Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener
Speaker 1: mail This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 1: And it's Monday, the day of each week that we
Speaker 1: read back some messages from the mail bag. If you
Speaker 1: are a listener to Stuff to Blow your Mind and
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Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. All sorts of messages
Speaker 1: are welcome. If you've got feedback on a previous episode,
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Speaker 1: we're on letterbox dot com. It's ltt r boxd dot
Speaker 1: com and that's mostly we just use an account there
Speaker 1: Weird House to log all of the movies we've watched.
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Speaker 1: so do it the way you want it. But to
Speaker 1: try to avoid weird technical glitches, that is apparently one
Speaker 1: thing you can do. And before we get into the
Speaker 1: listener mail, I'm also going to note that we're recording
Speaker 1: this on March fourteenth, so a lot of times we
Speaker 1: end up recording far closer to the publication date, So
Speaker 1: just bear that in mind. If you've sent in an
Speaker 1: email March fourteenth, or even just late in the day
Speaker 1: on March fourteenth, we probably haven't seen it yet, and
Speaker 1: that's one of many reasons we may not be reading
Speaker 1: it in this episode. The other reason could be all
Speaker 1: the cursing, so you know, try and keep the language clean, Okay,
Speaker 1: I think that does it for preliminary business. I'm going
Speaker 1: to kick things off with a message from Jeremy which
Speaker 1: is a follow up to a message featured on last
Speaker 1: week's episode. So on last Monday's Listener Mail, Jeremy got
Speaker 1: in touch to share with us that just as he
Speaker 1: was listening to our episodes on Finn McCool, during a
Speaker 1: passage in which we were describing the Giants Causeway, he
Speaker 1: drove past an art installation that appeared to be modeled
Speaker 1: on the Giants Causeway, raising questions, of course, about whether
Speaker 1: we were sort of a lay of heavening Jeremy's environment
Speaker 1: through the Internet. Anyway, we tried to figure out from
Speaker 1: Jeremy's photo, which he attached in the email, where the
Speaker 1: sculpture was and who made it, but no luck, so
Speaker 1: Jeremy wrote back in to fill us in. Turns out
Speaker 1: the photo was from the Babraham Research Campus, which is
Speaker 1: a laboratory campus south of Cambridge in England, and Jeremy
Speaker 1: writes as follows, Hello, Robert and Joe, thank you for
Speaker 1: reading out my emails since you appeared fascinated. I investigated
Speaker 1: further and found the following about the columns the referring
Speaker 1: to the sculpture. Apparently, the artwork is called Hive and
Speaker 1: is designed to represent honeycomb rather than the basalt columns,
Speaker 1: and is linked to the bioscience nature of the research
Speaker 1: going on at the campus. Best regards Jeremy Ps, no
Speaker 1: gray whales were cited, unfortunately, so I looked into this
Speaker 1: a little more. The sculpture, it's called Hive. It is
Speaker 1: made to resemble honeycomb or beehive, but it also apparently
Speaker 1: is modeled on the Giants Causeway, so it's both at
Speaker 1: the same time. It's by an artist named Tanya Covots,
Speaker 1: and I was reading from the website for the installation,
Speaker 1: which says quote from her studio in Devon. Covots cast
Speaker 1: more than two hundred and fifty concrete hexagons that resemble
Speaker 1: the basalt formations of the Giant's Causeway, as well as
Speaker 1: the shapes crafted in bee hives. The work is completed
Speaker 1: by a wildflower meadow and ribbon orchard of fruit trees,
Speaker 1: all of which work together to attract solitary bees with
Speaker 1: places to rest and feed throughout the growing calendar. So anyway,
Speaker 1: very nice sculpture. I like that it's trying to be
Speaker 1: a little bit geological and biological at the same time. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's neat to know the I guess. I mean, even
Speaker 1: in my experience, sometimes you drive past some sort of
Speaker 1: cool roadside art and you never really know the details
Speaker 1: on what's going on there. You don't know what the
Speaker 1: artist's intent is. So here we seem to have finally
Speaker 1: received the full story. I mean, I guess it wouldn't
Speaker 1: be advisable to start trying to like google art installation
Speaker 1: details while you're driving past. Oh no, no, no, All right,
Speaker 1: here's one that comes to us from Kim. Tim writes
Speaker 1: in and says, dear Joe and Robert. First of all,
Speaker 1: thank you very much for everything you do. I've been
Speaker 1: listening for years and it's always a delight. I'm writing
Speaker 1: to you today because of your episode on the Gray Way.
Speaker 1: You mentioned a book by Mark Carwodeen quite a lot,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to inform you that he is
Speaker 1: best known for his work with the incomparable Douglas Adams.
Speaker 1: Together they traveled the world trying to find some of
Speaker 1: the rarest still living animals. I remember the Kiwi and
Speaker 1: the bay Gee. This is would be the bay Gee.
Speaker 1: This is the yang Ze River Dolphin. The resulting book
Speaker 1: is Last Chance to See and I highly recommend it.
Speaker 1: They even made a TV show where Carboden visited some
Speaker 1: of the animals a couple of years ago in the
Speaker 1: company of Stephen Fry. Very watchable obviously. Thanks for all
Speaker 1: you do, Please keep it up. Greetings from Germany. Tim. Now,
Speaker 1: if I understand correctly, I think the original book by
Speaker 1: Carwardine and Douglas Adams was from maybe like the late
Speaker 1: eighties or something. But then there was this follow up
Speaker 1: television show from the more recently, certainly twenty first century,
Speaker 1: and the main thing I remember, though I haven't seen
Speaker 1: it in full, there was at least one viral moment
Speaker 1: from the show with Stephen Fry because one person involved
Speaker 1: with the show it might have been Mark Carwardine himself,
Speaker 1: they found a rare tropical bird that was trying to
Speaker 1: mate with his head. Oh yes, I do remember this
Speaker 1: going viral. Yeah yeah. Mark Carwardine is as a British
Speaker 1: zoologist and if you want to learn more about his work,
Speaker 1: he has a website Mark Carwardine dot com that's cr
Speaker 1: W A R D, I N E and H. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It has some links to the book to some of
Speaker 1: the books, including the Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises books, a
Speaker 1: book that I was referencing. It looks like there's a
Speaker 1: relatively new edition of Last Chance to See out with
Speaker 1: a forward by Stephen Frye. So yeah, he's been involved
Speaker 1: in a number of great projects, a lot of great
Speaker 1: wildlife to talk or Fean Moore. I just looked it
Speaker 1: up and I think the rare parrot that was trying
Speaker 1: to mate with his head was the caca po oh. Okay, yes,
Speaker 1: a very spirited animal also known as the owl parrot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this bird came up fairly recently on the show. I
Speaker 1: think we were talking back he remember as a listener
Speaker 1: mail or if it came up in the context of
Speaker 1: another episode, but highly intelligent parrot species sometimes Rex cars. Yes,
Speaker 1: it was a listener mail someone had written in about
Speaker 1: one of these animals tormenting their parents. I think, Okay,
Speaker 1: this next message is from Mike. This one's long, so
Speaker 1: I don't know, we might want to break this up
Speaker 1: part way through or something, but this is a fantastic
Speaker 1: message about firsthand experience with whales, so I wanted to
Speaker 1: feature as much of it as we could. Mike says Hello,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe. Apologize for the length here. After listening
Speaker 1: to your whale episodes, I wanted to write in about
Speaker 1: my whale experience. I live in Santa Cruz, californ, Ornya.
Speaker 1: We are located right on the northern edge of the
Speaker 1: Monterey Bay. Our waters host many marine mammals, including various pinnipeds,
Speaker 1: sea otters, and of course whales were a major hub
Speaker 1: for gray whales, and I've seen them as well as
Speaker 1: a blue whale, humpback whales in orcas nice. I am
Speaker 1: an avid surfer and that puts me in close proximity
Speaker 1: to many of these creatures. On a daily basis. It's
Speaker 1: not uncommon for me to find myself next to otters,
Speaker 1: sea lions, possibly even an elephant seal in the water.
Speaker 1: As for whales, the blues and orcas don't really come
Speaker 1: in that close to shore, but the humpbacks and grays
Speaker 1: can get very close to the surf zone At the
Speaker 1: right time of the year. It's quite common to see
Speaker 1: them feeding or just engaged in whale leisure just offshore.
Speaker 1: On one occasion, I was outsurfing when significant whale feeding
Speaker 1: was taking place. These were clearly humpbacks engaged in what's
Speaker 1: known as lunge feeding, unlike the way that gray's scoop
Speaker 1: food out of the bottom, and that's referring to the
Speaker 1: feeding behavior we talked about in our gray whale series
Speaker 1: where they'll like slam their head down into the ocean
Speaker 1: floor and scoop up sediment to filter organisms out of it.
Speaker 1: Back to Mike's message, the humpbacks engage in more active
Speaker 1: pursuit of free swimming food. Lunge feeding involves the whales
Speaker 1: cooperating with each other to herd small fish like sardines
Speaker 1: into a tight bait ball. Then they take turns swimming
Speaker 1: up through the bait ball from below with their mouths agape.
Speaker 1: It's a real spectacle as the feeding whale will breach
Speaker 1: the surface, often to great heights with their mouth agape.
Speaker 1: You really get a good look at these massive creatures
Speaker 1: as they slam their mouths shut, simultaneously ejecting vast quantities
Speaker 1: of water and crashing back down. As the feeding whale breaches,
Speaker 1: they tend to push a lot of the bait fish
Speaker 1: to the surface. This draws in seabirds by the hundreds,
Speaker 1: as the fish are easy pickings for them. On this
Speaker 1: particular day, multiple whales were breach over and over from
Speaker 1: where I was sitting in the water. I had a
Speaker 1: good view, but still felt quite a safe distance from
Speaker 1: the activity. For the most part, all this activity takes
Speaker 1: place in deeper water outside of the surfing area. At
Speaker 1: one point, however, I noticed that the birds had all
Speaker 1: taken up a position directly overhead. I am well aware
Speaker 1: that the birds know exactly where the whales are at
Speaker 1: all times. The birds above surely meant the whales were
Speaker 1: below me. I definitely did not want to be there.
Speaker 1: I moved to paddling closer to shore, but it was
Speaker 1: too late. I felt a strange disturbance in the water,
Speaker 1: unlike anything I had felt before. The water started swelling up,
Speaker 1: as though the ocean was filling up from below. The
Speaker 1: birds rained down from the sky all around me. Sardines
Speaker 1: began to explode from the water by the hundreds. I
Speaker 1: was in the worst possible position. I imagine that whale
Speaker 1: charging up from the depths with its huge mouth gaping.
Speaker 1: I didn't think it would eat me, as I've heard
Speaker 1: that humpback's throat is actually only wide enough to smallow
Speaker 1: a few small fish at a time. I was very
Speaker 1: worried that it could violently thrash me around, should I
Speaker 1: accidentally end up in its mouth, or that it could
Speaker 1: breach near me and come crashing down on me. Miraculously,
Speaker 1: the chaos stopped, The water calmed down, the sardine stopped emerging,
Speaker 1: the birds relaxed. No whale lunged out of the water. Okay, intermission,
Speaker 1: rob Do you want to take over at this point? Yes,
Speaker 1: hands on attack rope, here we go. Okay, all right. Instead,
Speaker 1: three whale surface not far from me. One aimed directly
Speaker 1: at me. It advanced and, with seeming intent, pushed me
Speaker 1: aside with its snout or bow. I don't know what
Speaker 1: the proper term for the front of a whale is.
Speaker 1: It's not the nose, that's right. A humpback whale swam
Speaker 1: out to me and gave me a shove. It was
Speaker 1: similar to having a good sized boat passing too close.
Speaker 1: There was enough wake from the whale to kind of
Speaker 1: drag me along in the same direction. As the whale
Speaker 1: brushed past, it rolled a bit so that it could
Speaker 1: align its eye with my face. There I was sitting
Speaker 1: in the water face to eye with this whale. Now
Speaker 1: I may be bringing my own preconceptions to the situation,
Speaker 1: but it feels like there's something deeply powerful in that
Speaker 1: gaze behind those eyes burned and intellect that seems curious
Speaker 1: and analytical. It seemed more knowing than say, a sea
Speaker 1: lion that might be looking at me. No disrespect to
Speaker 1: sea lions, as they are amazing in their own right.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was being sized up, and it
Speaker 1: felt like the whale was intentionally looking me in the face,
Speaker 1: as if to make sure that I noticed it. I
Speaker 1: really got the distinct impression that it was, on some
Speaker 1: level trying to reason with me. Its reasoning was do
Speaker 1: you mind we're working here? Or something similar. It was
Speaker 1: simultaneously the most magical and terrifying thing I've ever experienced.
Speaker 1: It's hard to really understand how huge and powerful these
Speaker 1: animals are until you were in the water with them
Speaker 1: and totally at their mercy. As Robert noted recounting his
Speaker 1: experiences in Mexico, they are surprisingly fast and agile, and
Speaker 1: you really have to see them in person to fully
Speaker 1: appreciate the power. Likewise, it's hard to really understand that
Speaker 1: that weird connection that one feels when they look into
Speaker 1: the eyes of another intelligent species until you were there.
Speaker 1: Note I don't recommend that people try to get in
Speaker 1: the water with the whales and replicate this experience. I
Speaker 1: was there accidentally. I now moved back towards the shore
Speaker 1: a lot sooner when I see this feeding happening. Clearly,
Speaker 1: my presence disrupted the feeding of this whale. I don't
Speaker 1: know if it got another turn or the other whales
Speaker 1: were like, sorry, back to the end of the line.
Speaker 1: It's my turn to lunch the bait ball. For all
Speaker 1: I know, I might have ruined this whale's day. However,
Speaker 1: as much as I try to stay out of their way,
Speaker 1: I still seem to cross pass with them pretty regularly.
Speaker 1: Since that experience, whales have unexpectedly surfaced right next to
Speaker 1: me many times. It's quite possible that some of the
Speaker 1: whales I've seen were the very same whales. Robert Sell
Speaker 1: in Mexico, thanks for reading and putting out such a
Speaker 1: great show. Mike. Oh and then Mike has a ps
Speaker 1: here ps. The Monterey Bay, as seen from Santa Cruz,
Speaker 1: is home to one of the most incredib and persistent
Speaker 1: displays of Fata morgana around, especially in the summer when
Speaker 1: we have warm, still air and cold water. The distant
Speaker 1: shores often consist of these phantom shapes that rise and
Speaker 1: chains throughout the day. It's quite common to see distant
Speaker 1: structures on the far shore repeated and inverted. Just one
Speaker 1: more bit of stuff to blow your mind. Magic that's here. Wow,
Speaker 1: what a fantastic message. Thank you, Mike. Yeah, that was wonderful.
Speaker 1: Yeah I agree with I did not obviously I did
Speaker 1: not have the exact same experience here, but yeah, to
Speaker 1: the extent that our experiences line up, I totally agree
Speaker 1: with everything that Mike shared about looking into the whale's eye,
Speaker 1: being in close proximity to one of these magnificent organisms.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. Okay. This next message is in response to
Speaker 1: our episodes on Horror Vakay and some previous listener mail.
Speaker 1: This is from Gary and it's about well we got
Speaker 1: We got a message from a listener a couple of
Speaker 1: mondays ago about pages in documents and books that are
Speaker 1: labeled this page intentionally left blank. So Gary says, Hi,
Speaker 1: Robert and Joe, just listening to your listener mail episode
Speaker 1: where you talked about blank pages, I was instantly reminded
Speaker 1: of the novel Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Stern, published in
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty nine, which famously has a blank page in
Speaker 1: it where Stern invites the reader to use it to
Speaker 1: describe a character. Big fan of the show, many thanks
Speaker 1: for making such a fun and interesting podcast. Best wishes, Gary.
Speaker 1: This is a great find. Gary, Yeah, a good literary reference.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I know when people talk about
Speaker 1: this book, they always shorten the title to just the
Speaker 1: name Tristram Shandy. But for humor's sake, I do like
Speaker 1: the full title, which is the Life and Opinions of
Speaker 1: Tristram Shandy. Gentleman, You've got to know the opinions. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm going to read the paragraph that leads straight into
Speaker 1: this blank page. I think what's going on here in
Speaker 1: the book is the narrator here is describing a character,
Speaker 1: a character that somebody is falling in love with, so
Speaker 1: they are smitten. And it says chapter thirty eight to
Speaker 1: conceive this right, call for pen and ink. Here's paper
Speaker 1: ready to your hand. Sit down, sir, paint her to
Speaker 1: your own mind, as like your mistress as you can,
Speaker 1: as unlike your wife as your conscience will let you.
Speaker 1: Tis all one to me, please put your own fancy
Speaker 1: in it. And then there's just a blank page, this
Speaker 1: page one forty seven of this volume. I wonder to
Speaker 1: what extent this is adapted in the film. Maybe it is, Well,
Speaker 1: they just show a blank page, just like picture as
Speaker 1: unlike your wife, as your conscience will allow. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: kind of have like a little intermission there, like, I
Speaker 1: don't know they might have. It seems like a clever
Speaker 1: sort of movie. Maybe they did. It's interesting that this
Speaker 1: is a very experimental kind of thing to occur in
Speaker 1: a book from the middle of the eighteenth century. But
Speaker 1: I know that though I've never read it in full,
Speaker 1: trust from Shandy does have that reputation. In general, it's
Speaker 1: sort of consider to be a kind of ahead of
Speaker 1: its time book in terms of weird experimental forms and
Speaker 1: literary conventions. And I think it has like a lot
Speaker 1: of stream of consciousness stuff in it, which was obviously
Speaker 1: not common of the novels or romances of the time.
Speaker 1: It's sort of, I think thought of as a proto
Speaker 1: modernist novel. But I also like how this looks ahead
Speaker 1: to to the way characters are realized in many video
Speaker 1: games of today, where you can like build your own characters.
Speaker 1: You just you know, Yeah, they don't come pre written
Speaker 1: for you. You draw him for yourself. Yeah. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I mean, and of course you still see games go
Speaker 1: both ways, but yeah, there's there's a certain power and
Speaker 1: being able to decide exactly what a what a character
Speaker 1: looks like. You know, And I think I've probably mentioned
Speaker 1: this before, but obviously I think we often do this ourselves.
Speaker 1: And I know I did this more when I was
Speaker 1: a younger reader, where I would sort of decide for
Speaker 1: myself what a character looked like and then go with it.
Speaker 1: But then I would get irritated, you know, halfway through
Speaker 1: the book the author just casually mentioned, oh, this character
Speaker 1: has a mustache, or this character had you know, any
Speaker 1: description like that. Well, now you've completely thrown me off.
Speaker 1: I already had a certain I had to already had
Speaker 1: this part cast and now you're giving me additional information. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you rebel against the author. This is not your character anymore.
Speaker 1: It's mine. Now I get to decide what they look like.
Speaker 1: I'm curious. I hadn't thought about this in a while,
Speaker 1: but yeah, I used to when I was a young reader,
Speaker 1: like reading like full length novels for the first time,
Speaker 1: I would kind of go through it. I would actually
Speaker 1: cast the characters, often like with particular actors, and I
Speaker 1: would decide ahead of time who was playing what part.
Speaker 1: And I don't really do that anymore. Occasionally I'll catch
Speaker 1: myself kind of casting and character or sort of course correcting,
Speaker 1: and maybe even at times if there's some confusing characters
Speaker 1: going on, I'll do a little bit of that to
Speaker 1: try and keep things straight in my head, but not
Speaker 1: not like I did when I was younger. And of course,
Speaker 1: if you're reading a book that there's already a movie version,
Speaker 1: and they're kind of doing that for you, and maybe
Speaker 1: that's where that activity came from. All right, Well, it's
Speaker 1: Pinball Wizard time because we have a great bit of
Speaker 1: weird house cinema. Listener mail, this is gonna be the
Speaker 1: last one to read in this episode, but it's a
Speaker 1: it's a weighty one. So here we go from Zach
Speaker 1: Dear Joe and Robert. I've been meaning to get in
Speaker 1: touch for a while. I'm a massive fan of weird
Speaker 1: house cinema, and I just love the verbal imagery you
Speaker 1: can cock for old and weird movies. I must admit
Speaker 1: I haven't seen half of the films you talk about,
Speaker 1: but your elegant descriptions make me feel like I have.
Speaker 1: I was inspired to experience the Super Inframan with my
Speaker 1: family because of the revered tones expressed in your podcast.
Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough for the recommendation. Not only
Speaker 1: did I personally delight in the colors and textures of
Speaker 1: that masterpiece, but my family all gains something special from
Speaker 1: the experience. My two little ladies still talk about seeing
Speaker 1: the zippers on those amazing rubber suits, a nuance that
Speaker 1: is lost with the day's seamless computer wizardry. Well, that
Speaker 1: fills my heart with gladness. You know, not many of
Speaker 1: the movies we talked about weird on Weird House or
Speaker 1: not for everyone, but in for Man, I think that
Speaker 1: that's the exception. That's just a movie that I think
Speaker 1: everybody should see and nearly everyone would love. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and it is great to see. I see this night
Speaker 1: in my own son. I've I've talked about this several times,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, but you know where they're they're seeing through effects,
Speaker 1: but sometimes they're able to experience effects that are not
Speaker 1: absolutely pristine despite being exposed to some really amazing modern effects.
Speaker 1: So it's it's great when they can appreciate the older stuff. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: continuing the email, your recent review of Clash of the Titans,
Speaker 1: one of my all time favorite stop motion animation slash
Speaker 1: Ray Harryhouse Inflix spurred me on to reach out. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure whether you're aware, but there is an interesting
Speaker 1: correlation between b movies and all time classic pinball machines.
Speaker 1: Because pinball was massive in the sixties through the nineties,
Speaker 1: anything at everything could become a theme for a pinball machine,
Speaker 1: so original themes were common. Licensing is more popular today
Speaker 1: than it was back then, and so some unusual choices
Speaker 1: were made for games because of the sheer number of
Speaker 1: games pumped out. Not all pinball machines were particularly great. Some, however,
Speaker 1: are regarded as timeless, primarily after hearing of your particular
Speaker 1: fondness for the film Sinbad in the Eye of the Tiger.
Speaker 1: I believe Joe owned it on VHS. I think I
Speaker 1: had a slightly pirated version on VHS. Ah, you'll hopefully
Speaker 1: be delighted to know that the accompanying pinball machine is
Speaker 1: revered as an all time classic. The pinball company Gottlieb
Speaker 1: made hundreds of games back in its heyday, but this
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight beauty is something special. It has the
Speaker 1: unique feature of two sets of double or inline flippers.
Speaker 1: Is a fast and brutal game and is one that
Speaker 1: I own and love well. Rob I had to dig
Speaker 1: up some pictures and paste them in the outline here
Speaker 1: for you to look at. So I love the artwork
Speaker 1: on the whatever it's called the backboard where it shows
Speaker 1: the scores. We have here some illustrations that only marginally
Speaker 1: resemble the characters in the movie. But we've got the
Speaker 1: evil sorceress, Queens and Nobia. We've got the bronze automaton
Speaker 1: of minotaur shape called the Minoton. He's a robot bullhead.
Speaker 1: We've got Sinbad here with his sword raised standing in
Speaker 1: front of Valency. The princess I think her name is
Speaker 1: Farrah or Farrah or something, and that's the Jane Seymour
Speaker 1: in the movie, I believe. And then smoke rising in
Speaker 1: the background so it's beautifully painted. And then when you
Speaker 1: look at the actual I don't know what you call it,
Speaker 1: the play space or something. Sure, okay, yeah, yeah, But
Speaker 1: the thing I didn't realize exactly what Zach was talking
Speaker 1: about here with the idea of double flippers or inline flippers.
Speaker 1: But they're flippers that when they are not activated, they
Speaker 1: form a straight line. It's the line that makes a
Speaker 1: kind of V at the bottom of the pinball space
Speaker 1: where the ball will roll down into the to the
Speaker 1: hole at the bottom. But when you activate them, I'm
Speaker 1: doing a terrible job of explaining this, but instead of
Speaker 1: just having one pair of flippers down at the bottom
Speaker 1: of that V, the whole V is made of flippers.
Speaker 1: So there's four flippers and when you flip them, both
Speaker 1: of them flip up on each side. Yeah. Yeah, now
Speaker 1: that I see it, I'll see a picture of it
Speaker 1: here on our notes. I totally get it. But yeah,
Speaker 1: this is a beautiful machine. I was I never really
Speaker 1: got timball machines. I was never a huge arcade kid anyway,
Speaker 1: but I was always interested in the arcade machines and
Speaker 1: today I can still I can look at these and
Speaker 1: I can understand why people go crazy for them, for
Speaker 1: the nostalgia of them, for the like the physical playable
Speaker 1: artifacts that they are very cool. Okay, Rob, I'm currently
Speaker 1: looking at an big internet list of licensed pinball games,
Speaker 1: and there are so many. There are so many that
Speaker 1: you really would not have expected. I'm gonna name three,
Speaker 1: and you tell me which of these is not a real,
Speaker 1: licensed pinball cabinet. Okay, all right, Okay, Apollo thirteen, Aerosmith Baywatch,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say Apolo thirteen is not a pinball machine.
Speaker 1: No it is. They're all real. Oh like wow? All right, Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I thought this this quiz was gonna go
Speaker 1: in a different direction. And you're gonna ask me to
Speaker 1: name one film that I wish was a pinball machine. Okay,
Speaker 1: and I didn't even have to think about it. It's
Speaker 1: gonna be Chuck. Please tell me, Chudd, there's a pinball machine.
Speaker 1: John Heard's face scrawled up on the background. Yeah, in
Speaker 1: like subway tunnels. You can imagine, like it seems like
Speaker 1: they could have done something really cool with that, and
Speaker 1: maybe they did. Did they get the pinball factory on
Speaker 1: the phone? I think you've got a white hot idea
Speaker 1: there that it can't lose, all right, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: exist that we know of. All right, Well, we have
Speaker 1: to have some more stuff he wants to share about pinballs,
Speaker 1: and so I'm going to read through them here real quickly.
Speaker 1: We also have meteor another late seventies classic, made by
Speaker 1: Stern Electronics. Stern Electronics was renowned for making beautiful, fast,
Speaker 1: and cheaply made games that have recently become darlings of
Speaker 1: the US tournament scene. I'm just so many things to
Speaker 1: floor me in this. I did not know there was
Speaker 1: like you still had like Pinball Wizard competitions. In appearance,
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem to be related to have licensed property.
Speaker 1: The art is great, but a bit generic, but it
Speaker 1: is actually a direct tie in to the nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: nine Sean Connery film I've never even heard of this movie, Meteor?
Speaker 1: Are they trolling us? Is this real? Natalie Wood, Henry Fonda,
Speaker 1: Martin Landau, Carl Malden, Huh yeah, in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 1: You know, I guess the thing with some of these
Speaker 1: big budget to films, especially some of these big disaster films,
Speaker 1: they weren't good. They haven't really stood the test of time,
Speaker 1: so nobody thinks about them today. Like, I really am
Speaker 1: not up on Meteor, but I feel like I've run
Speaker 1: across multiple films like this from more or less this
Speaker 1: time period and researching stuff for Weird House, and I'm like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's that I did not know that existed, and I
Speaker 1: have no interest in seeing it. This is an American
Speaker 1: International Pictures. Okay, I think this may need to go
Speaker 1: on the list for Weird House. It might be at
Speaker 1: least be something we should check out and see if
Speaker 1: it's worth doing. Yeah, I'm happy to look into it. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's another one. We also have the Shadow licensed from
Speaker 1: that fair to middling Alec Baldwin film. This is a
Speaker 1: highly collectible and fired game that's on my wish list.
Speaker 1: It commands a high price and as an excellent representation
Speaker 1: of all the greatest elements of nineties pinball design. Now,
Speaker 1: this is a film I'm very familiar with because I
Speaker 1: believe this was a Russell McKay film. I remember being
Speaker 1: very excited for it when it came out and I
Speaker 1: was a kid. And then I remember finding it somewhat disappointing,
Speaker 1: But not for reasons I can necessarily articulate. I just
Speaker 1: I have seen it forever. I just remember it did
Speaker 1: not win me over the way I wanted it to,
Speaker 1: despite a great cast. Speaking of underwhelming and great cast,
Speaker 1: you'll never guess the next movie that they made a
Speaker 1: pinball machine out of yes, I continues, Finally, I know
Speaker 1: you're both fond of the film Crawl. I saw it
Speaker 1: in the cinema back in the day and loved it.
Speaker 1: The pinball machine associated with this license has the legend
Speaker 1: of being a game that only made it to the prototype.
Speaker 1: It has the crazy feature of a second full sized
Speaker 1: playfield located underneath the main play field that is viewed
Speaker 1: via a distorting mirror from above. The mad creativity behind
Speaker 1: the design has sadly not been repeated since rob I
Speaker 1: dug up another high def picture of this and put
Speaker 1: it in the outline for you. Okay, so I can
Speaker 1: tell what's going on on the backboard. That we've got
Speaker 1: our main characters from KRUL, or at least one of them,
Speaker 1: I don't remember. I don't know who this lady with
Speaker 1: the big hair and the wizard staff is is. Oh no,
Speaker 1: that's that's our our lady, the lady. Yeah, okay, remember
Speaker 1: remember the beast um has her like dolled up for
Speaker 1: I guess their wedding, you know, Oh okay, but she
Speaker 1: ends up looking like this. There's the Widow of the web,
Speaker 1: the big spider. I see that, and they see some
Speaker 1: people on horses. I guess people ride horses in the movie. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then yeah, in the middle of the playfield there
Speaker 1: is I can't even tell what I'm looking at, but
Speaker 1: it's like a big It looks like just a big
Speaker 1: glass pane. So this is like a window into a
Speaker 1: lower level of play. Wow, it does seem ambitious, maybe
Speaker 1: two ambitious, like one wonder glancing? This is this something
Speaker 1: that was as fun to use? Was it innovation over fun?
Speaker 1: Or is a situation where it was fun and innovative
Speaker 1: but more difficult to manufacture? I don't know, you know,
Speaker 1: they really missed an opportunity here to have in the
Speaker 1: middle of the playfield a five sided star of flippers
Speaker 1: that you could all flip simultaneous. Again, be the Glave
Speaker 1: of flippers. Yeah, yeah, they should let me design pinball cabinets.
Speaker 1: How do you get into this line of work. It's
Speaker 1: got to be a very specialized field at this point, right,
Speaker 1: but man it yeah it looks it looks very cool anyway,
Speaker 1: apologies for the essay. Right, So, I actually host a
Speaker 1: podcast called the Pinball Tapes on the Pinball Network, which
Speaker 1: is a historical based podcast that focuses on individual games.
Speaker 1: I'm deep into the hobby as both a restore and player,
Speaker 1: and so I tend to get a bet verbose. I'll
Speaker 1: admit my podcast is in its infancy, but I'm really
Speaker 1: enjoying the right. Thank you for your time, gents. I
Speaker 1: really love what you do, and I'm very grateful for
Speaker 1: you introducing me to the to a world of weird
Speaker 1: and wonderful aw tours that I didn't know existed. Cheers, Zach. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for the email, Zach, and best
Speaker 1: of luck with your podcast. It sounds like you really
Speaker 1: know your stuff. Yeah, it's this is a seems like
Speaker 1: it's a very interesting world to explore for sure. All right, well,
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna have to close it up right there.
Speaker 1: I mean we have to. We have to. We all
Speaker 1: have to go off and like look and see if
Speaker 1: they made like the Chronicles of Riddick pinball machine now
Speaker 1: and so forth. Uh, there's like there's in some so
Speaker 1: many films that seemed like they would be just perfect
Speaker 1: for this kind of treatment. I mean, Chronicles of Riddick
Speaker 1: is basically a pinball machine, so the adaptation writes itself.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, certainly reach out to us. So I
Speaker 1: think we told you some ways to do that at
Speaker 1: the beginning. We'll share the email here in a second.
Speaker 1: Just a reminder listener Maile episodes published on Monday's Core,
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Tuesday and Thursday,
Speaker 1: short form Artifact or Monster on Wednesday, and on Fridays,
Speaker 1: we set aside most serious concerns to just talk about
Speaker 1: a weird film on a weirdhouse cinema. Huge thanks to
Speaker 1: our audio producer JJ Pauseway. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hello, you can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to blow your Mind dot com. Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeartRadio. For
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