84: The November 2019 Blade Runner Spectacular

to follow them down that hole. Uh So I saw a tweet that I sent to UM to Molly and tests from Emma Best, who's a a hacker activist. UM runs the site muck rock, which is sort of like UM like scripty or something. It's just like a place for documents and uh foya documents and stuff like that. So they had done a FOYA on looking up materials mentioning or describing psychological operations involving astrology, such as those

described in a series of numbers. UM, this is from the CIA, and they got the response that said there were several documents, most of them we cannot share with you. They're still classified. Thanks guys. So so to be fair, this is inconclusive. We don't know anything. There's only so one document was what had been declassified and it was from the Vietnam War and it was from this It was like a kind of document about UH from Henry A. Kissinger about a psychological offensive in Vietnam. And it was

this propaganda radio show called Mother Vietnam. And it was just a list of like the kinds of programming we could have on said propaganda radio station, like UM and astrology that tells you to go out and kill for the America. So rebuttal of Radio Hanoi UH, interviews with refugees, relatives, wounded soldiers, advice to North Vietnamese civilians and soldiers, and

astrological predictions. So WHOA, So we can infer that the psy ops that used astrology, we're basically like maybe to instill fear and people to be like, oh, looking at your horoscope, like looks like you should definitely not oppose the powers that be. We did. TuS and I were on Behind the Bastards, another show on our network that's awesome, and we were an episode about Nancy Reagan's astrologer that was all about how the Reagans were totally into astrology.

The astrologer was a horrible person and she only wanted to be an astrologer for rich people. But they made a lot of their decisions about meeting times based on what she said. So they would like circle the helicopter, for which had the effect of making their opponents be caught off guard because they wouldn't meet ever at like five pm. They'd have to meet at like five twelve.

It's actually kind of a great it's for good. But they were notorious apparently for like they would only hold meetings at these weird times, and it was because the astrologer told them to. Was it like numera numerology, like the straight up astrology? I think it was like this is why? Um? I mean I I then just googled is astrology a sty op um? Which is you know, of course opens up. I mean, this is not a

new question. Plenty of people of have thought of this before, but most of it's like on conspiracy sites and not um, not actual documents, not anything clickable by us. Right, It never occurred to me until until you sent me that tweet, and then I felt like right, because I was like, of course it can be used for evil. It never seemed like that's why you would use there was There was a person who responded to this on Twitter and said, you know, it's a very old practice, like obviously it

can be used anyway people want to use it. But they were like, if you want to be safe, though, don't use this. The astrology apps like you are listening to you, listened to you in therapy and then they give you a base period tracking app. Wait what what? Back up? What was that? Somebody was like, I know, okay, somebody I know was like my astrology app was saying stuff that was just about stuff I had just talked about in therapy, and I was like, well, your phone

one was on in therapy. I'm sure it's here's what you're saying. That means that she has like a personal astrologer. I think that's what I'm saying. I think it listens to you and then it gives you advice based on what it thinks you want to You'll be like you thinks are getting different reading and you're like, it's incisive.

It knows what I am going through right now, because like the that's what what's what's the benefit for the person who's doing all this labor to create your personalized astrology. Maybe that you to this feeding you the premium. Look, we know some people who work for astrology apps, and I would like to know what they have to say about this. I will also say that I'm the skeptic and the crew. I don't think astrology is real. You go through phases, sometimes you admit that you are one

does not need to believe that astrology is real. To not believe that there is an app in which like there's a room full of people who are listening on headphones to you in your therapy. I think that true stuff. I don't think astrology is real. But my worst boyfriend was a scorpio. See of course of course he was. He was a Scorpio. I don't think people also in it's a feedback loop for people internalized traits that they think they're going to have because of what their sign is.

Definitely mean personality, because you're like, yes, for sure. That's why I don't believe in it too, because I'm a Virgo and I'm so not a virgo in any way or such a virgo. I'm not there like meat, That's all they say. It's like they're o c D about being Now, there's two kinds of virgo, as every virgo should know, it's not the most boring. It's actually, isn't it the most popular astrology. We've talked about it, I know, but I'm just saying you can't really there's there are

many different types of virgo. Speaking of predicting the future, yeah, we should talk about later on before we do, Can I bring up an actual sourceable fact about apps tracking you and then I'll let you go? Yes? Okay, So someone reported that they had been using a period track her app and then forgot about it and just didn't do anything with it. So the app communicated or sold the data that she was potentially pregnant because she hadn't listed that she had had her period, so she was

being served. All of these ads were like because they calculated and they were like, oh, she must be do soon. I'm just saying all the apps do stuff like that instead of just she's lazy and doesn't care about here, like we're going to take a flyer on this one. Hious. I saw the story about how the Uber self driving car killed a pedestrian because it's like not programmed to recognize jaywalking right, just like the first thing you would think you would like check four if you were building

a self driving car. Right. Um, what I'm saying is that technology is evil. Okay, now we can go to technology is evil and it's certainly what would you do without Twitter? You guys, I enjoyed my hiatus from Twitter. I'm thinking about taking Twitter to me is actually the worst one. I'm actually never on Twitter. Now, listen, let's take a journey to right now as visualized from thirty

seven years ago. You guys, we watched Blade Runner two version of Blade Runner because it's November twenty nineteen in Los Angeles. Certainly is the kind of person who's been waiting for all the apocalyptic sci fi title cards to come into being. This is the bigs. This is one of the most iconic ones. I think, like the other one for me is whatever it is and back to the Future, to which I think was um, I think that was there's something in running. I think it was

running man. Um. But it was very funny because on November one, that was the day that the cycling plaque caught on fire and out water and it smelled like burning plastic in the entire east side and the sky was orange, and I actually took a surgical mask from our room where I work and used it to drive home because I walked outside and immediately started like hacking coffee, and the run or weather came right on time, exactly

on time. I also felt as though the air quality and the fumes, the particular fumes that were being emitted from this fire were downplayed, Like I think people really should have taken because it does look bad. You could smell it everybody I know. I feel like I was like, oh, I'm having all these really bad headaches and like headaches allergies, and I was like, no, that's the fire. We're all

like inhaling disgusting particles. There are a lot of schools right around that area, and I feel as though they sometimes there will be kind of a like mandate that children stay in school, um, and I think maybe they kind of. I feel like school should have been closed in that area, that's how bad the air in school. Yeah it was. I think it should have been a small day. We wouldn't get it off. We don't have to play in the auditorium anyway. This blade Runner like

it's such a like it is. It is the most iconic dystopian I think movie maybe. I mean, there are obviously like lots you can choose from, but I think like this particular vision of this like perpetual night time because of the smog, like uh Asian culture has running muck. There are there are robots that look like people and you can't tell the difference. Like all of that stuff feels very like this has just soaked itself into all science fiction. It's also a utopia because it's raining all

the time. What's in that rain? And I love it? And it's diverse, yes, exactly, how is my complaint? We did a North Mollywood episode about um The Runner where they said, as you said that the best shot was when they cut to a pile of garbage and the title just so San Diego, that's the best diss in the world, most earned diss. But also yeah, that it was shot in Europe, so all the extras are white.

It's like, well, that's the most ystopian future l a ever And was like, you're thinking about it more than they did, right, it feels original. Blade Runner does feel like such an eighties movie because it does feel like that fear. It's like the white fear of the city getting taken over by the other. But the thing, but the thing about Blade Runner, the world of Blade Runner, is not that it's been taken over. It's that those are the people who had to stay behind it are

not on the off world exactly. Um. So it's not like the white people have been killed off by all the Asian people. Um. It is it is that like they have, not because of class or because it's like some it's implied that some disabilities you can't like, Um, shef Sebastian can't go up because of this syndrome that he has a disease with methuselas syndrome. That makeup terrible and I relish bad makeup like that it would be

bad c G. I now kind of. But also just because it made him like it added an extra layer of wondering if if he was like putting on a front, because isn't that part of it too, that some people seem really conflicted about whether they actually want to populate the planets or whatever. You know how night Call feels, you know how Night Call fields And I was staying here, I mean you get amazing apartments apparently if you stay

by it. Uh, we're all moving into the brad. The worst part of the the lifestyle of living in those apartment buildings is being on the elevator that is attached to the exterior of a building. You mean like an outdoor the outdoor elevator that goes up to like the nineties, and I don't like you mean like the like the Bonaventure. Yeah, that's so I couldn't deal. I got to see the elevator.

Not the biggest fan of elevators in general, except for the one at Lego Land that hasn't big elevator fan, but I feel like you might as well be outside. They looked like they were going to fall off the building. It was so stressful to me. I think the funny thing about the design of Blader in Our being as like influential as it is, is that it's not really

straight up like cyberpunk. It's super noir and it's super like like early half of the twentieth century, like um and the fact that they shot on all these locations from that era in Los Angeles, Like, that's the architecture. Those are the bones of the city. It's not all these crazy pyramids and um, you know, sleek architecture that really defines most of um, just like like you know, I candy type stuff like it's it's very it's very dirty and kind of craggy and wet, very damn. We

love the wet future future. Was that because Ridley Scott was like I thought I read somewhere but not couldn't verify it that he wanted like an England to feel um weatherwise because he's British. I guess I don't know. It's actually kind of a realistic like it feels. It's also like now it's cold enough to wear a trench coat, but we are I feel like a boats were not believable to me. They are now gets cold night huge for Coch. It was so foggy last night. It was

so blade runnery. I was saying to Test I deny that it was fogg. I think it was fog last night for sure. Yesterday it was nasty. I don't know. There are many nights climates you could have been in a foggy set weather app said fog because it was listening to me and knew that that's what I wanted. Just wanted to make you feel good. Sorry, please give me fog. How do you think the movie has held

up since you've seen it last. The thing that okay, so I have like a very like I saw this movie, this movie like blew my mind or whatever when I was fourteen or however old I was when I saw it.

And there's an article in the news about me saying it was my favorite movie, which I don't think it's true, but wait, really yeah, because I I did a kind of Blade Runner indebted thesis film in college, like I did like an l a cyberp movie, um so, and then the local paper in Tacoma interviewed me about it, uh, and I said that Lade Runner was my favorite movie because it's just like that sounds right right, like this

girl loves bad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, But I think the thing that's always surprising to me every time I come back to this movie, and like also the more that I kind of steep myself and like, here's how you make a movie that like stands the test of time. Here's the perfect formula for a movie. Here all the beats you need to do, and like promises and uh and like you know, things like fulfilling all those promises that you make to the audience. It's like Blade Runner

is so arty and weird. It doesn't have any of those like satisfying buttons that are pushing, and all of its big ideas are like hinted at and kind of sideways and nothing is like hammered down in a way that most side five two one and that it's like a sci fi movie that also gets to be like capital a art. Yeah, it's like a mood, not like a Star Wars movie. It doesn't. It's not like a

popcorn movie. It's like a junior man's movie. It's very like I was thinking about, even the opening, like where decords at the noodle stand and then and then where James almost comes up and they take him to the police, but they say he's under arrest and they put him in a cop car like a floating car, and they take him to the police station or um and uh

that's it has the Vangelist score. It's like the slow shot of the car rising up over the city and it's all dreamy and the rain is falling, and I think, like probably the first three times I saw that movie, I never picked up that he was getting arrested because it doesn't feel like anything Urgent is happy. He's not being arrested. He's like he's not. Later, yeah, they but like that's like the reveal when they get there. But it's like, I don't I was just watching The Flying Car.

I don't know. Also, he was like, you can't arrest me because I'm still eating my noodles, and they're like, okay, that sounds pretty fair. We'll wait to arrest you while you finish your noodle. It is um. I was looking into the Wikipedia for this, uh, and I had had no idea about Hampton Fancher Hampden Fancher. Interestingly, well, first of all, now I'm going to have to see The minus Man. Hampton Fancher is a screenwriter. Yes, he wrote

it with David Peoples. But I had to look into The minus Man, which was his directorial debut with Owen Wilson and Jeanine Garoffalo, and seems like, you, how is it. It's depressing, it's about heroin addiction. It's good. I was just like this came out of nowhere. But also I didn't know that Hampton Fancher was married for two years to Sue Lion the original Lolita, and it was super There were a bunch of really weird things that happened

right before I watched Blade Runner. One of them was that Molly gave me a book, the Real Lolita, the Sarah Wineman book. Um, so I had Lolita on the time book about the case that Lolita is like supposedly based on this, like Nabakoff has sort of disavowed it, but she makes this point of like he would have seen it in this paper, like he knew this other guy who got in trouble for having sex with kids. Like so that was two days ago. Then there's the Sue Lion thing, which I just has happened to read

about on Wikipedia. And then also the other day I was like, I'm bored of my music. I need to start looking into Yes, I listened to Evangelists for like two hours. I put a Tangerine dream song on the latest. I put love on a Real Train on the last night collms nice. I think that is like, yeah, I mean that mix. Also, I was like, this mix really like feels out are unified aesthetic to me, which I guess is like there's no escaping it, but it feels

like beyond it. Being November in l A, I was like, WHOA Blade Runners, It's seeping into my life from all angles, and I loved watching it. It has been forever since I'd seen it, uh, and I had forgotten lots of great parts of it, which there are many, but it also has the weirdest tempo, if any mode, it has a super weird tempo. And like also it's one of those things where now, I mean I used to own it on DV, but now that you like stream everything,

I think I own it digitally. But I was watching it and I like the Internet started to go out during like like one of the few things that like qualifies as an actual action scene in it, which is where he's chasing down Zora the like the stripper snakes dipper, Yeah, the snake stripper um, and she's like, you know, running over the cars and then he shoots her in like this series of glass um, this like glass hallway, which just looks incredible because it's just like neon reflecting off

of every surface. And my Internet started to go down to it. I was like, I need faults. I can't I can't live like this. Any of the versions have you seen, um, I've seen I've seen the original one with the voiceover one that watched Okay, yeah, I haven't watched that one for a long time. I've seen that one like maybe once, and it was out of curiosity.

I've seen the director's cus one I've seen the most because that's the one that's most widely available, and I had that that DVD that everybody has um with the black cover, and then now I have I should look this up, but I have something called the Final, the Final Final for sure time we're done really this time, which is the one that's it's available on iTunes. So that's why that's when I have on. I showed it at every film class I took in college. Really actually hilarious.

I hadn't seen it until college. That was the last time I've seen it. Because also they'll do like they'll show you Metropolis and then they show you Blade But it was funny because it was like every professor like found a way to work Blade Runner into the curriculum. But it's also because they're all like eighties postmodernist, and that's like the writing they assign also. But yeah, it's interesting to think of Blade Runner as not an eighties

movie but a now sis. I've talked about the class I took in college that someone actually a listener wrote in to remind me of the professor's name, and it's um Professor Noyman. But he taught a film architecture class

and Blade Runner was featured and Metropolis was featured. Um and yeah, and watching it now in the time that it was to be set is really fascinating in terms of I mean because also we used to all work at l A Live and we often talked about how that is like a but I was just going to say, the most haunted, but it also lacks any vibrant, has

no time. That's my boyfriend. Johnny Coleman wrote a really good piece with the guy Jacob Butcher for The Nation about the gentrification of downtown that started with the Staple Center and how it's just been a massive failure um and how sort of public money goes to pay for things like this. They're supposed to reinvigorate the community but

displace everybody. Oh, I mean, it's the craziest thing about l A Live too, is the Ritz Carlton Residences or whatever are pretty much the facade of l A Live. And they're these it's this huge mirrored skyscraper in the middle. They set themselves up for Blade Runner because they were like, we'll build all this stuff without dealing of anything with Yeah.

But the thing the thing about like the thing about the Blade Runner Future is that it seems largely accidental and ad hoc and also it's like pedestrian domond needed Like if that opening scene and like most of the scenes that we see are supposed to be taking place downtown probably like on Broadway, Um, because the Breadbury building

is on is that on Broadway? Is it on Spring I think it's on Broadway, But that part of downtown, like that historic core area of downtown, Like if it's supposed to take place there, then they've like they've banned cars because there are no cars, and they fly but they come down like you know what we're realizing as

Blade Runners utope is and it rains. Yeah, it was like and also in the dark rain is so lovely and because because also the idea of like that eighties fear of like especially downtown being like completely bought but like Chinese investors. Uh now, I just feel like the fear that everybody I know has at least it's just like they're whitewashing like the entire city of Los Angeles.

If we end up with the Blade Runners. Now wouldn't be a utopia though, if like all the people who popular at the Earth where the main industry was like genetic engineering. What if all the what if all the agents were just like replicants, the agents, Yeah, like the like just like Hollywood agents are replicating. I mean that's a solid thesis. Like I believe that. Who else would you not be surprised if you were, like, all of these people are actually vent Your capitalists are replicants and

their bio engineering each other. Um, I don't know. Siegfried and Roy could be replicated, to be honest with you, and the Tigers could be replicants as well. Hot button topic. Do you guys think Deckert's are replicate? Okay, so fast? I spent forever thinking about this. Uh, I don't think so. I think he is. You do? Yeah? But I mean, so that's the big thing of all the different cuts, is it? Some of them lead you to think that

more than others do. Some with the unicorn, Yeah, the one with the unicorn, which I believe is the director's cut. The unicorn was in the voiceover as well well, though there was the unicorn origami, but not the Unicorn dream. Yeah, but I think couldn't that also be read as like the humans and replicants share some kind of like yeah,

all humans are replicants, man, man. I mean that's the whole thing of Battlestar Galactica, which takes a lot of this stuff and like then explores it for seven eights. Also getting right to that point in terms of tech, and there's obviously been a lot of action around that because a lot of really evil people want to use tech for the most evil things possible, especially with artificial intelligence.

It's scary. It is scary. I was kind of into the idea of the bioengineered animals though, because I was like, look, they can just have owl. It's like I love that stuff. I love the Eye Guys, like my favorite guy guy. I know you love I know you love the Eye got with stuff now, but I love like, well, going to the Eye Doctor is the most sci fi thing when they put that thing down. But that's like one

of my favorite like nods to Blade Runners. The actual I wear a brand called Eli I Works, which is the name of the Eye Guys store, and it's the same same logo and everything. Really they turned it into like they took that logo and made it like an glasses, like a glass of store. Store is so eighties. Yeah, I love that. I had no idea. So it's great. If you go back and watch a movie when they go in, Uh, when like Roy goes into the eye Guys place, it says l a, I works above the door,

and it is the exact same logo. Yeah. Do you think this coat? I mean, I love a trench coat. Jesus. I hate long coats. I'm probably hated long coats on people because I'm short, So it's not a great I think people look absolutely ridiculous when they walk. Oh man, you're about to be very disappointed by me. When I changed when I went to a Colombo themed Halloween party called Colombo Ween, where everybody was wearing trench coats, and it was great. It just looks like you're at a party,

Like it just looks like it's cops. Don't actually wear trench I know, but it just looked like or like a bunch of FBI agents or something. I don't know. Uh, my friend Sarah got a green trench coat that looks so cool. It made me be like trench coat. I had a long red coat that I wore a lot, and I thought it looked so good, and then literally it took one picture, seeing one picture of myself, and I was like, I look ridiculous. I'm humiliated. There are

so many different cuts of to try horrible. But speaking of coats, I mean not the trench coats and not the big fur coat, but the see through raincoat. Those are awares. When she gets shot is one of the most. Like if I had to make a Hall of Fame list of props and costumes for movies that I want, Like, do you ever realize those things have seeped into your

consciousness and you didn't even notice. I watched The Secret of Nim recently and I was like, oh, I've wanted a cape for like twenty years because as a cape and like a little like jewel neck. Well, yeah, I think seeing how people wear clothes and bodies and stuff like that makes a huge impression on you when you're young, Like when you're seeing you're like doing that, it's like cats seeing themselves in the mirror or something. You're like,

what if that was on me? Like I feel like, um, which is why we're all so fucked up by Disney movies. What if I were a seashell braw every day. But that coat went up for sale once. Um, it was like on auction some with some estate sale, and I was it was so expensive. But I thought, I thought real long and hard about it. Couldn't you make that? It just doesn't seem that hard. Yeah, it's a clear trench coat. It's clear. It's like, but isn't it short. It's like no, it's like it's like a hip length

hip length. Oh, I get. I'm fine with a hip length coat. By the way. If anyone wants to buy me coat, that's fine. I don't like it's we're talking like midcalf to ankle that I really won't go for. But if it were see through or if you know, I absolutely refuse. It was a decision I made and I haven't turned back on that decision. Um. Yeah, the clothes are amazing. Alright. He just died right, just and

I love him so much. It was also very fun, um in the years leading up to now to go through everybody's birthdays, all the replicants birthdays, because I think that right, Patty was supposed to be born in Yeah, yeah, there's one two, So it's like I marked all those as they went five, and it makes sense they last a song as like a computer. That's the whole point. Why do the male replicans have last names and the female replicants have none? Why do you think? But why

doesn't Sirie have a last name? Why a series female to begin with? What would series last name be? You can make serimale. Yeah, it's like programmed default females, because that's that the service class is going to be programmed default to be. But even just pleasure programmed by men, pleasure bots should have last names, pleasure boats. It really bothered me the more that I was like, why do any of them need Chris Johnson? Maybe it's just her

stripper name. She still needs a last name. Can be there, she was born on. It can be her first pet. I don't care. Do you guys have favorite um like bits of design or art or something? Harrison Ford the greatest intelligent design. There was the best story about Harrison Ford in some book that was about Michelle Phillips from the Moms and the Papas seeing him on screen and I think Star Wars and saying, hey, that's my pot dealer. You're kidding. It's great so good. Yeah, Um, do you

have a favorite? Yeah? I mean I really like the billboards, to be honest with you a weird way that having been no, because having been to l A Live recently, I felt like what was missing was like an element of kind of overt tackiness, like that something so huge with a human face on it selling you something would have endeared it to me. More of that, though. They

have like digital billboard. When you're standing at the movie theater and you're looking at l A Live from that kind of like alle thing or whatever, there's like a very kind of demure digital billboard. But it's I really love the like I mean obviously the like neon at night and the like you know, all of those tiny little lit up windows with the rain and these like

angular structures. But I really was so into the lady's face like taking the pill and then the Coca Cola billboard, because I was like, this must have looked so horrible in two, like this is the worst thing that can happen, But now it looks like art. It looks like it looks like my friends said. My friend Sarah saw Double

and I'mitty on a big screen. She said, there's this line that gets a big laugh where they're talking about like the tacky little nineteen thirties ranch houses and everybody's like, ha ha ha, I wish I had him. So yeah, I think there is that thing too, where it's like what's supposed to be scary from the past becomes like warm and fuzzy because it reminds you of the path

he just had. There's so much just too. You can smell that movie, like you can smell Blade Runner, and you can kind of like feel how damp it is and stuff like that, Whereas obviously the worst thing about l A in my opinion is the crowd. And here there was fog last night. It left drops of water on my car. If you felt fog last night, give us a call to four oh four or six night. But by the way, it was just small. It was

wet smog on you. If you think test is wrong in Molly's right, press one when you call, and the louser will have to die. If you have any suggestions for long coats for tests to wear. I actually I should admit that I had to. It was the red one, and then I had one. It was I bought it used so I was okay, with the fact that I had a fur collar and it was tan with a fur collar, and eventually like, I love this. It was

it looked really cool. And then my mom was like, this is used if you ever washed this, and I was like, washed it. It has a fur call and she just kind of backed away from me, and I was like, it's fun if one person can make youself destroy your Like, are you wearing something different than you usually wearing? Please give us a night call about that, Emily before we grab up, though, what was your favorite design? Oh, I mean it's it's the it's the coat. I mean

it's the sea through raincoat. Another one would be probably, I mean. Zora is a small character, but she has a lot of memorable stuff. Her fake snake, her coat, her hair dryer or amazing. Uh, that whole scene in her dressing room is like very It left a big impressional me as a teenager us like, wait, is this a really fun job? Um? Yeah, no, I I don't

know this movie. I am continually delighted. It's movies like this that whenever people are like, oh, you know, there's a certain way that a movie has to be to be popular. I'm just like you all worship this weird ass movie that has long runs of no dialogue that's extremely impressionistic that we don't even really know what the ending of it is. Like there's room for that, and like it has legs for a reason because it's like it's just like takes you to a place, and I think, yeah,

I'm same with two thousand and one. I think movies and TV shows and things that don't answer every question you could possibly have, like those are all the best things, like the Shining, just like things that make your brain just like go into a weird place of trying to figure it out and you can't. Also, Zodiac. It's funny now because we do have the thing of like any studio person who's like, where's our Blade Runner, Like we

need an Blade Runner? They made it and it's boring and over explains everything, and so you can very much the point, especially if Harrison Ford characters. I feel like people you can't replicate it, and you especially can't replicate it with like Chris Pratt by giving him some like one liners. There's just like there's just sort of like self consciousness about Harrison Ford, like a seventies actor. Nois that makes it great. He's not just an eighties guy

being like, fuck off princess. He does say something to that does something to that effect. But it's also like it was coming from Harrison Ford. Maybe it's ok she didn't have like a little bit of a forceful seduction there. There was a little problemat Yeah, that wouldn't. That wouldn't exactly what if they're both robots, then it's okay, Okay, I picked into the same conscious app astrology app in the dating app or one app. We are all one app. Well,

we're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to have our guest this week, Elizabeth Can't Well on to talk about her new book of poetry and being a semi prepper in Los Angeles. Welcome back Tonightcall. We are now joined by our guest, Elizabeth Can't well Um. She is a high school teacher and poet living in Claremont, California. Her poetry has appeared in a variety of journals such

as Diagram, The Cincinnati Review, the l A Review. She is the author of a chat book, Premonitions, and two full length collections of poetry, Nights, I Let the Tiger Get you and All the Emergency Type Structures, which was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and the regional winner of the Hillary Graven dick Prize. She's amazing. We all just read All the Emergency Type Structures and it is the most nightcall book of poetry ever. It covers

um zombie bees, which we have covered zombie cicadas. It's like the same thing and also a fascinating app that we want to exist. So, Hello Elizabeth, thank Welcome to the month. This is great because we had Elena Smith on last week from Dickinson. So we're doing like a poetry months. It's Poetry Month, it's also American History Months. We've decided, I decided, Molly decided. This comes down from me and then you guys agreed. Season American History. It

makes perfect sense. Secrets. I feel like your poems deal a lot with some of the dark aspects of American history and also of the human brain. Yeah, I think that's an accurate assessment. Yeah, Like Emily Dickinson, there is a gothness to your poetry that appeals deeply to me, and also a really interesting structure. And then a lot of the poems are about actual physical Struck sures, Yeah, Yeah, this is such a like this is like a very

general question. But I always think this, especially with poets, because I'm like, I'm so not a poet, but I'm like, how does one go about it? But you have so many like we're saying, like so many interesting kind of conceits and like ideas and little like almost like the starts of short stories, and I just like wonder why for you poetry is the best way to like explore those That's a great question. I feel like writing, you know, it's like any other art where you can't really explain

why you're good at one thing and not another. I've definitely tried fiction before, and I am terrible at it. I can say that confidently. Horrible short story once about a boy who was like locked in a walk in freezer at an ice cream store sounds great, died while a puppy was like watching it was There's something about writing short stories. I was just thinking about this yesterday. I was like, is there anything more off conscious to a short story? Let me spin you a wee tail

the first line of any decent short story. Yeah, I feel like, I mean, I feel like I kind of work in images, Like I think in images and I um uh spit things out in images. So poetry works really well for for the image. I would say, um, originally not not originally at all, um, but yeah, I think that usually I'll have a thought and I'll try to write it just as sort of like notes, either notes on my phone or notes on a piece of paper, and it just kind of turns into a poem eventually,

whether I wanted to or not. And your stuff especially, I mean, it makes me think how actually well suited poetry is to capturing what it feels like to live today and this weird dystopian reality we find ourselves in, because it is like you don't necessarily need to set up all these images of these ideas because that's how they come at you in twenty nineteen. It's just like a like there's kind of a poetry consciousness, a positive

neural network. I also think it was great because it allowed you to set up the tension between technology and the natural world, which was some of some of my favorite moments in the collection were kind of just sort of showing like the disconnect between the people with their

tiny screens, I think was one of the lines. And then having this like deep connection with like water, Like I think, so your your book is kind of divided into different sections that deal with like earth and water and fire and then the home um, and I was wondering kind of how you came up with that idea of like tying things together that way. Well, I think I started out wanting to write something about, like not apocalyptic, but like what do we do when the systems as

we know them seemed to be collapsing? And like how do we find a space for ourselves to exist when like literally I feel like systems and structures that we trusted as kids, or maybe maybe that some of us dressed as kids, we're sort of seeing the cracks in them now. And so I was thinking about, like what

do you do, how do you survive that? And like what are the kinds of structures one could build to like withstand those storms metaphorically and and literally obviously as like a lot of the book is also sort of climate change. Ee. I mean I wrote a lot of it in seventeen so I almost feel like I wish I had leaned into some of that more looking back on it now from two years later, Were you guys evacuated?

At some point for the fires or was that just kind of like alluded to as being something Californian There were fires near us, Um, but we we personally were never evacuated for fires. I did. My parents live in Thousand Oaks, so they were evacuated, like, but I think that was like last year. They stayed at our house

for a while. Um. Their house was safe luckily. But um. Yeah, So I think just thinking about those different structures and then also thinking about like the fact that like whatever we build has to come from the earth, right, So it's like, you know, either it's going to be the water, or it's going to be the land, or it's going to be out of space. Um, but whatever we create has to be of of a structure that is natural

in origin. Yeah. I feel like, Um, I really liked that you talked about the horse hitch at your old house, which your husband talked about when he guessed it on the podcast. It was that horse hitch, Like what was the one Emily the plant you were talking about recently that I didn't know what it was? What plant you were like that plant that everybody had in the two thousands, horse hair horsetail. It was the hipster plant. Yeah, the ter plant. I don't remember this horse teelers. You know

about horse tail. It's a very it's such a signifier. I feel like of like mid two thousand's California gentrification. Maybe it's not just California. It's kind of like the horizontal fence. Yeah, it's just like green. It looks like really narrow bamboo. It's like if bamboo is grass and you can make a very like and it's green. It's green. Yeah. I think in my mind I thought it was the different thing that was the toughty tough no I'm doing.

I think I think that's how it looks naturally. But I think if you trim it to trim your your new restaurant. You three people talking about trying to gas plant sign when you could use a visual. Do you have a favorite California plant or like like maybe I'm an evocative plant for you. You guys have great plant. I want to say, you guys have a great I've seen your garden on the Instagram and you have an

amazing Halloween display. We did have a was Old West theme. Yes, so it was like, um, I think it was called ghost Gulch. Is the little sign we painted and there's like a skeleton and cowboy outfit, and my younger son is devastated that it is no longer in a yard. Um. Yeah, no, I feel like I like, I enjoy succulents, but that like such a basic like Visco girl things, Where are you from? Are you from? I grew up in Virginia, Okay,

not a succulent place. Yeah, it's one of those fun things and you come out here and you're like, oh, I'm really like on another plan. And I never understood that Virginia was very green until I came back to Virginia. Like when the first time I visited with Chris Actually I remember he was like blown away because he grew up in Texas and then to California, and I was like, welcome to Virginia. He was like, why are there so

many trees the moisture here. I had that experience in Portland, and I went to Portland for the first time and was just like, trees everywhere. Portland is so beautiful. I could live somewhere with trees. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned Ray Bradbury in one of the poems also, which I only just realized recently that those poems are all about like moving from the Midwest to Lost of the poems, the short stories about moving from the Midwest to Los Angeles.

Uh in Los Angeles is Mars. Oh yeah, totally, totally. It also makes you want to move to Mars occasionally. I say that as someone who loves l A but Um. In one of your poems, when you talk about living in a kind of exoplanet commune, I was like, sure, I'll do that now because the fires have kind of continued. We've already talked about in the podcast, so I won't for anyone. We haven't talked about this yet. I wanted

to talk about. I read like an obscure etymology, not at all vetted, but it said that maybe the Santa Ana winds are actually a bastardization of Satanas the devil winds, because that is what other native groups called them, and apparently like the tongue but people who were the people here called them something like that, and maybe it was like translated into Spanish as Satanas and then translated back into English as Santa Annas. Because they don't come from

Santana and they are the devil winds. They are super that they're also natural, like they're meant to happen, and they do happen every year, but it just sucks so bad. Every animals hate them. Right, But I think like what your poems get at is like there's a way you can live in tune with those things, and that's not

what we're doing at all. Yeah. Well, I feel like my my poem about like going to another planet and living is also like that's a cheat, you know, like if you want to be like, let's blast off and live on another planet, it's like cool, but that is such a kind of shitty way to go about it. Conservatism. M We just talked recently about how scientists have now kind of asked us to give up hope on that, which I don't think we were ever like really witching

to go anti planet colonism were anti planet. But it's also interesting to explore that impulse when you feel overwhelmed not just by like immediate environmental concerns, but also obviously what that implies about largely environments. It's like the commune impulse,

but it's like you can't go anywhere. Yeah, well, I think also if you live anywhere where, I mean, I know, you guys didn't have to evacuate, but like in California, if you do live anywhere where you're under risk from having to be evacuated for a fire, or if you live in Florida where you know every year you have to board up your house and like the water takes over everything. Like I think like having some kind of sense of being at the mercy of nature even in

a non climate change scenario, you guys have tornadoes. Though, this is what I now can't stop thinking, right, But that's the thing, like I think, I I wish that that ingrained more of a like cool I'm gonna like let nature take over type mentality instead of this like like people who keep the inside of their house like succeed degrees all through the year, where it's like like that's like the small version of it where it's like

it's hot. It should be a little bit hot inside your house, Like you know, just like learning to like like like ride nature is sort of like resisting it because I feel like that's what that is what gets

you climate change events eventually. Yeah. Well, and I feel like the other thing that I that I think a lot about is like the disconnect between living in like a suburban community or in a UM, any kind of community where people are sort of comfortable, um, and how you kind of have to lie to yourself in order to do that. We're like, oh, but we turned the

thermostat down at our house and it's fine. Um. And this sort of like weird almost social pressure that you experience when you're like, oh, but everybody does that and this is just how we do it, and like no one else is changing, So why do I need to change? I'm teaching this book right now, actually called The House next Door. Have any of you read this book? Now? Oh? I think night Call would love this book. It's called The House next Door. It was written in I want

to say nineteen seventies seventy something. I don't know. Um that it's Anne Rivers sit Ins and she's like a kind of under the radar female UM Southern Gothic writer. And it's a ghost it's like a haunted house story where the house is new, so it's basically like what the haunted house was had just been built wonderful. And it's like social commentary about suburban Southern like, yeah, where is it funky? It's in like a suburb of Um, I want to see a suburb of Atlanta. I'm pretty

sure it's in the South. Yeah, it came out. I mean, I would love to read it. It's great ghost story about a seventies suburbia, like haunting, it's awesome. It's like a married couple where if um, if two people got married and decided not to have kids, and we're like, we're going to lean into just like loving ourselves in self care and like being a part of our suburban community, and then we're just destroyed by a series of happenings. But then again, like, is it also just because you're

narcissistic and have money to be comfortable? And what are your opinion is the most haunted architecture if you have an opinion on this, because talking about the suburbs, I'm like that to me, sometimes mid century houses seem the most hauntable, And I tend to go on in a boring way about upside down floor plans and how I think that they are just ghost magnets. What do you mean when the bedrooms are below the rest of the house,

you are crushed by the way bedrooms have to be upstairs. No, they have to be either on the same level or above. But if the bedrooms are downstairs, or sometimes if you enter and then yeah, yeah, there's all like a split level. Well okay, for first of all house floors in certain mid century houses, there there's like a main level and then sometimes there's either multiple bedrooms or one master bedroom that is like subterranean almost, don't you know? I do know? Okay,

can you imagine waking up like underground? To me, I think that's the worst psychic room in the basement. I actually have like a vivid memory of sleeping over at a friend's house where it was like a weird like there was bedrooms on the upper floor, but then also bedrooms on the lower floor. What if you're like the cool teenager and you get your own room. That's why teenagers are so weird that they all want to live in a basement. All they're all the bad vibes. Also

the radar settles. It's true, but it was your least favorite structure vibe wise. I do think like a very antiseptic modern place is creepy to be in when it feels like it doesn't when it feels like it's not really lived in. That to me is actually creepy, Like the complete lack of texture. Yes, like the books face, the spine facing backwards on the bookshelves. I don't want

to be in a room with that. But it's just like the thing we were talking about, because the room that I'm writing, and we have a lot of stuff that takes place at a spa, and we were talking about like the idea of spa culture and different in different cultures, and how somehow the Western one arrived at this thing where everything must be pristine and white and clean and made of tiles and like a lot like both other like European cultures and Asian cultures, like much

more value, like would and natural surfaces, and like when you're at a spa and relaxed and you want to feel like you're a part of nature, but there's this whole Like I think that to death. I think on everything in America, well in Los Angeles, yes, but I think, oh, you mean like done the done, the white gleaming services. Yeah, yeah, that's like so dominant minimalism. I hated, Um, what do you guys think of the most haunted architecture? Already said

mid century? I'm sticking with that. I used to like mid century houses and I still find them to be fun to look at, but having For a while, I was just going to open houses all the time because it was like free and the thing to do, and I felt like I eventually started picturing myself living in a house with like walls that would slide, and like the downstairs bedroom and the weird kind of like just

two angular bathrooms. It just I just became convinced that I don't think you can be happy in a house

like that. Yeah, I don't know. I think like that kind of subdivision gated community, like nineties nineties mini mansion thing, that's a really bad vibe, especially because I think there's a it probably starts in like the seventies or eighties, but I feel like it's very like I have a very tactile memory of being in houses like this where it just feels like it's fancy and it smells like a new house, but also like everything feels like kind of hollow, like that kind of empty feeling that's the

decorating scheme of all airbnbs. How about that Airbnb just read that it was insane? Did you guys read it? It's amazing? Yeah, this reporter for Vice accidentally uncovered this huge Airbnb scam when she booked a place to stay. Yeah it is. Yeah, it was like, you know, it's a picture of a couple. They're like, I forget their names, Frank exactly, Jack and Diane when something they have no regulations, they are not no, they did they this couple doesn't exist.

They it's like a guy who bought up a ton of property and what he does is basically a bait and switch where you show up and he says, oops, there was a sewage accident. I need to put you in a place that's identical. But it's like two blocks away it's the same. And then you go and it's not at all the same and it's not what you It's like a kind of terrible ramshackle, Like there's like beds with no sheets and like and like the multiple people staying there. Yeah, and then they don't refund you

because airbb you cannot speak to a human. But after she published this story, Airbnb was totally silent on it, and then the FBI was like, hello, what an interesting article you've written. We're going to start looking into this. So then Airbnb decided that come December something, they're changing their whole operations all startups get shut down. Hey, let's take a nightcall, high nightcall. I wanted to let you know that I've been in the tunnels underneath e c

l A. I entered through the Art department. Um, I guess it's like the north east part of campus, and then you go underneath the building and there's like the tunnels between the different departments. It's kind of like being inside of a ship, where each doorway is like a circular raised area that you stepped through, and then they're like skinny short tunnels. But then they opened up to

these like big cavernous rooms underneath the department. So I went under theater and it was like filled with old props. It was super fucking creepy. And then I also went under the library the clooks there, and that was filled with out of circulation books, uh and like plat files and like an insane amount of books. It was like a huge, huge room. Um, okay, right, I'm in suspense. I did know that the U c l A tunnels like there is an entrance the northeast campuses where theater

and film is, which is where I went. So I was That's why I was like kind of vaguely aware of it, but I never went into it. But I just looked up a map of the U. C l A tunnels and they go through the whole school. It's sort of like when you're saying it's like a ship. It's like because it's like an artery that goes down the campus under Does it start at Royce Hall? No, it goes through Royce Um. I mean it starts like it goes to like Polly Pavilion, which is underneath like

the soccer field there. I mean that's how far out it goes. But it goes like the whole North campus. There's like a square you can kind of see it's like that um. But yeah, it's so like I had thought that it was only one part of the campus, but it like goes through the whole thing. And they called in steam tunnels on here, and I was trying.

I looked at like, this research is all very familiar to me because I've definitely looked this up before and like tried to figure out what they were originally used for. I mean, I guess like as a means of transporting things from one department to another. I guess during nuclear No, that's true. A huge bomb shelter. But but most of u c l A pre dates like the nuclear panic as they built it. Oh, it's for the lizard people. It could have been for the ninja turtles. Was there

pizza then, we know? I mean it's a college. This is kind of a Ninja turtle situation, it is. Elizabeth was saying that her college also contained underground tunnels. Yeah. Well, I went to Yale, and there were tunnels at Yale

that I knew people went into. I never went into them, but I did that We had a we had these residential colleges, and there were tunnels under our aidental college that I went into a lot because it was the only way you could get to I don't want it wasn't the laundry room, but there was like a weird place where you could only get to something through these tunnels and you would have to bend double and like crouched down, and there was like one strange area where

it was all like discarded bikes and I don't know whose bikes they were, like they were not active members of the school's bikes. I just assumed the Yale tunnels lead to like the Phantom of the Opera for sure, it does feel like the Yale tunnels would be much more like kind of decrepit and like colonial than there might be more ancient, like they might like ancient Masonic energy, where like the U. C. L a. Tunnels have like

turn of the century Masonic energy. I got really piste off when I went back for a reunion and they had like renovated our college, which was fine whatever, um, but they had taken out all the creepy tunnels and put in like a nice basement with like a ping pong table and a dark room. Like this feels terrible. No, but he's ever going to hang out without a haunted tunnel? You cantrive? Were you allowed to go in the tunnels

back before they were renovated? I mean yeah, in the in our residential college, we were, um the other tunnels, I think we're not like kosher tunnels to go in. And there was also a weird thing with like a secret society that used like more water, Like their water bill was like higher than any place on campus, and there was no evidence of like what that water was going to, Like they didn't have a swimming pool as far as we knew, hydroponics. Maybe they were in tunnel. Sure,

I don't know the water torture. I don't know practicing escaping. Yeah, slip and slide. They were slipping and slide, and what were they using all that waterfall? It's a weird fact that I don't know. Okay, if you went to Yale and you know why they had the high water bill, give us a night call if you remember, particularly which secret society hot Yale Center calls a two four oh four six night and tell us why that water bill

was high. We like a regional mystery. Yeah. I don't really understand what the societies are for, except for people who then go on to do war crimes to meet you mean, basically, Yeah, it's just for boys to feel like a sense of exclusivity about what they're It's just for if you if you don't feel enough of a sense of exclusivity for going to Yale, then a secret society might be for you. Also, they have them like everywhere, not just at i Vy's, but those are like the

most famous. Do you c l A have any like I don't know about I know about some at UNC. Just because David was from Chapel Hill, doesn't u v A have that crazy one? Where like it's called like seven or something and there's only seven people in it, but you don't know who they are, but they chime the bell at Uva when one of the seven dies. I don't know anything. I'm pretty sure this is I mean, this is Virginia. This is maybe Virginia gossip. But I did know people who went to UVA, and I believe

there's something called like seven. See that's dope, though, Like I would love to be And that's because if that's all that it is, I hope that the whole goal is to live. And so like when you come from somewhere like here where you're like the traditions aren't that old? What were these really old traditions? Like? And then like my boyfriends from New Orleans and just like we watched something about like all the traditions of Mardi Gras and

it's all just like so intricate. Everybody's in a secret society, um and there's like so much costuming. It kind of just totally freaking New Orleans likes like a lot of rules and like details their detailed oriented city rules that come with the secret society or what really take me out of wanting to be in there at the society that Brown did we we didn't have any We were fraternities and those aren't secret though at all. That doesn't count.

Those are public stupid apologies to anyone in the Greek. But there are also some like there were some things that were like fraternities and sororities at Brown, but they were all like for nerds, a gameshouse house was like the D and D house and they had more sex and they had water. They were great. The Seventh Society, I'm looking at the Summer Society once again Atlas Obscure coming through for us UM. All that's really known is that the group is focused on philanthropy. Now, it's also

been around since colonial times. UM, specifically to support the university. UH. Donations have been known to come in for amounts like seventeen thousand, seven dred and seventy seven dollars and seven cents. But there's one thing we know is that philanthropy sometimes had some shady stuff. Yeah, how are the seven chosen? Um? Nobody knows. The Seventh Society local is the numeral seven surrounded by the alpha, omega and infinity signs. Yeah, because

it's like the beginning the end and forever. Elizabeth, how serious are you about proper being a propper? I saw you also quote the world and I was, yea, yeah, I mean I don't know. We talked a lot about leftist preppers. Well, do you think you automatically start to get proper tendencies just by like just by being outside of a city or being outside like a dense population area.

I feel like southern California has a specific prepper like attitude, especially because of the earthquakes, So you have to have like an earthquake bag, and now that there's wildfires, like you need like a go bag. Um. I do, Like I've never gone into like a survivalist store, but I did have like a long conversation with a few people about like if we were to like make this happen, maybe we should move to the mountain and like just create this small commune. How can you also engenders that

equal part? But also, like some of this is just practical, it's not. It's not like you're taken with like a whimsical notion being a prepper. Because also as a mom, you have to like, yeah, the emergency kits are like mandated by school. You have to figure out where you would pick up your kids if there were an earthquake.

My least favorite part of those school prep kits is that you have to include I don't know if your schools do this, but you have to include like a note God that supposedly your child would read were they to have to access their emergency kit, which to me is like what am I supposed to say in the note? Like goodbye? If you're reading this you will likely never see me again, or civilization? I totally cheer them up. Yeah,

I don't know. I think if you're reading a note from your parents from an emergency kit, the amount of cheers like I think my mom's just said like I'm thinking about you, like don't worry, like just something like that, like, which I think is like not. I mean when you're a kid, I think that can go a long way. I think we should all leave your book of poems. Yeah, it would be a perfect thing. It's like a guide

book for the apocalypse. Well, you should all go out and purchase a little bit Elizabeth's book, which I will bungle the name of all the emergency type structures structures. There you go, all the emergency type structures. You can get it at Skylight. If you're a friend of Skylate, correct Molley, you picked up a hard copy through the poetry section. It is the section. It's really can't recommend

it highly enough. And it actually it had been a really long time since I had read a book of poetry cover to cover, and I just sat down and like, in one sitting, it was awesome. It's so congratulations, Thank you so much, Thanks for coming on the show, Thanks for having me, Thanks for listening to Nightcall. If you'd like to give us a night call, give us a call at two four oh four six night You can

also follow us on social media. Nightcall Podcast on Instagram and Facebook, Nightcall Pod on Twitter, and if you're enjoying the show, please don't forget to leave us a rating and review and subscribe. Thanks for listening. Bode Bye. Nightcall is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.