Listener Mail: The Constant Flow of Invention

Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Listener mail, This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick,
and I think maybe we should jump right in with
a response to an older episode of ours about the
Bone Palace Vault episode or are you ready, Rob? I'm ready? Okay,

(00:29):
This comes to us from Megan. Megan says, Hey, Joe
and Robert had a couple of natural history notes to
add to your Bone Palace episodes. I remember, I think
there was a string of things we talked about in
those episodes about creatures other than humans making dwellings out
of the remains of other animals. Megan writes, Another cool

(00:50):
creature that make camouflage itself with the body parts of
other invertebrates is the green lacewing larva. You can see
them trundling about on tree trunks under tiny lichen festooned huts.
They voraciously consume other insects, and they may incorporate the
body parts of their prey, such as a fids, within
their camouflage. This is especially useful as a disguise to

(01:12):
fool ants which tend and defend sap sucking afids for
their honeydew. Also carrier snails from the family's xenophority, meaning
foreigner carrying, attach bits of coral rocks, sponges, and other
smaller shells into the delicate white whirls of their own
growing shells. They can be very elegant, with the long

(01:35):
spires of other shells protruding at regular intervals like a sunburst,
or look like crazy marine garbage heaps, depending on the
species and it's preferred masonry. The added bits provide some
camouflage and protection from predators, stability on the seafloor, and
also save them on the energy and material cost of
having to grow their entire shells. Thanks guys, you supply

(01:57):
me with moments in critical thinking in time when I'm
otherwise short on it, driving, kid tending, etcetera. Best Megan, excellent, Well,
these are both great specimens. Thanks for sharing these with us, Megan.
At least one of these seems kind of familiar, So
I'm wondering if we maybe researched it but didn't mention
it in the episode or mentioned it. It's possible. Sometimes

(02:17):
stuff falls through the cracks like that. Yeah, uh now,
We've got a number of responses to our pair of
episodes about furry fish, and these were great fun. Yeah.
The first one comes to us from Kelly. She says, Hi, both.
I was delighted to hear you mentioned in your second

(02:38):
episode on furry fish the gloriously fluffy hoax fish at
the National Museum of Scotland. As a child, I remember
for the first time seeing this fish on show. Since then,
I've always made a point of trying to find it
whenever I go in. It is Scotland's own abominable snow trout.
Your discussion of fish people and otters uh got to

(03:00):
me thinking about the Celtic Norse myths of the silky
a mer person that takes on the form of a seal,
which was a widespread folk tale in the North and
in the Islands. The story I remember reading when was
when I was very young was that of the Silky Wife.
I think there are plenty of variations on the theme,

(03:21):
but the basic premise is that a fisherman falls in
love with a silky woman in human form, but he
steals her silky slash seal skin, preventing her from taking
seal form, and locks the skin in a kiss or chest,
keeping her imprisoned on the land. Eventually she manages to
take back the skin, escapes to the sea, transforms back

(03:43):
into a seal and escapes. A more recent sculptural interpretation
at the Helix Park in Falkirk, called the Selkies presents
them in the form of the giant rearing heads of
Shire horses. I think this is part of a reference
to the foam tipped breaking waves of the sea being
referred to as white horses, as well as a link

(04:04):
to the horses which would have pulled barges along the
canals along which the park was built. They are quite
spectacular and worth a quick image search if you have
a few minutes. Thanks for the many hours of fun
and a lightning discussion. I come away from every episode
with some new interesting facts or ideas to think about.
All the best, Kelly. Now, I tried to google the

(04:26):
Selkies Helix Park and the only thing I think I
came across what I think you're talking about. But this
says they're called the Kelpies instead of the Selkies, which
I know are both things, so you may have just
had a typo in your email there. Either way, the
selkies are certainly fascinating. Uh selkies and and kelpies. I've
been reading about them for for ages, you know, because

(04:47):
they pop up in dungeons and dragons and mythology textbooks,
uh monster uh compendiums of all sorts. I I also
have to point out there's a wonderful two thousand fourteen
Irish animated film called Song of the Sea which deals
with this territory. Highly recommend that a beautiful film. M

(05:11):
all right. This next message about the furry fish comes
from Alex. Alex says, Hello, I love your show, but
I've never had a good reason to send you mail
until today. In your The Fish had for episode, you
mentioned the singing bass fish Billy bass, the singing bass fish.
I had one of these growing up, so I started

(05:32):
looking for it in my basement, hoping I still had it.
I didn't, but I experienced a bit of serendipity while
scrolling TikTok. After I gave up the hunt, I stumbled
across an artist by the name of Kevin Heckert. They
are an interactive artist that has created a billy bass
that somehow interacts with Amazon Alexa. It is amazing. It

(05:53):
sings any song you ask it to. Please look it up.
It will make your day watching billy singing all of
the hits. That's it. Thanks for making such an entertaining podcast.
Uh ps, I really missed the constant flow of Invention.
That's how I found you guys. Thanks for reading, Alex.
Thank you Alex. Yeah, thanks. I hope we keep I

(06:14):
don't know, we will still continue doing Invention episodes from
time to time. Sorry, we can't do them every week now.
I mean maybe at some point we'll just lose it
and start doing Invention episodes like back to back for
at least for a little bit. You never know. Yeah,
but anyway, so I looked this up. I'm not familiar
with this uh this person, but I looked up the
TikTok you were talking about, and yeah, it looks like

(06:36):
someone has uh sort of hacked a billy bass to
to be the interface for Amazon Alexa. So at least
if what is being alleged by this video is correct
and there's no trickery involved, you can say to the
big mouth billy bass, hey, Alexa, play whatever, and you know, uh,
play four Horsemen by Metallica, and then the bed the
bass will turn and say okay and it will sing

(06:58):
along with the song, It'll do the mouth. All right.
Here's another one. This one comes to us from Calvin
subject big mouth, Billy Bass, Hello, the one in the
town I grew up in play Don't Worry Be Happy.
As kids, we were absolutely obsessed with this thing. The

(07:19):
poor shop owner must have heard that fish hundreds of times.
Thanks for the show, Calvin. I gotta be honest. When
I first read this email, I laughed out loud thinking
about the town, billy bass town. Well, it reminded me
of New York movies, older New York movies, where they'll
be TVs and shop windows, and they'll be people gathered

(07:41):
around to watch the TVs. Except in this case, it's
the billy bass singing don't Worry Be Happy. Bobby McPherrin, Yeah,
great too, all right. We also heard back from our
listener Shay in regards to the tomay O Vault episodes.

(08:02):
He writes, Dear Robin Joe, I'm lovingly teased by my
friends and my wife for my podcast problem as I
spend every available moment driving housework, walking the beast listening, uh,
and your work is my favorite. I was listening to
the second Vault episode about tomatoes this morning, as I
made my wife send my favorite vegan beverage, an oat

(08:22):
milk latte. If you haven't tried toatally yet, Rob, you've
got to give it a go. I I do. I
do love oat milk. It's it's quite good. When Joe
suggested that the fruit from the Garden of Eden may
have been a tomato, quickly you both accept the improbability
of this, since tomatoes are native to the America's and
the authors of the Bible would not have been familiar

(08:44):
with them. However, considering the importance of the ld S
Church and in this U shase referring, of of course,
to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints,
um Uh. Considering the importance of the ld S Church
to the later acceptance of tomatoes in the US, I
want to offer a sliver of hope to your theory. Uh,
they can, he continues. In ELDS lore, it is said

(09:07):
that the Garden of Eden was in fact in the Americas,
specifically in Jackson County, Missouri. Now that's more than a
hot skip and jump away from South and Central America.
But Mormon beliefs are central to stories of ancient American
people's traveling across these continents. While there is of course
no scientific evidence that I'm aware of supporting any of this,

(09:28):
it is interesting to look at the pattern of tomato
development and apply it to a story. Here. Imagine a
cultivated tomato of knowledge being taken and or naturally adapting
and spreading to be the current like tomatoes of South America,
where they are again selected, cultivated, and spread north, then
grow wild and small again before finally being rediscovered and

(09:50):
becoming the tomatoes of today. I'm certain plot holes abound,
but what fun shay from the Rocky Mountains? And they
add a p s. In a recent listener mail, you
mentioned and how delicious a tomato mayo sandwich can be,
and I can't resist suggesting you try a pickle and
mayo sandwich one of my guilty pleasures. Hmm. Interesting, Oh,

(10:10):
I'm I'm up to try. I wonder what kind of
pickle would be best? Do you want to go? Do
you go bread and better pickle on that? Do you
go with a more sour variety, you go with a
spicy pickle? So many possibilities. I'm very partial to half
sour pickles myself. That fresh cucumber reef flavor. Yea. Now,
I wanted to look this up to make sure that
this is actually a belief among the Latter day Saints,

(10:33):
and I think what I discovered. I didn't have a
lot of time to look into this, but what it
looked like to me, um is that the belief that
the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri, or
it was definitely in Missouri. Uh, is not something that
is written in the Book of Mormon, but I believe
it is something that is alleged to have been said
by Brigham Young, and and that Brigham Young said Joseph

(10:57):
Smith told him this, so i'd know how exactly that
relates to to its doctrinal status among the beliefs of
the church. But but yeah, interesting nonetheless. Okay, anyway, are
you ready to move on to some emails about Weird
House Cinema? Let's do it. Okay, This first one comes

(11:19):
from Eric uh and I want to include this email
because it has some great stuff in it. But Eric,
I think you made a few typos that I couldn't
quite figure out. I don't know if there was like
some accidental formatting changes or something. So I'm gonna sort
of skip or summarize a few paragraphs here. But Eric says,
good morning, gentlemen, I just listened to this week's listener mail,

(11:39):
in which you spend a few moments pondering who should
potentially portray Tom Bomba Dill in the future Lord of
the Rings movie. And then uh, Eric says his first
thought was Charles Darning. Interesting idea. Okay, so he says
it's it's difficult to imagine Mr Darning is embodying a threat.
I don't know. I think about the sting at least. Yeah, yeah,

(12:01):
he can be quite threatening and a brother where art
thou at least when he wants to be. But he
can also turn on the chime. That's true. Um, And
Eric says he can sing, and he gives his evidence
the movie The Best Little Horhouse in Texas, which that's
a Dolly Pardon movie, isn't it? Yeah? I believe. So
he also sings in Brother where art Thou oh yeah,
and dances is that it is a talented dancer. A

(12:23):
lot of people don't realize that. And then after this,
Eric says, I think he's suggesting that his dog recommended
someone to him. Jokingly. I assume and anyway, that person
is Vin Diesel. Vin Diesel is Tom Bomba Dill. What
do you think? Okay, so so, Eric says, you know,
Tom Bomba Dill, some people might think of him as

(12:45):
kind of a a nature loving, quintessential hippie. But Eric writes,
quote Bomba Dill is clearly at least a demigod, and
he's a very powerful being. Well, he's by preference good natured.
He could be quite capable of violence. Even that some
remove and one would assume anger or at least implacability,
if that's a word. And Eric says, might have to

(13:07):
dub in the singing. Though to the contrary, Eric, I
don't know if you're aware of this. Vin Diesel has albums.
He he is in a professional singer in addition to
being an actor. So uh so, you know he he
may be living life a quarter mile at a time,
but at least one of those quarter miles has involved
going into the studio and laying down some sensitive emotional

(13:28):
pop tracks. Yeah. You sent me a link to this
and I listened to it, and I have to say
it's it's not terrible, it's not necessarily my thing, but
it's it's it's nothing that would offend me if I
heard it in a commercial or in a waiting room somewhere. Um,
I wouldn't say that it just screams Tom Bomba deal
to me. But um, I I accepted its proof of

(13:48):
Vin Diesel's musical chops. I would say it's not my
style of music. But I'm impressed by Vin Diesel's potential
as a singer. I almost I was immediately thinking, like, oh,
does he do cameo? Could we? How much would it
cost to send him like the robb inglist songs and
see if he can just you know, perform them. See
what it sounds like. Yeah, it's not gonna happen, sadly,

(14:11):
at least not now. Maybe later, maybe later in his career,
but for now, Vin doesn't need the cameo bucks. But
also Eric floats the idea of of Wayne the Stone
John's man as as the rock. Um. Yeah, the rock
certainly is charismatic, and I think he can sort of
sing at least um. But again, I don't know. I

(14:33):
don't know if this is a direction from my vision
of Tom Bomba till I don't know. It's such a
difficult part to potentially cast, so There was some fun
discussions about this in the Facebook group for Stuff to
Boil Your Mind, the Stuff to Boil your Mind discussion module.
I think we even did a little pole. Uh. There
was some some fun and some absurd suggestions on there.

(14:54):
I also, I think at the same time that was
going on, I was watching Hamilton's for the first time,
so I was also thinking of the areous actors in Hamilton.
I was thinking, Oh, they could be a Tom bombadel
Oh he could be up Tom Bombadil as well. A
lot of Tom Bomba is strange. Yeah, okay, especially if
you know. No, you have to remember in in in
the book The Lord of the Rings and Fellowship of
the Rings. Um, it's not said that these are necessary.

(15:17):
I mean that we don't have music, we just have
the lyrics. They could be wrapped. Oh that's true. Okay,
maybe they even need to be rapped. I don't know. Well,
I just don't know if any of those actors are
like old and rotund enough. I I picture somebody who's
got to be like over fifty and kind of round. Yeah. Well,
we're playing the long game here, so give it time.
We just have some potential, uh, Tom Bomba dial so

(15:40):
we just have to keep an eye on and see
how they develop, how they mature. Of course, I realized
this would also exclude Vin Diesel and and Uh and
Rock the Dwayne obviously. Yeah, in their current forms. You
never know, You never know, all right. We also heard

(16:02):
from listeners regarding our Weird House Cinema episodes on psychomania.
This one comes to us from Dawn. Guys, so glad
you picked this film. I saw this as a young
kid in the seventies, and the image of the undead
biker's turning to stone at the end was both frightening
and super sad. I don't remember much else about the
rest of the film, but that final scene has stuck

(16:23):
with me for decades. Thanks for bringing the rest of
the movie back to me. We'll try to track it down.
All the best, Dawn, I'm curious why it's sad. It
seems like these horrible people, these horrible trolls, are finally
turned to stone. Well, I mean they especially if you
watched it as a young person. It's you know, these
young people are you know, they're gonna live forever, They're

(16:45):
gonna do things their way, and then they're shut down
by old people. Magic at the end, it's kind of sad,
it's I can I can definitely dig that interpretation. The
end of the movie, once again to reiterate, is Mom
comes in and stops the rough house using yes basically
via occult paperwork. Yes. Yeah uh. This next message is

(17:11):
from Maggie, also about psychomania or the subject actually uses.
The alternate title is just death Wheelers, Maggie says, great
weird house cinema episode. Guys, I remember seeing this movie
about ten years ago at an all night secret horror
movie marathon in Philadelphia, and this movie was a huge
hit for that audience. I'm talking popcorn in the air,

(17:32):
cheering and hollering, particularly every time one of the bikers
rocketed from the grave upright on their motorcycle. A perfect
trash movie. Indeed, my friend and I thought the lead
biker Tom had more than a passing resemblance to Noel
Fielding from the Mighty Bush, and that lent the movie
a whole other absurd dimension in which to enjoy it.

(17:52):
Love the pod, and appreciate all the work you guys
put into it. Maggie, that's a good point. I think
when I was watching it too, I was getting some
some mild hints of no fielding character. Yeah, the hair,
kind of the you know, the long face. Uh yeah.
What what would have been like had the Mighty Boush
done some sort of like a proper psychomania inspired tail.

(18:14):
I think there there would have been room for them
to explore some absurd ideas there. Oh my god, yes,
they could have done a really good undead biker along
along the hitchhiker lines. I guess. Yeah. All right. This
last pair of messages comes from Lorenzo, and then this

(18:34):
is in response to us talking about the weird thing
that's in a lot of Italian horror movies from the
seventies and eighties, where there are scenes of heightened suspense
and then the soundtrack gets it starts playing music that
feels incongruous with the mounting suspense. It's playing like funky,
you know, funky jazzy, like cool music, not scary music. Anyway,

(18:57):
So we were talking about that, and Lorenzo says, Hi, Joe, Rob,
big fan of your show. Keep them coming, Joe. Twice
you commented on Weird House Cinema asking why the upbeat
synths and violence sequences, and Rob you rationalize that it's
a culturally based counterpoint to the tension, right, So you
were talking about maybe it's just some kind of difference
between how like Italian audiences versus American audiences would regard

(19:22):
the connotations of disco music. Maybe Yeah, And so Lorenzo says,
while the synth work of Goblin and Co Is awesome
for the action sequences, those guys just stepped aside. Similar
samples were pasted over all sorts of genre films in
Italy when I was a kid, including overdubs of westerns

(19:42):
and manga. So generally it's a shortfall on soundtracking in
those sequences. I'd rather have John Carpenter do my truculent ambient.
To be honest, it's a fail for our movies anyway
you look at it. Okay, So Lorenzo is just dissing
some of the soundtrack choices of of of these Italian
horror films. Uh, if I'm understanding, I hope I'm not misunderstanding.

(20:04):
But I think Lorenzo is saying, like you know, sometimes
they just didn't know what to put in there, didn't
have much of a budget, and just subbed in some
kind of track they had in a library or had
the rights to or something. Well, yeah, I mean I
could imagine that potentially be in the case. But on
the other hand, a lot of wonderful things come out
of accidents and shortcuts in filmmaking, and so you know,

(20:25):
I wouldn't I wouldn't discount it just because maybe the
process was questionable. If it was questionable, well here, let's see,
let's hear Lorenzo. Second email. Lorenzo also says, as you know,
Italian film is all about dubbing. Italians to this day
see all cinema dubbed with a handful of voice actors
playing the parts. They do a good job. We have

(20:47):
a better Homer than Dan Castelneda, I promise you, but
you will never know this. That's great. Um. Why do
I bring up dubbing in the context of those action
sequences with the upbeats? Sense? Do you ask? Because in
many films they were working on whatever budget they had,
and they sacrifice these production elements to an aesthetic, so

(21:09):
funky jazz in a slasher sequence or bad overdubs. I
guess we're secondary to the aesthetic. But I agree with you, Joe,
it's probably not an excuse. Lorenzo. Oh, Lorenzo I don't.
I didn't mean to to impugne movies that have soundtrack
choices that seem strange to me. I love a strange
soundtrack choice. Oh yeah, the stranger the better, the better,

(21:30):
the the it's the soundtracks that are not strange, those
are the ones that that can sometimes just piss me off,
to be honest, but I think I see exactly what
you're talking about, Lorenzo with um certain with there being
a sort of strain of creative preference in Italian cinema
for maybe sometimes visual aesthetics over everything else. That like

(21:52):
the the the director might have a certain kind of
image in their mind, almost kind of a painting of
the way they want the film to look, and that's
really top priority. Maybe a lot of other creative choices
might kind of just take a back seat to that,
and I think that's true about a lot of Italian
horror movies especially. Well, this will be this will be
a conversation to keep in mind and to keep having

(22:14):
as we inevitably come back to the cinema of Italy
on our Weirdout Cinema episodes. Oh yeah, I do like
him taunting us with the fact that his Simpsons is
better than ours. This This is fun because I had
recently um, I recently played a video game titled Blasphemous,
which is which is excellent and it is um It's

(22:35):
a Spanish production and it had you can choose to
have the audio in English or in Spanish. And I
was reading about it online with some people talking about
there being an apparent at times kind of a good
natured rivalry between uh Mexican dubblers and Spanish dubbers, like
who's doing who does the best job of providing voiceovers

(22:55):
for for projects? And uh so, so that was interesting. Well,
I never really thought about that, how you might have
some sort of like good natured competition between the dubblers
in Spain and the dubbers in Mexico for for different projects.
Blasphemous Is this the the two D side scroller game
that looks inspired by the paintings of Goya? It is? Yes,

(23:16):
Oh I've been. I saw a preview of that, I
think a few years back, and I was like, man,
I want to play that. That looks like some some
real classic witchcraft. Yeah. I put it off for a
long time and then I finally bet. I was like,
all right, I'm gonna give this game a shot. And
I'm not really huge into the sort of Castlevania Metroid
type type games. A lot of times they kind of

(23:36):
frustrate me. So I expected it to be a game
that would visually amuse me for a little bit and
then I would get sick of it because it would
be too hard for me as a gamer. But I
ended up I stuck with it it. It was just enthralling,
just some wonderful world building and uh, and I think
it's challenging, but it never feels cheap. So I highly
recommend that one and the voice talent. I listen to

(23:59):
parts of it in Spanish and parts of it in English,
and in both cases excellent. There's some wonderful dialogue in there,
and uh and in some very creepy voices. Nice. I
just love the idea that somebody essentially made a Goya game.
I don't know if that's what they were doing on purpose,
but as soon as I looked at it, that's like, oh,
that's what it is. I believe the creators have pointed
that out. They pointed specific Goya paintings that were key,

(24:22):
uh to this vision, to this world they've created. And
and but it also goes beyond that. There's all this
just rich stuff that's very you know, based in inquisition
and and Catholic guilt, and it just has a very
rich and mysterious world that they've built up around this game.
I'm gonna play that, and then I'm gonna hang on

(24:42):
for whoever makes the El Greco game. Yeah, yeah, that
could be good too. All right, we're gonna go ahead
and close the mail bag here, but we'd love to
hear from you all regarding current episodes, future episodes, past episodes, episodes,
Stuff to Blow your Mind, episodes of Weird how Cinema.
It's all fair game. We'll try and do a listener
mail every Monday. That's where you can hear it. You'll

(25:03):
find it and the Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed,
and you'll find that wherever you get your podcasts. Uh.
If you just need to get to us quickly, you
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(25:24):
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in case you're interested. Huge things. As always to our
wonderful audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
to get in touch with us with feedback on this
episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
or just to say hello, you can email us at

(25:46):
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