August 29, 2024 • 44 mins
Once more, it's time for a dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
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Episode Transcript
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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 Listener Mail.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. Now, Hey,
if you've been listening to the show for the past
few years but maybe tuned out over the past month
or so, you might not be aware that we've changed
up our format a little bit on listener Mail. For
a while, we had been doing it as a weekly
offering every Monday, but for the time being, we're trying
(00:35):
out a different schedule, which is more like what we
used to do going several years back. We used to
run listener Mail in a Tuesday Thursday slot every so often,
you know, whenever the mail bag would accumulate sufficiently, And
that's what we're doing for now. So we're bringing you
listener Mail today. We've got messages on all kinds of topics.
(00:56):
We've got stuff about warships, ramming, we've got stuff about
we've got stuff about ninjas, we've got stuff about horned lizards.
It's all over the place, and lots of responses to
the warriors, way more than we can get to, but
we'll do our best to give a somewhat representative sample.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Well where do we even begin to dive in here, Joe.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, let's see. I'm going to start things off with
this message from Ian about our series on Dust. All right,
Ian says, dear Robin, Joe, I was listening to the
fifth episode of your series on Dust, in which you
talk about dust storms and dust devils. In the discussion
(01:38):
of dust storms, you briefly mentioned plants abilities to prevent
such storms by securing the soil with their roots and
acting as wind breaks. I am from southern Kansas, where
we are very familiar with using plants as wind breaks.
When you drive through any rural area, you will see
about every quarter to half mile a straight line of
(01:59):
true planted between the wheat fields. Those were planted in
direct response to the dust Bowl and are still maintained
to this day. They were always just in the background
to me. I never thought about them until one time
we were driving to South Dakota to visit family and
I noticed somewhere around the Kansas Nebraska border the tree
(02:20):
lines disappeared. I don't know what cultural reasons underlie this difference,
whether they weren't hit as hard by the dust bowl
and never had them in the first place, or if
they used to have them but haven't maintained them. Whatever
the reason, it always stands out to me when we
drive through, how strange the landscape looks without the trees.
Dust devils are another thing we are very familiar with
(02:41):
around here. I've always associated them with mid morning in
the late summer or early fall. I never thought about
why until you described how they are formed. It makes
perfect sense now that around that time of day the
air is still somewhat cooler from overnight, but the sun
is starting to heat up the ground, creating the temperature
inversion you discussed. I've seen them most often unpaved surfaces
(03:05):
such as basketball courts or parking lots, especially gravel ones,
which must provide the smooth, open surface they require. The
ones we see are typically quite small, maybe twenty or
thirty feet high and five or so feet across, very wispy,
and extremely transient, often lasting only a couple of minutes.
Definitely not anything that could cause damage we have real
(03:27):
tornadoes for that. They are quite captivating, though they tend
to fade in and out of view as the amount
of dust they're carrying varies, and sometimes will seem to
almost stop rotating and fade away altogether before picking up
speed and strength again. Children especially find them in thralling,
as I did myself when I was a kid. Thanks
as always for your work, especially in highlighting the wonder
(03:49):
of seemingly mundane things. I never would have guessed dust
would be such a rich topic of discussion, but I'm
glad to have learned my mistake. Ian Well, thank you
so much and yeah, interesting email. I recall also seeing
dust Devil's form a little bit when I was a kid,
also on gravel or paved surfaces. That's exactly what I
(04:12):
associate them with them being unlike oh, I don't know,
like over the gravel and then edging onto the concrete
basketball court on the playground outside my elementary school.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, I too have definite memories of seeing them kick
up on little paved areas and so forth, you know,
parking lots sort of scenarios.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I'm also intrigued by the tree line mystery. I didn't
have time to look this up before we recorded today,
but I wonder if there was a if there is
an answer out there to this, Why the tree lines
between the Fields and Kansas but not Nebraska all right.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
This next one comes to us from Tim tim Rights
in on the horned lizards. Tim Wrights fellas, I only
have some heartfelt nostalgia to add to your blood spitting
lizard dropped today. I was born in Midland, which is
firmly in the Texas horny toad range. We moved from
(05:09):
Texas to the East Coast when I was almost five,
so catching, playing with and building little makeshift terrariums for
my legion of horny toads is still one of my
most vivid memories of my brief origins in Texas. They
were really pretty gentle little lizards and would quickly go
to sleep if you flipped them over and rub their belly.
It's good they had spikes because they were pretty easy
(05:29):
to catch, even for a four year old. They definitely
would spit blood at you if you surprised them, but
as these were the only lizards I'd ever known up
to this point, I was more surprised later to find
out that all lizards didn't bleed out of their eyes. Again,
maybe from the vantage of a four year old, I
just didn't notice, but I don't ever remember anything eating them.
(05:50):
All the dogs in the area learned real fast that
the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, so the thorns and
the blood must have done their job. Again, take everything
I say as veiled through the eyes of a child,
But forty years later, it was a real nostalgic run
for me today listening to this one.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Thanks Tim, Thank you, Tim. That's an interesting detail that
you said the dogs just left them alone. I wonder
if that is a product of past experience, like they
got the blood Jets one time, it tasted bad enough
that they just don't mess with them at all, or
or what. Yeah, by the way, did we end up
calling those episodes here come the blood Jets.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
I don't think we did, but I remember having that
Brian Eno reference in the notes at least. I can't
even remember if we specifically said it at one point
or another, but it's always in the background.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Whatever we actually used. I know at one point a
title I had somewhere in my head was like warm
blood squirting from the Lizard's eye, which sounds like a
Jallo movie. You know, they have those great titles that
are like a whole sentence or like a lot of words.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
We ended up using a variation of that blood squirting
from the lizard's eye. Okay, okay, so we did kind
of in focus sense of that your vice is a
lizard's eye and I am the blood or something.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, all right, we got another message about the Texas
horned lizards. This one is from Lindsay. Lindsay says, gentlemen,
longtime listener, thanks for the horny toad episode. US Texans
love our horny toads with personal memories from childhood. This
(07:24):
is a theme, isn't it. Yeah, Lindsay says, I know
that TCU. I think that's Texas Christian University mascot horned
frogs is one of the heavy researchers in their conservation.
We have several species throughout the Chiuawan Desert. I'm supporting
some local research on the mountain shorthorn in the Davis Mountains.
(07:45):
Keep doing what you're doing, right on, y'all.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Lindsay.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
PS, now here's a topic, SWITCHERU. I write this while
watching Highlander two, the Renegade version. You've picked the wrong version, Lindsay,
we go back in time and stop you.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
They don't make it easy, as we've discussed, to select
the correct version.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So yeah, but anyway, Lindsay says, and I ask myself,
what on earth does this have to do with the original,
and when does Clancy Brown show up? God to love
raw Hide from Buckaroo BONDSI, maybe it's not coming through,
but this email has a lot of line breaks in it,
so it reads kind of like a poem.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
I had to look up who Clancy Brown was in
Buckaroo BONSI. Unfortunately he is not one of the John's,
not one of the alien guys, John Smallberry's or whatever
he I guess works for Peter Weller.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I think, yeah, it's been a long time stin. I've
seen that one, but it has quite an ensemble cast.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yeah, but anyway, thank you, Lindsey. Clancy Brown never shows up,
You're never going to get to him, and Iland just
not in there. It's the sad facts.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
All right. Let's jump over to Ninja mail. This one
comes to us from Mike. Mike says, Hey, guys, been
loving the series on Ninja Just real quick note on
Snake Eyes and storm Shadow from Gi Joe and Larry
Hannah's long running Gi Joe comic series, Issue three oh
(09:17):
eight just came out a few weeks ago. Storm Shadow
isn't actually a villain. In his first appearances in the
comic Storm Shadow went undercover in Cobra to find out
who framed him for the murder of his Sinsey, the
hard Master, but he's mostly been part of the Gijoe
team since then. Ninja's have always been a big part
of the comic series. Towards the end of the Marvel run,
(09:38):
Hasbro went extra ninja crazy and started introducing a lot
of ninja characters, even turning longtime characters like Scarlett and
Stalker into ninjas. They even briefly put Snake Eye's name
on the cover bigger than Gi Joe and featured a
group called Ninja Force. And we have an image here
and yeah, it's like Gi Joe starring and then huge
(10:01):
banner Snake Eyes and Ninja Force. So it's like g
I Joe presents Snake Guys?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Now? Is this email a sort of semi correction to
us talking about a one of the Ninjas and Gi
Jo being good and the other being evil, And the
idea is actually they were both primarily good, because you know,
how can you have ninjas as the bad guys? When
you're a kid, you just you want the ninjas to
be on your team because you love them.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
They it seems like it ends up going this way.
In the comic books, this would have been what the nineties. Yeah,
so it does kind of back up what we were
talking about though. Yeah, the kids want the Ninjas to
be the good guys so much that even the bad
Ninjas are going to eventually cross over. It kind of
works that way anyway with any sort of cool villain.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Right, Yeah, they show up at first, they're acting kind
of mysterious and standoffish, but you know by the final
act they're going to be a standing right alongside the hero.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah. I have to I have to admit I didn't.
I never went too deep into the G I. Joe
lore because at some point I saw the GI Joe
movie that they put out. This would have been nineteen
eighty seven's G I. Joe The Movie, And this is
the one that had all sorts of like weird ideas
in it, where there's like a place in like a
(11:15):
place called Cobra Law and the Himalayas, and they are
all these like grotesque monsters. And I don't know, maybe
I just saw it too young of an age, because
on the surface, all this sounds weird. And great, right,
but it really like hit me the wrong way, and
I'm like, I don't really don't like where they're going
with this whole Gi Joe thing, and I kind of
I kind of phased out of the franchise at that point.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
I think, really leaning into the utopian spiritual themes of
the G I. Joe universe.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, and there was like a lot of like weird
body horror stuff in it. I don't know, I mean all,
you know, obviously all things that I definitely came around to,
but maybe I just wasn't ready for these ideas yet.
In my Gi Joe animated motion pictures.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
I don't know if this is the movie or if
it was just an episode of the two TV show,
but a G I. Joe cartoon that really sticks in
my mind from childhood was there. The the Joe's are
being attacked by a bunch of you know, bat evil
robots or something, and they're blasting them with their their
laser guns, and the laser guns are having no effect
on the robots. So one of the the Joe's, I
(12:18):
guess it's like a tough guy, I want to say,
Sergeant Slaughter, but I think that may have actually been
a wrestler and not a G I Joe.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
It was both Oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Okay, Sergeant's laughter or I don't know if that's really
who it was. This like tough sergeant character is like,
here's how we're going to defeat them. We're going to
use our bare hands, like the energy weapons no effect.
But they run in and they like rip the robots
apart with their hands and that works.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Nice. Yeah, I kind of forgot this sergeant Slaughter was
was part of the whole franchise there, at least for
a little bit, stands out in my mind. Maybe it
was only like a few cameos, but I just assume
he was just all G I Joe. I kind of
sometimes forget that he was also a human being as well.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
But anyway, back to the main theme. I do think
it's true that like the ninjas in Gi Joe have
got to be the absolute core, the bullseye of the
americanized pop culture ninja phenomenon. All right, I'm going to
move on to some other emails that connect one of
our historical show topics to some fictional media. So we
(13:25):
just did a series on the war galleys of the
ancient Mediterranean, especially the famous Trirem, which was used in
naval battles as a ramming weapon. In the ship to
ship combat, these ships would ram each other to try
to damage and immobilize each other in battle. And Rob
you ended up bringing up ramming between ships and a
(13:47):
science fiction context.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
What was the specific thing you were talking about was
a warhammer. I think in the third episode I brought
up warhammer, but earlier I just was kind of spitball
and I was thinking, well, hey, Star Trek has always
essentially been naval combat transferred into a space scenario, so
they had to have had some ramming speed going on
(14:09):
at some point. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Yeah, So we asked about that, and what do you know,
multiple listeners got in touch to tell us about Star Trek.
Who would have thought. So, this first message is from Jim,
subject line Star Trek Ramming. Jim says, you asked for it.
Here it is number one. In Star Trek First Contact,
(14:33):
the Federation is fighting a borg Cube. Wharf is in
command of the Defiant, a smaller ship from DS nine.
I guess Deep Space nine correct, and the Defiant takes
damage and Wharf declares ramming speed, but it never does
because the Enterprise comes to the rescue. But the fact
(14:53):
that he declared it means it's a thing.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Seems key that it would be like a Klingon thing, right,
kind of like your lastch effort. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Number two in Star Trek Nemesis Picard crashes the Enterprise
into a Romulan ship called the Scimitar, heavily damaging both ships.
This was not at warp speed, however. There was also
an example in Star Wars The Last Jedi. Oh yeah,
I remember this one spoiler for I don't know the movies,
(15:24):
like seven years old at this point, but you know,
a spoiler for pivotal plot moments. Laura Dern plays a
character named Vice Admiral Holdo. She rams a Rebel ship
into a Star Destroyer at hyperspeed, destroying both ships. Thanks
for all the great shows, Jim, and then I'm going
to quickly tack on another one here that we got
from Jim in New Jersey. So a totally different Jim
(15:46):
wrote in on the same subject, Robert, Joe, and JJ
you asked about whether ramming ships were ever used in
Star Trek. One story came to mind. It's from Star
Trek Voyager the year of Hell, which was a two
part episode. Captain Janeaway uses the Voyager as a ramming
vessel when all other options have been eliminated, and then
Jim attaches a clip to a video of this scene.
(16:10):
So I went and looked at it. I've never seen
any Star Trek Voyager really, so I don't know much
of what's going on, but it appears this is a
storyline in which the Starfleet ship is facing off against
an enemy played by kurtwood Smith Clarence Bodiker from RoboCop.
In this episode of Star Trek, he has some kind
of time manipulation device and can reset to an earlier
(16:34):
kind of save point anytime he loses.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
I think.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
So it seems like mutual destruction is somehow the only
way to break the loop and escape.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Well, I just watched a couple of like pizza commercials
on YouTube and then saw the ramming sequence, and I
am getting the sense that ramming in these various spaceship scenarios,
it is all or nothing. It's just a full speed,
mutually assured just struction and not the carefully calculated procedure
(17:05):
maneuver that we talked about with the tryrems. So it
would be neat to see that version of space combat.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
I guess a difference would be that the ships in
all of these scenes are not designed for ramming, whereas
the tryream is it is built with ramming in mind,
so it's constructed to be able to absorb the shock
and survive a ramming maneuver to damage the other ship
without taking critical damage itself. And generally space ships you
(17:34):
don't think they're not designed that way, but I suppose
you could make one like that.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, well, supposedly some of these ships in Warhammer. Again,
I never played Battlefleet Gothic or any of the sub
games that deal specifically with ship to ship combat, but
I may have to dig into it and see if
they're just doing an all or nothing ramming speed scenario
or if they are exploring something that is again a
little more nuanced and calculated, where you're kind of doing
(18:00):
a controlled nudge to rupture the hull. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Also, I feel like this is not the first time
we've gotten multiple different responses to Star Trek related questions
from different listeners named Jim, do the gyms all track?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Maybe? So? All right? This next one is more of
a general or related response. This one comes to us
from Lee Lee wrights in and says the following, Hello, Rob, Joe,
(18:39):
and JJ, just listen to the first episode regarding ancient ores.
Having spent summers on camp staff during high school and college,
one of the subjects I taught was rowing. What you
were saying about these types of rowing locks was correct.
Our boats had the open type, basically a U shaped
rest for the oars. They really don't facilitate keeping the
oars in the boat. This is never more evident than
(19:00):
during a class of ten or more twelve to sixteen
year old boy scouts, many of which whom have never
been in a boat. The technique of turning the blade
of the ore so that it is parallel to the
water surface is called feathering. Yes, it cuts wind resistance,
but it can also allow the blade to skim the
top of an errant wave in rough water. Pinlocks fix
(19:21):
the ore to the boat. Like you said, this could
provide an advantage to ancient seafares by not requiring a
multitude of spares should ores fall overboard. The trade off
might be some speed. Looking forward to the next episode, Sincerely.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
You know one thing we didn't get into.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Maybe you read about this in that book you were reading,
Rob but about whether spare ores would have been the
thing in the war galleys of the ancient Mediterranean, So
like if you're on a trirem and you drop your
ore into the ocean. In fact, I don't even even
know if that's possible. Maybe they were secured to the
boat in some way with a pin like Lee is
talking about. I don't know, But did they carry spares?
(20:00):
I know one of the techniques I read about in
addition to ramming the hull of the boat was to
sort of go against the side of the boat and
try to shear its oars off. So if that happened,
did you have spars on board to, you know, to
kind of quickly try to replace the ones you'd lost.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
This is a great question. I'm going to have to
bust out the ancient mariners and see if case gets
into it or not. But yeah, it seems like you
would run the risk if not losing them, because in theory,
you'd have a pretty crack team here that would not
lose their oars. This would not be the twelve to
sixteen year old boy scouts. I've never been in a boat,
but in a combat scenario. Certainly it seems like you, yeah,
(20:39):
you could get splintered oars, broken oars, and then what
are you going to do in order to restore your power?
Or is it one of those situations where again you're
getting into that calculus of not weighing the boat down
and you're just kind of going with all right, we
just need to make sure that it's as you know,
that everything is optimized as much as possible, and you're
(20:59):
gonna have to worry about splintered ores when and if
that occurs. All right.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
This next message is from yet another gem, the Gym's overfloweth.
This is subject line Rowboat mosh Pit. Listening to your
episodes on rowing and wanted to let you know that
I discovered that some of the audience for Viking metal
(21:25):
bands will often sit down on the ground and row
on mass and then Jim attaches several videos of this
taking place. I watched one of these. It's at a
concert of the melodic death metal band Amon m Arth.
I don't know if I'm saying that right, but they're
like a I think a Swedish melodic death metal band.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Okay, yeah, I'm not familiar with them.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
The name of the band is the name of Mount
Doom from Tolkien in like one of the languages of Tolkien.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah. I just pulled up some of these videos as well.
I was not familiar with this, but as someone who
often likes certain types of metal but has never ever
wanted to be in a mosh pit, I applaud this. Yes,
this is a far better situation for someone like me
like I would rather be in there pretending to row
a boat.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
I totally agree. Yeah, so you're pretending to be in
like a Viking galley instead of pretending to fight one another. Yeah.
But to describe for those who can't see it for themselves, yeah,
it's like, instead of a mash pit down on the
floor in front of the stage, it has just tons
of people lined up and they are pretending to row,
and they're they're chanting row on the beat of the
(22:35):
song as the band is playing. So yeah, again, much
better than a fighting mashpit in my opinion. But this
is really interesting to me because it's reverse engineering the
idea of using the steady beat of a piece of
music to time the power strokes on a war galley.
So here they are recreationally rowing on the beat to
(22:56):
enhance their enjoyment of music. And this makes me think
about how something we didn't much get into in the
episodes on these ancient oar ships was the idea of
using music or drums to synchronize the rowing of the crew.
In movies, these ships are often depicted with pounding drums.
You know, they've got somebody with this big, tempany looking
(23:17):
kind of drum just pounding up and down to keep
everybody in sync. But I decided to check and see
if that was truly the case, like, do we have
evidence that ships had these drums like this? And apparently
the answer is no, there is not much evidence for
the use of drums. In fact, I found some evidence
to the contrary. I was reading an article that had
(23:38):
some reporting on experiments carried out by the Trirem Trust.
To remember, Rob, you were talking about this in the episode.
These were the people who built the Olympius, the floating hypothesis.
Do you want to do a quick refresher on that.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah. Yeah. The basic idea here being that we don't
really know much for certain about the tryrems. We have,
you know, very scant physical evidence. We have descriptions in
ancient literature, but that's about it. So the idea was, well,
let's take what we know, let's build this floating hypothesis.
Let's try and build one based on the limited information,
(24:13):
and at least then we have a starting point and
we can test it out and then have these various
disagreements and considerations about how much this differs from a
possible reality.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Right, And so one of the cool things about this
ship again, we don't know that this is exactly how
the ancient trirems worked, but it seems probably pretty close.
And so they were able to run human experiments with it,
like to not just test the structure, but to test
how the operation of such a ship would work. And
so they experimented with different ways of using music or
(24:46):
sound to synchronize the crew. Now I read in this
article that they used like electronic loudspeakers to synchronize the
rowing strokes. But of course, you know, ancient Greek armies
and ancient Phoenician armies and stuff would not have or
navy excuse me, navies would not have had electronic speakers,
of course, So like, how did they synchronize everyone? And
(25:09):
the trials that they conducted found that drums as well
as singing and read pipes were all ineffective. They did
not really work to synchronize the crew, And strangely, the
type of musical organization they found that worked the best
was communal humming. Humming was the best way. Humming by
(25:31):
the whole crew, everybody humming together was the best way
to synchronize rowers without modern technology, and it improved ship
velocity by more than ten percent.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
That's interesting. I mean, I guess the thing about humming
is pretty much everybody can do it. I guess I
say that with the confidence of someone who's not researched it.
There may be people who cannot hum, but I don't know.
It makes a lot of sense to me. And of
course you don't need to drag some drums or any
additional even so much as a reed flute aboard the vessel.
(26:04):
At that point, it's the internal instrumentation. And I mean,
and again it ties directly into the human engine powering
the thing.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
But to come back on the other side, in this article,
they quote a scholar who we talked about in The
Warship's episode named Boris Rankov, who is a classic scholar
and was involved in the creation and also works as
like a rower he's like a trained oarsman, but worked
on the Trireme Trust and Rankov says, humming worked really
(26:35):
well in the experiments, but there's no literary record of
that actually happening in history, so this is not something
we're told that the ancient Greeks ever did. Fascinating to
think about, though, like why humming as a group would
work better than a drum beat a or you know,
general singing or music.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Interesting. Yeah, I wonder if if we get there's an
episode in that, you know, we could come back and
do episode on humming. I think we did one on whistling.
Yeah we did.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yeah, Yeah, where we talked about like whistle languages and stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah, bookmarkt for later. Yeah, all right, let's see. Here's
the here's another one dealing with our episodes on burning hair.
This one comes from John. John says, Hello, Robert, Joe,
and JJ. I have a couple of childhood memories that
I thought might be worth sharing. First, regarding aliens, Note
(27:28):
this was a long time ago, in any part of
this memory could be flawed. I remember, as an adolescent
reading a comic about alien xenomorph exterminators and presumably these
are these are human exterminators, by the way, who infiltrated
and destroyed it there the Xenomorph's colonies. As I understood it,
aliens only responded to a specific scent that humans released
(27:50):
when they are afraid. So the characters in the comic
book took a drug that completely numbed their ability to
experience fear and could then flamethrow their way through the
alien colony with essential no resistance. Once they'd been on
the job for a while, they stopped taking the drug
because they didn't feel any fear anymore even without it.
I always thought it was a cool and extreme version
of fake it till you make it. Doesn't sound cannon,
(28:12):
but I enjoyed the idea of it. Wow.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Interesting that there's just like so much secondary expanded alien
universe lore that I have no idea of, and I
feel like I'm like an alien super fan, but I
only really know like the Core movies.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah, yeah, there's tons of it in the comic books,
various novelizations. I was recently kind of getting up to
speed on some of the recent novels that have come out,
and some of them are pretty well regarded, so I
don't know, I have to dig deeper. If anyone out
there has a favorite write in, I'd love to hear
from you. But yeah, I also agree that this may
(28:47):
not be canon, but it's an interesting concept, like the
sort of concept that you could imagine working outside of
the Alien franchise. You know, is sort of an analysis
of fear.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Well, it kind of reminds me of something that shows
up in like some vampire movies, where like the vampire
repellent properties of a cross are only effective if the
person wielding it has faith or something. Yeah, I know
it's like that in Fright Night, but I think it's
like that in some other media as well.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
All right, anyway, he continues here. Secondly, regarding burning hair,
I have a memory of returning to a family friend
gathering after going outside to light the grill and being
accused of having put on mascaro while I was out.
Turns out I had sinned my eyelashes, leading them to
look really thick. I seem to recall whenever I saw
hair burn, it always left a bulb on the end
(29:35):
of the hair. Anyway, you know how they say you
shouldn't use gasoline to light a grill. Uh huh, Well
you really shouldn't use gasoline to relight a grill that's
still pretty hot. I'm pretty sure that using gasoline was
fairly common practice in my household. Who but I don't
think i'd ever tried it in a re lighting scenario.
I poured the gas on and nothing happened. So I
(29:56):
lit a match and whoosh, the fumes lit up ediately
from a good distance away. Lesson learned. Thanks for the
insightful and thought provoking podcasts as always, Hi, Renata, yours John.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Oh yeah, this listener John has gives a shout out
to another friend who's a listener, Renata, who also writes.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
In a lot Well, definitely, yeah. Take John's advice here,
and please do not use gasoline to start your fires.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
In fact, I don't even for less danger related reasons.
I don't even recommend using lighter fluid as a great
way to start a grill. The chimney starters are great
if you're doing a charcoal grill. They work fantastic. It's
the best way to go.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I agree. I don't do a lot of charcoal grilling,
but when I do, I use the tower and it
works and it's fast and he can depend on it.
So no flammable liquids are required. Yeah, I mean you
got to be safe with those two obviously, but we.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Think anything that's on fire, yeah, but limit your dangers well.
To clarify apart from safety considerations, I would also just
say that in my experience, I feel like lighter fluid
can sometimes kind of impart some unpleasant aromas.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
To the food.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
But yeah, Jimny starter a little bit of newspaper in
the bottom.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
You're golden. Can you dig it? Can you dig it?
Can you dig it? Can you dig it? Can you
dig it?
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Okay, we do have a lot of messages still to
get to, but Carney, our mailbot is over here, just
repeatedly asking in a digitized voice whether or not we
can dig it, And so I think we are being
asked to proceed to the Warriors' responses. All right, all right,
This first message is from Maxim. Maxim says, Hello, Robert
(31:41):
and Joe. First of all, thank you for all the
excellent content and all your shows in various forms. I
only casually tune into Weird House as I am only
a mild cinophile, But when you're doing The Warriors, I
am down like Charlie Brown during your most recent Weird
House episode about The Warriors, you made a statement about
how the film seems to take place in a slightly
(32:01):
alternate world, a not quite New York, New York. I
think you missed an interesting comparison John Wick.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Ah, I didn't think about this, and I've only seen
the first John Wick movie.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Oh same here. I've also only seen the first one,
so I from what I understand, I think the lore
gets more complex as it goes on. Okay, anyway, Maxim continues,
Not only is John Wick four an obvious homage to
The Warriors, with everything from a DJ calling out the
local Paris gangs to attack Wick too the final duel
(32:37):
at Sunrise, but I also think that an argument could
be made that both films exist in the same grungy universe.
If we accept that both John Wick and The Warriors
happened in the same universe, then The Warriors is not
just an excellent cult classic, it is cemented as a
John Wick prequel. Was Cyrus trying to join the High Table?
(32:59):
I don't know what that is. I assume that's a
John Wick thing where the Gangs of New York looking
to elevate their service. Was this the origin of the
League of assassins that exist in john Wick. Was john
Wick one of the orphans? Or if we really want
to get crazy, is john Wick the love child of
Swan and Mercy. This is the crossover experience we need,
(33:20):
far more than any DC Marvel multiverse shenanigans. Just wanted
to share my thoughts and see what you thought about
this potentially better than Marvel ip crossover. Also, are there
any other films you think might fit into this shared
universe theory? Ooh, thanks Maxim. I wish I could comment
on this more having more john Wick knowledge, but I
(33:42):
just haven't made it to the rest of those movies yet.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, saying I only saw the first one,
he Avenged his Dog, and I thought it was over,
but I guess there was more story to tell there.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
I've been assured that nothing bad happens to a dog
in the other movies, because that was kind of hard
for me to get past than the first one.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I guess having not seen the
other john Wick movies, I'm also reminded of some other
movies that I haven't seen any of, and that being
the Purge movies. On the surface, Again, as someone who
has not watched them. It seems like the Purge shares
like some similarities with the Warriors universe in the sense that,
(34:22):
I don't know, you have a like a slightly alternate
reality affecting the way a lot of street level crime
is going down. I don't know. I was thinking about
that because I did just watch the new twenty twenty
four movie Jackpot that has Aquafina and John Cena in it,
which I thought was an amusing viewing, you know, pretty
(34:43):
fun movie, but gets into some of those ideas, like,
you know, those sort of what if scenarios that end
up having defining what the street level violence looks like.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
I think the fact about the Warriors universe that would
be most important to fit with another universe is the
fact that the Bangs each wear costumes. That's like the
core difference is that this is a world where it's
just normal to have a gang dressed up as mimes
and a gang dressed up as baseball players. That's like,
(35:13):
that's a particular kind of alternate universe, not totally implausible
in reality, it's just not our reality. So what does
that fit with I'm not exactly sure, but it's close.
Oh and just one more thing to add on to
a maxim's email. Here Marcus wrote in with overlapping subject
matter to say John Wick four pays homage to the Warriors,
(35:37):
with the radio DJ using the same message, showing only
the tight shot of the mouth and says, obviously it's
not like Lynn Thigpen as she's no longer with us,
but this this DJ is announcing the increasing award on
the on the hit for John Wick throughout the movie.
So it sounds like this is an open, conscious play
(35:58):
on the Warriors, not just slightly similar.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Interesting, all right, there's another one. This comes to us
from Andrew. Andrew writes and it says, Hi, Robert, Joe
and JJ has always great work. While I like to
enjoy your core episodes on my commute, tuning into Weird
House Cinema has become my favorite part of Friday Night,
your recent discussion of The Warriors struck an interesting chord
(36:23):
for me. You briefly mentioned the two thousand and five
video game adaptation, but didn't spend much time on it.
That makes sense for a movie podcast, but it's worth
noting that the game was very well received in its
time and has been subsequently re released on newer consoles
over the years. While the film is rightfully considered a
cult classic, I suspect most people my age are younger
who are familiar with the Warriors came to it through
(36:43):
the game instead, And this makes sense. I think we
mentioned it was like a Rockstar Games release, so you know,
we've seen a lot of older film franchises re explored
through video games, but this would have been a rock
Star game. This would have been a big and I
was just kind of out of gaming, I think at
that time, and not really plugged into what was happening.
(37:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
We were just chatting about it in the episode, and
it struck me as kind of strange in the moment
that they would adapt a game from a movie that
was like twenty five or thirty years old and not
like a recent release. That just seemed like a weird
thing to me. But then the more I thought about it,
I was like, oh, I guess that's not all that unusual.
In fact, one of my favorite movies and favorite video
(37:27):
games has been like that. Alien Isolation is like a
recent console, a recent generation video game adaptation, not adaptation
of the first Alien movie, but it's basically a game
sequel to the original Alien from seventy nine.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Yeah, and then I believe they did have DLC for
it where they brought back I think pretty much all
the living cast from the first Alien movie to do voices,
and you had like the you know in Nostromo scenario
to play out. I never actually played it. I guess
I've got it on the system there. I should fire
it up, But I only played through the core game.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
I know what you're talking about. From what I recall.
That was not like a like a full game length,
story driven kind of thing. It was more kind of
like a little mini mini game or something.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Well even better, I'd have less time these days of
light times, so if it's short, I'm in all right anyway.
This lister Mail continues talking about the Warriors video game
adaptation from two thousand and five. Plot Wise, it starts
earlier than the film, but catches up about halfway through.
From there, it's essentially a playable version of the movie,
hitting the same story beats and taking the player through
(38:32):
the same set pieces. Having watched the movie sometime after
playing through it, it's easy to see how naturally the
game evolved from the film, which was on some level
just a string of combat encounters. You also mentioned the
need for more movies with uniform street gangs, and it
made me think of one of my favorites, twenty tens
Boon Raku. Like The Warriors, it features a few bands
of well coordinated Ruffians and an escalating series of fights. Stylistically,
(38:56):
it feels alternatingly like a stage play, a comic book,
and a video game, but it all hangs together pretty well.
It's also got a pretty stack cast, including Woody Harrelson,
Demi Moore, Josh hartnett, Ron Peerlman, and the absolutely incomparable
vocal talent of Mike Patton. I wouldn't say it's a
great movie, but it is deeply, delightfully weird. I recommend it.
(39:18):
Thanks as always for all your hard work, Andrew.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
You know I looked up a few screenshots from this movie,
and a couple of them kind of reminded me of
another movie from years ago now that I enjoyed, which
was Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, which does have some
vaguely uniformed gangs in it. I think we only ever
see two, and one of them we only see at
the very beginning of the movie. So primarily there's only
(39:42):
one gang in the film, but it struck me as
the kind of universe where I don't know, if they
were to make more Kung Fu Hustle movies, there would
be there could be more gangs that had weird uniforms,
like a gang of mimes would fit in in that world. Okay,
I'm gonna round things off with a part of an
email from our listener, Jeff. This is a great email,
(40:04):
but it's very long, gets into a lot of different
stuff from different episodes, So I'm just gonna mention a
couple of things from the beginning of it. Jeff says, Hey, guys,
when I was listening to Joe explain that the distinct
smell of burning hair is caused by sulfur, my first
(40:25):
thought was, I'm made of sulfur. What the heck am
I eating that's full of sulfur. I didn't recall ever
seeing a sports drink advertised now with more sulfur, or
being told to eat a banana because it's full of
healthy sulfur. But then I thought about the smell of
rotting eggs and asparagus pa and quickly realized I must
be consuming sulfur. Every Day, thanks to the listener for
(40:48):
explaining the connection to amino acids. This is a reference
to a previous Listener Mail episode in which our correspondent
Ahmed got into the sulfur bonds that can be found
in the amino acid cysteine, and that the breaking of
these bonds is responsible for these sulfur smells that are
released when you burn certain types of proteins and things
(41:10):
like that. But anyway, Jeff also says, regarding pop culture
representations of Ninja's I wanted to call attention to the
nineteen eighty eight arcade Beat Them Up game Bad Dudes
Versus Dragon Ninja. It's got a self aware amusing eighty's motif,
and to the extent that there was a plot. The
(41:31):
game explains quote this is in all caps. By the way,
rampant ninja related crimes these days. White House is not
the exception. Once you start the game, it asks President
Ronnie has been kidnapped by the ninjas. Are you a
bad enough dude to rescue Ronnie? And then after that,
(41:51):
Jeff says, you just start hitting and kicking everything that moves.
I remember this, though I remember the words differently. I
believe you that you're correct to Jeff. I remember it
as like, are you a bad enough dude to rescue
the President?
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Wow? I don't remember this one at all.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah, I wonder if there were different versions it was
there one that was specifically Ronnie and another one that's like,
let's not name drop him, let's just call it the President.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
And also at the end of Jeff's email, there's a
digression about the theme music to Mortal Kombat, which we
talked about extensively in the Weird House Cinema episode on
the movie from the nineties, and Jeff says the Mortal
Kombat theme was one of his go to albums for
doom slash quake land parties. I guess this would be
in the nineties. I can only imagine the vibes. It
(42:43):
sounds like Mountain dew and Dorito's.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
All part of a balanced diet. But thank you so much, Jeff.
All Right, well, we're going to go ahead and close
up the mail bag here today. Thank you Carney the
mail Bot for helping us with this. Hall We'll be
back in the future. For the time being, we're going
to continue with this schedule. Kind of gives us a
little breather. In between some of our multi episode series
(43:08):
a chance to catch up in that regard and then
also allow the mail bag to accumulate. So in the meantime,
feel free to write in though if you hear a
new episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind or Weird
House Cinema that you have thoughts on you want to
provide some feedback right in, We'll read it and we
might just include it on a future episode of listener mail.
(43:30):
And yeah, and if you have ideas about what future
episodes of our core episodes you should consist of you
have topic suggestions, write in those are fair game as well.
And hey, if you have thoughts in an old episode
right in as well. We would love to hear from you.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
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 (44:06):
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, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind Listener Mail.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. Now, Hey,
if you've been listening to the show for the past
few years but maybe tuned out over the past month
or so, you might not be aware that we've changed
up our format a little bit on listener Mail. For
a while, we had been doing it as a weekly
offering every Monday, but for the time being, we're trying
(00:35):
out a different schedule, which is more like what we
used to do going several years back. We used to
run listener Mail in a Tuesday Thursday slot every so often,
you know, whenever the mail bag would accumulate sufficiently, And
that's what we're doing for now. So we're bringing you
listener Mail today. We've got messages on all kinds of topics.
(00:56):
We've got stuff about warships, ramming, we've got stuff about
we've got stuff about ninjas, we've got stuff about horned lizards.
It's all over the place, and lots of responses to
the warriors, way more than we can get to, but
we'll do our best to give a somewhat representative sample.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
Well where do we even begin to dive in here, Joe.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
Well, let's see. I'm going to start things off with
this message from Ian about our series on Dust. All right,
Ian says, dear Robin, Joe, I was listening to the
fifth episode of your series on Dust, in which you
talk about dust storms and dust devils. In the discussion
(01:38):
of dust storms, you briefly mentioned plants abilities to prevent
such storms by securing the soil with their roots and
acting as wind breaks. I am from southern Kansas, where
we are very familiar with using plants as wind breaks.
When you drive through any rural area, you will see
about every quarter to half mile a straight line of
(01:59):
true planted between the wheat fields. Those were planted in
direct response to the dust Bowl and are still maintained
to this day. They were always just in the background
to me. I never thought about them until one time
we were driving to South Dakota to visit family and
I noticed somewhere around the Kansas Nebraska border the tree
(02:20):
lines disappeared. I don't know what cultural reasons underlie this difference,
whether they weren't hit as hard by the dust bowl
and never had them in the first place, or if
they used to have them but haven't maintained them. Whatever
the reason, it always stands out to me when we
drive through, how strange the landscape looks without the trees.
Dust devils are another thing we are very familiar with
(02:41):
around here. I've always associated them with mid morning in
the late summer or early fall. I never thought about
why until you described how they are formed. It makes
perfect sense now that around that time of day the
air is still somewhat cooler from overnight, but the sun
is starting to heat up the ground, creating the temperature
inversion you discussed. I've seen them most often unpaved surfaces
(03:05):
such as basketball courts or parking lots, especially gravel ones,
which must provide the smooth, open surface they require. The
ones we see are typically quite small, maybe twenty or
thirty feet high and five or so feet across, very wispy,
and extremely transient, often lasting only a couple of minutes.
Definitely not anything that could cause damage we have real
(03:27):
tornadoes for that. They are quite captivating, though they tend
to fade in and out of view as the amount
of dust they're carrying varies, and sometimes will seem to
almost stop rotating and fade away altogether before picking up
speed and strength again. Children especially find them in thralling,
as I did myself when I was a kid. Thanks
as always for your work, especially in highlighting the wonder
(03:49):
of seemingly mundane things. I never would have guessed dust
would be such a rich topic of discussion, but I'm
glad to have learned my mistake. Ian Well, thank you
so much and yeah, interesting email. I recall also seeing
dust Devil's form a little bit when I was a kid,
also on gravel or paved surfaces. That's exactly what I
(04:12):
associate them with them being unlike oh, I don't know,
like over the gravel and then edging onto the concrete
basketball court on the playground outside my elementary school.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, I too have definite memories of seeing them kick
up on little paved areas and so forth, you know,
parking lots sort of scenarios.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
I'm also intrigued by the tree line mystery. I didn't
have time to look this up before we recorded today,
but I wonder if there was a if there is
an answer out there to this, Why the tree lines
between the Fields and Kansas but not Nebraska all right.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
This next one comes to us from Tim tim Rights
in on the horned lizards. Tim Wrights fellas, I only
have some heartfelt nostalgia to add to your blood spitting
lizard dropped today. I was born in Midland, which is
firmly in the Texas horny toad range. We moved from
(05:09):
Texas to the East Coast when I was almost five,
so catching, playing with and building little makeshift terrariums for
my legion of horny toads is still one of my
most vivid memories of my brief origins in Texas. They
were really pretty gentle little lizards and would quickly go
to sleep if you flipped them over and rub their belly.
It's good they had spikes because they were pretty easy
(05:29):
to catch, even for a four year old. They definitely
would spit blood at you if you surprised them, but
as these were the only lizards I'd ever known up
to this point, I was more surprised later to find
out that all lizards didn't bleed out of their eyes. Again,
maybe from the vantage of a four year old, I
just didn't notice, but I don't ever remember anything eating them.
(05:50):
All the dogs in the area learned real fast that
the juice wasn't worth the squeeze, so the thorns and
the blood must have done their job. Again, take everything
I say as veiled through the eyes of a child,
But forty years later, it was a real nostalgic run
for me today listening to this one.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Thanks Tim, Thank you, Tim. That's an interesting detail that
you said the dogs just left them alone. I wonder
if that is a product of past experience, like they
got the blood Jets one time, it tasted bad enough
that they just don't mess with them at all, or
or what. Yeah, by the way, did we end up
calling those episodes here come the blood Jets.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
I don't think we did, but I remember having that
Brian Eno reference in the notes at least. I can't
even remember if we specifically said it at one point
or another, but it's always in the background.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Whatever we actually used. I know at one point a
title I had somewhere in my head was like warm
blood squirting from the Lizard's eye, which sounds like a
Jallo movie. You know, they have those great titles that
are like a whole sentence or like a lot of words.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
We ended up using a variation of that blood squirting
from the lizard's eye. Okay, okay, so we did kind
of in focus sense of that your vice is a
lizard's eye and I am the blood or something.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
Yeah, all right, we got another message about the Texas
horned lizards. This one is from Lindsay. Lindsay says, gentlemen,
longtime listener, thanks for the horny toad episode. US Texans
love our horny toads with personal memories from childhood. This
(07:24):
is a theme, isn't it. Yeah, Lindsay says, I know
that TCU. I think that's Texas Christian University mascot horned
frogs is one of the heavy researchers in their conservation.
We have several species throughout the Chiuawan Desert. I'm supporting
some local research on the mountain shorthorn in the Davis Mountains.
(07:45):
Keep doing what you're doing, right on, y'all.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Lindsay.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
PS, now here's a topic, SWITCHERU. I write this while
watching Highlander two, the Renegade version. You've picked the wrong version, Lindsay,
we go back in time and stop you.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
They don't make it easy, as we've discussed, to select
the correct version.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So yeah, but anyway, Lindsay says, and I ask myself,
what on earth does this have to do with the original,
and when does Clancy Brown show up? God to love
raw Hide from Buckaroo BONDSI, maybe it's not coming through,
but this email has a lot of line breaks in it,
so it reads kind of like a poem.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Nice.
Speaker 3 (08:28):
I had to look up who Clancy Brown was in
Buckaroo BONSI. Unfortunately he is not one of the John's,
not one of the alien guys, John Smallberry's or whatever
he I guess works for Peter Weller.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I think, yeah, it's been a long time stin. I've
seen that one, but it has quite an ensemble cast.
Speaker 3 (08:46):
Yeah, but anyway, thank you, Lindsey. Clancy Brown never shows up,
You're never going to get to him, and Iland just
not in there. It's the sad facts.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
All right. Let's jump over to Ninja mail. This one
comes to us from Mike. Mike says, Hey, guys, been
loving the series on Ninja Just real quick note on
Snake Eyes and storm Shadow from Gi Joe and Larry
Hannah's long running Gi Joe comic series, Issue three oh
(09:17):
eight just came out a few weeks ago. Storm Shadow
isn't actually a villain. In his first appearances in the
comic Storm Shadow went undercover in Cobra to find out
who framed him for the murder of his Sinsey, the
hard Master, but he's mostly been part of the Gijoe
team since then. Ninja's have always been a big part
of the comic series. Towards the end of the Marvel run,
(09:38):
Hasbro went extra ninja crazy and started introducing a lot
of ninja characters, even turning longtime characters like Scarlett and
Stalker into ninjas. They even briefly put Snake Eye's name
on the cover bigger than Gi Joe and featured a
group called Ninja Force. And we have an image here
and yeah, it's like Gi Joe starring and then huge
(10:01):
banner Snake Eyes and Ninja Force. So it's like g
I Joe presents Snake Guys?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Now? Is this email a sort of semi correction to
us talking about a one of the Ninjas and Gi
Jo being good and the other being evil, And the
idea is actually they were both primarily good, because you know,
how can you have ninjas as the bad guys? When
you're a kid, you just you want the ninjas to
be on your team because you love them.
Speaker 2 (10:25):
They it seems like it ends up going this way.
In the comic books, this would have been what the nineties. Yeah,
so it does kind of back up what we were
talking about though. Yeah, the kids want the Ninjas to
be the good guys so much that even the bad
Ninjas are going to eventually cross over. It kind of
works that way anyway with any sort of cool villain.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Right, Yeah, they show up at first, they're acting kind
of mysterious and standoffish, but you know by the final
act they're going to be a standing right alongside the hero.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
Yeah. I have to I have to admit I didn't.
I never went too deep into the G I. Joe
lore because at some point I saw the GI Joe
movie that they put out. This would have been nineteen
eighty seven's G I. Joe The Movie, And this is
the one that had all sorts of like weird ideas
in it, where there's like a place in like a
(11:15):
place called Cobra Law and the Himalayas, and they are
all these like grotesque monsters. And I don't know, maybe
I just saw it too young of an age, because
on the surface, all this sounds weird. And great, right,
but it really like hit me the wrong way, and
I'm like, I don't really don't like where they're going
with this whole Gi Joe thing, and I kind of
I kind of phased out of the franchise at that point.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
I think, really leaning into the utopian spiritual themes of
the G I. Joe universe.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah, and there was like a lot of like weird
body horror stuff in it. I don't know, I mean all,
you know, obviously all things that I definitely came around to,
but maybe I just wasn't ready for these ideas yet.
In my Gi Joe animated motion pictures.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
I don't know if this is the movie or if
it was just an episode of the two TV show,
but a G I. Joe cartoon that really sticks in
my mind from childhood was there. The the Joe's are
being attacked by a bunch of you know, bat evil
robots or something, and they're blasting them with their their
laser guns, and the laser guns are having no effect
on the robots. So one of the the Joe's, I
(12:18):
guess it's like a tough guy, I want to say,
Sergeant Slaughter, but I think that may have actually been
a wrestler and not a G I Joe.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
It was both Oh okay, yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:27):
Okay, Sergeant's laughter or I don't know if that's really
who it was. This like tough sergeant character is like,
here's how we're going to defeat them. We're going to
use our bare hands, like the energy weapons no effect.
But they run in and they like rip the robots
apart with their hands and that works.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Nice. Yeah, I kind of forgot this sergeant Slaughter was
was part of the whole franchise there, at least for
a little bit, stands out in my mind. Maybe it
was only like a few cameos, but I just assume
he was just all G I Joe. I kind of
sometimes forget that he was also a human being as well.
Speaker 3 (13:03):
But anyway, back to the main theme. I do think
it's true that like the ninjas in Gi Joe have
got to be the absolute core, the bullseye of the
americanized pop culture ninja phenomenon. All right, I'm going to
move on to some other emails that connect one of
our historical show topics to some fictional media. So we
(13:25):
just did a series on the war galleys of the
ancient Mediterranean, especially the famous Trirem, which was used in
naval battles as a ramming weapon. In the ship to
ship combat, these ships would ram each other to try
to damage and immobilize each other in battle. And Rob
you ended up bringing up ramming between ships and a
(13:47):
science fiction context.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
What was the specific thing you were talking about was
a warhammer. I think in the third episode I brought
up warhammer, but earlier I just was kind of spitball
and I was thinking, well, hey, Star Trek has always
essentially been naval combat transferred into a space scenario, so
they had to have had some ramming speed going on
(14:09):
at some point. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:11):
Yeah, So we asked about that, and what do you know,
multiple listeners got in touch to tell us about Star Trek.
Who would have thought. So, this first message is from Jim,
subject line Star Trek Ramming. Jim says, you asked for it.
Here it is number one. In Star Trek First Contact,
(14:33):
the Federation is fighting a borg Cube. Wharf is in
command of the Defiant, a smaller ship from DS nine.
I guess Deep Space nine correct, and the Defiant takes
damage and Wharf declares ramming speed, but it never does
because the Enterprise comes to the rescue. But the fact
(14:53):
that he declared it means it's a thing.
Speaker 2 (14:56):
Seems key that it would be like a Klingon thing, right,
kind of like your lastch effort. Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Number two in Star Trek Nemesis Picard crashes the Enterprise
into a Romulan ship called the Scimitar, heavily damaging both ships.
This was not at warp speed, however. There was also
an example in Star Wars The Last Jedi. Oh yeah,
I remember this one spoiler for I don't know the movies,
(15:24):
like seven years old at this point, but you know,
a spoiler for pivotal plot moments. Laura Dern plays a
character named Vice Admiral Holdo. She rams a Rebel ship
into a Star Destroyer at hyperspeed, destroying both ships. Thanks
for all the great shows, Jim, and then I'm going
to quickly tack on another one here that we got
from Jim in New Jersey. So a totally different Jim
(15:46):
wrote in on the same subject, Robert, Joe, and JJ
you asked about whether ramming ships were ever used in
Star Trek. One story came to mind. It's from Star
Trek Voyager the year of Hell, which was a two
part episode. Captain Janeaway uses the Voyager as a ramming
vessel when all other options have been eliminated, and then
Jim attaches a clip to a video of this scene.
(16:10):
So I went and looked at it. I've never seen
any Star Trek Voyager really, so I don't know much
of what's going on, but it appears this is a
storyline in which the Starfleet ship is facing off against
an enemy played by kurtwood Smith Clarence Bodiker from RoboCop.
In this episode of Star Trek, he has some kind
of time manipulation device and can reset to an earlier
(16:34):
kind of save point anytime he loses.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
I think.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
So it seems like mutual destruction is somehow the only
way to break the loop and escape.
Speaker 2 (16:43):
Well, I just watched a couple of like pizza commercials
on YouTube and then saw the ramming sequence, and I
am getting the sense that ramming in these various spaceship scenarios,
it is all or nothing. It's just a full speed,
mutually assured just struction and not the carefully calculated procedure
(17:05):
maneuver that we talked about with the tryrems. So it
would be neat to see that version of space combat.
Speaker 3 (17:14):
I guess a difference would be that the ships in
all of these scenes are not designed for ramming, whereas
the tryream is it is built with ramming in mind,
so it's constructed to be able to absorb the shock
and survive a ramming maneuver to damage the other ship
without taking critical damage itself. And generally space ships you
(17:34):
don't think they're not designed that way, but I suppose
you could make one like that.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Yeah, well, supposedly some of these ships in Warhammer. Again,
I never played Battlefleet Gothic or any of the sub
games that deal specifically with ship to ship combat, but
I may have to dig into it and see if
they're just doing an all or nothing ramming speed scenario
or if they are exploring something that is again a
little more nuanced and calculated, where you're kind of doing
(18:00):
a controlled nudge to rupture the hull. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Also, I feel like this is not the first time
we've gotten multiple different responses to Star Trek related questions
from different listeners named Jim, do the gyms all track?
Speaker 2 (18:17):
Maybe? So? All right? This next one is more of
a general or related response. This one comes to us
from Lee Lee wrights in and says the following, Hello, Rob, Joe,
(18:39):
and JJ, just listen to the first episode regarding ancient ores.
Having spent summers on camp staff during high school and college,
one of the subjects I taught was rowing. What you
were saying about these types of rowing locks was correct.
Our boats had the open type, basically a U shaped
rest for the oars. They really don't facilitate keeping the
oars in the boat. This is never more evident than
(19:00):
during a class of ten or more twelve to sixteen
year old boy scouts, many of which whom have never
been in a boat. The technique of turning the blade
of the ore so that it is parallel to the
water surface is called feathering. Yes, it cuts wind resistance,
but it can also allow the blade to skim the
top of an errant wave in rough water. Pinlocks fix
(19:21):
the ore to the boat. Like you said, this could
provide an advantage to ancient seafares by not requiring a
multitude of spares should ores fall overboard. The trade off
might be some speed. Looking forward to the next episode, Sincerely.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
You know one thing we didn't get into.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Maybe you read about this in that book you were reading,
Rob but about whether spare ores would have been the
thing in the war galleys of the ancient Mediterranean, So
like if you're on a trirem and you drop your
ore into the ocean. In fact, I don't even even
know if that's possible. Maybe they were secured to the
boat in some way with a pin like Lee is
talking about. I don't know, But did they carry spares?
(20:00):
I know one of the techniques I read about in
addition to ramming the hull of the boat was to
sort of go against the side of the boat and
try to shear its oars off. So if that happened,
did you have spars on board to, you know, to
kind of quickly try to replace the ones you'd lost.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
This is a great question. I'm going to have to
bust out the ancient mariners and see if case gets
into it or not. But yeah, it seems like you
would run the risk if not losing them, because in theory,
you'd have a pretty crack team here that would not
lose their oars. This would not be the twelve to
sixteen year old boy scouts. I've never been in a boat,
but in a combat scenario. Certainly it seems like you, yeah,
(20:39):
you could get splintered oars, broken oars, and then what
are you going to do in order to restore your power?
Or is it one of those situations where again you're
getting into that calculus of not weighing the boat down
and you're just kind of going with all right, we
just need to make sure that it's as you know,
that everything is optimized as much as possible, and you're
(20:59):
gonna have to worry about splintered ores when and if
that occurs. All right.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
This next message is from yet another gem, the Gym's overfloweth.
This is subject line Rowboat mosh Pit. Listening to your
episodes on rowing and wanted to let you know that
I discovered that some of the audience for Viking metal
(21:25):
bands will often sit down on the ground and row
on mass and then Jim attaches several videos of this
taking place. I watched one of these. It's at a
concert of the melodic death metal band Amon m Arth.
I don't know if I'm saying that right, but they're
like a I think a Swedish melodic death metal band.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Okay, yeah, I'm not familiar with them.
Speaker 3 (21:46):
The name of the band is the name of Mount
Doom from Tolkien in like one of the languages of Tolkien.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah. I just pulled up some of these videos as well.
I was not familiar with this, but as someone who
often likes certain types of metal but has never ever
wanted to be in a mosh pit, I applaud this. Yes,
this is a far better situation for someone like me
like I would rather be in there pretending to row
a boat.
Speaker 3 (22:12):
I totally agree. Yeah, so you're pretending to be in
like a Viking galley instead of pretending to fight one another. Yeah.
But to describe for those who can't see it for themselves, yeah,
it's like, instead of a mash pit down on the
floor in front of the stage, it has just tons
of people lined up and they are pretending to row,
and they're they're chanting row on the beat of the
(22:35):
song as the band is playing. So yeah, again, much
better than a fighting mashpit in my opinion. But this
is really interesting to me because it's reverse engineering the
idea of using the steady beat of a piece of
music to time the power strokes on a war galley.
So here they are recreationally rowing on the beat to
(22:56):
enhance their enjoyment of music. And this makes me think
about how something we didn't much get into in the
episodes on these ancient oar ships was the idea of
using music or drums to synchronize the rowing of the crew.
In movies, these ships are often depicted with pounding drums.
You know, they've got somebody with this big, tempany looking
(23:17):
kind of drum just pounding up and down to keep
everybody in sync. But I decided to check and see
if that was truly the case, like, do we have
evidence that ships had these drums like this? And apparently
the answer is no, there is not much evidence for
the use of drums. In fact, I found some evidence
to the contrary. I was reading an article that had
(23:38):
some reporting on experiments carried out by the Trirem Trust.
To remember, Rob, you were talking about this in the episode.
These were the people who built the Olympius, the floating hypothesis.
Do you want to do a quick refresher on that.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah. Yeah. The basic idea here being that we don't
really know much for certain about the tryrems. We have,
you know, very scant physical evidence. We have descriptions in
ancient literature, but that's about it. So the idea was, well,
let's take what we know, let's build this floating hypothesis.
Let's try and build one based on the limited information,
(24:13):
and at least then we have a starting point and
we can test it out and then have these various
disagreements and considerations about how much this differs from a
possible reality.
Speaker 3 (24:24):
Right, And so one of the cool things about this
ship again, we don't know that this is exactly how
the ancient trirems worked, but it seems probably pretty close.
And so they were able to run human experiments with it,
like to not just test the structure, but to test
how the operation of such a ship would work. And
so they experimented with different ways of using music or
(24:46):
sound to synchronize the crew. Now I read in this
article that they used like electronic loudspeakers to synchronize the
rowing strokes. But of course, you know, ancient Greek armies
and ancient Phoenician armies and stuff would not have or
navy excuse me, navies would not have had electronic speakers,
of course, So like, how did they synchronize everyone? And
(25:09):
the trials that they conducted found that drums as well
as singing and read pipes were all ineffective. They did
not really work to synchronize the crew, And strangely, the
type of musical organization they found that worked the best
was communal humming. Humming was the best way. Humming by
(25:31):
the whole crew, everybody humming together was the best way
to synchronize rowers without modern technology, and it improved ship
velocity by more than ten percent.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
That's interesting. I mean, I guess the thing about humming
is pretty much everybody can do it. I guess I
say that with the confidence of someone who's not researched it.
There may be people who cannot hum, but I don't know.
It makes a lot of sense to me. And of
course you don't need to drag some drums or any
additional even so much as a reed flute aboard the vessel.
(26:04):
At that point, it's the internal instrumentation. And I mean,
and again it ties directly into the human engine powering
the thing.
Speaker 3 (26:12):
But to come back on the other side, in this article,
they quote a scholar who we talked about in The
Warship's episode named Boris Rankov, who is a classic scholar
and was involved in the creation and also works as
like a rower he's like a trained oarsman, but worked
on the Trireme Trust and Rankov says, humming worked really
(26:35):
well in the experiments, but there's no literary record of
that actually happening in history, so this is not something
we're told that the ancient Greeks ever did. Fascinating to
think about, though, like why humming as a group would
work better than a drum beat a or you know,
general singing or music.
Speaker 2 (26:54):
Interesting. Yeah, I wonder if if we get there's an
episode in that, you know, we could come back and
do episode on humming. I think we did one on whistling.
Yeah we did.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yeah, Yeah, where we talked about like whistle languages and stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah, bookmarkt for later. Yeah, all right, let's see. Here's
the here's another one dealing with our episodes on burning hair.
This one comes from John. John says, Hello, Robert, Joe,
and JJ. I have a couple of childhood memories that
I thought might be worth sharing. First, regarding aliens, Note
(27:28):
this was a long time ago, in any part of
this memory could be flawed. I remember, as an adolescent
reading a comic about alien xenomorph exterminators and presumably these
are these are human exterminators, by the way, who infiltrated
and destroyed it there the Xenomorph's colonies. As I understood it,
aliens only responded to a specific scent that humans released
(27:50):
when they are afraid. So the characters in the comic
book took a drug that completely numbed their ability to
experience fear and could then flamethrow their way through the
alien colony with essential no resistance. Once they'd been on
the job for a while, they stopped taking the drug
because they didn't feel any fear anymore even without it.
I always thought it was a cool and extreme version
of fake it till you make it. Doesn't sound cannon,
(28:12):
but I enjoyed the idea of it. Wow.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
Interesting that there's just like so much secondary expanded alien
universe lore that I have no idea of, and I
feel like I'm like an alien super fan, but I
only really know like the Core movies.
Speaker 2 (28:26):
Yeah, yeah, there's tons of it in the comic books,
various novelizations. I was recently kind of getting up to
speed on some of the recent novels that have come out,
and some of them are pretty well regarded, so I
don't know, I have to dig deeper. If anyone out
there has a favorite write in, I'd love to hear
from you. But yeah, I also agree that this may
(28:47):
not be canon, but it's an interesting concept, like the
sort of concept that you could imagine working outside of
the Alien franchise. You know, is sort of an analysis
of fear.
Speaker 3 (28:57):
Well, it kind of reminds me of something that shows
up in like some vampire movies, where like the vampire
repellent properties of a cross are only effective if the
person wielding it has faith or something. Yeah, I know
it's like that in Fright Night, but I think it's
like that in some other media as well.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
All right, anyway, he continues here. Secondly, regarding burning hair,
I have a memory of returning to a family friend
gathering after going outside to light the grill and being
accused of having put on mascaro while I was out.
Turns out I had sinned my eyelashes, leading them to
look really thick. I seem to recall whenever I saw
hair burn, it always left a bulb on the end
(29:35):
of the hair. Anyway, you know how they say you
shouldn't use gasoline to light a grill. Uh huh, Well
you really shouldn't use gasoline to relight a grill that's
still pretty hot. I'm pretty sure that using gasoline was
fairly common practice in my household. Who but I don't
think i'd ever tried it in a re lighting scenario.
I poured the gas on and nothing happened. So I
(29:56):
lit a match and whoosh, the fumes lit up ediately
from a good distance away. Lesson learned. Thanks for the
insightful and thought provoking podcasts as always, Hi, Renata, yours John.
Speaker 3 (30:09):
Oh yeah, this listener John has gives a shout out
to another friend who's a listener, Renata, who also writes.
Speaker 2 (30:15):
In a lot Well, definitely, yeah. Take John's advice here,
and please do not use gasoline to start your fires.
Speaker 3 (30:22):
In fact, I don't even for less danger related reasons.
I don't even recommend using lighter fluid as a great
way to start a grill. The chimney starters are great
if you're doing a charcoal grill. They work fantastic. It's
the best way to go.
Speaker 2 (30:35):
I agree. I don't do a lot of charcoal grilling,
but when I do, I use the tower and it
works and it's fast and he can depend on it.
So no flammable liquids are required. Yeah, I mean you
got to be safe with those two obviously, but we.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Think anything that's on fire, yeah, but limit your dangers well.
To clarify apart from safety considerations, I would also just
say that in my experience, I feel like lighter fluid
can sometimes kind of impart some unpleasant aromas.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
To the food.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
But yeah, Jimny starter a little bit of newspaper in
the bottom.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
You're golden. Can you dig it? Can you dig it?
Can you dig it? Can you dig it? Can you
dig it?
Speaker 3 (31:14):
Okay, we do have a lot of messages still to
get to, but Carney, our mailbot is over here, just
repeatedly asking in a digitized voice whether or not we
can dig it, And so I think we are being
asked to proceed to the Warriors' responses. All right, all right,
This first message is from Maxim. Maxim says, Hello, Robert
(31:41):
and Joe. First of all, thank you for all the
excellent content and all your shows in various forms. I
only casually tune into Weird House as I am only
a mild cinophile, But when you're doing The Warriors, I
am down like Charlie Brown during your most recent Weird
House episode about The Warriors, you made a statement about
how the film seems to take place in a slightly
(32:01):
alternate world, a not quite New York, New York. I
think you missed an interesting comparison John Wick.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
Ah, I didn't think about this, and I've only seen
the first John Wick movie.
Speaker 3 (32:13):
Oh same here. I've also only seen the first one,
so I from what I understand, I think the lore
gets more complex as it goes on. Okay, anyway, Maxim continues,
Not only is John Wick four an obvious homage to
The Warriors, with everything from a DJ calling out the
local Paris gangs to attack Wick too the final duel
(32:37):
at Sunrise, but I also think that an argument could
be made that both films exist in the same grungy universe.
If we accept that both John Wick and The Warriors
happened in the same universe, then The Warriors is not
just an excellent cult classic, it is cemented as a
John Wick prequel. Was Cyrus trying to join the High Table?
(32:59):
I don't know what that is. I assume that's a
John Wick thing where the Gangs of New York looking
to elevate their service. Was this the origin of the
League of assassins that exist in john Wick. Was john
Wick one of the orphans? Or if we really want
to get crazy, is john Wick the love child of
Swan and Mercy. This is the crossover experience we need,
(33:20):
far more than any DC Marvel multiverse shenanigans. Just wanted
to share my thoughts and see what you thought about
this potentially better than Marvel ip crossover. Also, are there
any other films you think might fit into this shared
universe theory? Ooh, thanks Maxim. I wish I could comment
on this more having more john Wick knowledge, but I
(33:42):
just haven't made it to the rest of those movies yet.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, saying I only saw the first one,
he Avenged his Dog, and I thought it was over,
but I guess there was more story to tell there.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
I've been assured that nothing bad happens to a dog
in the other movies, because that was kind of hard
for me to get past than the first one.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I guess having not seen the
other john Wick movies, I'm also reminded of some other
movies that I haven't seen any of, and that being
the Purge movies. On the surface, Again, as someone who
has not watched them. It seems like the Purge shares
like some similarities with the Warriors universe in the sense that,
(34:22):
I don't know, you have a like a slightly alternate
reality affecting the way a lot of street level crime
is going down. I don't know. I was thinking about
that because I did just watch the new twenty twenty
four movie Jackpot that has Aquafina and John Cena in it,
which I thought was an amusing viewing, you know, pretty
(34:43):
fun movie, but gets into some of those ideas, like,
you know, those sort of what if scenarios that end
up having defining what the street level violence looks like.
Speaker 3 (34:53):
I think the fact about the Warriors universe that would
be most important to fit with another universe is the
fact that the Bangs each wear costumes. That's like the
core difference is that this is a world where it's
just normal to have a gang dressed up as mimes
and a gang dressed up as baseball players. That's like,
(35:13):
that's a particular kind of alternate universe, not totally implausible
in reality, it's just not our reality. So what does
that fit with I'm not exactly sure, but it's close.
Oh and just one more thing to add on to
a maxim's email. Here Marcus wrote in with overlapping subject
matter to say John Wick four pays homage to the Warriors,
(35:37):
with the radio DJ using the same message, showing only
the tight shot of the mouth and says, obviously it's
not like Lynn Thigpen as she's no longer with us,
but this this DJ is announcing the increasing award on
the on the hit for John Wick throughout the movie.
So it sounds like this is an open, conscious play
(35:58):
on the Warriors, not just slightly similar.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
Interesting, all right, there's another one. This comes to us
from Andrew. Andrew writes and it says, Hi, Robert, Joe
and JJ has always great work. While I like to
enjoy your core episodes on my commute, tuning into Weird
House Cinema has become my favorite part of Friday Night,
your recent discussion of The Warriors struck an interesting chord
(36:23):
for me. You briefly mentioned the two thousand and five
video game adaptation, but didn't spend much time on it.
That makes sense for a movie podcast, but it's worth
noting that the game was very well received in its
time and has been subsequently re released on newer consoles
over the years. While the film is rightfully considered a
cult classic, I suspect most people my age are younger
who are familiar with the Warriors came to it through
(36:43):
the game instead, And this makes sense. I think we
mentioned it was like a Rockstar Games release, so you know,
we've seen a lot of older film franchises re explored
through video games, but this would have been a rock
Star game. This would have been a big and I
was just kind of out of gaming, I think at
that time, and not really plugged into what was happening.
(37:07):
You know.
Speaker 3 (37:07):
We were just chatting about it in the episode, and
it struck me as kind of strange in the moment
that they would adapt a game from a movie that
was like twenty five or thirty years old and not
like a recent release. That just seemed like a weird
thing to me. But then the more I thought about it,
I was like, oh, I guess that's not all that unusual.
In fact, one of my favorite movies and favorite video
(37:27):
games has been like that. Alien Isolation is like a
recent console, a recent generation video game adaptation, not adaptation
of the first Alien movie, but it's basically a game
sequel to the original Alien from seventy nine.
Speaker 2 (37:42):
Yeah, and then I believe they did have DLC for
it where they brought back I think pretty much all
the living cast from the first Alien movie to do voices,
and you had like the you know in Nostromo scenario
to play out. I never actually played it. I guess
I've got it on the system there. I should fire
it up, But I only played through the core game.
Speaker 3 (38:01):
I know what you're talking about. From what I recall.
That was not like a like a full game length,
story driven kind of thing. It was more kind of
like a little mini mini game or something.
Speaker 2 (38:12):
Well even better, I'd have less time these days of
light times, so if it's short, I'm in all right anyway.
This lister Mail continues talking about the Warriors video game
adaptation from two thousand and five. Plot Wise, it starts
earlier than the film, but catches up about halfway through.
From there, it's essentially a playable version of the movie,
hitting the same story beats and taking the player through
(38:32):
the same set pieces. Having watched the movie sometime after
playing through it, it's easy to see how naturally the
game evolved from the film, which was on some level
just a string of combat encounters. You also mentioned the
need for more movies with uniform street gangs, and it
made me think of one of my favorites, twenty tens
Boon Raku. Like The Warriors, it features a few bands
of well coordinated Ruffians and an escalating series of fights. Stylistically,
(38:56):
it feels alternatingly like a stage play, a comic book,
and a video game, but it all hangs together pretty well.
It's also got a pretty stack cast, including Woody Harrelson,
Demi Moore, Josh hartnett, Ron Peerlman, and the absolutely incomparable
vocal talent of Mike Patton. I wouldn't say it's a
great movie, but it is deeply, delightfully weird. I recommend it.
(39:18):
Thanks as always for all your hard work, Andrew.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
You know I looked up a few screenshots from this movie,
and a couple of them kind of reminded me of
another movie from years ago now that I enjoyed, which
was Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle, which does have some
vaguely uniformed gangs in it. I think we only ever
see two, and one of them we only see at
the very beginning of the movie. So primarily there's only
(39:42):
one gang in the film, but it struck me as
the kind of universe where I don't know, if they
were to make more Kung Fu Hustle movies, there would
be there could be more gangs that had weird uniforms,
like a gang of mimes would fit in in that world. Okay,
I'm gonna round things off with a part of an
email from our listener, Jeff. This is a great email,
(40:04):
but it's very long, gets into a lot of different
stuff from different episodes, So I'm just gonna mention a
couple of things from the beginning of it. Jeff says, Hey, guys,
when I was listening to Joe explain that the distinct
smell of burning hair is caused by sulfur, my first
(40:25):
thought was, I'm made of sulfur. What the heck am
I eating that's full of sulfur. I didn't recall ever
seeing a sports drink advertised now with more sulfur, or
being told to eat a banana because it's full of
healthy sulfur. But then I thought about the smell of
rotting eggs and asparagus pa and quickly realized I must
be consuming sulfur. Every Day, thanks to the listener for
(40:48):
explaining the connection to amino acids. This is a reference
to a previous Listener Mail episode in which our correspondent
Ahmed got into the sulfur bonds that can be found
in the amino acid cysteine, and that the breaking of
these bonds is responsible for these sulfur smells that are
released when you burn certain types of proteins and things
(41:10):
like that. But anyway, Jeff also says, regarding pop culture
representations of Ninja's I wanted to call attention to the
nineteen eighty eight arcade Beat Them Up game Bad Dudes
Versus Dragon Ninja. It's got a self aware amusing eighty's motif,
and to the extent that there was a plot. The
(41:31):
game explains quote this is in all caps. By the way,
rampant ninja related crimes these days. White House is not
the exception. Once you start the game, it asks President
Ronnie has been kidnapped by the ninjas. Are you a
bad enough dude to rescue Ronnie? And then after that,
(41:51):
Jeff says, you just start hitting and kicking everything that moves.
I remember this, though I remember the words differently. I
believe you that you're correct to Jeff. I remember it
as like, are you a bad enough dude to rescue
the President?
Speaker 2 (42:06):
Wow? I don't remember this one at all.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah, I wonder if there were different versions it was
there one that was specifically Ronnie and another one that's like,
let's not name drop him, let's just call it the President.
Speaker 2 (42:20):
Oh.
Speaker 3 (42:20):
And also at the end of Jeff's email, there's a
digression about the theme music to Mortal Kombat, which we
talked about extensively in the Weird House Cinema episode on
the movie from the nineties, and Jeff says the Mortal
Kombat theme was one of his go to albums for
doom slash quake land parties. I guess this would be
in the nineties. I can only imagine the vibes. It
(42:43):
sounds like Mountain dew and Dorito's.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
All part of a balanced diet. But thank you so much, Jeff.
All Right, well, we're going to go ahead and close
up the mail bag here today. Thank you Carney the
mail Bot for helping us with this. Hall We'll be
back in the future. For the time being, we're going
to continue with this schedule. Kind of gives us a
little breather. In between some of our multi episode series
(43:08):
a chance to catch up in that regard and then
also allow the mail bag to accumulate. So in the meantime,
feel free to write in though if you hear a
new episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind or Weird
House Cinema that you have thoughts on you want to
provide some feedback right in, We'll read it and we
might just include it on a future episode of listener mail.
(43:30):
And yeah, and if you have ideas about what future
episodes of our core episodes you should consist of you
have topic suggestions, write in those are fair game as well.
And hey, if you have thoughts in an old episode
right in as well. We would love to hear from you.
Speaker 3 (43:45):
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 (44:06):
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.
Stuff To Blow Your Mind News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Lamb
Joe McCormick
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