Prepare yourself for Javier, Will Coffin, movie talk, our first piece of FanFic, cryptic messages and interplanetary war.
The Skinner Co. Network
FC010 - Cryptic Messages & Interplanetary War
[music] Hello and welcome to Flashcast episode 10. Prepare yourself for a half year. We'll coffin, the movie talk, our first piece of fanfic, cryptic messages, and interplanetary war. [music] In night, we have myself, Opopon X, Artisan, and Orator, Jessica May, Hello, Oracular Overseer, and JRD. Hello. Phrase Fumbler. What's an oracular something, Dilly? Yeah. Something to do with the overseeing sound, I do believe. Oh. Yes. Very fancy. Mm-hmm. I try. Kudos to you, sir. So, we were discussing just before we went live to the mic, as it were. Javier Bardem, as Roland. Mm-hmm. That seems like a pulpy topic. Do you feel like he's a good selection for the role? Maybe you should be more specific. Sorry, Roland the Gunslinger from Stephen King's... Of the Dark Tower. Series. He has been selected the dude with the... Possibly. Cattle Killer from No Country for Old Men. Mm-hmm. I'm just saying that to Jessica because she has a look in her eyes like... What the... I don't have to understand if the audience does. I'm not a big, what do they call them, a reader. So... Well, you're in... I have a theory that we all kind of tend towards those items that relate to our most dominant sense. So, you're more of an audio person. You tend to intake audio books at an epic rate, but you don't read very much. Mm-hmm. Same reason you're into singing, you're into music. You're an audio person. A friend of the site, friend of my... Life. Justin. He's also an audio person. And any time you reference any sort of movie or video game, especially video games to that fellow. His first reaction isn't, you know... I recall this tough fight, or I did this, or we stayed up all night and whatever. It was always the music from the levels or some audio aspect. So, I think that you're really just more of an audio person. Anyway, have you ever brought it in? Yes, that should be exciting. If you can't get Clint Eastwood to play Roland, who I think kind of the role was maybe modeled after a little bit. If you can't get him, because he's too old, then who's the next best bet. And of course, I think we could sit here for hours debating, you know, who would be the best what. But, I think, have you ever... I don't even know if I want to try to pronounce his last name. Bardem, have you heard Bardem? I think he could do Roland. Here's an interesting idea. Well, an interesting question. It seems to me that this next generation, we don't really have any cowboy heroes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. See, I don't buy him, really, as a cowboy. I enjoyed the film, I enjoyed... I just felt like the role could have been epic if it had been somebody else. Yeah. Like, it was so well written and the movie was so well produced that it was hard for it not to be good, but I don't feel like he was the best fit for that role. Why is that? Uh, I just didn't... he seemed almost comedic in some ways. Like, there's just something hard to buy about his portrayal. It's not... it doesn't... he doesn't carry the greediness and the gravitas of a Clint Eastwood. Maybe his age, too. He doesn't... he seems to be, like, frisky and settled badass and not steady-handed. Yeah, that's definitely part of the cowboy mythos is a steady-hand. I think your cowboys tend to be better as a lankier kind of fellow and he's just a little too meaty-faced for it. He's a gladiator, not a cowboy. So, if anybody has any suggestions on who would make a great film cowboy, I'd love to hear them if they want to send them in. Well, we're speaking on film pulp. I watched X the Unknown the other day, first, sort of, well not first, but an early hammer, a foray into a science fiction hammer. Peter Kuchinga, Christopher Lee, you remember? Yes, that's right. It was basically the blob. It was, like, radioactive, the blob. Mine is Steve McQueen? Yeah, no Steve McQueen. He made the blob, though. Yeah. Well, there were aspects in this. He was the only one I cared about. Like, he was the only one that seemed beyond that age of film, where it was just that sort of theatrical kind of silly and he seemed really realistic. Yeah, he did a good job in the movie, he carried it. But there was moments of blob effects. Anyway, this film, not so much. It was fun to watch, but it wasn't necessarily the highest quality film. Definitely pulp, though, science pulp. Speaking of science pulp, there's a new film coming out that I thought I'd bring up really briefly, Battle of LA. Oh, yeah, it looked really creepy. I find it interesting that we're getting into a phase of attempting this sort of hyper-realistic combat effect with, like, aliens. That seems to be what they're trying to do there. There's a lot of room for possible fail. I think it's kind of cool because, like, currently on the planet, there's not really anybody who could really kick their butts. Oh, you mean America? Yeah. So, you can't really think of something on that big a scale just coming and attacking them unless it was somebody from another place. More technologically advanced. I want it to be more District 9, and I'm worried it's going to be Independence Day. Like, where you don't really have an emotional sort of connection or empathy for the alien itself? Well, no, I think by the end of District 9 you definitely have that. By the beginning you did. Well, yeah, you feel for the aliens, yeah, for sure. They do a good job of portraying them in that. No, I guess I think more like... But Independence Day was just sort of like a punching bag for Will Smith. Yeah, I guess what I mean is I want more of a documentary-realistic feel throughout the film. Like, almost a documentary feel and less of, like, an Independence Day cutting to a series of scenes that are really just excuses to end an explosion. Yeah, yeah, exactly. For the action-hero-loving person who goes to see that type of movie. It's action porn. Yes, exactly. So yeah, I'm kind of up in the air about it. I don't know if I want to see it. Well, no, I definitely want to see it. I don't know if it's going to be good or not. I think the creepiest thing about that movie is the suburban setting to it. And how you have, like, the army and the explosions and stuff, you know, running around in the suburbs. You see the families that are trying to protect themselves. The parts of War of the Worlds that I could stand, the Tom Cruise remake, were definitely probably the urban scenes with people freaking out and running around. Do you know, Jay already actually tuned into that on TV the other night for just, you know, a few moments to get away from whatever else was on the other channel. But that was actually those few minutes, those were the most I've ever seen in that movie. I think it was the Kardashians. Yeah, yes, anyone was wondering what he had to turn away from so rapidly. Tom Cruise is only marginally better, though. That film had a lot of promise, and it just fumbled so badly in some of its spots of execution that it was kind of a waste. I feel like Tom Cruise was a large part of the problem. Is this too much pull? Yeah, I think he has too much say in his films, and he needs to just be shut up and told what to do. And he's turning himself into like Superman in every film he does. Yeah, that's fantastic. I think he ruined Minority Report, which could have been a really, really good movie. Mm-hmm. And I think he blew War of the Worlds, too. Well, I also think... Was he responsible for that? Oh wait, you've been dead for 45 minutes of the film, obviously. I know. I've never seen that many there. The original was really good. Yeah. I really enjoyed the original. And remake, I mean, maybe it was him. Yeah. Was Cameron Diaz in that one, too? Yeah. Didn't Day and Night also flop? Indeed. Didn't The Last Samurai also not do so well? Which I think that would have been a fabulous movie, if not for Tom Cruise. Yeah. I thought it was okay. Like I bought him. Like his... His betrayal of a very sad man. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. No. I think he needs to be... His intensity. I think he needs to accept being more of a failure in his acting roles. And they don't mean failing, I mean, just like, he can be not awesome all the time. Yeah, he needs to be a real person, not a superhero. Which is exactly where Nick Cage is failing these days. Yeah. He's got to pay some bills. Mm-hmm. Yeah, those wigs don't buy themselves. No, I don't think he's just doing it for the money. I think he's seriously going into these projects being like... This would be fun. I love the "Coast Rider" comic book. Yeah. I'm going to make this movie. I'm going to make it. I loved "Wicker Man". I'm going to make it. I love American history. Yeah. And then... Yeah. I loved Indiana Jones. I'm going to rip it off. Except that one actually made money. So... Anyway... So Nick Cage, huh? Yes. Now, I'm just going to quickly add, this is going to be almost nonsensical to some of you, and I apologize. But if you happen to know what the following sentence means, then please feel free to move forward with that information. I play a drain-eye priest on Moon Runner Server under the name of Baxon. B-A-X-A-N. Feel free to drop me a message. Oh boy. So I also wanted to drop another surprise. I wanted to change the structure of Flashcast. Okay. Oh my God. So instead... I'm getting the vapors. I find that we tend to kind of dance around our separate sections, and then we get to the mailbag, and that's where the meat of the discussion is. And I feel like we'd be better going the other way. Yeah. So I think we're going to start with mailbag, and then whatever scraps we haven't discussed, we can save for our individual sectors at the end. Sounds reasonable to me. Okay. So, let's do mailbag. Mailbag! Mailbag! What exciting? First piece of fan friction came in. Absolutely. From Flashcast, Flashpult, Favorite, 3 Day Fish, who I also have permission now to mention is M.C. underscore laughing on Twitter. I don't know if it's mik laughing. I guess it's M.C. right, probably. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You always remember your first... Do you say it creepy? That's a question. Oh, yeah, because you told me. Oh, he's watching. You were my first. Okay. Always remember. I'm going to have my first... I want slash fiction with, like, Wilkoffin and Carwick. No. No. We're there. Anyway. Anyway, so, yes. M.C. laughing, McLaffin. I appreciate the submission. A little bit of fan fiction. People can enjoy the next couple of minutes. Our lovely apoponax is going to do her own rendition. And it's going to be, like, whatever happens. It's just happened, so. So this is a little raw. You may get a taste of what it's like when we're doing it straight. I wonder if I can leave it unedited. We'll see how it goes. If I'll let her. I'm so embarrassed already. Okay. Oh, my gosh. Okay, really, though? Laughing at the Sun by 3 Day Fish or M.C. Laughing on Twitter. McLaffing. Yes. I'm just... Okay. I don't know how long I've been buried, but I was buried almost instantly. Buried under what seemed an infinite amount of snow. I always knew that avalanches were a danger in this area. But that had been the attraction, the possibility of danger. Danger like what you see in the movies. However, in movies, avalanches have the decency of roaring as they charge. This one snuck up on me. One moment, I'm skiing with my buddy. The next moment, a force of immortal strength, overwhelmed me. I heard the roar a split second before it hit me. Then, it was black. Then, it was silent. So it had been for what seemed uncountable hours. Time didn't matter anymore. Nothing really did. I struggled at first, but it quickly became demoralizing. I could not move an inch, and the thought that there was so much snow on top of me that I could barely even flex my muscles was a crushing thought, indeed. Oh, God, I'm numb. I'm so numb and entombed that I have no idea what position I'm buried in. For all I know, I've been buried grabbing my ass. I certainly hope not. It seems the best I can hope for is being uncovered a few centuries from now and be studied. If I'm uncovered grabbing my ass, future posterity could get the wrong idea. This thought made me laugh. I'm not sure how it is possible that I can laugh or even breathe for that matter. I stopped laughing after a short while. Soon, I began to think again. As I'm thinking, my thought strayed my buddy. Where had he ended up, I wonder? He could be inches away, though it may as well be a mile for all the help it would do me. I would not have any better chance of surviving if he was next to me. Had he somehow escaped my fate? Maybe he's getting help. Maybe, but probably not. More questions burn in my freezing mind. I wonder what temperature blood freeze is at? Are my eyes freeze before my tongue? Have I turned blue yet? If I were rescued now, would any of my limbs make it? How well will I be preserved? Then I asked myself, "Why do I care?" I realized I didn't. Not really. Despite my foreseeable death, being numb made the whole situation boring. I think I am just keeping myself entertained until the inevitable happens. I'm beginning to feel warm. I know what this means. They teach you in first aid that victims of freezing often get a false sense of warmth when their bodies have lost too much heat and are in the final stages of hypothermia. It's just another sign. Another sign that death is upon me. I may only have a few minutes left. It was then. I heard something. A vague, but rapid, pounding. A strange apathy is coming over me. I don't care. I have accepted my fate. Whatever it is, I have no reason to fear what may do should it find me. It slowly came closer and became louder. At least, I think it was. My senses are failing. My eyes are closing. All I want to do is sleep. Then the sensation of movements has all of the snow around me swirled with me going along for the ride. Perhaps this is how a snowflake feels. Fingerprint uniqueness that is powerless over where it may go as all the rest. Then, all the movement ended. And I fell to breeze. A breeze. I tilt my head up realizing that I have ended up on my back. I can see the sun. And then, as though I were solar powered, I found the energy to move my arms and legs and struggle to get out of the snow. I fought and flailed, struggled and strained until... Freedom. I look up at the sun and burst into insane laughter at my triumph over nature. The joy was short lived, though. As I looked down the mountain, I suddenly wished I had remained buried and died ignorant of the cause of the avalanche. I fell to my knees as I took in the horror that was Karwick, the Spider-God. Very nice. Very good. Very good 3D fish. And that was so good. I was just a hiccup or two. Very nice. And it really kept the format of a Karwick story. That was really good. And, yeah, I'd forgotten it was a Karwick story. And so I'm like, "Oh, the breeze, the sun!" "Oh, no, no, Karwick." It's not fair. Very good, but struggle. Please do send in that fan fiction. We may have to include it at the end of the show generally, but... But with your first, come on. Yeah, and 3D fish, fan favorite. Yeah, for reals. I hope you like my rendition. So I thought that was fantastic. Thank you very much for your submission. Yes. And we should add, as a follow up note, I did hear back from, unfortunately, the sexaholics anonymous people. That's right. They gave me big kudos and thank you for correcting the number and gave me the new number should I need it for my addiction. For your sex edition? I mean... My sex edition? Yes. We're putting a new edition on the house. I do feel better that at least the calls are getting to where they need to go so people can have help. Mm-hmm. That's important. But it's a little less interesting for our mailbox. True. I mean, yeah. Anyways. Although we still get things like... Hi. It's me, Ray. I would like to know where I can get my hands on a copy of the black hole box. Or the black hole box, sorry. I have zombies under control, but I feel like I'm greatly unprepared for all the other cult beasties out there. They're culties. You let me know. That'd be fantastic. We'll see you later. Bye. That would be kind of interesting. Yes. It would mind you way far down the road because we don't even know what half of this jazz is that black hole deals with. I really liked that little shout-out in the last episode where coffin talks about having red black holes book. That was great. Mm-hmm. And actually that brings me a new question I wanted to ask you. What did you find was the hardest part to combine the two storylines? Black hole and coffin? Part of it was attempting to make sure that each felt different in its delivery and structure. Because essentially, and not to give away the weak point of the story, they kind of both end the same way. Although you open with the burial of the jabber in the first story, chronologically it's essentially meat jabber, have rough encounter, dispose of jabber. And I wanted them to both feel like they stood on their own, but, and had sort of a connecting scene between them. And their own sensibilities. Like how coffin, like the... Yeah, how they deal with things. I really liked the insinuation that the jabber was working for some kind of shadowy government or something like that. I liked that. Yeah. Because it kind of gives the idea that you have these mythical creatures that are still there, but they have adapted in a way to... or rather the world has adapted around them to incorporate them into... Yeah I don't want to give too much away, but we're going to see a little bit more of that in the future. And especially specifically why so much of it is going to be sort of focused around the capital city area and coffin's neighborhood specifically. Like, there's a hot bed and the reason why? Yes. That's pretty exciting. And also not to give away any hints, but there's a certain fellow wearing a suit in one of those episodes that we will be seeing again. Consider this an introduction. Mmm. That's pretty cool. Well, he did say we are requesting an alliance, right? Who's we? Him and the jabber? I don't think so. We will see. So I think that's pretty cool. I'm pretty excited about the continuation of that story arc. I really like the... your description of the jabber and what he was doing to people and stuff. It was really creepy sounding. Yeah. It's funny that story, and we're sort of moving into back room plots a little early, but that story a lot of my hang up was in trying to come up with a monster that was essentially immortal, but that would work between both times. And here is the truth that I'll say it now out loud. Although I may in the future write a vampire related novel because I do have in my mind a vampire novel, there will never be vampires specifically in Flashbout. Despite the use of the occult and all of that, I just can't deal with that. And in truth, I don't mind even relating that if I do write a vampire novel, it's actually going to be a trilogy and it will be the Kill All Vampires trilogy. It is very exciting. I can't wait till you have time to write it. Yes. But so that would have been the easy out, right? Was to have both characters meet a vampire because it's the easy immortal to go with. Everybody likes vampires. Well, no, that's not true. A lot of people like vampires simply hate vampires. Yes. Because a lot of people hate vampires go about them. Yeah, because of the over exposure. So anyway, there was a little bit of-- And our vampires will never twinkle. Very true. But the day I'm really broke when I decided, you know what, I'm just going to sit down. I'm going to do my own thing. I had some ideas. Actually, part of the jabber came out of how I feel about Paul Schaeffer from the Tonight Show at the Department. And the TV, yes. Okay, that's right. Oh, I remember sitting down watching Letterman one day with you. And I have a thing for Paul Schaeffer, too. He creeps me out in a way that no other man creeps me out. And JRD was joking around this because at night he crawls onto little children's chests and steals their breath to give to his other band members to keep them animated. No, it's for their wood instruments. Yes. He has a special wood instrument. He plays with stolen children's breath. With the breath of stolen children. Yes. Yes. That's awesome. I'm glad I just kind of like-- Oh, yeah. It's Paul Schaeffer back here and not using that for a story. But it's Paul Schaeffer. But it's Paul Schaeffer. It would be a story about Paul Schaeffer being like-- And then Letterman said, it wouldn't be as believable, but it's the truth. Anyway, to get back to the books, though, it actually did sort of cross my mind to-- Not you. --it did cross my mind to do almost a Black Hole reference book. That would be fun. But I think the first step of that would be essentially creating a Black Hole wiki. And waiting till that got a little more filled out, either by my own hand or somebody else's. But excellent idea. Yeah, fantastic idea. I would gently prod maybe one of the audience members, anybody feeling like they've got the gumption and the interest to open up a wiki based on Flashpulp and start feeling that out, I will definitely lend a hand. And I will probably give you-- Insider. --insider. --insider. --insider. Yeah, well, general Flashpulp blessing, I guess, is what I mean. Like, we'd probably push it a little bit from the site and stuff. Excellent. Something to consider. Kind of like the Stephen King universe. You can just eventually connect it all together. Oh, that's not true. All right, then. She's a liar. Rain on my parade. Dude, you have no parade. So Barry, we just missed a quick comment from Barry that I wanted to touch on as well. Yes. So, I'm going to bring Lance Henriksen in his email and how his problem with Lance Henriksen, and this is really to go back to my Javier Bardem. Javier Bardem problem. There's no R sound. Javier. Javier. Javier. Yes. Yes. Javier. Javier. Javier. Yeah. Javier. Javier. Javier. I've heard it always. Javier. For him, specifically. Really? I thought they were saying a lot for the Oscars. And I thought-- Javier. Javier. Javier. Yeah. It's the same problem that Barry has with Lance Henriksen, which is that you look at him and you have him very specifically affixed as himself, like Lance Henriksen, as opposed to whatever character he's supposed to be playing. So you can only see them in really kind of stereotyping that guy sort of role? Oh, look. It's Lance Henriksen playing a vampire. Look, it's Lance Henriksen playing an Andrew. Like Julie Roberts. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's very tough to see Julie Roberts' anything. Oh, look at Julie Roberts' smile. Look at all. Look at Julie Roberts' cry. I didn't like that silly field. I think that's why people forget about Pretty Woman as being a prostitute. Like, it's just like, well, it's not really a prostitute, it's really just Julie Roberts. She wasn't doing a-- Julie Roberts too. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Sorry. She just was misguided. She wasn't a trot-lop. I'm sure she's still a virgin. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. So anyway, sorry about that Barry, sorry about that little detail. Indeed. We'll also continue on with last episode business. We did hear back from Ingrid regarding her breakfast. That's great. That's awesome. We were all very, very concerned sitting on pins and needles. So Jessica could be right. Jessica, if you want to read the comment that she left on the blog. Okay. She said, "Thanks for the great show and for an excellent start into my day." I too-- I do come to a coffee, a big portion of cereals and yogurt. I ate up every word of you guys and finished my breakfast with an ex-- an excellent laughter at the end. Thanks for the very kind words. You are great. Well, thank you for the very kind words. Yes. And I thought I was totally right. I said some coffee and some cereal and yogurt. Did I not say that? Did I not? Me and Ingrid were like this. This is an argument that you press at the risk of having to go back to the last episode and cut out whatever-- No, it feels right. No, no one will know. Anyways, yes, that is so great because we're a part of a balanced breakfast. Yeah. Exactly. Yay. We're going to be a part of tomorrow's breakfast. How much farther ahead do you think Ingrid is? I think she's light years ahead of everybody else. Ha ha. I don't really know what you mean. Time zone. Time zone, yeah. She's in Austria, right? Is she actually in Austria? Is she? This is a question that I had. Ingrid, maybe you can get back to us about this. And she's actually left us a separate email too. I wanted to ask you, what is popular culture in Austria? Well, we would refer here as pulp fiction, sort of the cheap, almost disposable buffheart chunk kind of culture because right now in America, I would say the three dominant forms of pulp and the three forms that you will never see off of television for a great example. Lawyer shows, cop shows, doctor shows. Yeah, yeah. Good point. And I mean, we go through spurts of supernatural shows, but those are on and off. It just depends on what level of gullibility the general populace is going through during that period. What's popular? Yeah. Yeah. Your fringe or your ex-file or then what do you think that is? Which aspect? Why we always will have tons of lawyer, doctor. Because these are the people we think of as doing exciting jobs, which is essentially what comes down to it. Life changing. Yeah. Excitement. It had something to do with three in it and there was the cops and there was the firefighters and there was the paramedics. Oh, yeah. Third watch. Third watch. Yes. That was like all of them wrapped together in one. It was basically trying to take law and order one step further. They were like, "You've got two halves. We've got three. Cool." Yeah. Exactly. But it was too much for me. I could never follow who I was doing what. Everyone was just so upset at their partner. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the acting on that show was a little too much to you. See, I think where law and order excels is when it sticks to basically like, "Here's a story. We give a little bit of character background on the cops only once every season." Yeah. It's maybe one episode that deals with their personal lives and the rest are just simple procedures. Man, my favorite personalized stuff was Lenny and that was so long ago but him and his daughter and she died. But it was so incidental. Like Benjamin Brat, he's like having some adulterous friggin' whatever. Yeah. Lenny was the best. I never watched law and order. But if you want to talk lawyer show, make clear. Yeah. That's too much comedy, though. That's not both. Who was the lady on it? She had a uniform. Mrs. Big hair? Yeah. That was just her birthday. Huh. Oh, the cop lady? Yeah. Yeah. She had sass. Yeah, she was sassy. Okay. It was a tall bald guy. What was his name? Moose or Tiger. Oh. Tiger. Tiger blood. Winning. Also winning this other email from Ingrid. Hi, guys. I'm sure you can imagine how I enjoyed the Flashcast Nine. Thanks to all of you. That's pretty nice. Yeah. Very nice. She's very nice lady. Recently, I caught myself in the act of humming the flash pulp signature tune in the shower. This led me to the following question, "Who have you guys responsible for the choice of the melodies? Is it teamwork?" They are very sensitive, sensitively chosen, and I find them very suitable to the main characters. You put up your great work. Have fun. Bye, Ingrid. I think in the beginning, because you, Jaredie, were more familiar with the sites where to find them, you would sit down in front of the site, and then we would sit kind of behind you. And we would have somebody in mind like, "Okay, we're doing this person tonight, and they need a theme song, and how is this? How is this?" And we would just listen and go through them. And then since then, you've kind of wanted me to take the helm at that and go check the archive sites. What's free. And you've been pretty specific too, and what you look forward. But we generally have a very specific goal in mind. You guys keep going. I remember sitting and finding the theme song for Cough, and we were all just sitting around the table listening, and when that particular melody popped up, we all just stopped and listened, and we all knew right away what that's it. Just there were some contenders, but it just, it says so much about each character. Like certain ones really kind of blow the others out of the water. Yeah. Like Mother Gran. Oh gosh. Pretty poly. That's so great. And it just suits the mood to a lot of the stories too. Like, and generally when we know everyone comes to consensus right away, and like we know that's the one. And I'll be in the middle of edits, it'll be late, and we'll be halfway through recording it, and we'll both just stop and I love that song. I actually keep all the songs for all the stories on my iPhone, my iTunes, so that I can listen to them at any time. I don't keep all the podcasts on there anymore because I don't have that much space, but that was what I had the music with me. And our general role is that it's free, it's public domain, and like we want to enjoy listening to it, we want to everything about Flashbump, every little bit of it, we want to actually really enjoy just for its listening pleasure. And I think a while back, JRT, it was probably like a while back now, but he actually did a post on Gloomy Sunday on the various forms of the song that we had come across. All the artists, different artists, renditions, because it's a very popular song, really. Yeah, and the different versions vary so greatly. And the story behind it, too, with the suicides and everything, that was pretty interesting. I'll dig it up and put it in the show, thanks. Or we can even talk about it next week, because it is our theme, it should be given a little we can expand on the topic, certainly. Okay, so I think that's actually a lot of the main bulk of the stuff, but let's run through the separate little mini-section. Sure. The art of narration. Well, today I got to work on some Ruby stuff, Ruby departed. Some backlog, right? Yes, the last three episodes that were put up her local hero trilogy hadn't actually been written out because we lost a pen. But that has been corrected. I was going to ask you, how the pen, was it the ink lost? Because I know that pen was just nearly out of ink, I thought that's why it had died. No, the pen died. Yeah, the pen died. That's all I wanted. So it wasn't that we misplaced it, yeah. Well, it was lost to the Ruby world. Yes. Yeah. By your hand, it was lost to your hand. Yes. And it's efforts. So there's even the third part, right? Is it the third part? Yeah, it's actually in the first part. Oh, the first part. Okay. So it's actually a little illustrated. Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. Mm hmm. Yeah. I know that... Well, there's got to be a lot of pens left around, too, though, you know? Mm hmm. So at least there's that. But yeah, I tried to make an effort to do a couple of extra little illustrations in these ones, just to give it a little something. And a holla to our native land. Yes. That's right. Not to be that guy, but how's coffin going? The picture. You know what? I don't have a picture for coffin. You know what? I've got an idea. I just... I just... I feel a little... I really like that, too. I really like the picture, but at the same time, I didn't create that scene. No, but you took the photography scene? It wasn't marked by an artist. My feeling is that they were made, they were mass produced, and no one's going to be upset with you for taking part of a photo. But I guess, to me, it's more about the integrity of the show and just having everything produced by our own hand. My photo was taken by an artist. I think it's a very artfully done photo. If it was just a picture of the box, I don't think that'd be so awesome. Yeah. So overruled. Okay, jaredie. Plus, I think it makes coffin kind of special, because he's the only one with actual photography. Photo. Actually, there's... I might put it in black and white sometimes, too, though, because that'd be pretty cool. I really love the vivid colors. It reminded me of Mexico, like... The Audi, Oak, on accident, of hope. So we're going on an adventure. The three of us. That's pretty exciting. At the end of the month, yeah. We haven't been out and about in a very long time with the three of us hanging out. So we're going to go to... Why don't you... Well, no, I guess you want me to explain this in my live section. But we're going to go to a live recording, sort of the radio version of War of the Worlds. Yeah. The Orson Welles Classic. Yes. So we're going to go into the city, into Toronto, Toronto, and there's a few kind of Canadian actors that are fairly recognizable. And we have great seats, and we're meeting somebody that we've actually met through Flashbulb. No? Not through Flashbulb. Through. There's a fellow by the name of Jim, who will occasionally haunt the blog and does his own... Has his own massive audio network. Very nice. The Relic Radio network. It's great work. Oh. Wow. Is he like... No, no. Hold on. Not to whatever, but Jim's not the guy who's coming. It's a fellow that I met through his... Oh, okay. I'm like, the Relic Radio guy? That's so great. Why haven't you just told us before? I was the Relic Radio guy. Okay. So cool. That you met him through the forum there? That you go to? Yes. Well, that's just as cool. Mm-hmm. So we think you're cool too. Yeah. Thanks, Jim. So Jim is bringing a couple people, and we're... No. Jim is not the guy. Jim is the dude from Relic Radio. Oh. Jello is the guy. Jello. He has another name, obviously, but I don't know that we can... Oh. But can we refer to them as Jello all night? So, Jim, Relic Radio guy. And through that forum, you met this other fellow who has this number... Jello. Jello. Jello. Jello. Well, his name is not Jim. We're bringing a couple guests, and we're going to go. And the coolest thing about this evening, specifically, that we're going on, is we get to after the show or the recording or whatever we would call it, there's going to be a reception afterwards, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, the reception. Yeah, because of the premium. Yeah. So we get to, like, the casting crew will be hanging around. Mingle. You know, I'll run up to somebody and whatever, but I think it's, you know, a really exciting adventure. Yeah, well, it definitely relates to the show in a few ways, actually, because it not only does it fit into the sort of old-time radio story ethic that we have kind of preferred, the event has been being put on in celebration of Bernard Herman's birthday, I believe, or possibly his death. I think it's his birthday. And although Bernard Herman is heavily involved, and he was, he was Hitchcock, he's the guy who scored the Day of the Earthstood Still, North by Northwest, he's heavily into that kind of business. And the show is going to feature his music quite prominently, but also in a weird twist. When I'm writing Harm Carter, especially, but even Mulligan, or any of that situation, I listen to a lot of Bernard Herman, because it's so in tune with the vibe that I'm going for. Yeah, you tend to do that, listen to a lot of instrumentals kind of in the same vein of a story that you're writing. I can't, I can't deal with anything with vocals usually, unless it's a song I'm extremely familiar with to the point where I just blank it out because it's a distraction, it's so a distraction. It just engages my brain just enough to keep me away from what I'm supposed to be thinking about. I'm agreed. But he can get in the zone. The zone looks very specific. I wonder if we should draw a picture or something sometime. Like a glazed stare, it would probably look a lot like a Ruby zombie. So yeah, end of the month. I'm so excited. We're going to get all dressed up, fancy-lack. All right, well let's do a background plots and close it up. This week we had the coffin black haul crossover and the one-parter sort of chiller tail, which was dedicated to three-day fish. Hala. I've already sort of discussed the problems in cutting those two stories, but I thought I would go a little deeper into how I do my jotting process. Although, now that I'm thinking- Like your story planning, is that what you mean? Yeah, because the truth is that we're on such a schedule that I don't usually have time to- before I started Flashpulp, my process was essentially to sit down and see what happened. But the truth is now, time is of such a commodity that I cannot do that. Well, that, and you had such a huge backlog of notebooks with ideas for- No, no, but I mean even in that time. In that time, when I was writing stories before I had any sort of deadline, when I was just writing stories, I wouldn't do previous plotting. I would just sit down and go, "Well, I have a general idea for a story. Let's see what happens when I get there." Yeah, and you don't have the- I don't have the space to just wander around a plot device until I encounter something I like. Yeah, you only have so much time and you need to split it as a story in a certain amount of time. And it's got to be a certain size too. It can't be giant and long. Well, sometimes it is, but- Well, no, the truth is that, for example, when Marco, the voice error from- Marco. The black hole series. When he originally appeared, he was in a piece that I was doing separate from Flashpulp. It was a black hole story, but it was just supposed to be like something I would cut up later at some point. And it was, I want to say, 6,000 words in and nothing had happened. Well, I mean, it was character development. It was engaging in certain areas. But the truth is that there were two other- there were two voyagers in that story. And Marco is essentially- the Marco we know is essentially a combination of those two. I slammed them together and I cut out all the parts that didn't work and I essentially slimmed it down to- Yeah, I sped it up to one person. And that you could insert into- Into an entirely separate story. Mm-hmm. Well, I guess the structure of the pulp story is so, like, not limiting, but you need to get to a certain point and a certain amount of time and it's kind of clockwork. So when I'm doing my plotting and I realize this is a visual thing that I'm going to now describe it loud, I essentially draw three sets of square brackets on top of each other so that they look like three separate sections. And then each one is an act to that story. Okay. And usually the major items go beside the spokes. So, like, there'll be the top bracket and the second bracket will overlap and there'll be a single spoke. And that will be the first major development, you know, Mulligan starts talking to the little girl. And then the second major spoke will be her- everything between that can be filled in with details that I want to get in any sort of odd sides that I've kind of cooked up that I thought were fun but not necessarily had a specific place. Yeah. Yeah. Where they are. And then the next spoke will be the little girl reveals that she's seen a clone and then, you know, the direction that conversation leads and then the final spoke will be the conclusion which is Mulligan tells her that it's not a clone that's just a dude with a tummy tuck. And I hope I just haven't blown that story for some people but anyway. Well, if you haven't, they should be keeping up more. My tip to anybody who's doing writing stuff, you know, it's fun to sit down and whatever but- And see what happens but structure is- Silly. Yeah. format. It has saved my butt many times to know where I'm going already. And now the flip side of that is to over-develop it and just become obsessive about pre-plotting every detail. And that takes a lot of the creative juice out of it, a lot of these sides that you'll cook up just by having to think through your plot. So don't go too far. I find that simple diagram is about as far as I want to go. When I run out of space in that diagram, then I am done and it's time to go to it. Yeah, it's like the major meat. Yeah. And then everything else is- This spasses. Mm-hmm. Okay. So let us know what you think of the new format to the show. I don't know that we're going to be keeping it but I thought it was- I thought it moved around a long brushly. Yeah. Well I find it, when we have specific things to talk about, I almost feel like it's a little little foresty now to find something to talk about. But if we've talked through mail, it kind of gets my juices flowing in. Mm-hmm. I'm a little more open to just being conversational about a few bullet points. I like the format but the people at home should tell us what they think. Mm-hmm. And I'm glad, Ingrid, you enjoyed Ingrid's breakfast. I was happy to call it that. And yeah, thanks everyone for your input. Mm-hmm. See you next time. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, you can find us at Skinner.fm. Call our voicemail line at 206-338-2792, certainly us and about sex-aholics and honors anymore, unfortunately. Or email us, text our MP3s to Skinner.fm. Jessica May's vocal talents and musical stylings can be found at maintenance.com. See you and I promise. A Popenax is a artistic work and general updates can be located at a popenaxfeathers.wordpress.com. The entire run of Flashbulb can be found at skinner.fm or via the search bar on iTunes. Flashgast is released under the Canadian Creative Commons attribution non-commercial 2.5 license. [Music] Someday to leave my hour that's number there. Here is the shadow that is with our number there. Little light clouds will never awaken you. Not where the black holes of our own has taken you. Angels have no thought of ever returning you. But they behind me if I'm not joining you. [Music] (dramatic music)