We Made Geeky Music and the TSA Stopped Us | Jeromy & James

In this episode we share geeky music we made, invite you to join us, and talk about problems we had with props.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You were now listening to the podcastfor Geeks and the Stuff they Love,
where each week we'll talk about everythingfrom anime to movies, games and prop
collecting, but the people who createand love it. I'm Jeremy, I'm
Vince, I'm James, and Fitchis your Geeki. I'm Jeremy, I'm
this and I'm Jays and this isyour Geek Fixed podcast. There you go,

(00:29):
ye recording. Yeah, so thatwas Uh, my voice sounds so
much better in there. The hThat was actually something that Vince sent to
us a little quite a while ago. Uh. Actually I didn't look on
the date on it. But butat the same time, this is created
using a service that is called theRefusion, which is an AI service and

(00:55):
it's free, which I like that. And what it does is it will
you. You can either you caneven just put in like a basic topic,
so you can put in some liketalking points of things that you like
or things that you're interested in,or some idea about a song, and
it will create the lyrics and thencreate the music and even creates a cover

(01:15):
for you. Or you can putin lyrics and then have it, you
know, sing those lyrics for youand all sorts of different styles. So
just give you an example. I'llgive you. I did four songs here
for some for some quick examples.This this first one. I you know,
I wanted to do a kind ofa romantic song, like something that

(01:36):
you would sing if if for youknow, people that naturally geeks do get
with other geeks. But at thesame time, you might have some different
likes, like maybe one person likeStar Wars, one person likes Star Trek.
You know, one person's more Fallout, one person's more Doom or something
whatever it might be. So sohere's my song for that. We'll have

(01:57):
a Star Trek wedding and a StarBoys honeymoon. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
So there's that song. You likethat one? And then and then
you know, I also I alsowrote one because along the lines of Star
Wars. Of course, you know, everyone has their own opinion about how

(02:23):
things are are going with start.They titled this automatically Star Wars Blues.
Is it just me? Or doesthe new Star War stuff suck? I
think so? I think so.I think so that's my favorite because it's

(02:43):
very catchy. And then uh thatthis one, this one right here is
about Batman and iron Man because Ialways saw Badman and iron Man were pretty
similar and so both self made menwith more He's right, yeah, they

(03:04):
self titled this on money. Thehero iron Man was like Batman, no
superpowers. The only thing he hadto fight Eva was money and a lot
of it. There you go,and then curse my final one. I
know that our channel has uh someindividuals out there who who have uh you

(03:28):
know it should be proud of theirown of their own interests. I am
proud of being a brunie pinky pie. Ain't no one I like to eat
Aquin my Berni. I am abronie. I'm a bronie. I like
to eat equine macaroni. It's myfavorite line from now on. But anyway,

(03:51):
so so naturally, I mean,we want you to share things that
if you if you go into this, it is a free service, and
we put it in so the communitypage, along with the invitation for people
to to make their own music,because I knew people would say which even
with this, I've already had aresponse from people saying I'm not musically inclined,
like you know whatever it stuff.You don't have to be to create

(04:12):
something. We just want to hearsome things that are interesting or funny that
are because there's not geeky music outthere. There's not really a lot of
geeky music outside of weird aw andstuff like that. So you want to
hear some clips of some things thatthat you guys come up with and submit
them to us. Again, youknow, no, you can't have you
know, really bad swear words oranything this you know, sexual or something

(04:33):
that you know inappropriate. But onthe flip side, yeah, keep it
somewhat clean and at the foot onthe flip side, if you are also
musically inclined, like you actually writemusic or you've already created some some nerdy,
geeky themed music, we also wantto hear that because that would be
great and we'll share that on orif you do a music video or something

(04:55):
whatever you want to do, sendthat to us over this next month,
and then next smell them them wedo recording, we'll check them out and
and maybe I'll even come up withan award for the person, for one
of the people or for a fewof the people that kind of come up
with the best one. We'll hopyou guys all vote on it or something
like that. We'll kind of refinethis more as we talk about it.

(05:15):
But I just I'm excited about hearingagain. We won't we want to share
things? Yeah, music, Imean we could try different categories, like
if we want more serious note,if you want like make make us love
sort of thing, absolutely fair.Do you know what, let me I'll
make it one step easier to letme show how to how to do one
of these good say like fifteen secondthings or you know, I've tried pushing

(05:41):
the limits. So I think Ithink if you I don't know, if
we have a paid version or something, would be longer. But I think
it's also just what the AI isable to generate is kind of that length
on its own. So it alsowill tell you when it's kind of it
says something like it if it's gettingtoo long. So we'll do went in
here. So here's some other onesthat we tried doing, for example.

(06:03):
But what you do is just getin there a refusion and you click.
So I'm gonna click creates and wecould try we can try either a typing
some lyrics, which we could door in this case, so that's what
I did with the ones that youjust heard, I wrote in the lyrics
and then it came up with thesong. But let's try. Let's try

(06:24):
letting you write the lyrics. We'rejust gonna come up with some topics.
So give me some topics, James, I sink competition, competition, yep,
I sink geek well, geeky,I sink prize money. What'd you
say? You read money, prizemoney? Oh, prize money, prize

(06:47):
money. Okay, I sing techno. Well, I guess that might be
described technical style. Oh that comesup next? Like is a social is
a geeky theme? We could do? Oh well, because of the briefs

(07:13):
for a moment, ago do anythingwas on my mind as I stole war
stuff. But I want to dodifferent we haven't. I didn't do a
fallout thing, so I do afall out thing for a large part of
our audience. Fall Out. Wecould specified pit Boy maybe just to like,
but it gets the right full outright right, So you can do
a pocalyptic or a pocalypse misspelling apocalypse. Okay, So we could do nucleo.

(07:46):
Okay, all right, let's seewrite the lyrics. Yeah, so
we click write lyrics and now itsays competition, geeky, prize money.
Fall Out didn't do too much withthose lyrics. Let's try to get in
here, right Eric Wasteland Warriors searchingfor a Hero clouds, clouds, Oh
there you go. Oh it's oh, I see what it did. Okay,

(08:09):
it did make some some rhyming stuff. What type of genre you said
you want? Techno? Yeah?Sure, tech? Now is that a
spelled technow? Yeah? Techno?And uh what about slow technol thing?
It might be fun. What isit slow techno, like a slew down
sort of thing? Oh? Slow, okay? Male female? Uh?

(08:37):
Female female? All right, let'stry it with that. Here we go.
So now it's gonna it usually createsthree three songs at a time.
And what you're gonna see, Reeve, I like the oh yeah chi yeah

(08:58):
check that out and then see theseare the covers. It's kind of cool.
That looks very fall outish. Let'sstart with that one. Competition Geeky
Prize Money fall Out the Piper leadsin Apocalyptical clear about Wasteland Warriors searching for
a hereas it sounds like number ofbots. Competition geeky prize money. That's

(09:26):
what I was thinking, is competitiongeeky prize money. Fallout the leads in
Apocalyptic no clear about wasteland warriors searchingfor heroes? Clear? Okay, So
I can also here and then ithas there's our words. But now I
can also change it up, soI can change that to we can change

(09:50):
a rock or wrap, so I'llsee im and now maybe i'll make it
mail too, and then we goactually could leave that off. Let's just
do rock. Well here, giveme, give me, just give me
a bunch of Fallout things, uh, full out America again? Yeah,

(10:18):
pip boy or being specific? Whatabout what about some different other things?
So we've got used to Oh,yeah, that's my handy or what dog

(10:41):
meat? Oh yeah, dog meat? I met dog meat at the somebody.
Yeah they and they looked just likehim too. Uh yeah, he
had even head on. They puta little carry whatever you call the detaches
to the strap so they could walkhim. Uh uh like a little vest

(11:01):
thing that they put on them ofthe wood. Yeah, let's see any
dark yeah, uh seventy six ora vault voltimost one yet and you could
put good springs in that. Okay. Oh and give me some cool classic

(11:31):
one liners from Fallout. So yougot wore one and it changes, never
changes, I don't know Actually thatmight be good. Those those might be
pretty good. Let's try. Let'stry. Let's try the rock on that
one. That shoupeak enough. Okay, here we go. So oh I

(11:52):
didn't re redo the lyrics though,So that's going to be a very very
literal. Yeah, maybe two exactnuclear nights and good Springs fall Out fall
Out New because hair cut nuclear thishandy dog made vall good springs never change.

(12:16):
Oh, that was pretty good.Actually, if you would have repeated
war never changes again, it wouldhave been perfect. Fallout New Vegas,
America. Make sure to the beginning, this sounds like it's stand up or
something. There is handy dog madevault, good springs their one of them.

(12:41):
Yeah, I think there, we'lltry one last thing with this hair.
Let's go, yeah, write lyricsfrom it, hair goes or it
never changes. In My Blood andmy Soul, world torn apart by ways,
untold, holy cow, let's gofor that one. They go over
everything else. Then it did.It's like this is good enough. I
think it does like like full fulllines. Then so you need to put

(13:03):
in a sentence. Oh yeah,it's the kind of intense all right,
war never changes. And then myblood and then my soul the world's on
a part by ways and tall warnever changes in my blood and in my

(13:24):
soul. A world torn apart byways pretty good, all right? He
war never changes in my blood andin my soul, the world torn apart
by ways of told, okut it. That's not too shabby. So there

(13:46):
you go. That's our invitation toyou is to uh to send us some
of that stuff. But you canyou are you gonna create some some songs
for us, James to I'll giveit a go, Yeah, I'll so
next time next month, James isbringing it to the table too. We'll

(14:07):
each create something also to cement withyou guys. Our ours won't count though
for the prizes, if we getabout prizes. But at the same time,
I thought, I mean, weattached this kind of a short topic,
but one of this kind of importantI was also thinking about the other
day. But it's come up forus even recently and stuff. I won't
get into too much on it.But at the same time, also making

(14:30):
this, I cannot take this toa conference now, can you tell me
why? I would say, Ihave somebody to do with the shape.
Yeah, so it looks like agun that can be one piece of it.
You can just be like, well, it looks like a toy gun,
so not too much problem. Thebiggest issue is if I take this
to a con, this hole isgonna be a problem. So the second

(14:54):
I drill that hole is something likea problem you could you know. Most
so most countries and most states.I'm losing my voice. Most countries and
states have rules about at least fortoys and things, they have to have
an orange, specifically in orange.There's even a name for the color orange

(15:20):
plug that's in the end, whichif you ever saw my my, uh,
what's the name of that gun,the rifle from ball out, that's
where any rate? Yeah, what'sthe short version of it, pistol?
Well yeah, yeah, yeah,yeah, I feel token. Well that's

(15:41):
the one that one I got.Yeah yeah, okay. So so that
when I did that, you'll seeat the end, I never altered the
end of it because I did wantto use the cons and it came already
with the correct orange plug, whichactually matches the game anyways. But at
the same time, that's that hasto be on there. So most conferences,
when you go there, the firstthing they do when you do check

(16:03):
in you then go where they kindof look over your outfit, and so
they'll make you zip tie things.So for example, even if if I
take a water gun, for example, to a conference, a lot of
them will actually require that you pullin the trigger and then it zip ties
that trigger tight. Oh it's onething. Or if you have a sword

(16:26):
or something, they'll have you tiesomething on it. They'll let you take
it out to be able to takea picture with people, but at the
same time, like it has tobe on there. It's basically to prevent
people from doing things. I think, I don't know if I sell the
video, I'd have to get Logan'spermission. But my son went to a
conference one year where he was inthe in the booth area, you know

(16:48):
where all the merchants are, andsuddenly this guy started there was a big
argument between one of the sellers andjust some random guy. And the guy
looks like it's almost exactly like comicbook good guy, like you know,
he's he looks like somebody that you'dexpect to be kind of, you know,
very very nerdy about whatever it is. But he started making comments about

(17:14):
you know, I will use thisand that to to get you talking about
powers and things. But then hepulls up his pant leg and he had
a knife duct taped to his leg. Oh, and he went to get
it. Luckily of his duct tapedto his leg like two much to the
point he can't get it out.But at the same time, it's very
obvious they had to bring in security, you know, to get the guy

(17:34):
and stuff. I mean, thingscan happen, and so for that reason,
naturally, you know, conferences haveto be careful. And you know,
on the flip side, the reasonwhy I was able to take this
last year to the New Vegas event, this one, not the other one
that had their working parts, andeven though it has the hole in the

(17:55):
end, is because the New Vegasevent's done a little bit differently. It's
just kind of just kind of peoplethat are gathered in a public space.
But on the flip side, Imean, yea, also I want to
be a little careful. I mean, I saw a lot of weapons I've
had. Some of those weapons werereal weapons. But you know, I
mean, every everything is different.But you get to keep in mind when
you're making a prop that you haveto make it appropriate for what you're planning

(18:18):
to use it. For Vin's alwaysrefers to the fact that you know,
also there's a difference between the movieor fictional world and then the true actual
prop that they used to film.A lot of times, the prop that
they used to film, you won'twant to replicate because it doesn't look that
great and it doesn't do half thethings that does. Do I want to
make one that looks like the actualproper do? I want to make one

(18:38):
that looks like the world's you know, item kind of thing you make it
work like it does in there.But this is another restriction that I always
have to consider, is is ifI want to take it to show it
off or to do something I'm tryingto I'm trying to hook up right now
actually to go to Kansas to hangout brief with Adam Savage, and I

(19:00):
was planning on taking a couple ofmy props with me down there. But
I also have to get this intothe conference because that's where we'd be meeting.
And the issue is, uh,all the stuff I kept on thinking
about taking it in there, Iwonder if I'm going to be able to
get it in And I did takeit, and I have to create something
specific or special just for that,I was thinking about taking the retractable lightsaber

(19:23):
actually. But yeah, but onthe flip side, I mean, like,
yeah, this, these are thingsthat I I I've been in communication
a lot lately because of like weshared recently, like a lot of people
are now finally sharing some of thestuff that they're building, and and as
you're writing me about some of yourthings that you're doing, there's also disappointment

(19:45):
because they want to take it somewherenow and they can't, and so being
creative about how you create something sothat it could be it could go into
multiple environments or something I else Ithought about when I did the New Vegas
still but I I honestly, Ijust ran out of time. I just
didn't plan very well for it.It was it was the truth, that's
all on me. But on theflip side, I thought with the pit

(20:08):
boy, the thing I could havedone because I had the new one that
I was building, is I couldhave made it kind of like yours,
either a like yours where I couldtake the phone out like James's, you
know, completely even after its assembled, and then just sent each part through
and I could take the wires offeven temporarily because this part of what got
me was the wires, but oryou know, or where I take the

(20:32):
whole thing and party event, becausethat's another sneaky way to do it.
They sound like even as I'm describingthem, I hate describing it this way
because I also feel like there's badpeople out there that can do these same
things for nefarious reasons, and I'mtry doing them for good reasons. But
at the time, I like somethingthat you kind of have to consider in
advance. I used to live ina town in California called Viceilia, and

(20:56):
they had this park where they hada house that it was a Russian home
from this one part of Russia.And the the idea behind it was that
this home could be disassembled because theyhad back in the day, way back
in the day, they would havethe tax collectors come around and they would

(21:17):
they would force you to pay onthe spot based on what you had on
land, and so your land becamemore worthless if you didn't have a house
on it. So the house wasconstructed with these stones in such a way
you could easily take the whole thinga part, so it just becomes a
bunch of scattered stones stones around yourfield and uh, and some and a
stack of wood, and then youcould easily within the same day. So

(21:38):
because also you didn't know until theywere that they were coming into the last
second, so they're on their waythere quickly. Your family being able to
disassemble your house into the field andthen reassemble the whole thing, uh,
is kind of cool. But atthe same time, I mean, like,
I feel like you could also technicallydo that with propps, but you
have to be thinking in advance ofhow it's assembled. And and so I

(22:00):
mean this is half that creativity ofnot just how do I make a prop
and make it work or make itcool and displayable, but also what do
I plan to do with it inthe future, and and how can I
make it so it's easy to trendsportand Yeah, but it's it's a puzzle
in and of itself, And soI would be curious to know some ways

(22:22):
that some of you have done this, or if you've been thinking ahead on
some of these factors and and howyou kind of get around it, you
know, because yeah, it's it'ssomething that you do need to consider.
It's it's it would be a sadthing. And I've seen it. I
probably must have seen it, seenit if you've ever gone to there and
you get to that table, orthey're screening all your stuff and they're tagging

(22:45):
it and things like that. Atthe conference, you'll always see people getting
turned away, you know, andthey're like, but I made this giant
sword out of foam and it tookme six years. And they're like,
sorry, you can't bring it inbecause it's made not because it's not made
with foam, Sorry, it's madewith plastic, or there's metal pieces that
are on it that aren't allowed.So you know, you can pretty easily

(23:07):
find out what some of the rulesand regulations are or or some of the
tricks. It's also very different.I mean, so like here in the
US, I can easily have somethingthat looks like I mean, you gotta
be careful still, but I caneasily have something that looks like a firearm
and keep it and have it andtake it places and other areas you can't.

(23:30):
You know. It's it's weird though, because at the same time,
I think back to when I talkedto Chris Bernardo, he told me about
he came to the US and hebought this prop that it was a prop
gun and it had real it hadwhat looked like real bullets too that go
into it or were they No,they were real bullets, but they had

(23:52):
you know, the ends where theywere drilled out. And so but then
he took them to the airport andthe in the US. When he got
to the airport, the the TSAwas like, what are you doing with
this? You know this gun.He's like, well, it's a prop
you know, it's not really agun. They picked it up, all
the bullets fell out and he startedto reach for the gun and stuff.

(24:17):
I mean, things could have gottenreally bad. But then he got to
the UK, where they have verystrict rules about firearms and things like that,
and he got there and he expectedthem to react more and so they
was like, yeah, that's fineand just passed it right. True.
I mean, you never know I'dhave a similar ish story. So when
Vinsa I were over in the UKfor recording the whole prop store stuff,

(24:41):
I made the most of the tripand I went to a shooting range like
for the first time ever, andI wanted to come back with like a
keepsake, like one of the emptyshells from like from the bullets to I
personally shot right while I was there. They they told me that it might
be a dangerous thing to take tothe airport, like anything weapon related.

(25:06):
They might have an issue, andso I thought, I'm gonna try and
risk it. I'm gonna see whatthey do. I got security and they
were sort of like easing at theback of my mind, like what if
they delay me, like because ofthis, what if I get in trouble,
if whatever? And so I hada zip loc bag which which had
I think two or three like emptyshells, so no bullet, no gunpowder,

(25:29):
just like pure mesal. And Ishowed it to the guy and I
said, I want you to seethis. This is like three empty shells.
There's nothing in here that could becaused like they could cause any type
of damage. It's just plain metal. And he had to call the supervisor
because he said, I'm not trainedenough to deal with this, and I
said, that's fine. Caught thesupervisor, I explained the situation to him.

(25:51):
I said, look, I don'twant to I don't want to cause
any trouble. That's why I'm tellingyou list like in advance. But I
have this. I would love tokeep this because this is an important keepsake
to me. But I understand thatyou guys might think that this is dangerous,
even though you can see it's justmessile, like there's nothing in there
that can coolse damage. And theymade me throw it out. So,
like the UK was a bit morelax in lessons, at least for Chris

(26:17):
in my experience, you're right,well, and you know it's it's tricky
because I mean, even like withmy case, Yeah, they will,
they can dispose of it as oneend. They can also destroy some things
the whole I mean, And wekind of told this story a little bit.
But by this time hopefully the videocame out so you can actually see

(26:37):
the New Vegas video. But youknow, when I tried, I think
half of it was I took toomany things. I sometimes I've wondered if
I tried to only sneak through mytwo thousand pit boy and only one of
the NUCAD Couli gains, if itwould have gone through. The things that
that stood out for them is numberone. I had two guys, so

(27:00):
it looked completely different on the inside. So one had very minimal wires that
just go to a speaker and somebatteries. The other one had like hoses
and wires and stuff like that,and you can't take water guns on the
plane as carry on. You cantake them, you can send them through
your in your luggage if you're goingto check a bag. But I didn't
check a bag. I hadn't purchasedthat. I knew. I had it

(27:23):
in the back of my mind thatI could. But then the other problem
with checking a bag, which Ithought would also work maybe for the pit
boy, is that when you checkit, they still go through the same
process. So they're still going togo through an X ray machine and they
pull it either a you're not gonnasee your bag on the other side,
or if they think it is likelike in this case, the B word,

(27:45):
you know it had come it wasbeing snuck through that they would be
taken out on the turnmac and blowingit up, you know, being on
the news. You know, That'swhy I didn't try checking it. It
was like either I get it onthis way, or maybe just get how
hopefully get somebody that knows the gameand will be like, oh, yeah,
this is just a prop and letit go through, which nobody did

(28:07):
somehow, or I could always thenwalk it back outside. So because this
is a small airport, literally Icould walk it out to my car,
which I did and left it allin my car and then walk back in
and checked in again. And abig airport and you're and you're running down
on time. Yeah, like you'regonna have to pick between your prop and
and flying where you need to gobecause they're not gonna give you that option.

(28:30):
They're gonna be literally like, yeah, I get rid of this.
That was something else that interesting.When I came back from Vegas and I'm
trying to put this into the video, I just couldn't figure out where to
put it. Is. Uh,they did this weird tsa thing. I
didn't have to take off my shoesor anything. I didn't have to open
up any of my stuff, didn'thave to take it out. Instead of
what they had us do is theytook everyone in a long line, which
what pretty fast is you go upto this point and then they say you

(28:55):
get to walk straight, don't stopwalking, and walk to the other end,
and there's fans on the other side. There's two fans that are playing
at you and as they walk youas you're walking across, then a guy
with a police dog walks twice behindyou a drug dog and our bomb dog
or whatever he is, and watchtwice. So the fans are like blowing

(29:17):
your send. I yes, towardsthe dog and and so, and I
filmed. So I filmed several peoplegoing through walking in two's and have this
dog walk back and forth behind themand stuff. Never had that happen before.
But it was the fastest process Ithink I've ever had. Uh,
maybe my maybe my props would havemade it back through there, I said,
I was so worried about having ithappened in Vegas where I wouldn't be

(29:40):
able to keep my props. ThenI said home with my son and so,
so I could pick it up whenI when I went to visit later
on. So I went back withvery minimal luggage anyways. But but yeah,
it's weird though, is that theydidn't chick like if they didn't have
an actual look through you your love. But even though I'm now doing this

(30:00):
like two and two sniff thing,did they not put your your machine like
through an X ray machine? Theystill had to put it on it.
So we did still put our luggageon the thing to go through. But
you know, normally you have totake out so I didn't have to take
out any liquids. I didn't haveto take out my computer. Like literally,
we just took our bags, putthem on the thing, it scanned

(30:22):
it, and I was done,you know, and no take off the
shoes or anything like that or mybelt. Like it was just boom boom
boom, and the christ you know. They and then they also that this
location also X rays you. Soit's the one where you have to stand
like this and they get pictures ofyou everything. Yeah, and then the
screen is always pointing somewhere where everyonecan see it. Oh here's the best

(30:45):
part. I don't know if Iwant to share this or not. I
get through the X ray. Wasthis is that? I think this was
for Vegas. I get through theX ray and the guys like I gotta
I gotta check out one other thing, and it comes up to me to
fill my stomach, which all admit. I gained a little bit of weight
in November, not much, butat the same time, I don't feel

(31:07):
like I'm a big guy. Buthe's like, he's like, oh,
that's all real, let me go. It's like, I just want to
make you feel bad real quick.And then he let me go from there.
But any rate, yeah, sothat was that was fun. But
anyway, Yeah, let us knowabout your creative ideas of how you send

(31:30):
your props the things. Do youmail them or do you actually think out
a way that you can you canbe able to have your props be transformed
based on settings that you're in.I'll let us know, let us know
about you. You'll wait to tearSuny Experiences as wettle. Yeah, yeah,
nothing too extreme. If you've enjoyedthis podcast and want more, to

(31:52):
stay tuned for that, but alsocheck out our channel, join the community
on YouTube that goes by the samename and your geek Fix. Be sure
to check out Vins on Twitter atmassive dmg Underscore and on his YouTube channel
Massive dmg. Check out James atmister Malta Fur on Instagram and the Replica
prop forum. We also want tohear from you, so be sure to
send your questions, stories, andother projects to your Geekfix at gmail dot

(32:15):
com. In the meantime, thishas been your geek Fix