Stuff To Blow Your MindOnce 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, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. Listener mail. My name is Robert.
Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and it's Monday, the day of each week that we read back messages from the Stuff to Blow Your Mind email address. If you have never gotten in touch before and you'd like to give it a shot, do give it a shot. This is the time you can reach out to us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. We accept mail on all kinds of subjects, whatever you want to send us, but we are especially pleased when we get feedback to recent episodes. And if you have something interesting you'd like to add to a topic we've talked about. Get in touch. It is contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Let's see Rob, I think I'm going to kick things off here with this message from Chris in response to our series on cave biology.
All right, let's have it.
Chris says, Hi, Robert, Joe and JJ really enjoyed the first episode of the Hypogean World and the discussion about the potential for the adaptations that selected for sightlessness and the fact that the one fish you had described does technically still have eyes during development, but then they lose them. Did not realize this? Well, The first thing I see when I open my browser this morning is a suggested story on none other than blind cave salamanders coming to the surface. So the article that Chris links here is from Gizmoto from March thirteenth, twenty twenty four by Isaac Schultz, and it is called Scientists caught blind cave Salamanders sneaking to Earth's surface. So here's the gist of the story. This concerns recently published research about the om, the cave adapted salamander from the dynaric karst of Europe, which we talked about in one of the later parts of the Cave series. So it's possible that when Chris sent this email, we hadn't actually published our stuff about olms yet. So nice coincidence. The olms are very cool animals because they sort of live life in slow motion. They're thought to sometimes live for a century or more. They can apparently go years at a time without eating. Their cycle of mating and reproduction is very slow. I seem to recall it maybe like a decade or more in between their breeding cycles. And we also discussed a study that found that they can go for years at a time barely moving, maybe moving no more than a few meters from their starting location. And we also talked about how these animals were first observed in village springs hundreds of years ago, leading to these Carniolean peasants believing that they were baby dragons that had been spit up by a big adult dragon underground. And then of course came the developing biological understanding that these were subterrean cave adapted amphibians. And the idea was that, well, when there are heavy rains and there's suddenly a lot of water flowing through these underground waterways, these animals get washed up to the surface in these springs, they are washed out of their underground homes. But the researchers who conducted this new study were handling olms found in springs in surface springs in eastern Italy, and they found that in some cases when these olms were handled, they would like vomit up earthworms that they had previously eaten. And these earthworms are not prey that you would find in the subterranean waterways where the olms are thought to spend most of their lives. You would find them in the soil on the surface, like up in the Epigean world up above. And they said that many of these surface olmes were in fact plump with earthworms they had been eating very well on the surface. Here the researchers also found evidence of olme activity in the surface springs at a time when there was no preceding weather or water activity that would have been likely to flush them up to the surface against their will. So instead, the researchers say, you know, these olmes are probably adapted to live the vast majority of their lives in these subterranean caverns and the underground waterways, but it seems they sometimes probably make deliberate journeys to the surface, come up to these surface springs to eat and maybe sometimes to breed. So there are like so you can be mostly adapted to a totally underground, lightless way of living, but for certain types of activities come all the way up to the surface where you know, it was previously thought that the vulnerabilities of the cave adapted animal on the surface would make that kind of journey very unlikely. Because you know, suddenly you're up here and you're vulnerable to predators. You don't normally have to worry about predators and your underground habitat. You might be just generally not well adapted to a place where there's a bunch of light. But it seems like maybe the rewards in some cases make it worth it for the olm to to come up and eat a bunch of earthworms or whatever.
Yeah, maybe heed that call to adventure perhaps, But that's fascinating because it does turn some of what we thought we knew about the olm on its head, you know, considered concerning their their obligate subterranean life, their their tendency to stay in just one very small area for the duration of their very long life. So, yeah, fascinating information.
I'm trying to think of the equivalent. It would be like if us surface adapted organisms. You know, we live almost our entire lives on the surface, but we know that maybe five hundred meters down in the in the total darkness of a deep cave, there's like a really good buffet. So if we get really hungry, we go down there sometimes.
Yeah, yeah, or you know, it's not completely out of keeping with what we know about, you know, some ancient peoples that would have maybe gone to do certain caves for sacred purposes, you know, be it some sort of like funeral ride or so forth. So yeah, fascinating to think about.
Anyway, if you want to check out the underlying paper that this Gismoto article was about, it was published in the journal Ecology twenty twenty four by Minetti at All and it is called Wandering Outside of the Sticks, a surface activity of an iconic subterranean vertebrate, the OLM. All right, ohen to come back to Chris's message, that was the first half. Chris says, thanks again for all the fascinating content on the subject of caves. I took a family trip last fall to Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. What a great experience. We were lucky enough to be able to take the Dome and drip Stones tour, and during one part of that tour, they killed the lights and had us in utter darkness, only to be broken thirty seconds later by a single small lighter. It was quite dramatic and a really fun experience. Highly recommend regards Chris Awesome.
Yeah, yeah, I think we alluded to this sort of experience in the cave where you can you can experience this, you know, deep true darkness like this.
Yeah, the one time I've done this, it was it was in caves in Oregon. It was an incredibly memorable experience.
All right. This next one comes to us from pav Have rites in and says Hello, Joe and Rob wanted to drop you a quick note to say how much I enjoyed the recent four episodes about the caves. The exploration and mysterious atmosphere really captivated me. I'm hoping that the next Weird House Cinema movie will continue this trend with a cave themed horror flick. There are so many possibilities to explore in that genre. Looking forward to what's next. Thanks pav Rob.
Do you have cave movies in mind?
I mean we have a few on the list for the potential future that involved caves. I think the one that we did right after the Cave Special had no caves, and the next one coming up also has no true caves. But I mean, on one hand, I was looking into it. You know a number of films that we've covered already feature Bronson Canyon in the Bronzon Caves in Griffith Park, Los Angeles. These were featured in such films that we've watched as Let's see the Return from nineteen eighty Let's see. Also there was let's see, we haven't done it conquered the world yet, but that's that's certainly one that's potentially on the list.
Choke.
Yeah, yeah, The Magic Sword apparently shot some scenes there as well. I don't know if they did the full cave or just sort of that neat canyon environment that often feels like another world. And oh, robot monster of course. So it's it's been a favorite spot to either create another planet or to just have a haunting cave in which may lurk a monster or a robot, or some sort of combination of robot and monster.
It's a great place to learn, too late that man is a feeling creature.
Yeah, but yeah, we have a number of films. I mean, caves pop up in all sorts of fiction and all sorts of genre pictures, those genre pictures that we may choose. But offhand, I know that we've talked about potentially covering the Gargoyles movie from the nineteen seventies. Yeah, seventy two.
Oh, the made for TV one with Bernie Casey.
Yeah, that one prominently features some caves sets. And there are a few other in this genre as well that are on the list. A lot of bat people movies, troglodyte movies, and so forth. I mean, you can get a good cave in there. There's some Paul Nashy films that have some caves that I've batten around in my head. So yeah, we'll definitely get back to some cave flicks on Weird House Cinema.
I can't wait. Okay. Another short message, This one comes from Emma in response to previous listener mail that brought up the Encyclopedia Brown book series. I think somebody mentioned it because they found out what Ambergris was from reading Encyclopedia Brown books as a kid. Emma says, live from Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, Grade three classroom. My son doesn't read them, but I instantly thought of you all. And then they attach a picture of a like a collection of classroom reading material. The very first book in the stack is Encyclopedia Brown's Book of Strange but True Crimes.
Yeah, there it is in the bin I wonder what those strange crimes were. I assume mostly serial murders.
Yeah, what is what is true crime that's appropriate for children?
I know you're kind of limited to diamond heist and so forth.
Right, Yeah, true nonviolent crime.
Yeah, but I mean, now, this is this is this is fine. I have no again, I have no experience with Encyclopedia Brown myself except it just vaguely remember the title. But that's about it. So I think it's great that people can still connect with this stuff.
Okay, here, I think we're gonna have to switch over and do some weird house cinema messages because we've got a lot of them in the bin. Many people have been writing in, especially about Dune, but about other episodes as well. Maybe we should do all of the Dune messages in a block. And before that, maybe I will read this response from Bruce on the episode that I did with Seth Nicholas Johnson while you were out about the Monkey's movie head.
Oh yeah, I listened to this episode. I wasn't able to get a hold of the movie at the time because I believe I was traveling, but yeah, I did listen to the episode.
Oh you should watch it sometime, Rob, I think you'd appreciate it. Bruce says, stuff to blow your mind, folks. I wanted to thank you so much for the latest episode of Weird House on Head. I am also a huge Monkeys fan, and this movie has always been a favorite of mine. To demonstrate how much they were in the middle of the whole sixties experience. For example, something that isn't connected with the movie, but shows how much influence the group had on the culture. The character of Chekhov on the original Star Trek. I guess the original TV series was added in season two as a direct result of Davy Jones' popularity.
I had no idea we got to get a Russian monkey in there, Okay.
So Bruce says, the thinking was, quote, we need our own younger international character. Oh that's right, because the other three monkeys were American. They're from the United States. But Davy Jones was British and was the cute one and had shaggy hair. But Bruce says, yeah, they were thinking, we've got to get our own international character to capture our fair share of the teeny bopper audience. And Bruce says that's why Chekhov's hair was shaggier than anyone else's. Bruce goes on to say, the real reason writing is to pass along some quotes from the twenty seventeen autobiography of Michael Nesmith called Infinite Tuesday, where he shares first hand riffs on head. I was somewhat surprised that the book didn't make it into your narrative, as it has some pretty interesting views. According to Mike. Quote and there are a few substitutions in here for clarity. With the Monkey movie, Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson had decided to kill the monster they thought they had created, and they asked Jack Nicholson to help. They also asked the four principal cast players Davy, Mickey, Peter, and Me to participate. At first, I thought the suggestion was simply for the four monkeys to join in on a trip to Ohi and smoke dope, hang out with Bert and Bob and Jack and race golf carts around the hotel. But no, they were serious about the four of us actually contributing to the screenplay. But then Bruce says He goes on to say that it didn't work out because quote, we were not drawn together. And then Bruce says, there is a great quote about what Bert Schneider thought about the screenplay quote. He Bert described it to me, Mike as a wild gamble. He said he thought it would either be recognized and revered or reviled and unsung. There would be no in between and no ambivalence. Millions would attend or no one would attend. He was right.
Then.
Bruce shares that Mike Nesmith's take on Head is this quote drug addled, bizarre, obtuse and ignored as it was, the movie still became an actual driving force. Instead of destroying all things monkeys, it emblazoned them on pop culture permanently. Also an interesting take on the title. One of the parody elements of the film, according to Mike, was that Bob Rafelson wanted to include quote all his favorite genres from Westerns to David Lean type epics two quote the darkest thing on the planet. When Jack asked what that would be, Bob said, Victor Mature's hair. Victor Mature is the old Hollywood actor, like a you know, the sort of dashing leading man with always very very well quaffed hair. And yes, parts of the movie do take place within his hair. And so Bruce explains how, yes, they seized on that moment and they said, yes, that's it, that the movie must take place in Victor Mature's hair. Bruce says, as drug riffs go, it is one of the greats, and it would serve the serve as the magic carpet for the film. The serene fantasy behind the panicked psychedelia Victor Mature's hair would be heads quote Dia Jesus, and he says. Mike follows that with a cool story about how he unwittingly provided the solution to getting Victor Mature to participate in true Mike Nesmith's storytelling brilliance. The incident is hilarious. I would share it here, but it goes on for a number of pages and I couldn't do Mike justice by condensing it. Find a copy of the book can read it for yourself. Infinite Tuesday is about so much more than the monkeys, though. Mike was such an unrecognized talent, and he doesn't shrink away from as many faults as he tells the story. But that's a subject for another time. Thanks for shedding a spotlight on the seminal film and reminding me why I'm such a fan of these four guys. They truly do transcend pop culture of the sixties and music. Bruce Well, thank you, Bruce Well.
Yeah.
Actually, after Seth's recommendation to me in this episode, I did spend the following weekend. I was actually on a road trip and I listened to a bunch of Mike Nesmith's solo albums. At the first one, I think it's called Magnetic South maybe, but then also Nevada Fighter. There's one called pretty much your Standard ranch Stash, and I really enjoyed these. They're great sort of country rock, much like Graham Parsons or the Flying Burrito Brothers, similar kind of stuff, and it was really good.
Very cool. Go ahead, let's go ahead and dive into some Dune feedback here.
Oh boy.
The first one comes to us from Lorenzo. Lorenzo says, Hi, Robin, Joe, I'm very pleased you're covering Dune two episodes. No less, I wanted to write to you regarding the sound design of the films of David Lynch, which I've been watching since I was a kid. Joe, you were looking to link Dune to subsequent Lynch films. Those soundscapes that persist in hum that made the air heavy. I would have propose that you could hear those films without seeing them. Thanks, Lorenzo.
Oh, Lorenzo, So you're saying that you could almost like you could watch the movie without looking at the screen, just like by the sounds creating the atmosphere and all that.
Yeah, I believe that's what he's saying here. And yeah, that seems like a strong case to be made there.
I agree. Yeah, I love those David Lynch sounds. Wait, but you've been watching the sound the movies of David Lynch since you were a kid.
Well, I mean you'd start with Dune as a kid, right, Okay, yeah, and then branch out of the other things. I think that would that would be the best way to go. Like if I were to start my son on David Lynch and I was like really obsessed with getting him literate in David Lynch, Like that's that's where we would start at his age. Yeah, and even then I would be like, this is gonna be a lot.
I'm just imagining like eight year old's watching Eraserhead.
Yeah no, not not appropriate? Not appropriate?
All right, Next one, I'm gonna do is this message from Steph. Steph says, Hi, Joe and Rob. I was playing Listener Mail today and it unlocked a core memory for me. My dad would rent a VCR when HBO had their free preview weekends to record whatever movies he could for free. One of our VHS tapes had the combo of National Lampoon's Vacation, which segued into the first part of Dune. In order to finish Dune, you had to put in another VHS tape, which then segued from the second part of Dune to Muppets Take Manhattan. Amazing. I don't think you could plan a more jarring transition from one style of movie to another. We had about a dozen tapes like that that would abruptly change from one genre to another with almost no warning. It was a wild time in home entertainment, but I remember but one I remember with such fondness. We eventually bought our very own VCRs, so then we always had something cool to watch if we were homesick from school. Because a kid could only take so much. Price is right when you weren't feeling well. Always enjoy your shows, but especially love weird house cinema. You have introduced me to so many great weird movies and reminded me of others that I had forgotten. When I saw that you were doing a two parter on the nineteen eighty four version of Dune, I let out an audible yes while making dinner that caused my husband to wonder what was going on. Thanks for all you do, staff.
That's great. I'm glad I'm not the only one who had those tapes with like the three movies taped off of HBO on them. I was I was thinking a little bit more on this, and I could be wrong about like what each individual tape, you know, contained, but I vaguely remember there being a tape that maybe had Poltergeist, which I was terrified to watch, terrifying film, and I think it's still the effects hold up, Yeah, not get appropriate in my opinion. And then it had Raiders of the Lost Arc, which was one of my favorites. And then I think it also had the nineteen eighty four Robin Williams drama Moscow on the Hudson, which was not appropriate for children or even like interesting to children, but it was there.
I had tapes like this as well, not from HBO. I don't recall us ever getting free free trials of HBO or anything. I guess I don't know. That must have been the thing somewhere else or something, but we didn't have that. We had stuff that was taped off of TV, sometimes with like jarring transitions where I got really good at doing this thing when I was a kid, where I would try to hit stop recording during the commercial breaks on the TV things and then started back up. But sometimes you'd miss your queue and then so like part of the movie would be gone, and then sometimes you'd accidentally tape over something. So yeah, my tapes were a mess, but I cherished them. Nonetheless.
It's crazy looking back on how we use VHS technology at times to try and capture some sort of pristine cut of a film off of a television broadcast, like it was never going to be, like the video quality wasn't going to be good. You probably weren't going to have like the actual theatrical cut to any extent, and it's not like your removal of the advertisements was going to be seamless. And then fast forward till today, those sorts of tapes they're mostly only interesting if you have the commercial still on there if you still have studio not studio, but you know, TV station material on there, things other than the movie, which is gonna be in dreadful quality to begin with.
Yeah, and also the way they used to edit things for TV, not just for content, but just for run time, so there'd just be stuff cut out randomly to you know, to get it down to fit. Nothing's in the original aspect ratio.
It's hilarious, Yeah, except in rare exceptions where you have films that have never come out in better quality, and there are there are still those out there for sure.
Let's see Rob. Do you mind if I do this last message from Constantinos here? Oh?
Yes do?
Constantinos says so apropos of nothing in particular. Here is a twenty ten fat Boy Slim video of Christopher Walkin dancing to the song Weapon of Choice. Note the lyrics at about two minutes into the song. The lyrics are walking without rhythm, it won't attract the worm. Uh, And it just keeps repeating that until finally it says, if you walk without rhythm, you never learn.
Uh.
Just a little note. I don't think I realized this until I looked the song up. But the vocals on this song are by Bootsy Collins.
Mm hmm, yeah, I think they're altered a little bit, but yeah, that's that's Bootsy in there.
But this is a This is a classic fat Boy Slim video directed by Spike Jones, I believe with yeah, with Christopher Walkin dancing, and Christopher Walkin of course was a dancer, so you know he can he can handle it.
Yeah. Yeah, you also see him dancing and What Pennies from Heaven? I believe he dances in that film as well.
I've seen it.
Oh it's pretty good as racllp in a while, but yeah, he definitely cuts a rug in this in this Fat Boy Slim video. I I I do vividly remember it when it first debuted on MTV, and uh it's it's a great track as well. I mean, fat Boy Slim had some real some some really good hits. Album Better Living Through Chemistry from nineteen ninety six was pretty phenomenal.
Anyway, coming back to Constantinos's message, I'm pretty sure that this is video evidence that Christopher Walkin manifested the newest Dune movie just by sheer force of will or can you just believe it is a happy coincidence that this man happened to be cast in Dune a decade after this wonderful jazz somba fusion dance ode to Shi hulud. Because there is no Illuminati and birds are real, just trying to keep doing weird Thank you for a fun edition of Weird House Cinema. Now do the series, and then Constantinos includes a link and says regards, well, thank you very much for the message, and thank you for giving me an excuse to watch this video again. I really enjoyed it, and I truly I don't think I had ever noticed the quote from Dune in it before.
Oh yeah, yeah, walk without rhythm so you don't attract the word yeah. Apparently someone asked him about this in a recent interview, and he said that he never realized there was a Dune connection in it until he was cast in the recent Dune Part two film, and then someone pointed it out to him.
Must be magic.
Yeah, but absolutely great track, still holds up, great music video.
Okay, should we wrap it up there?
Yeah, let's go ahead and wrap it up. But we'd love to hear from everyone out there if you have more thoughts about Dune, If you have thoughts about any past, current, and potential future episodes of Weird House Cinema Stuff to Blow Your Mind Core episodes, of course, also any of our Wednesday episodes and Amelia stipendium, The Monster Fact the Artifact. Just hit us up. We'd love to hear from you. Just a reminder that if you haven't rated and reviewed the show wherever you get the show or go and do that. That helps us out in the long run. And you can find us on most social media places where whatever you're using, look us up. We're probably there. Also find our discord server. If you need a link for that, just email us and we'll send it to you. If you use the Facebook, there's a Facebook group called the Stuff to Blow Your Mind discussion module. You can join there as well. In both places you can interact with other listeners to the show.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. 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.
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