S2E2: Love in the 80s, Romance Scams & Gamer Girls Gone Mildly Wild

Episode Transcript
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Megan Bennett (00:00):
I'm Megan Bennett , I'm Lesley Meier and this is
Gen X.
Women Are Sick of this Shit.
Hey Megan, hey Lesley, how areyou?

Lesley Meier (00:11):
What's up, what's up, I'm okay yeah.

Same-o, same-o.

It's rough.
It is as of when this episodemy God, already we're 30 seconds
in.
I have no words.
This episode.

Being recorded on February 2nd.

Will air on February 15th, the day after
Valentine's Day.

Right, right now.
We got the groundhogs.
That's what we're dealing withtoday.

Groundhog Ah truth , Today's Groundhog's Day.

Little shit, mm-hmm, little shit, saw his.
Groundhog Day Little shit sawhis I know, Little shit saw his
shadow.
I can't say that.

I'm Satani Phil.

Motherfucker.
Yeah, bundle up everybodyAccording to the weather
groundhog weather service.

it's going to stay cold, it's going to stay cold.

Now, as I think we mentioned in when we were
talking about this podcast, I'mnot sure that a groundhog takes
into account global climatechange.
This is true.

I could be wrong, I mean they might be very
advanced, they probably do, inways that we do not, as human
beings, like animals, are goingto adjust and adapt in
reasonable ways.

I would think so, but it probably has, fuck all
to do with seeing their shadow.

Yeah, absolutely not.
Yeah, I don't know that theyare aware of the concept of a
shadow, even let alone seeingone, and what it means for the
weather.

No, they're just fucking pissed because they get
yoinked out of a hole and likewith all the cameras and all.

Yeah, no well, and where are the royalties?
Because they did inspire one ofthe greatest movies ever.
It's a great movie, so fuckingfunny, and it feels like that
right now in the united statesof America.
Every day we get up and it'sthe same thing, it's just worse

(02:09):
every day, yep, it's the same,worse.
You get up and you like, maybewalk a different route and you
try to use different words, oryou try to be nice, and it's
just like this endless stream ofnews and information that we,
you know, no longer have accessto.
I'm waiting for the day when wewake up and it's a different

(02:34):
kind of, and it's february 3rd.
We'll see what.

Let's see that would be 2028 right, nine, nine,
yeah, okay, this is a prettylong intro 28, right 9.
29.

Mm-hmm.
Yeah, okay, this is a prettylong intro, it is.
We have things we're going totalk about today.
They're going to be fun things.
They are going to be fun things.

We're going to follow a format that I teased
last time.
You keep talking about thatformat.

I don't believe you, here's our things Bullshit
and hot goss.
We definitely have some infoShit that we're sick of today in
our Gen Expert Not an Expertsegment which will be all about
things we need to distract usand have for our entire lives.
For our entire lives Videogames I love it, and the arcade.
So let's dive right in withbullshit and hot goss.

Two parts relationships, relationships and
dead people, the relationshipsthat we have with dead people.

There you go something this was not the way I
saw this going.
Here we are, specificallyrelationships from the 80s.

We were just sort of chatting about valentine's
day and like hot couples in the80s or my god, yeah, like and,
and some of the ones that wedidn't realize were, I don't
know, or maybe I just hadforgotten.
Absolutely, because I'm sure itwas in all the tiger beat and
all that shit right, but Ididn't realize some of the
people that were hooking up notin the 80s, uh, and because I

(04:06):
forgot to like.

You know how hard is it to have this page just
available?
Evidently quite difficult.
Um, sort of in like ananti-valentine's day way,
because, odds are, most of thesepeople dated briefly or they
are already divorced, althoughwe found three couples yeah,
there's a few that are stillhanging out right, um, but we
were talking about, oh, the veryfirst one.

(04:29):
It was Cher and Val Kilmer.

I had no knowledge.

I was like they went out.

I think it's a weird couple it is a weird.

I'm here for it.
It's fine.
Younger than her,unsurprisingly right right.

so long, sonny Bono.

I'm going with Val Kilmer I mean Cher loves men,
she just doesn't need them.
So she picks whoever she wants.

She picks what she wants Out of a tissue box,
and I love that you pulled up apicture of him with the most
amazing mullet.
Actually, she kind of has amullet thing going on too.

It was the thing, definitely, that's for sure.
So that was a celebrity oddcouple that I was not aware of.
Did not know it.
Who did you?

pull up.
Well, so Bruce Willis and DemiMoore, oh yeah.
You know, kind of a long time.

Yes, long time thing, and I love that they're
still friends.

Still friends.
She's super supportive of him.
I love it.
It's great, wonderful um, and Ithink they went through some
rough stuff right like the like,all like 90s, early 2000s I
think with their daughter, andeverything was a little rough
okay, so then, and they cameback together to be buddies,
which is really cool, yeah, sothat one was a fun one.
I did know about that one, andthen, um, all of the tommy lee

(05:40):
wives oh my god, so many soheather lacklear was one yes
amala anderson I think they gotthey were together right, a
celebrity couple.
See, this is where this is wheremy brain just goes.

So those were two that we were like how, how many
people did tommy league go with?
All of them?

answer all of them.
Who do you?

have there, uh, madonna and sean penn.
Oh, that was a big one, if youremember that I do and it was
like a big deal.
That he was kind of a dick,like yes, he was a jealous this
is my teenage brain rememberingthese things, right, it's like
sort of a jealous, possessivekind of.
That was not gonna fly for verylong.

You know, dude.
Yes, she got very um into herown self, which is good like she
came into her own and didn'tneed that shit no more.
Yeah, oh, you just uh scrolledpast uh sly stallone and
brigitte nielsen.

Yep, that was a big deal, mostly like that we
were going through this list andI'm like I don't, was this
important?
Like I don't remember, yes,which ones were important and
the only one, that one was a bigone.

I remember, I remember sly and bridget
brigitte being a big thing,absolutely, and that probably
because it was.
I mean, that was like afterthey were in rocky poor together
.
That's why right like it waslike.

Producer Tim (07:03):
But this is what actors do, right.
You have pseudo relationshipsand roles For all time.

And then you fall in love.

As children of the theater, we know what this
is like and you fall in love,but you have so much money.

You could do whatever you want.
Like there's no, you can movereally quick.
Us mere mortals, without moviestar paychecks, cannot do these
things.

No, we cannot, yes, we can't afford the prenups
and all the things that we haveto have right.

We have to fall in love and get married next week.

Oh, here's a good one.
Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell.
I love them.

Still together.
So cute, a wonderful couple.
Yeah, I hope they're not jerksbecause I'm saying that.
No, I think jerks because I'msaying that.

No, I think they're probably okay, right,
generally good people.
Um, I know a lot about them.
They're my personal friends.
This not true.
Sometimes we lie, um, so this,this one threw me, this one I
did not know.
Yes, matthew broderick andhelen hunt went out.
Yes, when last, when Last week.
No, they briefly dated in 1987.

Okay.

I was what like 13, 14?

I had no concept of that I wouldn't even have
cared about them in 1987,because I was a young teenager.
I was very young.

Yeah, I probably would have been interested in
like what the heck MatthewBroderick was doing, because you
know he was a rat packie.
I don't think he was a bratpacker, but but we're not
reliable reporters no, we're nottime, time, we time is a fluid
construct the only reason I amscrolling through this really
quickly.

He also dated jennifer gray oh, that was the
other one.
Thank you, he went out withjennifer gray.

yeah, so they played brother and sister and
ferris bueller's day off, andthen it was like, hey, baby, oh,
that's a weird way to gettogether.
I mean whatever Again butyou're in the theater.
You're, you know, in a play, ina movie, in a whatever, and you
have this very intense, wasthat?
Paul Simon and Carrie Fisher.
Paul Simon and Carrie Fisher,they were married briefly.

(09:02):
Were they really?
Yeah, see, this is what.
I don't remember things,because then he married Edie
Brickell.
Are they still together?
I don't know the answer to that.
Is he dead?
Is Paul Simon still alive?
Okay, paul Simon is still aliveas of this recording.
It just popped into my head.

I was like oh no, what if he's dead?

Okay, paul Simon.
Paul Simon is alive.
Sorry, friends, paul.
If you would like to prove thatyou are alive, we would love to
interview you.
He doesn't want to go here.
If you're dead, you could justforget that we said anything.
If you're dead, right.

He is still living .
He is very much alive.
Yes, Okay, thank you.

He is very much alive.

I'm hoping no one would ever, ever, ever share
this.

Long live Paul.

Simon Favorite, do you have like a couple from the
80s, 70s, 80s, maybe early 90sthat stands out to you?
That was like the couplethought was cool or impactful or
important.

Well, I mean the princess, die charles thing, it
was kind of like the biggieright, like everybody but, we
watched him get married.
We, yes, followed the ups andthe downs and she was like our
age right yeah, our age, wecould totally relate like right,
she was a little older whenthey started dating.

She was like 16 or something she was a child he
was like 19, they just diddifferent.
Yeah, well, just the paparazziwas always in.

You could not get away from the princess dive
thing.
Yeah, if you tried, yeah that'sfor sure.

That was a big one .
I think that I also remember.

How about Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet?

Hot, super hot, god damn, did you want a scale
of one to 10?
They're like 20.

Smoking hot they made a beautiful baby too.
Yes God, she's gorgeous.

Zoe right.
Super hot couple.
God, I don't know.

It's out of my brain Cher also dated Tom Cruise
.
Oh my God.
Well, is that right?
Hang on I gotta, I gottaclarify that tom cruise and
share.
Tom cruise met share at seanpedd and madonna's wedding in
1985.
I love her wow, she was.

She is still a collector of men's souls, and it
is my favorite thing tom cruiseand share got hot and heavy.

One of the most unusual couples that emerged
from the 80s.

Yeah, yeah if I would say so.
I think that's pretty wild.

I thought Prince and Kim Basinger going out was
like you know I mean both coolpeople.

but Prince, like, come on, it's like coolest of
all the coolest.

Well, and wasn't Kim, wasn't?
Isn't Kim Basinger like reallytall, and Prince was notoriously
not tall?

I was trying not to mention that part, but yes,
Prince doesn't care.

Prince doesn't have to care.
That's accurate.
Prince did not care.

Nor does any woman care.

Any person.
Prince is a babe.

He was a babe.
Keep Prince to a single gender.
No person would care.

Sweet, how about this?
How about another infamouscouple, infamous?

Yeah, not like you know, give me an infamous
couple.

Mike Tyson and Robin Givens.

Show me a picture.
I don't remember this in reallife.
Okay, they Is.
There a brief, very truthfulsynopsis about their
relationship.

It was rough and scandalous.
Few couples in the 1980s werequite as scandalous as Mike
Tyson and Robin Givens.
They met in early 1987.
Okay.

Was it like scandalous in like a violent way
.
I'm making a stereotypicalassumption about.

Mike Tyson.
I'm going to say yes, but Ifeel like, yes, this is me
talking out of my ass.

We need some actual information, because we
don't.

They were married for a year.

Okay, one year Brief, tumultuous, ended in
divorce after allegations ofdomestic violence.
There you go, boom.
Sometimes the brain works,sometimes Sometimes we remember
things.

Amazing Jerry Hall, mick Jagger.
Oh my gosh, so many fun LikeJerry Hall, mick Jagger.
Oh my gosh, so many fun likejust big time flashbacks.
Oh, oh, this is a good one.

What Brooke Shields Nick Cage Interesting.
I wonder what that was like.

I wonder if she talks about that in her book.
I feel like she's way youngerthan him.
Maybe I'm making that shit uptoo.
She's our age, she's50-something they dated briefly
in 1987 before he his breakoutrole in moonstruck okay, so
she's eight years older than me.

Okay, so just young 20s, yeah.
And when was he born?
This is important 64, they'reonly you're apart, how?
Oh, a year apart, how aboutthat.

That's weird.
That is weird she had.

Yes, that does not feel accurate or true.
It doesn't In an emotional way.
It feels like he was robbingthat cradle it does.

But not, they're peers.
God, Nick Cage was such afreaking babe too.
I don't know.

I had a crush on him when I was for truths.
Um cool, there we go.

So couples romance anti-romance it's just
more like gossip than anything.
Yeah, if there's some that weforgot and you want to like, let
us know who we forgot please do, because our brains are faulty
and I would.
I'm sure we're leaving out somelike there's wild hundreds.

I'd be super curious if anybody ever like
waited on a celebrity couple inthe 80s or like happened to see
them like shopping in xyz storesno kidding or saw them at a
sidewalk cafe and they're likeactually he pucks his nose and
it's really gross.

And she was disgusted by it.

They were totally bored with one another.
There we go, so that's somebullshit and hot goss, and then,
as always in this segment, wetalk about people we lost
recently At the grocery store.
They just got lost, it justdisappeared.
Who's dead now?

(15:15):
And you had somebody from soapopera Did.

I, oh, yes.
So the actress who playedMonica Quartermain, leslie
Charlson, monica Quartermain onGeneral Hospital.
She was in that role for like50 years Longest running
character an actress on generalhospital.
Wow, sad that she's gone.

(15:42):
She in the more recent I stillwatch.
I watch all the time.
I don't watch real in real time, because life.
But I record episodes and thenhere's here's my secret shame.
I put my ipad up and I watchkind of general hospital while
I'm like taking a shower andstuff I guess I was just playing
there, so I like keep up on my

keep up on my shows but while I'm taking a
shower.
So what you're saying is thatwhat they're saying doesn't
matter.
It's just watching the images.
No, I can hear them, you can't.

It's more like hearing it and like I just oh
yeah, I know it's gone, but soshe is not.
Monica's not been on the showin a really long time and you
you knew like as a generalhospital person you could watch
like and see that she wasn't ingood health, got you.
And what's weird now is they'restill talking about her like
they're, they reference her likepretty much every freaking

(16:35):
episode they're talking aboutmonica and something that monica
wants.
Like there's a whole thing goingon right now.
I love it.
You know that there's a wholething so good and so.
So they reference her all thetime and like I'm like in the
back of my head I'm like, yeah,but she's dead.
Like that's weird, I don't know.
So they haven't, they haven'twritten her character off yet.

(16:56):
She hasn't passed away.
They will have to come to gripswith that, probably pretty soon
.

How does that work in a soap opera when the actor
dies?
But I mean, you can do anythingin a soap opera.

I cannot imagine they would recast her.

Do you sign a contract that says yes?
Please continue to talk aboutmy character after they own the
character.

I'm sure we don't need to go down this rabbit hole
, but, like where does that?

money goes to her estate, I'm assuming well, I
think the actress when she'sdone she's done, like like she's
probably you know she's notmaking any money anymore because
she's not performing anymore,right, sure?
So and the show owns thewriting and the.
The show itself owns thecharacter so they could recast
her, but I cannot imagine thatthey would do that.
She will be missed.

(17:39):
She was a great actress.

She's really good.
I love that, though that's goodenough.
I love that.
You know all of that and thatshe's been a constant on the
show for a long time.
It's, it's my secret shame it'snot so secret anymore, it's out
there here.
It is guess what folks?
uh, another incredible woman whopassed away, cecile richards,

(18:02):
oh, yes served as the presidentof the planned parenthood
federation of america in itsaffiliate planned parenthood
action fund from 2006 to 2018.
She just died and I've seenlots of tributes and memorials.
She clearly impacted the livesof millions of people and lots

(18:26):
of people knew her personallyand well, I got to see her speak
once.

I couldn't begin to tell you when that was.

Sorry.

Because you know, yeah, uh, but I do remember it
being a really excellent eventand she was a powerhouse.
She was very much um there forall things women.
She was there to support women,she was there to lift women up
she was there to make sure thatwomen had the health care that
they needed when they needed it.

(18:57):
So important, yeah, so she willbe horribly missed.
Um, I know that the newpresident of clam parenthood is
rocking it as well.
So um, you know, I think shejust blazed that trail and um,
hopefully you know we will.
I would love a world where wedidn't need it personally, but

(19:20):
but I'm I'm glad that she was.

She was there to lead us and lead Planned
Parenthood the way that she didfor as long as she did.
Um, we need strong womensupporting women right now.
Just as a little bit of atidbit, evidently she co-founded
a new political action group,supermajority, in 2019 to
further women's political agendafor the 2020 elections.
So I don't know.

(19:43):
I would assume that politicalaction group is continuing.
I'm going to go look it upbecause I didn't know that.
Pretty cool.

Yeah, and then there's one other.

Well, there's two little ones.
Not little ones.
Marianne, faithfull died yeah.

She was a musician singer.

She passed away.

Started in the 60s right, like music in the 60s
Born in 1946.

Died January 30th, and we were kind of listening
to some of her songs justwarming up for this including
one where she's saying withmetallica, yep so which I did
not know, I didn't either, andit's very.
The juxtaposition is prettystark with mary ann faithful and
metallica you would not putthose two together normally, but

(20:31):
it worked not at all.
I was listening to her cover ofMonday Monday by the Mamas and
the Papas, beautiful voice onpoint, and then, as we were
researching, this is the onethat made me really sad and I
don't know if this is really GenX, because this movie came out
in 2001,.
But it is an important movie.
Perry, the real life donkey,who inspired the iconic Shrek

(20:55):
character, died.
The donkey, perry the donkey,who was like the model for the
animation.
How old did you say Perry was?

Perry was 30 years old Boys and girls.
If you decide that you want adonkey, I would like to point
out, donkeys apparently live tobe 30 years old.
That is a commitment, very longtime.
That is a big commitment.
I suppose Perry probably had agood squishy life as a donkey

(21:26):
right, Absolutely.

Perry was a famous donkey from Palo Alto and
California.

Donkeys.
Oh, producer Tim pulled up thatdonkeys can live 27 to 40 years
.

There you go Longer than most marriages,
quite honestly.
And Perry's adorable, he's gotyou know little photos up and
yeah, I see it, he does looklike him.
He looks like Donkey.
They were going to hold amemorial for Perry.
His exact death date was.

(22:01):
I don't know, I don't have it.
This announcement came outJanuary 5th, so I would assume
kind of in the first couple daysof January.
Well, rest in peace, perry.
We love you.
Shrek's a darn funny movie.
Rest in peace, rest in peace,rest in peace.
So that's our bullshit and hotgospel today.
It's pretty good.
What are you sick of today,megan?

(22:23):
Or what shit are you sick oftoday?
We're going to stay on brand,stay on, brand, stay on brand.

Well, the thing that we were talking about today
, that was kind of getting ourfeathers ruffled.
Things do that they get ourfeathers ruffled.

We have a lot of feathers.

Lots of feathers.
We were talking about scams.
We were talking about internetscams.
We were talking about trying toprotect our parents from
internet scams Truth, while alsotrying to protect ourselves
from internet scams.

Well, yeah, like what happens when technology
begins to outpace even our youknow, we've kind of grown up in
the middle of it, so we wereable to acquire skills in our
20s when our brains were fresh,you know, but when the the new
scheme, when our brains werefresh and new, fresh and pink,

(23:16):
and specifically we were talkingabout the romance scam epidemic
and being in the sandwichgeneration and having older
parents who maybe Trying to keepyour parents who are they were
not raised when their brainswere fresh and pink, with
technology as much but trying tokeep them from giving their

(23:42):
social security checks to youknow the hot piece of ass that
they found on the internet.
I don't know if this is accuratebut a Scottish guy in New
Zealand, or.
These are snippets.
I was reading some things thatpeople had talked about in the
Facebook group, so it's notaccurate.
But yeah, don't send all yourmoney to anybody really Really

(24:02):
to anybody On the?
Internet, not all of it Right.

But these scammers, they are so good at
making you feel like A they're areal human being, of course,
and B Like A they're a realhuman being, of course, and B
like they, you know, they knowpsychologically how to kind of
mind fuck you to get you to beinterested and committed and
want to help them and they havea really good sob story that

(24:28):
they have crafted and used andwoof it's bad.

They're practiced and persistent.
Um, we were looking at somewebsites and I found um.
The stat came off of oopssiberraio, the siberra um
company, and they had made anannouncement in 2023.
They were partnering withadvocating against romance

(24:53):
scammers, aars, but they hadsome stats from 2022 735 million
dollars scammed.
That is huge in 2022 hugeindustry.
I'm gonna assume that that wasinternational, like globally I
mean maybe um, because they didnot specify, but it's an

(25:29):
international company.

So that's my human trafficked into these jobs
.
Yes, Quotation marks rightQuotation fingers here, jobs
where their goal and their jobis to get you by text message
into a conversation, yep, andyou know we I don't know how
many do you get a week, becauseI get those fucking every week.

So not by a text, okay, I have never, I don't get
them by a text, never gotten onethat just says hey, there, or
is this Alice, or some shit likethat.
Oh, okay, yeah, I will share.
Yes, you keep going.

Okay, and then I'll pull this up.

Okay, and I'll read it to you.
I have it.

So, but anyway, these people are like that's
their whole, that's get youhooked in.
So you know they, they send youa text.
Is this alice then yourresponse?
You know, unless your name isalice is you know?
no, you have got the wrongnumber, yes, and then they will
text you back and be like oh mygosh, I'm so sorry.
Yes, I um.
You know I meant to try to getwith alice, who I've, you know I
lost track of, and blah blah,and she lives, and she lived in
such and such, and you know youdon't happen to live there, do

(26:38):
you?
Or whatever.
Then they ask you a questionand the goal is to get you to
have a response yeah, and thenyou get put into this
conversation with this personand next thing, you know, if all
things go right on their end,you're sending your social
security check to them Dang.

So there was one that popped up, but I think I
deleted it.
It was that's probably for thebest it was, it was good I
stopped responding to.
It was really the person hadlike sent a text that I just
ignored and deleted it was justlike, um, I'm making something,
something for dinner tonight.
Okay, can you come at eight?
And I just deleted it.

Sure.

And I think it happened again like in a week,
and I deleted it again, and thenthe next one was well, why
aren't you responding?
And I finally just said wrongnumber.
And then they came back with thething and I was like nope, not
me, you know, it was super shortresponses.
And then they was like nope,not me, you know super short
responses.
And then they were like oh, youknow, I'm so sorry.
Blah, blah, blah.
I was like not a bother, fine.
And then, well, you seem like areally nice person.
And I was like mm-hmm, I am areally nice person.

(27:45):
They're like if you're ever insuch and such California, let me
know, I'll buy you a coffee.

And I said nothing at that point, I just like left
it there.

But I was like it was the randomness of the things
that were coming to my fan,like I'm making this for dinner,
will you be there at seven?
And I was super apologetic.

Of course you know like, oh my gosh, you're
such a nice person.
Oh gosh, I was like am I?
I just A was just fuckinggorgeous, Like you don't really
know me at all and I just, youknow, kicked my dog Mm-hmm,

(28:25):
which I did not, but you know,like they don't know anything,
right, right, they don't knowwho you are.
Well, the thing that I read,too, or the 60 Minutes, or
whatever it was, was alsotalking about, like, the people
who are in that situation, likethat they are literally being
forced to have these dumbconversations with you, and so I

(28:49):
always feel a little bit.
I feel a little bit I feel bad,right, for those people.

And I'm like.
I wish there was a way that Icould like you know, hey, I'll
tell little bit.

I feel bad, right For those people and I'm like I
wish there was a way that Icould, like you know, hey, I'll
tell you what I know you'reprobably a human trafficked,
human being that's sitting onthe other end of this line you
know here's okay.

Yeah, Are you okay ?
Can you send me your location?
I'll send it to the localauthorities.
Right, we'll get you some help,like what can we do?
It comes up a lot in the group,though, with with folks, um,
who are trying to help theirparents or, in some cases, their
friends, understand that theperson that they're
communicating with is not whothey say.

(29:25):
They are right, they, ifthey're asking for like gift
cards or crypto or anything.

Oh, that gift card thing is like a.
That's a big red flag, rightthey?

want access to your bank account.
None of that is real.
It doesn't matter howconvincing it is, None of it is
real.
Just walk it back in your mindand be like would I do this if I
was in a pickle financially andneeded help?

Is this how I would solve this problem for
myself and I know you knowthere's a lot of very, very
lonely people out there that are.
You know, parents are some ofour parents, when you know if
they're widowed.
If they're, you know they'veonly got themselves and they're
waiting for you to come visitthem every, you know, every
couple of weeks or something.

(30:11):
Yeah, that's a lot of time tosit there in front of a keyboard
and it can feel, it could feelreal and yes, and it's real easy
to get suckered in.

I think that probably one of the hardest and
most frustrating parts ispointing out the inconsistencies
and trying to say, hey, youknow, like how do you share that
with someone when they're soinvested emotionally?
Right, I'm kind of brainwashedby the person.
I mean it is an abusiverelationship, um, so that it's
even hard to like.
You're kind of like cultmentality, yeah at that point.

Um, it's hard to like show them reality or
whatever even yeah, and theydon't want in a lot of cases,
won't want to know that that'stheir, their boyfriend, on the
other end, super hot scottishguy in new zealand totes he's
lost.

He's lost, but we did totally like very lost.
Um, we did look up someresources, just because we don't
want to just freak out aboutthis bullshit and not share
information.
Like to find some reasons thingsthat people can access and the
things that were shared with usfederal trade commission.
Believe it or not, there'sinformation on there.

(31:23):
There's an organization calledscam watch, the better business
bureau, the cyber crime supportnetwork.
Homeland security still has apage up all about romance scams
and like what to look for.
Aarp is a great resource.
They actually have like a scamhotline.
It is 877-908-3360.

(31:47):
You can just go to a plain oldphone.
You don't even have to send anemail.
Rotary dial for your phone.
I hope so.
That's the best way to dial.
And then the National Councilon Aging has a great page that
has tons of informationunderstanding the psychology of

(32:07):
scammers, safety for sendingmoney online, how to report
things, limiting yourinformation, contacting
businesses directly.
If somebody's saying thatthey're like oh, the one that
happens here all the time is thepower company.
Everybody's always gettingtheir power shut off, yeah, and
you need to send $1,000 rightaway.
So that is helpful for peoplewho are being scammed, but also

(32:29):
for those of you who aresupporting people.

My husband had an issue like not too terribly
long ago where somebody calledhim and told him that he had an
outstanding warrant.
Oh yeah, that shit happens allthe time and needed to go
immediately to like drop offmoney, yep, and he actually was
working downtown, which you know, right by the courthouse, and
there were lots of bail bondsplaces and stuff.

(32:52):
And so he's on the phone withthis person.
You know, he sort of had thisspidey sense that something's
not right.
Yes, but also, like, the guywas so convincing yes, like and
my husband is cynical as the dayis long so he does not get
bought into this shit veryeasily yeah, but this guy was
super convincing and he ended upwalking into a bail bonds place

(33:12):
to see if they could run areport, to see if he really did
have brilliant, you know, uh anda, an outstanding warrant.
And so he's on the phone withthe guy and he's like, hey, hang
on a second, I'm at this bailbonds place, I'm gonna have him
run that thing.
And the guy hung up on him likeimmediately and he was like yep,
never mind everything's fineyep, but that's a big one too.

So that's happened um frequently locally to
therapists.
Wow, it was because ourinformation is available.
We're marketing ourselves allthe time and because they don't.
They don't know who you'reseeing.
Nobody knows who we're seeing,but they're like, oh, you missed
a court appearance.
You better show, show up.

(33:53):
You know, it feels fairlyconvincing and it's our
livelihood as human beings.
So these things cycle aroundand it's frustrating, to say the
least.
Yes, there we go.
So that's the shit we're sickof today.

Yep, everybody, stay safe out there.
Don't fall for any of thatbullshit.
Don't fall for any of thatbullshit.
Gen X Women Are Sick of theShit is supported by Lylas Love
you like a sis, a Gen X Women'sSocial Club.
What's Lylas Megan?
Lylas is our off platform, offthe books of faces, off all of

(34:37):
the other traditional socialmedia.
It is our space and place forGen X women to come together,
have conversations, meet eachother.
It's a social club.

It is a social club.
It's a membership-based club.
Memberships are $10 a month.
That does help support us ingrowing the platform.
We purchased a platform thatwould host a network of women so
that you could come togetherand meet each other in real time
.

In a safer space than a traditional social media
platform and a much morepersonal space.
So what do we do there, Leslie?

We host movie nights where we live stream some
of our favorites as they areavailable to us for group
watches of films from the 70s,80s and 90s.
We host a space for a monthlybook club.
We host trivia nights.
Once a month we have a livetext chat prizes even four

(35:37):
prizes.
that's true, um, we, the space,is able to host like weekly text
chats so that you can kind ofcheck in in real time with
people.
I would say the criticaldifference between kind of what
this space is and any othersocial media space that I've
experienced is that it is active.

You will have to engage in it or be engaged in it
by other people, so it's notlike a passive consumption thing
, it's like making connections,yep, and if that's what you're
looking for the opportunity tomeet other people, to find
people who are maybe in the samesimilar spaces as you are.

Like-minded, same time, phase of life, navigating
all of those transitions, thenthis might be the right place
for you.

So check out Lylas.

You can learn more about it at genxwomenpodcom so

(36:47):
and so, and so I think we'regoing to talk about, uh,
distracting ourselves.

Why on earth would we need to distract for?

all the freaking rooms right now.
Yeah, distractions, the thingsthat we do to occupy our minds
entertainment.

What do you do?
What's your?
Just your uh distraction I readyour escapism.

An insane amount of romanticy books, romanticy
yep Ripping bodices made ofbrutally slaughtering.
I mean, there is very hot sexbut there's usually a lot of
blood and swords.

Well, I just assumed that the bodices were
like made of like dragon scale.

Yeah, it's more like that.
Okay, strong female maincharacters as super.
No, I won't say as, becausethey can get pretty supernatural
.
I want, no, nothing real.
I want dragons, fairies,vampires, werewolves impossible
odds.
Overcoming brain bubble?
I don't want to.
I don't want to have to thinktoo much.

(37:49):
Yeah, but usually you know yeahit can't be totally vapid you
want a.

You want a completely different world.
Absolutely and world buildingsomething completely different.

Yes, okay, cool, and that all kind of ties into
life, so I think that's a go-to.
And then we have like I have aphone game that I play quite a
bit.
What do you do for distraction?

What do you do for distraction, my distraction
when things, when I need to shutdown my brain, I will go down
into my basement and I will playsome video games Nice.

And mine.

Nothing real, like nothing.
You know it all has to befantasy kind of out there stuff
too, Although, although,although my favorite.

Yes, my current favorite video games are
Assassin's Creed, sweet yeah,which are historically based.

Yes, my current favorite video games are
Assassin's Creed, sweet.

Yeah.

Which are historically based, true, you
know.
So, like Valid, there's aFrench one, there's one about
the French Revolution that youcan, you could just walk through
France during the revolutionaryperiod and climb in and around
and on notre dame and saintchapelle sweet and like, get

(39:00):
into the nooks and crannies andthe crevices of, like these
amazing historic buildings.
It's super cool, that's awesome, so that's really fun.
A tour de france, right,exactly, you might say, and then
you kill people.
That is even more exciting.
Fun, um, it's.
You kill an awful lot ofvirtually virtually you
virtually kill an awful lot ofwhite men that will happen in

(39:23):
france.
I'm just saying and it's kindof assassin's creeds, mo, um,
yeah, so video games have alwaysbeen a big thing for me.
I love that.
Yeah, like the, I'm gonna bethe old granny that's still
fucking playing video games Istill play video games.

It's been a long time since I've done like a
console game per se like I havea switch.
I did the whole animal crossingthing during covid.
Love it, love collecting things, loved all the lego games.

I wish I would have gotten into that.
I missed that boat and I shouldhave jumped on a boat.

I was like I was a few months in and I just didn't
realize what it was.
And then I had a friend who wasplaying it and I was like what
is this?
Teach me to play.
Yes, so that Lego games, allthose Lego games.

Oh my gosh, Look for every dang piece of Lego.
The Star Wars ones arehilarious so funny, really good.

Play some Link.
Oh yes, of course Got that outthere, but you know, games
didn't start in the 2000s, megan.

They did not start in the 2000s, no, but we,
as Gen X, were so incrediblylucky.
We were lucky.
We got the video games.

And they started in the 70s yeah, absolutely yeah
.

So we were talking about this, about like
what we're, you know, talkingabout video games, and we wanted
to do like a quick history, yes, of video games.
We can then talk about our likehow fantastic the fact that you
could walk into a, a place in amall, yeah, and just throw
quarters at these giant boxes.

(40:59):
Pre-consoles Like pre-homeconsoles, yeah, so we can talk
about that, but the consolesthemselves were cool, and the
first one was launched in 1972.
It was the Magnavox Odyssey.

I was negative one , negative one years old.

So video consoles are older than Leslie.
That's so cool.
How about that?
That's one year, one year older.
So that was considered the.
It was designed by a team ledby the father of video games.
My God, it was huge, massive,and they could display three

(41:41):
square dots and one line in amonochrome black and white right
.
So it's basically Pong.
That it was giant.
You get Pong, yeah, huge.
I mean, look Look at that thing, it's got a couple controllers,
it's got.
You get Pong, yeah, but huge.
I mean look, look at that thing.
It's got a couple controllers,it's got a whole keyboard.
You've got the little cartridgespot for it.

(42:03):
What?

Are you on eBay?
This is an eBay.
This might have been.
This is an Odyssey 2 with threegames.
Okay, so that was later.
That was later.
This was a later one.

Like I kind of want to have one.

There is, oh, here's a 1980 Phillips Magnavox
Odyssey 2 for $3,700.
Zowie, Vintage Magnavox, allthese Odyssey 2s.
There is a Yep.
I can't find an originaloriginal that is actually
available for sale.

That is so, so cool.
But they say you know themagnavox odyssey gaming home.
Without this, the magnavoxodyssey, you may not have had
other consoles.
It was the thegreat-grandfather.
I love that of all of them.

I think that's cool.

And then, like I don't know if you remember, but
you got the 1975 the at AtariHome Pong was the next.
So you had, you know, threeyears between the first and the
second.
So the 1975 Atari Home Pong wasthe first Atari game.
So that's the first time thatwe hear Atari as a name.
And then you have like a coupleyou got in 1976, there was

(43:17):
something called the FairchildChannel F, and that was the
first one that you had swappablecartridges.

Oh okay.

So that's when you started getting this idea of
you could grab a cartridge blowthe dust out, pop it in there
and get a different game.
So a small library, it says.
So not very many games Poopedout, probably pretty quick.
Yeah, that particular one.
Never heard of it, nope.
And then the Atari 2600.

(43:48):
This is ours, right, this was1977.
So the?
Yeah, the Atari 2600 had thejoystick, okay, with a little
red ball on the top Amazing,yeah, it made Atari a staple in
the living room.
It was not the first, but itdid have swappable cartridges

(44:11):
and had this idea of anexpanding software library base
with it.
So that is in.
1977 is when you introducedpac-man, oh okay.

Space invaders, okay, asteroids, so you could
play all of those from thecomfort of your own home in 1977
okay, so the one that has beenremade, the atari that they've
like recreated, is that this one?
The 2600, or is it one from?

I think it's the later one that is like the kind
of the reboot yeah, okay, yeahbut this would have been the
first um, the first atari, likebig atari game, gotcha um.
And then 1976 you had thecalico telstar um, because
everybody wanted in on all this.
But calico had built-in gamesand it had hockey, it had
handball, it had tennis, nice,so more sporty probably.

Okay, I'm probably not remembering it right we?

know right.
Well, well, I think and I'm I'mprobably gonna mess this up,
but I think calico was the onethat had the ball.
So rather than a joystick, ithad like a rolly ball were they
the?

uh, I think centipede was that calico no,
okay.

So thank you, producer.
Tim just pulled up calico hadtwo little knobs like it looks
like a flat radio right it hasweird it does.

It looks like r equipment.

Yeah, so no ball, you had like little bitty
joysticks.
That's amazing, Clearly thatsucker was focused more on
sports.
It looks like.

Yeah, cool, that's awesome.
Okay, and then 1979, you hadIntellivision.
Yes, I do rememberIntellivision.
My uncle had an Intellivision.

It was a Mattel company or a Mattel toy.

Yes, I totally remember this.
We're looking at it.
I absolutely played a whole lotof Donkey Kong on an
Intellivision.

Yeah, look at that, it was probably in the 80s
.
And then the cartridges go popin the side like that.

Yes, I remember those cartridges.
Oh wow, the controller had acard.
I forgot about that.

And you put the little the controllers when
you're not using them, juststuck right in the top of the
machine like that that's prettycool.

That's a nice design.
Yeah, it's all very compact.
It's not bad like tucked away.

Yeah, this is what we had growing up.

You had an Intell had growing up and in
television.
I think they're great, so itlooks like the.
You could tell me, tim, if thiswas right.
But some of the games wereburger time dig dug also had
pac-man on that, donkey kong andnfl games.
Oh wow, so it was the firstinstance of a licensed sports
game hey, they had that.

They had, uh, they had a baseball game.
They had a baseball game, theyhad a basketball game.

We had an advanced Dungeons and Dragons game oh
fun.
That would have been more inthe 80s, though, yeah.

Yeah, but the map revealed itself as you went
through the dungeon.

That's cool it looks like we have a little time
jump between 79 and 1982, whenyou had the.
Colecovision.
Okay, two when you had thecalico vision, so um one of the
most recognizable consoles ofthe early 80s slightly more
impressed.
Impressive graphics, um yeahyeah, so I recognize.

(47:31):
Yeah, that's interesting, samekind of gist to it, right as the
intellivision.
Um, totally some titles thatwere included.
There were ladybug, cosmicadventure and venter venture.

So cool, I don't remember those games, but I do
remember that console donkeykong right there.
Yeah, I know, that's what Ialways played.

And then then the biggie right then, like the
great grandfather of all videogames of all times.

Oh yeah, the OG 1985 Nintendo Entertainment
System.

The first NES.

Yeah.

This one In 85.
Okay, so I was like 12 whenthat came out.

I mean, this was like everybody's Christmas list.

Yep, huge Were video game systems always $300,
no what?

I think decade they were in.

I freaking think so matter, or were they like a
hundred dollars then?

no, I no.
I want to say it was like 249or something I could I don't
know for sure, but like yeah,like I remember it being like
not in a a small amount of moneyI mean they've always been
insanely expensive.

In 199 dollars, jeez, in 1980, whatever, that
was 85, 85.

I mean this is a significant amount of money,
yeah so, uh, this one nowintroduced, you know kind of the
r RPGs that you couldn't do inthe previous.
You know video games.
You got Super Mario Brotherswith the Nintendo Entertainment
System and Mike Tyson'sPunch-Out, which I can picture

(49:14):
so, so vividly Punch-Out withlike the outline of the guy.
You were Like you were theoutline and then you were
punching the solid guy.
I remember that vividly.
Punch out with like the outlineof the guy.
You were like you were theoutline and you were punching
the the solid guy.
I remember that vividly.
Did you have one of these?

uh, we only have the atari.
Okay, so I just I uselessinformation.
Do you want this?
Sure, I want this, sure I wantthis.
This is going to be great.
So it was the Kaleek no, andthe NES system was $199 in 1985.
It would be $583.69 today.

I got to tell you that kind of tracks with what
like a new, like the new Xbox,like the high end and super
juiced up Xbox would probably beright around that.

I would expect.
So, wow, okay, so there you go.
I mean, you can get a systemprobably for like 399 bucks 586,
that's crazy, an increase of386 dollars over 40 years.
Yeah, we all will buy anything.
So here's a question.
Okay, that I when did uprightlike arcade games start to be

(50:22):
manufactured like in mass, whereyou would have an arcade like
at the mall?

Oh, like where the first ones could be.
So there's a Netflix.

How early were those manufactured?

There's a.
Netflix special.
I should.
I'll look it up, but there is aNetflix special that is all
about the video games andspecifically about Pac-Man and
like where those all came fromand you know when they started
and basically like the hooplaaround all of that, but wild,
like so early 70ss I want to say, is when you started seeing
like the big games, right yeah,producer tim's pulling up

(51:07):
information for us.

Cool.
So it says 1971, the firstarcade game oh, you just left
what I was reading.
Computer space was created bynolan bushnell and ted dabney,
the founders of Atari.
The company followed on itssuccess the next year with Pong.
So is that Upright?
Okay, the Upright arcade gamein 71.

(51:31):
So they kind of developed atthe same time.
I wondered if it was like achicken or an egg, like one came
first and then they created theother one.
So it sounds like, if anything,these were sort of simultaneous
, like the developmenttechnology was happening at
similar times you got the big.

You got the big ones at the arcade, and then
they were at the same timetrying to like how can you
smoosh this down into somethingthat you can have in your own
house?

I think a lot of the upright arcade games are
kind of the descendants of thecarnival games and things like
that Sure.
That, like you, would walk upstand up to pinball things like
this.
It would be like pinball.

But I'm talking about in terms of video game
development, did one come beforethe other and it sounds like
they were simultaneous.

Yeah, yeah, so the Netflix show show if you're
interested is called high score.
Oh nice, and it came out in2020, so it's a docuseries that
traces the history of classicvideo games, featuring insights
from the innovators who broughtthese worlds and characters to
life.
That's sweet, so yeah if you'reinterested in that it's uh it
is pretty cool.

Uh, the source that we were pulling our
timeline from yes, because wewere quoting some information
and we found that on kind of aninteresting website.

So the website that we're getting our
information from, with the kindof the timeline of these
different video game systems,you can find that on Long Island
, retro Gaming, there's an expo.
Actually it looks like it'saugust 8th through the 10th in
of 2025 and it looks like ablast, like just a bunch of

(53:11):
people hanging out playing videogames.

Like playing old video games and new video games
and an arcade game.

There's a little cosplay, oh check o check it out
Oregon.
Trail.
Oh my God, we should probablytalk about Oregon Trail and how
it changed our entire lives.
Well, let's go through this.
Let's go through the rest ofthis timeline really fast.

For sure.

Because then 85 also saw Tiger Electronics
created the first LCD handheldgames, uh-huh.
So that's where you got.

like those, the sports games, right, like the
football game and the baseballgame and everything that you
would have in your hand.
We had one.
It was like green and thefootball players were just like
little red dots and they werelike yep, I totally remember
that.

Yes, yeah, so that was.
Uh, they also had a gi joe anda teenage mutant, ninja turtles.
Um, street fighter, turtles,street Fighter, amazing, yeah.
So some cool games, and then 86, you get the Sega Master System
.
So then you get the.
You know, now Sega's like hey,don't forget us, and they jump

(54:11):
in with their system, not theGenesis right, but the Sega
Master System.
And then in 86, you get theother amazing Atari game.
You get the.

Atari 7800.

So Centipede, pole Position 2, dig Dug and the
godfather of games, the cremede la creme.
Galaga, Galaga, you were aGalaga girl.
I freaking love Galaga, I wouldtake a giant stand-up Galaga,
galaga.

You were a Galaga girl.

I freaking love Galaga.
I would take a giant stand-upGalaga game in my living room
and be quite happy, thank youvery much Any day.
Any day.
In fact, Jeff, my husband and Iactually talked about instead
of getting a dining room table,which we desperately need, we
thought maybe we just get one ofthose games that you would play

(55:00):
at Pizza Hut, right when youcould like sit and play.
Centipede or Galaga and likejust make that our dining room
table.

Absolutely.
I think you should do it.

What if they?

make one for four people, and then you could even
play some of the four persongames that came later.

That would be cool .
That would be cool.

Really cool.

So what was your first game system as a young
person?
I think my first one.
Well, so my dad had an odyssey.
Oh wow, cool.
So after divorce he got anodyssey and then somebody broke
into his apartment and theystole it and that was a big sad
day day um, I want to say ourfirst one at home was the was
the atari 7800.

(55:44):
Okay, I thought, I don't thinkwe, I know well, maybe it was
the nintendo, the nes and Ican't remember, but I wanted I,
I feel like it was the 7800.
Um, how about?

you, I, we had the 2600 okay, 2600 the original
nice and I remember getting thatbecause we had space invaders
and my mom, she loved videogames, she loved computers and
technology and she played spaceinvaders probably for 24 hours.
I mean it insane, we didn't getto play.

(56:20):
The video games were for adults, not for children.
You like, maybe got some timeand I love that Space Invaders
was the big one, uh-huh,asteroids.
I remember that.
And then my next big memory ofvideo games was I don't know
what system it was on theoriginal Pitfall.
Was that on Atari?

(56:42):
It was Atari, I think it wasAtari, and my brother was young
he's probably six or seven, okayand won the Pitfall game, like
made it all the way through,finished it.
You would take a picture, aPolaroid picture, of him
standing next to the screen withhis high score, uh-huh, and we

(57:05):
sent it, mailed it off, so thathe could get the patch.
Oh, that's so cool Because theywould mail back a patch, if you
like beat a certain high scoreand finished a game.
I didn't know that.
We would use the old fashionedmail with like stamps and things
and we would write on envelopesand we sent this Polaroid
picture in of him.

I love that With the highest score on the game,
it was cool, they mailed backPatch.

I wonder if he still has the vest.
I don't know, I'll have to askhim.

We weren't like our family.
We had the very first Macintoshcomputer, oh right, on don't
know like two and a half feettall and weighed roughly the
same as a Volkswagen and came ina cloth bag to unzip it.
So my mom got the very firstApple Macintosh computer and it

(57:56):
had a screen that was like thisbig.
Yeah, and we played solitaireon that thing every, every day.
It was just like on the diningroom table, much to my
grandmother's chagrin and justsat there and you would just
play solitaire.
I don't know that.
I don't know that it didanything else I don't know did
you did with it.
I don't know what I just said.

I I don't think we did anything with it other than
play solitaire because was it aword processor, sure would you
have been able to type, I think.
I mean it had a keyboard it had.

In fact it had a curly like q cord.
That okay you know.
So it was right there right ondon't know, only ever played
solitaire on it.

That's all that matters.

But that was our gaming.

That was pretty sad.
So those are.
We kind of had our home consolegames.
Those are early memories ofthat.
What about arcade games?
I was doing the whole chickenand egg thing like which came
first.
Did you go to the arcade?

as a young person, yeah, and like when, what?

was that what was your arcade era about
Definitely the same era of justgoing to the mall.
Okay, there were a couple ofdifferent malls that have
different arcades and of courseall had different games, you
know, but then this was likepre-dance dance revolution kind
of thing.
It was just rows and rows ofstand-up.

Centipede Burger-man, miss pac-man, you
know, gallia, thank, you verymuch and these are all like 16
bit games, right, pretty prettymuch, yeah, pretty early on, at
least early on.

Yeah, they would get a little trickier.
You'd have some that were alittle fancier.
Do you remember when, um, ohshoot, what was the one called
the dragons?
Dragons quest, dragons eight?
It was dragons quest, like I'mlooking at producer tim, but the
one that was like the mostadvanced graphics, um, and it

(59:52):
had like a night that.
No, it was a stand up art, itwas a video game.
That, when Dragon's LairDragon's Lair oh yes, freaking A
man.
That one the most frustratinggame ever.
Everybody spent at least $200trying to just get out of the
castle.
Nobody ever did it.

Producer Tim (01:00:11):
I do remember that , but that was like the next.
That was the next phase.

Megan Bennett (01:00:15):
Yes, when they started getting way advanced yes
, agreed that was a gooddevelopment there super
beautiful to look at, impossibleto play.
I remember this.
I bet nobody's ever finished itI would love to know.

Lesley Meier (01:00:27):
That would be awesome.

But yeah, so we should mostly like mostly the 16
bit okay so yeah, I rememberlike playing frogger.

my mom mom loved Balloon man, do you remember?

this game?

Oh, I don't remember Balloon man it was a
guy like on a unicycle, like aclown.
Balloon.

Man.

Okay, and he would just like ride back and forth
and the goal was for him tocatch balloons on top of his
head.
Okay, and then there, centerconsole like centipede had that
balloon man was also a ball inthe center console.
It was definitely in theeighties.

(01:01:05):
Yep, there you go, balloon man,and definitely at showbiz pizza
.
Oh, I remember showbiziz, andthat was back when a youth
children's pizza establishmenthad a lot of entertainment for
adults right it was an arcadekeep them busy and there were

(01:01:27):
kid games, but I remember likeit was mostly the parents I mean
the kids played, but likeanybody was there for skeeball
fuck, yes, skeeball we have togo play some.

Yes, let's do that.
I love that'd be super fun.
So much I do too, and again,very competitive with that oh so
and then there's that wholelike the world changed right and
the video games suddenly hadseats to them do you remember
when that like kind of happenedtoo, like you got the star wars
games.
I think there was an indianajones game okay that you sat

(01:02:00):
down in um, yeah, or, and thenlater jurassic park.
There was like a jurassic parkgame where you were in a jeep
sure so that's.

This is an interesting part of the video
game journey, because when videogames started at the very
beginning, like the whole starwars franchise, didn't exist yet
right so there weren'tnecessarily video games based on
movies.
So I'm kind of curious aboutlike the crossover, like when
somebody was like oh look, youknow, I mean star wars, obvious

(01:02:30):
entry point, lots of things tofly light sure all the things,
but that had to open up a wholenew era of video game
development I'm sure, becausenow you had the marketing aspect
to it right like a wholebranding piece, that on another
layer to what they were doing,because before that you could do
defender, yeah, and you couldhave defender and defender was

(01:02:50):
just defender right.

But then now you've got like a right, like a
star wars tie, fighting,shooting, which would have been
drastically different.

Our brains have been through a lot.
They have, when you think aboutmarketing and the development
of marketing and how brandingbasically I don't want to say
totally came into existence.
This is a little bit of Gen Xexceptionalism, because we only
know what we know, we know whatwe know.
But this whole thing developedlike sheets, action figures

(01:03:22):
video games clothes Like thiswas our childhood.

You can kind of start blaming it on Disney a
little bit right, Because like Iremember as a little little kid
having.

Bambi sheets.
Okay, right on, yeah for sure.

So like that kind of stuff branded Well and even
Holly Hobby, but those were.

I remember them being popular in middle school
and Holly Hobby is much olderthan the 80s.
Well, and probably all right,I'm going to de-center us.
There was like I mean, you hadCoca-Cola, davy Crockett, that
was like you know, there wasthat marketing, like there was
Davy Crockett wallpaper and thehat like the old Wild West
stories.
But I would say certainly inthe 80s shit blew up.

Yeah, the wheels fell off the bus and yeah, it
went crazy.
Agreed, because you know videogames around movies.

This story is brutal the development of the
Atari.
What producer Tim is showing usright now is the Atari ET video
game.
And I think this was on a showthat we watched the development
of this game.
They were pushing so hard toget this game out to coincide
with the movie, to get theChristmas sales, and so they

(01:04:34):
were working 24 seven likearound the clock.
I had that game To get thisgame out and it was like the
most expensive and the biggestflop.
Is that true, am I?
But this game tanked so hard.

Well, if I recall , it was pretty impossible to
play and I know you were on abicycle and there was a flower
involved and I just I'm liketrying to remember a little bit
of this, but I do rememberplaying it yeah, but it was
pretty brutal.

I mean it was unlike any other.
It was the height of like kindof commercialism and pushing a
product to come out with a moviewell, the developers probably
only had you know this tinylittle window right, because the
movie gets into into production.

And you I mean, like I think about the, the
movies or the games that I playnow, like all of those assassin
creed games, they take years.
Yes, years and years and yearsto put out, and if you're trying
to back in the way, old ancientdays, even with the 16 bit,
right, you only had a tinylittle window to get this shit
built.

(01:05:42):
Yes, and then it also stillsomehow had to have some sort of
theme to the movie.

Right, like it was supposed to tie in and you
should care about it, and itshould feel like an extension of
the film and game.

Development up until that point had taken
decades, right, well, and Ithink, if memory serves like the
developers hadn't seen themovie yet, because the movie
wasn't done, there was no screen.

Right If they're trying to get it out at the same
time.

So they were like getting like photos of the
production, artwork and stuff.

And they're not going to give them the whole
script and they're not going toyou know, because if any of that
gets out, that's like justterrible for a movie.

That's wild.
Yeah, so I kind of missed.
I know the next development waslike the Game Boy and that kind
of handheld.

And that sort of went over my head.

Not like it was too hard, but I just was moving
on to other things over my head.
Yeah, not like it was too hard,but I just was moving on to
other things.

Yeah, I went off into college.
I remember the.
I think the end for me, I meanthe break for me, because I'm
back into it, but the I want to.
Oops.
I want to say that in juniorhigh and my freshman year of
high school we had at-putt inour like right down the street

(01:06:59):
from us oh, okay, right and ofcourse that's miniature golf for
anybody who doesn't haveputt-putts or didn't have
putt-putts, um, but they alsohad an arcade that was next to
the putt-putt.
Nice, and you'd go in and youcould get your, get your ball in
your, in your and your stickand go play putt-putt, or you
could hang out in the arcade,okay, and my friends and I would

(01:07:22):
go every, every, every Saturdaynight and play video games.

Nice.

And we were a pretty decent, like normal group
of kids.
We weren't terribletroublemakers or anything like
that.
We weren't trying to burn theplace down.
Not trying to burn, but we justwould go in and hang out and
play video games okay and we gotto be good friends with the
police officer who was therejust to keep people from having
fights right and he got tokensfor free.

(01:07:50):
So in the back of his policecruiser he had buckets of tokens
from Putt-Putt.
And he would hand us, like giant, like tumblers, cups full of
tokens every time we'd come in,not for everybody, but just for
my little crew, and so we wouldsit and play for hours for free.

(01:08:12):
That's awesome, it was so greatwe played Gauntlet.
We played the shit out ofGauntlet.
Remember that one?
No, I mean, that's freakingDungeons and Dragons, right
there.
Show me what it looked like.
Gauntlet had a warrior, it hada Valkyrie.

Oh, sweet An elf.

It had a wizard.
It had.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then you got, like you know, if you were
about to die it'd be likevalkyrie is about to die.

Warrior needs food , so yes yes, so there was a
place that was by the house afew years ago and they had this
in it and their arcade.
Their uprights didn't alwayswork, but a girlfriend of mine
and I were there one evening andwe played the shit out of this
and we laughed a lot at itbecause it was really funny.

It's so fun.

I don't even know how we ended up there that night
.

There's nothing more frustrating than when you
go and you like nowadays and youput a quarter in and like one
of the characters doesn't work.
Oh, it's just like yes,absolutely, I just it's just
like yes.

Absolutely.
I just want to play with mybuddies.
Those games are great.
The other game we played therewas a Michael Jackson video game
.

That was called Moonwalker.

Talk about branding, I think, and it was
also an early and we were justlike what.
I did not remember this.

I didn't remember a Michael Jackson one.
I remember Michael Jackson.

Super weird.

Here it is.
Yes, oh, my goodness, do youmake him dance.

Yes, and he has like powers.
Yes, we played this a lot, butthis is I played it as an adult.
I didn't know it exists.
Okay, it was a Sega Genesisgame.
It's kind of magnificent.
It's just so surreal and weird.

That's so 80s, I can't even stand it.

That was really pretty fun and we have a couple
of arcades here in the city ofIndianapolis retro arcades that
you can go to and play many ofthese games.

I think you and I need to go do that, because the
one downtown also has skeeball,yes, so we should go do that,
and they have a gauntlet game ohwait.

Yeah, I posted from that last year because we
got to go as part of gen con wegot in there for that event and
they have a skee-ball upstairs.
That was super fun so yeah,maybe we can get some like
little mics and we'll just likenarrate ourselves playing that'd
be fun, okay.

question if you go back in time, yes, walk into
an arcade.
Okay, you have a handful ofquarters.
You can play any game you want.

Which one do you pick?
I have to go back in olden daysbrain.
I probably would have played.
It was Pac-Man.
I played a lot of Pac-Man.

Pac-Man.

Yeah.

Now, did you prefer Pac-Man over Ms Pac-Man
or did you like Ms Pac-Manbetter?

I like the original.
Okay, I played.
I was an equal opportunity Pacperson as Pac people go, I
really enjoyed the originalPac-Man.
This takes me back to thePac-Man Christmas special that
you didn't know existed.

I didn't know it existed.

We talked about that that was pretty funny, but
Pac-Man probably.
So what would you play?
I feel like I know, but I don'tknow if you go back to the
beginning.

It would have to be Galaga.

Okay.

And that's partly because I played it so much
that I got the pattern down.

Oh, right on, and then it was almost like cheating
, right.

Yes, because after a while you're like I
played so many games of it thatI know exactly when the next
round is.
I know where, that you knowwhere the ship's coming down, I
know when it's going to drop thelittle missile.

Yes, you know, I know when the alien's coming.
That was part of the skill ofit.
Yeah, it was the patternrecognition and the development
of like.
I mean that's how you got goodRight At video games.

Yeah, oh, look at that.

Oh, there's a little Galaga guy, there's a
little alien that's going totake my ship and Galaga came out
post Space Invaders and post.
Was it Mission Command orMissile Command?

Missile Command.
It was an AT&T game.
Oh, I hated Missile Command.
I hated that one, my AtlantaAtari game.

I didn't like that one at all, but these were
precursors to this.

Yes, galaga was like a better version.
Yeah, it's a little more fancy.
They had, like the ships were alittle more detailed and stuff
like that.
So I need to go to video games.

I'd be a good time .
I'm glad we have them.
I like to play some video games.
I like to play them.

They are not just for little boys.

No, um, they are not just for little boys.
No, they are not just forlittle kids, no, they are for
old people too video games arefor grown ups.

Embrace your video game.
If you are looking for a wayjust to uh, de-stress, I
strongly recommend, highlyrecommend, and that's not just
phone games which are fine rightother place, but we're just
like touching a screen with yourfinger.

Yep Like get on a nice console game, hold a
controller, go to the arcade,meet some people, look around,
touch grass.

Touch grass or hide in your basement and play
Assassin's Creed until the worldheals itself.
Go to France.
Go to France in your, your mindor on your video game this has
been fun.

That's been fun.
You have been listening to genx.
Women are sick of this shit.
Hey megan, hey leslie, what dopeople do if they want to find
us?

well, we have a website that people can find us
on, and that is genxwomenpodcom.
We also have a Facebook page.
We have an Instagram account aswell.
We have a YouTube account wherewe put YouTube shorts and other
little tidbits up there.
We have a TikTok account.

(01:13:52):
I don't talk the dick or tickthe tock.
You don't tick the tock, I donot.
I barely talk the tick, but Idid put a TikTok up.
We're explaining TikTok account.
I don't talk the dick or tickthe tock.
You don't tick the tock, I donot.
I barely talk the tick, but Idid put a TikTok up.

We're explaining the internet to people again.

That's okay though it's great.

We need to know how the internet works.

Can people buy merch?
They absolutely can.
We have a merch store on thewebsite itself, and we also have
an Etsy store too, so that wasjust pretty easy to find you.
It's just Gen X women on Etsy.

And if you are listening to this podcast,
presumably you found itsomewhere.
And while you're there, give usa review.
Yeah, let us know what youthink.

Throw some stars at us.

That'd be great.

We'll take one, two, three, four or five, ooh,
five, maybe ten, and also makesure that you are hitting
subscribe so that you'renotified whenever a new episode
drops.

Most important.

We also have a five minutes of fame that I
think we should tell peopleabout too.

Hell, yes, we want to know your stories, your five
minutes of fame stories.
You can send those stories inon the website or you can call
1-888-GEN-X-POD and leave yourstory for us and we will play it
live in our next episode.

We'll listen to it on a little red phone, just
like.

Batman.
That'd be cool, let's get a batphone.
I think that's it.
I think you're right.

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