Prepare yourself for hill folk, free stickers, dead toes, chimney sweeps, the open sea, and Will Coffin.
Find the show notes at http://flashpulp.com
The Skinner Co. Network
FC042 - Old Timey
[music] Hello, and welcome to Flashcast 42. Prepare yourself for hill folk, free stickers, dead toes, chimney sweeps, the open sea, and Will Coffin. [music] Tonight we have myself, Oopoponax, Fancy Talking, I like that one, Jessica Mae. Hello. Fancy Walking. You know it, you just got any boots, that's great, mm-hmm. And JRD. Hello. Mundane Tapest. So I heard you heard a factoid. Oh my gosh, I do, and it's even local. I read recently, and it breaks my heart. At the Toronto Zoo, there is a pair of African penguins, Buddy and Pedro, who are really good friends. And they play well with all the other penguins, but in the evening, every evening, they go and nest together. So are they denying these gay penguins a civil partnership? Is that what you're... They are. They are, actually. This is not like the case with, what was it? New York. Yeah, in New York. I can't remember. And Tango, Tango Makes Three, the book about the gay penguins in New York that hatched a chick, which was lovely, but no, no such hope. Oh, I thought you were referring to, there was another homosexual couple of penguins in New York. Yeah, in New York. And together they hatched a chick, and the chick, they named, I didn't even know that. But I knew that they kept them together. I didn't realize that they had it. Yep, they named the chick Tango, and there was a book written about it. And it's actually on New York Times, a list of like top controversial books or whatever. And Tango Makes Three, it's called. But... Where did these gay penguins find a chick? That's my question. Did they go around some penguin grocery store and snatch somebody's chick out of the... Well, no, they hatched it from an egg. I don't know where the egg came from, but they gave it an egg and they made a family. But in Toronto, they're going to separate them. Yes, that's right. It's not part of the species plan, the survival species plan or whatever. They're supposed to be mating with ladies. Buddy and Pedro are being separated, and they are being put with lady penguins, which I... Being put with lady penguins? Yes. Are they going to like one of those? Yeah, I was saying it's very reminiscent of the 50s. It's very sad. It's very sad to some church retreat for a weekend and pray the gay away. Wow. Mm-hmm. Penguins. I smell Michelle Bachmann behind this. Mm-hmm. Can't just leave the penguins to be happy. Yeah. Sorry, Buddy and Pedro. We were written for you. Bob and wire bread. So big news this week. Stickers came in. Yay! Finally, it was so exciting. And you know what, the funniest thing about that was that I saw the ticket to go pick it up at the post office, and we'd been waiting for them for so long. But even when he wouldn't answer me as to what it was in the box, I still had absolutely no close to what it was you were talking about until I, you know, physically saw them in your hands. Well, it actually came after a flurry of Halloween packages arriving. Yes. Yeah. So generally we have, like, maybe one thing coming in the mail, but at the time, like, we had, you know, things left and right coming. Mm-hmm. Anyway, very exciting. So, mailing's have already gone out. More mailing should go out very shortly. And I also have taken some photos of stickers that have mysteriously popped up around downtown Toronto. I do have plans to post those to the mob. I just, I was having issues with my phone, boring stuff, but they'll be there. And, yeah, they're in good, high traffic spots, they're played well by... Not that we know how they get there. Yeah. We're not encouraging you to vandalize your city with our stickers for free promotion or anything. But if you're willing to, you could maybe send an email and potentially more, it could come your way. So you might ask, how might I retrieve those stickers and Jessica may, may I answer? In the mob. That's right. We've got a couple of contests going on right now. Mm-hmm. Yeah, there's been some trivia going on. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I should mention this now, but for those of you who have been listening a very long time and know the entire backlog, we're hoping to just the sticker trivia questions if we can keep those to people who don't really talk so much to the mob. We're trying to get some discussion going. Well, I think most people are fine. It's really gigantic, I believe we're looking at it in this room. Yeah, you know everything, dude. Like you have been so loyal to us. And we love you, and anytime you want stickers, you just need to ask. Mm-hmm. You know what? I'd love it if people would take pictures of where they put their stickers for me. Absolutely. And send them. I would love that. We've also got a capturing contest going on with some very hilarious. Yes, it's going very well. Lots of entries. As soon as you mentioned, people could put in multiple responses. I think it really opened it up, but anyway, pretty hilarious. We have some funny mofos in the mob. Yeah, for real. The mob barking in the distance. I'm not sure if the mic had that up. Yeah, the wind blowing. November blowing through our living room. Yeah, it's pretty nice. Yeah, it's one of the last one days, so open windows while we can. Speaking of November, we ended off the October 31. This will be the final October 31 report, and I have a number. I have a number for how many we made it through. Oh good. Was it near 31? Well, I'll tell you after my last two brief reviews. Boy who cried werewolf. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Kids. See, miss eight, you're not so nonchalant, you're like, oh, you missed her, you're going to watch this. And she's like, I don't want to watch it. And you're like, well, you can find something else to do. She's like, she ended up going on the low seat and watching it with you. It's funny actually because she's recently really gotten into a number of vampire related tween, almost books. Yeah. Yeah, she's actually freaking out one of the neighbors because she comes home and she puts on her black lipstick and puts her fangs in and then just goes back outside and swings in the swing and her. Oh my gosh. Her first little gosh, why is she doing no honey princesses? I'm like, really, it's fine. It's fine. She's okay. Well, it sounds very goth until you realize she's doing it in a pink dress with just the most ridiculous girlish or, you know, the hot pink shirt with the little cat skeleton on it. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. With some, I'm all right with that. She's doing a book report on curiosity killed the cat. And she's dressing up as a main character, which is slightly emo tween. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm with it. Like she's a really good girl and she reads books. She's giving nine in a couple of days. So, yeah, it was funny. We were talking about twins nine real Z's. We were talking about, um, yeah, we're talking about tweens. And she was like, you know, like eight, nine, 10, 11, 12 year olds and I just smile. I didn't, you know, like cool, whatever, she wants to call herself a tween. She wants to be, yeah, well, she's looking up to the next age group, which is the way it happens, right? Yeah, for real. Yeah. Most of the next rung up the ladder. Yeah. The boy who cried were wolf was a pretty harmless little film, started one of the main nick stars. I don't even remember which one. One of the I Carly's, one of the Hannah Montana's I love your description. It was a fun little movie though. I mean, to watch with a kid who wasn't really anything you'd want to watch on your own. Yeah. Also, watch the leopard man, which I had. Oh, wait, wait, wait. You forgot to mention Brooke Shields was in it. Oh, yeah. Brooke Shields played. It seemed to be, like, it almost seemed like a made for TV movies. Well, that's exactly what it was. Wait, wait, wait, okay. It was, what was, what was Britney Spears's first song? She sang that at the end in a German accent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, that's the one. One more time. Yeah. She sang it in a German accent. Well, it was one of, she was supposed to be all lost here and over there. It was one of those Nick films, right, where the whole thing has a little bit of a budget, but not too much. And they've got one kind of former star in there as a side menu. And then you got sort of the young female lead and probably one of the precocious younger males from their show. I don't really know them also. Mm-hmm. Yep. There's a core email. Yeah. Absolutely. They all did the sort of, oh, look at the hilarity the cast had when they all sang the same song. Yeah. Yeah. Now in different sets, moments. Oh, god. How tedious. Like, if it's done well, it's awesome. If not, you're sitting through this whole song watching the same painful moment. I'm so impressed. I know, even describing it is painful. Mm-hmm. Anyway, so there was that. So, you know what wasn't painful though, the leopard man, which I hadn't seen before. I really enjoyed that film. Yeah. Refresh my memory. I have a terrible memory, everyone so. I actually watched it solo. Yeah. You guys were out. I don't remember where you guys were. Well, that makes me feel better then. It was a really moody little film. I don't actually want to tell you too much because you guys would probably really like to see it. Okay. But it takes place in this sort of small town atmosphere and there's this odd situation going on. It's actually by the same fellow who did the original Cat People. Oh, yeah. So, is it like '50s then? Yeah. Okay. There's this, not really noir, but there's a lot of shadow use and it's kind of nice. You have to when all you're working in is tones of, you know, a fair enough fair enough. But yeah, so those are the last few because we had actually done the last podcast just before Halloween. So. On Halloween. Oh yeah, on Halloween. But we had a couple extra. It was earlier in the day and we watched these some later in the day, I believe. Do you know? Oh, that's where you are. You're off trick or treating. Anyway, guesstimate how many films we watched? Jessica May? Me too. Do you really believe that we watched 32? Consider it in your mind how many it felt like we watched. 500 million. I don't even know why I asked you. I'd say 24. 24? Yeah, I mean, oh yeah, yeah. We actually watched 25. Well, I think mine wasn't so bad. 30,000. 500 million? Yeah, 500. So close. Okay, well, my first one wasn't so bad and then my second one was horrifically bad. Don't judge me. It was way better than 1500 million or whatever it was. Don't judge me. Now even though the season has ended, we have been watching something else pretty spooky lately. Yeah, yeah. American War. American War. That was good in that it leaves an impression that the husband, he just, that whole situation with the adultery and I'm sure you're supposed to be unsettled, but I am so unsettled by the situation and it kind of like eclipses everything that goes on. I'm kind of like relieved when I see horrific things happen. To him? Well, that isn't that some of the fun of a horror movie though, and that, obviously. You have to hate them a little bit. Yeah. And those twins. You take them, but it's like, oh. Yeah. Well, that's what I like about the show is not necessarily original in any one concept that it presents, but it'll take like 60 horror movie concepts that you would see spread across like 60 films and it'll can them all into one episode, which I'm really enjoying so far. That's acting very good. Can I give away my favorite line of the show? Yes, please. Don't make me kill you again. Yeah. Yeah. That was. Yeah. I've never heard that before. Yeah. Yeah. At least there's some good writing. Yeah, there are definitely moments. Who was the actress too? I recommend. Jessica Lang. Yeah. It's obviously written by somebody who's very well versed in the genre and who really has a love for it, so. Oh, creepy, creepy. You know the scene I'm talking about. Yeah. I'm not even going to get into it, but anybody who watches it, there is a scene that is creepy as well. You're talking about the first episode though, right? In real life news, I just wanted to bring something up real quick. You guys who know who Carlos the Jackal is, have you ever heard of? Yes I do. No, I don't. I do now because I read a story about him recently, but also I had heard of Carlos the Jackal. I had no idea what he had done. It was one of those names that is like so famous that, of course, everybody's heard of Carlos the Jackal, but who was Carlos the Jackal? What has he actually done? Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, now I actually know what he's done. Jessica May is obviously giving you a look like, what has he done, so? He was a revolutionist. Yeah, revolutionary. He was involved in some bombings in Paris, was it? Other terrorist-y things, he was on the run for a long, long time. Took some folks hostage in Stockholm? Yeah. Wasn't it like really important people like? Mm-hmm. I think it was an OPEC delegation, or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. He was actually a boogeyman for a long time. The reason I bring him up, he was a pulp boogeyman for a long time. There was a bunch of- 20 years. 20 years. The whole, you know the Borne films? Mm-hmm. That whole original series by Robert Ludlam is all based around Carlos the Jackal. But Jason Bourne's main enemy or whatever, his archinemesis, if you will, is Carlos- And he is all about Palestine, right? About- Yeah, I've never really entirely understood his motivations. Yeah. I think he's more of a rabble raiser than anything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, he's finally going to trial in France. I think they- they canned him in the 90s, is that right? They originally caught him in the late 90s, as I recall, or something- somewhere around there anyway. But I think at first they didn't want to even try him because they were worried of sort of blowback. Because they were worried about blowback, so now he's actually going up to court. I wonder if there's going to be any problems. Well, he was apparently pretty casual about it, pretty casual about being there. Well, I mean- As- What's the difference? He's essentially been held without trial up until now, hasn't he? Yeah. At least he gets a chance to find out how long he's going to be in the can, which is for forever. You guys hear about the new Bond film? No. There's definitely a go-ahead. It's been given a name. Mm-hmm. Do you know the name? No, I can't remember. Is it something fantastic? No, it's something really dumb. Skyfall. Oh. That doesn't sound good. That's cool. Skyfall? Yeah, but is it a Bond movie? I mean Moonraker, even as a bad film, at least it's a Bond name. Skyfall? Well, I totally agree. Yeah. Skyfall sounds like the name of a poorly written fantasy novel. So? In the land of the deep forest elves, there were tales of the Skyfall. I was thinking more Sky pirates, but I really like Sky pirates. You always devote to Sky pirates, yeah. Yeah. I just keep thinking like, I could just keep seeing James Bond, like he's got his gun and he's in a text, he's in a text video, and he's just free falling. Yeah. It's like totally. Well, the plot actually sounds like they're doing a is-em-maturator kind of situation and they're playing up the Judy Dench aspect. I think maybe because they realize she's got more star power than Daniel Craig. And we'll see. I also do wonder if this is going to be a film where they transition her out. You know what I mean? Use this sort of double, like the last scene of the film is like the new M turning around in their chair or whatever. That's going to be some other- Yeah. No, it's not going to be your granddaughter. It'll be some other famous British actor. Some noteworthy- It'll be like Ian McAllen. Oh, maybe your fake granddaughter? Gandalf will also be M. Or maybe Patrick Stewart. Wouldn't that be excellent? He'd be like a leader in everything. Oh, I'd be so. No, what's his name from Quantum Leap? He comes in. Scott Bacula? Yeah, he just like, he zaps in and he's like, "Oh my God, okay, how do I handle this?" And then we'll have to wait till next week to find out how he got himself. Oh, that situation. Yeah. Of course, Scott Bacula. He's never easy for him, not once. I just want to make a quick note that our fellow Jello has some new episodes up of the show Radio's Revenge over at radiosrevenge.com. He does a full cast, old school, old-time radio kind of show, and it's a fantastic piece of work. So if you guys want, point your browsers over there. Mm-hmm. Awesome. Even if you don't want to, just do it anyways. Just do it anyway. And you know what? That actually reminds me. I know it's not exactly old-time radio shows, but I've been listening to a lot of old-time music lately, and if anybody has any suggestions on stuff I could be listening to. You're talking 30s through 50s? Yeah. Yeah. Well, there is actually a genre called old-timey music that's like Appalachian folk music. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Which is-- Which is-- I also heard that type. Well, even more like playing on a washboard than that, but I really enjoy it, but I'm not sure that it's actually what you're looking for. Yes, not exactly what I'm looking for. I just happened to call that playlist my old-timey playlist, but yeah. For example, Ella Fitzgerald, Bedabing. I'm eager for the day when the eights have children of their own, and those children are telling us that the chemical brothers are so old-timey. Yeah, right. You think, "I've got an old-timey playlist." Oh, this is a chemical brother. Anyway. So yeah, if anybody has any suggestions, throw it my way. Thanks. One last thing I wanted to touch on, I know that at least one of the people at this mic is excited about the impending release of Breaking Done. Why do we have to talk about this? People make fun of me. I do believe that despite the fact that I think it's not very good, the Twilight novels do have a place in sort of pulp conversation. I think the romance novel in itself brings something to the pulp genre that I tend to ignore because it's not where my money is at. Yeah. Well, you just wait. Yeah, I know. You're actually going to get me a gunpoint at some point to write some sort of romance story. That's right. I am going to force him to write me a romance novel one day. So I've got a new vampire concept. Here's my feeling. You know this lust thing that's always going on in vampire stories? Yeah, this lust thing that's always going on. Well, there's always the sexual undertone except for something in like 30 days of night maybe. What if they need to like, what if they're, how do I put this gently? What if vampires are constantly flaccid and they require the blood that they drink as sort of a natural Viagra so that they have blood so that they can actually... Yeah. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Those are just sexual addicts. Run amuck. Hey, well, you know, if that's the case, they can call us because it wouldn't be... What? Oh. It wouldn't be the first sexaholic to call us. Yeah. Referring to... At first I was like, what? Hmm? What are we going to do for them? Pass. Yeah. Sexaholics anonymous. That's been a while. I think they actually finally fixed the website so that our number wasn't... We've said that before. Yeah. Well, we'll see if it sticks this time. Okay. Now I'm very eager for the return of... Spot of Modern. Hi, mobsters, I'd like to apologize in advance for my voice. Our household has been stricken with the plague and I've been the latest victim. So that being said, here goes. With all of the recent Flashcast discussions regarding Lucky Rabbit's feet, severed limbs, and the like, I couldn't resist presenting this little story that I stumbled across today from the Great White North. "Fathers and sons traditionally bond over a shared experience, hunting, fishing, playing cards, but it's highly unusual for that familial moment to involve sucking on a dead man's toes." Yep, you heard me right. Sucking on a dead man's toes. That's how it worked for Ron and Matt Frenchll. Before Matt went off to college at University of Nebraska in 2007, the pair decided to take a road trip from San Antonio, Texas, all the way to Alaska. It was a trip six years in the making and the experience inspired Frenchll to write. The Sour Toe Cogtail Club, the Yukon Odyssey of a father and son in search of a mummified toe and everything else. Ah, yes, the Sour Toe Cogtail, a gruesomely famous beverage served only in one place in all of the world, the Sour Dough Saloon in Dawson City, a town 300 miles from the Arctic Circle in Canada's Yukon Territory. This creepy cocktail, a shot of any type of hard liquor, served in a glass with a dehydrated human toe, mummified in salt, is the stuff of legend. As the story goes, a man known as Captain Dick Stevenson started this tradition in 1973. He is said to have discovered the original toe in a cabin that he purchased, which had previously belonged to a trapper who had lost his big toe to Frostbite and saved it in a jar. According to the rules, the nasty toe must touch the lips during the drink's consumption for the drinker to earn the distinction of being a true sour tour. Other toes have since been donated on our kept end pickling salt when not being slurped. Saloon officials say the high alcohol content in the whiskey vodka or other booze keeps the toes sterile, despite being in the mouths of as many as a few dozen people on any given night. The Frenchlles first got the bug to drink the cocktail when that was 13, Ron explained. When you're 13, liquor and body parts are two topics that are fascinating. We talked about doing it some day, but when he was ready to go off to college in Nebraska, I decided we better do it. Once the trip was planned, the two drove from San Antonio to Calgary, where they rented a camper for the rest of the journey which took 12 days total. The closer we got, Matt became increasingly hesitant not just because of the thought of having a cadaverous toe on his lips, Frenchll said. He wasn't a fan of hard liquor and worried that the Yukon Jack whiskey, that is the usual choice would make him sick. The two finally made it to the sourdough saloon. We wanted incontrovertible evidence in a dark bar so we put it in our mouths. Ron said it was pretty grotesque. Frenchlles says he wasn't worried about germs figuring the toe was sterile after having been dunked in a dozen whiskey glasses before it got to him. There was no taste, no smell, as a sensual experience it was ho-hum. As a result, Ron and Matt are officially recognized as members number 24,694 and 24,695 of the sourdough cocktail club. But Dick Van Nastren, the manager of the sourdough saloon admits the record keeping sometimes gets shaky. We've had more than 100,000 people do it. We keep two toes on hand to deal with the demand. I'm Jeffrey Lynch, and that's this week's Spot of Bother. That was really gross and awesome. An excellent piece as always, Jeff. I totally think I could do it, though. How about you, Jamie? Yeah, for real, totally good. I don't think I had much problem with it. Just as long as I didn't get it in my mouth by accident, like in my mouth? Well that was actually something I was going to say. You know that both of the toes that keep on hand have been puked on repeatedly. I don't necessarily know. They can say, "Oh, you're dropping a whiskey glass," but there's still a chunk of some guy's pepper-ret stuck to the side. That's gross. And you'd never know. Anyway. Yeah, and I guess they would only be good for so long, so you'd need another toe or two, right? I don't know. Keep it in my hand. There should be. The people that you count know, here's the thing. You get above that. They'll put anything in their mouth. Noah, when you are trying to pull in tourist dollars, when you live that far north, you do the craziest things. Look at the crazy thing we'll do here. You know what? Just what we put in our drinks. Just look at the whole "kiss the cod" tradition in Newfoundland. Yeah. Yeah. At least Newfoundland's a beautiful place to go to. Yeah. But you know the stories of newfies. You know. They have two heads, and they're-- Yeah. What are these stories apparently I've missed out on something? You know when people are really discriminatory against newfies? Oh, I don't like those people. No. I'm just saying, like, in the same sense that, like, they'll do a lot for tourism in the Yukon. They'll do a lot for tourism. I think there are certainly people out on the coast who ham up their coastal position just to-- Mm-hmm. But at the same time, I know how it is. If somebody had come around to my grandfather's place, they would have thought he was some country bumping, hamming it up for tourist dollars. That's just how he was. He's just a guy standing around in a field full of poop rolling his own cigarettes like that. Mm-hmm. It's just his living. So I'm not going to buzz the-- It wasn't always a field full of poop though, right? Well, no, he started it with a poop free field, and through a lot of hard work, he got it-- Got it. --full of poop. Yeah. He filled it with poop. But what was he-- Largely not his own. Largely? [LAUGHS] Mostly cow poop. OK. Sometimes you really had to go. Well, my grandpa had a large amount of wheat that he grew. Ah. OK, so it was-- It was like a field of hay or wheat, not like a field of poop. It was only a field of poop every once in a while. He also had-- You make it sound like he was aspiring to-- Things alternated as I grew up like when I was very young and he was still a relatively agile man, they had cows, and that was largely what his fields were used for. But as he got older, he couldn't do as much work. So he started to just sell off the hay of his fields as opposed to raising anything on it. Mm. But he also maintained a fairly large garden like they ate a lot of their own gross. That sounds really gross. They ate a lot of their own growth. Not their own growths. [LAUGHS] I mean, they ate what they grew. Happy Halloween, people. Yeah. They were the tomb of suckers. Yes. Yeah, thanks a lot, Jeff. That was fantastic. Mm-hmm. And I would be-- I would put this on the tourist destination list for flash bulb posts. For real. With the mobsters. Oh, man. We're going to really get a list. We should put that up somewhere and start getting like a list and a little-- Places to see. Yeah, we'll get like a map and we can have-- I'm sure you know how to do all that stuff. You're smart. I have been known to use the internet. Yep. You'll make something for me. Make it pretty. Now, let's change it up a little bit with a fantastic film review by-- [CLICK] Fresh fish, a new batch of cinematic pulp with the always listening, 3-day fish. Hey, Flashgast, 3-day fish here, feeling a mike better. So not a great week for a pulp in movies and whatnot. Yeah. Tower heist. No, it was not pulp. The other room that came out with Tower Heist, not pulp, but fear not. For fish is always listening. So I'm going to pull off a retro review. Something that I, thinking back, might have suggested for the October 31. So here it goes. The movie is called Freaks. It came out in '33, if I'm not mistaken. Could be wrong. Don't cite me. Directed by Todd Browning. But what is interesting about this movie, I use a few things, really. For its time, it was very controversial, very risque. So this is the basic plot. There's a circus. And the circus has a freak show. And the ringleader is a little person. And he has a little person, fiance. And the lovely lady star of the show flirts with the ringleader. And, but she's just doing it because she found out that he has a huge fortune and she marries him. She could take it all and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, it's what you'd expect. If you've ever seen an old movie, it's what the acting is, what you'd expect, effects are what you'd expect. But what is interesting about this movie is that all the people in this movie are actual circus freaks from the time. There's people with shrunken heads and there's some conjoined twins. There's a half man, half woman. There's a guy with no legs and walks around on his arms. There's a guy with no arms and no legs. And he lights himself a cigarette with no arms and no legs and all by himself. And it's pretty impressive. So yeah, it's a very interesting movie, Pulp-wise, just because it does touch on the very sensational side of Pulp. Very much worth a C. It's considered a classic, it is a cult classic, I believe you can catch it on Turner classic movies every once in a while. So time for the rating, I'm going to give it a yellow light, sad to say, that is only because if you don't like old time movies, you're not going to like those maybe probably. Like if you were just dead set again, if you're a bit more open minded, it's a decent watch. Don't go into this movie thinking you have to take like 100% like serious. But if you are a fan of old timey movies, this is definitely a must see if you've already seen it. See it again, fun times, so yeah, that is all, always listening. Nicely done fish, freaks is a classic and film I enjoy quite a bit, sorry if you don't like the quote unquote old timey films that are fish. But yeah, we've seen it many times. Yeah, definitely a Halloween staple. I think there's something to be said for the cinematography in that film. It's very moody. It's very good. Yeah, it has a lot of moments of creep. I think people honestly have not been able to replicate the way they're saying to the man like the we accept him, we accept him and like in return, he's so disgusted by them and doesn't want to be accepted. Like there's just so many levels, like so many interesting things that they're saying with that film. So should be mentioned, Fish did touch on the sort of hubbub over its release. But this film really derailed Todd Browning's career. He made a few films after this, but he certainly didn't make anything for a couple of years immediately after the film. And what he did make wasn't, I haven't seen everything he did afterwards, but it wasn't terribly spectacular. Like I don't think he was going much of a budget to work with after that. I think it was a ballsy film for its time. Can you imagine what could come out these days that would entirely implode a director's career? What could you put out? Like you put out human caterpillar and that, or human centipede I mean, and that will actually human caterpillar. It's a totally different film. Spins a cocoon around himself. And then comes out as a pretty butterfly. It's like a reverse horror film. What could a director possibly do at this time? Like other than just straight up sort of bukaki, like even that has its market. What could you do that would sink your career entirely? I can't think of anything. I suppose you could go- I can't now either. Anyway, thanks a lot, Fish. Yes, sir. Thank you. Your mother-in-law listens to this show. She doesn't know what bukaki means. Don't look it up, please. I think this would be a good time to cleanse the palette with a little New York minute. Hi, I'm Barry and this is your New York minute. Lock your doors and look out. Thanksgiving is coming. I don't talk much about Staten Island on this blog yet. It is unintentional. I used to work there and take it from me. It's a great place. It's easily one of the top five boroughs. And it's about as opposite of Manhattan as you can get. It's the least populated and the least developed borough. Parts of it are covered in trees, trees, trees, and more trees, but evil lurks among the trees. I will now read you a tale of a neighborhood under siege, a neighborhood beset by invaders, non-human creatures who prey upon the weak and helpless, and they leave a lot of poop around, too. I'm taking this article in its entirely from the New York Daily News, where usually the only turkeys it writes about are Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council. And I can vouch for its truthfulness, for I have seen these marauders and I've still gotten out alive. Turkeys terrorize residents as they roam local neighborhood. One slice of Staten Island isn't giving thanks for its turkey this holiday season, because the wild fowl are rampaging across the neighborhood. The menacing flock is ruffling feathers and ocean breeze by tying up traffic, covering yards of excrement, even trapping one terrified woman in her car. "It was straight out of Cujo," said dental assistant Gina Guorano, 23. "I'm sitting on my car, Facebooking on my phone, when turkeys jumped on my windshield. I screamed like I was being murdered. They just kept looking at me like it was their car. I felt trapped. I was so scared." Ocean Breezes' turkey terror began at least a decade ago, when a local resident liberated her nine pet birds at nearby South Beach Psychiatric Center. The State Department of Environmental Conservation said there are roughly one hundred turkeys in the neighborhood, though locals think it might be in the thousands. Packs of turkeys strut slowly along the tree-lined residential streets near Cromwell Avenue and Mason Street, and a daily display that's hardly mouthwatering. "It's disgusting, it's horrible," said Sarah Palais, 82, who first noticed the invasion a decade ago. People think turkeys are a big joke, but when you have thousands of these filthy animals surrounding my house and pooping all over everything, it becomes a living nightmare. Standing two to four feet high, the brown feathered fiends meander between houses and linger for hours outside some homes. The turkeys are terrible, terrible, said Sarah Finess San Feliz, 82, who keeps a garden hose by her front door to drive them away. They come and drove us by the hundreds, and eat the figs off my fig tree and poop all over everything. I complain and complain, but no one will help us. The hose is the best weapon available because city law protects wild turkeys from hunters. Nothing protects humans from turkeys, though. At Staten Island University Hospital, patients and staff routinely dodge the birds gathered outside the doors. Some seniors are too terrified to leave their homes, City Councilman James Otto said. DEC spokesman Tom Panzone said the agency is surveying residents to determine what steps are needed. Options include capturing or harvesting, killing the turkeys and donating the food to the needy, he said. Otto hatched a plan two years ago to move the turkeys to an upstate farm, but conservation officials balked because they thought the weather would be too cold. How are people supposed to have faith that their government can deal with problems like terrorism when we can't even deal with turkeys, Otto asked? Some residents have specific ideas of handling the problem. "I have the perfect spot for these turkeys," said Alan Barnhart, 52, "right between my mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce." I'm Barry, and this has been your New York Minute. Let's hear it to do your, to do your, to do your, to do your. You know what? The well-being of turkeys is kind of recently dear to my heart. Oh yeah? Recent? Yeah. Well, is it because we used to live in the woods and we'd see them run around all the time and the world? Yeah, until Barry mentioned at the end of the bit that they were protected, I was going to say that when I was a youth, and maybe it reveals a bit of my rural upbringing, seeing a turkey was actually a sign of a delicious meal ahead. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But I recently, I was, I was made aware that certain companies do not treat their turkeys very well. You're talking about factory farming? Yeah. Yeah. Factory farming is pretty brutal. There's a lot of weirdness in the food industry right now. I think we're shaking ourselves out as we get to these stacked population levels, wherever we can't really maintain it through natural means. Well, maybe we can though. We can. It's just, it's cheaper and it's more profitable to treat them, you know, improperly. Sorry, there's our cat named Cat, and he's singing to the outside with his tail, like, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. I do understand though that certain concessions do need to be made for efficiency, but at the same time... Well, what is that documentary watched and we saw that guy was free range, just amazing. I absolutely believe that... Can you man at least amazingly and sustainably? Mm-hmm. You don't got to be so brutal. No, absolutely. I do believe factory farming has got way overboard. I don't believe in, you know, battery hens in that whole situation. It's very rough. I'm just saying that you got to find a middle ground. Give me some turkey. Mm-hmm. Charity will get you to make a turkey any time of the year, just so he can make sandwiches with it. I don't get me wrong. I love turkey, and I will eat a turkey any day of the week, but I don't want it to suffer. You know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Turkeys have evolved genetically over hundreds of thousands of years to be absolutely perfectly delicious between two pieces of bread with a little mayo. And salt and pepper. And that's... And they've evolved to be stuffing on it. They are the apex of exactly... Well, yeah. I mean... They feel nothing. If you were walking sandwich fodder, you'd be pretty pissed off most of the time, too. Mm-hmm. Oh, I'm screwed. We actually do them a service. Yeah. What do we eat them? Yeah, they want to be eaten. That's right. The horrible existence. The horrible existence. This does strike me as a New New York problem. Not an old New York problem. I can't see the sort of mental image of '70s, hard-ass New York. And they have these wild turkeys and... Yeah, I really... What turkey problem? Yeah, exactly. And then the warrior's collaborative. The turkey's... The turkey's had to make it to Coney Island by Don. Yeah, totally. Thanks a lot, Barry. Thanks very much, Barry. Very nice. Now, while we're looking abroad for our tales, a little something from Vienna, perhaps? The curious tales of Vienna. The 13th Chime. It was in the middle of the 16th century in a tavern in Vienna, when a handful of young musicians had an enjoyable evening. Among these musicians was a well-known conductor, named Arnold the Poek. It was already nearly midnight when an old gypsy woman entered a tavern and offered her services palm raider. She went from table to table, but nobody seemed to be interested. Arnold the Poek was in an excellent mood that evening and ready for some fooling, so he backed the gypsy over to his table. "Tell me about my future," he asked her and stretched out his hand for her to take. The woman followed his offer eagerly. "You have an interesting palm," she said. "I see an eventful life, a lot of success, and a circle of high personalities. I even see the emperor in your life." "Probably, the brook looked around to make sure that everyone around could hear the gypsy's words." "Your heartline is strong and uninterrupted," she continued, "and your lifeline is telling me that a proppedly she broke up her sentence and intended to leave." "Hey, hey, stop," the brook exclaimed and grabbed her sleeve. "You haven't predicted my future yet. What has my lifeline told you?" "I've seen the hour of your death," she replied softly. "And this is when," he insisted. "It is better you don't know it." It had become silent in the tavern, and everyone's eyes were directed to the brook and the gypsy. "But I do want to know," the conductor urged. "Well," the fortune teller looked again at the lines of the brook's palm. "You will die, not far from this tavern." Soon, when the clock of St Stephen strikes 13 times, for a moment it was so quiet that one could have heard the fall of an eel, then a thunderous laughter broke out. "Ha ha, when the clock strikes 13, it's not at the brook. This clock has to be invented. You've just proclaimed me immortality." Still laughing, he opened his wallet and gave the woman a gold coin. The old looked sadly at the conductor, then she left the tavern and disappeared in the dark. A couple of weeks later, Arnold the brook had already forgotten that boozy evening and the prediction of the gypsy. He visited the bellring of St Stephen's Cathedral. It was a beautiful day, and because Arnold the brook laughed a few over the roofs of Vienna, they climbed up to the tower, up to the room where the bells hung. At that moment, the church-glock began to strike to tell the Viennese that it's twelve and time for lunch. The conductor put his hands over his ears to protect his sensitive hearing. When the twelfth chime had faded away, he thought his friend had shouted something at him, and so he turned around quickly. Thereby his sword hit violently against the bell, a thirteenth chime echoed through Vienna. Suddenly he remembered the gypsy and her prophecy, full of panic, he tried to silence the booming bell, but he stumbled, lost his balance, and fell into the depths. That was great, thanks so much Ingrid. It's very nice having Ingrid back on the show. I can't believe you still have stories about St Stephen's. Is it like a book you have or something? You know what? I bet you she's just making up the stories and you know what St Stephen's was in that one. Interesting how often these tales revolve around specific numbers of meaning. Yeah, remember she was just saying one of the last episodes that she had stopped sending at Tail Thirteen? Yeah. That's funny, I have another feature Thirteen. Thank you very much Ingrid, that was great. Very nice work. Once again. Now, special treat as well. The return of Captain Pighart. Whee! Greetings Flashcasters, Tzai Captain Ignatius Pighart, back once again with a tiny adventure for you on this Halloweeny occasion. It is a short tale of fear and doom and disaster upon the seas. It is me, gelatinous adventure. This be the legend of the where, Jelly, long may ye fear him, and hear be ye reason in why. Ahhh! The clouds clustered about the swollen moon, like Octopi and Menison expectant Meruench. Ahhh! Memories. It was nil omen, for the lunar cycle breathes anxiety amongst even the saltiest of Seaman, who prefer to be docked and drunk amidst full moon. However, with no chance of making landfall, we'd lost both Map and Anchor in a bet over who were the most superstitious, ourselves or the crypto-astrological whalers of gullible island. Instead, we busied ourselves with ordinary shipboard activities, such as drinking, doing fillesome things with ropes, and tormenting the new cabin lads we'd acquired some weeks earlier. And worrying about the portents. A cry from the top mass dismissed me most morbid musins. Treacle or Francois, the tri-eyed recipient of the good doctor's infamous ophthalmic experiments, bade us all into the riggin, for a glimpse of one of nature's rarest sights. I aspired only two dolphins dabbling carnae, this I've seen before. The other port are, to a fine sight, beneath the waves pulse the eerie glowing of a shoal of jellyfish, drifting in our wake. It was most soothing to our lunar and flamed nerves, and, with thoughts of the dolphins, we rolled into our hammocks, or squeezed into the build accordingly. 'Tis Billy no mate abode; his fresh stench were easier to tolerate than his cleaner than thou's superiority.' Dorn eyed up the night suspiciously, before creeping over the horizon. He were soon start off again by the inevitable shouting. He no mate stood on deck, arm and finger extended, in the well-known point in gesture. May I follow this finger. At first I was unsure to whom he gruesome corpse belonged. But beneath the mass of red welts, I recognized the same terrified features as I'd seen when bundling him into a sack. At least we'd not named the cabin lads yet, else I'd feel a greater sorrow. As it were, his pals commenced some communal keenan, which grade vastly upon me nerves. I had no tolerance for that, so I had friends who are trical or haranguminous unspeakable tongue till they fell silent. Ah, back to ye, buddy. Whenever a man slips away on board, I like to have a bit of a poke and make some guesses to his fate with me mine suitably ajar. So I screwed in me magnifying eyeball for a closer peak. Now this lad were wet and somewhat slimy, which we might attribute our watery environment, or perhaps some homicidal sea cucumber emerging from the deeps, ah, who knows? I followed the strange footprints what led from the blistered body right up to the rail and over the side. A frenzy of panic, surmiseries, ensued in spite of a light-hearted comment that he were a bit wet behind the ears, ah, 'cause ye see, he were both new, and also he was wet. Just as a joke, perhaps is not appropriate, just at such times. Now, when night boldly thrashed herself upon us once more, the crew were exceedingly jittersome. The moon strutting out from her cloudy bower we yellow and engorge, impressing on us a sense of malevolence and a slight stern of arousal. No, 'tis just me then. The lads were winding themselves up nicely, so we watched the pretty underwater undulations before retiring. Me slumber was arrested by a piercing scream, followed by a gas-scream, which peered out into an anguished wail and finally a strangled squeal, which was a fine range. The lads burst forth with lamps and pistols at the ready. At the foot of the mast a grim sight greeted us, the three eyes a tricolour-fransoir, red, staring straight ahead, white, down at the viscous filth, slocked over his blotchy body, and the blue, gazing to starboard. Alas, poor-fransoir, ye pretentious accent annoyed me more than reason could bear. We followed his blue eye in the footprints, with all the stealth of an armed mob. A further cry heard us on, out of the shadow stumbled Mute Charlie rambling incoherently. He were not actually Mute, I should point out, but an idiot, but not as stupid as leaving nickname selection to Billy and his blasted the sores. The lads were on hair-trigger, and unleashed the salvo shots at poor Charlie. Well, he howled out, but so did something else. An uncanny shadow of a man peeled off me crew-maked, and lulled up towards us. The thing were like a fat, drunk child that ye could see through, that we translucency according to Billy, how I despise his pedantry. It quivered like Monty's surprise extract to wail, but with added radiance. As with all things strange, we colanderised it with our discharge. It collapsed to the deck, spread in elongating, with one last pulse of phosphorescence, until it grew still. There were a moment's peace, followed by a uniform hushed. Well, bugger me, at the sight of the dead jellyfish on deck. The moon winks sarcastically at me. Nah, I prefer daytime. I sent Billy up the rig and see how many more of them jellyfish were still hanging around. Shakeily, he reported him blooming thickly about us. Next, we heard the sound of a gloopy hand slapping onto the planks, and another one of the bioluminescent bass had slopped onto the sloop deck. "Jourms!" I cried, earning me some dark looks for me more unfortunate crew members. Pistol shots rang out as the battle began in earnest. Cannonfire, slaps and cries of, "Ah, the really stings!" surrounded me. The sun's morning glory finally fell across us, and the hordes of blobby blighters slopped back into their natural shapes where we could stamp on them. With many dead, and the rest had taken their share of stings in surprisingly sensitive regions. Ah, the moon's seaser waxing that night, and the mass of amorphous monsters sank out of sight, leaving us to pickle our wheels. One month later, horrid smug-faced lunar swagged out from Twixtor cloudy bower once more. I felt a stir in within me, as if I'd eaten too much soup, so I reached for a bucket, anticipating so unpleasantness, but my hand just flopped into it. Me artificial appendages clattered to the deck, as I slid blubberly out of me clothes. Ah, every night of lunar largesse makes me a jellyfish. Now, that be the legend of the wear, jelly, along may ye fear." "Oh, thank you, Captain." "That was sooooooo good." "We're jellies." "Nicely done. Nicely done." "Oh, fantastic." "You had us giggling." "We apologize that it wasn't put up for the Halloween show, we just got it a little too late to get it in, right?" "Yeah, it was just a smidgen too late, we're like, "Ah, no." "Yeah, but it was certainly worth it." "Yeah, very, very, very, very worth it, thank you." "Mmm, now I'll get right in some new stuff." "I have to, well, he's got plenty of backlog. I have to admit that Captain Pighart has sort of ruined the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise for me. Not that the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise hasn't ruined itself enough, but-" "But it's no Captain Pighart." "Yeah." "Yeah." "Yeah, your variety of ours are amazing, as I said." "You can find all of the Pighart business as well as Nick's postings for upcoming comedy shows at CaptainPighart.com, and while I'm at it I should also point out that you can find a lot of fantastic work by our own Jeffery Lynch at bothersomethings.com." "Absolutely." "Bary of the New York Minute can be found at BMJ2K.com, and Ingrid can be found at vneyslegends.blogspot.com, as well as dancing on let.blogspot.com." "Indeed." "And, well, we're giving the rundown, you might as well know that you should come around to the Facebook, find 3-day fish in the mob, or in his own Facebook page." "And like him." "Yeah, he likes that kind of business." "Okay, so let's move into Elle Melbag." "Actually, speaking of Ingrid, she had sent in a little bit of commentary regarding Flashcast 40. We were talking about superstitions, which we haven't actually finished talking about. I know Halloween has moved fast, but I think at the same time I've got a little few kicking around the mailbag that we'll come up with next week, but yeah. But she wanted to mention that the, because I had, we had wondered how the chimney sweeper touching you had been. Good luck." "Yeah, I liked my story on Ellen." So she submitted, she said that she'd dug up some background information. In older times it was almost a disaster for a household when the chimney was blocked. People couldn't cook nor get heat. In such a situation, the chimney sweep brought a lot of happiness and luck back to the people. "Yeah, I guess." "Yeah, and it sounded like an essential service." "Yeah, and also just cleaning out the chimney prevented chimney fires." "Yeah, and death, yeah." "And death, so..." "Yeah, it was a lifesaver." "It's not like I suppose your random maid who, you're not going to have the maid clean up some journey." "Cleaning shuffle ups the chimney, yeah." "She's not going to sweep something up that's eventually going to save your life." "Oh, maybe. I mean, maybe maids don't get better than respect they deserve." "There's specific tools and you know, there's reason why it's an occupation." "Yeah. No, I'm not, no, listen, I'm not downplaying cleaning services like it's a pain in the ass job." "Oh no." "You are." "I've been hassling charity to get our own cleaning services because little people have sticky fingers and then they touch everything." She also mentions regarding cuckoos that the male call is usually given from an open perch "guku" and there's a wiki article and there's an audio file in the wiki. This call is audible from April to July to attract female cuckoos. As far as she knows, cuckoos are very shy and that's why it's lucky to hear one of their calls. "You know what? That actually reminds me, I just heard what a nightingale sounds like for the first time yesterday." "Can you do it first?" "I'm a nightingale!" "Yes, yeah." On that note, I believe Rich has a little something to say. "Hello, flashpulp gang. This is Rich again. I'm still creeping up slowly on you through the archives. I'm up to Flashcast 18 right now. One thing I want to ask you guys before I forget, and likely if forgotten I asked by the time I reached the Flashcast where you answer it, is if you've ever drawn a comparison between Will Coffin and the Harry Dresden character in Jim Butcher's books. Will reminds me a bit of him, at least a shortly of sci-fi channel incarnation. I haven't read the books myself, my wife has, and I keep meaning to dig out her copies and read through them. Anyway, hopefully you haven't discussed that before and I've forgotten or it hasn't come up an episode I've yet to reach. I really do like Will, though I'd say I like all the characters, including the off-malign Joe Monk. Really, the only one I have sort of a hard time with is Mother Graham, but maybe that's because she reminds me a little too much of southern gothic stories, who knows. I'm off to wait for more trick-or-treaters now. Tell Karwick Rises. Rich. Can't get enough of that till Karwick Rises sign up. I know me either. I just think you know a bunch of those stickers, and I signed them all till Karwick Rises. So thanks Matt, Rich. I think we're just going to start calling him time travel to Rich. I find this fascinating that he's essentially sending himself little messages in a bottle for the future. He's creeping up on us. He told me, yeah, he told me his estimate for how long he thought it would take to finally achieve where he would be able to hear his answers, and it was a number of weeks. It can't remember how many exactly, but it's so cool the time traveler, Rich. Time traveler, Rich. Well, welcome to the future time traveler, Rich. The answer is, yeah. What about Rich the time traveler? Rich the time traveler. I like time traveler, Rich. You know what? 'Cause it's all backwards. We send ourselves a message in a bottle. Time traveler, Rich. You decide. Do you prefer Rich the time traveler? Time traveler, Rich. Let us know in however many episodes we are from now. Jay, you know. Yeah. Come on. He always gets her way. He'll know that already. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I haven't, I'm not super familiar with the dressing files I have to admit. I'm probably more familiar with the show than I am with the books. Oh, I've mentioned that before. Yeah. I knew when I have, yeah. The other character I have to say I avoid stepping on the toes of is actually John Constantine from the Hellblazer comics. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. He's also sort of a sheister magician in a way. But at the same time, I tried to give Will his own personality, hopefully it doesn't feel like he's, unfortunately, we don't have enough of this sort of modern myth stuff to feel necessarily like you can set somebody, well, what I refer to as an urban shaman all the time for Wilkofen in sort of a modern setting without feeling like they're meshing together with these other universes a little bit, but I've done my best to lay out Will in the way that he is, and I think he's a pretty separate entity from the other two. What do you think about Rich the Time Traveler's comment saying that it was difficult for him to get into Mother Graham? I find that interesting and it would also depend and there's no way he's going to remember this by the time he hears this. But Mother Graham definitely started off in a very southern goth, kind of trajectory. I definitely have to agree with that. I can leave it. And then it reached a certain pitch where I did a story that I'm not going to really blow the outcome of right now, but it had a pretty intense ending and I just sort of walked away from the grand character a little bit, and since then all we've done is basically her telling other tales, which I really like. So I kind of hate having fallen into an almost stereotypical position of this old lady. Yes, sitting here children around and she's... So at some point she's going to return. I have certain things that she needs to accomplish, and in the same way that we opened up chapter, I feel like we opened up chapter three of the murder plague with Flashpop 217. I just haven't opened up the next chapter of what I want to do with Mother Graham, and I sort of started building on that with the cast of characters, but some days I am really tempted to go to just declare that I'm going to make a run of the murder plague and maybe some mixed in Blackhall, Mulligan episodes, and a little coffin. The stuff that can be really one shot I guess is what I'm saying, and then just run right through the end of the murder plague, and then maybe do Ruby, run right through to the end of it, so that I can have a little bit more continuity, because I know that people sometimes find it hard to remember who all the characters are from things. That's an interesting proposition. But the problem is that I'm not necessarily sure that I... The rate I write them at is the rate that good ideas come to me essentially, so I don't want to trash what I've built with the murder plague just because I need to keep up at a certain speed and produce a certain amount. Anyway, it's something that I play with, and maybe when I really... The truth is, it kind of happened naturally. Usually, if I get excited about something, I'll keep returning to that character over and over again, and that's... Even if you have a plan to do everything but... Mm-hmm. So at some point I will probably get excited about Mother Gran again, and we'll get off her sort of storytelling phase, but... I can dig that it's not for everybody, she's not for everyone. I do have to point out that I very much appreciate that Time Traveler Rich pointed out how awesome Joe Monk is. Yeah, Joe Monk gets a lot of love from a very few people. Mm-hmm. We, you know, we went a while without having a Joe Monk story, and then we had one again, so... Oh yeah, I hope you're happy about that. Very appropriate timing, Rich. Uh, Rich the Time Traveler. Time Traveler. Alright, well thanks for the call, Rich. I look forward to more. Absolutely. Good to hear from you. In the future. Now man, for all ages, Colorado Joe. ♪ Use a cup of Joe for mobsters at home ♪ ♪ It's Colorado Joe ♪ Hello, Flashcast Crew and fellow mobsters. Love the pics of your family Halloween costumes. Everyone looked awesome. The Force was with you for sure. The mention of the movie with the little devil doll tickled some long unused neurons. The story in question was one of three vignettes comprising 1975's Trilogy of Terror. I distinctly remember the end of the story, when the woman is possessed and is grinding her knife on the floor, waiting for the arrival of her boyfriend. It was creepy. My own personal phobia is spiders. This phobia was exacerbated by a Twilight Zone episode, in which a giant spider terrorized man. He was the only one who could see the spider. Not as bad now, but when I was a kid, a spider could turn me into a basket case. As for haunted houses, my favorite has to be the year I heard six preteen girls, including my daughter, through a local haunt. I conspired with one of the employed spooks to up the fright factor. I gave her the name of one of the girls. In the next room, a ghost chanted the girl's name over and over, to totally freaked him out. We ended up going through the house three times that night. Fun times. One observation about how superstitions can come to be. The human brain has a strong predilection for confirmation bias. We remember the outlying events very clearly, and tend to forget non-eventful times. As an example, I can totally see someone scratching their nose than company showing up. This combination happens, and is noticed several times. While times when an itchy nose and the arrival of company don't coincide, the brain doesn't register it. And thus, a superstition is born. Awesome job on communication. One of my favorite coffin story to date. What a cool concept for a monster, and a great, unexpected ending. I second fished his recommendation regarding in time, and would even bump his rating to a solid green light. I'm picky about my sci-fi. This one did okay. I could poke a few holes in the thing, but nothing major to make it unenjoyable. In conclusion, we haven't talked about the music of Flashpulk for quite some time, but I wanted to point out that the history of your theme song, Gloomy Sunday, was touched on in a Freakonomics podcast. I rather enjoy the song, but it has been credited with being the catalyst for over 200 suicides in Hungary, and was actually banned for some time in Budapest and on the BBC. And on that cheerful note, take care. I have Gloomy Sunday on my podcast playlist of work, and it never made me want to kill myself. What did we do about the superstition going in? Yes, that was part of the charm. Again, to loop back to what we were saying earlier about what kind of director possibly do to push themselves out of the industry these days. Inspire a mess, suicide? Well, how could you see Madonna or the Jonas Brothers or? I guess there was the whole Judas Priest thing, right, from the 80s, but it's been a long time since people have had that sort of level of spookness. Man, let's get off topic here for a second. What was up with Satanist cults in the 80s? What were those people? Why was everyone thinking that there were Satanists everywhere? It's because there were, they just needed a name of something to scare people. Do you realize, Jessica May, before we moved into the Greater Toronto area, we lived in a fairly rural location, but we lived near to a town called Prescott. Yes. Very small town, very picturesque, quiet kind of place, old people go to on a Sunday to have breakfast. An old fort town. Yep. Two hundred people were accused there of Satanism and investigated for a child. Oh yeah, like porn ring. That's right. I remember. And it's so hard to get accurate information. And in the end, it seems it was the combination of an overzealous investigator, like an overzealous cop, and a crazy pedophile who made up stuff that the cop believed, I suppose. Anyway. Yeah, made it a much bigger, wider thing than just this guy. Instead of supposedly essentially every child in town being part of this pedophile ring, it was like one girl who was a very unfortunate situation and, you know, terrible. Yeah, for real. That had happened, but it was one girl as opposed to an entire town of... Yeah. Anyway, Satanism. What up? What up with Satanism? I miss vignette horror films. They don't do that, it was enough anymore. Trick or treat, I believe, came out, what was that, 2010? I remember that one, with the little gooey goblin gang. I believe they even made a sequel to that, but we haven't seen it yet. A gooey goblin, too. I don't know how you call it. Gooey goblin. Gooey goblin was actually a fairly successful '80s horror franchise. And Too Gone is a very successful gooey movie. Leading product? I miss vignette movies. You used to be able to get a lot of those out of, not so much hammer, but like the second run hammer productions. Mm-hmm. Like a sea movie? Yeah. The guys who would hire out Cushing and Lee for a weekend, but they couldn't afford them for a full film, so they put them in a third of the film, run them as main billing, and then have a bunch of filler in the back two. Yeah. They'd all be sitting in a booth in a train, and they'd each tell a different story. Yeah, you're actually talking about a terror express or whatever our film is. Yes, yes. See, now here's the problem. I've seen so many of these films, and many thanks, Joe, for catching that it's truly the trilogy of terror. Yes. I've seen so many of those movies, though, that they all have run together in my mind into, essentially... One giant movie. Yeah. Terror Express of Trilogy of Pain. Horror. One of my favorites of those is actually the original Tales from the Crypt. And that was a great, and nothing to do with the modern take on it with the Crypt Keeper and everything. There was a... I remember Demon Knight. Mm-hmm. Yeah, actually, I really enjoyed Demon Knight as far as those films went. There's a great little pulp film for you. That's really... I really enjoyed it. Mm-hmm. You really didn't mind if a lot of the characters died, but they were so interesting and unique. You know, it was fun to watch them die. Mm-hmm. And it was an interesting take on the Christian mythology. Mm-hmm. It wasn't just together. Absolutely. Good point on Superstitions, Joe. You're absolutely right that a lot of the times are... You noticed a coincidence. That's my feeling with religion as well. Our own brain does spooky things to us sometimes, which is unfortunate and fantastic at the same time. Yeah. We can convince ourselves of anything. Yes. I'm actually glad to hear a second opinion about In Time, also sort of positive. Mm-hmm. It's promising. I think Justin Timberlake, as much as I'm not really the target audience for his music, it's hard to deny he's a charismatic fellow. I don't know that I'm necessarily going to enjoy a film for him specifically, but I mean, you usually have to have one of those to get the movie made. Mm-hmm. You know, that reminds me of the movie we saw last night. Well, was that Fear Island? Fear Island. The... Ha... Hailey Dafford. Oh. You just gave me a headache with a remembrance of that film. Hailey Dafford, Kaiser... So sad. So sad. So sad. Yeah, that was ridiculous. Yeah, that was ridiculous, like it was just, okay, so the snake comes out of this cupboard and bites this guy in the chest, but this guy is looking at the cupboard like he's really got to open it. No, he's like looking for a killer, but he's looking in like the cabinets with the dishes. Like, you need to have a reason why somebody's opening this small cupboard, and then it pops out and bites him in the heart. I can almost tell you exactly what happened. In the original script, it probably said something like, "He hears a rattle." But as soon as they dubbed that part, they were like, "If you heard a rattle in a cupboard, you would not open that cupboard." You would be like, "Oh my God. Oh my God. There's something in there. Oh my God." You would be like, "There's a snake in the cupboard. It's got a rattle. It's probably going to bite me." So... So instead... They just skipped it and it made no sense. Yeah. And then fingers opens a cupboard and then gets bitten in the heart. He lives long enough to have a conversation. I've heard about what it looks like when you get bitten by a snake and you die, and it was just ridiculous. There was no reason why anybody had to do anything that they did, and they just died ridiculous death. And you could call it, you know, what was going to happen, a mile away. Oh, that was rough. But you know, you need to see some rough in order to appreciate the good and to know what the good and the bad is. And this was ugly. Yeah, this was just ugly. Okay, well, we've talked a little bit about the recent Wilkoff and Platt. Why don't we go right into... Backroom plots. So we got a bit of a do-over on our Halloween story. I just love Mulligan. Yeah, but you did not enjoy the original Halloween story. No, you shouldn't. Well, I wouldn't say that I did not enjoy it. I just didn't find it horrifying enough. I mean, it was kind of like spooky because he was in a haunted house, but it was about a drug dealer, you know, it wasn't really like I really think you nailed it with Coffin's beast. Yeah. Well, it's so fantastic. Yeah, the kids were wondering why they couldn't bring flashpulps stickers to school to give away to kids. And I thought there was the sweetest thing ever. And I'm like, no, you can't because it's like big people's stories. And then Mr. A, it's like, I've heard a flashpulps story. I'm like, yeah, you've heard one flashpulps story. But you should have heard Daddy's story last night. It was about a creature and then I just explained like briefly, but not in detail what it was, but he's just sort of like, like they just, they knew instantly. Yeah. I, that's not something I want to advertise to this, dad went over the line, dad went over the line. Yeah. Yeah. For his friends. Absolutely. Yeah. Oh, anyways, I can understand why you want me to do that, mom. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want to give too much away about the story, but I was fairly happy with how it turned out. I'm fairly happy. It had a lovely creature. Yeah. I was very pleased. Yeah, lovely. We go to have an opportunity to just write a decent monster story. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know how much I love tentacles? Yeah. Yeah. Also got out a decent, I feel, murder plague tale, part one of two, the next one to follow immediately after this episode. So I've, I've left on a two part cliffhanger, which is very rare for us, but. It was so like, da, da, da, we're at the end, it was like, what? I love those. I even told me that there was going to be a what, but I got so engaged with the story that I completely forgot it was going to be like that. So then when it happened, when I was like, what? I was like, it was crazy. Did you like that? Yeah. Part two is actually going to have some magic to it too. I'm hoping, hoping people will also. Maybe some what what? Yep. Gimme a. No. No. You're not going to give it to me? Negatore, good. You're not going to raise your hands in the air like you just don't care. I will not say hey, and you will not say, oh, okay, ah, I thought we were actually going to do it together, but. I love you, Scooby, Scooby. I, oh, never raised you. So we were talking about sending out the stickers for the mailing recently, right? Mm hmm. Well, everybody, I, I sent a message out, I, I did a little doodle for them too. Personalized doodle. Yeah. We'll. Yeah, lots of fun with that. That's probably. I'm going to get it for sure, and I'm sure they do too, but I'm not sure how long that tradition can continue. Well, as long as it can. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know, we can still answer our own mail. I can still do a little doodle for anybody. Yeah, certainly. Mm hmm. I thought it was a lovely personal time. Thank you. Very nice. Are you a dassy? Oh! Oh. So we were discussing potentially going to Fan Expo next year, right? Mm hmm. Just as observers, maybe like get as many flash pulp people together, maybe stay in the same place, hang out for the weekend, you know? It's four days. Maybe we could do three, you know, we got little people. But then it was suggested maybe we get a booth, so we were considering that. I think this is something we should actually, because we have very little convention experience. It has to happen at some point. I understand that, but I think we maybe want to get the lay of the land a little more before, especially Fan Expo. We've never been to Fan Expo specifically. True that. True that. Maybe we'll get a little feedback from the Nutty or maybe Gigantor and see if they think a booth would be worth it. I mean, it'd be good in the sense of exposure. I think we could get the word out a little bit, but at the same time. But if not, I really, we really got a, well, this is the thing, is the website hasn't actually listed anything for 2012, which has last year's information. Other than to say when the date is or the dates are. So when that happens, I want to be bugging you guys further, but if people could be back, whether they would like to come and hang out with us, that would be swell. We would love to hang out with you guys next year. Yeah. We have to play in the far end. Yep. For real. It ain't easy to get into the house. Nah. Well, in that case, I think we can throw a big thanks to Jim for hosting wiki.flashbulb.com. Thanks, Jim. Thanks. And flashbulb.com. Mm hmm. Again. Also, many thanks, Jim, for being such a stalwart defender of the wiki. I've seen you smash the bloody spammers at the walls, and I appreciate it. And also, oh, what are you doing, man? If you have comments, questions, or suggestions, you can find us at flashbulb.com, color voice may align at 206-338-2792, or email us text or mp3s to comments@flashbulb.com. Jessica May's Volca Townes musical sounds can be found at metunes.com. The entire run of flashbulb can be found at flashbulb.com or via the search bar on iTunes. Flashcast is released under the Canadian Creative Commons attribution on commercial 2.5 lessons. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] The entire run of flashbulb can be found at met- the entire run of flashbulb can be found at metunes.com. The entire run of flashbulb can be found at- mytunes. Jesus. I've run out of steam. My mom's basement. [Music]