You are not on my 13 mile commute to work. Hell, I haven’t been to work in months. I’m trying to think of when I went to work last. That would be March before I went to Vegas. March. Wow. That’s like the middle of March. And it’s the middle of August. That’s crazy how long it’s been since I’ve been to work. Hey, now Alex J. Lopez is in. It’s going on man. So yeah, it’s been like forever since I’ve done a show. I’m on this weird ass schedule these days. And yeah, so it’s been weird trying to get out to the car. I know that sounds funky. But so let me tell you what my day looks like these days. This is what I’ve been up to. So just like everybody else who’s cooped up in the house and we’re not doing anything and the gyms are closed and, and in in Phoenix, it’s too goddamn hot to do anything outside. I mean, Could you get up at like 5am? It’s only 90 degrees and you could go out and walk right? lately. It’s been it’s seven o’clock when I go out to run. It’s been about 107. Right? That’s nutty. I mean, that’s crazy town. So what I’ve been busy, here’s the thing, you guys know, I’m paranoid as hell about gaining weight now, right? Because I work so hard to get all the weight off. And even my mom reached out to me, I don’t know, two or three weeks back, and she was you know, she was hinting around asking how things were going and how’s everybody doing? Because she’s, she’s fighting with her weight as well. And I don’t know, I don’t know if I’ve got her metabolism or I’ve got her. If she eats like one piece of bread a day she balloons up right so she’s got something going on. I don’t have the problems that she has with maintaining my Wait, but you know, working at home, playing at home being at home all the time, you start kind of falling back into some other habits. So I haven’t been eating things bad for me, or I haven’t been I haven’t left my Bricker Brack collection of edibles but I’ve been snacking more. So every time I go through the kitchen, I’ll get a drink and then I’ll grab a couple of my late July chips right or I’ll pop by the refrigerator and I’ll grab a handful of grapes or a peach or an apple or you know a handful of almonds right so I’m not eating anything poor for me but I’m eating I’m snacking and grazing and grazing is I’m telling you right now, anybody who’s who’s who’s done, who’s fought weight battles, you’ll find out if you’re a grazer, that’s that’s the behavioral piece of the equation right? Cuz you got your your physiological piece Your body craves certain foods or you want this or your body wants to eat at a certain time. But there’s this psychological piece about grazing and that, of course, you know, listen, you’re playing a, you’re playing some video game at night. It’s eight o’clock, you pause, you go to the kitchen to get a drink. Ah, here’s a handful of almonds. Here’s a, you know, a little tiny square of dark chocolate, right? Because that’s one of my treats. I get a little, a little square of like 92% dark chocolate, which doesn’t taste very much like chocolate anymore. But listen, it’s what I got. So, anyway, so I’ve been noticing some grazing and my wife, like, poked my rib cage a few weeks back. And I could tell the chief, I don’t know I just listened that we’ve been together long enough that I can tell she was not pleased that I had obviously put a few pounds on now. I did not crawl back on the scale. Because, you know, people who have lost weight and are afraid of gaining weight, don’t want to get back on the scale. They don’t, they don’t want to face the reality of weight gain, right. So I say to myself, okay, we’re gonna knock off the snacking. We are going to resume some sort of a fitness program, right? Because I haven’t been to the gym, the gym has been closed, blah, blah, blah, too hot to go running. So I’ve been doing nothing, I mean, playing beat Sabre that’s about it. I mean, and that’s something but it’s not enough. It’s not enough. So anyway, in July, I don’t know if I talked about this on the show or not. But my my favorite piece of exercise equipment at the gym is the Arc Trainer. And it is the YMCA where I go to the gym, it’s right up the road. It’s a five, seven minute drive. It’s quick, it’s easy, it’s fairly cheap. They have one of two options. trainers, but one of them is the lower body only our trainers so you don’t get the moving arms with it right? So I don’t want to I don’t want that Arc Trainer. I want the one with the full motion. A lot of people don’t know what an Arc Trainer is. It’s kind of like an elliptical. But it’s, it works. You can adjust it to work different pieces of your body. Right. So an elliptical is just sort of like a cross country skier. Right? The art trainer actually lets you sort of tilt. So instead of working just one particular part of your body, you can dial in different pieces based on the settings of the Arc Trainer. I don’t want to go into huge bunch of details about it. But I found it is my greatest my greatest piece of hardware. And so when the gym did momentarily reopen for about two seconds, they were doing all the social distancing and all that other stuff, right so it was a real pain to get in. It was a real pain even to get out. And then they had every other machine disabled so that you couldn’t be too close together which then socialism there’s supposed to be doing. But the problem is the art trainer, they only got one of them. So three days, one week in two days the next week because they alternate days of the machines open. I can only get to the art trainer two or three days a week. Now, when everything was everything I was I was doing. I was doing the art trainer five days a week, twice a day. Now I could only do it once a day, two or three times a week it’s a complete departure from from what I was doing. So none of us knows when this is going to be over. None of this knows when the gyms gonna be reopen, reopening. I can tell you that eventually it’ll cool off here and I’ll be able to go outside and run but you know My wife and I were laying in bed talking about and I’m like, you know, this is really bothering me. I got to get this weight. I got to get the weight back up. I can feel I can feel it creeping on me. Just didn’t want to say anything. It’s like, dammit, I knew it. I knew you’re giving me the large dip stick with your finger. And she goes, No, it’s okay. It’s okay. I didn’t want to say anything. I don’t want to I didn’t want to upset you. And it’s like, Ah, so now I am now not only am I internally conscious of it, my spouse is conscious of it. It’s been brought up in the open and it’s, it’s obvious enough that she can see it or poke me and feel it. So it’s like, I got no choice. I gotta, I gotta, I gotta do something. I gotta do something. And she goes, at one point in time, we bought an elliptical, but it didn’t. It never worked right. We had to set it up ourselves was a cheap ass one. It didn’t work in sat forever until we finally got rid of it. You know, like most, a lot of people when you buy exercise equipment, it turns into a clothes hanger. It turns into a Something that you put a box on top of it it becomes a horizontal service and you never use it. The art trainer I’m sure I would use because I like it It shapes my body well. But do you ever priced in our trainer? Like I don’t want like well first off, aren’t trainers don’t exist really in the home gymnasium environment. If you want an exercise bike or a treadmill or even an elliptical, you can get a home version of it right the home market version, which is you know, four or 567 hundred bucks. Our trainers only come like in gymnasium industrial versions and you go looking at those things. Some of you right now or listening to the show up there trying to find our trainer right now. You’ll find that these things clock in at $8,000 for an art trainer. Unbelievable. You get a treadmill for 1200 bucks. 1500 bucks. 1800 bucks. You want An art trainer. It’s a grant. That’s for like the bottom of the barrel ones that’s like the basic ones as an art trainer, eight grant. And so my wife, my wife was saying, why don’t you you know, why don’t you spy on our trainer? I mean, let’s just make it an investment you can quit going to the Y you can you can do it in the house twice a day. We don’t have to worry about the temperature, the heat. I said, Okay, let me go looking. So I went looking at Of course, like I said, eight grand, you know, nine grand or something with this $12,000 there was one. I’m not paying a grant. I can’t do it. I can’t justify paying a grant. Well then I found a place that sells refurbished gym equipment. It’s called like, it’s like a blatantly obvious name like used gym equipment, LLC or something like that. Use gym USA or something. It’s something like that. And they had that eight grand art trainer for like, three grand refurbish, you know, you know, they they do Get them, they totally refurbish them, they check them out, they’ve service them, and then you can get it for three grand. sitting there thinking, God $3,000. So I’m sitting here calculating how you know, because it’s 70 bucks a month for the YMCA, right? How many months will it take before I quote, pay this thing up, and that’s it. I did the math and it’s like, Damn, that’s a long ass time. But then I, I also looked at the alternative piece of that, which is my wife will use it and like, I can force my Sunday. I can’t force my wife to use it, but I can make my son get on there twice a day, three times a day, I’m sorry, twice a day, once a day, three, four times a week, and he can get a workout too, because he’s, they won’t go to the gym. They don’t like going to the gym, even though I’ve got a family membership, which is why it’s 70 bucks, which is ridiculous. It’s like they won’t go, but they’ll do it if it’s here. Right. So I went ahead and ordered one. This was on July 10. ordered this thing. It only shipped like yesterday. That’s how long how backlogged and everything else that they are. And I still don’t have a tracking number which means that they put it in for shipment but it hasn’t actually hit the freight yet. So I’ve been waiting like five weeks for my art trainer, which by the way, they happily charged my credit card for already. They charged it right away. So, you know, I paying interest for six, six weeks on something I don’t even own which really pisses me off, but that’s neither here or there or there. So for the last two, three weeks, I have been doing core, I got my dumbbells out I’ve been doing upper chest type stuff, arms. I’ve been doing that during the day on my lunch hour and during breaks from work. And then at seven o’clock at night when it’s nice and cool outside and it’s 107 I’ve been running about almost three miles So they say that doing Sprint’s interval sprints are better than fast walking or jogging. So that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been doing the three miles doing. Basically I do two blocks, fast walking two blocks, Sprint, two blocks, fast walking, etc. So that’s what I’ve been doing. So after a couple weeks of that, I climbed my ass on the scale. And I weighed in at 215 not my low weight, mind you my low weight was 205. So I would like to seek but I’m also doing some muscle building as well. So I’ve got to kind of account for a few pounds of muscle going on to so I’m looking to get myself under 210 before I you know, kind of calm down a little bit. If I can get like 209 I’ll feel a little bit better. So that’s what’s been going on with that. Actually hold my ass to the iPad. Doctor man, I don’t want to go to any place where there’s anybody hanging out. Fortunately the eye doctor, you know they’re having you waiting your car. You don’t wait in the waiting room anymore but I go into the eye doctor I got new new contacts that are dialed in a little bit better for close up reading. Otherwise my eyes are good, which is great. That’s a nice. That’s always a nice thing go in and there’s not much change. I do need to haul my ass to my GP though, and get some bloodwork done. I got to get my testosterone measured. I got to get my lipid panel check. I mean, listen, there should be no problem with my lipids. Everything should be should be fine. But you know how it is right? Anybody who’s who’s had a crises with their body never wants to go back and be told that there’s something wrong. So I’ll have to go in and do that bla bla bla bla bla. So that’s what’s been going on. So my schedule, that’s how this whole thing started. Let me roll back. So why I haven’t been doing the show is my schedule has been a complete frickin mess. And so essentially I’m up at five or six, depending on when my wife has to go into work now, right? So, you know, I’m not happy about that, but she’s not teaching in, she doesn’t have kids in the classroom. So the way I guess the dicer Unified School District decided to appease parents who think that teachers are doing nothing more than taking a long vacation for remote learning. So much nonsense. My wife works more now than she ever even worked before. And the if they’re in the classroom, so they go to the classroom, and they do remote learning from there. So she asked to go every other day. So one week, it’s three days a week, one week, it’s two days a week. But again, she’s not in contact with anybody. She’s isolated. There’s nobody in the classroom with her. So it’s I mean, listen, it appeases parents, I suppose, but I think it’s I think it’s pointless. I mean, she could do the exact same thing she’s doing in the classroom right in her home office. I think It’s a waste of I think it’s a waste of energy. But it’s better than the alternative. So I will I will suck it up. So she gets like when she has to go when she’s up at five, which means I’m basically at the five right because you know, she gets out she’s running the shower, she turns the TV on, I’m not sleeping for that hour, sometimes we’ll just get up and do something else. So I’m up. I spend you know, an hour doing my morning crap. I’m on the I’m at work at seven. You know, I dial in at seven. I’m out at four although lately I’ve been working later hours. That gets me out between four and five. Right? Then I cooked dinner, I’d make sure everybody’s taken care of. That takes me up to about six which gives me about one hour to do something for myself. Seven o’clock, I’m out running. So when I was doing a fast walk, I was doing about 48 minutes for those three miles now that I’m running. It’s about 35 minutes so I managed to shave some time off But then I come in, I go get a shower. I’m a complete mess when I get back in. And then my son and I have been watching the greatest American hero. So I’m not sure why he’s so into the greatest American hero. I listen, when I was his age, the greatest American hero was like the greatest show ever. But you know, He spoiled and you know, greatest American heroes got some pretty bad blue screen effects. And it wasn’t, it’s not. I liked I still think the show holds up from a storyline point of view. And the characters are interesting. And they’re sort of both a serial and a procedural nature to the show. I enjoy it. And we’re finally in the middle of season two, where, you know, everything’s kind of gotten a good roll to it, you know, everything’s kind of moving along. And so, we’ve been we’ve been enjoying that. And we listen, it’s been like every single night he wants to watch an episode, he’ll come out about 815 from his room or whatever he’s doing, and He’s like, hey, and he starts humming the theme song because that’s his way of saying it’s time to go watch greatest American hero. He loves him some greatest American hero theme song. He’s like, there’s, he’s like, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this theme song. That means he likes it right? So he can’t say that he likes it. But he can say there’s nothing wrong with it. That’s 13 year old mentality. So we are there plastered to the couch for 49 minutes a night, every single night watching some greatest American hero. Then to throw everything on top of the mix. Hang on a second. I had something else with that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell you about that in a second. So along well, let me say Oh, hang on a second. Let me look at my list here. Right So along with that, I got sucked into this. This new game release called Horizon Zero Dawn. If that name sounds familiar to you, that is a PlayStation four game that came out a couple years back recently released on The PC, which in itself is sort of miraculous because it was a PlayStation four exclusive and PlayStation four exclusive games don’t tend to wander on any other platform including PC. And if it was going to show up, you’d expect it to be on something like epic or you know, some store I don’t want to use. But oddly enough, it came out on Steam. I got a 15% off coupon, I had a couple of dollars in credit somewhere. And so between all of them I ended up getting the game and I had it on launch day. And since then, today apps actually today about two hours ago I completed the main storyline. And I am 60 hours into the game I got 60 hours of playtime out of that and all of my free time morning, noon and night has been filled in with that game. So that’s also where I’ve been not in here recording the show. So that’s why my schedule has been so whacked out. I’m surprised there’s not more people in the chat. I wonder if when my phone switched over to Wi Fi dropped everybody. Alex, are you still there? And he pokes something in the chat just to let me know if anybody’s actually there. It still says I’m live, I’ll be pissed if this somehow didn’t get recorded or people can’t get in. Anyhow, let me move on. So one of the things that was interesting, so I’ve also as I think I mentioned, either on Twitter or somewhere that I’m going through my movie nook, and I’m consolidating. So, this is a process right? So I have DVDs. I have blu rays, I have Ultra HD, four KS, and I still have a couple of VHS is I have to think there’s any other media that I got. I think that’s about it. So one of the things that I wanted to do to start consolidating stuff was, if I have a blu ray of a movie already, I need to evaluate if I need to keep the DVD, right? Because a lot of times you buy the blu ray and it’s got the DVD with it. But here’s the problem, right first world problems. Oftentimes they license certain features, interviews, clips, feature ads, like from HBO or something like that. They get these feature sets on the DVD, but when they release it on blu ray, none of them make it over. Right? And it’s like, what the hell? So it the blu rays great because it’s a blu ray, but at the same time, um, oh, it dropped and pick back up a new episode and it was picked up in a new episode. I don’t know if Alex managed to get into the new episode or not. I don’t know. Well, we’ll find out Anyway, so so even if you have the blu ray that has a DVD with it sometimes the DVD original DVD release that you had is still in from an extras point of view and interviews point of view, all this other stuff is better than the DVD that you’ve gotten out with the blu ray. So unless I want to preserve as much about my favorite movies as I can. So one of the options of course is to go movie by movie disc by disc and compare special features that is a lot of work and a lot of time, a lot of time. So, the other option is to just say, trip. In fact, I will just take the DVD out the original release of the DVD, I will get a two or three disc blu ray case and I will take my blu ray release and I’ll just put my Original DVD in the same case, and I’ll get rid of the DVD. Now you guys know me I’m a little sentimental. A lot of DVD inserts. jackets actually have better artwork than the blu ray. But the blu ray containers are shorter the DVD artwork doesn’t fit blah, blah blah. So now what I ended up doing is I’m saving all of the inserts and all the unique Insert Stuff right so I’m saving the case, the jewel case, insert and I’m saving any movie unique cards, Chapter indexes booklets from the inside of the DVD that I’m throwing the DVD case away. I’m keeping the inserts and the extras and I’m moving the DVD into a two or three disc blu ray along with the new blu ray and the new DVD if there is one, along with all the blu ray extras so that is I’m doing that a little bit at a time. So I had to order some new double blu ray cases, some triple disc blu ray cases. All is all as well. So that has been another little pet project that I’ve been up to. And I’ve managed to clean out a lot of stuff. I mean, it’s been, it’s been good to get to pare down a bunch of stuff. And of course, there’s always these weird exceptions, like I’ve got special edition DVDs. I mean, these are ones where they put a lot of bank into these DVDs. I’ve got the blu rays too, but I don’t want to give up the special packaging and all that other stuff. You know, the four disc DVD collection for this. So some things I’m just keeping both. But that’s that’s my current first world problem trying to decide what I’m doing with my rather extensive physical media collection and how I can sort of downsize and start cleaning some stuff out. So whilst I was doing that, I told Brian Now that he’s on a big greatest American hero kick, I said, you know, I’ve got that cape. And I’ve got the instruction book inside the DVD release, right. So I got that big black DVD tin that has that has the, the cape in it, the instruction book and the instruction book lights up like it kind of like it does on the TV show. So I wanted to show it to them. Well, I pulled the instruction book out of the 10. And on the back side is this white, powdery substance and I’m like, Oh, damn it. Battery leakage. Yes, that thing used a standard set of like triple A batteries. And I open up the back and the battery compartment is like, has leaked battery acid all over the inside of it. And I’m like, totally crushed. So I took it, I cleaned it out and then I started thinking to myself, wait a minute, what else Might I have because I’ve got a lot of those weird swag versions of disk collections that have light up this light up that my $6 million man collection actually plays the intro theme song on it. And so I’m like, Damn, I better go back and look. And then I put a little note out on Twitter, I said, Listen, if you’re collecting all this cool swag with light up, flux, capacitors and all that stuff, you better go back and make sure your batteries are taken out of there, or they’re not going to leak because I mean that. Fortunately, fortunately, the damage wasn’t too extensive. And I was able to clean all the battery acid if it hadn’t chewed through the battery terminals or anything else yet. So, so Life is good. Life is good there. But yeah, interesting. You don’t even think about that, that you’ve got these dis collections that might have battery operated swag going on in there and you better go back and look at it from time to time. bad stuff happens. Let’s see where we want to go next. So I was watching that Paranormal Videos show I can’t remember the name of it right off the top of my head but it’s the one where people send in videos of paranormal experiences and then they talk about their experiences you know they get the actual people who shot it you know most of it’s like white trash and you know stuff from the ghetto but whatever anyway you know because nobody with like you know, a public job wants people to see him on TV talking about how some ghost opened up their kids you know their babies baby gate on film you know? But it’s got a couple of it’s it’s it’s hard even know if it’s a step up above like ancient aliens or anything like that. It’s it’s more like one of those America’s Funniest Home Videos only it’s the paranormal version. So, but I was watching that and it occurred to me Why do people insist on shooting video in portrait mode on their phone, because that’s nobody records on cameras anymore, right? They’ll use their phones. And it always produces the shittiest picture, right? It’s always blocky, it’s grainy, and I was watching this one some dudes in Atlanta, Georgia or something are recording and they’re all swearing in the background was pretty funny. Obviously, they were bleeping everything but it was still funny. Man, that’s a helicopter man. Anyway, and I’m like watching this thing. And of course, it’s all pixely and nasty. It’s a shitty phone. But then I started thinking to myself, because you know how they do it when they whenever they show, mobile phone video, they have to bet a bet to fill the rest of the screen with something right. So they use they use some sort of a weird, multiplication blur effect, right? And it looks bad and it distracts from the video. I started thinking to myself, the fuck is wrong with people, every single phone that has a camera has a landscape mode. If you are going to record a video of a UFO, a Bigfoot, a ghost, whatever. Why wouldn’t you want as much resolution is possible? Why would you not want to use landscape? There’d be more picture, more video, more space more stuff. And I and now every time I watch that stupid show, everybody’s crap is in portrait and I’m like, Dude, why would listen, if you had a point and shoot camera you would never shoot in portrait ever? Like unless it was a artistic choice. But yet everybody uses our stupid phone and it’s not even comfortable that way. People I mean, I’ve seen people shooting videos in portrait. It’s not even it doesn’t even feel it feels like you’re just holding your phone up but doesn’t even exist. feel like you’re shooting with a camera. I mean, all you got to do is turn it, you know, and you don’t have to go in and do any settings or anything. Just turn it and it picks it up. I don’t get it. I don’t I don’t understand where that came from or why. I mean, I I don’t know, I don’t know why people refuse to use landscape but it makes me crazy. So, please, if you’re going to shoot videos of UFOs or shoot videos of Bigfoot or any of that shit, can you please use landscape things? Hey, speaking of movies, my I think I was talking about the the German there was a German company that created a blu ray remaster of the $6 million, man. And first off, you know, I’m not shocked that this has never hit blu ray, right. I mean, listen, it’s 1974 i didn’t i forgot that the $6 million man was that old. I thought it was late 70s but it’s Not it’s like early 70s, early mid 70s. So I’m like, Yeah, I get it, I get it. Probably not a lot of call for the blu ray release of $6 million man, that time life collection, one that I got was a real masterpiece, considering what they put in there, right. And I talked about that I did an unboxing video of that the whole bit. But a friend of mine, Michael rain from the watchman. He had run across this and said, Dude, did you know that they made a blu ray of $6 million man wants to get out it’s gonna look like crap. They probably just use some crappy upsampling. And so he had done some research and it turned out that this was like the real deal. They had done remastering of the original video. And that’s when you find out it was shot on film analysis and we talked about that. So I tried to order a set and they said, Well, you don’t ship to United States like Dude, my friend just ordered from the exact same page on Amazon, and it came in fine, but the hell right. So he apparently been watching the page And he wrote me a couple weeks back and said, Hey, hey, they’re shipping to the United States again, I’m like, But wait, wait, wait. Okay. So I jumped on there. And sure enough, I was able to place the order, and it came via DHL or whatever. And I got my hands on it. And I gotta tell you, it’s amazing. I mean, I’ve gotten a chance to like, look at all the episodes, I’ve ripped them all I ripped every single one of them down to put on my Plex server, and where the where it falls short a little bit. Well, first off, they have they have a slight change to the intro, which kind of bothers me because I like the one. I don’t know if I like it anymore. But I’m used to the original United States intro which has that sort of weird Bank of lights as they’re putting the $6 million man text over the front of it. Well, in the in the German release, and these releases, they show an external shot of the experimental craft it Steve And is flying. And again, it’s not bad. It’s just different. And it it just it sticks out, right. So you, you notice it every single time. And then of course they call it their dare $6 million mon or whatever, they got this weird spelling of it. And so that’s what they use at the beginning instead of the $6 million man, they say they’re got a sex $6 million main. But, but yeah, but listen, I mean, you look at this thing, and it’s like, it looks like brand new. I mean, the clothes are from the 70s the cars, they’re using telephones and phone booths. But you’re looking at this video in whole hell. I mean, when somebody takes the time and the effort to do a restoration and it shot on film, and you’ve got all this good stuff available. And all of your special effects are done optically, right? Or in camera, where you don’t have to go back and worry about shitty CGI sequences and stuff like that. It’s like Wow, that is frickin amazing. Unbelievable. The Wonder Woman looks just as good. Crazy. But anyway, so one of the things that does bother me is any episode any crossover episode with the bionic woman, they did not include it at all. Right? So for example, the world famous everybody knows about fin bots. Right? fin bots are the crazy robots that that were stronger than bionics and Jamie had to jump off the building and she ended up you know, her legs collapsed underneath her and so that it’s a three part episode series called kill Oscar. Two of the episodes are on the bionic woman, and one of them is a crossover episode with a $6 Million Man, I think it’s season four, Episode Six. The only reason I noticed I just ripped all this stuff. So instead of including Episode Six, this just the $6 million man episode, they omitted it completely. So Not only do you not get three parts of kill Oscar, you don’t get one part the $6 million man episode of kill Oscar, you get nothing you lose. Good day, sir. Switch. And Now interestingly enough, the time life collection on DVD provided all of the crossover episodes. So if $6 million man appeared in a bionic woman by God, they included that with the $6 million man collection, which is fantastic. I love it. But unfortunately, they did not hear so we were missing. We’re missing a couple of things on the blu ray collection. There’s also people who report that some of the episodes are trimmed. So there’s little tiny nuance differences between the episodes they say unless you’re like, you know, this Uber fan, you’re probably not going to notice the difference. I probably will not despite being a huge fan. But here’s something that I I did realize was missing bit bothers me more than I thought it would and that is Is the teaser recaps at the beginning. This is something a lot of people have no frickin clue existed way back when. And this was very common 70s 80s I think about mid 80s they stopped doing it but like in the 70s in the 80s, especially like primetime shows. They had a teaser at the beginning so when when eight o’clock came around in $6 million man started, they have a 32nd teaser like almost like a little mini trailer about what the episode is going to be about just to suck you in. And then sometimes that would lead into the intro of the show. Sometimes that would lead you into another a pre clip, an early clip part of the show, then they would go into the intro, and then they would put you into the body of the show the rest of the show. But the $6 million man episodes on the time life collection I’ll have the recaps. So if you’re looking for a particular episode to watch and you don’t remember the name of it or whatever, you can just watch the first 30 seconds sort of like a, like a thumbnail almost right? Like if like if you’re trying to find a document, you can look at the thumbnail, and decide if that’s the episode that you’re looking for. You could simply play like the first 15 or 20 seconds or whatever and you would get a short recap. I remember Wonder Woman doing this both biotics The Incredible Hulk did it night writer did it. I don’t remember if greatest American hero did or not on my on my collection, they do not have the recap teasers on it. But I realized that all of the $6 million man’s on the blu ray, none of them had the teasers and I was I was kind of missing them almost to the point and this is where I have to draw a line. Listen, I’m crazy. I’m not this crazy. I thought about clipping the teasers off of the beginning of each episode off the DVDs, upscaling them using some AI thing and then And then fixing them to the beginning of every episode from the blu ray, that I thought for a second, what an enormous task that would be. And I said, fuck that noise. If I want to watch the recaps, I’ll go back to the DVDs and I’ll watch them off of there. I think I can save myself 100 plus hours of nonsense by not doing that. So anyway, so the $6 million man blu ray story is pretty much now complete, I can check that one off my list. So there was a story recently, I was reading that Android TV which is I love myself my shield TVs. You guys know I’m a huge fan. I know a lot of my listeners, Roku fans. I get it. Nobody wants to pay 150 bucks for a set top box. But I’m a huge fan of shield TV. I love Android TV. A lot of these cheap Chinese Knock off. set top boxes are like vanilla Android with some sort of a weird shell put on top of it. But I do like Android TV. I know a lot of people don’t like it because some niche app that they want for their satellite companies not on their on Android TV. It’s on Android, but not on Android TV. Or some stupid news service like peacock isn’t on there who gives a shit. If it’s got Plex, MB and Kodi on it. I’m good screw the rest of it. But that’s neither here nor there. So apparently, Google is now going to put in Android TV, this giant recommended viewing box at the top of the interface. Now I haven’t seen it on my Android TV yet. And if it does show up on my shield TV, I will roll back a version of the OS until it’s not there anymore. I will not tolerate that crap. And of course, it’s not just stuff that you have or that you owe. Right so it’s not what’s on your Plex server or what’s on your subscription to Hulu or whatever. It’s something sponsored content. You can eat my ass. I hate it when Plex does it. I hate it when anybody does it. If If it’s not mine, keep it the hell off of my interface. I don’t want it. And if you’re going to put it there, you better let me opt out of it. Right so far, Plex has always allowed us to opt out, even though they shove it in your face. First, they don’t give you an opportunity to opt in. You have to find a way to turn it off. Right? This doesn’t sound like you can even turn it off. I’m guarantee someone will patch it and hack it out. But I haven’t been routing any of my android TVs for a while. Because I haven’t had the need to because I can block ads which is my sole reason for routing. I can block ads at the router level now. So I don’t need to do I don’t need to route my android TVs anymore. But if that nonsense pops up It takes root to get it off. Well, I guess I’m back to routing my android TVs. Let’s see how much what am I out here? 40 minutes, okay. A new Tron movie was announced. I don’t even care. The last one was a one time watcher. I bought it on disk because it had the classic version of Tron with it. I don’t even think I’ve played that disk. I ripped the 3d version of it so I could try it on my quest. The movie doesn’t just doesn’t do it for me. They have they have like forced hat tips. They’ve got that horrible CGI flippin it doesn’t it doesn’t feel like Tron. It doesn’t feel like Tron. It feels like a shity shity remake, rehash. reimagined, but they put the hat tips in there to try to get the old fans back not my favorite thing at all. So I don’t even care about the next movie. I I probably won’t even see it. And I can’t remember who it was that they were there was attached to it. Nobody I give a rat’s ass about. So it’s like, yeah, I’ll mention it but it holds no interest whatsoever to me. action movie producer john woo is apparently going to be put in charge of the new nightrider movie. Now this is another property that I’ve said over and over again, is is rebooted. It could be done. But it has to be done right. Now, those of you who watch that horrible night writer reboot that they tried to do a bunch of years back know that it can be it can be messed up, that’s no slam dunk. nightriders not a slam dunk IP. It has to be done right. Now, I don’t know if they’re playing if this is planning to be a reimagining or a reboot, or a completely different show that’s going to hoard the name. I don’t know if David Hasselhoff is going to be involved and he has to be or it’s it’s a legitimate as far as I’m concerned, making this this is so easy. If nothing else, all you listen, they could have they could have done this so much better if they would have done the Listen, there’s nothing wrong with nightrider as it is. I know cars car technology has drastically improved. A lot of things that Kitt did in the 80s aren’t even magical anymore. So instead of instead of focusing on the relationship of man and car, and focusing on the crime fighting aspect of it, and making it a character driven vehicle, so to speak, no pun intended. They instead tried to shove technology at the new Kitt car with nano particles and it can transform into a truck. all nonsense. What kept nightrider on the ground. was the fact that everything was barely within reach. Now listen, they got a little crazy in the last season when Kitt could go frickin hydro planing on the water, the super pursuit mode get listen. They colored outside the lines, and that’s when the show started to go to hell in a handbasket. That’s why it jumped the shark. But unfortunately the new night writer television show that they did jump the shark started with the first episode. The entire series had jumped the shark before it even aired. You have to keep this dabbling in the realm of possibility. We don’t there’s no technology listen. Bay path they managed to make a kit amazing, but not impossible. That’s the first step in recreating Knight Rider properly kit in Knight Rider kit was not indestructible. He in fact he was destroyed two or three different times as I recall. I mean like down to the destroyed and had to be rebuilt. superheroes are the same way we’ve talked about this right? Somebody who’s completely invincible that has no foibles that has no alter ego that has nothing to make them human or to make them tragic. pointless and that’s why I don’t like this Avengers shit. I don’t like any of these modern superheroes, because they don’t everybody’s a goddamn hero all the time. Who cares about that? I like to see the David banners. I like to see the Clark cans. I like that I like the Bruce Wayne’s right, I like that piece of the equation. I like the people Park and once Kitt could like reformulate with nanoparticles, it was a complete waste of time. The guy that they got to be the new Michael Knight douchebag Mike, I can’t remember the guys name. He was kind of a douchebag didn’t like him they brought they brought Hoff in for like the premiere episode for two seconds. It was a waste of time. Now. You want to bring back Night writer back right first of all half has to be involved to you cannot erase what’s already happened. Please none of this goddamn timeline time Rift. Michael night prime bullshit. You can’t leave. You can’t leave canon. Leave the cannon in there. And you can do it. It’s so fucking easy. You don’t have to ruin everything. Knight industries continue to exist after the Knight Rider television show. Right. Devin, of course either retired and actually know from Canon he died he was killed in one of the nightrider movies. But listen, Michael knight takes over the Devin role. He’s running Knight industries. They want to bring the Knight Rider program back. It’s simple, right? It’s so easy. You can bring kit back the real kid. He’s a classic antique he can be part of the show. You can do it Listen, Boone Daniels is still around you better get his ass in the studio right now. I don’t know how old he is. I haven’t heard from him. I haven’t seen him die yet. You better get his ass in because Val Kilmer ain’t no better. You know, that’s who voice the new kid. I don’t want his ass in there either. So either you get William Daniels to come back and do the voice of the old kit in the new night writer. Or are you going to sound like you’ve got to have you can’t fuck with kit, you got to leave the original kid exactly the way he is. And that’s okay. He’s still a formative piece of equipment, a formative form of this formidable piece of equipment for night industries. Right. But you could do a whole lot more with this new kit. They again they tried it in that night writer 2000 thing. In fact, you know what? I suggest you remove that from Canon completely nightrider 2000s got to go ixnay as far as we’re concerned at the end of season four night writer was done. No snow movies. No, no nothing. That is canon. It’s so So yes so kids still has super pursue motive and still drive on the water. Now you bring Mike you know so Michael Knight now runs Knight industries. He’s got the Devin role he’s running the show, right? And listen if you want, even if you want to rebuild the show and reboot it where Mike where David Hasselhoff is Devin miles, right? And you want to see g Edward mohair in as Wilton Knight dying in the bed to make this all work out with canon. I’m good with that. I suggest though you you just take off where we’re left off, right. Michael Knight is now running the industries Knight industries. He is getting older right so he’s getting ready to retire. But before we go before we you know and this and he could retire at the end of the movie, I guess as long as you’re not going to make a series out of this. He can retire. But he wants to bring back the Knight Rider program. He wants to build a new car. He wants To get a new driver and dude, listen. I don’t don’t mess with this. Don’t mess with the formula. Please don’t make the car some convertible VW or it’s got to be a sleek, sexy car. I don’t want to sound sexist or misogynistic. It’s got to be a dude. Please don’t put. Please don’t make the new nightrider that’s the thing tried to do with the movie and it didn’t work. All right. Allison. You don’t want to be polarizing? Right? It’s okay. The formula is a one man in his car. You can do it again. You don’t have to make it a woman in her car. So, listen, listen. Listen, if you’re in charge, and you’re writing the script for nightrider, the new night writer movie and you need ideas. Please come and see me. I’ve got it all. I got this whole movie written down. I could almost write a spec script for it. Okay. While we’re at it, if you need a new greatest American hero I’ve already got that completely written out to it. And I’ve got William cat written into the show. And it makes sense. It works. It doesn’t erase Canon and everybody will be happy you have a great show. Come talk to me, I can save you guys tons of time, save you millions of dollars when people revolt against this stuff, because you guys don’t know what the fans really one. You want to take the name and hoard it for some new IP that you can somehow squeeze into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Listen, Ralph Hinckley does not need to be in the MCU or in the DCU. Okay, he doesn’t need to be absorbed by Disney. Please. And thank you. All right. Let’s see. I’m going to save my horizon zero dawn review for the next episode. I could probably talk all episode about that. So if you are tuning in hoping I was going to talk about that. I did talk about it a little bit, but the review will be for next time. I’m at 50 minutes already. But I did promise a terminator resistance review in the next episode of patency rate so I have to deliver So before Horizon Zero Dawn sucked my ass into oblivion, I read an interesting little fan article on medium I think about Terminator resistance and why did this game get shit on? Why didn’t this game do better? Why wasn’t this game more popular? Because critically, it got panned. As per usual, well, players who actually, like the Terminator franchise, thought the game was okay or better, right? I mean, it was, it was, it had plenty of problems, but it was still a good game. Not a great game, not a superb game, not Game of the Year material. But it did not deserve the panning that it got. This game came out in November 2019, so less than a year ago. And so I read this review, and this guy was talking about and he’s like, Listen, this game is as close to is as close To the original couple of movies, right? So if you want to see a movie or be part of something be part of the Terminator, IP, and you want it to look and feel like the original two movies, then you’re gonna love this game and I’m like, well wait a minute. I love the original two movies. In fact, I didn’t play the last Terminator game because it looked like shit. Not this one. But the last one before that one. Because it looked like nonsense, but it’s like this one, the storyline is germane to the original franchise. It doesn’t feel like it’s trying to replace the franchise. It’s respectful the property. They’ve got little hat tips, but nothing like in your face, like rise of you know, Rise of Skywalker nonsense. And so I’m like, shit. Maybe Maybe I need to take a look at this. I mean, I haven’t played a single good single player game in a while. So as it turns out, fortuitously, the game was actually on sale on Steam. For 27 bucks, like Well, shit 27 bucks. I need like five or six hours a game plan I’d be totally I mean, I get my money out of this game. So I got it, I installed it, I started playing it and I’m not gonna lie to you. First hour, I was almost out. Because the first hour is a lot of wandering around. There’s not a lot of there’s not much going on. There’s not a lot of combat. You don’t even have a laser gun. Right? It’s kind man. I’m intrigued, but this better get better. Right? So you’re about an hour and you’re kind of going. No, I mean, this guy I’m going to push on because the review is positive and waiting. I mean everything he talks about in the review I haven’t seen yet so it must just be slow. And listen, I know how I play these sorts of games. I investigate every nook and cranny I search every room. I look for the unexpected. So for a lot of people who are playing this A to B Instead of going from A to C versus a, b, and c, then it might be a little quicker might be like 30 minutes of, of buildup. Well, at some point, everything sort of kicked in. The storyline started getting moving. And I don’t even want to tell you anything about the storyline, just that it takes place. It is it is sort of, I would almost say it’s a prequel to Terminator Salvation. So what happens after Terminator two? And it’s, it’s all focused. It’s not focused on any of the key players. It’s focused on the resistance, the resistance against Skynet. And so of course, there’s going to be talking about john Connor in there. There’s going to be talking about stuff that you knew about stuff about a new Terminator. That looks like a human right. Oh, listen, all of the things that they that they you would think should be there are their time travel stuff, everything’s in their hands. So, once it ramped up I like I said, the first hour, I almost jumped I almost failed. And a friend of mine, Chris, he took a look at the game. He did not make it past the the first hour he bailed. And it’s like, Listen, I get it. I would have bailed too If I had not been pretty determined to get to the good parts that I knew about from the video. Right. So anyway, so yeah, so essentially, it’s it’s a guided sandbox there, you will play, you will play in the same locations multiple times. So for a lot of people, they look at that as a negative, right. So it’s like, doubling back across the same territory bothers people. But they do it in a way where you’re playing it in peacetime and you’re playing it in wartime. So even though it’s the same location, you don’t feel like it’s the same location if that makes any sense at all. But yeah, I mean, the storyline itself. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s Listen, it’s not going to win any awards. It’s not, you know, it’s not gone with the wind or anything it’s not, they’re not going to make them you know, probably not going to make a full blown movie out of it, although they could, I mean, the premises and the characters, everything are all there, they could easily flush it into a movie. But unlike the like the Ghostbusters video game where essentially, if you chipped that movie that game apart, you could make a third Ghostbusters movie, and it had all the original players in it. This isn’t you’re not going to get a movie by cutting the cutscenes together, but the the storyline, the characters are all there. And a little bit of interpolation by you and you could fill in some decent stories stuff in there. So I liked it. I thought the combat was fun. I felt like I was in the Terminator universe. I felt like I was fighting with the equipment that you’re you hear about, you know, phase plasma rifle in the 40 watt range, you actually get one of those at one point and so great. But yeah, so I enjoyed it a lot. And listen for 50 or 60 bucks, probably not a recommendation, anything under 30 yet do it just pull the trigger. Just understand that you got it you got to play through that first hour. I do not remember what my runtime was on it to be honest with you, but I was playing it straight. I was playing with all of my free time for two or three days, so probably 16 hours, something like that. So, you know, a couple bucks an hour for entertainment. It’s good. And like I said to me, outside of terminators, one and two, this felt the most like a legitimate piece of Terminator canon. So there’s value in that. So there you go. Terminator resistance, don’t believe the critics make up your own mind. I grabbed the latest chorale PaintShop Pro 2021 because you know, every year they release a new version, adding a couple of little new features to it. And this time they added artificial intelligent resizing. And so listen, it’s 60 bucks a year basically for a license and I use it quite a bit for my YouTube stuff and everything. So I was curious about the AI stuff. So I went and I got the I got the preload, I think it comes out at the end of the month officially. It there’s some rough edges. I’m telling you right now, if you’re one of those people that don’t like pre releases, or little bugs and glitches, wait until it releases if you’re even interested, but I found a mixed bag with the AI stuff. So if you want to know more, though, I did record a video of me showing off all the AI features I used my own, not their stock, sample photos that are included but I use my own photos from my old shitty iomega Click camera from 1997 all the way with, with you know, bad shots today that I’ve taken on my phone and everything in between. So if you want to see that it’s on Monroe worlds YouTube channel you can see that and I can show you I can take you on a tour and you can decide if you want to to make the upgrade because that was the that was the the big sell right along with some other stuff about underwater and sky photos I’m like that’s really nice. I mean ai i get it AI upskill upscaling yeah yeah that anybody and everybody could use that but like if you want to improve drastically improve your underwater pictures I’m going what is that five people that are doing taking underwater pictures? That’s where you’re targeting your your new features get here, but the AI stuff got me so if you want to learn more, go to Monroe world’s YouTube channel. And check it out. Do a search for Corel PaintShop Pro. The boys Season Two Holy hell are we Is it time yet? Dammit. I think it’s September 9, we get the first three episodes dropped and then we get Like one week after that, or something like that the boys is one of my favorite new series that have been out in the last couple of years. It’s on Amazon. It’s about a greedy corporate underworld that uses superheroes as their vassals to, you know, to basically control cities. It’s awesome, awesome show. If you haven’t seen it, go back and watch season one cuz season two is about ready to start. The official trailer is out for season two actually came out like last week so you probably already saw it but I had it on the list. It looks just as great as the first season I’m I am super stoked and I’m not super stoked about anything coming on television but I am excited about the boys Season Two so go check that out. Let’s see. So I’m saving Horizon Zero Dawn. Okay, I got a couple more items. So those of you who follow my YouTube channel, probably notice that I was playing around with ai upsampling of old music videos. I did like a Kylie Minogue video I did a Debbie Gibson video. And the idea was to see if we could take because that’s something that really bothers me is that I’ve got a huge music video collection cuz Listen, music videos for Gen Xers like me, and most of you. MTV changed the world. Music Television changed the world. Music videos are not the shit that they play now. They don’t, they don’t. It’s not music videos. It’s a video of music, but it’s not music videos, its own genre. And listen, sometimes they colored outside the lines of this music video shit. Sometimes like Michael Jackson took a thriller and turn it into a 13 minute movie. And when everyone went batshit crazy, sometimes it was just a live performance from a band. Which is what a lot of what they do now they just have some fucking dance number with a bunch of backup dancers and there’s like there’s no, there’s nothing solid to it. It’s just a performance. captured on video. That’s what they call music videos now, but they rarely do they do things like, you know, story type videos or micro movie videos like Michael Jackson, ghosts and everything else. But anyway, so MTV. That’s one thing though that’s drastically missing. You know, last year around Christmas time, they uncovered we talked about this, they uncovered a George Michael Christmas music video. And because it was shot on film, they were able to upscale it to 4k and it looked brand new. I mean, it was batshit crazy. Every news agency was talking about it. Fan sites were going batshit crazy about how the hell did they do that? And that’s where this whole this whole shot on film 4k thing came from. But then you realize that’s an oddity, right? I mean, there’s probably a lot of music videos shot on film, but music videos from the 80s and maybe a little bit into the early 90s These things are hidden in a vault somewhere. There’s no place that plays them really in any sort of quality definition. And people aren’t, don’t seem to be shaking rattling their saber to get get these things. I mean, if I would love to have thriller in HD I want I want a Blu Ray copy thriller, and a Blu Ray copy of Thriller 3d. I would pay solid dollars I mean, I can’t be the only one who would buy music video collections where they took them and meticulously upscaled them to HD I would buy them. I buy. Even if it was for artists, I’m not thrilled about like, let’s say they released a 10 music video collection for 20 bucks. And I liked three of the four or three or four of the 10 videos. I buy it. I buy it for that. I want. I want I want those things preserved and Damn, I go back and look at some of my music videos. They’re like 40 megabyte mpegs and they literally look like those old full motion video games that were you played on MS DOS and these little tiny windows and it’s like, Dude, this sucks. So I started experimenting with both the DVD fab, has some fun, something called enlarge AI. And then Topaz has this, this AI, zooming video AI zooming program as well. And so I’ve been playing with him seeing if I can not only rescale these things because that’s not what they’re supposed to do is make them make them look as good in HD as they did in SD but Topaz sometimes clean them up a little bit tidy at remove some of the blocking and all this other stuff. And so I was experimenting and I put up Kylie Minogue camera which song of hers I put up there but I put that one up, but it looked great. I mean, I thought it actually improved the quality of the video. And of course, you know, I can’t monitor This, this is the song’s copyright. So, you know, you’re not going to be able to earn any money off of this. And you know, we’re going to show ads before people need to watch. Whatever. Okay, it’s their content, right? I get. So then I go and I do. I do a couple of other ones. I do a Debbie Gibson video and I do an Alan Parsons project video. And I uploaded both of them, and they were destroyed, they were pulled immediately down not watchable in any country. Like, well, this is some bullshit, this is why you can’t get the shit off the ground. This is why we don’t have people out there who loves music videos that have technology that can do this cleaning up and sharpening and enlarging but there’s no place to put it because they’re going to get struck down. Who’s going to do that level of effort to do that stuff. I was discouraged. I was thinking I was gonna end up doing half my damn movie, video collection with this technology. But now once I know that I can’t, nobody else can benefit from it, but But me, it really sort of takes the steam out of stuff, you know what I’m saying? bothers me. So YouTube sucks. Instead I ended up posting it on bit to where you can actually post up or doesn’t get knocked down to more items, so my dishwasher suddenly started having problems and we weren’t sure exactly what it was. And as we as we were, as we finally noted, the cycle would run but no water would go in there they wouldn’t fill with water. And so I’m like, dammit, we just replaced this dishwasher. And so I’m looking online I’m looking at you to dishwasher won’t fill Oh, to basically have to disassemble the entire fucking dishwasher to get to the water inlet valve so that you can make sure it’s clear because you can’t get to it any other way other than this is something no damn thing or you’ve got a you know, the water inlet solenoid is bad which even requires more Assembly to get to. So I’m looking at this on YouTube and I’m going Dude, I’m so not doing this. I’m so not going to do this. So I’m getting ready to call my handyman. And I stumbled across a YouTube video that says, check your float valve. Right? And it’s like it’s right there. It’s front and center. It’s the easiest possible thing that could be wrong with your dishwasher. And yet, it wasn’t taught it wasn’t at the top of the list. It was like buried down below you is like 15 even on Google a Google search, you know, no, Whirlpool dishwasher won’t fill with water and they’re having to disassemble the whole damn thing to make sure the inlets good. As it turns out, much like a toilet inside your dishwasher. There’s this little circular UFO looking thing. And when your dishwasher fills with water, this little UFO floats upwards and it some point it gets to the water, the water level is high enough and it clicks over a solenoid which tells the water to stop coming in. So they’re like, well make sure your floats working. So I go in there, and I grabbed the float. And I looked down and you couldn’t even see this because I didn’t know what I was really looking for. But behind, right, because if you’re looking into the front of the dishwasher, you can’t really see this. But behind the float is a fork. A regular old fork. The the non pokey in the handle end of the fork was right underneath the float, and it was pushing the float valve up were to disengage the solenoid. So I removed the fork the float flop flop down into its regular position, the dishwasher was fine. I was moments away from $100 service call, this guy would have walked in, pulled the fork out and said that’d be checker cash. Right. So anyway, I’m doing your PSA, right? public service announcement. If your dishwashers not filling with water, do not disassemble, make sure the flow valve works. Last but not least, My birthday is 10 days away. I’m not pleased. I wasn’t pleased when I turned 50. And I’m certainly not pleased turning 51 but it is what it is. Now. I’m comfortable in life where if I want something, I just buy it, right? So it used to be, you know, when you’re in your 20s and sometimes in your 30s you got to save up for something special how some people are like that right now. I am. I am so fortunate that both my wife and I have jobs, where we can work from home and there’s accommodations. I know not everybody is being afforded that. So we’ve been very fortunate. And without the gas and entertainment monies and going to Vegas three times a year. We’re managing to put a little cash away and so now more than ever, I can buy whatever I want. You know, I just bought a fucking art trainer for Christ’s sake. That was three Grant, I did put it on a credit card. But there was a point in time where I could have paid cash, my fucking cat, you know, my cat that we sent in for cat surgery dollars. When he broke his leg. He’s got cancer, right? And so he’s been to the vet, he went, remember I talked about this, he went to the vet and had half his fucking half his eyes opened to get this big giant fucking tumor out. Well, within a week, the tumor was back and growing. So and take it back and they got that tumor out. Now he’s going in on Thursday to get another tumor pulled out. Because it’s small enough. It’s I don’t know what this cat is cost me. But I assure you, it is a generous amount of money. But I’ve been able to pay cash for that. You know, normally, you know, back in the day, when I was younger, maybe didn’t have the kind of cash flow, I would have had to charge it or pay in installments, right? My bed’s very nice about letting me do installments because we’ve, we’ve been doing for 20 years. So yeah, so When it comes to birthdays, it’s very difficult for the people who love me to come up with gift ideas because I just buy whatever I want. And there was a period of time where I wasn’t allowed to buy anything for months before my birthday or Christmas and that pissed me off. So that didn’t last very long. So now it is a chore to come up with something interesting for my birthday. So my daughter, Christina, my younger daughter, she she said, I’ve got something this year, it’s actually going to be there on time. And it’s something special. Okay, cool. Because it’s like I said, it’s very difficult to come up with anything. So two days ago, I get a little package in the mail from her. I opened it up and inside is a cassette tape, a cassette tape, folks. Not a CD, not a DVD, not a USB stick, a cassette tape It says mixtape or Bert Happy Birthday mixtape. So my daughter in her late 20s in 2020 sent her dad a cassette mixtape for his birthday how fucking great is that right? Is that like the greatest gift ever? And so then it’s like shit I don’t know if I have anything to play this now as those of you who watched the Shane shed videos knows I do have like a realistic cassette you know one of those kind of console cassette players courses back in the shed buried and put away so I was actually at Target today and I picked up that you know, you can buy a cassette, portable cassette player target. Who knew, I was like now they’re not going to have one I have to get something off Amazon or something. No, believe it or not. Target has a really cheap shitty cassette player. Like a Walkman style cassette. For 20 bucks, so I grabbed it I brought it home and I put this mixtape in first off the headphones that come with it. I listen to the first five or 10 minutes of the tape with those headphones. Terrible I mean literally they’re like 50 cent headphones, they sound terrible. They they’re already shorted out when you bought them you know. So I finally I put in a decent pair of headphones and I’ll tell you what it is. There’s something magic about the cassette tape. And I know we’ve talked about the physical media and the contact and tactile response and all that stuff but to put this tape in and hear the click of the play button, and to hear and there’s a sound like like vinyl people both on vinyl, both vinyl is rich sounding so much better the CD boss. cassette tapes are not better than CD, but there’s a property of cassette tapes, especially like when you record a mixtape, if not when I made mixtapes for girlfriends and stuff in high school. I used a reel to reel but reel to reel On a dual cassette tape, boombox, right? So I would put my original tape in one side, I put my copy in, I’d find the song on one tape, I’d play it hit record on the other one, record the song, hit stop on both and then do the next song. So, while my recordings didn’t sound like factory recordings, they were really really pretty good. She went old school, she got a tape recorder put it next to her computer speakers. And she sequenced a mixtape using like a YouTube playlist, a micro and out loud, she actually did like little comments in between them and talked about the significance of the song. And, and occasionally mixed in a little, you know, she rickrolled me at the end of it, she’s, you know, right in the middle of a David Bowie song, and the tape was almost over on the second side. And all of a sudden, the song just kind of stopped and all of a sudden Rick Astley, you know, Never gonna give you up as playing. She goes. If you thought you were Get it through this tape without getting Rick rolled. Well, you were mistaken. So here’s your rick roll. And then she started playing out. I was dying. But what it what a great gift. What an interesting gift if, you know, in part, not only because, and she’s like, dude, I have no idea how much work this would be. And I’m like, yeah, Listen, man, you know, even doing that shit digitally. You know? What, and she’s like, I understand when you were producing podcasts, you know, not this show, because I just turned the thing on a record, but you’re producing podcasts, you’re producing YouTube content. This shits work. I mean, people don’t think anything new to me. But if you do it right, you’re doing some work and she was like, this was a lot of work. And I said, Well, I totally appreciate it if nothing else, you know, part of it is not just that it’s a mixtape because I have every song that she had on there. You know, I’ve got mp3 ease. I’ve got it. You know, I’ve got available to me digitally. But there’s a magic behind it. The sequencing her little blurbs, the sound of tape hiss. Those of you who don’t know it, tape it. This is fine find a grown up that does know what tape is is to explain to you but I thought it was I thought was a great gift it was a wonderful gift now I now have a cassette player I don’t know what else I’m going to do with said cassette player. What I found interesting is that the cassette player had a lineout on it a lineout and a headphone jack. I thought that was kind of interesting. And I actually tried sending the line out to my computer and it was just a nasty mess so I’ll have to use the headphone out but I’m Why would you have a line out that’s a mess. Anyway was 20 bucks What do you want? And it’s like 1980s technology. So there you go. All right, well listen, I have given you plenty of show. And we will have the Horizon Zero Dawn review next time and whatever all the crap I can come up with. I hope you enjoyed the show. You’ve got 7576 minutes a show. 76 minutes my wife probably thinks I drove away and join the Merchant Marines or something. Alright, hope you enjoyed it everybody. This is Shane R. Monroe passenger seat Ray Radio. We’ll see you next time. Take care, everybody.
Passenger Seat Radio Episode 2020-08-15
