Listener Mail: And The Gunslinger followed

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Listener mail My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick,
and it's Monday, of the day of the week. We
read back some messages from the mail bags applied to
us by our loyal mail bot Carney. Here right at

(00:28):
the top of today's episode, I wanted to feature a
correction by our listener Dorry, and usually if a correction
comes in, we try to put that near the top. Uh.
Dorian's response was in reference to the Odometer episode where
I did, indeed do do a major geometrical screw up.
So Dorian pointed out that it's in the part of

(00:49):
the episode where I'm discussing the odometer described by Vitruvius,
and I, for some reason, I said that the formula
for the circumference of a circle is pie our squared.
That is not correct. That is actually for the area
of a circle. UH circumferences to pie r. Though as
a weird coincidence, since we were talking about a wheel

(01:10):
specifically with the radius of two of two ft, UH,
the different formulas gave the exact same answer. In this
one case, which is twelve point five six. So thank
you Dorian for pointing that out. Always appreciate people letting
us know if a mistake like that gets through. Uh,
and I did. I did listen back. There was a
way to to snip that little reference out of the episode,

(01:31):
so so the episode should be corrected. Now. Alright, this
next one comes to us from Ben. Hey, guys, someone
else may have already mentioned this, but it occurred to
me that one factor in the accuracy of the Benitists
who measured distances by counting pacers would have been the
inclines in a route to be measured, as one's pace

(01:53):
length would naturally shorten when walking up or down a
steep incline. Perhaps they took this into account and counted
uphill or downhill paces separately. Anyways, a fascinating episode. Thanks.
I did not think about that at all, but yeah,
that's a very good point. Now. This is referencing the
the idea of Alexander the greats Bematists and other bimatists

(02:15):
from the ancient world, people who were said to measure
distances by pacing. Uh. There was some suggestion that because
they came they came up with distance measurements between milestones
or cities that are actually quite accurate, even as measured today.
There was some suggestion that maybe some of these people
actually used an odometer or some type of machine that

(02:38):
we don't know about, and that's possible. It's possible they
just were able to keep an accurate kind of paces
for some reason. I guess we don't really know. But yeah,
this is one thing that would certainly affect pacing. That
would I think not affect a mechanical odometer. Is the
incline that you're walking up or down, I guess, and
that would be a problem even if they were to

(02:59):
say this is ridiculous. Of course, if they were to, uh,
do some twine to tie their ankles together and always
do maximum stride. Oh well, now that's a good point.
But I guess when you're going up or down a
lot of times, the distance between your feet is not
that's true. Well, the twine thing is a good idea.
I didn't think about that. If you want to regularize

(03:20):
your pace, Yeah, but then what do you do with
wild animal attacks or um or the enemy shows up
to assault the caravan? It's like, oh, sorry, measurement dudes,
your best defense is just to fall over at this point.
I mean, even then, I think if you're like stepping
up or down on on an incline, that might make
a difference. Though if it's like, I don't know, if

(03:40):
you're talking about trying to like, I don't know, scramble
up or down over rocks or something, that would also
be something that a wheeled odometer couldn't really go over, right, right,
all right, I think maybe we should mention some responses
to the episodes on paragraphs. Now. One of the things
we talked about in that episode was we asked listeners

(04:03):
to send in their favorite examples of paragraphs or favorite
opening paragraphs from literature. I guess with an eye towards
selections that are not just a chunk of text that
you like, but one where the paragraph boundaries, like the
actual placement of the line breaks, feel like especially strong
or significant choices. And I thought one great submission came

(04:25):
from our listener Anna. Anna begins by selecting the book
Jane Eyre great choice and giving some background on its
themes and composition. I'm going to pick up a couple
of paragraphs in here. Anna writes the book was very popular,
but there was also a fair bit of criticism from
people who did not like the fact that there was
a story about a girl who had her own mind

(04:46):
and spoke up for herself. Charlotte Bronte, who was writing
under the name kerrr Bell, hit back at critics in
the preface to our second edition quote, I mean the
timorous or carping few who doubt the tendency of such
books as Jane Eyre, in whose eyes, whatever is unusual
is wrong. She goes on to say that conventionality is

(05:07):
not morality, self righteousness is not religion. Those are pretty
strong words, especially considering it was hard to get a
book published in those days. The fact that the book
had a second edition within a year of its first
publishing is a testament to its popularity. Anyway, I could
go on and on about how much I like this book,
but instead I will reproduce my favorite paragraph, uh and

(05:30):
note that this is going to be a scene between
the protagonist, Jane, and her her brooding forbidden love interest,
her employer Mr Rochester. Now onto the quote, which begins
first with a line of dialogue and then a separate
second paragraph. This is Mr Rochester speaking, you examine me,
Miss Eyre said he do you think me handsome? And

(05:51):
then line break, I should, if I had deliberated, have
replied to this question by something conventionally vague and polite,
but the answer somehow slipped from my tongue before I
was aware. No, sir, uh Anna goes on, This is
so relatable, and I really think you could put a
scene like this in a modern movie and people would
think it was great. I think this would be a

(06:13):
good quote to put on the back of the book
to give readers a feeling for what the book is like.
One of the things about Jane is that she speaks
the truth even when it gets her in trouble, something
we now call speaking truth to power. It's also an
indication of the relationship between Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester.
She never knows where she sits with Mr Rochester? Is
he trying to be funny? Is he rude and vain?

(06:35):
Does she reply no, sir, because she actually thinks he
is not handsome? Or because it is such a rude
question to ask You have to keep reading to find out.
It's the sort of paragraph that you read and you
immediately have to know what happens next. Thanks anna, uh,
and I agree. I really like that as a paragraph.
It is a wonderful little compact unit. I have never

(06:56):
I don't think I've ever read Jane Eyre, or or
if I did, I did it for school and forgot
all of it. Um, I don't think I've seen any
of the movies, so I'm having to like glance real
quick and see, like, okay, well, who played Mr Rochester
in a movie adaptation? Looks like William Hurd played him once.
Mr Rochester is one of the famous so called byronic heroes.
You know, he's like a Jane is obviously drawn to him,

(07:18):
but he's also you know, he's not just like straightforwardly
uh handsome and lovely in every way. He's like brooding
and dark, and he has terrible secrets and in fact,
in many ways could be considered quite a bad person.
But also he's in some way irresistible. It looks like
Fastbender played him in an adaptation. Yeah. I don't know

(07:38):
if the idea of a spoiler for a book as
old as Jane Eyre really comes into play, but spoiler alert,
he I mean, you do find out that he essentially
uh has he he already has a wife, and she
has gone mad and he is keeping her trapped in
the attic of his house. Uh, well, he's he's pursuing
this relationship with Jane. You know. Looks like Kieran Hines

(08:01):
played him in a in an adaptation, which also makes
sense another kind of like uh got you know, British
actor with intense eyes. It's really good at playing dark
characters anyway, But I digress. Let's see. Now, we got
notes from a number at least two, maybe three listeners,

(08:21):
all suggesting the same opening paragraph as a favorite of theirs. Rob,
do you want to pick one of these to read? Sure? Sure,
let's see. Um, let's see. Yeah, we heard from anders
on this, We heard from Jeff on this. Um, those
are at least two of them. Let's say, yeah, they

(08:41):
both had good points to make. Um. Le'll start with Andrews. Here. Hi,
longtime listener, first time writer. I just listened to the
paragraph part one episode, and my all time favorite opener
came to mind. I'm sure it's a favorite for many
since it's quite famous. It's from Stephen King's The Gun Slinger,
the first book in his Seven Books series, and I
still distinctly remember reading it for the first time some

(09:02):
twenty years ago. For me, it both set the tone
and in a way captures exactly the plot of the book.
And also it's just a really cool line. Here goes
quote the man in Black fled across the desert and
the gun Slinger followed. My guess is you'll get other
emails for the same entry either way. I always enjoy
your stuff. Keep up the good work. Greetings from Denmark. Uh.

(09:25):
And then Jeff also wrote in, and I'm just going
to read part of what Jeff said about this. He says, uh,
we learned the protagonist, antagonist, and setting all in one line.
Um and uh. He also has this to say, thanks
for the podcast. My new favorite Friday tradition is watching
that week's weird how cinema movie if I can find
it streaming anywhere. Oh well, that's that's sweet. And yes,

(09:48):
we we heard from I think more even more than
than these two about that opening line from The Gun Slinger,
which is, indeed, yeah, a great line. I definitely remember
this being a line that captivated me as a young reader,
and I've been I've been meaning to reread at least
just The Gun Slinger at some point because I think
King went back and and um, and did an edit

(10:09):
pass through it and sort of brought it up to
speed with the later books at some point. And I
don't think i've read that version of it. I think
I've only read the older version of it. So I'm
kind of interesting to see how how things are stitched together.
Not that I remember all the details from the first time,
but I remember really loving that book again as a
young reader and like junior high and then of course
I read all the other ones as they came out

(10:30):
over the years. So my my, my reading of the
Dark Tower series. Like I guess most people or a
lot of people, it's yeah, it's spread across the decades.
I actually do not know the Dark Tower series. I
think I started reading the first book one time a
long time ago, and I liked it, but I didn't
finish it. That's all. It's Internet, you know. I saw

(10:51):
a meme to this effect recently about people bouncing on
the first book and sort of like, um, I think
that it's like the illestration is somebody digging a tunnel
and they're almost to the gold or the diamonds or something, uh,
implying that the first book is kind of a slog.
But then the rest of the series is the is
the reward, and uh, I don't know, I I you know,

(11:14):
there are all there are many reasons to bounce off
of a particular book, to stop reading it, to set
it down, or to give up on it, etcetera. So
you know, you can't really find one rule for anything
like this. But I remember, at least as a younger reader,
really digging the first one, maybe finding the second one
a bit more of a slog, just because a lot
of it's in the real world and it is a

(11:35):
little more less set in the fantasy, but then returns
to the fantasy and so forth. Uh, and then being
like all in on three. I don't know, I'm not
going to go a book by book, but I feel
like it my my engagement level goes up or down
depending on which book it is in the series, But
in general I was I was always on board for
the saga, and once you've spent enough time with it

(11:57):
in your head, you're kind of locked in. I see,
I feel like it's one of those things I'll get
around to one day. Oh yeah, it's not going anywhere, okay. Uh.
Next message about favorite paragraphs from books is from d

(12:18):
D says, hey, there, just listen to this episode. Lots
of fun, especially considering how I fell down the pill
crow research rabbit hole about a month ago. On the
topic of memorable paragraphs, your discussion made me think immediately
of Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse five, in which this happened. And
to provide some context, I um, I didn't look this up,

(12:41):
and I'm pretty sure this comes in the scene where
the newly arrived Allied POWs they get to the new
camp and they eat a bunch of rich soup. After
having eaten I think nothing for a long time. Uh,
and it makes them sick. And so the book goes
and note where the paragraph breaks are. An American near

(13:03):
Billy wailed that he had excreted everything but his brains.
Moments later, he said, there they go, There they go,
he meant his brains. Paragraph break. That was I, that
was me, that was the author of this book. Break.
Billy reeled away from his vision of hell. He passed

(13:26):
three Englishmen who were watching the excrement festival from a distance.
They were catatonic with disgust. And then D goes on,
I see this as one paragraph, but the middle sentence
rips you so hard out of the narrative that it
is deserving of a single line paragraph all its own.
Thanks for the great podcast. I'm off to listen to

(13:47):
part two now. Cheers, d D. I agree. Ever since
I read that book for the first time, that moment
has stuck in my brain. I think of it often. Yeah,
I hadn't really thought about this. This it from it
as much, um, I guess I tend to come back
to some of the other moment. There's a lot to
stick in a young reader's head. And Slaughterhouse five it's uh,

(14:11):
there's a there's a lot of of interesting and kind
of at times I guess, provocative content in there. Um,
But of course it's a it's a great novel, and
it does I can't remember if this is actually the
opening line of the book or it's just the opening
line of one of the early chapters, but of course
it has that line. Listen, Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck
in time, um or or Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck

(14:33):
in time, something to that effect. But um, that's a great,
great line as well. I mean that instantly tells you
whoa something has happened here? What's what's happened to Billy Pilgrim?
And even the name, I guess that's an interesting thing,
like sometimes just having a um an insightful name for
your character. Uh, that also adds to the flavor like
Billy Pilgrim. Uh, you know that's um kind of ties

(14:57):
into the idea, you know, some of the flavor of
the children crusade and so forth. Yeah, I'm sure vonna
get junkies out there have a lot to say about it.
I am um, but it's been so long since I've
read it or really given it much thought. All right, uh, Rob,
I'm gonna read this very short message from Alvaro UM,

(15:20):
and then maybe we'll move on to some weird house cinema.
So Alvaro right rights in with subject lines single paragraph novel.
We were talking about those, uh, and Alvaro says, greetings.
I was listening to your paragraph episode and I remembered
a novella that consists of a single paragraph. It's called

(15:40):
Nocturno de Chile by Roberto Bologno. It's pretty good, though
not an easy read, as all of Bologno's books are.
Now that was the whole message, but I looked this up.
And to add to this, I think the idea of
this novella being a single paragraph makes a lot of
sense when you consider the contents of the book. This
is the first sentence in English translation, I am dying now,

(16:05):
but I still have many things to say. The story
is actually presented as a kind of transcript of a
night long deathbed confession by a deeply morally compromised Jesuit
priest who ends up getting involved with like rich people
in political power players and somehow eventually serves as a

(16:27):
nighttime tutor for the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and uh
so so anyway, the form the book takes is like
a meandering, rambling divulgence of everything this old man can
think of to say before he dies. So a single
paragraph somehow makes a lot of sense to me as

(16:47):
a stylistic choice. Like, I think the whole point is
that the story is not organized, but a stream of consciousness,
rambling as a man thinks back on through like the
process of the moral corruption of his life. Interesting, yeah, yeah,
I can see where this, uh this style would fit
the su premise. All right, we also have some weird

(17:14):
house messages here, this one comes to us from L L. Right, So,
my goodness, you finally watch Return to Oz. Yeah, I'm
so jealous. I too would like to have the experience
of being rolled over by the film for the first time.
I first saw it as an unassuming child, so I
just sort of took the film and stride with all
the other weirdness of television and film produced for children,

(17:34):
though it be insane or dark or what have you.
As a child, I felt all the same emotions, the
fear of the awe, et cetera. At the points you
described in your Weird House episode, I marveled at the
visual and creative beauty of the world imagined into being
by the artist, though I did not consider the creators
behind the scenes at all at the time. The only
difference in response would be my take on the Wheelers.

(17:57):
Though I knew they were the bad guys and did
route for the good guys in the fight scene, I
absolutely loved them. I got a huge kick out of them,
and there wildly over the top acting. You know, it
is wildly over the top. One of my favorite parts
was when Dorothy and billina Are were trapped in the
locked room before discovering TikTok. Dorothy asserts that they have

(18:17):
done nothing wrong, and the lead wheeler says, in this
grand accusatory fashion, isn't that a stolen lunch pail? And
that is that a chicken in there with you? The
absurdity of the accusation always made me laugh. Oh yeah, yeah,
because so Dorothy has a lunch pail that she picks
off of the lunch pail tree. So yeah, I guess

(18:39):
she didn't know who that lunch pail tree belongs to. Um,
But yeah, the other thing is like, and you've got
contraband in there. That's a chicken. Yeah, oh yeah, And
of course the chickens and especially chicken eggs, are a
great threat to the Nome king, as we learned later
in the film. Yeah, yeah, we have no idea why
at this point it would be a problem for her

(19:00):
to have a chicken. L continues here to close, I
need all of the people responsible for making this film
to reunite and produce a slew of OZ films using
material from Bombs many other books like Confest. I haven't
read more than two, but as a child I was
very much aware of the others because my brother loved
them and read them all. Thanks for the great content.

(19:21):
Sorry for sending you mail twice in one week. All
topics are more interesting when hashed out and discussed by YouTube.
There is something about getting to experience a movie like
this as a child. Um. And and also I have
found getting to re experience movies like this viewing them
with a child. UM, it's been great fun to re

(19:41):
explore older films that of this nature with my son.
And in the case of of Return to Oz see
something like this for the first time and gets get
to view it through his eyes. Though sometimes it backfires.
I mean he's not interested in movie. Like I keep saying, hey,
how about how about the black Hole? Is it time
to watch the black Hole? And he just he does
not care. I can't get him into him, Like, look,

(20:02):
it's got cute robots, it's got Anthony Perkins. What what
could What's what's possibly wrong with this? And he's like, no,
I'm not doing it. Well, you're trying to sell him
on it based on Anthony Perkins. No, No, not really.
I I focus on the robots in the space and
I'm like look, and I'm like it's on Disney. Plus
you know, there's a good chance you're gonna like it,

(20:24):
but he's he's they can't can't get him interested for that.
This This is really funny images possessing my brain now,
Like the idea of somebody trying to get there, like
you know, their their child to watch a movie because
it's got Dan Hedea in it. You know, like, well,
I think that kind of that does say something about
the film and maybe how miscalibrated it is. Like you

(20:45):
look at the actors in the black Hole, and he's
got a number of great actors in it, but I'm
not gonna list them all, and maybe we'll talk about
it someday. But it's got a great cast, but it's
not necessarily cast members that are gonna appeal to ten
year olds. They're not gonna look at this cast be like, yeah,
who are these interesting middle aged people up to in space?
That that's to get the parents in? All? Right? Uh?

(21:13):
Should I do this one from Richard? Yeah, let's hear
from Richard. Okay, Richard says, I love your regular science
history episodes. You're a great team. You've held my attention
with some subjects that that would have bored me in
lesser hands. Kudos. I love Obscure oddball films, So I
greatly enjoy weird how cinema. You frequently note that such
films are released with different cuts, different names, etcetera. Have

(21:38):
you ever considered devoting an episode to this phenomenon? You
could easily do ninety minutes on the how and why
of that. It's got a pretty rich history, from indie
productions to blockbusters. Here's one I don't know if you're
aware of. I'm one of the very few people who
saw Hands of Steel in a theater years ago. Remember
that's the the the Italian Terminator off that we that

(22:01):
we watched. Yeah yeah, John Saxon is in that one. Um. Also,
George Eastman has a has a small role Simonetti soundtrack.
Yeah yeah, really fun. Richard goes on. So the movie
ended before the DVD version that you reviewed. In the
theatrical release, the protagonist reveals that his head is full

(22:24):
of circuitry, then delivers the line poco Quai act doesn't exist,
maybe he never did, and then the music swells and
the credits roll the end. It was a memorable ending
to an otherwise forgettable film. Anyway, keep up the good work, sincerely, Richard. Huh, Well,
you know I don't clearly remember everything that happened at

(22:46):
the end of the film. I could be wrong about this,
but I vaguely recall it having a kind of voice
over about how like love can defeat evil or something
after a scene where he blows up John Saxon and
a factory. Oh, then there's also something about the age
of the cyborg had begun or something, some frozen texts
on the screen. Yeah, Uh, this is interesting. Now, I

(23:07):
don't I don't think we we know where Richard was seen.
We had viewed this film. So that's one thing we
always have to take into account is that these films
had different releases and different cuts in different markets, Uh,
depending on you know, who is releasing them. And then
it's content was cut for various reasons like that, just
because this was fresh on my mind. Conquest, the Luccio

(23:29):
Fulci movie that we we discussed the last couple of weeks, Like,
that's one where I think some initial releases of it
had cut down on some of the violence and also
some of the oozing source that make up a large
junk of the later portion of the film. Uh. So
you have a little things like that, and then yeah,
then you have alternate cuts occurring for various reasons. It's uh,

(23:52):
it is an interesting topic. It's always something that's um.
It's a note when considering films. But I don't remember
reading about a different ending for Hand of Hands of
Steel when we are discussing it, So that's that's cool,
all right. Well, on that note, we're going to reach
the ending of this podcast episode as always right in.
We'd love to hear from you about about this episode

(24:13):
of Listener Mail, about past episodes of Weird House Cinema
and Stuff to Blow Your Mind, as well as future episodes.
Just a reminder that our core episodes published on Tuesdays
and Thursdays, and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast
feed We have Listener Mail on Mondays, we have Artifact
or Monster Fact on Wednesdays, and on Fridays we do
Weird How Cinema. That's our time to set aside most
serious concerns and just talk about a strange film. Huge

(24:37):
thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.
If you would like to get in touch with us
with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is

(24:59):
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