May 13, 2024 • 23 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 you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
This is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And this is Joe McCormick. And it's Monday, the day
of each week that we read back messages from the
Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you have
never gotten in touch with the show before, but maybe
you've thought about it, maybe you've felt a little tingle
in your brain that maybe you should get in touch,
this is the time, This is the week you should
do it. Reach out at contact at stuff to Blow
(00:36):
your Mind dot com. All types of messages are fair game.
We of course, always appreciate feedback to recent episodes. If
you want to suggest a topic for the future for
a core episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, or
a movie for Weird House Cinema, or if you have
something interesting you would like to add to something we've
recently talked about on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I do want to throw in though, give us a
little context if you If you're just sending like a
link or a video attachment, so yeah, that just just
get throwing a little text there. Just let us know
what this is and why it has been sent. Because
sometimes we have been trained to be a little suspicious
about some of these things, So just a little added
(01:17):
context in those cases would be great.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
That's a really good point, Rob. Yes, if there's like
text you'd like to include or something like that, it's
often better to just copy and paste into the email.
Then give us a link. We got to be cautious
about links.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah yeah, and uh yeah, And I think we've said
this before, but you know, write in and if you
if you want to share something and you don't want
it to go on listener mail, you don't want us
to feature it on the podcast, just state that, and
we're happy to honor that as well.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
All right, Well let's go ahead and dig into this
mail bag. Who wants to go first? You want to
grab one, Joe?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Uh, let's see, Well, why don't you do this one
about dust or Matt?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
All right, Matt Wrights, Greetings science humans. I have to say,
last time I wrote in, I did not expect to
hear it read on air, and it was a wonderful experience.
So thanks for that. It has been a while and
I think I might write more frequently in the future.
Life is crazy and the show helps ground me. So
(02:13):
when you were asking for more writers in, I figure
it's the least I can do. I've been listening to
a lot a lot to the archive, but I always
get excited for new episodes. Weird House Cinema has given
me endless hours of joy. And though I used to
wrinkle my nose of the kind of movies you talk
about on there, I have discovered that I have a
deep well of love for them. And my girlfriend's family
(02:35):
all think I'm crazy for it.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
How's this coming up with your girlfriend's family? You like?
Have you seen Highlander two?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Hey? You know? I mean, I think movies are often
a great place to go. It's better than talking about
the weather as long as that connection's there. So anyway,
Matt continues, anyway, I wrote in to talk about dust,
so here goes. I am a veteran of the US
Navy CEBE, which I'm very proud of. And if you
don't know anything about CBS, I suggest you look them up,
(03:05):
because we're pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I did look them up. The CBS. That's the nickname
of the US Naval Construction Battalions. So CBS is spelled
like the ocean and like the hymenoptera. But CBS, I
think comes from the CBE for Construction Battalions, and in short,
they do engineering and construction for the Navy and the
Marine Corps.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
All right, Mac continues that they spent many months in
different deserts around the world. I was a mechanic when
I was in the Navy, so I had to deal
with dust destroying our equipment in a myriad of ways.
The most common problem I found was the air filter
getting clogged every morning before we let any of the vehicles.
Vehicles exit the yard, particularly in Iraq, we would use
(03:46):
pressurized air to blow the air filters out, and there
was at least a pocket full of sand dust in
each one every day. Now this is reminding me of
doctor Fhive's rises again that here right.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Oh right, yeah, the sand flasting in the car.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Matt continues. One thing I can offer up to you
folks that may help to answer some questions I heard
listeners asking in the Listener Mail episode is that dust
is everywhere all the time, so there doesn't need to
be a storm walking around kicks it up enough in
the air for it to clog air filters. In the Navy,
we called it moon dust, I think because it was
seemingly lighter than air, and when you stepped in it
(04:25):
it resulted in what looked like footprints on the moon.
The moondust caused a lot of issues, not just mechanical ones.
As you walk around in a desert, it is impossible
to see the texture of the terrain because the moon
dust coats it and looks so smooth. It is not
smooth most of the time. The problem is that the
dust doesn't build up under your foot as you walk,
it moves and piles around your foot. It covers up
(04:48):
rocks and bumps in the road, so you have to
be a lot more careful walking around. I definitely tripped
a number of times and sprawled out looking silly on
the ground at first, but overall I think this gave
me stronger ankles, so maybe it was worth looking like
a fool a few times.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
That sounds perilous.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, as far as driving in a sandstorm goes, this
is something I would advise against strongly. I only went
outside during a storm once in Iraq. It was terrifying
and extremely dangerous just to attempt to walk to the
galley chow hall, mess hall place to eat at. My
friend and I started walking to the galley, which was
about a fourth of a mile away from camp, and
(05:26):
as soon as we walked across the street into a
large sandy flat that covered the distance to the galley,
the wind, which was loaded with all sizes of grains
of sand, not just dust, just about knocked us over.
We walked on for a short time, pressing hard against
the wind. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a huge chunk of
the fuselage of a plane came bounding by, bouncing like
(05:48):
a tumbleweed. The only reason we could even see it
is because it was a foot in front of us,
which scared us both enough to look at each other
and say, to hell with the galley. I have snacks
in my room. At the same time, but wait, it's
not over yet. We turned around and headed back to camp,
only to arrive at the galley. This was slightly demoralizing,
(06:09):
and I'm sure we cursed a lot at this point,
but we eventually got back to camp. I never attempted
to go anywhere during a sandstorm again. I hope my
email is worth how long it is. Thank you so
much for all that you do.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Much love, Matt, Oh, thank you so much, Matt. Yeah,
these are exactly the kinds of experiences we love to
hear about in listener mail. It adds a lot of
text here to the stuff we talk about to hear
about personal experiences.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Absolutely, all right, what else do we have in the
old mail bag.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Year, let's see? Oh well, we got a response to
the first part in our series on meteorite iron, the
Iron from the Sky. So this is responding to a
part of the episode when we were talking about how
before the process of smelting iron from ore became widely
known and practiced, in the ancient world, iron was often
treated as a precious metal like gold or silver today,
(06:57):
but perhaps even more rare and valuable because most of
it had to be sourced from meteorites that fell from space.
And though it probably did not happen fast enough for
this scenario to actually occur, we imagined a scene where
somebody's clutching their incredibly scarce and valuable iron trinket, maybe
it's an iron dagger or an iron amulet or something. Meanwhile,
(07:21):
the local metalworkers are figuring out iron smelting, and iron
quite suddenly becomes very common and very cheap, sort of
the reverse Goldfinger scenario. So that's context for this message
from listener Joe. Joe says, your story of iron suddenly
(07:41):
losing value reminded me of the Twilight Zone classic with
which I imagine you're familiar, the Rip Van Winkle Caper.
So this is an episode of The Twilight Zone where
you got like a team of scientists they pull off
a massive gold heist from Fort Knox, and they believe
they can evade the law by taking their gold bricks
and then going into specially created suspended animation chambers that
(08:06):
are going to let them sleep for one hundred years.
So I think the idea is, you know, you come
out one hundred years later and start trying to trade
the gold. It's not going to arouse suspicion.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I remember this episode. This is one I saw as
a kid on TV watching old episodes of The Twilight Zone,
and I still distinctly remember it because one of the
plot points is that when they wake up in the future, well,
one of the characters wakes up, but the other character,
like a rock has fallen from the ceiling and has
broken like the glass panel of the preservation chamber that
(08:39):
they were in, and so now there's just a skeleton
in there.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Yeah, yeah, the disrupted hibernation. I think like three of
the four conspirators survive, but then they after they wake up,
there is much desperation and betrayal. I think they end
up stranded in the desert and they're like trying to
buy a drink of water off each other for thirty
pounds of gold for a sip or something. And then
here in the email, Joe goes on to quote some
(09:02):
dialogue from the twist ending of the episode. So you know,
one of the one of the dying conspirators is like
trying to buy water from someone in the desert for
these gold bars. And then the characters say, can you
imagine that he offered this to me as if it
was really worth something? You know, wasn't it worth something once? George?
I mean, didn't people use gold for money? Sure, about
(09:25):
one hundred years ago before they found a way of
manufacturing it.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It's a great twist. I love this one.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Yeah, it totally is that kind of irony the Twilight
Zone twists are really known for. It's kind of gold
enough at last, right.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, yeah, oh man, some of the Yeah, when Twilight
Zone was at its best, like you just can't touch it.
I need to go back and watch some more episodes
of it that in the original Outer Limits. We were
just talking about that off mic the other day about
some episodes of the original Outer Limits good.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Stuff, the one where Donald Pleasance plays a professor who
invents a way of like telekinetically controlling events, but then
of course it spirals out of control. I think he
ends up subconsciously getting revenge on everyone who wronged him.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
All right, let's see what else do we have here?
Always have some more weird House specific email. We're already
in the basic vibe of weird house, but let's go
all the way in. This one comes to us from Albert,
(10:30):
subject line Dragon Slayer. Hi, Robert and Joe. I remember
watching the film in theaters in nineteen eighty one. It
was such an awesome experience, especially for someone who is
in the midst of playing advanced dungeons and dragons. Anyway,
if you can at all find it, the novelization of
Dragon Slayer was a great read. It went into a
(10:50):
lot more details into the background of all the characters.
For example, Ulrick dreams of the first dragon born of
his sorcerer's humorous paid in blood by the innocence, you
get the backstory to the dragon slaying spear crafted by
Valarian's father. I'm not one hundred percent sure about the film,
but in the novelization, the father crafted the dragon slaying
(11:12):
spear under the guidance of Ulrich many years ago. The
price of his hubris to craft such a mighty weapon
was the loss of his wife to the lottery, leaving
him with a baby girl. The romance between Galen and
Valerian is a little more developed, as Galen was not
imprisoned but was allowed to live in the village for weeks,
spending time with Valarian. There were other developments, so if
(11:36):
you get the chance, I highly recommend the novelization as
a companion to the film.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Many thanks, Albert, thanks for the recommendation. You know, we've
talked about movie novelizations a good bit on the show before,
and I can't remember if this specific thing came up,
but I was thinking about how I read a theory
somewhere that film novelizations really filled a niche before home
video existed, so you could if you could only see
(12:03):
a movie in a theater, maybe you really loved the
movie and then it wasn't playing anywhere near you anymore?
What do you do? Maybe in this case, you go
buy a novelization of the film, and this is your
only way to experience the film again is to sort
of read the movie.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, yeah, And I think it's they can still serve
that purpose. There aren't as many of them as they
used as there used to be, but they still buzzt
out novelizations from time to time and all occasionally, I
haven't done this in a while, occasionally given and use one.
And yeah, I mean it costs cost a fair chunk
of change to go see a movie in the theater,
and if you don't have some sort of a theater
(12:42):
membership going on and the spare time to do it,
you might not be up for another two to three
hours in the theater to experience it again. And novelizations,
you know, often give you a chance to revisit it
the material, but with slight tweaks and changes, they can
be a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
I think we've also talked about before that the interesting task,
like the creative task of a writer of a film
novelization to sometimes fill in like paper over gaps, like
a movie might have plot holes that are never explained,
but the novelization provides an author with like these sort
of challenges, these clever, clever ways to come up to
(13:22):
get around to the plot holes or explain inconsistencies and
so forth.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, they can be great. I love
hearing about the ones I haven't read. And it seems
like a lot of people I talked to all have
that one favorite, you know that they distinctly remember, perhaps
reading as a kid. You know, when you're at times
your obsession can be just absolutely maximized over some movie
you've just seen, So like, yeah, I remember reading the
(13:48):
novelization of Tim Burton's Batman, among others, and you know,
they're they're often extra scenes and then also a little
insights sometimes into like what this film was looking like,
perhaps before final editing or you know, before everything was
fully shot and so forth. Now I know what some
of you are wondering, Well, who wrote the Dragon Slayer novelization?
(14:10):
And was it Alan Dean Foster who wrote so many
of them. Now I looked it up. It was a
writer by the name of Wayland Drew who of nineteen
thirty two through nineteen ninety eight, who I don't think
I've read anything by this individual. But some of the
other novelizations that they did include Corvette Summer, which came
up in Dragon Slayer Batteries Not Included, which is also
(14:31):
connected to the same filmmakers.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
And Willow. Okay. I did a quick check to see
if that was the same author as the novelization of
Halloween three Season of the Witch, but that's not. That
was Jack Martin. Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And then you know, like most of these writers, they
also have original works and I have not read any
of these either, but this was a Canadian writer.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Okay. This next message comes from b Z. BZ says, Greetings,
Robin Joe. I have listened for years to your podcast
and greatly appreciate your well researched approach to the broad
range of topics you discuss. At the moment, I am
behind on my listening, but have thoroughly enjoyed getting caught up,
(15:16):
and just recently listened to your July twenty first, twenty
twenty three Weird House Cinema episode on nausicaa of the
Valley of the Wind. Normally I enjoy your breakdowns of
strange movies, but have maybe only seen one or two
of them. I felt a strange pull as you began
describing the art and the story of Nausica. I could
truly feel your love of the film and had to
(15:37):
experience it myself. After all, Rob did describe it as
a perfect film. I paused the episode and that evening
rented the English dub. I was immediately taken by the
beautiful animation, the thoughtful story, and the compelling characters. It
was a truly moving work of art. Thank you for
creating a new experience for me. Keep up the fantastic work. Sincerely,
(15:59):
b z PS. As a land surveyor, I work with
boundary markers, both modern and historical. I think the topic
of boundary stones in history would make an excellent episode.
There are curses both petty and grand in nature, and
even the Old Testament wides in with Deuteronomy twenty seven seventeen. Yeah,
(16:20):
we actually have talked about boundary markers and boundary stones
from the ancient world in some episode we did years ago.
It might have been an episode of Invention, though, that's possible,
which was another podcast we did that. We eventually sort
of just folded the format of back into stuff to
blow your mind.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
But it's still out there if you want to check
out all the Invention episodes. The feed is still still alive.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
That's right. But anyway to come back to your the
curses about boundary markers from Deuteronomy twenty seven to seventeen.
This is in a section of Deuteronomy known as the
twelve curses. So you've got curses for a variety of offenses.
On one hand, you've got curses for anyone who lies
with an animal or lies with his mother in law.
But also you've got curses for anyone who leads the
(17:04):
blind to stray on the road, kills a neighbor in secret,
or a curse for anyone who mistreats a widow, an orphan,
or a stranger from another country. And then one of
the curses also shows heightened concern for the tampering with
land boundaries. It said curse would be anyone who moves
a neighbor's boundary marker. All the people shall say, amen.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Oh man, I almost moved a boundary marker this morning.
I need to know that the that you know that
the curses may be in play, But did you literally
did you you know how they do? Sometimes you know,
there's boundary markers in the legal sense, and then there's
like where the fences were built. And so sometimes when
like neighboring properties, they're measuring things out, they'll throw a
stake over on your side of the fence, or a
(17:48):
little bit of a you know, marker tape or whatever
will be on your side. And I was looking at
one of these and I was cutting back some weeds,
and it was like, should I give this a cut too?
And then I'm like that, I'll 's fine. So I
might have spared myself a curse there. Oh and as
far as Nausica goes, that's tremendous. I mean, if I
if we can help introduce folks to new movie experiences
(18:12):
like Nausica, then that's wonderful. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Yeah, I mean that one is well known and widely
known to be wonderful. So I don't know if it
needs our help as much as some of the movies
we talk about that are more more obscure gems, but
it is truly wonderful in every single way. So yeah, yeah,
if we can encourage people to see it, I will
always take that.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah. Yeah, push it up the to watch list a
little bit for some some listeners. That's that's what we
can do? All right? We have another one here. This
one comes to us from Chris. It goes as follows
Robert and Joe. I was prompted to write after listening
to The Vault episodes about childhood amnesia and watching Star
(18:54):
Trek Bicards season three DVD specials in Shorts this weekend,
especially actors actions to the recreation of the Enterprise d
Bridge set from Star Trek the Next Generation, and how
memory and emotion can be strongly associated with location. I
can easily remember the actual theaters I viewed seventeen of
your Weird House subjects, partially because in my much younger days,
(19:17):
going to a theater usually required at least some modicum
of thought and effort, even if only to ride my
bicycle into town. Of the seventeen Weird House films I
saw in a theater, they were often part of a
double feature including the usual newsreel and cartoon. However, I
have seen one way or another fifty two of the
Weird House films. Eight were on TV as a late
(19:39):
night feature or other regular local broadcast fair as well,
before rental, cable or PayTV availability like that, you youngsters
grew up with my family held onto a Zenith black
and white model very like this. There's a picture they attached,
maybe even the same until about nineteen sixty seven, when
(20:00):
it was relegated to us kids upstairs, where it finally died.
It was called a portable, but perhaps luggable would be
a better category.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
This huge, old bulky TV with like a brass handle
on top. I love that luggage.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, easily lugged around there. Keep this information in mind
when I finally send my novella length I mean short
list of suggestions for Weird House episodes with comments, you
will have no one to blame but yourselves. Naturally, it
will include the creation of the Humanoids, the film that
started my flood of emails Chris.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Thanks Chris, Well. I want to watch movies on a
TV like this now. I look at the screen looks
like it's I don't know, maybe like six inches and
diagonal and it's got I guess. I don't know if
these are like channel and volume knobs at the top,
but they look like how you attach a hose to
a spigot. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, this reminds me. I had a black and white
television in my room when I was a kid at
one point, and I think that was where I I
watched parts of Friday the Thirteenth movies on TV late
at night, black and white. We were living in the
country at the time, which always made Jason Voor He's
all the more terrifying for me because he is the
(21:13):
sort of of entity you could imagine just walking out
of the dark forest and accosting you.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
That's funny. Yeah, I remember having similar thoughts when I
was when I was younger and I was first experiencing
like the Friday the Thirteenth movies on USA or something,
and I think I had more bravado about the subject
matter of the movies in the daytime or at you know,
in more urban locations. But whenever we would get like
out in the woods or something, then I would start
(21:42):
kind of thinking about Jason and be like, oh, I'm
actually a little scared.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah. Yeah, the night changes things for sure. All Right,
we're gonna go ahead and close the mail bag now,
but we will be back. So again, keep those messages coming.
You have weird house cinema suggestions, since we talked about
a lot of those, send them in. You know, sometimes
these kind of build up and they help push a
selection up towards the top of our consideration list. Other
(22:07):
times you put films on our radar, they just weren't
there previously, so it's a great exercise and if nothing else,
we like chatting about the possibilities. And likewise, if you
have feedback on or suggestions for, past, current, and future
episodes of the core Stuff to Blow Your Mind episodes,
our short form episodes, or just in response to stuff
(22:29):
that you've heard us chat about in listener mail episodes,
write in. We would love to hear from you.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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 contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
more podcasts from iHeartRadio, 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 you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail.
This is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
And this is Joe McCormick. And it's Monday, the day
of each week that we read back messages from the
Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you have
never gotten in touch with the show before, but maybe
you've thought about it, maybe you've felt a little tingle
in your brain that maybe you should get in touch,
this is the time, This is the week you should
do it. Reach out at contact at stuff to Blow
(00:36):
your Mind dot com. All types of messages are fair game.
We of course, always appreciate feedback to recent episodes. If
you want to suggest a topic for the future for
a core episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, or
a movie for Weird House Cinema, or if you have
something interesting you would like to add to something we've
recently talked about on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
I do want to throw in though, give us a
little context if you If you're just sending like a
link or a video attachment, so yeah, that just just
get throwing a little text there. Just let us know
what this is and why it has been sent. Because
sometimes we have been trained to be a little suspicious
about some of these things, So just a little added
(01:17):
context in those cases would be great.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
That's a really good point, Rob. Yes, if there's like
text you'd like to include or something like that, it's
often better to just copy and paste into the email.
Then give us a link. We got to be cautious
about links.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah yeah, and uh yeah, And I think we've said
this before, but you know, write in and if you
if you want to share something and you don't want
it to go on listener mail, you don't want us
to feature it on the podcast, just state that, and
we're happy to honor that as well.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
All right, Well let's go ahead and dig into this
mail bag. Who wants to go first? You want to
grab one, Joe?
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Uh, let's see, Well, why don't you do this one
about dust or Matt?
Speaker 2 (01:51):
All right, Matt Wrights, Greetings science humans. I have to say,
last time I wrote in, I did not expect to
hear it read on air, and it was a wonderful experience.
So thanks for that. It has been a while and
I think I might write more frequently in the future.
Life is crazy and the show helps ground me. So
(02:13):
when you were asking for more writers in, I figure
it's the least I can do. I've been listening to
a lot a lot to the archive, but I always
get excited for new episodes. Weird House Cinema has given
me endless hours of joy. And though I used to
wrinkle my nose of the kind of movies you talk
about on there, I have discovered that I have a
deep well of love for them. And my girlfriend's family
(02:35):
all think I'm crazy for it.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
How's this coming up with your girlfriend's family? You like?
Have you seen Highlander two?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
Hey? You know? I mean, I think movies are often
a great place to go. It's better than talking about
the weather as long as that connection's there. So anyway,
Matt continues, anyway, I wrote in to talk about dust,
so here goes. I am a veteran of the US
Navy CEBE, which I'm very proud of. And if you
don't know anything about CBS, I suggest you look them up,
(03:05):
because we're pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
I did look them up. The CBS. That's the nickname
of the US Naval Construction Battalions. So CBS is spelled
like the ocean and like the hymenoptera. But CBS, I
think comes from the CBE for Construction Battalions, and in short,
they do engineering and construction for the Navy and the
Marine Corps.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
All right, Mac continues that they spent many months in
different deserts around the world. I was a mechanic when
I was in the Navy, so I had to deal
with dust destroying our equipment in a myriad of ways.
The most common problem I found was the air filter
getting clogged every morning before we let any of the vehicles.
Vehicles exit the yard, particularly in Iraq, we would use
(03:46):
pressurized air to blow the air filters out, and there
was at least a pocket full of sand dust in
each one every day. Now this is reminding me of
doctor Fhive's rises again that here right.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
Oh right, yeah, the sand flasting in the car.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
Matt continues. One thing I can offer up to you
folks that may help to answer some questions I heard
listeners asking in the Listener Mail episode is that dust
is everywhere all the time, so there doesn't need to
be a storm walking around kicks it up enough in
the air for it to clog air filters. In the Navy,
we called it moon dust, I think because it was
seemingly lighter than air, and when you stepped in it
(04:25):
it resulted in what looked like footprints on the moon.
The moondust caused a lot of issues, not just mechanical ones.
As you walk around in a desert, it is impossible
to see the texture of the terrain because the moon
dust coats it and looks so smooth. It is not
smooth most of the time. The problem is that the
dust doesn't build up under your foot as you walk,
it moves and piles around your foot. It covers up
(04:48):
rocks and bumps in the road, so you have to
be a lot more careful walking around. I definitely tripped
a number of times and sprawled out looking silly on
the ground at first, but overall I think this gave
me stronger ankles, so maybe it was worth looking like
a fool a few times.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
That sounds perilous.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Yeah, as far as driving in a sandstorm goes, this
is something I would advise against strongly. I only went
outside during a storm once in Iraq. It was terrifying
and extremely dangerous just to attempt to walk to the
galley chow hall, mess hall place to eat at. My
friend and I started walking to the galley, which was
about a fourth of a mile away from camp, and
(05:26):
as soon as we walked across the street into a
large sandy flat that covered the distance to the galley,
the wind, which was loaded with all sizes of grains
of sand, not just dust, just about knocked us over.
We walked on for a short time, pressing hard against
the wind. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a huge chunk of
the fuselage of a plane came bounding by, bouncing like
(05:48):
a tumbleweed. The only reason we could even see it
is because it was a foot in front of us,
which scared us both enough to look at each other
and say, to hell with the galley. I have snacks
in my room. At the same time, but wait, it's
not over yet. We turned around and headed back to camp,
only to arrive at the galley. This was slightly demoralizing,
(06:09):
and I'm sure we cursed a lot at this point,
but we eventually got back to camp. I never attempted
to go anywhere during a sandstorm again. I hope my
email is worth how long it is. Thank you so
much for all that you do.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Much love, Matt, Oh, thank you so much, Matt. Yeah,
these are exactly the kinds of experiences we love to
hear about in listener mail. It adds a lot of
text here to the stuff we talk about to hear
about personal experiences.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Absolutely, all right, what else do we have in the
old mail bag.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Year, let's see? Oh well, we got a response to
the first part in our series on meteorite iron, the
Iron from the Sky. So this is responding to a
part of the episode when we were talking about how
before the process of smelting iron from ore became widely
known and practiced, in the ancient world, iron was often
treated as a precious metal like gold or silver today,
(06:57):
but perhaps even more rare and valuable because most of
it had to be sourced from meteorites that fell from space.
And though it probably did not happen fast enough for
this scenario to actually occur, we imagined a scene where
somebody's clutching their incredibly scarce and valuable iron trinket, maybe
it's an iron dagger or an iron amulet or something. Meanwhile,
(07:21):
the local metalworkers are figuring out iron smelting, and iron
quite suddenly becomes very common and very cheap, sort of
the reverse Goldfinger scenario. So that's context for this message
from listener Joe. Joe says, your story of iron suddenly
(07:41):
losing value reminded me of the Twilight Zone classic with
which I imagine you're familiar, the Rip Van Winkle Caper.
So this is an episode of The Twilight Zone where
you got like a team of scientists they pull off
a massive gold heist from Fort Knox, and they believe
they can evade the law by taking their gold bricks
and then going into specially created suspended animation chambers that
(08:06):
are going to let them sleep for one hundred years.
So I think the idea is, you know, you come
out one hundred years later and start trying to trade
the gold. It's not going to arouse suspicion.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
I remember this episode. This is one I saw as
a kid on TV watching old episodes of The Twilight Zone,
and I still distinctly remember it because one of the
plot points is that when they wake up in the future, well,
one of the characters wakes up, but the other character,
like a rock has fallen from the ceiling and has
broken like the glass panel of the preservation chamber that
(08:39):
they were in, and so now there's just a skeleton
in there.
Speaker 3 (08:42):
Yeah, yeah, the disrupted hibernation. I think like three of
the four conspirators survive, but then they after they wake up,
there is much desperation and betrayal. I think they end
up stranded in the desert and they're like trying to
buy a drink of water off each other for thirty
pounds of gold for a sip or something. And then
here in the email, Joe goes on to quote some
(09:02):
dialogue from the twist ending of the episode. So you know,
one of the one of the dying conspirators is like
trying to buy water from someone in the desert for
these gold bars. And then the characters say, can you
imagine that he offered this to me as if it
was really worth something? You know, wasn't it worth something once? George?
I mean, didn't people use gold for money? Sure, about
(09:25):
one hundred years ago before they found a way of
manufacturing it.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It's a great twist. I love this one.
Speaker 3 (09:30):
Yeah, it totally is that kind of irony the Twilight
Zone twists are really known for. It's kind of gold
enough at last, right.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Yeah, yeah, oh man, some of the Yeah, when Twilight
Zone was at its best, like you just can't touch it.
I need to go back and watch some more episodes
of it that in the original Outer Limits. We were
just talking about that off mic the other day about
some episodes of the original Outer Limits good.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Stuff, the one where Donald Pleasance plays a professor who
invents a way of like telekinetically controlling events, but then
of course it spirals out of control. I think he
ends up subconsciously getting revenge on everyone who wronged him.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
All right, let's see what else do we have here?
Always have some more weird House specific email. We're already
in the basic vibe of weird house, but let's go
all the way in. This one comes to us from Albert,
(10:30):
subject line Dragon Slayer. Hi, Robert and Joe. I remember
watching the film in theaters in nineteen eighty one. It
was such an awesome experience, especially for someone who is
in the midst of playing advanced dungeons and dragons. Anyway,
if you can at all find it, the novelization of
Dragon Slayer was a great read. It went into a
(10:50):
lot more details into the background of all the characters.
For example, Ulrick dreams of the first dragon born of
his sorcerer's humorous paid in blood by the innocence, you
get the backstory to the dragon slaying spear crafted by
Valarian's father. I'm not one hundred percent sure about the film,
but in the novelization, the father crafted the dragon slaying
(11:12):
spear under the guidance of Ulrich many years ago. The
price of his hubris to craft such a mighty weapon
was the loss of his wife to the lottery, leaving
him with a baby girl. The romance between Galen and
Valerian is a little more developed, as Galen was not
imprisoned but was allowed to live in the village for weeks,
spending time with Valarian. There were other developments, so if
(11:36):
you get the chance, I highly recommend the novelization as
a companion to the film.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Many thanks, Albert, thanks for the recommendation. You know, we've
talked about movie novelizations a good bit on the show before,
and I can't remember if this specific thing came up,
but I was thinking about how I read a theory
somewhere that film novelizations really filled a niche before home
video existed, so you could if you could only see
(12:03):
a movie in a theater, maybe you really loved the
movie and then it wasn't playing anywhere near you anymore?
What do you do? Maybe in this case, you go
buy a novelization of the film, and this is your
only way to experience the film again is to sort
of read the movie.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah, yeah, And I think it's they can still serve
that purpose. There aren't as many of them as they
used as there used to be, but they still buzzt
out novelizations from time to time and all occasionally, I
haven't done this in a while, occasionally given and use one.
And yeah, I mean it costs cost a fair chunk
of change to go see a movie in the theater,
and if you don't have some sort of a theater
(12:42):
membership going on and the spare time to do it,
you might not be up for another two to three
hours in the theater to experience it again. And novelizations,
you know, often give you a chance to revisit it
the material, but with slight tweaks and changes, they can
be a lot of fun.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
I think we've also talked about before that the interesting task,
like the creative task of a writer of a film
novelization to sometimes fill in like paper over gaps, like
a movie might have plot holes that are never explained,
but the novelization provides an author with like these sort
of challenges, these clever, clever ways to come up to
(13:22):
get around to the plot holes or explain inconsistencies and
so forth.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, they can be great. I love
hearing about the ones I haven't read. And it seems
like a lot of people I talked to all have
that one favorite, you know that they distinctly remember, perhaps
reading as a kid. You know, when you're at times
your obsession can be just absolutely maximized over some movie
you've just seen, So like, yeah, I remember reading the
(13:48):
novelization of Tim Burton's Batman, among others, and you know,
they're they're often extra scenes and then also a little
insights sometimes into like what this film was looking like,
perhaps before final editing or you know, before everything was
fully shot and so forth. Now I know what some
of you are wondering, Well, who wrote the Dragon Slayer novelization?
(14:10):
And was it Alan Dean Foster who wrote so many
of them. Now I looked it up. It was a
writer by the name of Wayland Drew who of nineteen
thirty two through nineteen ninety eight, who I don't think
I've read anything by this individual. But some of the
other novelizations that they did include Corvette Summer, which came
up in Dragon Slayer Batteries Not Included, which is also
(14:31):
connected to the same filmmakers.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
And Willow. Okay. I did a quick check to see
if that was the same author as the novelization of
Halloween three Season of the Witch, but that's not. That
was Jack Martin. Okay.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And then you know, like most of these writers, they
also have original works and I have not read any
of these either, but this was a Canadian writer.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Okay. This next message comes from b Z. BZ says, Greetings,
Robin Joe. I have listened for years to your podcast
and greatly appreciate your well researched approach to the broad
range of topics you discuss. At the moment, I am
behind on my listening, but have thoroughly enjoyed getting caught up,
(15:16):
and just recently listened to your July twenty first, twenty
twenty three Weird House Cinema episode on nausicaa of the
Valley of the Wind. Normally I enjoy your breakdowns of
strange movies, but have maybe only seen one or two
of them. I felt a strange pull as you began
describing the art and the story of Nausica. I could
truly feel your love of the film and had to
(15:37):
experience it myself. After all, Rob did describe it as
a perfect film. I paused the episode and that evening
rented the English dub. I was immediately taken by the
beautiful animation, the thoughtful story, and the compelling characters. It
was a truly moving work of art. Thank you for
creating a new experience for me. Keep up the fantastic work. Sincerely,
(15:59):
b z PS. As a land surveyor, I work with
boundary markers, both modern and historical. I think the topic
of boundary stones in history would make an excellent episode.
There are curses both petty and grand in nature, and
even the Old Testament wides in with Deuteronomy twenty seven seventeen. Yeah,
(16:20):
we actually have talked about boundary markers and boundary stones
from the ancient world in some episode we did years ago.
It might have been an episode of Invention, though, that's possible,
which was another podcast we did that. We eventually sort
of just folded the format of back into stuff to
blow your mind.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
But it's still out there if you want to check
out all the Invention episodes. The feed is still still alive.
Speaker 3 (16:42):
That's right. But anyway to come back to your the
curses about boundary markers from Deuteronomy twenty seven to seventeen.
This is in a section of Deuteronomy known as the
twelve curses. So you've got curses for a variety of offenses.
On one hand, you've got curses for anyone who lies
with an animal or lies with his mother in law.
But also you've got curses for anyone who leads the
(17:04):
blind to stray on the road, kills a neighbor in secret,
or a curse for anyone who mistreats a widow, an orphan,
or a stranger from another country. And then one of
the curses also shows heightened concern for the tampering with
land boundaries. It said curse would be anyone who moves
a neighbor's boundary marker. All the people shall say, amen.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Oh man, I almost moved a boundary marker this morning.
I need to know that the that you know that
the curses may be in play, But did you literally
did you you know how they do? Sometimes you know,
there's boundary markers in the legal sense, and then there's
like where the fences were built. And so sometimes when
like neighboring properties, they're measuring things out, they'll throw a
stake over on your side of the fence, or a
(17:48):
little bit of a you know, marker tape or whatever
will be on your side. And I was looking at
one of these and I was cutting back some weeds,
and it was like, should I give this a cut too?
And then I'm like that, I'll 's fine. So I
might have spared myself a curse there. Oh and as
far as Nausica goes, that's tremendous. I mean, if I
if we can help introduce folks to new movie experiences
(18:12):
like Nausica, then that's wonderful. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Speaker 3 (18:17):
Yeah, I mean that one is well known and widely
known to be wonderful. So I don't know if it
needs our help as much as some of the movies
we talk about that are more more obscure gems, but
it is truly wonderful in every single way. So yeah, yeah,
if we can encourage people to see it, I will
always take that.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Yeah. Yeah, push it up the to watch list a
little bit for some some listeners. That's that's what we
can do? All right? We have another one here. This
one comes to us from Chris. It goes as follows
Robert and Joe. I was prompted to write after listening
to The Vault episodes about childhood amnesia and watching Star
(18:54):
Trek Bicards season three DVD specials in Shorts this weekend,
especially actors actions to the recreation of the Enterprise d
Bridge set from Star Trek the Next Generation, and how
memory and emotion can be strongly associated with location. I
can easily remember the actual theaters I viewed seventeen of
your Weird House subjects, partially because in my much younger days,
(19:17):
going to a theater usually required at least some modicum
of thought and effort, even if only to ride my
bicycle into town. Of the seventeen Weird House films I
saw in a theater, they were often part of a
double feature including the usual newsreel and cartoon. However, I
have seen one way or another fifty two of the
Weird House films. Eight were on TV as a late
(19:39):
night feature or other regular local broadcast fair as well,
before rental, cable or PayTV availability like that, you youngsters
grew up with my family held onto a Zenith black
and white model very like this. There's a picture they attached,
maybe even the same until about nineteen sixty seven, when
(20:00):
it was relegated to us kids upstairs, where it finally died.
It was called a portable, but perhaps luggable would be
a better category.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
This huge, old bulky TV with like a brass handle
on top. I love that luggage.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Yeah, easily lugged around there. Keep this information in mind
when I finally send my novella length I mean short
list of suggestions for Weird House episodes with comments, you
will have no one to blame but yourselves. Naturally, it
will include the creation of the Humanoids, the film that
started my flood of emails Chris.
Speaker 3 (20:33):
Thanks Chris, Well. I want to watch movies on a
TV like this now. I look at the screen looks
like it's I don't know, maybe like six inches and
diagonal and it's got I guess. I don't know if
these are like channel and volume knobs at the top,
but they look like how you attach a hose to
a spigot. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yeah, this reminds me. I had a black and white
television in my room when I was a kid at
one point, and I think that was where I I
watched parts of Friday the Thirteenth movies on TV late
at night, black and white. We were living in the
country at the time, which always made Jason Voor He's
all the more terrifying for me because he is the
(21:13):
sort of of entity you could imagine just walking out
of the dark forest and accosting you.
Speaker 3 (21:20):
That's funny. Yeah, I remember having similar thoughts when I
was when I was younger and I was first experiencing
like the Friday the Thirteenth movies on USA or something,
and I think I had more bravado about the subject
matter of the movies in the daytime or at you know,
in more urban locations. But whenever we would get like
out in the woods or something, then I would start
(21:42):
kind of thinking about Jason and be like, oh, I'm
actually a little scared.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Yeah. Yeah, the night changes things for sure. All Right,
we're gonna go ahead and close the mail bag now,
but we will be back. So again, keep those messages coming.
You have weird house cinema suggestions, since we talked about
a lot of those, send them in. You know, sometimes
these kind of build up and they help push a
selection up towards the top of our consideration list. Other
(22:07):
times you put films on our radar, they just weren't
there previously, so it's a great exercise and if nothing else,
we like chatting about the possibilities. And likewise, if you
have feedback on or suggestions for, past, current, and future
episodes of the core Stuff to Blow Your Mind episodes,
our short form episodes, or just in response to stuff
(22:29):
that you've heard us chat about in listener mail episodes,
write in. We would love to hear from you.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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 contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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