This week we're talking about Dune: Awakening, climate engineering, Dune: Awakening, and I Saw The TV Glow. Show music by HeartBeatHero and OGRE. Support the show!
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It's Friday, June 28th, 2024. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) All right, let's start off with our traditional, I think it's an unusual promotional segment. I like the promotional part I usually get wrong. Well, I tell you, if you'd like to support our show, all you have to do is go to supportourshow.com and you will see a number of different ways that you can help out the show. One thing that is missing, as far as I know, is still working, for those interested, is the code O-Z-O-N-E to my knowledge. No one has told me otherwise, which means nobody's used it or it's working. It should get you two months free on Libson to try out the whole podcasting thing. Just don't get into it, think you're going to make any money. I tip to you. One other thing, I was alerted to something, I had no idea about this, that somebody had messaged me saying, "Hey, the new shows haven't shown up." Nothing after the 20th has shown up and I thought, "Huh." And I looked and I looked on Spotify, even though I don't use Spotify 'cause I hate it, I look on it because it is the largest platform for this stuff. And I saw the new show, so I said, "Huh." I said, "Well, where are you not seeing it?" They said, "Well, it's not showing up an Apple podcast." And I went out while Apple podcast is well known for having problems. So I went and looked and sure enough, it hadn't been up there. So I said, "Huh." Looks like Apple's up to it again with everything just works. So I looked around and I noticed that in my little podcast around my phone, I couldn't see the latest episodes either. I went, "Huh." I looked at the RSS feed. I went, "Okay." So I thought, "Well, that's what you have support for." I opened a ticket with Libson Support and said, "Hey, I'm not seeing the show showing up with the new stuff in a couple of places. Feed looks okay." I know the show's published. Please advise. I love that. I use it on all my trouble tickets now. It's the best thing. Please advise. It's such a wonderful kind of set of words to just be like, "You tell me, man, I love it." So maybe an hour later, I get a response back. And the person says, "Yeah, you have 4,100 plus shows in your feed. And most services don't take over 300. Do you want us to adjust it and cap it at 300?" Which is typical because I guess I never looked at this because it's never been a problem. I guess our file, because it has 4,000 plus shows in it, because I've just had it indexing everything, has become multiple gigabytes in size because even for a text file because it's so long. So they're like, "Yeah, you're getting cut off." So most services won't take over 300. It's kind of surprising it hasn't hit this before now. I said, "Oh, yeah, cap it." I said, "As long as people can still get the old shows if they want them on the website, then I don't care." And you can. You can go back and get them on the website. But now they don't all load. You'll notice if you have a podcatcher that you're subscribed to. Oh, yeah. It's 4,100. Yeah, there is a cutoff, yeah. Yeah, now it's 300. So it's just the 300 most recent episodes, which I'm sure is for most people fine. But then you should add to your traditional opening that if you would like to hear more than the 300, you have to go-- Well, that's what this is. Yeah, I guess. Actually, I always do say for a back catalog, go to-- and I was correct, the show homepage because there's an archive up in the top. So that's still accurate. Yeah, it's still up there. We go to episodes and there are archives and it has it going all the way back to '06 when we started. So that's all there. So that was a great way to celebrate episode 900 is the feed stop working. So that's that. So that just wanted to say that. Also, my voice is kind of crappy because I'm getting over cold. So just a little bit of an FYI. And why I don't sound right is not my mic. I'm not having any audio problems that I'm aware of. It's that one little interesting thing I wanted to open with. I didn't know-- I was not paying much attention to this. I don't know if you were. I'm guessing you weren't. But there is a new Dune MMO, is it? Oh, no. Survival games. Oh, no. I thought you're-- no, no, no. I did not know that there was an MMO. No, it's not an MMO. I guess it's a survival game is what I-- Yeah. It's a-- Is that what it's called? You know. Success. Success is a funny thing. Oh, survival MMO. Okay, so it's both. I love Dune. I do love. I love those books, right? Yeah. And I haven't seen the new ones, but I love the old movie. It has a different kind of representation of it. Sure. But it's so funny how today, if something's popular, they need to bleed it dry for as much money as they can get out of it. I don't fundamentally disagree, however. Yeah. There is an interesting angle to this game, which makes me interested in it when I previously would not have been. Because what the developer said was, well, there's really no way to do this as the story exists, because you know what happens. Like, you can't really-- unless you're going to base it around Paul, you're going to try to alter things, which nobody's going to like. It's not going to work for the game we have in mind. So they've developed an alternate timeline. And in this timeline, Jessica doesn't have a son. So now, basically, they've set it up where there is no Quizats Hatterac. There is just all the houses are against each other, and you can represent them. Oh. Which is interesting. No. Yeah. I mean, they're still the same idea of the Fremener kind of mystery. They could have just gone. They could have just gone back like 100 years. And like, hey, guys, this takes place 100 years before Maudeib. Well, I don't mind this, because I think what they're trying to do is still allow you to experience the idea of becoming the sort of fulfillment of the Fremen's prophecy and see what happens. I think that's an idea. Oh, so you get to be Maudeib is what you're saying. That's what it sounds like. Yeah, like whoever character you create, you end up being the Quizats Hatterac. Yeah. But it's an MMO. So we all get to be the Quizats Hatterac? Well, see, and that's where I don't really know how exactly it's-- I think it is going to be in that style of World of Warcraft where there are larger plot elements that will be unfolded. But all the stuff that is in between is determined by what I'm just doing. Yeah, I mean, if I was going to do some kind of dune MMO type game, I would either do it 100 years before dune so that you have all the houses and you have everybody out there. And the Fremen are around as well, right, so that you can just play the different worlds without ever touching the dune material. Or I would make it so that you were playing a lesser character in the largest storyline and then, you know, just make it so that as-- I guess the timeline is the problem. How do you timeline that? Well, that's the thing. I'm interested in what they're trying to do. I have an idea. Now, I have an idea. There's like 10, 15 years or something like that in the middle of dune. Everyone always cuts it out where Muadib goes into the desert and then it comes out, you know, the leader of the Fremen. I would just have this MMO in that time period where you're in the desert with Poem Muadib and you're attacking the, you know, the, whatever you call them, the Harkonnen shit. Yeah. You know? I never like it. I never like it when they mess with timelines. Skilled hands. It takes skilled hands to mess with timelines. I don't either, but I do like the idea of sidestepping it, which is what I think this is doing. This is kind of the Star Trek thing. I kind of appreciate that. I just wonder how clever it's going to be. Well, you know, well, execution is everything, obviously. So, but I enjoy, I like the fact, I appreciate the fact that they're not trying to say, well, we're going to figure out a way that we can have all this stuff happen just in the background of the story that you know, because that never works. That's like a recipe for disaster is this idea that, well, we're going to, we're going to have all these events that nobody knew anything about. It's kind of like the spore drive and Star Trek discovery, which everybody was like, well, wait a minute. They had to make it work. We have to keep this a secret, which is ridiculous. I mean, with Star Trek discovery, it's like, I did feel like they were trying to cram a lot of shit. I mean, like the whole day. Yes, they were. The holographic, the holographic projector that all these ships have, and then they have to make, and they basically have to write a line in about how Pike doesn't like them and they're, it's broken on his ship anyway, or some shit like that, right? Or the fact that Pike is on a spore drive ship and yet we've never heard of it. The fact that they brought Pike onto the ship is even worse than the whole thing. Yeah. And that's why they have to, the ship has to go someplace nobody can go and the whole thing has to be sworn to secrecy. Right. Yeah. So it's, it's, it's clunky to say the least. So in this way, what they're saying is, well, everything is basically the same, but what happens if there's no Paul, or if you are Paul, because one of the interesting bits is that you can, you, the way that your character starts off, it's kind of a similar thing to that Baldur's Gate where, okay, you know how you can pick, if you want to be a, this, you want to be a story, you can be a story character or you can make your own character. Well, not even that, but you can be from a mentat background or you can be from a benedgeter at background and then you get the voice, you know, you have that skill. Swordmaster is like a human and I guess it would be like a Dunkin' Idaho type. And so you're putting together these classes. It's an interesting idea. Will it work? I don't know. It may still be a disaster. Who knows? I do agree that probably the best way to do this would have been to go back way back before all this stuff happened. Well, the miniseries they're doing takes place, what, like 800 years or some ridiculous shit like that before? Yeah, something like that. If that series ever actually happens, I still wonder if that series will actually have been happening. They keep talking about it, but it's taken a long time. And that's kind of, I mean, that's kind of the thing is that they want to, they want to milk it and they're trying to milk it wherever they can. And listen, if you're desperate for doing content and you've read all the books and you've seen all the movies, then yeah, maybe this is up your alley. You know, I'm not that young anymore, I guess. You know, if it comes out and it's good, I'd be willing to play it. I like the idea of the world of it and I like the idea of trying to do it. I'm not going to jump on day one. The question is, the question is, who's doing world will it be? Because it's probably going to be the new doing world, not the old doing world. If you told me they were using the design from the first doon, then I'd be like, oh, well, you know what? I'm just going to play just to see that shit in motion. Well, my hunch is that you'll be able to have whatever kind of, they'll have different types of still suits. And one will look like the new one, you know, the old one and one will look like the new one. I mean, the images in the video I've seen it does not, I mean, it looks somewhat like the new one, but it, well, let me watch this newest one, let me see what this is showing. It's definitely the buildings are more like the new one. And yet there's also parts, like the desert parts feel very much like the lynch one. So it's sort of, I think they're trying to blend it. Is there going to be an acid trip aspect to this? The water of life, I guess. Yeah, I mean, I would, you know, listen, listen. If they think they can pull it off, let's see. I did see something which I thought was immediately interesting when they said, because you're on a desert and water is, of course, everything. If you can't keep enough water, you can kill enemies and drink their blood. It'll get you hydrated. I'm like, that's interesting. Okay. Yeah. I mean, listen, if you've got some skilled people doing this, then maybe it'll be a lot of fun. Maybe it'll be interesting. Maybe it'll be something, you know, maybe it'll fail as a, as a dune thing, but be a great game because that happens too, where you have games that aren't really good, you know, branching properties, but they're actually really good games. I, this, it, listen, the, the other thing too is this may be a game that's far too ambitious to do what it wants to do because I read some quote from one of the developers. They say, Oh, well, there's two types of survival in this game. There's the normal survival you're used to in games. And then there's the political survival element. Once you get past the normal survival, then you have to do political survival. Oh, yeah. How is that going to work? It involves a lot of programming and I, and I, is that going to be fun gameplay? I don't know. So like I said, I am, I'm interested in so far that it's an interesting idea and they're not just redoing the, the story. They're not trying to. I don't know if I've ever heard of a game that managed to make politics fun. The only one I can think of usable, like, are there any political video games? Eve online. That's the only one, and that's, and that's, and that's not because of the game, though. That's because of the people. Well, and that's what I think that's what the bank got. You know, actually, if the Eve people, you know what, I'll give you this. If, if someone like the Eve group did a dune game, right, I, I imagine it would be interesting. It would be damn near unplayable for a lot of people, but it would be really interesting because I mean, Eve, Eve is a very selective game for people, you know what I mean? And yet that, that universe, that universe on some level is kind of very dune-ish. I mean, you know, the, the, um, do they have planets in the Eve yet? I don't think they do, do they? Is there a landfill? I, there was supposed to be. I don't know. Now that you say that. I mean, you never, the, the problem with Eve is you never really got to your ship. There's kind of no point. Well, I think you can get out in the space stations now, but I don't know if you can get off them. Yeah, but it's not like, it's not like they've got really great first person shooter aspects of the game, you know, where you can board an enemy ship and kill the, the rival players. You know what I mean? No, it's, it's mostly space. Because if they did, holy shit, I would love to do that. I'd love to be a, uh, a ship jumper, you know, um, but that you said that makes me curious about something. Let me lift this up because what I'm curious about. Well, so Eve Online is a Icelandic company. Yeah. So due to awakening, it's not an American company. I know that. Who's making this thing? I want to say it was Swedish. Is it the BG3 people? That'd be funny. No, it's definitely not this. It's not that I could, that, that I could tell you for sure. Who is making this thing? Uh, does this tell you, because this, this, because the studio makes it, the studio makes or breaks it. Well, that's the thing though, is if it's, if it's a, you know, the fact that it's not an American company gives me some, because you said to me the other night, we were finishing Baldur's Gate through our second run through and I was talking about how the studio said they're not making any more Baldur's gates. And you said, well, they're definitely going to make another one and I was sitting there thinking to myself, yeah, you're right. They are going to make another one. No regions. They'll find. What's that? It's the Norwegians. Oh, interesting. So they'll find another company to make another Baldur's Gate. Oh, yeah. But the question is. Ain't too much money. What's that? It made too much money. I know they want to make another one, but the question will be, who will they find the studio that can do it the very specific way that made it so that everybody loved it. I mean, listen, Dungeons and Dragons material is good, but they found a way to process it and to make it so everybody loved it. And that's the studio, like the material can be good, but if the studio doing it knows what they're doing, they can still make a game. Yeah, you got a game where the story is shit and still super playable. What was that game we played that was, the story was a fucking joke, but the actual combat was really enjoyable. Oh, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out, out. That story was dumb, but Jesus, the action was so well designed, like I, I, I still think about that game, mainly because the story was so stupid, but because the, the, the physicality of playing. No, the combat mechanics were fantastic, it was fantastic, yeah. So it's, it's things like that, you know, the studio can really make the game regardless of the source material. So if, you know, and that's the thing you often get where it's like you get a popular movie comes out and then, you know, the, the studios rush to get a game out and they make all kinds of, you know, you know, a Batman, the game, you know, and you're like, oh, is, is this just an attempt to make the movie? So the fact that they're trying to divorce it somewhat from the story is great, but let's see who's doing it. Let's see who's doing it. Let's see what the, what the actual gameplay looks like. I mean, listen, trailers look great. Yeah. No, as far as Baldur's game four, yeah, once they announce the studio, that'll tell you a lot. Yeah, because I mean, that was the danger they have. I think the biggest danger to Baldur's game four to be honest is whoever gets it is just going to imitate too much. You know, they're just going to, I mean, you, you literally could, this is the thing is a lot of, and this is where I'm curious because there's a lot of turbulence in the video game industry right now is become very, very apparent that they cannot keep making all these multi-billion dollar games with the expense and the, the human cost or shutting down studios of games or success. I mean, it's just, it's a complete mess because as with everything else, they got greedy and stupid. They didn't, they didn't look at quality. They looked at how can we just shove stuff out? So you could literally, or anyone could use the exact same graphics, everything, not make anything better. Oh no, just, just write a new story and just write a better story and, and just plug and paste what you need in, but not try to make it, you know, ray trace next gen. No, no, no, honestly, yeah, you could do, you could do a, you could call it a BG3.5. It's a full game, but you're, you're using all the mechanics from BG3. I would, I would play that. If it was well written, that's all you need is a good story. New characters, new story. Yeah. I'd even go back to Baldur's Gate. Sure. You know, I mean, you don't necessarily, you, you don't necessarily need to make a new city, but you could. I mean, and that would really save you because you could make a huge game just by adding one city to that map. Yeah. You know, and that's, that wraps back around to why this actually has some interest for me is the idea that they're saying rather than trying to bend, do, and as everybody knows it to this game and make things, do canon expo explanations like, you know, they've done in lots of other things where they try to start was trying to bend all this stuff that, that was going on in between and someone that doesn't make any sense instead. Darth Vader is secret apprentice. Yes. Right. There, there is, oh, a Ben Kenobi and Darth Vader fought yet neither of them killed each other because the movies after have to happen, even though it makes no sense, you know, stuff like that. Instead, they're saying we're just doing away with Paul entirely. So I would hope that that actually allows for let's say the Harkonans to win. Is there a situation where the Harkonans win? I will make the argument though. I kind of, the, the Obi-Wan and Darth Vader thing, it kind of works for me though. I thought about it a lot because like at first I was kind of like, hmm, you know, and I think what it is is that I think Obi-Wan could just never bring himself to do it ever and he never did because think about it, even in the original New Hope, he turns himself into a force coast rather than have to actually fucking fight him. You know, I, I think it's just a, what, you know, actually, let me, let me ask you that because this is this, I have to admit, this is something I never thought about when I was younger. What's that? Why did he just give up and let Vader kill him? I don't think he wanted to fight him. And I think he knew he couldn't win either. Like, I think that's the other thing is that by the time they meet up again, uh, Obi-Wan is, is older, right? And I think he knows at that point that Darth Vader can probably beat him, right? And I think the idea is that he kind of went there knowing that it was, that he, it was over for him. He knew that he was getting the end of his life and knew that he was probably going to become a force ghost soon. I think he just picked his moment to be most effective. And it created a massive level of distraction so that Luke could get away. But yeah, I don't think Obi-Wan ever wanted, because if you, if you track it, just like, let's look at the storyline. Like, no, he couldn't do it in Attack of the Clones or R. Was it a revenge of the Sith? He couldn't do it in Revenge of the Sith. He couldn't do it in the mini series and he couldn't do it in New Hope. And I think that that actually, when you look at it, the big picture of it, it tracks because, you know, he was like a little brother. He was like a surrogate son on some level. He couldn't kill him. He just couldn't kill him. He could cut off his limbs. He could leave him on the side of a, a lake of fire. He could drop a fucking mountain on him, but he couldn't kill him. You know, and that, I, I think that tracks, you know, like, I, I, I didn't, I didn't need an Obi-Wan series. It'd be very clear. Well, yeah. Yeah. But that aspect of it makes sense to me. It was worth it just to have Lee and Neeson show up for two seconds. It's quite fine. Jin again. Geez. And that's what I really fucking want. Like, you know, I, I just want, I mean, unless you recast, I guess you could recast. Yeah. But then you lose some of the power of it being Lee and Neeson. Well, yes, exactly. And just to be, just to be clear about it before we go on, I don't really care if there's a reason or not. It's not like I'm like, wait a minute. This doesn't make sense. This movie sucks now. It's not that. I just, I realized that someone, I was like, who would you? Who would you replace? If you had to replace Lee and Neeson, man, and they were like, you can have any actor you want to play Qigong, right? Who, who carries that gravitas for you? Of the appropriate age? How was he? 40 something? No, no, no, no, we're doing, we're doing pre, well, let's say we're going to do a pre. Are we doing young Qigong? A pre, a pre-fant and miss. Oh, geez. All right. Who do you get? I don't. I can't think of anybody. I don't know young actors anymore. I stick with older stuff now. I don't care. Well, fine. Let's say you're doing a mini series of Phantom Menace, right? That time period, it's, it's, it's that Qigong. Oh, okay. Uh, who? Somebody from that time? Yeah. Who replaces him in that? Uh, what's his face? Oh God. Colin, um, not Firth. What's the other Colin? Colin Farrell? Yeah. Yeah. Um. I could see him with that hairstyle doing it. Yeah. You know what? That was like the last person I thought you'd pick. Yeah. Um, interesting. And I'll tell you why. Because I, they were, they, I just saw something about, um, the Penguin series and he's under all that prosthetics and he can't even tell it's him. If you don't really know. No, he looks good. You know, he was really good in Batman under all that prosthetic. So I have no problem. He was, he could play him on a character. He's been really good in a lot of movies, but it's just funny, you know, she didn't think yeah. Yeah. I mean, he doesn't really look like him, but then again, I don't think that matters. Yeah. I don't, I don't need him to look like him. I just want somebody who I think can. Who carries that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think you can. How fails? I have a lot of good stuff. So, yeah. I have some interesting angle on things for you. It's changing. Well, just before we change base, I was looking up Scottish actors to see if I can spot somebody else. And the first one, the first one is Craig Ferguson. I would not pass Craig Ferguson. Just so you know, Liam Mason's Irish. Oh, shit. Is he? Yes. I know. I don't know. And you got lucky because Colin Farrell's Irish too. Holy shit. Is he? Yeah. Oh, well, see? See? Yeah, you inadvertently got it right. That is hysterical because I did not know either of them. I just thought they were both Scottish. I thought Colin Farrell was English. No, no, he's also Irish. Holy shit. Gabriel Byrne is Irish. A young Gabriel Byrne is Qui-Gon. Yeah, but he's. He'd be better as a Sith. He's an older guy now. Yeah. Well, but you said if we're doing it at the time. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Michael Fassbender. Oh, yeah. You know what? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I can see Michael Fassbender as a young... That Fassbender can project what you were talking about, the gravitas of it. We could be friendly, but he can also be fucking off serious, yeah. Yeah. I'm looking through the Irish actor list to see if there's anybody else who has the instinct gravitas to meet her now. Now that I know what I'm talking about, which I clearly don't. It's hysterical that I accidentally picked the right person. I don't know if they have to be Irish to do it. Well, they don't. But the fact that I not only missed somebody not realizing that they're Irishmen, yeah. I misheritaged Liam Neeson, but then inadvertently correctly heritaged, the replacement actor is a joke in itself. Anyway, you were saying, God damn it. Oh, yeah. I found some weird stuff. I had some things I wanted to bring that to you. I'll wait for you. I can't believe that I accidentally picked the correct. All right. Go ahead. No, no, no. That's hysterical. It is funny. Yes. That's why I pointed at you. Oh boy. What a start. Because you were going to start looking for Scottish people. I'm like, no, no, no, no. I did. I searched for Scottish actors. You're already in the right track. You're fine. So there's a heatwave going on right now, actually, but the time there shouldn't be a heatwave anywhere where I am. Oh, no. It's supposed to. The heat don't. I don't know about you, but it's going to last. It's going to go on forever. Yeah. Just comment offhand online. I didn't write. It stuck with me. Like I saw this passingly. And then it just stuck with me. It was along the lines of it's hilarious that the cities are telling people, hey, don't turn on your AC. Oh, yes. Unless it's like 79 degrees or you're dying or something like that, right? And they said, meanwhile, AI is like choking down power like crazy so they can make images of women with five boobs, right? It is. This is the show of strange synchronicity because that was going to be my opening thing until I saw the doing thing. No. Okay. Instead of me just doing angry ranting about AI again, because I do it a lot in the fives and I don't want to do it, I was like, do something you actually want to talk about. Don't do this. Are you? Were you actually going to bring that up? I was because my blue sky feed is filled with that exact there's somebody on Twitter or someplace put this thing and they actually had a, I guess there's a very popular machine generated image of a large breasted farm woman that has continually been being refined. It started off and she had no, she had nothing outside of under her stomach was just gone. It was missing, but she had these gigantic triple F boobs and like 18 fingers and now they've got it where she has sort of four legs. I can say the image. It's great. Okay. So yeah, so I saw this image, I saw this commentary and I was laughing about it because it's true. You know, they're telling individuals, Hey guys, watch out on your power usage. But meanwhile, these companies are just fucking, you know, it just, they're just sucking it down for all this technology. I mean, just the, how does it, the bit mine, the bit mining, whatever they call it, Bitcoin mining going on. Crypto mining is now. Yeah. It sucks. It's like crazy. So it's, it's funny how they're on one hand, they're telling people, Hey, you know, don't run that AC. But on the other hand, people are just, you know, companies are blazing through power, right? So there's a lopsided sort of a responsibility. But then I saw this really interesting article and it was about how, okay, so this is on the Guardian. The title of this article is climate engineering off US coast could increase heat waves in Europe study fights, right? That now, you know, the whole cloud cloud seeding and, yeah, yeah, they have all these different sort of tricks now to kind of climate engineer to try and bring rain to try and change things, right? And you know, I'm sitting there and I was reading this article out loud to my wife because I was, I was kind of fascinated by it by this idea that essentially if, if the US tried to use a climate engineering and they were trying to cool off the west coast, the whole, this whole idea that them doing something, you have to do something in Alaska, I think would have longer lasting effects, because it would come down, but this idea of them doing this thing there would actually mess with some, you know, jet stream climate element that would then make it so that more hot air would go towards Europe. And my wife said out of nowhere, well, it looks like we have a future full of climate warfare. And I was like, oh my fuck, climate warfare. I was like, you know what, I was like, I never would have put those two words together and yet it is so perfectly apropos, this idea that yes, if things don't get better, we're heading for climate warfare, where, you know what, we're just going to mess, we're just going to use climate engineering on our environment and let you burn. And then, you know, and then what are you going to do, right? And this is kind of thing like, you know, because, you know, last couple shows we've talked about how there's this greater sense of greed and people kind of have a, I don't give a shit mentality, right? But so your country says, you know what, like this is a Dubai that just flooded themselves, you're doing the whole cloud seeding thing in there. Is that what, is that what this article you refer to as, what is cloud seeding and did it cause Dubai flooding? No, no, no, no, no, no, this, this particular article is called was on the Guardian. That's right. Yeah, it's called climate engineering off US coast could increase heat waves in Europe study fines. Now, the article itself is very benign. It's very science based, yeah, it did not, it did not spouting, start spouting the weird shit I'm going to spout to you. This is coming from my wife saying the phrase climate warfare, right? Sure. But this idea that let's say you have, so Dubai, I think it was Dubai that had the whole cloud seeding thing where they got all the rain and they flooded themselves, right? Yeah. And it's like, okay, well, there you go. You have this, you know, I'm going to, I'm arbitrarily picking Dubai as a country, right? But actually, you know what, I won't even bother any country decides, fuck all, I'm going to use climate engineering to improve things here for my people. They make their weather better and they, direct connection is found between that and another country suddenly having drought, awful weather, causes of famine, temperatures well above the, the, you know, in the, in the low hundreds, or low hundreds, like low 100s, like 110, 115, right? An area that's not used to it, right? Cause that's a, that's a key thing too. They're parts of the world. They get hot temperatures and it's not weird. It's when these places that don't normally get it, suddenly get it. It's like, okay. Right. So this other country suddenly starts getting baked and they draw a direct correlation with the fact that this other country is climate engineering. So country two says, fuck this. Now what are they going to do? Do they try and climate engineer the situation back? Do they try to, you know, sabotage the climate of the environment that is, that is fucking their environment up? Do they declare war? You know, is there, is there ground war? I mean, it, it, it graduates into so many possibilities. You know, it's like, you know, up until now, you know, you, what did you have to do to start a war, right? You had to, you had to invade, you had to kill a whole bunch of citizens from another country, right? You had to invade an ally, right? But what if we're heading for this future where, no, no, no, you can just use climate engineering and fuck other people so bad that they declare war on you a climate war. You know, and it was just such a, it was just such a different vision of things. Well, we're already kind of doing it. Just not the way you're talking about it. No, not yet. Yes. We're talking about where all of our electronics go. They go jump into charge with dismantled and kill all these kids. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, but at what point, I guess my thing is at what point we're doing that to countries that we are, we feel safe, the U.S. is doing that to countries that it feels safe shitting on, essentially what it is, right? But at what point to two countries of equal power go to war over their, over, over climate engineering? Because one says, hey, we're going to make it rain. And the other country says, hey, you're stealing our rain, you know, well, I think the trick there is that you have to be able to clearly demonstrate what's being done. And I don't know how easy that's going to be depending, because here's the thing, right? Let's say that everyone's doing it that, you know, yeah, there is also that. But let's say that, I don't know, the Pentagon tomorrow figures out, oh, okay, there's a way that we could create a nice Los Angeles 72 and sunny with no humidity environment for the whole United States at the expense of, I don't know, but let's just pick Ireland because I've already smothered them once with the, with the screwing up the two of their national treasure. So let's just say, let's say we're just going to push all that heat into Ireland, right? Yeah. Well, unless they're really, really stupid and there'd have to be a lot of dummies there, somebody is going to, in the counterintelligence, they're just going to say, okay, we have to do this in a way that's undetectable. But yeah, let's do it. So let's say Ireland heats up, you know, but what I'm saying is that they could do it that way. So this is for scientists to go, hey, you know what? It's really weird that the US is 72 and sunny all over and Ireland suddenly gets horrible weather. Because this is the other part of this, which is that the computers we have and the machine learning that we have are getting really good at pattern recognition and really good seeing anomalies, except all you got to do then is once in a while have the kill, the Irish engineers. Right? Well, that too. You just have to turn it off occasionally so that the US bakes a couple of months out of, you know, every other year, and say, look, I mean, we're all in what do they call it, like climate weirdness or whatever, you know, they've got a name for it, global weirdness. No, no, no, that's happening to us to look, you know, North Dakota at 90 degree weather in the middle of January. Who knew? Meanwhile, I see there's a little guy shooting a beam at the classroom and it's making North Dakota heat up. But, you know, so as I'm saying is, I think if there's going to be warfare over global alteration of some kind, and I have no reason to think that there won't be, I don't think that's what it's going to be. I think it's going to be over resource allocation, not whether, you know, you're pushing heat somewhere. And some of these methods have really weird, like, titles because like there's the cloud seating thing. Oh, yeah. This one's called marine cloud brightening. Hey, listen, you know, nothing's going to be rods from God, but yeah, no, I know, but that's, yeah. But rods and gods, rods for God is, but what I'm saying is, yeah, there's lots of weird terms for things. I mean, I'd forgotten about that. You know, I never forget about that, but that is a wonderful term. Truly awful and funny. That's great. Yeah, I just, you know, I just hadn't, I hadn't thought about it that way up to that point. I was still thinking about, now this is the mistake I make because I look at the science. So this is a mistake a lot of people who are science based make, which is that you look at it all and you go scientifically, you're like, well, this is what's going to happen. But then you forget the whole, yeah, but then people are going to misunderstand. They're going to go to war and you're like, yeah, that's what they always do. People are going to get pissed off and they're going to be like, you know, Vietnam is stealing our water, you know, or our rain and we'll go after them. And then in Ireland, we'll be like, ah, the US is, uh, is baking us with scrub, you know, but what I'm, what I'm afraid is when two countries of equal power, like you get into like a climate cold war, except it'll be hot, a climate hot, the climate hot, the climate hot, cold war over hot temperatures. That's when I'm curious how bad that gets because I mean, this is, this is kind of a whole other realm of warfare because I mean, right now we've got, um, we're going into the age of like tech warfare where basically you can shut off everybody's another country's um, plumbing or you can back their, uh, their sewage systems or you can, you can digitally go in and fuck with their infrastructure, right? But now you have this other layer where like, yeah, but you know what, you can also take a dump on their, their climate, right? I mean, you could, you could do it on purpose, right? I mean, I mean, the US could be like, Hey, you know what, we want all the oil, the oil in the Middle East. Why don't we just mess with the climate enough that, you know, nobody can live there. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's just a, you know, it's that kind of sci-fi post apocalyptic, uh, curiosity thing that, that comes in, you know, where it makes you, it makes you consider what that would look like. But I've come to realize that my imagination is not absurd enough to really envision the future. Um, and I think that's really the key thing is I don't think futurists can ever fully, uh, grasp how dumb the future can be, you know, like, like, I love William Gibson. I love his whole cyberpunk thing, right? But the, his cyberpunk thing is really about the 80s. And December grads, well, we love it. It's high tech, but it's the 80s, right? It's what, what if all this technology had happened right then in the 80s, which is why you've got the neon glow, right? And all the drugs. But you know, he wasn't, he, he missed just how dumb a lot of things it would be. You know, the dumb usage of things. Like, I know that, um, when he was writing his last book, not the periphery, one of the comes after the periphery. I can't remember it. One of his timed, one of his time, um, uh, timeline books that he's doing, um, he wrote the book and he wrote the book that Hillary won and that this alternate timeline, Trump won because in his mind, he said he never imagined that Trump would win. And then when Trump won, he was like, shit, and he had to go back and he had to rewrite the whole first part of his book because suddenly it, it just made no sense. And he, I think he said something. He's like, I just didn't, I just did not think that Americans would make that kind of mistake. And it's like, oh, no, no, they do. And I think that's the mistake that, that smart people make is that they don't leave, uh, grounds for just how stupid the group can be. You know, the, the level of sort of meat head decisions that can happen. You still there? By the way. Oh, no, I'm listening. Oh, just checking. Oh, just checking. I keep forgetting to start my, the background stuff because that would actually give me a clue too. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's no cityscape. No, I keep forgetting because I have to activate it. I don't have a way. Yeah. So do it. Do an Alakazam thing. Right. And as you, Alakazam it, you can bring it into being. Go ahead. Uh, Alakazam. Hey, look at that. Magic. Yeah. So, yeah, I find that all the time when you read a lot of these books and you read what? Oh, now you just reminded me I have to get the sound effect of, uh, what's the space saying? It's a kind of magic. I should have had that at the ready. It's kind of. Oh, is it Sean Connery? Sean Connery said it first, right? And then the Lambert said, I think in the, what, the second movie or did he say in the first movie after, he, I think they both say, but I believe you're right that Connery says it first. Yeah. Yes. I'm 99% sure. Connery says it. And then Lambert says it to somebody either in the same movie or in the second one. Well, yeah, so I just find it funny because you really these visions of the future and you're always like, oh, this is so interesting. And oh, they predicted all these things and you're like, yeah, but, but they missed the fact they missed all the dumb shit. Now, you know what? To some degree, I kind of like Corey Doctorow for that. I think Corey Doctorow, I think he picks up on a lot of that dumb shit, you know, because he's got that one book. Oh, what is it called? Is it, is it, it's not artificial bread. Is it illegal bread might be, it might be illegal bread. Now that you say that, yeah, he, hold on, I want to see if I can get the, well, I'm, I just searched for illegal bread. Oh, no, it's not that. Doctorow. On authorized bread, I knew I was going to say he must have used a more clever word. Yeah. So he's got that book on unauthorized bread. And I think that book actually brings in, but the problem is, is that he's blinded by corporate stupidity. Oh, he's very fixated on that. Yeah. And, and so he misses the other end of it, which is like the human stupidity, which is some degree corporate greed is human stupidity. It's just a very, yeah, it's organized to humans. Very well. Yeah, exactly. Um, so that's the thing is that, you know, when you, when you look at the science and you, and you, and you think logically, yeah, the, the, there's a lot of good in the future. It's just that when these things then, then get translated to public consumption, it's like, yeah, it's the whole, um, they scientifically developed an atom bomb to end a war, but then they kicked off the Cold War. And if you'd gone to, you have to imagine that if you'd gone to Oppenheimer, wait, Oppenheimer knew he did swing bad, but you have to imagine it went to Oppenheimer and you showed him the future of what developing the bomb will, will have done to the human race. I don't know if you would have done it, you know, I mean, to some degree, if, if you went back in time and you, and you showed him, you know, like, would it have been worth the lives of all those American soldiers who would have had to go island to island to end the war, um, for, to not have an alien bomb future? Probably not because, I, I would guess because of course, you know, I mean, somebody else would have developed it. Well, not, I don't even know if it's that necessarily, but I think some of it is that I don't think anybody at the time was quite aware how off his rocker Hitler was, you know, that he was listening to an astrologist or whatever it is, astrologist. He was out of his mind on drugs, yeah. Yeah. So I think if they, if they knew that, so if Oppenheimer had seen or any of the other scientists had seen how, what was actually going on, had they had remote viewing inside the war room and they'd seen Hitler like bouncing off the walls going, oh, the stars are alive, the stars are alive, my hair, my hair, my hair, but Hitler, but Hitler wasn't the problem for them. It was the Japanese, it was the problem for them. Well, there, there were problems all over. So what they had still developed it? The idea is that, I don't think anyone realized it was going to become, you know, a mass proliferation brain device. Well, that's the thing is, you know, what they have, knowing that, what they have put their efforts into not developing a nuclear weapon, but instead some kind of other bomb that was conventional so that if you dropped it somewhere, you didn't make it uninhabitable for 10,000 years. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they would have, maybe they would have made the hydrogen bomb that worked or whatever that one was supposed to suck all the shit out but leave the buildings. So it's a, I always find that interesting, the, the, our, how we get blindsided by like the dumb future, you know, it's the, yeah, well speaking of dumbness and AI is a small kind of tangential story. Did you see the thing with the, the DC AI covers where Superman symbol was wrong and DC printed it? No. Okay. What the fuck is that about? I'll say you this article, uh, it's, it's, it's gotten a lot of, it's gotten a lot of attention in different places, but basically variant covers, which have been around in comics forever. There's an artist who apparently, I've never heard of this person, but apparently within the art world, he is well known as a HACster kind of trace over type artist, but he clearly used an AI generator to make some of these variant covers for him. And one of them has Superman and Superman symbol has a double bottom of the S and apparently he didn't even notice it. And DC. Oh, yeah. I mean, you got to be tremendously lazy, not to make sure that the S on Superman's outfit is right, but, you know, oh, yeah, I mean, this is, this is, this is just funny. This is the stupid, right? Cricment. This is the dumb, you know, the dumbness and laziness always always comes out. I'll just use a, you know what my, um, my wife on the wild, a little while ago was saying that she was starting to see stuff that cropped up from tech guys that, and she would, she would see it and it would be like a completely different tone of voice. And she'd be like, Oh, yeah, and she, and she doesn't ask because, you know, she thinks it's rude to ask, but she was sitting there going, yeah, I wonder, I wonder if they are. Yeah. And I said to her, it wouldn't surprise me. I was like, cause, you know, the, you've got these tech guys who aren't, you know, who aren't naturally writers who are trying to produce material and you're like, yeah, and they're writing tech manuals. I mean, well, we discussed about what percentage would make it not. Yours, right? Oh, yeah. And that came up recently because they had that woman who won a writing award and she said that she does use chat GP and they said, um, but she said it was something like only 10% of our, I was going to say three or four percent. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's, I mean, and this is, yeah, I just had a big conversation with my, my kids about what Parity is. Well, you know, the interesting part for your wife, by the way, would be to take that and feed it to the Jack GPT and say, was this written by an AI and see what it comes as? Oh, yes. I recognize the patterns. I wrote this. That would be a great response. I said, I wrote this. Yeah. But you know what? Honestly, the, the writing of tech manuals, it makes kind of sense to me that you have, you have, you have tech people who know how to use it. And they're writing really dry material. It makes sense. But it, but it is interesting that she noticed a change of tone. See, that's, this is the thing is, yeah, but, but when you're doing art and they're not, I guess, yes, I guess the thing is, I mean, you're doing art, that's the thing that, and this bugs me more than a writer using chat GP to, to get through 10% of their book. Well, it doesn't, I'll tell you why it doesn't bug me. Yeah. It's because after this happened, the amount of other artists who came out and said, yeah, this guy sucks. We've known this guy sucks. Okay. Well, that's good. I guess this is exactly what it proves. I don't want to become normalized that where it's like, listen, if you want to use chat GP or whatever, if you want to use a machine learning system to kind of get basic framework of your design out, cool. But then give me your art because I'm not here for computer processed shit. I'm here for human individual art. I, I could absolutely see using it myself. If I wanted to draw something and let's say I wanted to get the perspective of, let's say, I want to draw, draw this from the perspective of a rat on the street in New York. Show me that perspective. And then it shows me what that looks, I'm not going to perspective with buildings, right? So I wouldn't literally trace over it, but I go, Oh, okay. And I would do general shapes and just sketch it out. So I'd be like, all right, that's the perspective. I got it. And I met a painter. I met a painter, I was living in Vermont who used to take photographs, right of the things he wanted to paint and then he would turn them into, you know, the overhead projectors that we had when we were kids. Oh, yeah. Of course. Yeah. So he would turn the photographs into essentially, what's that? Like into transparency. Yeah. It's a transparency. So he would get the line work, he would turn the photographs into essentially line work. And then he would put that on a transparency. And then he would use that as the frame for his painting. And then he would then go in and put out everything in the color, the pattern, all that stuff. Sure. But he used it and it's like, okay, well, guess what? That's, you know, he did draw it. I mean, he created a process to put it there because he knew that his drawing wasn't that good, right? But that his strength slide elsewhere and it's like, okay, well, you know what, that is that so different than having a machine learning system give you a framework? No, if it creates the whole thing for you, that's the difference. Yeah. Yeah. There was a guy, there was a very famous judge, dread artist who showed how he made the buildings because he said, I'm not good at buildings. And what he did is he would take Polaroids of paint cans and then he would, he would draw over them and they were these big, tall, like rounded buildings because he was like, I like the shapes, but I can't, I cannot visualize the perspective. So I just took a picture of it and I drew over it and then I made it into buildings. There's nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that. Yeah. There are lots of artists. I mean, we've seen, you and I have seen, and this is forever, comics where we're like, oh, remember the Fury comic where, what was it, Hogan was based on Gene Hackman? Very clearly was based on Gene Hackman? Like the, remember a Fury's friend? No, no, no, no. Hold on. The Nick Fury where, where Gene Garofola was one of the characters? Yeah, exactly. Yes. Yeah. The Max one. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. There are a lot of artists who will use what's, they will use a light box. Yeah. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Oh, Jesus. That book where Eminem is the main character. Oh, I don't know where it looks just like him and then his dad is, is basically Harvey Kitell. I, I don't know that one. You know this one? Oh, wanted. It's wanted. Oh, yeah. Look at the art for wanted. Oh, yes. I remember the last frame. And yes, he does it like Eminem having sex with him. Yeah. He looks like Eminem. Yeah. His dad looks like Harvey Kitell and then the woman in the comic looks like, uh, Hallie Berry. Yeah. So a lot of the way that those artists did that, and I'm sorry if I'm, I'm breaking something for people who don't know, this is they either light box it or what they do is they do like, uh, they trace over the faces because they can't do, they can't mimic faces. That's fine because the rest of the art is their own, but they wanted it to look like Gene Hackman or, or Eminem or whatever. And so they. That's over it. That's almost hard in itself because then you have to find like all these photos to match what you like. Well, it would be easier now. You could use AI to say, okay, I want Eminem looking up and why I want one of his eyes to be bleeding and it's curling around his face into his mouth and it would try to do it. They could probably do a pretty good job. So it's probably not used to a while, a while back. I was testing it. By the way, by the way, to your point about it being tough, that's why you will notice that certain, certain times in a comics where they're making somebody look like a famous person, you know, they have to make sure that they orient the body to fit whatever photo they found. So there are times and you can, you can, if you're, if you really pay attention, you can pick it up where let's say you see an artist who typically works with like a front perspective right there. You're looking straight. It's usually waist level and then out of nowhere, there's one panel where suddenly it's lower and pointing up, but it looks exactly like, I don't know, Gene Hackman. It's because they found a photo from that angle like, well, that scene has to be at that angle because I can't find the photo so I have to make it work. It's fine, but you will see it if you look for it. It's an interesting thing. You'll pick it up. I was fucking with machine learning a while back. And I remember seeing if it could produce was it Angela Bassett as Red Sonya, you know, and it produced something and I looked at it and I thought, Oh, that's interesting. And it was, it was in no way finished. She had six fingers. The face was weird. There's kind of an uncanny valley of was created by something with a soul or not. That's the new uncanny valley, isn't it? Well, did you see the picture I sent you? Oh, no, wait. I texted it to you. Yeah. I texted it to your phone. This is the image I was talking about that has gotten all the attention for the the the busty farm girl, which apparently is just a boy. Yeah, it looks like she's got a giant penis that's folded over. Yeah, it's weird, right? But that's feet. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But that's way better than the first version where she had nothing underneath her torso. Oh, my God. Yeah, the sheep. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's it's all. Oh, the sheep. It's horrific. It's great. And this is there. I love everyone. Somebody am from Japan with an E guy and somebody said, so I have to make sure I don't turn on my AC unless it's over seven to over under 79. But we can have all these data centers running to produce this. Okay. Yeah, I guess the fucked up part is like, I look at this image and I'm like, you couldn't get a girl to sit in the field of sheep and take this. Oh, please, I could search for hot farm girl and find better than that in five minutes on the internet. That's shit. I mean, probably fine porn. But yeah. Well, okay. So that's not porn. I mean, that is porn. That's not porn. Well, just because she's not new doesn't mean it's not porn. That's not being created for you to go, boy, do I respect the intellect of this character? Well, you got to get into a conversation now about what is and is not pornography. Okay. That is a photo that the farm girl you think you sent me. That is weird fucking photo. That's a photo. That's not that is not strictly pornography. That would not be age rated and blocked. Yeah. Someone. Someone. I'm sorry, but you are completely wrong because that is moderated and marked on most social sites. Really? Yeah. That's just some photo. You can't post feet on some sites without being marked as sexual because of, yes, because of foot fetish. Oh, yeah. Acupas had rants about this. What? So just because somebody finds a fetish in something, suddenly, you're not allowed to have that in a photo because there is no definition. I like elbows. There's no elbows anymore. Well, it would be interesting if there's an elbow thing maybe. No, no. Yeah. That that will be marked as. That is so funny because I look at that photo and she's okay. Oh, I'm saying is you're getting hung up on the pornography. But all it has to be is sexually suggested and that is the same as pornography. I have never even remotely wanted to see what machine learning does with pornography because if it can't get the fingers and the arms right, I can't imagine what it does to the sex parts. Well, he has 12 dicks now, you know, like, I know for a while and I don't know if this is still the case, but I remember there were multiple articles about it on sites like polygon and kotama, where they were talking about the fact when Overwatch first came out, that became the dominant thing was what they call machima machinima. Portifying it or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Basically, you know, taking the video game, taking the video game characters and then turning into porn. So I would imagine all they did is refine that with AI. Yeah. I mean, and that's still it. That is pornography because I mean, you see it. I mean, they're not. Sure. I mean, plus I do find it funny that they've done that with everything now, you know, any game that's out there they've done it with, of course, but when you say, I'd be interested with that would look like I would imagine all that does is increase the fidelity of those existence. No, I am not interested in what that looks like, no, because I think it's probably bad, but it's probably actually very good because they're worried on what's already there. You're going to get a Cthulhu like vagina. No, no, they'll take all their already existing, uh, the machinima stuff and they'll just say you make this higher fidelity. That's all I'm going to do. I do know that they're using machine learning to like remove bathing suits and then have it generate like I have read that. But there was there was there are, you know what? I guess my problem is I like looking at real things. Is that weird? Like, no, I'm the same way. No, no, I'm the same way. It's it's it's there is no appeal in faked anything to me. Nothing. That's why strip clubs. Nothing, none of that makes sense because it's all art. Oh, artifacts. Yeah, you don't like it. It's all just not. Yeah, I don't like it. That's what I said. Clyde Barker ruined actual porn for me when I was very young, ruined it because, oh no, I'm sorry. It wasn't Clyde Barker. It was Stephen King. Stephen King ruined pornography for me at like 14 or 15, whatever. Whenever I read the Tommy knockers, I know it wasn't or was it the great and secret show. One of those two books has a scene where one would, whichever author, now I'm starting to think it's Clyde Barker again because it makes more sense for him. Is it juicy and tentately? No, no. He talks about the fact that they're faking the moaning and it never occurred to me up until I read that, that it was faked and as soon as I realized from that, I'm like, Oh, yeah, it would it just destroyed it. It made it point. You're you're literally just watching a movie. It's fake. Yeah. But up to a certain point, do you really that I didn't think about it? But then once I read that and I went, Oh, and it was just like a whole bunch of like just the whole clip side fell into the world. I guess I I guess I kind of always knew it was fake. I don't know what it was, but like I think it's because it was a movie. My brain was like, well, it's a movie. Don't get me wrong. I realized that the woman could have paid the plumber. Like I get that there's a set up. You know what I'm saying? Like I got that the scenario was made up that there didn't just happen to be a camera and a director. I'm not necessarily enjoying what's going on shooting paid to act. Right. I just kind of thought, well, why would somebody do something? This is the this isn't naive that falls away. We watched my kids. My kids really like the Sherlock Holmes movies by Guy Ritchie and they were like, Oh, no, no, no, no movie by Guy Ritchie. I realized that they really weren't that many things to watch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So then we watched the King Arthur movie, right? And my wife's like, is there anything bad in that movie? And I'm like, well, we have to explain to them what a brothel is because that King Arthur is raised in a brothel. And we were and I said to my wife, I was like, you know, I don't really have a problem explaining this to them because it's like the oldest profession. It's in the fucking Bible. Like prostitution, it's it's you know, and we didn't explain it like, this is a perfectly normal thing. We just said this is the thing. Yeah. That is something that exists in the world. It always has. And they were so thoroughly confused where they were like, really? Why? I'm like, you're not old enough. Yeah. I said, I said to my kids, like there are things that will make sense to you guys and you get older and you'll look back and you'll go, Oh, okay. That's fucked up. Yeah. But you know, right now you're young for it. So but yes, it's all it's all artifice. And that's, you know, it's the whole people who fall in love with actors because they think that they're they're characters, you know, and it's like, that's all artifice. And the thing is, as long as you realize that it's just a show, then you can enjoy the show. It's entertainment, but never let yourself get distracted by the that from the fact that it is a show. Sure. And and nowhere more so in the realm of of sex that listen, the prostitutes don't really want to have sex with you. The strippers don't really want to spend time with you. Point stars don't really want to be there. Right. Like everyone really kind of just wants to get paid. There probably are some, but the fact you don't know for sure. That's the part that wins it. Listen, there are cops that like to beat the shit of people. There are cops that rather would spend most of their day being cop rather than not being cop. Sure. Right. And I only pick that as an arbitrary, you know, a job. They are always outliers or always people who would rather be doing who are willing to do a thing. Sure. But they're usually outliers. I was going to say the problem is you don't know and if you don't know it, for me, it ruins everything. But yeah, so no, it's all artifice. And listen, the fact that people can't tell the difference, that is a problem because you have a lot of men thinking that a lot of these movies are what they should be doing. And it's like, no, not at all. This is not what you should be doing at all. I mean, just examining what pornography looks like today, from what it looked like when I was like younger, right? And to be fair, I had a friend growing up whose father had a porn obsession, right? And I remember he had something like six or seven garbage bags of porn VHS in their basement, right? I remember one time me and this kid, we just sat down and started putting them in being like, what the hell is all this shit? Like, no, his family was in home, so we just sat there and we started going through them. And we're watching them and we're like, you know what, there's a lot of fucked up shit here. Like, you know, a lot of stuff that I had not seen where I was like, you know, and so like, you know, like urination fetishes, that's been around for a long time, tying people up, that's been around for a long time, right? That's been around for a long time, what's weird now is that there's a level of disrespectful savagery that goes beyond the stateomasticistic aspect, you know what I mean? Where it's like, stateomasticism was a thing, there's a power struggle, who's in charge, who likes the pain, who's giving the pain, but with this kind of new angle now where it's just like, it's the, it's just mean, it's just kind of a belittling effect. And maybe it was clearly there on a minor level before, but I think it was there before because misogyny was just the thing, right? But now, it's like it's gotten turned into its own fetish, should I mean? Yeah, you're talking about more or less, what's the word for it, what's a descriptive term for demeaning? Yes, demeaning, yeah, it's become more demeaning, yeah. But the thing is like, it used to be, there was, pornography has always been kind of demeaning, but before it was demeaning, kind of like, the, it was like the background radiation of... Well, it was more subtle, I guess, oh, here it is, degradation as the point, as opposed to a secondary effect. Yes, yes. That's it, yeah, and there's a lot more of that now, and it's a lot more normalized. Well, let's say, you know, like rape videos, like, oh, okay, also, I've ever read an article not that long ago about how, like, oh, man, what was that book? Do I read that book that was all about numbers and all the weird ratios and patterns and how you can learn a lot? Yeah, I don't remember the name, but I might be talking about it, yeah. And in that, they were saying how, like, incest porn has having a huge moment, and if you look at the search data that, like, Pornhub has, there's all this, like, incest videos are in, and you're kind of sitting there going, "Really? Why?" Like, where is that coming from? You know, so it's, yeah, it's, you know, we're living in weird times, and, you know, but to be clear, taboo porn has been around forever, because there was taboo pornography when I was a kid. Oh, yeah. Do you know what I mean? So, like, that itself isn't new. Wow. It's more so the proliferation of it that's new. Why is that having a moment? Yeah. But I don't remember, I remember that if you had porn that was degrading, it was usually some kind of S&M porn. So, it wasn't so much that it was degrading as it was an S&M movie, whereas now you've got that degradation. It wasn't, it wasn't somebody drowning a woman as he had sex with her for fun. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So, it was a lot more than that. It was more of a give and take, you know. It was like, "Okay, Daddy, smack me type stuff." It's like, "Oh, God. I hate it when girls say Daddy." That's so weird. Yeah. That's why I brought it up. It was a lot. But let me use a perfectly good festival. Honestly. No, it's a twofold for me. It's twofold for me. Because if a girl says Daddy, "Ooh, God, it makes me seem like the other one is…" Oh, it's gross. It's gross. It's when a Spanish woman says, "I, Poppy." Oh, God. I hate that one more. Yeah. Yeah. I hate that. That one really does that. Yeah. Yeah. There are things that if a woman would have called them out during sex, I might have just stopped. Yeah. Because it's yucky. And you're like, "You try not to hear it." Wow. Like, "I didn't just hear that." No. Don't say it again. God damn it. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, I did not expect again to do a cul-de-sac about the current state of pornography. Thanks, AI. Thanks, AI. We'll see what happens with all of it. I think this is… I think we're forgetting the dem effect, is that someone's going to figure out something really dumb with all this shit and then we're going to be like, "Ah." And 20 years we'll look back and go, "Merry, where is it going on? Machine learning?" And then it just turned out to be fucking bullshit. Yeah. I mean, do me wrong. I think machine learning will be used in technology and help it get it processing. Yeah, but it's going to be background. It's not going to be in… It's going to be background. Yeah. Whereas right now people are talking about it like, you know, scarring out is going to ruin everything. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's… I was listening to a discussion. It's very funny because it's very accurate what they're saying, you know, because all these companies are saying, "Well, we're going to let you do it on device and that way we maintain your privacy. We'll never go to the cloud." Oh. And this person said, "You know the real reason for that, right? It has nothing to do with privacy. It's because if you send all your requests to them, they have to pay for the data centers. They want you to burn your own phone out so that they can say, "Oh, we're giving you what you want, but we don't have to pay for it." Well, of course, it makes a complete sense because every request you send, they have to pay for it. I mean, that's going to cost them money. Yeah. So it's on device. You don't have to pay for anything and your phone will just melt in your hand. So that's great. I'm doing that tech course about, you know, how technology shapes us. And she said this phrase and it bothered the shit out of me. And I think it bothered me because she was right where she was like, you know, she was talking about privacy and how in the modern age, the problem is that people just don't really understand the way privacy works. And all you have to do is create a certain situation and people out of convenience will gladly give up their privacy. So it's the whole, hey, if you want privacy, you have to pay us a dollar for use of our Wi-Fi, right, in like a public place. Or you could use it for free. But it won't be private and a lot of people will just use it for free. And it's like, it's these little steps that you create, but she said at the end, she's like, "Listen, we're going to a future where privacy is going to be a luxury that only people with money can really afford." And she set up a whole argument for it, talking about how like, you know, you end up having to pay more for the convenience of privacy as they throw more kind of hoops for you to jump through. And that phrase that, you know, we're heading towards a future where privacy will be a luxury only the rich could afford. And I was like, ah, it hurt, it hurt, and I agreed with her, but it hurt, you know. And yeah. So you said privacy net just now that just maybe reminded me of this idea that, you know, privacy, privacy doesn't, almost doesn't really exist anymore. I mean, it does exist, it's not that it doesn't exist. It's that what people have to understand, I've said this a bunch of times I've done fives on this, you just have to understand that technology is fundamentally a transactional platform. Yes. Oh, yeah. So what you have to decide is what you want to trade for what? And you make those decisions as long as you know what they are. And this is the thing that doesn't happen, what should be very clear to you is what you are trading. And that's the problem is there isn't that one of the things it's like people who use Google or used, I don't know, they may have killed this off, but there's a thing where I can tell you, okay, I've looked at the traffic and you have a 230 appointment because there's an accident, you need to leave in the next 10 minutes and not 30 minutes. Oh, yes. Google Assistant, isn't that Google Assistant? Well, it's now the assistant is the thing you ask, but you can send it in calendar and it can do it for you if you give it all your information. Now, for some people, that is more valuable than I don't care for those of myself. No, no. And that's the thing I'm talking about. There are some people who will gladly give up their privacy for convenience. And that's okay. They can as long as they know what they're giving up and understand it. That's one thing I would advise people is be wary of medical apps, because a lot of those apps you use that track your biology do not have HIPAA restrictions on them. Whereas, you know, when you talk to your doctor, that information is pretty much there between you and your doctor. You do have privacy there, right? When you go to a counselor and you talk to your counselor, there is a privacy there, right? But if you use some sort of program that does counseling or you use a medical tracking program, most of these softwares, they sell the data. Now the data might not necessarily be tied to your name, but it's not that hard to put those things together. Yeah, you just have to be careful with it. That's all. Yeah, and insurance companies like to buy that data because they can find out, you know, they can they can piece it all together and they can find out what's really going on with their customers. And the thing is, if insurance companies start getting that data streaming on a regular basis, you're more fucked. So it's it's that kind of thing. You have to work a lot harder now for privacy. It is becoming, like she said, a luxury, you got to work for it if you want it. Oh, you just or you just have to be a little bit clever, you know, because I have a I have an app. Pay attention is the track like calories on stuff I eat. So I just have an awareness and I put my weight there, except my name is as the initials or W. And my birthday is January 1st, 1950, which I use as my birthday for everything, unless it's something I'm legally competitive. Yeah, just make it up. So I don't know who our W is that was born in 1950, but they've got my stats. But I mean, if they're fine, but can't they link that to your ISP? I don't think they would, I mean, and then tie it and then tie it to the people in the household. No, I mean, let's put this machine learning to be like, you know what, this guy is probably this guy. They would have to, I mean, don't get me wrong. If they really knew how to do it, sure, of course, anybody could do it. But do I truly believe that there are people working on insurance companies or any normal business who have the technical knowledge, a and the incentive be to do it? No, I don't. I think it depends. No, I don't think it depends. I think that they honestly believe and often are correct that most people will never make that much effort and they'll just give them the information. So what they probably do is write it off as, okay, if we have a hundred customers and ninety of them give us every bit of data without even thinking about it, do we care about the ten? So you're banking on their lazy to do the research. Oh, yeah. Well, it's the same idea as robbers, right? It's not that you could build a steel wall around your house. Yeah. If somebody wants in, they're cutting that wall, what you what will deter most is laziness is this is a lot and the guy has one. That's it. Yeah. This is a lot of effect. You could be rich and nobody would really know because you just happened to live there, right? But if they suddenly everyone suddenly finds out that you've won the million dollar jackpot, they all know you have that million dollars. That's right. Suddenly you become a target. Yes. Yeah. So yeah, it's one of those type of things and then not to mention I pay attention to what my insurance company promotes. They have yet to come out and say, hey, install this app. So, you know, we can give you discounts on the car. One does. Oh, this. Yeah. discount. That's the other thing. Discounts discount car. And that's that's the clue. So if you're paying attention with that. Yeah. If your company's not doing that, then they don't care or they think they've got the data already, which yeah, a lot of the new bomb do. Anyway, sorry, I'm not putting it all my blood. I went for the present for the present status of porn to, uh, uh, which is what it's all technology now where I was headed. It's all technology now. Yeah, it is. Oh yeah. It is all technology. And it all ties into artifice because I'm R.W. born in one one 1950. So artificial everywhere as you're online, your online personality. That's right. That's my online personality. And that's why I use my fifth email account for the one that jumped my account. I just watched R.I.P.D the other day. Um, you were in that movie with, uh, yeah, Josh Brolin. Jeff Bridges. That's right. That's right. That's right. Jeff Bridges. Yeah. Yeah. It's a silly movie. Yeah. Honestly, I realize now it's a slap. Yeah. It's goofy. It's good. Yeah. Cause you can't, you can't kill the dead. But I, um, I love that movie. The fact that the debt, you can't see the dead for who they are. So Jeff Bridges, when people look at him, he looks like a supermodel and, um, uh, Ryan Reynolds looks like, uh, oh jeez, what's his name, the bad guy from big trouble little China. Yeah, low pan. Low pan. It looks like low pan. I just love that. And I think that's probably the future we're heading for where you're going to have some sort of software. It just makes you look like, oh, oh, did you not hear about the butterflies thing? The butterflies app? No. Were you create an AI avatar, the chats with other AI avatars that others have created? Why? I don't know. I don't know. But here it is. Uh, butterflies, the social networks where AI's and humans coexist. So you can make fake people to go talk to other fake people. Oh, here it is. Anyone can create an AI persona called a butterfly in minutes. After that, the butterfly automatically creates post on the social network that other AI's and humans can interact with. Each butterfly has backstories, opinions and emotions. You're creating almost a D and D character. There might be humans in there or is it all just fake people? Yes. Who knows? Which, well, you know what, that sounds like a way to yourself, but you could also create a double of yourself. No, no. It sounds like you need a waste of energy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Somebody's using it. I don't know. Some fake people are using it, for sure. Well, that's, they said, the only people I know would think, you know, I, I, the only time I want to create fake people is if you can do Sims shit, you know, make, make a fake Twitter account and then trap it in a pool or some shit like that. Sure. Yeah. Why not? Uh, although I never really trusted the people who would like automatically went to torture when it went to, to Sims. Like, I joke around about it, but like, I never really did it. But there are people who like find it next joy. Okay. I don't find it next joy. I was curious what the thing would let you do. Yeah. What I'm saying is there are people who find it meant joy in just being worse kind of God in that game, which makes it, which really makes you like think twice and be like, Jesus, I don't want you as a deity. That's once I become as the board of the game is when you do that, and that means you're at the end anyway. I wouldn't spend much time after that. I would do it and be like, all right, I'm clearly done with this game. Yeah. You know what? I don't even know what the point of Sims is. There's the point of Sims. Oh, it's like Sim City. It's just like anything else. It's like you create an environment and see which, you know, there are goals. There are things you can do. So I think the, the, the true basic idea is well, can you take this character and give them a happy life? I think that's the idea, which is sort of a neat thing. That's funny. Let's play a game where we give somebody a happy life because we are incapable of being allowed to have our own happy life. Well, listen, that's kind of true for a lot of people, right? So if you can vicariously, you know what? I understand. Is it? So it's just, it's happiness, escapism. Well, sort of. I mean, if you're not happy in your life, I can understand why an outlet where you can imbue this fake persona with happiness. That's sort of appealing. I understand. I have a, I have a horrible feeling on coming off like in a men's grump tonight. I just want people to be happy. Let's see if you're very clear about it. Oh, no. No. Look, the grimness of it. I agree is there. Don't get me wrong. It is. It is pathetic that for some people, a video game is the only way they can experience happiness in life. That's bad. That's bad. Yeah. And then it's horrible. It's, yeah. But am I glad they can experience something and not just be staring at a wall of their own miserable existence? But it should be an invisible existence. Yeah. Sad that that's your only avenue for it. Yes. Oh, from a macro level. Yeah. It's horrible. It's a, it's an indictment on the idea that we're living in a gilded age. Fuck you. No, we're not. But if somebody comes home after working two jobs where they're barely making rent and they're eating ramen noodles every night, because that's all they can do because that's where they're stuck and they can escape that for an hour in a game, I'm happy they can escape. But on the street, they are the Lord of samurai. That's what I'm saying. Right? It's that kind of thing where yes, this is, this is a release valve on the sewer that is the rest of your life. Fine. I'm glad you have the release valve. Oh, God. I'm not saying that release valve indicates a healthy thriving world. No, no, that's not what I'm saying. I don't know if there's an MMO that I would escape into. Is there a video game that you would leave to? Oh, that I would just like go out of my pocket like, you know, like, you know, tomorrow reality begins to collapse and we realize we have the ability to step into narrative and we can all escape into a digital video game world. What world would you go into? Hmm. That's a good question. I don't know. Um, I don't know. Maybe started. Valley. I, what's that? Maybe Stardew Valley. Animal Crossing. Well, animal, the only problem with animal crossing, I think there's a lot of people who are going to pick a game and not realize they've made a huge mistake. We're going to be like, I want to go to Fallout. I'm like, no, no, not at all. Well, I mean, that was the first impulse was, but here's why not. If I didn't, if I wasn't married and I had no one, Fallout, because fuck it, I would be miserable anyway. So why not live in a world of beautiful misery? Not really. I don't believe in beautiful misery. Misery is not beautiful. Oh, miserable misery. Miserable misery. No, no, I think there is, there is beauty in. You know, the only reason that Fallout works for you? I know why Fallout works for you. I know why. But go ahead. You can have a dog. Well, okay. That's the second reason. But the other is, I've said this for a while. My artistic ability gives me an edge in the apocalypse. I won't have to become, you know, the meat puppet of a dictator. I will draw the maps that define the, I'll walk around. Yeah, I know. Do you want a map of your territory? I'll take care of it. I don't know what game world I'd be. I'd feel. That's why I picked Stardew, because Stardew is a very kind of utopian thing where you just farm all the time. What game world feels healthy and stable enough to actually do that? Stardew Valley. I've never played that. Okay. So here's the whole point of it. You farm and you help people in town. It's all you do. What you do? This is one of those little kid games, isn't it? No, well, no, it's not a, it's, it's not a kid's game, but it's basically it's a game without any, um, malevolence. It's what they call a cosy game. It's a game that you play. You don't feel bad for doing it. I'm not, I'm not used, I'm not used to not having any malevolence. It is, it is similar to Animal Crossing. The problem with Animal Crossing is it's very limited. Animal Crossing, you get to the end of that pretty quick. Stardew Valley, you can really just keep going for a long time. It throws little things. You know, so they say, Hey, um, I'm trying to build a bridge. Can you help me collect a hundred hardwood? Okay. They'll chop down trees for a couple of days. Here you go. And they're like, thank you. They give you money and that lets you buy things to plant and then somebody will say, Hey, I want to turn it. Oh, I play at the Terence last week. So here is a fresh turn up and I go, thanks. Here are some seeds. If you play at the scene, you can make wine or beer or whatever. And that's all it is. It's, it's my life. I'll have to think about it. You can play co-op. It's very fun. It's a very, it's one of the biggest games in the world precisely because, really, oh yeah, it blew, I mean Animal Crossing was a pandemic game. Stardew Valley was similar. I mean, Animal Crossing, the biggest problem with that is like nobody, the animals don't, it's Animal Crossing has this limitation to it where a Stardew Valley just doesn't for some reason. I couldn't really tell you why, but it doesn't. And my wife and I have replayed it. We're on our fourth playthrough. We're playing it for me. It's just great. You sit there for a couple hours and you farm and, you know, we had to get to the bottom of a mine in a certain amount of times. So we got down to the bottom of the mine and guy gave us this magic stuff that gave us more health and we're like, yay, and then we went back and I picked blueberries. It sounds idyllic. Yeah, I'm working up to getting a horse. Horses are expensive, so then you can ride the horse. Also we're helping out raccoons, raccoons who, for some reason, wanted dried mushrooms and a smoked catfish, I think. I'm not kidding. And they were like, thanks, buddy. And he calls us babe. The raccoon calls you babe. He's like, thanks, babe. I'm like, no problem. And then there's a giant fat raccoon so we got to help. I would love to, I think I would really love it if the people in the, in power were more like the people who made this game. It's like one, it's basically one or two people. It's one guy that he got somebody to help him. He did it all himself. Funny. Yeah. Well that guy should be president. President of something. For sure. Well, what have you got for me tonight, sir? So I watched a movie that I have been hearing really good things about for a while. And I did not realize it was an A24 film. But it is. But it's either that or it's on criteria on one of the other. That's how the sign of something good. And it's a movie from, I think it's this year, yeah, the 2024 called I Saw the TV Glow. Now where I saw most of the stuff being written about it was from people. I'm going to vaguely heard of this. Yeah, because they said, oh, this is a really great movie is representing the trans experience and that type of thing. Okay, well, I'm not going to really necessarily connect with that part of it. I also. But I also. Okay. Yeah. Hear about me. Hear about me. And, but I also read, but even if you don't care about any of that, it's a really interesting well-made movie that makes you think and I'm like, ah, okay, it's got just a Smith. He's pretty good. Uh, what's your character? Oh, he's. Oh, wow. Yeah. He's really everybody in this is really good. I mean, even Fred Durst from Limp Biscuit is in this. I saw that he was in this and I was like, what is he doing here? I read about how this movie was made. So this movie is specifically made as kind of a love letter to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the TV show, which is very evident when you watch it. And it uses, it employs a lot of actors and people and including somebody from Buffy, but people from the 90s when that show, you know, when the show was on. So they're specifically in these roles because the whole idea is it's recreating this idea of. Amber Benson. Oh, is that who it is? Okay. She's the mom. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That was Willow's girlfriend, man. I love Buffy. Sure. Except I, you know, Buffy way better. This is why you should almost watch this because you would pick up on things I wouldn't. But, you know, Buffy's one of those shows that like, I didn't think I was going to enjoy it, but I just read so many things about it. And then one day I was like, you know what, I'll watch it. Why not? Well, to the point where, hold on, I want to watch something because I've never, I've never actually, I've seen parts of Buffy, but I've never seen the opening of it. Has your wife never watched Buffy? I don't think she loves the movie. I don't think she's ever seen the TV shows. Oh my God. It seems right of her fucking alley. I know. I almost want to watch it with her at some point just because I'm curious. I'm telling you, you've said it's good. I didn't think that I was going to enjoy it. And I kind of, I was, I was kind of half in to the first season, right? Okay. But then by the time I got to the second season and I, the formula is, is, it's got this kind of 80s fun to it because it's, you know, there's always a monster of the weak type of thing, but then you've got the bigger picture, but then you've got the comedic elements and the serious elements and, and the story starts to build on itself so that there begins to be so many, so many references back on itself that someone, you can sit down and watch an episode and not know anything about those references or you can sit down and, and kind of understand the bigger picture of things. And I just, I just found that the writing ended up being really, really clever, but not so bad that it was, you know, it wasn't a much like animal crossing. It was kind of like soft. It was kind of easy, you know, it's from that realm of 90, two and O. That's why I'm surprised your wife hasn't watched it, we're like, there are lessons in there, but it's also a movie about a super woman who beats the shit out of monsters, you know what I mean? And, and I, I ended up enjoying the hell out of it and I have probably seen that whole show, I've probably seen the whole thing twice and then I've seen random episodes throughout. And the thing is like, Joss Whedon, whatever fuck I ask that he may be, he does know how to create some cool moments. And there are some very cool moments. I mean, there is a whole episode where nobody speaks. There's a whole episode where everything is a musical, you know, like it's a shit like that. I mean, the musical thing is, is normal now, right? Every episode, every show seems to happen. Yeah, but it was not, it's a time. I remember that was. Yeah. I remember, I remember, even though I didn't see the show, I heard about it, that all buffet just did this whole musical episode. But Amber Benson was a big deal because, uh, her and Willow were like one of the, I think, the first big lesbian couples on TV and they were together for a while. Like, it wasn't like they did it as like, oh, you know, in this episode, Willow has a girlfriend for two episodes. Like, they were together in the show for a while, um, and, and, you know, when Amber Benson's character leaves the show, it does leave a hell of a crater, um, but it's like, yeah, uh, I, I think that's the, uh, Willow is the other reason that Buffy is such a big show because you, you normalized a lesbian character. It wasn't weird, it wasn't done overly sexy, like, yeah, she was just a normal part of the cast who was in a, a functional, healthy lesbian relationship until things, until other things happen, that would have happened to any couple, you know what I mean? Right, sure. So it's, I can see how people would look back at that show and say that show is very empowering for that aspect. Yeah. I totally derailed you. I'm sorry, go on. Yeah, that's fine. So anyway, I've read a lot of good things about it. Uh, like I said, because sometimes with movies that are very, very message oriented, which I think I would say this definitely is, if they're, if they're meant for a specific audience, their audiences, there, there are movies that are meant to be, and I don't even say this in a negative way, but they're meant to be for that audience. And they really don't intend for anybody else to watch them. That's fine. But those types of movies, I'm not going to watch it because, you know what, I, I, you know, I think if you're Hispanic, that movie blue beetle makes a lot more sense. Right. Okay. Right. But it, but it's not something that wouldn't make sense to somebody who is, no, you can not be Hispanic and still enjoy that movie. But being Hispanic, I enjoy that movie a lot more. And there are small pool of movies that are made specifically for their audience to the point where they are actively, I don't want to say that they're saying that other people can't watch them, but they really aren't aimed at anybody else caring about them. So, but this one I had read, even if you are not directly tied to the underlying thematic stuff, it's like the matrix. You watch the matrix and you can just watch the matrix. And I never even thought about the secondary themes of that movie until I saw this very good video that laid out all the stuff that said, well, yeah, since, you know, the Wachowskis are trans and point out all these things, you're like, if you know like that the red pill is the same color as the pill given for I think estrogen or whatever, like there's all those things where it's like, that's not accidental. These things are written on purpose. There's a lot about, you know, and then some scenes, I'm like, oh, yeah, okay, right. I never picked that up because I'm not in that audience, but I still love the movie. And that's great. So it's like it can work more for somebody else, it still works for me. And that's what this movie is like. It still works, even if you don't care anything about the underlying themes. But at the same time, there was, there was a while in the movie where I'm like, okay, this is playing things very subtly. And then it became unsuddled and I went, oh, okay, I thought it was going to be settled the whole way through. There's a point where it is, no, there's no subtle thing. So, and that's fine. I don't think it derails the movie. I'm going to cut out the background audio because I want these clips to actually have their potency. Okay, go ahead. So that's why I did that. So anyway, it starts off and we see young Owen, who's played by a different actor, Justice Smith plays the older version of Owen. But we're with the young version for maybe 20 minutes of the movie, I want to say or so. But the young version, he's going with his mom, he's, you know, he's even school and he's very clearly an outsider. He clearly, you know, isn't with the other kids. He doesn't talk very much. He kind of seems on his own, somewhat, you know, insular and withdrawn. There's never an indication there's anything specifically wrong with him, but you could tell that he's different or the, at the least that he's not as social. Let's put it like that. You could take from that whatever you want. And so there's a night where the, and this is very common, or at least it was common, I don't know if it's common anymore, where there's some kind of local election or whatever, and the school is a place, a polling place where you can go and vote. He was there with his mother and he and his mother get along very well, but you get, you get the sense almost right away that the father is, I mean, it's Fred Durst and you get the idea that the father is the threat. And so he's, he's terrified of his father. But while he's there with his mother, he kind of wanders off and he wanders into a room and the, there's a girl who seems very much like a Darla type. And that's Maddie who is in there and she is reading a book and he had seen at, right before we see this scene, he had seen a commercial for a shawl called the Pinko Pig, which I didn't know this. I read this trivia and I watched the Buffy intro and yes, that there's definitely similarity. It even uses similar fonts because that's a lot of what this is oriented around. The show, the Pinko Pig, is essentially Buffy, more or less. It's a Buffy type of show. I didn't realize the font thing, the amber, whatever her name was, like, no, that's, that would have flown me right over my head. Again, that doesn't make the movie bad. It means that somebody who knows Buffy would be like, oh, you know, the whole, well, I got that reference. You know what? It's funny. Was it, when we finished our, we finished the Baldur's Gate thing, there was a reference to fucking Bing-Bong. Right. Right. Right. Yes. Right. Exactly. You picked up on it. I'm like, so. So, um, so he, he runs into this, this, uh, into Maddie and she's reading an episode guide for the Pinko Pig. Cause this isn't the 90s. I think it's 96 or whatever. Uh, so, you know, this is pre-internet or at least internet where you had all the message words and everything. So they had these episode guides. This is a common thing for people who are old enough to remember this. And she's reading this episode guide and he sees her there and it kind of says hello to her and she doesn't seem to have any interest in speaking or anything like that. And then he happens to mention that he had seen the commercial for this show and they have this dialogue about the show because she's clearly very interested in it. So the fact that he expresses any interest, it gets her to talk to him and this is their kind of initial meeting. What grade are you on? Ninth. What about you? Oh my god, you're a baby. Election night is cool, right? It's like colonial day. Or when they bring the inflatable planetarium into the gymnasium. It's like the school gets transformed into something else, you know? It's special. It's a ketchup, right? I think okay. No. No way. He told you that. I mean yeah, technically it's on the young adult network, but it's way too scary and the mythology is way too complicated for most kids. I see commercials for it all the time, it looks amazing. You can read about the episodes here if you want. It's got quotes and pictures and info about the double bill of bands that plays each week at the double lunch. It comes on at 10.30 p.m. right? Yeah. And every Saturday night, it's the last show on the block before they switched to black and white. It runs for old people. My friend Amanda and I watch together every week. Dad, why don't we stay at night, right? It's okay, it's my bedtime. Damn. That absolutely sucks. My mom basically doesn't give a crap when I go to bed. So, that is their introduction and so she says, "Well, you could always come over to my house and you could watch it with us." And he says, "Okay, well, I'll try to figure out a way to do that." And so he doesn't see lies to his parents and says, "Oh, I'm going to have a sleepover with this guy that I'm friends with." And the mom says, "I thought you weren't even friends with him anymore." And he says, "Oh, no, no, we still are. We just weren't talking for a while, but basically he makes up a way to be able to be dropped off at Maddie's house and so starts watching the show." And so you see excerpts of one of the episodes which features an enemy called The Ice Cream Man. And when you see it, it's this monstrous, literally it has an ice cream cone as a head but it's all melting and it's got like one eyeball and it's a horror show thing. But when you watch it, it is clearly based on kind of the Buffy idea. The two main characters are these two girls who have the psychic connection and they're fighting this main bad guy but the two of them are kind of special and they can kind of psychically connect to each other and it's like every week it's kind of an ex-file setup where there's individual episodes. Yeah, it's a monster of the week. Yes. And she actually explains the concept of a monster of the week here but now this clip is where she's asking him what he thought of the episode but there's specific dialogue about her father in here because basically he says, and you'll hear this in the clip where he's like, "Well, I told my mom it was a sleepover, can I just sleep down your basement?" And she's like, "Okay, but you better be gone in the morning." So I'll just play this where they're talking about the show and she explains why he better be gone in the morning. So did you like it? The show, I mean? Yeah. It is really interesting. Isabel is a scary cat. She's kind of the main character but she's also kind of a drip. Tara's my favorite. She's super hot and she doesn't take shit from anybody plus she's an expert on demonology. And they never meet up in person, right? No. Just in the pilot episode, back at sleepaway camp but they can communicate via the psychic plane. So each episode they help each other fight a new monster from across the county, okay? Is the ice cream in every episode? No, that's just a monster of the week. Mr. Melancholy is the big bat. Is this a melancholy? The man in the moon. Right. It's always messing with time and reality. He wants to rule the world, to trap Isabel and Tara in the midnight realm, so each week he sends a new supernatural foe their way. Because they're part of the pink opaque. No. Because they are the pink opaque. Right. Sorry. Don't apologize. One passing out. Are you sure it's okay that I sleep down here? Just be out by Don. If my stepdad catches you, I'll break my nose again. Little details that tell you that the father is on both sides because right after this, so he's going over there. He's watching the show. He's becoming a fan. The two of them are bonding as this goes on. And then we jump ahead two years. And he's now older. Now he's being played by Justice Smith. And his mother, who he's had, you know, they're fine. And now the mother clearly is sick. She's wearing a band-an overhead and she's clearly sick. And they're at a fair together. And they're kind of sitting there and she says, you know, I don't know what's going on with you. I feel like you're driving, you know, is my illness making you kind of get further away from me. And he says, no, it's not that. I just, you know, I don't know what it is. And then we see that they're in the car. And his mother and he are both in the backseat, Fred Durst is the father. He's driving. And he's the stepdad or he's the dad? Well, I mean, I don't know. I was never clear on whether he was a stepfather or Owen's father. I would have to assume that it was stepfather. But I don't know. It may have been mentioned and I missed it. So I don't know. But let's go ahead and assume stepdad. It would make more sense because there are these parallels between Owen and Maddie in a lot of ways because Maddie at one point says my mother doesn't care when I go to bed. And when Owen says in this scene two years later, where he's now, what's ninth grade? How old are you in ninth grade? I mean, old enough that you probably shouldn't have a bedtime anymore. He basically says to his mom, can I stay up to watch the pink opaque? And the mom says, well, you'll have to ask your father. Again, they're sitting in the back seat and he's sitting up front. And there's nobody in the past. That's so the mother. Freshman in high school. Okay. So, you know, I don't remember having a bedtime when I was in high school. I don't remember that. But maybe I did. I mean, obviously I couldn't stay up till 3 a.m. But I don't remember having to go to bed at 10 o'clock or 9 30. So the father, so the mom says, well, you'll have to ask your father. And all you hear Fred Durst say is, isn't that a chauffeur, girls? But obviously he's saying no. I mean, that's the inference of it. So basically he's saying no. And so what happens is Maddie, Maddie and him don't seem to be physically in the same place very often. I think because at this point, she would be a senior because if she was a 9th, he was a 7th to you. So 11th grade, I guess. Yeah. Because also, I guess it would be a junior. But you don't see them really ever talking to each other. But what you see is for a while, she's leaving him tapes in the dark room. In the photo lab, she's taping it on VHS tapes for him to be able to play back. And so you see all these scenes of him walking around and you see all the episode titles and what happens and all the kind of lore of what's going on. And Maddie's notes about here's what's going on. Oh, this is, you know, this is the main thing, pay attention to this. And we see little excerpts of the episode. So it's filmed like it's on tape, like it was on TV. And you know, we see some of the villains and some of these, and they're pretty scary. I mean, they're well-designed villains that we see him watching. So he's watching it for a while. And this goes on. And then there's a point where he's outside and he sees Maddie sitting by herself on the bleachers and he goes over to talk to her. And this is the two of them kind of what feels like catching up based on the dialogue is obviously they haven't had any in-person discussions in quite a while. What's up? Nothing much. Um, I was wondering, do you, um, do you and Amanda still watch the Pinko Pay together every week? I haven't talked to that asshole in a year. Amanda told the entire school that I tried to touch her tit, which is a total lie. And then surprise, surprise, 11th grade comes around and suddenly it's been her lifelong dream to join the cheer squad. Secret agents trying to make my, like, miserable I swear. If you wanted I could come over again. I've been watching the tapes you've been making me, but I wanted to watch the Pinko Pay gone Saturday night again while it airs. I like girls, you know that right? Non-intable ways. I wasn't, I was totally, that's fine. Okay, I'm just making sure. What about you? Do you like girls? I don't, I don't, no. Boys? I, I, I think that I like TV shows. When I think about that stuff, it feels like someone took a shovel and dug out all of my insides and I know there's nothing in there, but I'm still too nervous to open myself up and check. I know there's something wrong with me. My parents know it too even if they don't say anything. Do you ever hear a few words to that? I don't know, maybe you're like Isabelle, afraid of what's inside you. So you start to get the sense now, the way she's talking is like the show's real, right? You're starting to see this bleed in there, so, you know, because she talks about all the secret agents that's referring to a set of characters in the show, you know, and she starts talking like that and, you know, watching, you're like, okay, she's losing herself inside the show. Pete and Pete are in this movie as well. That's what I'm saying. There's lots of this reference stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously much older, but there's lots of 90s stuff in this movie. So then he comes over and they watch the show and, and Maddie is visibly crying and being very emotional and he notices it that she is more into the show now than the first times when they were watching it. Like she is very much into the show and is identifying with the show. So then he sleeps there and she's sleeping next to him and that's all happens. It's completely chased, but as he's laying there, he looks up and she had drawn the symbol that the two girls in the show have on the back of their necks. She drew it on the back of his neck and so he's looking up and he starts to see what looks like floating TV static or something. There's something he's seeing where it looks like, you know, like literally like a TV, like, you know, channel, like snow channel type of stuff on a TV. So then she says, I'm, I have to leave here. If I stay here, I'm going to die. Why don't you come with me? I'm just going to get out of here and I'm going to go somewhere else because I just feel like if I stay here, I'm, I'm never going to be anything. And she says, okay, yeah, sure, I'll go with you. But then he immediately goes over to the house of the kid that he's been lying about sleeping over at all this time and says, you have to tell my parents that I've been lying about sleeping over here because that way they'll ground me. And what you realize is he's afraid, he doesn't want to leave. So if he's grounded, then he can't leave with her. So his parents find out, sure enough, they ground him and then he says that the next night or the night after, Maddie disappeared and all they found was her TV set burning in the backyard of her house. And then the thing jumps forward eight years. So eight years, she's just been completely gone. Obviously he's older now. He has a job. He's working at a movie theater with a couple of guys who are kind of jerks and he's coming home one night and he comes across this hole in the ground and there's a power line down and there's all this paperwork floating around and the papers are the episode guide for the pinko peak. And so then the next thing is he sees he's picking up and they always burn papers and you know, there's just some weird thing that happens. And then he goes to get groceries, I want to say the next day, turns around and there's a woman standing there and he doesn't recognize her at first, but it's Maddie. And she's now just suddenly shown up is like, where have you been? And she says, let's, let's go to this place and I'll tell you. And the place that she takes him is a bar, or I don't know, whatever, is some kind of venue called the double lunch, which is the same name as in the show. Because I, if you, in the first clip, she mentions the double lunch and this place has a big thing. It says double lunch. And like I said, I don't know if it's supposed to be a bar where a band is performing or it's a venue that has, you know, a place to drink. It looks like it could be either one. And basically she's sitting there and he says, where have you been? And she says, I'll tell you in a minute, says, but first, have you ever wondered, have you ever felt like this all isn't real, that the show is real, but this isn't? And he's looking at her like she's nuts. He's like, what? No. What do you mean to feel like? She's like, you never have felt like maybe this was all fake or that there was something else. There was something else going on under here. And he says, no, I mean, I don't know what you're talking about. Where have you been? And she says, all right, I'll tell you. Now this is a long clip. This is like a 10 minute long clip, but, but it's so good. I didn't want to cut it. And this, this is, I think for me, where you have to, this is where the movie is forcing you to make a decision on what you think is going on more or less. So this, so she says, all right, I'm going to tell you where I've been. And so she brings him out to, oh, before that, I'm sorry, before that, she gives him a tape of the final episode. So he watches the final episode and the final episode because the show was apparently just canceled. I mean, that's the way it sounds like because he says it just ends. In the final episode, Mr. Melancholy manages to get, I think it's Isabel, who Maddie, Maddie would be the other girl. I can't remember the other girl's name. But Isabel is the one who gets caught, okay. So Maddie would be Tara and then, oh, the Isabel in the way that she's identifying them. And so Isabel is caught and she is buried alive by Mr. Melancholy when he gives her this stuff called the, the Luna Juice or whatever that makes her like a zombie. And so then it was a cliffhanger ending and then the show was canceled. So he watches that as a really wonderful sequence, like it's really well done as far as he affects and everything. And so then the next thing you see is right after that, the father comes downstairs where Owen is watching the show. And what you see is Owen with his head in the television and sparks are flying out of it. And then the next thing you see is Fred Durst sticking his head into a tub. And I don't know if he's supposed to be drowning him or what, like it's very unclear what's going on there. And then it just cuts the, so you see, you're never really clear on what's going on there, whether he's hallucinating that or was he, did he actually try to stick his head into the television? It's unclear. But then he goes to meet Maddie at the planet, or at the school where there's a planetarium machine, she was talking about when they bring it there. And so she, he goes and she gives this really long speech about where she's been all this time. And that's what I'm going to play. I'm just going to play all the way through because it's, there's the way the music's being used, her performance, it's all just so good. And like I said, when you get to the end of it, then you have to make a decision on what you think is going on. So I'm just going to play this. I made it all the way to Phoenix on the money I saved. The trees look different, but everything else was exactly the same. I started using a new name, sleeping at the cheapest hostel I could find, the Pinko Peak was over. I got a job at the mall, I built a bear, filling the dolls up with stuffing. I got out of that town, that place I knew would kill me if I stayed. But something's still wrong, wrong or even. Time wasn't right, it was moving too fast. And then I was 19, and then I was 20. I felt like one of those dolls was sleeping in the supermarket, stuffed, and then I was 21, a chapter skipped over on a DVD. I told myself, this isn't normal, this isn't normal, this isn't how life is supposed to be. I thought about running away again, about living to Santa Fe and changing my name one more time, but I knew that everywhere would be just the same. I'd seen how it ended, anywhere it was. A little bit after my 20 second birthday, I paid this burnout kid, he used to hit on me in the food court, fifty dollars to bury me alive. I mean, he didn't know he was burying me alive, but I doubt he would have cared too much even if he did. I bought a coffin, I dug a hole, I got inside and I closed the lid, I said to myself, this is crazy, what you're doing is crazy. But another part of me knew that it wasn't, that it was survival, and that I didn't have much time, that what felt like years in this world was actually just seconds. So I waited, and then finally, the first spade full of dirt hit the top of the box, and then another, and then another, saying songs to myself, I counted to ten thousand without skipping any numbers, I pissed and I shit my pants and I forced my mouth to produce whatever saliva I could muster, just so I'd have something to drink. I screamed as loud as I could for help. I apologized for the whole thing, and I begged God for someone to come along and save me. I tried and tried to claw my way out, but that burnout guy pecked the dirt in too tight, just like I'd asked him to do. And then, after I don't know how long, I felt myself start to weave myself, and it was like I was watching myself on TV from across the room, and I was moving further and further away from the screen until the screen was so small that I couldn't even see myself moving. And then I was clawing my way up out of the ground, and then I was at the surface, gasping for air, rain pouring down on me, thunder and lightning, and I was finally back there, back at our little superweight camp. Just like I was waking up from a bad dream, that whole life, that whole reality where I was Maddie Wilson, drifted away, like a brief hallucination, but after a few moments I could hardly even remember, and all those memories that had felt so real washed away with the rain back at our own superweight camp. When I was me, I was finally me again, and it was the Season 6 premiere. I tried looking for you, but Mr. melancholy had covered his tracks too well. I knew you must be buried somewhere close by, but I didn't know where, and your signal, that I used to be able to close my eyes and feel so vividly, I was nowhere. I wasn't picking up anything on the psychic plane. I found my heart. Oh my God, I found yours too, and it was still beating, stored indefinitely in an industrial freezer. I left our hearts there because I knew I wasn't done yet. And I found Mr. Melancholy's cauldron, I found the loonage you used to send us to the midnight realm, and I took a big sip straight out from the ladle, and I laid back down, and I waited to fall back asleep. I knew I needed to come back here, I knew I needed to come back and save you, so that the show can continue, so that we can get to Season 6. That's not my name, and I haven't told you anything tonight, but you don't already know. Tell me, tell me you know it's true. You told me yourself, you felt it, remember, on the bleachers, you know what he put inside you. This is insane, I remember playing in the snow, driving to baseball games with my dad, cooking with my mom. Now at this point, you as the audience, obviously you hear Owen, he's looking at her like she's nuts. And that's the thing, is at this point, because this isn't about 20 minutes left or so, so this is far towards the end, and it's like okay, is this, because then you see these flashbacks where you see things that in certain scenes we hadn't seen. For example, there's a scene where she and Owen walk out into a football field and he's wearing a dress, and you don't know whether she's remembering that or he is, it's unclear who's remembering this, but now we're seeing things that were previously not there. So this is where, like I said, for a while, it seems like okay, some of this stuff is subtle, now it becomes very unsettled, it's like okay, even I know what we're talking about, like there's double meaning in all this and I can follow this, it's obvious enough that even a dummy like me is able to follow this, where it's like okay, is she just so unhappy that she has lost herself in this show, or in terms of what the movie is saying or at least the surface level, or is this a double a break, a break, yes, exactly. And so she says, you have to let me bury you, and I will bring us back over to the other side. So they walk out to the football field, and this is a point where I'm like okay, what is, I didn't even, I had no idea what was coming next, so he's looking at her and he has this really terrified look, and so he tackles her, knocks her down and runs away. And so she looks at him and she said, and he goes back home, and there are scenes here where I'm just like, I don't know what this is specifically supposed to be, but he comes back to the house, and we'd seen several times when he walked into the house, the father, the Fred Durst father, is always sitting there with a TV on glaring when he walks in the door at him. Never does anything when he specifically walks in, but he just stares at him. This time he walks in the TV is on, but there's nobody on the couch. It's the first time we've seen the couch empty. And then we see him sitting in the room and he says, I never saw her again. Basically after that, she disappeared, and then we see an image of the football field during the day, because this was all happening at night, and there is a grave dugout, but just one, and you don't see anything else. And this is when he's talking about the fact that, oh, and then the movie theater closed, but my manager thought I was a good worker, so the manager took me with him when he went over to the fun center, which is basically like an entertainment complex. Almost every place has some version of this, what kids have their part, it's like a chucky cheese type of thing. And so he says, you know, I decided there's a very specific, oh, I think I have the audio on it. Yeah, I do. I do have the audio of it. Where he's talking about moving on after this happened, so I'm going to play this because there's very specific word choice being used and what he's saying, and of course, multiple meanings, but I'm just going to play this because he talks about rewatching the show, having not watched it in a long time. So this is, I'm going to play this about what happens after Maddie is gone. After then, I'm on a football field, I locked myself inside. I didn't leave the house for days. I kept waiting for her to show back up to force me underground, because she never did. I never saw her again. I told myself I made the right choice. Maddie's story was insane and it couldn't be true, but some nights, when I was working late at the movie theater, I found myself wondering what if she was right, what if she had been telling the truth, what if I really was someone else, someone beautiful and powerful, someone buried alive and suffocating to death. Very far away on the other side of a television screen, but I know that's not true. It's just fantasy, kid stuff. The movie theater closed the next fall. My manager brought me along with him to the fun center. I work there now, restocking the ball pit with balls. My father passed away in 2010 after his second stroke. I moved fast these days, years past like seconds, just trying not to think too hard about it. I decided to stay in the house. It was time for me to become a man, a real adult, productive member of society, and that's exactly what I did. I even got a family of my own, I love them more than anything. Anyway, like I was saying, it was raining the other night and I couldn't sleep, so I started to think I'll pick again. It's available to stream now, I don't even need a disc. I started the pink opaque again and it was nothing like I remembered it. The whole thing felt cheesy and cheap, dated and not scary at all. And the wintertime is the selling ice cream you can sell soups instead. That's all embarrassed. Now a couple of notes on what we see during all that. He mentions that he started a family who he loves, we never see them. But no point is there any suggestion that there's anyone in that house, we never see anyone, wife, anything, kids, nothing. He says them, but we never see anybody. And that sound at the end that you are hearing is he has asthma, which will factor into the ending. So he starts wheezing as he's watching the show. You don't actually see him wheezing, but the sound effect plays. And he's also talking about, he says things that are very similar to what Maddie was saying, or Tara, whatever she's supposed to be, about the time passing differently, how he's remembering things differently because we saw scenes where we saw stuff that we didn't see the first time. So there's all this stuff where again, it's up to you to figure out what this means or what it doesn't mean. So then we see, so now we're at the end of the movie, and we see him and he's helping out at a birthday party at the fun center. We see him using inhaler. So that's what the wheezing was. This is now, hold on, let's see, it was 20 or 30 years later, I'm trying to see, 20 years later, he's still working at the fun center. So now he's, well, I don't know, I guess he'd be close to 40 or early 40s or something. I mean, he's clearly older. And so he's working and they go in, they're doing like a birthday song, like he wrote a chucky cheese or whatever, and he's standing in the corner and then he just kind of screams. And when he screams, everybody freezes but him. And so you see him, everybody's just kind of frozen. And he walks and he's like wheezing and he's having an asthma attack or something. And he goes into the bathroom and he takes a knife and he cuts his chest open and opens it up and inside is a TV screen with like static playing, right? And you just see all this light bursting out and, and I don't know, whatever's going on. And then it just cuts back to him and he's just standing there and he comes out because his manager was knocking on the door saying, are you all right? And he comes out and the last scene is him walking through and apologizing to everybody in the fun center, none of whom seem to have any idea of what he's, they don't even seem to notice him. But he says, I'm sorry, it's my, it's, it's my, it's my medication, my medication, you know, made me have a problem. He's just saying, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And then the movie just cuts the black and the movie ends. And like I said, it's left to you to figure out what that all is. It definitely sounds like an A24 movie. Yeah, it's, it's, it's a sad ending because either way he's stuck. I mean, clearly he's just stuck. It's very matricsy. I'll tell you that, this idea that you're in it. Yeah. Honestly, if you told me. It's like he took the blue pill. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh, man, did you ever watch the, the animatrix that they did? I have the animatrix. I love that. And there's one of those episodes where somebody stays. Yes. Yep. And then they always wonder like, yeah, what would it, what if I'd gone? Yeah. It sees little things here and there and says, well, is that, yeah. Yeah. And it's like, it's like if, if someone came to you and was like, Hey, I left the matrix and then realized that, you know, and it's, yeah, it sounds crazy. But the thing is, you know, that idea feels mad when you're on the other end of it. But once you realize that, you know, I mean, yeah, it's, it's, but that doesn't change the fact that it can also be the fact that she was so miserable that she had a psychological break and fed into a fantasy rather than live in the reality because she was happier that way. Yeah. And that he just couldn't get away from the misery of what he, how he thought he was supposed to be living rather than, you know, Gobi, whoever he wanted to be. Yeah. Yeah. That's what, that's what I mean. Is it works for either way as a, as a, as a, I mean, it's, it's like I said, there's a point where it very clearly is, okay, you can substitute the TV show for, I don't know, being gay, being trans, whatever. Right. So I just swap them out. I also don't think that he should have let her bury him. Well that's the thing, right? Is it because you're right in his, in his side of it. And when she's telling that story, she, she looks nuts. And but you know, but then again, if it's true, like if we take the surface level narrative, if in fact, oh, we've been trapped, of course she'd be psychotic because she's lost part of her life. She would be saying you have to come back with me. So, yeah, you know, but even a thing where she says that's not my name. Well, if you know anything about dead naming and how that works, all this stuff makes sense. It still works as a straightforward surface, like I know it's just, it's just the idea. The metaphor breaks down at the idea of being buried. Right. Well, it does. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Because it's like, yeah, if there had been some other kind of transition, right, even make more sense. But the act of, I don't know, and maybe that's something I'm missing culturally, you know, you have to bury the old you for the new you to well, I mean, that does go along with the idea of dead naming is, you know, that is no longer you. So you it is in a sense, the death of the old version of you and your rebirth as the person you're supposed to be. Yeah. So, you know, yeah, there's definitely a matter of fact, it makes sense. It's just it, it, it comes off so much more like sad, and I, and I think the reason it does, and I think that's a specific decision because it emphasizes the, well, do you believe her or not? Because if she just said, all we have to do is hold hands and chant the 12, well, then there's no stakes. Okay. Let's chant the 12 and you'll see nothing happens. Of course nothing happens. You're nuts. Right. It's too easy. You have to have it be something where Owen has to make a decision. But if there's no stakes to it, then there is no risk therefore he can play along. And it does sound like it sucks. Yeah. Yeah. And so it is either, no matter what version of what's going on is true, he is clearly not in a place where he's actually happy, but for whatever reason it is ending with the TV, like I'm kind of sitting in the chest, I'm kind of like, okay, well, what does that mean? Yeah. Because then it cuts immediately in his chest is fine. He's just walking around. You know, he's okay. So is that mental? Is it that, you know, he's having these moments of realizing what's actually going on? Because again, and plus the villain's name is Mr. Melancholy. I mean, it's a specific name. Yeah. And the way he's acting it too, he's like, just as, just as Smith, whatever his, I've seen him in other movies and he's, he's definitely playing this drained of emotion. Yeah. And very specific delivery and active choices. On the verge of tears, almost at every moment, afraid to be noticed. But he's also doing the thing that work where he talks about there's nothing inside me. There's also that it's very, he has this very kind of empty, like way of moving through the world. Yeah. So it's, yeah, what I think makes it work is it's about these two people. And it's, I mean, obviously from the, it's very character driven. You do have these moments where you see things outside, but it really is about their relationship. And the fact that she is, she gets to a breaking point and takes action because she can't stand anymore. And when he reaches these points, he retreats. So they're like opposites that way where she's just going to charge forward, even if she's delusional. And even if he is resisting something that he shouldn't be, he's not going to force it. He's backing away from it or he's running from it because he's very passive and she's very aggressive. So again, you know, you can choose to believe whatever you want, the movie doesn't really ever give you a definitive anything. There is evidence on both sides. Everything you're seeing could be true. It could also just be these two characters. Imagine what they would do. Imagine that you watch and then when you get to the end, you're like, almost so like this, like when I say disturbed, you disturb because you don't know what what it was. You're disturbed because you don't know what's happening and you almost need to run off and watch something else to almost like recalibrate yourself. Yes. It's just a 10 minute just that 10 minute speech is like, right, right. And I only cut like one or two little bits out where there's just long silence where I'm like, okay, there it's just, but otherwise that's pretty much uncut. That's like us. And it's, it's not an unbroken shot because that would be astonishing if she memorized the whole thing, but it's not, not broken up and it's dramatic and it's an incredible narrative. Yeah, the music. It's all down and reading. And there's like a heart beating in the background. If you heard it, there were the heartbeat was going when she was talking about the harsh sounds, a heartbeat sound and I don't mean, I don't say age 24 is a belittling thing. A 24 is a certain type of movie is a movie that is demanding and can sometimes confound your sense of reality and can leave you needing some level of recalibration. Well, and yeah, and this, and this one, honestly, I was sad at the end before the character because you know that no matter what, Owen is not happy, whatever the truth is, you're sad and you also don't seem to, you, you don't know what's, you don't know what's happening to him. You don't know what's real. It's not real. Right. You know, did he have something and he was never diagnosed? I mean, so maybe her too, because remember this starts in the nineties. And as we've talked about, this stuff wasn't diagnosed back then like this. If you were not behaving like other students, they weren't testing it for ADHD and all this stuff. Is there some kind of, yeah, there's some kind of mental disorder? Right. It could be that both of them have something and weren't diagnosed. She's getting the shit kicked beat now to her by her dad. Right. There's that. So there's that. And, and he is sitting in the back of the car with his mother. Of course now, not that they ever make a big thing out of this, but Fred Durst is white, and the mother and Owen are black. So it's weird that she's in the back of the car with that. That's what I know and that she, she keeps deferring to him specifically. And yet this thing is where he seems very, I don't want to say he hates Owen, but he doesn't seem to like him. And yet then Owen says the thing about, I remember going to baseball games with my dad. Nothing about what we've seen before would make me believe that was ever true. That seems like a lie. It does not fit at all with the way we have seen him and Frank interact. I mean, he wasn't necessarily beating Owen, but he certainly was not at any point affectionate or said anything nice. We saw no, the mother and him are often together. They seem affectionate like they seem like mother and son in the way that you would think a healthy relationship would be. Yeah. Frank, who's the father, stepfather, whichever, he never said, I don't know if he ever specifies, but whatever it is, Frank Durst, they never have that. They feel like they are forced to live in the same household and tolerate each other at best. And so when he says, I remember going to baseball games with my father, I'm like, I don't know that I know what that would even look like. Do you mean he forced you to go? Because the way he says it is like we did this together. It's like we never saw anything of that. So there too, you're put into question on whether what he's saying is accurate or is he misremembering like he did with the dress. He's an interesting interpretation of the ending. Sure. So no matter what discourse may unfold because of his actions, Owen did not choose the TV glow and quite possibly never will. But with any luck, viewers of the film who identify with him will opt to change the channel instead of being lulled to sleep by the static. And that's what matters most. Oh, was it something you looked up? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I hope that's true. Yeah, that's one rationalization. Well, and that's what I mean about for the right audience, this is definitely going to have more impact. For me, it made me sad. Just not being able to cast what I am. I went and I looked. This is really sad that this character is stuck like this. I guess my thing is if it's a, if it is a metaphor for transition, right, it makes me sad because the metaphor for transition is being buried alive and going through hell. Do you mean like it's awful that that is the metaphor for it and it makes me feel bad for the writer because that, that is the writer's expression of what they felt transition for that character must be like and I do believe the writer, I believe it's writer director both is a trans individual. I am 99% sure I will make sure of that, I want to make sure I get that right. I think so because I remember reading something where they were, they're talking about the making of it. Yeah. I mean, like, and, but I get it. I get the idea is, is, like I said, it goes back, you're talking about this movie and it goes back to the Matrix to me. Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, it's an idea of, yeah, you have to be willing to accept you by the way, the writer, director, trans feminine, non-binary, I thought so. So this is clearly, you know, yourself and the reality of what you really are. This is a lie, you know, everyone's telling you this is what you have to be, but this is not what you have to be. You can be something else. Well, and when he says that thing about, am I actually a powerful, wonderful person and I'm just not, you know, he says something like that. Yeah. In that thing where, you know, maybe she's right and I am this powerful, beautiful person inside. Or maybe that's just a fantasy. Yeah. You have to be willing to break from everything to possibly find a place where you can successfully be that person. Yeah. So yeah, it's, like the Matrix, it works whether you identify with that side of it or not. I think it works perfectly fine either way. I think the thing I like the Matrix more, but other than the fight sequences, because I feel like this ending is very sad. And as, whereas with Matrix, I, I finished watching that movie with a sense of hope. The first one was not talking about the trilogy, just the first one. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. trilogy won't leave you the much hope if you get to that third movie. Oh, the first movie always left me with a sense of hope. Right. Where this movie, it's like I feel bad because it's, it's basically, he didn't take the pill, he didn't cross cyber, he's, he's sticking with the identity that has been put on him. And he's unhappy. He's miserable. And he's empty. And that's sad. And maybe that's the point, the point is that there are a lot of people out there who, who do make that choice and stay sad. Yeah. And I think like you said, if this gets somebody to say, I don't want to be like this. It's a cautionary tale. Yeah. Cause, cause I mean, really that is what he's just, you know, you see him go from very young to very old. And he's not a happy person. And that sucks. And that's what I mean about, yeah, I guess the only part, the only part that breaks down for me is just her speech is so intense and so amazing, but I wouldn't let someone bury me either. No. Well, I agree, but I guess, I guess that's where the metaphor breaks down for me or like if it had been anything else, like come with me to this place or you said it can't be too easy. It can't be. That's the problem. Because because if you look at what, what it must be to be in that's, let's take it from the real world example of deciding that you are trans and changing something that is going to change your entire world and it might destroy everything. So you have to make it as grave as well. I'm okay. I mean, to make the period. It has to be as serious as this because it is the end of a life. I understand that as the metaphor, but it just breaks down because that idea. I guess what it is, is that where it breaks down for me is Ace is not, she's asking, she's asking him to let her do it to him, but this isn't him setting himself free. This is him basically having a decision between what one, what one group is saying to him and what a different person is saying to him. And I think that's the part that it breaks down, which is that yeah, he has to make a choice and he's afraid of the choice, but it's also not coming from him. And that's, you're right. That's the other side of it is that they are different personalities. She sets herself free. Yeah. She literally burns her TV in the back when she leaves as a statement, whereas he goes and tells the woman, you have to turn me in so that I don't have to leave. He internalizes the globe, the TV. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it sounds like a great art film and I hope that it gets discussed. We're discussing it. So it worked. Yeah. And as just a movie without, I mean, I think the meanings are kind of hard to miss, but even if you want to make it a movie about, well, is this imaginary TV show reel or not, it works for that too. So it is successful, like the Matrix, it works on its own. You're right there. He doesn't soar off into the sky at the end. So the Matrix is definitely what I would follow this up with if you want to do a double bill. Do that second. So you have the kind of Superman. But it works as its own movie. So again, it doesn't, you don't have to, it's not all about that. It doesn't have to all be about that. But I think that somebody who's grappling with this, this movie will, I am sure hit much harder. But even I was like this stuff. Yeah. And I guess that's the part of it is, is it, is the hope, the hopelessness of it just feels stifling. And maybe that's the point is that for some people, there is a stifling sense of hopelessness. It depends, because if you, if you read it as, I haven't seen the movies, just based on the clips. Yeah, based on the clips. But if you look at it from the two characters, Maddie transformed in whatever way you want to interpret that. And she did it. She was able to do what she wanted to do. And Owen wasn't because he ran from it. So it's not, I mean, the hopelessness is on Owen's side, which sucks because we're left with him. But he is the narrator. Yeah. And you're seeing it all. And that's the other thing is we, we get multiple things that indicate that he may not be a reliable narrator. And that's where you have to, there is vagary. But as you said, nothing else inspires discussion, which makes it worth watching. The lack of reliability comes in with scenes you said, the scene where he's wearing the dress. Right. And you sit there and go, okay, well, whose memory is that? Is that his memory? Is this a scene that we didn't get like, and the fact that they're sitting in a bar that has the same name as something on a television show, is that accidental? Or, or, you know, because I didn't even realize that at first. And then I was, I was like flipping through the clips of it later because I was going to get the sound clips. And I replayed that first clip and I heard her say double one show like, Oh, that's the name of the place they were in at the end. Like shit, I didn't even pick that up the first time. So I probably at some point where we watch this because I'm sure I miss things. There was, there was, I'm sure stuff in there. And then there are, and this, you can't capture this in audio, but there's also things like that the secret agent twins who are these weird looking characters. There's a point where in the final episode you see them, and when Owen leaves his house to go and meet Maddie at the planetarium, there are two kids standing outside his house who clearly are made to look like, they're not make up, but they're standing and they're kind of arranged like those twins in the show. And they don't say anything, they don't do anything, but he looks at them and they look back at him and then you just cut to him talking to her. So it's like, okay, what is that? To someone leave a message and chalk on the sidewalk? There's, that's throughout the whole movie, there's always chalk outside the house that says different things. There's, at one point it says there is still time and that's where he's talking about the movie theater closed. And on the chalk it says there is still time. And then there's other things, yeah, there's only, there's, but I don't, you know, besides there is still time, which to me means this is before it's 20 years later, is that meant that he could still find her is still time to find her because it's hard to say. I don't know. That's what I mean. There's a lot in here where different people will see like, I think you watching it would pick up different things than I would from a writing perspective, you know, I like plot the storytelling stuff, whereas I was the visuals are spectacular. I was, I mean the visuals are fantastic. And the acting is great. That whole speech she gives, that's probably the whole thing of the movie is like that whole because she just, she's so good in this. But they both are because his thing too is you're never really clear on what's going on with him, which I think is the point. Yeah, there's a really great vulture article that examines the different things that might be going on. Okay, I'll have to read some of the stuff. I didn't read anything about it outside of the, there's a, because they sit, so outside of the trans perspective, right? You could, I guess there are people who are saying it's a cautionary tale about the perils of fandom or the ever encroaching tendrils of nostalgia. Sure. And the person writing this article does not agree with that interpretation, but I do cite it. Well, I mean, that would, that would align with the fact that she has gotten too wrapped up in the show. Maddie. She's identifying too much. Yes. And quote, and quote, Maddie's second disappearance is likely because she died. At best, she's living a marginal existence somewhere grappling with the major mental health crisis. The Pinko Pake themed arcade games at the fun center might just be a cheeky wink toward our nostalgia saturated culture. Owen might just be a man realizing how much of his life he's given away to a TV show with every asthma induced wheeze. That is, but that's not the interpretation that the article wants to get into. However, what does support it? Is the fact that you see the day in the day that the football field has one grave. Well, to get back, she would have to bury herself again. Did she bury herself again and not escape? Sure. It's possible that there were two graves there. She buried her, had somebody bury her again. Yeah. You should read this. You should read this article. They really get into the idea that what if everything Maddie says is right is true. There's evidence of it. I mean, that's what I mean is that the movie gives you enough that you have to, the movie never commits to anything, which will drive some people crazy. But I think that's the point is you're supposed to look at this and make your own decision. It's like when Owen says I became a man and it's like it's a very, very specific word choices, very specific things. I became an adult, like I, and then he watches the show and it's cheesy. Was it always that way? I don't know. To be aware. This is from the article. To be aware you might be trans, but unwilling to do anything about it is to create endlessly bigger boxes within which to contain yourself. When you are a child, that box might encompass only yourself and your parents, but the time you are gainfully employed, adult, that box will contain multitudes. The thought of disrupting it will grow even more unthinkable. So you cease to think of yourself as a person on some level. You might think, you think not of what you want, but what everybody expects from you. You do your best not to make waves and you apologize if only implicitly for existing. You stop being real and start being a construct and eventually you decide the construct is just who you are and you swaddle yourself up in it and maybe you die there. There is still time until there isn't. That lines up with where he apologizes as he says don't apologize because he doesn't understand what's going on. Now that's in the show, but of course you can say well. This is a great article to read because the author cites other interpretations and then their own interpretation. So it's a fast thing. I like to think about it, but I love it when they give you all the sides, you know me. And that's one of my big things that I like about this movie that will drive some people crazy, but I think as a strength is the movie never tips its hand on what it's supposed to be. Yes, so the title of this article is I saw the TV glows ending as full of hope if you want it to be. Well that would probably be your read of it that this is a message to somebody that says hey don't be like this. Don't be like this. Yeah. Well yeah, I mean it's a message saying this is what happens if you don't just embrace who you are. Right. Yeah, take the, what do you say, it was the red pill? I can't remember which pill it is. No, I think it's the blue pill. Jesus Christ, what is it? Hold on. No, it's got to be red pill because red pill became the conservative thing for the truth. Remember? You've been red pill. So yeah, the red and blue pill, here it is. The matrix is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, where is it? Red pill, stay in wonderland. So that's the truth. Blue pill. Blue pill is you wake back up and blah, blah, blah, blah. So yeah. Yeah. So, yeah. Well, interesting. Yeah. So I would, I would recommend it to people. I think it's really good. And like I said, even if you don't want to get into the deeper messaging, I think it still works. It's got some great music. You know the music is fantastic. The main actors are great. I think the visuals are fantastic. And if you're a Buffy fan, you'll get more out of it. And if you have more of a connection to some of the secondary material, I'm sure you'll get even more than I did out of it. And I liked it quite a bit. So the fact that we discussed it for this long and it has at least three different interpretations, that's great. That's what I like out of movies like this is. I like the fact that there's more than one way to look at it and there's no incorrect way to look at it. It's what you want to bring to it. It's what you want to take out of it. The only downside is I think no matter how you look at it, Owen doesn't have a great interview. Oh, it's grim for him. No matter what. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's sad. Yeah. And I think that the, the, the trans conception of it is fantastic. Yeah. Always. But it works without it. But it works without it. And it's sad because he doesn't, he doesn't, he doesn't transition away from the person he thinks he's supposed to be. He doesn't end up in a life that feels like it's happy. Yeah. Whatever you want to read that as it does not seem like he ends up in a place with time. And that's a heavy movie. And it could even be as simple as if you want to scrape all the other stuff out. The only person that he really seemed to have any genuine connection with is gone. And the only thing that the two of them had in common, he no longer can enjoy. So the beauty of the booty of movies and books and shows and all of this media is that you get to interpret it any way you want because that's entertainment. That's correct. And on that somewhat hopeful note, we are done for this week. And whatever you do this weekend, we hope that you ultimately interpret it in a happy way. But I would say if you're going to watch this, watch the nature itself so you have a better perspective. That's a better way to end it out. On that note, we will talk to you again next week. Visit OzoneNightmare.com to subscribe to new episodes, browse through our back catalog, or to find links to support the show. Follow @OzoneNightmare on Twitter for the latest episode postings and other show information. If 280 characters just isn't enough, you can always email us at OzoneNightmare@gmail.com. The opening theme for the show is provided by Heartbeat Hero. The closing theme is provided by Ogre. Please visit and support these artists using the links in the show notes for each episode. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [BLANK_AUDIO]