Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener mail.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And my name is Joe McCormick. And it's Monday, the
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Speaker 3: It is contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Let's see Rob if you don't mind, I'm going to
Speaker 3: kick things off with a response to our series on mud.
Speaker 2: Yes, please date.
Speaker 3: This is from Stefan and Stefan says that he is German,
Speaker 3: so he hopes his German English is acceptable. It's perfectly acceptable, Steffan.
Speaker 3: We always want to hear from anybody whatever state you're
Speaker 3: English is in, you know, send it on in. We'll
Speaker 3: do what we can with it. So we appreciate this.
Speaker 3: This is following up from a digression in one part
Speaker 3: of that series about the famous scene in the movie Predator,
Speaker 3: the Original Predator with Arnold Schwarzenegger where he evades the
Speaker 3: heat vision of the alien hunter by covering his body
Speaker 3: in mud, and we talked a little bit about whether
Speaker 3: that would actually work. It seems like if it did work,
Speaker 3: it would only work for a very short time, basically
Speaker 3: until the mud heats up to same temperature as the
Speaker 3: rest of your body. Stefan says, Hey, Robert and Joe,
Speaker 3: great podcast has always many thanks for your work. A
Speaker 3: short remark to mud, Arnold's and Predators. This is a
Speaker 3: direct reference to the German legend daslid der Nibelungen. Siegfried,
Speaker 3: the hero of this legend, killed a wildly feared dragon
Speaker 3: with his sword, the Balmung. A bit of the dragon's
Speaker 3: blood spilled on his skin, and he noticed that his
Speaker 3: skin became invulnerable due to this plaster. He jumped into
Speaker 3: the puddle of dragon's blood and in this way provided
Speaker 3: himself with an impenetrable armor, except one little spot on
Speaker 3: his back, right between his shoulder blades, which was accidentally
Speaker 3: covered by a leaf of a linden tree. The story
Speaker 3: goes that his wife cream Hilled, gave this information to
Speaker 3: his rival Hagen van Tronier Tronia, sorry, I'm doing my best,
Speaker 3: also who a little later took the opportunity to kill
Speaker 3: Siegfried by stabbing him with a spear right at the
Speaker 3: spot in his back which was covered by the leaf
Speaker 3: and therefore still vulnerable. I think mister Antol, the director
Speaker 3: of the first Predators movie. And a quick side note,
Speaker 3: I think Stephan might have been confused here because Antol
Speaker 3: is the name of the director of the twenty ten
Speaker 3: movie Predators, but the name of the director of the
Speaker 3: first movie from nineteen eighty seven was John McTiernan. But
Speaker 3: whatever the case, Stefan is saying about the director of
Speaker 3: the first Predator movie, Stephan says must have been a
Speaker 3: big fan of the German legends. So replace Siegfried by
Speaker 3: Arnold and dragon's blood by mud, and you don't have
Speaker 3: to go a long way to Arnold's and mud puddles
Speaker 3: winky face emoji. I hope my German English was sufficient
Speaker 3: to get this remark across. Looking forward to your next podcast,
Speaker 3: Greetings from northern Germany, half between Hamburg and New Munster
Speaker 3: if you are interested, Stefan.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's wonderful. I mean, obviously, connections between myth and
Speaker 2: legend and modern horror and sci fi movies. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that's our that's our cup of tea.
Speaker 3: Now, this is a good question. I haven't seen the
Speaker 3: original Predator in quite a while. I don't recall how
Speaker 3: the mud invisibility armor is eventually compromised. What happens? Does
Speaker 3: Arnold fall into water and that washes it off? I
Speaker 3: think that might be the case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to remember as well. Because he
Speaker 2: evades the Predator successfully and then of course preps for
Speaker 2: the big showdown where he makes an unrealistically powerful long bow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he builds a bow, just like stretching it with
Speaker 3: his arms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then he covers himself with mud again, and
Speaker 2: you know, looks really badass to go out for this fight.
Speaker 2: But yeah, This is where you can really get You
Speaker 2: can ask a lot of questions about how long the
Speaker 2: mud would be effective, were were effective at all. I
Speaker 2: don't remember how how that battle really plays out. I
Speaker 2: think there's some back and forth there, because it's a
Speaker 2: pretty good fight. You know, it's the it's it's it's
Speaker 2: it's man against alien. It's it's Dutch bringing all of
Speaker 2: his clever tricks versus the tricks that the Predator still
Speaker 2: has a bit sleeve, including a nuclear weapon literally up.
Speaker 3: Well, and it has a move in it that I
Speaker 3: always like in movies. For some reason, I find a
Speaker 3: lot of the best human versus monster movies have this convention,
Speaker 3: which is the humans set a trap for the monster
Speaker 3: that always works well. I like that in you know,
Speaker 3: going way back to the Thing from Another World nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty is it nineteen fifty the Howard Hawks movie, you know,
Speaker 3: where they set the electricity trap and they you know,
Speaker 3: Dutch does it. In Predator. He like builds up a
Speaker 3: counterweight log trap to try to pin the Predator up
Speaker 3: against like an overhanging branch that he hides by knives,
Speaker 3: and that doesn't exactly work out to plan, but he's
Speaker 3: still able to use the trap in a counterintuitive way
Speaker 3: to win in the end. In fact, speaking of myth
Speaker 3: and legend, I would be interested in in tracing that
Speaker 3: that sort of human versus monster trope all the way back, Like,
Speaker 3: are what are the early versions of that where the
Speaker 3: hero is not able to defeat the monster in a
Speaker 3: direct contest, but defeats it by setting a clever trap.
Speaker 2: Oh, you know, this is something we could potentially explore
Speaker 2: in a future episode. Maybe this would be a good
Speaker 2: one for Halloween season this year. We've touched on ghost
Speaker 2: traps before on the show before, but there could be
Speaker 2: more there, you know, monster traps and myth and legend,
Speaker 2: whereas ghost traps are often actual physical items and artifacts
Speaker 2: of superstition.
Speaker 3: Right in about your favorite monster traps, whether that's from
Speaker 3: an ancient myth or from a modern movie.
Speaker 2: All right, We continue to hear from a lot of
Speaker 2: folks concerning our Dream Falls series. This one comes to
Speaker 2: us from Adam. Adam writes, Hello, Robert and Joe and
Speaker 2: the rest, by which you means Jja, longtime listener of
Speaker 2: the show here. I've always wanted to write in, but
Speaker 2: after listening to the last listener mail episode, I now
Speaker 2: have some things to share. It's time for some more
Speaker 2: Baku content. In the video game Neo, there are many
Speaker 2: types of guardian spirits. We had to look this up.
Speaker 3: By the way.
Speaker 2: This is a Japanese video game that I believe is
Speaker 2: released on like the PlayStations. I'm not sure which format
Speaker 2: you know. I'm not familiar with the PlayStation so much
Speaker 2: these days.
Speaker 3: Neither of us have played it, so we're unfamiliar.
Speaker 2: So Adam continues. These are animal familiars that grant divine
Speaker 2: protection and power to those they favor. In the sequel
Speaker 2: Neo two, one of these guardian spirits is a baku.
Speaker 2: This particular baku is called Yumihami. Its name literally means
Speaker 2: dream eater. Its dream eating abilities are not shown in game,
Speaker 2: and it uses lightning powers instead. I believe its dream
Speaker 2: eating nature is more symbolic. In the story, Yumihami is
Speaker 2: the guardian spirit of the game's main antagonist, Otakimaru. Otakimaru
Speaker 2: bestows Yumihami to a character whose ambitions are getting out
Speaker 2: of hand, causing him to turn into a villainous warlord. Thus,
Speaker 2: it could be said that the baku devours the dreams
Speaker 2: and ambitions of others. To fuel its own. In the
Speaker 2: game's expansions, you eventually acquire a Baku named as such.
Speaker 2: The game describes the Baku as devouring the desires of people.
Speaker 2: It appears to have been corrupted by Otakimaru's dream to
Speaker 2: destroy humanity, which, given his history of interfering with humanity
Speaker 2: to cause conflict, also lines up with the idea of
Speaker 2: devouring the dreams of others to fuel its own. Otakima
Speaker 2: Momorrow eventually fuses with the Baku in an attempt to
Speaker 2: fulfill his dream, causing him to become a horrible monster,
Speaker 2: which has no physical Baku traits for his final battle.
Speaker 3: Now, it would be funny if the horrible monster did
Speaker 3: have Baku traits and it, you know, it looked like
Speaker 3: a taper that you like, a monster taper that you
Speaker 3: had to fight.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure it could be done. People love
Speaker 2: taking cute things and twisting them into a little bit
Speaker 2: to the left into something a little more horrifying. But anyway,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to do an image search on these
Speaker 2: later and see what these look like. Yeah, Adam continues
Speaker 2: that appears to be all the interesting things about the
Speaker 2: Baku in Neo two that I can think of. The
Speaker 2: neo games have their own interesting takes on Japanese folklore
Speaker 2: and mythology, and the Baku's depiction is just one of them.
Speaker 2: Never anything really deep, but fun to talk about. Anyways,
Speaker 2: thank you for hosting this show for many years and
Speaker 2: for all the interesting topics you've discussed. Hopefully I can
Speaker 2: write in another time with more ideas regards Adam.
Speaker 3: So, one thing this got me thinking about is the
Speaker 3: multiple meanings of the word dream in English. So in English,
Speaker 3: a dream is the on one hand, the experience you
Speaker 3: have while you are asleep. It's like, you know, you
Speaker 3: go to the dream world, you have dreams, but the
Speaker 3: same word is used to mean desires, basically the things
Speaker 3: you wish to accomplish with your life, or you wish
Speaker 3: what happen to you. And I realized I don't know
Speaker 3: if that same double meaning occurs in other languages. So
Speaker 3: like in Japanese, does the same word mean the things
Speaker 3: that you see when you're asleep and the things that
Speaker 3: you desire in your life? I would assume based on
Speaker 3: the blurring here in the game, where a quote dream
Speaker 3: eater is something that eats your ambitions, that means that
Speaker 3: it's the same way in Japanese, and I wonder if
Speaker 3: it's that way in many languages.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a fascinating question, you know, when you get
Speaker 2: into the linguistics of things like this. Well, Adam, thanks
Speaker 2: for writing in. So many of these video games are
Speaker 2: off our radar, especially these days, so it's great to
Speaker 2: hear from folks who are familiar with them, because, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's so much amazing, amazing creativity that goes into these
Speaker 2: these virtual worlds that have been and continue to be
Speaker 2: created for the video game making a market.
Speaker 3: All right, I'm going to read a message in response
Speaker 3: to our episode The Machine Speaks, which was about machines
Speaker 3: that were designed to synthesize human speech from before the
Speaker 3: age of electrical machines. So basically just like acoustical mechanical
Speaker 3: machines almost kind of pipe organs that were that were
Speaker 3: designed to try to speak like a human and to
Speaker 3: some degree accomplished that feat. So this message is from Magnolia.
Speaker 3: Magnolia says, maybe it was the lack of sleep that
Speaker 3: got to me, but I listened to your recent episode
Speaker 3: The Machine Speaks. During a late night laundry crusade. Parentheses,
Speaker 3: broken dryer and found the story of Fober, that's Joseph Fobber,
Speaker 3: the inventor of the Euphonia and his Euphonia, absolutely heartbreaking.
Speaker 3: Often while listening to history, I find myself imagining myself
Speaker 3: as a time traveler speaking to the subjects that I'm
Speaker 3: learning about. In this particular case, I saw myself approaching
Speaker 3: a depressed and disheveled Fober, my phone in one hand
Speaker 3: and the tiny blue case with my earbuds in the other.
Speaker 3: I imagine myself saying something along the lines of this for
Speaker 3: your right ear and this for your left as I
Speaker 3: shared the earbuds with him, and then playing something explaining
Speaker 3: how his efforts eventually inspired the creation of the miracle
Speaker 3: I was now demonstrating. The problem comes in when I
Speaker 3: tried to imagine what I would play for him. The
Speaker 3: first scenario that I imagine was playing him the episode that
Speaker 3: I was just listening to. But I don't think hearing
Speaker 3: people's opinions of him would have been great for his
Speaker 3: mental health. Oh yeah, hearing all those descriptions of him
Speaker 3: is like a disheveled and obsessed and haunted Oh.
Speaker 2: I think we were sympathetic to it, But yes, we
Speaker 2: were reading some unkind things by others.
Speaker 3: Well, I think even some of the people who described
Speaker 3: him that way were sympathetic. They were just saying like, hey, yeah,
Speaker 3: this guy's having a hard time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they didn't hold anything back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but Magnolia goes on. The next thing I imagined
Speaker 3: was some contemporaneous music opera maybe, but I don't know
Speaker 3: enough about the music of his day to make a
Speaker 3: good choice. At this point, I've spent way too much
Speaker 3: time trying to imagine what to play for this person
Speaker 3: I'll never actually meet. So I throw the question to you, guys,
Speaker 3: what would you play for a depressed and disheveled fober
Speaker 3: to give him hope and show him what the future
Speaker 3: held Magnolia? Ah, okay, So the idea that I guess
Speaker 3: not just music but speech could be replicated in a
Speaker 3: synthetic way and with infinite variety.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess the boring answer is to set
Speaker 3: him a talking to Siri or something, you know, just
Speaker 3: get him with like a digital voice assistant there. But
Speaker 3: I bet we could do better than that. To say,
Speaker 3: I would play some of those Peter Frampton songs that
Speaker 3: have the vocoder in them. You know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that would be a good choice.
Speaker 3: Does he feel like we do.
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: He does because he's because he's hearing it himself.
Speaker 2: Oh well, how about the nineteen eighty three Neil Young
Speaker 2: album trans.
Speaker 3: Wow, Well that's kind of out of nowhere, but okay,
Speaker 3: yeah that does have vocoder, Yeah, I.
Speaker 2: See, yeah, robot voice going on in there. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know. I guess in general, I would I would think, well,
Speaker 2: he's in a tough place. I want to probably play
Speaker 2: some self help content, like, you know, think some eck
Speaker 2: cart toole or something. But if I but it was
Speaker 2: just music, I you know, i'd probably fall back on
Speaker 2: Tangerine Dream, you know, play him a nice, nice Tangerine
Speaker 2: Dream album. Maybe Ruby Kant, that's a good one. Nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy five.
Speaker 3: I'm cycling through the songs on that Neil Young album
Speaker 3: in my head. Maybe maybe maybe he should hear Computer Cowboy.
Speaker 2: Oh, I remember liking some of them, Transformer Man, Unit
Speaker 2: to Sample and hold.
Speaker 3: There's actually a there's a nice cover of Transformer Man,
Speaker 3: but an acoustic one on his unplugged album from oh nineties.
Speaker 2: I don't think i've heard that. Opticos Go look that up.
Speaker 2: All right, We're gonna go ahead and transition into some
Speaker 2: weird house listener mail here. This one comes to us
Speaker 2: from Pat. Guys, you recently asked about Elvis movies? Was
Speaker 2: he in a western? Was he in a movie in
Speaker 2: which he did not sing? Charro and Charo? The title
Speaker 2: of this movie has an exclamation point at the end
Speaker 2: of it. A non singing Elvis Western. This movie was
Speaker 2: typical of fifties westerns and not particularly special. I saw
Speaker 2: it on an afternoon television showing. In the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 2: local television station showed a movie every day at four o'clock.
Speaker 2: They would have presentations like Elvis Week or Road two Week,
Speaker 2: Crosby and Hope Buddy Pictures. Thanks again, Pat. All right,
Speaker 2: So I had to look this up, and I actually
Speaker 2: actually ended up texting my aunt a little bit, because
Speaker 2: my aunt is a huge lifelong Elvis fan, like that's
Speaker 2: one of her big things. So I reached out to
Speaker 2: her with a couple of questions about non singing Elvis movies,
Speaker 2: and she told me that, yep, there's only one non
Speaker 2: singing Elvis movie, and it is indeed nineteen sixty nine's
Speaker 2: Charro By the way. It's also the only film in
Speaker 2: which Elvis wore a beard. Oh, look this up, and
Speaker 2: he has a beard like in some shots and promotional stills,
Speaker 2: it looks more like stubble. Other times it looks like, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's kind of got the beginnings of a full beard.
Speaker 3: There, I'm looking it up right now. Okay. He plays
Speaker 3: a character named Jess Wade. Oh yeah, I see the beard.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, it's a kind of a beard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's but it's significantly more beard than you usually
Speaker 2: see on Elvis. I also asked my aunt what her
Speaker 2: favorite singing Elvis movie was, and she couldn't pick just one.
Speaker 2: She said that there are many good ones, but the
Speaker 2: quote Jailhouse Rock is excellent, and then she included a
Speaker 2: chef's kiss emoji. And she also highlighted King Creole and
Speaker 2: Blue Hawaii. King Creole is notable. It has both Carolyn
Speaker 2: Jones and Vic Morrow in it, both of whom have
Speaker 2: come up on Weird House Cinema, and Blue Hawaii had
Speaker 2: Angela Lansbury in it.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever seen all of an Elvis movie.
Speaker 2: No, No, neither neither of I you know, And I
Speaker 2: guess the kicker is We could never actually cover an
Speaker 2: Elvis movie on Weird House, not a proper Elvis movie,
Speaker 2: because Elvis movies are pretty much the opposite of weird.
Speaker 2: He never popped up in anything with a like speculative element,
Speaker 2: no horror, no even real thrillers. However, I have toyed
Speaker 2: with the idea of doing a series of like square
Speaker 2: movies by weird directors. I guess we'd call it square
Speaker 2: house cinema, looking at stuff like John Carpenter's nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: nine Elvis movie starring Kurt Russell and Shelley Winters, or
Speaker 2: David Cronenberg's Fast Company from the same year, which is
Speaker 2: carr movie.
Speaker 3: I see in the notes you said that one has
Speaker 3: George Buza.
Speaker 2: In it yep, along with John Saxon and an actor.
Speaker 2: The star is William Smith, who played Conan's father in
Speaker 2: Conan and the Barbarian. This is probably a funnier idea
Speaker 2: than it would be an execution, though, so probably just
Speaker 2: best to stick to things that are actually weird.
Speaker 3: Okay. One last weird House message. This is from Tauntrey.
Speaker 3: Tauntrey says hello again to my favorite podcasters. Loved the
Speaker 3: black Hole episode. I'd never seen or even heard of
Speaker 3: the film and am delighted to have watched it now. However,
Speaker 3: I think you guys misread the ending. Maximilian and this
Speaker 3: is the devilish sort of steally red ARCon robot. The
Speaker 3: evil robot. Maximilian is I think supposed to be doctor
Speaker 3: Kate's father.
Speaker 2: Hmm.
Speaker 3: I definitely didn't put that together, but Tontree goes on,
Speaker 3: that's why doctor Reinhardt said he's afraid of him, and
Speaker 3: then when he mentions Kate's eyes so specifically, it is
Speaker 3: foreshadowing to the end when Maximilian and doctor Reinhardt are
Speaker 3: in the black Hole hell and we see her father's
Speaker 3: eyes inside Maximilian's head when he's tormenting doctor Reinhardt. The Horror,
Speaker 3: The Horror. Also regarding the black Hole the ride, I
Speaker 3: found this and then Tautrey includes a link to something
Speaker 3: I couldn't click through to for some reason, but anyway
Speaker 3: I found it seems to be about a ride that
Speaker 3: was never fully implemented at Disneyland that would have been
Speaker 3: based around the movie The black Hole. I think it
Speaker 3: is something that, if I understand correctly speculatively, this ride
Speaker 3: was previously what's it called Adventures in Innerspace and then
Speaker 3: eventually it was turned into the Star Tours ride.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Star Tour is a fun ride.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, that was like the Star Wars ride
Speaker 3: they had before the modern era of the lucasfilm Disney Union,
Speaker 3: like it goes back to the eighties and.
Speaker 2: They still have some version of it. My son and
Speaker 2: I wrote it when we went down to the Star
Speaker 2: Wars land at Disney World.
Speaker 3: It is what do you call this type of ride?
Speaker 3: It's where you're not actually like going anywhere in the ride.
Speaker 3: It's more kind of like showing you a three three
Speaker 3: D video and moving you back and forth in a barrel.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I forget the industry terminology for this. But there's
Speaker 2: a great series on Disney Plus about like the story
Speaker 2: behind some of the key rides, and they get into
Speaker 2: this one a.
Speaker 3: Bit simulated motion or something. But Tandrey, coming back to
Speaker 3: your idea about this being Maximilian's father, that's very interesting
Speaker 3: and I think you may be onto something. I didn't
Speaker 3: catch that at all while watching. And when you see
Speaker 3: the eyes inside Maximilian and the kind of hell after
Speaker 3: life dream sequence at the end, I assumed that to
Speaker 3: be doctor Reinhardt's eyes and him being sort of having
Speaker 3: merged or fused with Maximilian and he's trapped inside. But
Speaker 3: I could totally see it being the other way around too. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I like hearing a different read on this. It certainly
Speaker 2: it's ambiguous enough that it invites different interpretations.
Speaker 3: And I think it would make sense of doctor Reinhardt
Speaker 3: surprisingly saying he's afraid of Maximilian and then like asking
Speaker 3: Kate to protect him from Maximilian, which doesn't really make
Speaker 3: any sense otherwise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it barely makes sense even with
Speaker 2: this interpretation, but that I like a fresh interpretation, and
Speaker 2: you know it, And it's also neat that that Tantry
Speaker 2: got the experiences for the first time. You know, we're
Speaker 2: bringing we're bringing these films out for folks to experience,
Speaker 2: treasures from the Temple for everyone to enjoy. Well, you know,
Speaker 2: our own murderous Kilbot. Carney is telling us that the
Speaker 2: time is up. No more listener mail for this episode,
Speaker 2: but we have more that we'll come back to in
Speaker 2: future episodes. Listener Mail episodes published Mondays and The Stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow Your Mind podcast feed core episodes of our
Speaker 2: podcast on Tuesdays and Thursdays, on Wednesdays, a short form
Speaker 2: artifact or monster fact episode, and on Fridays. Indeed, we
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Protect us from Carney. Here's thanks to our excellent audio producer,
Speaker 3: JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 3: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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