Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind Listener mail.
This is Robert Lamb and this is Joe McCormick. And it is Monday, the day of each week that we read back messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you would like to make your own contribution to the mail bag, why not reach out to us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Whatever you want to send is fine. We always appreciate feedback to recent episodes, especially if you have something interesting you would like to add to a topic we have
talked about on the show. But again, whatever you want to send, just just throw it on our way contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot Com. All right, Rob, we got a big, big haul today. We can get through some of it here. Let's see. Maybe I will kick things off with this message from Hugh about our Vault episode on the invention of the gimbal.
All right, let's have it.
Hugh says, Hello, Robert, Joe, and jj I hope you and your loved ones are happy and healthy. I'm not sure if your recent Vault episode covered this aspect, but the gimbal serves another very important surface on sea going vessels, and that is helping keep the crew fed. I think this is adding to the fact that we talked about some kinds of instruments in ships at sea that would be mounted on gimbals.
Right, right, and illusions I believe to ancient devices that seem to have been gimbals of one sort or another.
Right, But Hughes says, yes, gimbals are also used to keep the crew fed. The email goes on to say the cook tops and ovens on vessels are usually hung on gimbals that swing perpendicularly to the vessel's center line, with some sort of adjustable rail system to capture pots and pans in the direction of travel. This makes the job of dealing with hot liquids and such safer for the galley crew while underway. Wishing you the best as always, Hugh. Well,
thank you, Hugh. That is an interesting fact and I don't know if I would have considered that, but yeah, that makes perfect.
Sense, absolutely, chef. All right, let's turn to some more responses from our October episodes. This one is from Colin. This was on Facebook. I believe probably the discussion module responding to our episode on Necromancer Episodes on Necromancy, Hey Joe and Rob and JJ writing in about the episodes on the Necromantic Urge, specifically part two where you talk about dream interpretation and the temples of Aslepios where this
was done in ancient Greece by trade. I'm a professional actor mostly for the stage, and part of my education in classical theater mentioned this. I'm going off memory here as I'm currently at work on a national tour of a show and separated from my notes, but from what I remember, there was a temple to Aslepis underneath the theater at Epidaurus, and apparently patients were put into a dream like or suggestive state by the use of some sort of snake venom I think, either ingested as a
potion or patients were bitten. Under controlled circumstances, the patient's dreams were told to one of the temple attendants called therapons, same word rout as words like therapy, which roughly means ritual substitutes. If a dream was judged to be significant enough that it would benefit ancient Greek society on the whole, the therapons would then enact elements of the Dream in a play at the theater upstairs, so that all patrons
attending the show could learn from it. Side note, Aslepius's association with snakes is made more apparent with the presence of them wrapped around the staff of Estilepius, which itself is often confused with the medical symbol of the cadusius. I'm trying madly to back up what I've written here with references and citations, but I'm coming up a little dry. Perhaps someone else in the discussion module who knows about this can give us a hand with it. Otherwise, keep
up the excellent work. Chaps. Love the podcast as always, especially when you managed to sneak in references to D and D. I have no doubt that game was a part of why I chose the performing arts as a job.
Colin ah barred to the core. Well, I'd never heard of any of this, but this is interesting, especially the idea about re enacting parts of the Dream in a theatrical performance. I have to say, for some reason, I'd be a little skeptical about the snake venom aspect, but I don't know that could be true. I'd be interested in following up on that and looking into it.
You know that would be something though to think about this in a modern context. What if you had to you had to sign off the rights to any dream contents you shared with your therapists because they might be produced as a play.
Or how about when you go to therapy you have to sign off on the contents of your dreams because they will be used to train AI.
Well, you know, I guess if it helps pay for one's therapy, I guess it would like if you could do that instead, It's like, okay AI gets rights to my dreams or Hollywood gets right first pass. Let's say first pass on the contents of my dreams. But that means I also don't have to pay We're going to reduce rate on my therapy sessions. I don't know, I'd have to consider it because most of these dreams are real dogs. I mean, they're not going to really get anywhere with this content.
Yeah, I'm trying to imagine a Greek chorus saying it was my high school, but it was not my high school, and it was also my first apartment, and I was me, but I was also Brad Dourif.
Yeah, yeah, that's most of my dreams these days are kind of like that. Oh I did have a good one. As long as we're talking about dreams, I've been meaning to share this one with you. So one of our bosses in this dream, I think you know which one, but one of our bosses an individual we both like,
we both look up to excellent chat. But in the dream he had written a book called how to Write, and how to Write was being released as a candle and we had to and I don't think the candle produced sound, but somehow the book was being released in candle form and we had to record ads promoting the candle adaptation of how to Write.
My god, I mean, it makes perfect dream logic. Though I can see exactly why you dreamed that.
It is one of those rare moments too in the dream where I was like, this is what It's a candle, but it's an adaptation of a book. How does that work? It doesn't produce sound, but still you know it to dream, so you go with it.
The ad department is like, yeah, just go with it.
So you heard it here first. How to Write now available in all formats including candle.
That's really good. Okay, we got a bunch of responses to our anthology of horror episode from this year. Let's see, maybe I'm going to do this one from longtime correspondent Jim and New Jersey that has just packed with Star Trek trivia. How about that? Yeah sounds good, okay, Jim and New Jersey, says Robert Joe and JJ. Robert's Halloween anthology choice reminded me of transporter technology in other stories,
especially its use in Star Trek. This is in response to the the anthology segment Rob picked this year, which was from the nineties Outer Limits, and it was a parable about the use of a teleportation machine, but one in which your body at the original the departure point the teleportation has to be destroyed, and there were questions about like is this really death? What is self identity
if you're recreated at the destination and so forth. Yeah, Jim, talking about transporter episodes of Star Trek, says, here are a few things I can recall, and I'm sure I won't remember them all. Gene Roddenberry created it since a few visual effects and glitter spinning in a tank of water would have cheaper production values than having to use
the shuttle craft and the docking bay. That's interesting. You know, it wouldn't be the first time that the material and practical constraints of filmmaking led to what was in the end an interesting plot device or idea.
Yeah. I mean, now, it's almost impossible to imagine Star Trek without teleportation, without people being beamed up and beamed down.
But I can absolutely see how. Yeah, you would have to have fewer sets than if you were like having people take a ship down, up and down.
Yeah, just right from the ship to the cave environment or the alien terrain that you've prepared on the other portion of the set.
Jim says, while Kirk and crew could request being beamed out of a bad situation, there was no emergency beam out button on their communicators.
It would make it too easy for them to get out of a jam.
Also, Kirk never said the words beam me up, Scottie. Interesting. It's kind of like Luke, I am your father you and Darth Vader never says that.
Yeah, or it's elementary, my dear Watson. Though I don't recall the details on that. It's probably been said in adaptations, but if memory serves it's not ever said in the stories. Don't quote me on that just in case.
What's the actual Darth Vader quote? I think he says, No, I am your father. I think you're right anyway, Star Trek facts continue, Jim says in the Enemy within the original series, there was a transporter incident when a crew member returns from a planet with magnetic dust on his uniform. Kirk beams up next and leaves the platform. Then, after everyone leaves the transporter room, another Kirk materializes. The first Kirk has all of Kirk's good traits, the second Kirk
has all of his bad traits. This was inspired by Doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde. I feel like the straying a little bit from hard science fiction, you know, saying like that the physically separated, the moral quality is into different beings. I don't know about that.
Yeah, you know, the settings were weird on those older teleportation devices.
Yeah, but I bet it maybe for a good episode. I've never seen that one. Let's see. Jim goes on to say doctor McCoy hates the transporter quote. I signed aboard this ship to practice medicine, not to have my atoms scattered back and forth across space by this gadget. I think sound reasoning doctor McCoy in Realm of Fear. In the Next Generation, Lieutenant Barkley has an outright phobia
of the transporter. I have a vague memory that this was the first time Star Trek showed the transporter process from the point of view of the person being transported.
That rings a bell.
I don't remember if I ever saw that one. In Relics from the Next Generation, the Enterprise crew finds Scotty, who has rigged the transporter to be a type of suspended animation for the past seventy five years to keep him quote alive while he awaits a rescue. Oh, that's interesting. So he can like beam himself to well, I don't know, just beam himself to nowhere, just in the middle of a transport while he's waiting for somebody to come get him physically.
Yeah, it's a great way to have him serve as a guest star on an episode. But I do remember this episode. I actually referenced it in my interview with the astrophysicist Adam Frank because this is the Dyson Sphere episode of Star Trek the Next Generation, and I had distinctly remember watching this episode for the first time when I was probably in junior high, maybe a little or earlier, but it was just such a mind blowing episode, you
know this. I don't think I'd ever been introduced to the idea of a cosmic megastructure before, and it was just amazing. Like this episode, which I haven't watched in a very long time, but it's one of those episodes that made me fall in love with Star Trek the Next Generation and just blew my young mind.
Okay, one last bullet point here, Jim says in Second Chances from the Next Generation, we learned that when Riker had been rescued from a planet via the transporter eight years previously, the transporter beam split. One version was rescued, the other version bounced back to the original planet. There have been two Rikers, and one has been stranded for eight years. His personality is much more bitter than the Riker we know, and for good reasons. I heard that
the food replicators are based on transporter technology. That means that every cup of Picard's Earl Gray Hot is identical to the one before. This begs the question Dartrek's transport technology transport the original atoms or just transport the information about those atoms the replicators, and several plotlines in the show tend to suggest that it's the information and not the atoms themselves. So what about this for the show?
Every time a landing crew is sent on a mission, the transporter maintains a copy of what it sent, sort of like what Scotty rigs up. Therefore, when one of the Red Shirts buys the farm, they can just spin up a new one from the transporter, much like saving the state of a video game and then restarting it once your character dies. Of course, this could work for everyone on the landing party, but let's be serious, it's
only the Red Shirts who are in danger. I would think that it would mess with a security officer's mind to know that they could be dying repeatedly and then resurrected without any memory of their deaths Jim in New Jersey.
But then again, getting back to the basic premise of think like a dinosaur and so forth, is like the idea that that's what teleportation is, dying repeatedly and then being resurrected without any memory of your death.
Well, anyway, thank you Jim for all the trek facts.
Good food for thought, you know, before we get any listener mail about this. I do want to settle the Darth Vader quote question. I had to look it up just to make sure, but basically the whole exchange is Vader says, if you only knew the power of the dark Side, Obi Wan never told you what happened to your father. Skywalker says he told me enough, He told me you killed him. And then Vader says, no, I am your father.
Okay, yeah, that's what I thought it was.
It's better than Luke, I am your father. The actual writing is better than the meme. Yeah.
That touches on a theme that's come up in many episodes we've done this year, just coincidentally, not on purpose, but the idea of false memories. This is another one of those false memories we can have because lots of people not only mistake the line for being Luke, I am your father, it's like you can hear it in your head. You remember the voice of James Earl Jones saying Luke, I am your father, even though you never
actually heard that because it wasn't in the movie. And so it's like another one of these cases where a you know, like reading a phrase has given you a false memory of like a sense impression of hearing words spoken that were not actually spoken in exactly that order.
But when reality is better than the memory, or even if it's the same quality wise but different and like, it almost kind of keeps the media fresher, you know, because because you're going in there with a preconceived notion that is then subverted and improved upon.
That's a good point.
I agree. Yeah, It's one of the great things about getting older is that you remember less, and so when you reread your favorite book, you're like, oh man, this is great. I don't remember any of this. Yeah, this when comes to us from Mark, Mark says Hi, Robert and Joe. At the beginning of the latest Anthology of Horror episode, Robert said, this might be your last anthology episode. I am writing to say, please don't let that be the case. I genuinely look forward to the anthology episodes
every year. While they are similar to weird House cinema, the medium of an anthology is so different from a film. It's like comparing short stories to novels. Yes, they are both written works, but there's something about the medium of a shorter format that changes what the creators can do with the story. Anthology shows are premise based, not character based, and almost always have a satisfying or surprising twist. Also, i'd say, on the whole, they tend to have darker,
more foreboding endings. Your anthology episode discussions are a glorious buffet of supernatural concepts and twists. I love them. Weird house cinema episodes seem to focus more on the elements of the film, casting, dialogue, special effects, etc. And marveling at the weirdness of the final product, which I also enjoy very much. Please continue the anthology series, your fan, Mark, Ah, Well.
Thank you, Mark. Yes, I agree that there are things that are very often just just different across the board about anthology episodes versus movies. Anthology episodes tend to be often, like you say, more premise based or more about philosophical ideas, whereas you know, full length movies tend to be more involved with the struggles of particular characters and more about plot. But I would say the other big difference is that you know, our anthology episodes we treat as core episodes
of the show. They're Tuesday Thursday outings, so we usually use the anthology segment as a springboard to talk about some kind of idea or topic raised in it, more like we would in a regular core episode, whereas in Weird House Cinema we're just talking about the movies.
Yeah. Yeah, it can be hard to select something for anthology of horror because you have to find that they have to have to be this right, everything else to line up just so. You want something that is genuinely enjoyable, you know, that's fun to talk about, it's well made. But also whatever that premise is, whatever that nugget is, for the purposes of a core episode, there has to be some way to spin that off into sort of a core episode discussion. And there are just a lot
of things that don't match up. Like there's so many great I love Tales from the Crypt, so many wonderful episodes of Tales from the Crypt, but very few of them, in my experience so far of going through them, actually have something you can talk about in a core episode. You know, there's only so much science or culture of mythology you can necessarily squeeze out of a given one.
I mean, most of them are bad thing happens to bad person, you know, and that's fine, that's what it is, which is probably one of the reasons we often come back to things like Outer Limits and Twilight Zone, as those tend to be a little more sci fi, sometimes a little more contemplative, where other shows like Night Gallery, which is another one I love to death. Again, most of those don't necessarily have something you can really spin off, or at least for our purposes.
But we'll see. I mean, if we can bring it back for next year, maybe we will. I guess we shouldn't promise anything.
Card subject to change.
All right, you want to do some Weird House messages before we wrap up?
Yeah, what do we have in the bag here? Oh? Do we have some Critters email?
Oh boy, yes, the crits are chompin'. Let's see. This first message comes from Jeff. Jeff says greeting science humans. In the Weird House Cinema episode on Critters, you briefly discussed the origins of the quote suiting up scene. Yeah, so this is the montage that's in like every Batman movie where you get a series of rapid close up shots of buckles fastening and things snapping into place, and gear going into sheaths and stuff, and then you finally zoom out and you see the full suit in its
assembled form. Obviously it's in all these Batman movies, but it's in other movies too, and we saw that it is in Critters, which predates all of the modern Batman movies. I can't remember if there's a montage like this in the the sixties Batman. I don't think so, but it's certainly there from the eighty nine Tim Burton Batman on it's in Critters from nineteen eighty six, and we were
asking how far back does this visual meme go. Jeff says, I have no idea where the tradition began, but I wanted to strongly recommend that all your listeners take a moment to enjoy Bruce Campbell's epic workshed suit up in Evil Dead Too. Just spectacular. There is no aspect of this scene which is not perfect, So folks at home, if you want to look up a video of this, I'm sure there are multiple YouTube videos that clip it out.
But it's from the movie Evil Dead Too. It's it's where the two surviving human characters who have not been possessed by demons go to the workshed and Bruce Campbell like builds a way to He's cut his own hand off at this point in the movie, and he builds a way to attach a chainsaw to his wrist and puts like a little like hook on his suspenders so he can, you know, pull the pull cord on the chainsaw by just hooking, you know, looping it through the hook.
And then in his other hand, of course, he has the boomstick.
Yeah, it's ridoculous, but it's pretty awesome.
Jeff says, it's unlikely that a dedicated weird house listener would be unfamiliar with this classic scene, but do we have the right to take that chance. I have to assume Sam Raimi was riffing on previous suit up montages, but it's difficult to imagine anyone topping that one. Steay groovy, Jeff, Jeff, I agree, this is a great example, but I still am no closer to understanding where this this meme comes from, So I don't know the origin.
Yeah, I've been meaning to reach out to some folks, maybe our friends at Videodrome or some of our coworkers who were really versed in film history, because I was looking around and I saw this sort of meme, this this basic idea referred to as the lock and load montage. I've seen it referred to as the gearing up montage. I found some lists that show that it at least goes back to the nineteen eighties, but in terms of like what's the patient zero here, I'm not exactly sure yet.
I mean, I would guess it goes back at least a decade earlier. And I and also it would have to line up with certain trends in editing, because I mean, it's not just a matter of close ups, right, it's a matter of the editing, the way you're cutting things together to show these various pieces coming together in the hole.
Yeah, it tends to be rapid editing. It's a lot of short quick shots.
Yeah. So there are eras of filmmaking, or at least the mainstream within those eras of filmmaking, where you're just not going to probably see this kind of shot because that's not the way they were assembling their scenes, though at the same time you might have something akin to it.
Right, My thinking goes like this, it had to be fairly widespread in movies because by like the nineties, some of the uses of it in Batman are already satirical, and I think it wouldn't. Like when it shows the close up.
Just of like the bat butt, you know, it's just like Batman's butt cheeks, and that's clearly meant to be funny as part of the montage, and I think it wouldn't It wouldn't make sense to have a joke like that unless it was a well established visual meme in a serious way already.
Yeah. Yeah, a lot of the times You're right, A lot of the times that it's used, certainly more recently, it is. It is very satirical. It's like, you know, it's it's like an action style set up for a less action character, like you know, maybe they're putting a calculator into their pocket or they're into the other pocket, that sort of thing. Yeah, So I if any of you out there have some inside write in, we would
love to hear from you on this one. Yeah. What what are the possible origins of the gearing up or lock and load montage? Oh?
I just realized a movie that does this extensively, probably like you know, five or six times throughout the movie at least, is Sean of the Dead Edgar VI. Yeah, lots of satirical lock and loads there.
But if you're talking about someone like, yeah, Edgar Wright or Sam Raimi, like obviously, these are individuals that were extremely well versed in various film editing styles and memes and montages and so forth, so you know they they knew what they were doing. It would be interesting to know exactly what they were drawing from in some of these cases. Because it can't I can say it can't be Sam Raimi that invented it. He's referring to something else. Yeah,
there has. It has to go back further. I just don't know how far back it goes again. If I had to guess, if I had to put like five bucks on it, I'd say some nineteen sixties biker movie or something. All right, let's see. Oh, here's another one on Critters. This one comes to us from Mark. Mark says, Hi, Joe and Robert thoroughly enjoyed your weird House cinemon. I recently rewatched Critters and was surprised to see how well it held up. I think you failed to mention, however,
at the best moment of the entire Critters franchise. Well, to be fair, we didn't discuss the entire Critters franchise. We just talked about the first one.
We failed to mention.
But Mark does bring up a very memorable scene, he continues, which is the giant critter ball in Critters Too. The critter ball is an amazing and hilarious feat of practical effects. This is back in the day before CGI, when if your movie called for a giant ball of critters, you went out and built a giant ball of critters.
How deep do you think the critters went on? The giant critter ball was just like a big like I don't know what was the inside of the ball.
I mean, it would be insane to build critters all the way down, but you'd have to have them a certain amount of tritters partially, you know, the way down, so that it would look all right.
Oh no, the core of the critter ball is going critical.
So he continues. The best use of the critter ball is when it runs over someone and reduces them to bloody bones, instantly, terrifying and funny. It did make me wonder if there are other animals that group together to form balls for some reason. The closest thing I could think of was a rat king, But I'm not sure if those are even real good episode. Don't be afraid to do another Gromlin episode in the future, Mark, So I don't know where to even begin on that listener mail.
Yeah, we certainly could come back and do something more on life forms that agglomerate. I mean, I just think of one example would be army ants that not quite a ball, but they will form a gigantic mass made out of ants to protect the queen as she's moving along. So it is just kind of a huge ant wad with the Queen hidden somewhere inside.
Yeah, fire ants forming a raft comes to mind. There are various animals that kind of, you know, ban together in a limited sense, and then there's also the discussion of animals that coil up into balls or sort of wheel shapes, and then the rare instances of ones that may appear to roll. I think I've covered some of this before in the past, but I don't have the notes in front of me to be clear. Though, there's nothing quite like a critter in the in the natural world.
That's why they had to create critters for movies. As for the rat king, well, I mean that's also a great topic that I believe I've covered in some form in the past. I can't remember if it was on the podcast or if it's something I wrote at some point, but if memory serves like, the basic idea is rat kings, the idea that you have so many rats in your play ridden village that their tails have tangled together and
they can't become untangled. And then if you, like are ripping up boards in a house and you see one, you're horrified and realize that this is an omen of great doom for your village. Like it's a cool and grotesque idea, and I think I've read that it's maybe not entirely beyond the realm of possibility, but also extremely unlikely that this would happen.
I haven't researched this, so I can't speak to it, but I just did remember what the term for the for the ant thing is, like the driver ants or the army ants that formed these big wads of ants like the critter ball.
It's called a bivouac.
Was where the colony forms a bivouac that sort of moves along with the progress of its march.
That's right, And to be clear on the rat king, there may be more recent research into this that has turned up some strong evidence for the existence of a rat King at one point or another. But as I recall, it was rather dubious. But that may have changed. But yes, for doing more Gromlin episodes, yeah, I'm totally down for that.
I'm down for Critters too, if we want to come back and do that when at some point, like I said, Critters two is one the one that I definitely remember seeing when I was younger, and I remember enjoying it quite a bit. It makes some interesting choices, as I recalled, it might be fun to revisit. I don't remember exactly how they were handled, though.
Is Critters two to Critters one kind of like Evil Dead two to Evil Dead one. It's almost like a comedy remake of the original with a bigger budget.
I think so. It's definitely the bigger budget, you know, because Critters was a success and they written It's one of those situations where the studios like, yes, give us more of this success, make us more of this movie, and they obliged, and you know, you have some other element. You have most of the I think most of the same one up, maybe not most of the same cast. Several members of the cast are back. David Towey is on the script, so it has a lot of things
going for it as well. Definitely bigger and bolder.
All right, should we wrap it up there for today?
Yeah, let's go ahead and wrap it up into one big Critters esque ball and send it on down towards the farmhouse.
We've still got a bunch of things in the queue, so we'll have to get to those next week.
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