Once more, it's time for a weekly dose of Stuff to Blow Your Mind and Weirdhouse Cinema listener mail...
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of My Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. A listener mail This is Robert Lamp and this is Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day of the week. We read back some messages from the mail bag. Oh and hey, if you ever want to get in touch with the show, and you've never done so before, you can do that by writing to contact at Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Whatever email you want to send this fair game, of course, we're always open to uh two, feedback, to corrections if necessary, to just interesting things you want to share with us, or if you just want to say hi, that's always cool. Contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Rob, if it's cool with you. I want to kick things off by reading this message from Josh about our episodes on fun. Go for it all right. So we asked people from other language cultures to share equivalence of the English word fun and any differences in connotation and so forth. And we heard from Josh about a word from Dutch. So Josh says, Hey, Joe, Rob Seth, I'm an American living in the Netherlands, and I wanted to pitch in on the word fun. In Dutch, the word is leuke. It has a wonderfully difficult pronunciation for an English speaker, something like the way he spells it as l e h dash o dash k. So luke, that's what I'm trying. Well, we'll see, um, Josh says. It is used frequently as what I would call a throwaway word, something you might use several times as an encouragement while being told a positive story, like nice might be used in English. Oh so somebody's saying, Hey, I did this cool thing, or I'm you know, I have plans to do this cool thing or whatever, and you you sort of encourage the anecdote to continue by saying nice. Nice. At least that's how interpret yeah, or or indeed, cool could be used in the in the sensense as well. Yeah, Josh goes on. It is also used to describe something particularly colorful or with an interesting or new design. I find it indicative of my observation that Dutch people tend to be neophilic, finding new and different things fun and not threatening. Thanks for the Luke podcast, Josh, excellent. Yeah, well, this is exactly the sort of thing we're asking for. Examples from from other languages related to the linguistics of fun alright. This next one comes to us from Cat. It is a response to our episodes on incense Cat Rights. I was taken aback when Rob mentioned it is more common for bad smell hallucinations. From my own personal experience as well as experiences from a few of my family members, a good sometimes floral smell is typical for us. For the occasional smell hallucination, the floral smell usually does have a sort of associations with past loved ones, which in turn does have a spiritual religious connotation. I have search and low for a source during these hallucinations to see if there's a real life cause with no luck, which strengthens the spiritual connection angle. So Rob, I think you're right about that. I absolutely love the podcast. You guys are my all time favorite and always look forward each week to learning from any new topic you cover, however random it may seem. It always makes me think and I appreciate how you look at it from every possible angle and with an open mind. All the best and keep it up. Cat. Oh thanks Cat, Now I do want to see Yeah. First of all, yeah, thanks for writing in. But but I do want to say that I don't mean to imply that that positive aroma hallucinations are necessarily less common in general, just that I had seen or remembered fewer mentions of of the phenomenon or or at least, you know, recollections of it. Um. I so so don't tank to that to the bank just yet. I did pick up my copy of Oliver sacks Is Hallucinations, which is a great book on this very topic. And he gets into he does get into into uh these sorts of hallucinations, smell hallucinations, m old factory hallucinations, and it looks like at least with cases of parasomnia and uh disomnia, unpleasant odors are more common. But yeah, this is I think a topic we could potentially look into more in the future. Uh do a give give old factory hallucinations a proper episode? So anyway, greatly appreciate the feedback and perspective on this topic. Alright. This next message us in response to Rob's squid interview. Uh, and this is from Ian Ian says, Dear Rob and Joe, as seems to be my eternal condition. I'm several months behind on podcast episodes. I just finished the episode in which Rob interviews Martin Walland about his recent book Squid. I love the discussion revolving around squid intelligence and wanted to share a recommendation for some science fiction reading in the same vein Children of Ruin by Adrian Tchaikovsky, the second book in the Children of Time series. I will try to keep this as spoiler free as possible, but arguably even describing the premise is somewhat of a spoiler, so be warned. The book isn't technically about squid, but does heavily involve they're quite intelligent cephalopod cousins octopuses slash octopi slash octopodes slash octo whatever's The basic premise involves far future human space explorers who encounter a long lost colony that has been taken over by accidentally uplifted oct to podes. I'm going to use this version of the word because it's my favorite. Tchaikovsky clearly put great effort into trying to keep the octopussy nous of their intelligence and not fall in the common sci fi trope of having everything think basically like a human. It's a very interesting exploration of the concept of human level intelligence and something that is probably as alien to us as it is possible to be without being literally extraterrestrial. And I recommend it to anyone who enjoys speculative fiction, which I imagine is a large proportion of your audience. I would also recommend the first book which gives the series its name, Children of Time, And in fact, you would likely be quite lost in Children of Ruin if you did not read Children of Time first, but it explores similar ideas, though in its case there are no molluscs insight. As always, thank you for your wonderful content. Cheers in ah. Yeah. Back to an old favorite speculative topic of ours, the the supposed Minds of Cephalopods. I have not read the books you're talking about, Ian, but there is a great nonfiction book I've recommended on the podcast before by Si Montgomery called The Soul of an Octopus, which I really liked because it just has some wonderful, very surprisingly emotional observations about octopus minds, about the kind of baffling otherness of octopus intelligence, but also some moving thoughts about octopus emotions and connection to human handlers and uh, continuing on the subject, I think we may have talked about this on the show before, so I apologize to the extent that I'm repeating myself. But uh, to whatever extent I haven't, I have done the intelligent octopus thought experiment before, you know, meaning like, if an octopus were to possess a capacity for language and human level technology, that sort of thing, And I recall thinking that a major ecological influence on the nature of that intelligence would be the comparatively solitary intelligence of the octopus contrasted with the deeply social intelligence of the human. I'm I'm very much of the opinion that one of the most profound influences on the character of human intelligence and human thought is the fact that we evolve to live in groups and to survive by working together, and so the human brain is formed for maintaining and manipulating social relationships, and this fact colors basically every aspect of our intelligence. I'd argue that even when we're alone, even in the case of people who like spending a lot of time alone, our thoughts are very social in character. So how would an octopus be different? Like, I wonder if the human brain's obsession with a sense of belonging would be replaced with a need for something else in the case of an intelligent octopus, maybe something like like a sense of sheltered nous or hiddenness or something. Yeah, it's yeah, it's such a a fascinating thing to try and comprehend. Um. I was just looking here at uh Adrian Chukovsky's um various writings. This is not an author I've read before, but I knew the name. I knew I'd heard the name before. I was trying to figure out what it was, and I have found it. So he's seems fairly prolific. Has written a number of different science fiction and fantasy books, many of which seem to have some sort of an animal theme in there. I believe there's one that involves with genetically augmented dog. But where I had heard of him is that he has written one Warhammer forty Thou novel, Day of Ascension, which has to do with the gene Steeler hybrids, which this is. This is a this is a fascinating faction in the Warhammer forty Thou universe. These are like there's they're the Tyrannids, this threat from another galaxy. Uh, that is entering into our galaxy, and they're, you know, just a big biomass that wants to consume everything. But they kind of seed worlds ahead of time with these gene Steeler colts, with these uh these partially mutated factions that are sort of vying to um to control the population and destabilize things ahead of the arrival. Uh So anyway, Uh, fascinating faction. And I'd heard good things about that book when I was coming out, but I wasn't familiar with the author here, so it sounds sounds like something I might want to check out. Yeah, either way, Thank thank you. Ian. Alright, let's get into a little weird house cinema listener. Mailison comes to us from Bruce. Bruce says, Hello, Robert, Joe, and Seth. Some of the recent weird houses have been right in my wheelhouse. That's a that's a that's that's suddenly a mouthful. Uh, the weird house wheelhouse. That'll be our wheelhouse anyway. Bruce says, I had a job in a movie theater to help pay for college during the eighties. It was a great job at the time for a student. Once the movies were playing, the lobby had been cleaned up, was plenty of time to study. The theater i was a manager at played both Krawl and The Last Starfighter. My memory of Kroll that makes it distinct was when people would call to ask what we were showing. This was before the days of movie phone and other automated services, so typically the cashier or one of the ushers would answer the phone. When they'd say Krawl, they invariably had to repeat themselves as the person on the other end of the line would misinterpret the title as our employee clearing their throat or some other vocalization unrelated to a word. Yes, that's so good. It's It's not like the movie was called The Adventures of Kraal or like The Tyranny of Krall. It's just Krall that clearly. It's almost it seems perverse. It was like it was intended to cause problems. Yeah, Kral Kral, because yeah, it sounds like there's some sort of an issue going on. Um they continue. Last Starfighter was one of my favorites to show at the time. Yes, the computer graphics were not quite up to resembling anything close to realistic even at the time, but they were still impressive as being a relatively new application of this type of special effects technique. They seem to add to the lighthearted overall tone of the film. One scene I always enjoy recalling when describing the movie to neophytes that I was looking forward to hearing your take on was the scene in which Grigg and Alex are hiding in an asteroid cave and then, uh, Bruce, here includes some dialogue. Uh we should we read this in character? Joe? Do you want to be Alex? Who's who? Who's Alex? And who's Gregg? I don't know. Do you feel like you have a Greg voice in you? I? I can be Greg? All right, all right, I'll be Alex. Uh this reminds you of home? Ah? Yes, I live below ground with my wife Oyd and six thousand little grigglings, at least until Zoor turns them into slaves. Where does your kind live in houses? Mostly that's caves above ground. I live in a mobile home. What is that? It's like a cave that goes places, only we never went anywhere, a mobile cave that never went anywhere. Fascinating, Bruce finishing my Greg. Come on, it's pretty good. It was a good grig. It was a good grig solid Dano, Harla, hey vibes there anyway. Bruce finishes out by saying, never fails to elicit a smile whenever I recall it. Thanks for the fun podcast now, Joe. This is also the scene, isn't where Greg is showing family photos of yes, yes, the children and the wife boyd Yes. He's got like a grig little wallet full of pictures and uh, how do wait, what form do the pictures take? Does he literally have a print out? I don't recall, I don't look. I just remember them splashing on the screen. There, So Gregg has six thousand children. That's that sounds stressful. It's probably also pretty hands free. It's pretty hands off when it comes to parenting. I'm guessing yeah, okay. We also got another message about The Last Starfighter, this one from Brad. Brad says, Hello, gentleman, what a treat this episode was for me. I'm a huge fan of your various shows, Weird House Cinema included. However, I'm ashamed to admit I've only seen a few of the movies you've covered. It's nothing to be ashamed about, Brad. Brad says, I'm a huge movie fan, but unfortunately never had anyone introduced me to the weirder side of cinema. You guys do such a great job of covering the films. It has prompted me to check out a couple of the ones I was previously unaware of. The Last Starfighter, on the other hand, was one of my favorite movies as a child. In fact, I have plans this November to swing by the place quote where it happened on our way to Disneyland. The mobile home park has since closed in the general store has gotten a huge facelift, but I know I know what happened there. Anyway. My tidbit is, you guys may have noticed Beta Alex's hair in the film look fake. Remember that there's a side plot in the movie where uh Lance guests character while he goes up into space, is replaced by a robot that looks exactly like him, named Beta, and he's there to take his place on Earth. Um so they say a Beta Alex's hair in the film looked fake. Yes, I did notice that, Brad. Brad continues, that's because it was. They originally only had a couple of Beta scenes, but test audiences loved them so much they went back and filmed more weeks after Lance Guest had cut his hair all already, so they had to have him wear a wig. Love all your shows. Thank you for providing me with knowledge and entertainment. Brad Ah. That's that's fascinating and that is that is something. The films we cover on Weird House, they cover a wide range, so I sometimes I forget that. Yeah, when we start looking at films off the caliber of The Last Starfighter, you are dealing with test audiences. You are going in situations where where people are saying, we love Beta and we want to see more of Beta, and then they go back and feel more scenes. You're not finding that that level of a forethought going into to some of the flicks that we're talking about. Yeah, Last star Fighter is definitely one of the bigger to do is we have covered on. Yeah. I don't think Horror Arises from the Tomb was really benefiting from any test audiences where they're like, you know, we we wanted to see more beheadings and they're like, well let's shoot it again. Like you know, now many of these films is like it's kind of a miracle they finished some of these films. They're not going to go back and shoot more for them. What if they did test audiences for the brain Eaters, but they'd be like, I don't understand the glowing globes? What's with the globes? Test audiences wanted to know did literarymoy get paid at any rate? Thanks for the tidbit, and best of luck on your pilgrimage to the place where it happened? All right? This next one comes to us from Dan subject w HC. Colin The Apple. Dan says, Hello, Robert and Joe. I recently listened to your Weird House Cinema episode on The Last Starfighter, and I have a personal story that I have to share with you regarding The Apple. Several years ago, I used to work at a movie theater in New York City that often held um repertory series devoted to a particular director, actor, or country. One year we had a cannon film series and one of the movies we screened was The Apple. It was a one night only showing with an introduction by Catherine Mary Stewart, your m Globus and mena him Golon. Miss Stewart, as I recall, was very lovely happy to be there. And even thanked Mena him during the introduction for giving her her start in the movie industry. The show was close to, if not sold out, and ended up being more of a cess than predicted. Nearly everyone in attendance was quite young college age and came wearing little triangle stickers like the characters in the movie. This confused myself and many of my co workers, as we had never seen the movie and didn't know why people had triangles all over their bodies. Some of them also came under the influence of certain substances, but they were very nice and enthusiastic about watching the Apple. Since I was working, I didn't get a chance to watch the movie, but I did sneak a peek early on during one of the musical numbers with a couple of coworkers. We were left speechless, bewildered even by what little we had witnessed. As we came out of the screening room, one person I remember saying, well, their costumes are very nice. All in all, it was a very odd night and one of the more memorable experiences I had working there, Probably as close as I've come to being at a midnight screening of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Also regarding Robert Preston being in the Last Starfighter, did you know that Brian Cox played Harold Hill in a run of the Music Man. Does this add more credence to Joe's theory that anything could be made better simply by adding Brian Cox? Wow, I had no idea. Dan attaches a link to a version of You Got Trouble right here in River City, the song about the pool table where Brian Cox is playing Harold Hill. Wonderful, Absolutely wonderful. I notice one major difference in the way the character comes across. The version I'm familiar with is, of course the one with Robert Preston as as Harold Hill. And either way, this song Trouble, You Got Trouble you know, uh is? It has so much fast talk crammed in, and Preston delivers it so smoothly. The the impression he gives is that he is the slickst con man in the world, and he's done this a million times. He's five steps ahead of the locals. They're never going to figure him out. He's he's just like he's a machine. But with Brian Cox, you actually feel how much of a mouth full all the fast talk in the song is and you can hear him kind of scrambling to keep up with the tempo of the song, and it creates a very different impression, a really cool one too. In the Brian Cox version, there's more of a precarious feeling to the con like Harold Hill is talking fast enough to scam the town's folk, but instead of being five steps ahead, he's only one step ahead. He's constantly on the edge, struggling to make up everything as he goes, and it feels like any minute he might finally draw a blank where somebody might be like, hey, wait a second there, And both approaches to Harold Hill really work. It just creates a very different vibe about the story. Interesting. Uh yeah, there there is a lot of fast talking in the music Man. In fact, if memory serves, I think I had a drama teacher once who was a great drama teacher, and I think he was, but he was also trying to like connect with with the kids, and he was like, you got your rap, Well, let me tell you about the music man. Um So I don't. I don't remember the finer points of the argument, but h but I think it was just an excuse to show us a scene from The Music Man Trouble with the capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool. All right, dad. Dan ends it up out here by saying, apologies for the lengthy email, but I just thought I would share since you've mentioned this intensely weird movie now twice referring to the Apple. Um when it came up in our h let's the Last Starfighter because there was a direct reference to it, and then um Athor and Mary Stewart was in it. Yeah, yeah, and then we were we were talking about Adam and Eve pictures. Oh it was the check film. Oh yeah, Furtive Paradise by very Chalova. Yes, yes, that was it. Yeah, yeah, the Surreal Garden of Eden movie. Yeah. Because The Apple, for anyone who doesn't remember, is essentially an Adam and Eve and the Devil kind of tale, except lavishly told as a big New York Ork City sort of sci fi musical piece. Anyway, Dan says, looking forward to what you have planned in October, can we expect the return of Dr Anton Jessop all the best? Dan Um? Well, first of all, no, Dr Anton Jessop is dead. He died Um during an expedition in Antarctica. But I know I just found it out too. I'm heartbroken. But but as far as the Apple goes, yeah, the Apple is super weird and super fun. And I did not know it had such a following enough to fill up a whole uh theater like this. I'm basically I don't think i'd heard of it until Riff Tracks did a riff off it, and that's that was my introduction to the Apple. I still haven't seen it. No, it's well, it's out there. It's wait ninety next time you're in the mood for a crazy musical. I don't know. Maybe we'll do it on the show at some point. We uh, we haven't. We haven't. We haven't. We haven't done a lot of musicals. Um, but there's always room. Okay, should we call it there? We should? We should go ahead and call it there. But we'll be back with more listener mail in the future. Um when in the future, Well, Monday's Monday's in the future, Monday's or when we do listener mail in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on Tuesdays and Thursdays in the future. We do core episodes on Wednesdays, in the future we do artifact or monster fact episodes. And on Fridays in the future, well that is when we do Weird how Cinema our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. And on Saturdays in the future we do vault episodes from the past. But future vault episodes from the past will still affect you in the future. Exactly. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. St Have to Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.