May 22, 2023 • 24 mins
Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. A listener mail.
This is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And this is Joe McCormick. And it's Monday, the day
of each week we read back some messages from the
Stuff to Blow your Mind mail bag. If you would
like to get in touch, and you've never done it before,
why not give it a try. You can reach us
at contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
All kinds of messages are fair game. If you have corrections,
suggestions for future topics, feedback on a recent show, whatever
(00:37):
it is, send it on in. Let's see rob Do
you mind if I get started with this message from
Stephanie about our episodes on whale spouts, Yeah, let's have it.
So this is responding to a couple of shows we
did based on a chapter in Moby Dick where the
narrator describes the whales blowhole and what comes out of it.
(00:58):
Among many strange claims made in that chapter was that
whale blow was poisonous, that if it went in your
eyes it would blind you, and in some cases if
it touched the skin of say the arm or the hand,
it would cause your skin to peel off. In short,
none of this is really true, but after some research,
(01:18):
we did wonder if these claims might be based on
stories of people having skin rashes, conjunctividis, and other topical
infections after exposure to whales, which is a well documented
phenomenon among people who handle marine mammals directly. You can
get zoonotic infections, skin rashes, and so forth from them.
(01:45):
Stephanie says, Hi, Robin Joe, thanks for another series of
fascinating episodes on whales. I'm no biologist, but an alternate
explanation for Ishmael's suggestion that whale blow is poisonous occurred
to me. Could it not just be the extreme pressure
of the air slash mucus expulsion that caused the side
effects described? According to this Quebec research bureau, and she
(02:09):
includes a link, whales can spout air from their lungs
at a rate of seven hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.
I can imagine that sticking your arm into a seven
hundred and twenty kilometer per hour jet of air could
give you some pretty serious road rash or air rash.
Sticking your eyes directly in front of this jet of
air seems like it could lead to temporary or permanent
(02:31):
blindness too. Thanks as always for expanding my horizons of interest, Stephanie. Well,
thanks for the message, Stephanie. Yeah, on that question, I
really just don't know it. That does seem like very
you know, that would be an extreme blast. It does,
you know, it exceeds hurricane wind speeds. But there are
(02:52):
also plenty of modern day accounts of people who take
whale spout blasts to the face or to the skin,
and it doesn't usually seem to cause immediate physical injury,
at least in the cases we've seen or read about.
But on the other hand, yeah, it's hard to say
for sure, Like this is a case where I would
love to hear from somebody who does have a lot
(03:12):
of direct experience working with whales or handling marine mammals.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
All right, and now we're going to get into some
of the listener mail that we've been receiving regarding our
episodes on the moons of Uranus. So yeah, let's see
where should we start with these? I guess I'll start
with this one from Joseph. Joseph writes, I first found
(03:38):
your podcast in twenty fifteen due to Your Saturn's Brood
and Children of Jupiter episodes. Great episodes, and I was
very excited to listen to this week's Uranus moon episode.
The Greek god is pronounced your anus. The NASA official
pronunciation is your anus. I should add this Joseph is
(04:00):
spelling this out as your anus. Most people, including myself,
say urine us spelled out as in p and us
to make it more palatable in the English language. The
true proper pronunciation is your anus according to NASA scientists,
but most folks just say 'in US. German scientist Johann
(04:24):
erleit Bode proposed the name to name the planet Uranus,
and his associate Martin Heinrich Klaproth named the element uranium
in solidarity with him as a way to push the
establishment to accept the name Uranus or Uranus, which has
a near identical pronunciation in German, Uranus does not have
(04:45):
the same connotations as in American English. Can't wait to
listen to the rest of the episode. Keep up the
good work, best regards, Joseph.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
This is interesting because this is in direct contradiction to
stuff we have heard from other listeners or stuff I've
read on the internet, so I don't know. People just
seem to be all over the place on what you're
supposed to say.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, I'm staying in the in the Urinus camp, though
firmly positioned there.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Yes, but thanks nonetheless, Joseph. We got the following message
from our listener Constantine about the pronunciation of the name
of the planet Uranus. Constantine says, Hello, gentlemen. Let me
begin with a simple thank you for your hard work
in putting out an informative, entertaining and addictive podcast. I've
(05:36):
been listening to you all since back when you were
a threesome, and your show continues to be on the
top of my weekly rotation of podcasts. Oh well, thank you, Constantine.
I recently heard your Moons of Urinus podcast, and once
again you fell into the rabbit hole of proper pronunciation.
The word Urinus does not even begin with a you,
(05:56):
but with an O in the original Greek, so the
pop popular English pronunciation is certainly questionable at best. As
a native Greek speaker, having been born in French Canada,
let me provide you with an official, bonafide, definitive opinion
of an answer as to how to best speak Greek
in English. The answer is do with it as you will, ah,
(06:19):
the Satanic maxim of pronunciation. I like this level of license,
but constantine goes on. Much of Greek came to English
via those grand cultural appropriators, the Romans, and then back
in the eighteenth century or so, English intellectuals decided to
standardize English Greek with novel grammatical protocols. Not to bury
(06:44):
the headline, but this game of telephone went badly. To
begin with, Greek is not even a thing. The name
came from the Romans. There is not even a G
in Greek. We call ourselves Hellenes, and Greece is Hellas. Wait,
it gets worse. There is not even an H at
(07:05):
the start of the word Hellenic. Remember those English intellectuals
I mentioned earlier. They decided that words that begin with
the Greek epsilon or e will have a leading H
in English for reasons unfathomable. That's right, it's not Helen
of Troy. It is Ellen of Troy, speaking of H.
(07:25):
The Greek H or it's spelled chi. Here is that
chai or I don't know how to say that is
turned into a k sound in English. Yes, it is
pronounced character and r chitecture, not character and architecture. It
goes on and on like there are no d or
(07:47):
J in Greek. So it is not Delta or Jesus
christ either. It is thelta and eosus Christos. Yeah, you
can look it up while we're The real plural of
octopus is octopodia. So if all that got jumbled up,
what chance is there that Uranus's original Hellenic pronunciation of
(08:10):
uranos could possibly survive through Roman transmission and English quote greekification.
It can't. Don't fight it. Now more people pronounce it
Uranus than Uranos, and such as life, and if pedants
come along with an alternative pronunciation, tell them to quote
stick it up. Let's say Uranas, stick it up Uras.
(08:34):
As for us Helenes, we're just happy to be invited
to the party. Cheers, good folks, Constantine, Well, thank you, Constantine.
I'm sorry I probably also pronounced some of those Greek
words in your email wrong, but yeah, we're doing our
best here. There's there's a whole mess of trouble leading
up to everything happening with these words in our brains today.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
All right. Constantine also adds ps monster factor is fund
short up your game people. Well, thank you. I'm glad
you enjoy it. They are short by design, but we're
going to continue to experiment with putting out omnibus episodes,
which take multiple related episodes from the past and cobble
them together into one episode. In fact, next week there
will be an omnibus episode of Vampires.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Ooh nice. Well, actually, so since we did that, Constantine
includes several PS's, so we've got a PPS and stuff.
The PPS that he adds is that Urinus is simply
the word for sky and is still the word for
sky in modern Greek, and Guya is still our word
for earth, and yes, you spotted it. There is no
(09:37):
g in Greek. Are you ready for this? Gaia is
the poetic form of gamma eta and is pronounced ye okay,
I think poetic means quote, getting it wrong, So it
is Urinos and ye not Uranus and gaia, all right,
(09:59):
And there are several more yes as actually, but I
think we'll cap it there.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
All right. This next one comes to us from Jared
another one responding to our episode on the Moons of Uranus.
Jared says, hey, guys really enjoyed these episodes and looking
forward to more like them all right, well, we'll have
to come back to Neptune in the future. And then
Jared goes on to a comment about the Shakespearean names.
(10:25):
They write, quote, it was a compromise between Great Britain
and the rest of the European astronomers. Since they couldn't
call it George, it was agreed the moons would all
be named for British literary characters, at least according to
what I heard on doctor Neil Degrass Tyson's podcast, Keep
up the good Work.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Jared, Yeah, I've read something similar. So the idea was
that when William Herschel, the English astronomer, first discovered Uranus
as a planet, he wanted to call it, what would
Georgium seed Us I think, meaning the George Star, named
after King George of England. Which we found that idea
quite amusing. It's like, hey, let's you know, let's name
(11:03):
the planet Neptune Millard Fillmore Star or something. But yeah,
so it was agreed instead that the names would come
from from mythology instead of from you know, political figures,
to avoid having national rivalries appear in the heavens. And yeah,
that does seem to be the case, but I guess
(11:24):
it's maybe somewhat of a concession to Herschel's desire to
name it after the English king, to name it after
characters by an English playwright and poet, or not the planet.
I guess the moons. Okay, I think we're going to
cap the Urinus messages there. But we've got a whole
bunch of messages on hand about weird House cinema, so
(11:45):
maybe we should try to read some of those, including
some messages in response to Time cop So Lawrence writes, Hey, guys,
just listening now to your episode on time and you
said it's your fourth time travel film. Not to jump
down your throat or such, but you're not counting Santo
(12:07):
in The and the Treasure of Dracula, and I think
you ought to. Thanks Lawrence, Lawrence, Oh my god, you're correct.
This must have been I don't remember which one of
us said that, but this must have been an oversight,
because it is true. Santo not only has a time
machine in that movie, I think he invents the time machine.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yes, my apologies to the Saint. This was me forgetting
that Santo and the Treasure of Dracula was actually a
time travel film. Now I won't say it's one that
really does any hard thinking about time travel, but there
is a time machine.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
And you know, thinking on it, somehow, that movie doesn't
really fit any of the story the main story categories
we talked about, or if it does it, it's not
really the main use of the time travel in it
is just like watching videos of the past, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah? But wasn't there also some like theft via time travel.
Wasn't that part of it? It's like we have found
Dracula's treasure in the past, we can steal it.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Maybe they saw where Dracula left his treasure in the
past which allowed them to go there in the present
to retrieve it. Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, it's it's been
a while. I could be remembering it wrong, but I
thought it was just like their time machine. Was you
were allowed to watch the past on TV?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah? Yes, all right, we're gonna have to revisit it, okay,
But you know, it does make me wonder if there
has been a if there been any other Dracula time
travel stories out there. It seems like there has to be,
and Dracula is a pretty popular character and for crying
out alloud Dracula is a character in Marvel comics. So yeah, so,
(13:49):
I mean that's how Blade started out battling Dracula.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Given all the time travel, space alien stuff that goes
on in Marvel comics, there has to have been some
time travel with the old Drack at some point or another.
So comic book fans write in let us know. Yeah.
This next one comes to us from Thomas Hi, Robert,
(14:14):
and Joe. Your layout of time travel types in the
recent episode had me thinking. As you explain the arms
race time travel theme, it reminded reminds me of one
of my guilty pleasure films, the one well, not time travel,
but multiverse travel. It fits that core theme jet Lee,
as both protagonist and antagonist gets more and more powerful
(14:38):
a Lah Highlander quickening style, and with the killing of
their parallel selves across the multiverse. It's from the early
two thousands, but would not be out of place in
the eighties with some of the bright colors and comic
book darkness, fake grime, and spotless street scenes juxtaposed, and
(14:59):
also early though not young Jason Statham before he learned
to speak out the front of his mouth. I think
it fits Weird House Criteria. Check it out, Thomas, and
then there's a follow up. Sorry about the split emails,
but clearly I jumped the gun in my excitement. You
later in the episode ask about twin films, jet Lee
plays versions of himself matching up against each other. Does
(15:20):
that sound tempting? Three question marks.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
I've never seen the one, but I've wanted to for
a long time. People have told me I would like it.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, I mean everything lines up here on paper for me.
Multiple jet Lee's love jet Lee, some sort of wonky
multiverse Highlander esque theme, and I'll take Statham as a side.
I guess I've enjoyed some State of the movies. Some
of the earliest States of the movies were at least fun.
And he was in John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Oh my god, you're right. He was in Ghosts of
Mars in two thousand and one, the same year he
was in The One.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, it was a big year. He was ascending but
had not yet reached that point. I remember reading that,
like John Carpenter was impressed by him, and it was like,
you know this, we need to we need to be
in the Jason State and business and they were like, well,
he's good, but we're in the ice Cube business on
this film.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
I really wish I could. I could love Ghosts of
Mars more, either genuinely or ironically. Truth be told, it
is not that fun of a watch. It's kind of dull,
but there's stuff about it that just I wish I
could see it in a different way and love it more.
Like the thing. So, first of all, like, yeah, I
do love some of the cast. Ice Cube is in it,
(16:34):
Jason Stathum, Pam Greer, Pam Greer is in it. Yeah,
But the main thing I always remember is that ice
Cube's character is named Desolation Williams, and people refer to
him in the dialogue as Desolation, so they're just like, hey, hey,
they're Desolation. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah? I think I've mentioned this perhaps and we've had
this exact same exchange before. But Alien Covenant, which there's
a lot I like about it, but there's a character
in that whose nickname is Tennessee. You can't have a
nickname with three syllables to it like that, dude would
be ten that would be his nickname, not Tennessee.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Right, Desolation has four.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah too much? But yeah, I don't know. I haven't
revisited Ghosts of Mars in a long time, but I mean,
on paper, yeah, good cast seems like a good concept.
The artist Gerald Brahm did some of the conceptual designs,
and I've always loved Gerald Bram's art. But yeah, I
don't know if it's aged enough for a revisit yet.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Sorry, I'm just over here dreaming up character names. I'm
gonna make a space action movie where the hero is
called di Apocalypticization Jones.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I like it as long as it's not his nickname.
I mean, according to the credits, Desolation is his first name.
It's not like he's Mike quote Desolation Jones. He's Desolation Jones,
Desolation William. Sorry, I'm getting to know.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
No, No, you're wrong, I think, well, I just looked
at Wikipedia wiki claims he is James quote Desolation William.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
All right, IMDb has it wrong, then, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Maybe the wiki's wrong. Who knows. I don't know who
would just make up James though. Yeah, Okay. This next
message comes from Chris. Chris says, hello, Rob, Joe, and JJ.
You will never guess who I saw staring back at
me from the arts and Entertainment section of the Chicago
(18:34):
Tribune today none other than the one and only bert
I Gordon in all his mustachioed glory. This must have
been a response to when we did Attacking the Puppet
People the bert Eye Gordon Shrink movie. Chris says, this
is definitely a guy I would want to have a
drink or three with. Couldn't pass up the opportunity to
share this weird bit of print media overlapping with my
(18:56):
digital media world. They did a great job sharing some
night color prints of his various movie posters as well.
Please see attached. The movie posters will have to be
in a separate email due to size constraints regards Chris.
All right, so Rob, I've attached the screenshots Chris took
here the photo of Bertie Gordon. This doesn't look anything
(19:16):
like the photos of him I'm familiar with, but he's
much older in those, so I guess when he was young,
he was a skinny guy with sticking out ears and
a big funny mustache. And the caption tells us that
this is him playing a character called the Mad Russian,
who was a regular on CBS Radio's The Eddie Canter Show.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah, is the look of a guy who makes weird pottery.
No disrespect to weird potters. I love weird pottery.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
He looks like he would be cast as a scientist
in an Abbot Castello movie. Yeah. But I want to
read the beginning of this article because while it does
look like something I would I would like to get
into in full that I have a bone to pick.
So the article is by Christopher Borelli, and it says
Bert Eye Gordon, who died earlier this spring at the
(20:07):
age of one hundred, was the absolute worst filmmaker who
ever lived, or so some might argue. You've heard Ed
Wood was the worst, or Roger Corman, or maybe Michael Bay.
But Gordon was not lousy for one or two decades.
He was a terrible filmmaker for about sixty years. And
when he got around to writing his memoir in twenty ten,
(20:29):
called The Amazing Colossal Worlds of Mister Big and Autobiographical Journey,
it was the absolute worst book ever written by a filmmaker.
To borrow from the lurid posters for his movies. His talent,
such as it was, screamed amazing, towering, beyond description, just
not in a good way. Now, I do appreciate the
(20:52):
nod to how like the lack of modesty in the
bad movies of the mid century, Like how movie from
the fifties that were some of the worst ever made,
would say in their advertising like a film unlike any
other will change your life. You are not prepared for
the most spectacular movie event ever created. It is Attack
(21:15):
of the Puppet People or whatever. But I also just
want to go back and say, you know, Roger Corman
made a lot of slapdash drive in cheese, but I
don't know any reasonable observer who would say he was
the worst filmmaker who ever lived. I get why Edward
is in the running, but come on, Roger Corman made
at least a half dozen movies that are really good,
(21:36):
and a couple you could say are great. A Mask
of the Red Death comes to mind, So I don't
know why he's included there.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah. Plus, I mean I would not say bird Eye
Gordon was the worst filmmaker that ever lived. I mean,
there are various ways you could determine that classification, but
you know, I wouldn't say he's the worst by any stretch.
Does his work bring me pleasure?
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yes, So let's look at these posters here. So we
got Empire of the Ants.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
This is great stuff.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Yeah, a lady in jeans on the cracked desert ground
and there's just an ant getting ready to it looks
like bite her leg off. Basically. The poster for the
amazing Colossal Man actually just looks great. I love this
poster and it's a shame that there is not a
good disc of this movie out there.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, yeah, I really want to come back to this
one at some point, because this is a movie that
I genuinely enjoy and I think is trying to be
something more than just just schlock.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
I think it's an ambitious film in its own way.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Agreed. On the other hand, you've got The Spider, which
I think that is just schlock, but it does have
a pretty good poster. It's like it's got a cop
shooting a machine gun at a giant spider and somehow
they just managed to like slip like a screaming horizontal
woman in there. She's just lying there on like a
(22:57):
red rectangle.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah, they went for something different here. The Spider's not
carrying the woman, but the woman is still horizontal and
laying on the ground. And having a machine gun fired
directly over her body.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Well, yeah, it looks like the cop is using the
woman for cover.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
I guess it does kind of.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Yeah, he's popping out over top of her to shoot
at the spider. All right, should we cap it there
for today?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, it sounds good, sounds like a good place to
cap it off. But we'd love to hear from everyone.
Keep the listener mails coming in. We read all of it.
We don't have time to respond to all of it,
and we don't have time to feature all of it
on listener Mail, but we do what we can. So
it's always great to hear from all of y'all. So
keep it coming. The reminder that Listener Mail episodes they
(23:44):
publish on Mondays and the Stuff You Blow Yourmind podcast
feed core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Wednesday. A
short form artifact or monster fact episode except when it's
an omnibus episode and then it's longer as previously described.
And then on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns
to just talk about a film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for
the future, or just to say hello. You can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. A listener mail.
This is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And this is Joe McCormick. And it's Monday, the day
of each week we read back some messages from the
Stuff to Blow your Mind mail bag. If you would
like to get in touch, and you've never done it before,
why not give it a try. You can reach us
at contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com.
All kinds of messages are fair game. If you have corrections,
suggestions for future topics, feedback on a recent show, whatever
(00:37):
it is, send it on in. Let's see rob Do
you mind if I get started with this message from
Stephanie about our episodes on whale spouts, Yeah, let's have it.
So this is responding to a couple of shows we
did based on a chapter in Moby Dick where the
narrator describes the whales blowhole and what comes out of it.
(00:58):
Among many strange claims made in that chapter was that
whale blow was poisonous, that if it went in your
eyes it would blind you, and in some cases if
it touched the skin of say the arm or the hand,
it would cause your skin to peel off. In short,
none of this is really true, but after some research,
(01:18):
we did wonder if these claims might be based on
stories of people having skin rashes, conjunctividis, and other topical
infections after exposure to whales, which is a well documented
phenomenon among people who handle marine mammals directly. You can
get zoonotic infections, skin rashes, and so forth from them.
(01:45):
Stephanie says, Hi, Robin Joe, thanks for another series of
fascinating episodes on whales. I'm no biologist, but an alternate
explanation for Ishmael's suggestion that whale blow is poisonous occurred
to me. Could it not just be the extreme pressure
of the air slash mucus expulsion that caused the side
effects described? According to this Quebec research bureau, and she
(02:09):
includes a link, whales can spout air from their lungs
at a rate of seven hundred and twenty kilometers per hour.
I can imagine that sticking your arm into a seven
hundred and twenty kilometer per hour jet of air could
give you some pretty serious road rash or air rash.
Sticking your eyes directly in front of this jet of
air seems like it could lead to temporary or permanent
(02:31):
blindness too. Thanks as always for expanding my horizons of interest, Stephanie. Well,
thanks for the message, Stephanie. Yeah, on that question, I
really just don't know it. That does seem like very
you know, that would be an extreme blast. It does,
you know, it exceeds hurricane wind speeds. But there are
(02:52):
also plenty of modern day accounts of people who take
whale spout blasts to the face or to the skin,
and it doesn't usually seem to cause immediate physical injury,
at least in the cases we've seen or read about.
But on the other hand, yeah, it's hard to say
for sure, Like this is a case where I would
love to hear from somebody who does have a lot
(03:12):
of direct experience working with whales or handling marine mammals.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
All right, and now we're going to get into some
of the listener mail that we've been receiving regarding our
episodes on the moons of Uranus. So yeah, let's see
where should we start with these? I guess I'll start
with this one from Joseph. Joseph writes, I first found
(03:38):
your podcast in twenty fifteen due to Your Saturn's Brood
and Children of Jupiter episodes. Great episodes, and I was
very excited to listen to this week's Uranus moon episode.
The Greek god is pronounced your anus. The NASA official
pronunciation is your anus. I should add this Joseph is
(04:00):
spelling this out as your anus. Most people, including myself,
say urine us spelled out as in p and us
to make it more palatable in the English language. The
true proper pronunciation is your anus according to NASA scientists,
but most folks just say 'in US. German scientist Johann
(04:24):
erleit Bode proposed the name to name the planet Uranus,
and his associate Martin Heinrich Klaproth named the element uranium
in solidarity with him as a way to push the
establishment to accept the name Uranus or Uranus, which has
a near identical pronunciation in German, Uranus does not have
(04:45):
the same connotations as in American English. Can't wait to
listen to the rest of the episode. Keep up the
good work, best regards, Joseph.
Speaker 3 (04:53):
This is interesting because this is in direct contradiction to
stuff we have heard from other listeners or stuff I've
read on the internet, so I don't know. People just
seem to be all over the place on what you're
supposed to say.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
Yeah, I'm staying in the in the Urinus camp, though
firmly positioned there.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Yes, but thanks nonetheless, Joseph. We got the following message
from our listener Constantine about the pronunciation of the name
of the planet Uranus. Constantine says, Hello, gentlemen. Let me
begin with a simple thank you for your hard work
in putting out an informative, entertaining and addictive podcast. I've
(05:36):
been listening to you all since back when you were
a threesome, and your show continues to be on the
top of my weekly rotation of podcasts. Oh well, thank you, Constantine.
I recently heard your Moons of Urinus podcast, and once
again you fell into the rabbit hole of proper pronunciation.
The word Urinus does not even begin with a you,
(05:56):
but with an O in the original Greek, so the
pop popular English pronunciation is certainly questionable at best. As
a native Greek speaker, having been born in French Canada,
let me provide you with an official, bonafide, definitive opinion
of an answer as to how to best speak Greek
in English. The answer is do with it as you will, ah,
(06:19):
the Satanic maxim of pronunciation. I like this level of license,
but constantine goes on. Much of Greek came to English
via those grand cultural appropriators, the Romans, and then back
in the eighteenth century or so, English intellectuals decided to
standardize English Greek with novel grammatical protocols. Not to bury
(06:44):
the headline, but this game of telephone went badly. To
begin with, Greek is not even a thing. The name
came from the Romans. There is not even a G
in Greek. We call ourselves Hellenes, and Greece is Hellas. Wait,
it gets worse. There is not even an H at
(07:05):
the start of the word Hellenic. Remember those English intellectuals
I mentioned earlier. They decided that words that begin with
the Greek epsilon or e will have a leading H
in English for reasons unfathomable. That's right, it's not Helen
of Troy. It is Ellen of Troy, speaking of H.
(07:25):
The Greek H or it's spelled chi. Here is that
chai or I don't know how to say that is
turned into a k sound in English. Yes, it is
pronounced character and r chitecture, not character and architecture. It
goes on and on like there are no d or
(07:47):
J in Greek. So it is not Delta or Jesus
christ either. It is thelta and eosus Christos. Yeah, you
can look it up while we're The real plural of
octopus is octopodia. So if all that got jumbled up,
what chance is there that Uranus's original Hellenic pronunciation of
(08:10):
uranos could possibly survive through Roman transmission and English quote greekification.
It can't. Don't fight it. Now more people pronounce it
Uranus than Uranos, and such as life, and if pedants
come along with an alternative pronunciation, tell them to quote
stick it up. Let's say Uranas, stick it up Uras.
(08:34):
As for us Helenes, we're just happy to be invited
to the party. Cheers, good folks, Constantine, Well, thank you, Constantine.
I'm sorry I probably also pronounced some of those Greek
words in your email wrong, but yeah, we're doing our
best here. There's there's a whole mess of trouble leading
up to everything happening with these words in our brains today.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
All right. Constantine also adds ps monster factor is fund
short up your game people. Well, thank you. I'm glad
you enjoy it. They are short by design, but we're
going to continue to experiment with putting out omnibus episodes,
which take multiple related episodes from the past and cobble
them together into one episode. In fact, next week there
will be an omnibus episode of Vampires.
Speaker 3 (09:17):
Ooh nice. Well, actually, so since we did that, Constantine
includes several PS's, so we've got a PPS and stuff.
The PPS that he adds is that Urinus is simply
the word for sky and is still the word for
sky in modern Greek, and Guya is still our word
for earth, and yes, you spotted it. There is no
(09:37):
g in Greek. Are you ready for this? Gaia is
the poetic form of gamma eta and is pronounced ye okay,
I think poetic means quote, getting it wrong, So it
is Urinos and ye not Uranus and gaia, all right,
(09:59):
And there are several more yes as actually, but I
think we'll cap it there.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
All right. This next one comes to us from Jared
another one responding to our episode on the Moons of Uranus.
Jared says, hey, guys really enjoyed these episodes and looking
forward to more like them all right, well, we'll have
to come back to Neptune in the future. And then
Jared goes on to a comment about the Shakespearean names.
(10:25):
They write, quote, it was a compromise between Great Britain
and the rest of the European astronomers. Since they couldn't
call it George, it was agreed the moons would all
be named for British literary characters, at least according to
what I heard on doctor Neil Degrass Tyson's podcast, Keep
up the good Work.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
Jared, Yeah, I've read something similar. So the idea was
that when William Herschel, the English astronomer, first discovered Uranus
as a planet, he wanted to call it, what would
Georgium seed Us I think, meaning the George Star, named
after King George of England. Which we found that idea
quite amusing. It's like, hey, let's you know, let's name
(11:03):
the planet Neptune Millard Fillmore Star or something. But yeah,
so it was agreed instead that the names would come
from from mythology instead of from you know, political figures,
to avoid having national rivalries appear in the heavens. And yeah,
that does seem to be the case, but I guess
(11:24):
it's maybe somewhat of a concession to Herschel's desire to
name it after the English king, to name it after
characters by an English playwright and poet, or not the planet.
I guess the moons. Okay, I think we're going to
cap the Urinus messages there. But we've got a whole
bunch of messages on hand about weird House cinema, so
(11:45):
maybe we should try to read some of those, including
some messages in response to Time cop So Lawrence writes, Hey, guys,
just listening now to your episode on time and you
said it's your fourth time travel film. Not to jump
down your throat or such, but you're not counting Santo
(12:07):
in The and the Treasure of Dracula, and I think
you ought to. Thanks Lawrence, Lawrence, Oh my god, you're correct.
This must have been I don't remember which one of
us said that, but this must have been an oversight,
because it is true. Santo not only has a time
machine in that movie, I think he invents the time machine.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yes, my apologies to the Saint. This was me forgetting
that Santo and the Treasure of Dracula was actually a
time travel film. Now I won't say it's one that
really does any hard thinking about time travel, but there
is a time machine.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
And you know, thinking on it, somehow, that movie doesn't
really fit any of the story the main story categories
we talked about, or if it does it, it's not
really the main use of the time travel in it
is just like watching videos of the past, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
Yeah? But wasn't there also some like theft via time travel.
Wasn't that part of it? It's like we have found
Dracula's treasure in the past, we can steal it.
Speaker 3 (13:08):
Maybe they saw where Dracula left his treasure in the
past which allowed them to go there in the present
to retrieve it. Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, it's it's been
a while. I could be remembering it wrong, but I
thought it was just like their time machine. Was you
were allowed to watch the past on TV?
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Yeah? Yes, all right, we're gonna have to revisit it, okay,
But you know, it does make me wonder if there
has been a if there been any other Dracula time
travel stories out there. It seems like there has to be,
and Dracula is a pretty popular character and for crying
out alloud Dracula is a character in Marvel comics. So yeah, so,
(13:49):
I mean that's how Blade started out battling Dracula.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
I think so.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Given all the time travel, space alien stuff that goes
on in Marvel comics, there has to have been some
time travel with the old Drack at some point or another.
So comic book fans write in let us know. Yeah.
This next one comes to us from Thomas Hi, Robert,
(14:14):
and Joe. Your layout of time travel types in the
recent episode had me thinking. As you explain the arms
race time travel theme, it reminded reminds me of one
of my guilty pleasure films, the one well, not time travel,
but multiverse travel. It fits that core theme jet Lee,
as both protagonist and antagonist gets more and more powerful
(14:38):
a Lah Highlander quickening style, and with the killing of
their parallel selves across the multiverse. It's from the early
two thousands, but would not be out of place in
the eighties with some of the bright colors and comic
book darkness, fake grime, and spotless street scenes juxtaposed, and
(14:59):
also early though not young Jason Statham before he learned
to speak out the front of his mouth. I think
it fits Weird House Criteria. Check it out, Thomas, and
then there's a follow up. Sorry about the split emails,
but clearly I jumped the gun in my excitement. You
later in the episode ask about twin films, jet Lee
plays versions of himself matching up against each other. Does
(15:20):
that sound tempting? Three question marks.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
I've never seen the one, but I've wanted to for
a long time. People have told me I would like it.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
Yeah, I mean everything lines up here on paper for me.
Multiple jet Lee's love jet Lee, some sort of wonky
multiverse Highlander esque theme, and I'll take Statham as a side.
I guess I've enjoyed some State of the movies. Some
of the earliest States of the movies were at least fun.
And he was in John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars.
Speaker 3 (15:50):
Oh my god, you're right. He was in Ghosts of
Mars in two thousand and one, the same year he
was in The One.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah, it was a big year. He was ascending but
had not yet reached that point. I remember reading that,
like John Carpenter was impressed by him, and it was like,
you know this, we need to we need to be
in the Jason State and business and they were like, well,
he's good, but we're in the ice Cube business on
this film.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
I really wish I could. I could love Ghosts of
Mars more, either genuinely or ironically. Truth be told, it
is not that fun of a watch. It's kind of dull,
but there's stuff about it that just I wish I
could see it in a different way and love it more.
Like the thing. So, first of all, like, yeah, I
do love some of the cast. Ice Cube is in it,
(16:34):
Jason Stathum, Pam Greer, Pam Greer is in it. Yeah,
But the main thing I always remember is that ice
Cube's character is named Desolation Williams, and people refer to
him in the dialogue as Desolation, so they're just like, hey, hey,
they're Desolation. What's going on?
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Yeah? I think I've mentioned this perhaps and we've had
this exact same exchange before. But Alien Covenant, which there's
a lot I like about it, but there's a character
in that whose nickname is Tennessee. You can't have a
nickname with three syllables to it like that, dude would
be ten that would be his nickname, not Tennessee.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
Right, Desolation has four.
Speaker 2 (17:17):
Yeah too much? But yeah, I don't know. I haven't
revisited Ghosts of Mars in a long time, but I mean,
on paper, yeah, good cast seems like a good concept.
The artist Gerald Brahm did some of the conceptual designs,
and I've always loved Gerald Bram's art. But yeah, I
don't know if it's aged enough for a revisit yet.
Speaker 3 (17:39):
Sorry, I'm just over here dreaming up character names. I'm
gonna make a space action movie where the hero is
called di Apocalypticization Jones.
Speaker 2 (17:49):
I like it as long as it's not his nickname.
I mean, according to the credits, Desolation is his first name.
It's not like he's Mike quote Desolation Jones. He's Desolation Jones,
Desolation William. Sorry, I'm getting to know.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
No, No, you're wrong, I think, well, I just looked
at Wikipedia wiki claims he is James quote Desolation William.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
All right, IMDb has it wrong, then, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Maybe the wiki's wrong. Who knows. I don't know who
would just make up James though. Yeah, Okay. This next
message comes from Chris. Chris says, hello, Rob, Joe, and JJ.
You will never guess who I saw staring back at
me from the arts and Entertainment section of the Chicago
(18:34):
Tribune today none other than the one and only bert
I Gordon in all his mustachioed glory. This must have
been a response to when we did Attacking the Puppet
People the bert Eye Gordon Shrink movie. Chris says, this
is definitely a guy I would want to have a
drink or three with. Couldn't pass up the opportunity to
share this weird bit of print media overlapping with my
(18:56):
digital media world. They did a great job sharing some
night color prints of his various movie posters as well.
Please see attached. The movie posters will have to be
in a separate email due to size constraints regards Chris.
All right, so Rob, I've attached the screenshots Chris took
here the photo of Bertie Gordon. This doesn't look anything
(19:16):
like the photos of him I'm familiar with, but he's
much older in those, so I guess when he was young,
he was a skinny guy with sticking out ears and
a big funny mustache. And the caption tells us that
this is him playing a character called the Mad Russian,
who was a regular on CBS Radio's The Eddie Canter Show.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
Yeah, is the look of a guy who makes weird pottery.
No disrespect to weird potters. I love weird pottery.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
He looks like he would be cast as a scientist
in an Abbot Castello movie. Yeah. But I want to
read the beginning of this article because while it does
look like something I would I would like to get
into in full that I have a bone to pick.
So the article is by Christopher Borelli, and it says
Bert Eye Gordon, who died earlier this spring at the
(20:07):
age of one hundred, was the absolute worst filmmaker who
ever lived, or so some might argue. You've heard Ed
Wood was the worst, or Roger Corman, or maybe Michael Bay.
But Gordon was not lousy for one or two decades.
He was a terrible filmmaker for about sixty years. And
when he got around to writing his memoir in twenty ten,
(20:29):
called The Amazing Colossal Worlds of Mister Big and Autobiographical Journey,
it was the absolute worst book ever written by a filmmaker.
To borrow from the lurid posters for his movies. His talent,
such as it was, screamed amazing, towering, beyond description, just
not in a good way. Now, I do appreciate the
(20:52):
nod to how like the lack of modesty in the
bad movies of the mid century, Like how movie from
the fifties that were some of the worst ever made,
would say in their advertising like a film unlike any
other will change your life. You are not prepared for
the most spectacular movie event ever created. It is Attack
(21:15):
of the Puppet People or whatever. But I also just
want to go back and say, you know, Roger Corman
made a lot of slapdash drive in cheese, but I
don't know any reasonable observer who would say he was
the worst filmmaker who ever lived. I get why Edward
is in the running, but come on, Roger Corman made
at least a half dozen movies that are really good,
(21:36):
and a couple you could say are great. A Mask
of the Red Death comes to mind, So I don't
know why he's included there.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Yeah. Plus, I mean I would not say bird Eye
Gordon was the worst filmmaker that ever lived. I mean,
there are various ways you could determine that classification, but
you know, I wouldn't say he's the worst by any stretch.
Does his work bring me pleasure?
Speaker 3 (21:58):
Yes, So let's look at these posters here. So we
got Empire of the Ants.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
This is great stuff.
Speaker 3 (22:06):
Yeah, a lady in jeans on the cracked desert ground
and there's just an ant getting ready to it looks
like bite her leg off. Basically. The poster for the
amazing Colossal Man actually just looks great. I love this
poster and it's a shame that there is not a
good disc of this movie out there.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, yeah, I really want to come back to this
one at some point, because this is a movie that
I genuinely enjoy and I think is trying to be
something more than just just schlock.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
You know.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
I think it's an ambitious film in its own way.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Agreed. On the other hand, you've got The Spider, which
I think that is just schlock, but it does have
a pretty good poster. It's like it's got a cop
shooting a machine gun at a giant spider and somehow
they just managed to like slip like a screaming horizontal
woman in there. She's just lying there on like a
(22:57):
red rectangle.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah, they went for something different here. The Spider's not
carrying the woman, but the woman is still horizontal and
laying on the ground. And having a machine gun fired
directly over her body.
Speaker 3 (23:10):
Well, yeah, it looks like the cop is using the
woman for cover.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
I guess it does kind of.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
Yeah, he's popping out over top of her to shoot
at the spider. All right, should we cap it there
for today?
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Yeah, it sounds good, sounds like a good place to
cap it off. But we'd love to hear from everyone.
Keep the listener mails coming in. We read all of it.
We don't have time to respond to all of it,
and we don't have time to feature all of it
on listener Mail, but we do what we can. So
it's always great to hear from all of y'all. So
keep it coming. The reminder that Listener Mail episodes they
(23:44):
publish on Mondays and the Stuff You Blow Yourmind podcast
feed core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Wednesday. A
short form artifact or monster fact episode except when it's
an omnibus episode and then it's longer as previously described.
And then on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns
to just talk about a film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Huge thanks to our audio producer JJ Posway. If you
would like to get in touch with us with feedback
on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for
the future, or just to say hello. You can email
us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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