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Episode 23: Parun Spice Latte with Titus Lunter, Part III
98 Plays6 years ago
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to the Goblin Lore Podcast!
In our twenty-third episode, the guys talk with Magic: the Gathering artist Titus Lunter, who not only has done plenty of illustrations for Magic cards – he also has been a member of the concept team for at least two sets (Amonkhet and Guilds of Ravnica).
This is the third episode in a three-part series. In this episode, it's YOUR questions that Titus and we answer as we dig into our mailbag and come up with some bizarre answers to some even weirder questions!
You can also check out Titus's work here.
There may be "secret vault" audio of discussions about Titus's art and other elements of Ravnican design, so stay tuned for information on how to access that!
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Remember: we've reached 300 followers on Twitter! Keep the word of mouth going; with every 100 new followers, we will do a random prize draw for one lucky follower!
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You can find the hosts on Twitter: Joe Redemann at @Fyndhorn, Hobbes Q. at @HobbesQ, and Alex Newman at @AlexanderNewm. Send questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to @GoblinLorePod on Twitter or GoblinLorePodcast@gmail.com.
Goblin Lore is proud to be a member of the Geek Therapy Network (on Twitter at @GeekTherapy).
Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art courtesy of Greg Staples, design by Joe Redemann.
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Transcript
Introduction to Episode with Titus Lunder
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to another episode of Goblin Lore. In this episode, we talked to Titus Lunder for the last time, or really, it's a continuation of the last time that we talked to Titus Lunder.
Mailbag: Dutch Recipes & Unique Purchases
00:00:21
Speaker
This is the third part of our three-part series and our discussion with the Dutch magic artist, and of course, in the third part of a trilogy, things get a little bit weird.
00:00:33
Speaker
And this is our mailbag episode where we solicited questions from the audience and, of course, we touched on such topics as classic Dutch recipes, how one gets into art and draws inspiration from artists, and of course, the most useful thing that we've gotten for ourselves for $100 or less in the last couple of years. This is an episode that's a bit of a departure from most other episodes and that we kind of get a little bit weird and let our hair down, but I hope you'll enjoy it.
00:01:02
Speaker
So, without any further ado, let's get to the show.
00:01:10
Speaker
And now that we've gotten the headiness out of the way, let's have some fun. We had mailbag questions. Let's get weird because some of these questions were weird. I'm not going to lie. I am excited for this. And I'm going to start with the one that somebody mentioned. They've loved to see for all podcasters. So we're going to start off with our question from TK drama, drama, drama.
00:01:33
Speaker
Yeah, which we love him. And I can't pronounce that name. I'm sorry, buddy.
Most Useful Purchases Discussion
00:01:38
Speaker
Who can be found on Twitter at TK shillings. And he said he wanted to borrow this from ones he's heard from another podcaster, but it is the question of what's the most you useful, unique purchase that you've made in the last three years that costs less than $100. Or whatever money you use in the Netherlands.
00:02:00
Speaker
Oh, I'm first. Oh, dang it. You don't have to be first. No. Yeah, because I mean, I read the question, I read the show notes and I couldn't figure it out then. Real quick, subscription to a bouldering hall, which is sort of like climbing. I don't know if it's called the same there. Yeah. It's to not be in this chair as much.
00:02:24
Speaker
Um, the other thing was, uh, mental health care, which here is free, but I'm not sure if you could do that for a hundred dollars, but if you can do it, uh, anything again, to get you out of that and into a healthier space. And I'm going to defer on the third one while I think about it.
00:02:44
Speaker
Yeah, I'm gonna say the most useful, unique purchase I've made in the last three years, and this is partially because I just made a career change in the last couple of months, but I think they're technically called galoshes, but they're like those
00:03:02
Speaker
You know, if you remember going into your grandparents' closet when you were a little kid and finding those weird, like, they looked like shoes but they were just stretchy rubber outlines that looked a little bit bigger than shoes and you put them on, you flopped around like a clown for a little bit, that's what I bought because you need those when you're a male carrier because you'd be shocked at how wet the grass is all the time and how little your shoes repel water.
00:03:31
Speaker
So galoshes are a lifesaver for me. I literally was picturing you in like a Paddington bear type situation.
Titus's Favorites & Artistic Pursuits
00:03:41
Speaker
100%. All right. I guess I'll go. I'm going to cheat just a little bit because this wasn't purchased in the last three years. But every time I use this, I comment to whoever's around, sometimes myself, sometimes my roommate's cats.
00:03:54
Speaker
Sometimes other people that I just love it. Before I moved out for my parents, my dad did a lot of cooking in restaurants. And so there was a few specific cooking tools that I needed to get for myself. And one of them is this pair of long tongs. I think they're like 18 inches. And I just love them. Because it's amazing what just that little bit of extra length on the tongs, how useful that is. And there's just a good,
00:04:25
Speaker
solid a pair too. Like I've seen people with these weird little, like just a thin hot dog things. I'm like, I'm not using those tongs. Like I cook, uh, went up to a friend's cabin a few weeks ago to just game all weekend. And I'm like, I'm going to cook breakfast. I'm bringing up my own knife and I'm bringing up my tongue. Like everything else you have in the cabin and he's like, well, we have knives. We have, I don't, I don't care. I'm bringing up my chef's knife and I'm bringing up my tongs. Cause those are what I cook with.
00:04:54
Speaker
Is this like a male thing where you get super excited for a couple extra inches? Remember, this is a family podcast.
00:05:10
Speaker
When you're cooking bacon, you want that hand as far away from that grease as you can get it. So I also was struggling to come up with this because a lot of the stuff I was thinking is not very unique, but is very helpful. So I was initially just going to list all the knives that I bought. Like when my wife and I got married, literally the thing I was most excited for on our wedding registry was any time I saw that we were getting one of the knives that I had put up there.
00:05:34
Speaker
But because of that, this is a little related. One item that I think has been great and awesome has been a magnetic strip that goes on the back behind our stove that the knives attach to. So I have a magnetic block for the knives.
00:05:49
Speaker
And it saves counter space. My knives are right there when I need to use them. They're right in the useful place where they need to be. The second one actually is related to the wedding gift that I was given by Joe and his lovely wife, which is magnetic spice containers. So we have a metal board that you just, all the spices are on that board next to the stove in these round containers that have magnets on the bottom of them.
00:06:16
Speaker
so that we can just grab them while we're working. And so it's just, it's usefulness stuff that I think, what's really funny is my in-laws bought their own townhouse and literally copied the exact brand and board that my wife and I had because we had done it.
00:06:33
Speaker
The last thing, I don't know why I'm doing three, but I just started the question. Yeah, I thought I thought three years, but that's good because you have to do another one now because I'm going to do the last one was it was a Kickstarter program that had moved to being.
00:06:50
Speaker
an online like they just were for available for sale on Amazon, which is a beer brewing journal. So my wife and I brew beer. And it is a journal that is set up a nice leather bound one that has like hop substitution list if you can't get the hops that you need so you can look at other ones.
00:07:08
Speaker
It lists the types of glasses you should use for different styles of beer. But it also then has the recipes where you can write notes of what you brewed and what went well, what you would have changed, what the tasting was, the alcohol percentage. And so you can just really easily, it's got spaces for all of those things because I used to just write that stuff down on like a notepad that I'm sure got lost. That's a good list. Thanks. Now did that give you time to come up with your third?
00:07:35
Speaker
It did. It did. A third and a bonus one, because magnets triggered it. Actually, I had to get one that is more than $100, because I changed the screen that I'm working on, because I work on a Wacom Cintiq, which is the screen that I can draw on directly. So I no longer have a tablet in front of me. I have a screen which I draw on. And I used to have an arm, it's called the Ergotron arm, that held the screen up.
00:08:03
Speaker
pitch and move my screen every which way. So the one that I need now is more expensive because this screen is ridiculously heavy. I don't know what it is in American units. It's bigger than my number, but this thing is 10 kilograms. So I think that's like 20 pounds, 22 pounds. So it's heavy. So I need a heavier duty arm. But if you can, if you spend a lot of time behind your computer and you don't want to invest in the standing desk.
00:08:27
Speaker
Get an Ergotron arm, which costs like a hundred bucks. Put your screen on there and you can just put your screen up and stand. And if your desk is in a reasonable height, your hands, while my hands can still reach my desk, just fine. You just, they're just stretched down and there you go. You got your foe standing desk for about a hundred bucks. Nice. So that's, so that's what I've, I've been, that was a real back saver for me because I sit down less. And the bonus item is, um, my magnetic millennium Falcon bottle opener.
00:08:55
Speaker
It's a little Millennium Falcon, and it has a magnet on the back, so you can just attach it to the fridge or whatever, and it looks cool. That's awesome. By the way, the S-Lenter is not sponsored by the Ergotron arm, but Ergotron, if you are listening. Yes, if you are listening, send me more arms. It's something odd that this conversation made me think of, too, that maybe is a little silly, but pop vinyls have been great for me, because what I do is I bring them to work.
00:09:25
Speaker
because I work in like a classic cubicle and an office building and it can feel really soulless. And so having Claptrap and like Ajani and just these little things that I love sitting, you know, and someone gave me like this little Pokemon Sun and Moon poster that I put up on the wall. So just having these things around me really makes the environment
00:09:49
Speaker
better to work in original magic art. So we got more questions here. The next one comes from Tyler Leib, who is at Basic Land Bin. And he wants to know, Titus, from you,
Rewarding Commissions & Humorous Stories
00:10:01
Speaker
what were the most challenging and most rewarding commissions that you've had for magic and why? Usually my default answer for the most challenging one is
00:10:13
Speaker
a black resourceful return, I keep forgetting the name, because it was a gear hulk suspended upside down from a ceiling with artificers working on it while it was being reassembled. And the concept for the gear hulk wasn't that clear yet, so that was by far and away the most complicated piece.
00:10:31
Speaker
I ever had to do but you know some time has passed and some other challenging ones have come across and the one of the most challenging ones is one that I thought was going to be in Gills of Ravnica but isn't which is a really interesting creature so when that comes out I'll talk about that.
00:10:51
Speaker
Wow. And the most rewarding might have been it's got to be one of the reprints. I've been weirdly lucky that I get a bunch of reprints, you know. So, you know, Wrath of God, Pact of Negation and Snaring Bridge. I see they all score super high because, you know, when do you get to do one of the staples of magic?
00:11:18
Speaker
hardly ever. Either you have the original window or you don't, then it passes. So when you, you know, if you get to go back there, yeah, that's really rewarding. What's really cool on resourceful return is Titus actually did, you did a GIF of, of like making that that's on Reddit, correct?
00:11:35
Speaker
Is it? Yeah, there's oh, it's I guess it's just under the subreddit of Titus Luttner. So maybe somebody I don't know, but there is a I'm going to post it maybe and it shows kind of the process of the art.
00:11:51
Speaker
I might've made that, but I can't remember making that. Okay. Well, we're going to include it in the show notes. I mean, I named that piece a lot of times because it has a funny anecdote where I got the commission and then I broke down the commission and had a bunch of questions for the art director.
00:12:12
Speaker
You know, the question was like, am I getting this right? Is this actually what I'm making? And I was juggling all the different pieces and like, how are you going to know if it's being taken apart or put together? Like, what's the difference in one frame? Yeah. That's impossible. And I just got an email back saying, good luck.
00:12:37
Speaker
Okay. So, um, this next one actually, I guessing comes from a friend of yours, Titus. Is it Gidge Welton? Hice. Hice Welton, which is at Hice Welton, spelled G-I-G-S Welton. But he wants you to tell us about your Joyra commander deck and why you hate your friends.
00:13:03
Speaker
I mean in your play group strong word. It's more like a general just like I'm kind of a Timmy player
00:13:16
Speaker
But I'm a bad Timmy player, right? So I never win with my Timmy decks ever. I've tried everything, man. I had the giant hydras, the ridiculous numbers. But everything always gets shut down or canceled or gated. And it's endlessly frustrating. So I decided, you know what? I'm not going to build a deck with creatures anymore because that's just stupid. Because it's just going to counter it anyway. And I'll never win. And it's not about winning. But if you never win, it is kind of about winning.
00:13:48
Speaker
I decided to make a deck, which I thought would just be kind of a fun combo deck. You know, hidden myths as all combo decks go. I'm not a big fan of, you know, either you have the combo or you win the game or you don't. But I figured I'd try a bit more casual approach. So I just build a Jorah Weatherlight Commander, the new one deck with Aetherflux Reservoir as the main victory. And I have this deck for months now.
00:14:16
Speaker
I thought I had a cube before, but nobody ever played with a cube. So I took it apart. So all these super expensive cards have come out of it. All the cool artifacts are in there. No power cards, but pretty much everything else. And I play tested the game. And on turn five, I have like 180 life. I was like, oh, I mean, that worked. And then I played it again. And then on turn six, I had 200 life. And I was like, oh, that worked. And apparently,
00:14:46
Speaker
After years of trying to build a Timmy deck and failing, I took one stab at a Jura combo deck and it just works every time. I'm not playing the deck anymore because I realized that it's a really shitty deck to play against. And I'm not even playing it when I really want to win, but it's really fun to have one box with one deck in it, which I know that
00:15:12
Speaker
If I grab it, I'm going to have a good time. I mostly play it behind my computer by myself when there is nobody else. In my break, I'll have a bunch of commander deck sticks to me. I'll just play, this will be my opening hand. OK, this is what I do. Oh, that's fun. That could work. But yeah, it's fun. It's funny, because it's very similar to my journey with my Kozalik deck.
00:15:37
Speaker
I built the deck with the new Kozalik. And I'm a Timmy player. I'm also a Johnny player, so I like to do convoluted things sometimes. Convoluted big things, especially. And so Kozalik worked out really well. I built the deck, started playing it. Then I realized that all the deck wants is more mana ramp. So I now have a version of Kozalik where I tend to cast him on turn four. And that... Nice. See, that works.
00:16:05
Speaker
It's another deck that I don't play very often because there's not a lot of people who I know who can deal with Kozlak on turn four, but there's times where it's like, okay, this is a serious game with some people I know have more serious decks, I'm gonna bust out Kozlak. Who do you play with that has serious deck? Where are you finding these people? It's not our play group. No spikes in our group, not whatsoever. I will release spiky deck that never wins though.
00:16:36
Speaker
which is my combo discard deck. Okay, so in case Gijs is listening, coming over, his brother is listening. This one's for you guys. There was a game where I, there were three players left and I was playing my Demir discard combo deck. And I was firing off and it was going really, really well. And I combo into all my pieces and I make both of them
00:17:04
Speaker
mill until they reach, what was it? Like eight or nine lands. So like their whole decks were destroyed. And I, I was on a, I was on a, I was in bad shape. I don't really run any creatures in there. Cause why would I, it was a mill combo deck. I don't really care. The creatures are there to tap so I can, you know, mill for that amount. And I was tapping, tapping and I had Bart down to no cards, zero.
00:17:35
Speaker
So I was like, you know what? Pass the turn. Have fun. You lose the game. In fact, he did not lose the game because he killed me in his upkeep. He found a way to kill me in his upkeep with the cards that he had. I mean. I had twice now that I had people at no cards left, and before their draw step, they kill me. I don't even.
00:18:04
Speaker
That feels so bad. That feels so bad. Because they were like, do you have a way to make me draw a card? Like, why would I? No, you draw a card naturally. My deck is about milling. What are you talking about? Like, oh, then I have you. Like, what? No, you need to draw a card. Upkeeps first. Like, OK, yeah, but that's a formality. It was like, no. So it's the best worst deck I've ever had. It's really good, but it never wins. It just can't win. It's impossible. That's awesome.
00:18:33
Speaker
This is from David Schultz at David underscore a underscore Schultz.
Artistic Inspirations & Personal Grooming
00:18:38
Speaker
From what artist or piece of art have you drawn the most inspiration? Oh, wow. Inspiration is not a monolith, right? So it changes all of the time. I think
00:18:54
Speaker
know, as an artist you try to use as much inspiration as you get and it could come from every single angle possible. Inspiration mainly means curiosity, so as long as you're curious enough you'll find stuff everywhere. But if I had to name a bunch of artists that I really look up to, it's a divide between contemporary and classical,
00:19:16
Speaker
in the classical sphere it's more about the idea that they represent so we're talking about William Turner which is very kind of romantic paintings and John Martin which is very bombastic kind of end of the world paintings but what they represent is really cool you know they embody a shift in art culture where things have become less church driven and more personal stories and more loose and more grand and
00:19:44
Speaker
There was no room for that before, so we have a lot to thank those guys for. And in the contemporary sphere, I'm looking at specifically concept artists and illustrators for the digital realm, which is what I do. And two names that pop up are Craig Mullins and Jamie Jones. Both are absolute legends. It's hard for me to state to somebody who doesn't know about art how important they actually have been. Craig Mullins has basically invented digital painting. So, you know, big props to Craig. He's worked on,
00:20:13
Speaker
everything that's incredibly cool. He has a very, very loose way of painting, but uses an incredible amount of detail to still pull paintings off. He's done a few pieces for Magic a long time ago. Same for Jamie Jones. He's done stuff recently. Everybody will know him from, like, Heart of Kirin and a million other cards. And he's just a legend. He uses super cool tiny color shifts and
00:20:39
Speaker
hard to find edges versus soft edges, which may or may not mean a lot to the non-artist listening, but the tinier the things look, the harder they are to pull off. The big shapes, the figures, the anatomy is easier, and the place that they're
00:20:56
Speaker
Playing around in that space, that 1% that separates them is more complicated than all the other 99% put together times like a million. That last percentile is near impossible. And seeing people playing around with that with such apparent ease and casualness is just a joy for me to look at.
00:21:17
Speaker
I was going to say, just looking up as we're talking about this, I just looked at the Craig Mullins version of Glacial Wall, which was in the Eternal Master set. And it really does have that beauty of, like you were saying, knowing that it's digital art, but taking, I mean, most of what he had done for Magic has been landscapes and been the basic lands. He takes Glacial Wall and basically makes a panoramic, I mean, basically makes a landscape
00:21:46
Speaker
into a creature, kind of what you were talking a little bit about before. And it's just that's amazing. If you know nothing about digital art and want to know what good digital art looks like, if you're coming in from a completely neutral point of view and goes like, I wonder what go to his website, which is good brush dot com. So it's just good brush dot com. And pretty much every single piece you see on there is probably as good as that piece will will be. I mean, this is my opinion. I know a lot of people go like, no, I want it more rendered or less rendered or but
00:22:17
Speaker
coming from, from me, my point of view and how he constructs his images and colors and composition. Um, it, yeah, it's incredibly good. Okay. Awesome. So, okay. Let's get into some fun. All right. First questions here is a little bit about we, I mean, we're going to ask now that we're watching you on, uh, we can see you on video right now. This may have changed, but it wants to know why the goatee and not a full beard.
00:22:47
Speaker
If I could have a full beard, I'd have a full beard. I'd have it years ago. I'd have a full beard as a baby. That question is painful, man. We're going to let them know that this is the best I could do. Okay. This is the best I could do. And I'm trying.
00:23:08
Speaker
Not like this right here is what you're saying. Oh, no. I have the thickest of mustaches, which is a tease, and the rest is just patchwork all the way, and I can't. That's it. See, and I wish I could have your mustache, so paid off.
Coffee Preferences & Positivity Advice
00:23:24
Speaker
So these questions, this was actually a series of them all came from a cowboy, Kyle C. Carson, who likes, he's asked this question for every mailbag we've done. He wants to know how you take your coffee.
00:23:37
Speaker
Uh, lots of milk. That's it. Lots of milk. I'm cutting down on the sugar, but good. Now, is it more, is it more so dark, gross? What are we? No, I can't know because I don't like the taste of coffee and I like the taste of coffee at the same time. You know, you know that feeling where you, you like it, but you don't like it. That's exactly where I'm at. That's why you put the milk in because then you don't really taste the coffee, but you get the hint of it.
00:24:05
Speaker
Exactly. So my is like, I'll have the milk or maybe the soy milk and then maybe a little bit of hazelnut and a sprinkle of the mocha and then you make it a double, but you know, I'm drinking coffee, but it's not really coffee.
00:24:21
Speaker
This reminds me of like, uh, so when I've been at cons or magic events, I tend to, um, I've had a good experience and good relationship with, uh, arcade posts. So I always bring him coffee whenever I see him at events. And the joke is that he tells me to get him the most sugary sweet thing that I can possibly find that also has like four shots of espresso in it. Yeah, that's a good one. That's, that's probably the artist beverage of, uh, of choice of choice. So let's say no to coffees brought a GPS just to answer.
00:24:51
Speaker
And I will say that in general, from my experience, all artists do appreciate bringing them a coffee. Just do it for your artists when you go. There is this awesome dude who him and his brother always visit me at GPs in Europe, and he brings homemade vegan cinnamon rolls and other kind of baked goods. And he is absolutely amazing. See, if you were here, I would bring you a homemade home brewed beer.
00:25:19
Speaker
See, I don't drink beer. So that, I mean, that'd be a waste of the problem. So it'll be a waste waste. If you get into ciders, then you have my attention. Oh, I tend to drink a lot of ciders. Don't drink a lot of beer. I don't like the taste of beer. The only beers I found that I liked are ones that don't taste like beer. Like we've got a beer from just one side over Wisconsin that called Berry Vise. It's just a seasonal thing, but it's got like blackberry juice in there. So it doesn't taste like beer.
00:25:47
Speaker
It's just alcoholic blackberry juice. It's pretty good. I feel you, man. That's where I'm at. But I'm also trying not to do cider because that's a lot of sugar and I'm trying to minimize my sugar intake because I sit like 18 hours a day, which is not good. But that's how you get the good art. So now I've switched to like liquor, which is worse, but less sugar.
00:26:10
Speaker
I tend to drink more white Russians than I should. But, you know, also the big Lebowski. So I feel, you know, that's a good place to be at. OK, he's got a few more. He wants to know your favorite sea monster or landworm. Do we even know any sea monsters or landworms? I literally expected this to just turn into an armada worm. The worm? No.
00:26:39
Speaker
No, not the armada worm. Like one time, not talk about the armada worm. Oh, I'm going to let that one go. Oh, man. Oh, the armada worm. No, the landworm is the worm from Dune. It's the spice. It's the spice is life. OK. What's one card that you wish you could create art for? And if you can't answer that, we understand.
00:27:08
Speaker
Oh, picking one. Oh, my man, that list is that list is long, but it has to be Stormcrow. Hands down. Yes. Yes. We are a little disappointed that you did not say a goblin of some sort, but we're not going to hold that against you. I mean, which goblin would take president? You know, this is like Cranko Cranko. Is it, you know, Kiki Kiki, is it?
00:27:34
Speaker
It's Cranko. It's Cranko, right? I saw the poll on Twitter, I voted Cranko, it had to be Cranko. No, but it had to be, if I had to pick one card which the Magic community could get a laugh out of if it got a reprint with new art, it'd have to be Stormcrow. Nice. So the person wants to know kind of a little more seriousness, this is still all from Kyle. Do you have any advice on how to stay a shining star of positivity in the Magic community? Because you do have that reputation.
00:28:03
Speaker
Everything you do onto others, you do onto yourself. That's the most important thing to learn. If you give positivity, you'll get positivity back. Not always, but it's important to understand that we are all the same person in essence, right? We are here. We are here for a short time. We are here to learn. And if we consider us all to be the same person, what would you want? You want to have the things that happen
00:28:32
Speaker
uh to you to be positive so that means that you have to be positive to other people it doesn't mean you always get to be positive look i i i say a lot that you have to be as good as you can be even
00:28:48
Speaker
if the world is not good to you. You cannot guarantee that the world is good to you. You cannot expect the world to be good to you. You cannot have any sort of expectation whatsoever. Just because you do good does not mean you have a right to receive good. It doesn't work that way. That's a very weird, naive way of looking at things. But if you realize that whatever you do unto others, you do unto yourself in this weird, and I'm not a spiritual kind of person or anything like that, but I do believe that if I spend the extra energy to be positive,
00:29:19
Speaker
someone might spend the energy to be positive to somebody else, you know, because we're all doing it to each other. And that's the least we can do really. And the impact goes a very long way, very long way.
00:29:34
Speaker
And I will say that it becomes a conscious effort and action at some point and it's making a choice to do that even when you're not having a good day. It doesn't mean that you're being fake. There's actually this whole concept of opposite action that shows up especially in what's called dialectical behavior therapy or DBT, which is when you feel like you want to act in a certain way that has not been healthy for you in the past, it's to purposefully do the opposite of it.
00:30:00
Speaker
and see what happens. And I know that for me, who struggles with depression and anxiety, I have had lots of years of just negativity and putting that out there. And I still have very bad days. And I also am trying to make a conscious effort to be grateful and to look at the grateful and to be mindful of the fact that I'm not going to be perfect. I'm not going to have great days every day yet.
00:30:27
Speaker
I would like to see more positivity there, and so I'm going to try. I don't like to use the word try. I am going to do that and now I may fail. I may not be good at it. Yeah, my motto is do or do not. There is no try, so I may not be successful with it. And I'm still going to do it.
00:30:48
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I have, I don't have anxiety, but I struggle with control a lot, you know, with what I talked about in the last episode and things that have happened where if it goes someplace, the first thing in my mind is like, what if it goes wrong? If I get a magic commission, like what if it goes wrong? And I never think about the other side, but what if it goes right? And, and allowing yourself to think more in that way has helped me. If I post my art online, what if they,
00:31:18
Speaker
go on another winch hunt, right? What if they call me out like that again? But what if they don't? What if they like my stuff? What if I keep giving into the negativity that I see in the world around me? Well, I know what's going to happen then, but what if I don't? What if I spin that and instead just be positive? Like you said, it's a conscious effort. It's not easy. It doesn't work all the time. I have plenty of people who call my positivity fake.
00:31:45
Speaker
or tell me that I'm not famous or important enough to give my opinion all the time on stuff. Like, OK, that's fair, man. If that's your opinion, that's fine. But that's not going to stop me. Because what if I would stop? Because you said those things to me. That'd be stupid and terrible. So no, I'm not going to do that. And sometimes the question is way easier to recognize and answer than others. But you'd be surprised if you start making that effort
00:32:14
Speaker
how many things you start to realize are happening. And then being positive feels nice. It feels good to be positive. I can still get incredibly aggravated and annoyed when I get five games in a row on draft where I draw five lands in a row and lose the game. That is frustrating. And I'm not in a good mood. But then I just turn that off and just be positive again. And we're moving on. There's no reason to hang on to that.
00:32:43
Speaker
No, that's that's why I'm doing this podcast for a long time. I was looking at the what if this fails? What if this goes poorly? But I've now that's that is a that is a tool of avoidance. And so because I've been more cognizant of that in myself, I've been making those choices that would have felt risky and still kind of feel risky. But now I'm looking at both sides. That's really good stuff.
00:33:11
Speaker
So the last question we have is a great one to kind of be segging out into the end of the episode, which is, have you ever tried putting butter on a Pop-Tart?
Cultural Comparisons & Dutch Recipes
00:33:21
Speaker
This comes from local Minneapolis player, The Boost Cube at The Boost Cube, who we know very well. I'm not surprised that this came from him at all. I heard it's freaking good. So my first question was actually going to be, what is your experience with Pop-Tarts to begin with?
00:33:41
Speaker
Well, since we are a functional, well-educated society, we don't actually have Pop-Tarts here. Right. That was my first thought. That's my snare right there. No, we don't have Pop-Tarts. We don't have Pop-Tarts. I had them once when I was in the States. I did have Pop-Tarts. And I think there were like three different flavors of Pop-Tart.
00:34:08
Speaker
I guess my palate is not used to it because I just couldn't taste the difference between the Pop-Tarts. I was like, these all taste the same to me. It's an overload of sugar and my mind is racing and my heartbeat is irregular now. That's called being an American. Right. To answer the question, aside from I heard it's freaking good. I must say that I have never actually had the
00:34:32
Speaker
pleasure of putting butter on a Pop-Tart, because they're not for sale here. I can't get my hands on Pop-Tarts, so I can't have that experience. I'm sorry. Not even the Netherlands version of Amazon will get you a Pop-Tart? We don't actually have Amazon in the Netherlands. Oh my gosh. Amazon here in the Netherlands actually only sells books. Okay. Wow. Can you believe that? Yeah. I go back to civilized, well-educated populations.
00:34:55
Speaker
Uh, I mean, if, if, if people want to send me PopTarts, it's fine, but I guess there's like a US store in Amsterdam that I could travel two hours to get to and buy some PopTarts. But, uh, yeah, I, I live in a pretty small town, so we have not Americanized, um, as much here. So there's a lot of stuff that. So you have real degrees that are going to have Danishes that are going to taste much better than that is what you're telling me. Well, you know,
00:35:23
Speaker
We'd not call them danish's because we're robbers obviously but uh you know that's uh oh yeah I mean... Stroopwafels? Am I in the right region now? Stroopwafels yeah for sure. I actually just bought some of those. Nice. See I think I think a lot of people would say oh you know the cheese from my home country or state is much better than x or y and yeah
00:35:44
Speaker
I think the Netherlands has a lot to be proud of, but the food culture is definitely not one of them. Save for cheese. And I read somewhere that we also invented the donut, but I'm not sure if that's true. I do know that we invented chicken and waffles, but when I looked at the original recipe for chicken and waffles, it was not what I thought that it was. So that was highly disappointing.
00:36:07
Speaker
Wait, now I need to know about this. What was the original recipe? So the original chicken and waffles recipe came from the Dutch that then settled in the US in
00:36:18
Speaker
Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Dutch. Yep. We love them. And so, you know, I made chicken waffles, you know, the fried chicken, fat waffle. I'm very confused what I think about the dish, but I like it a lot because it's whimsical. So, you know, and I do make delicious popcorn chicken if I say so myself. But that dish was their waffle was not really a waffle. It was more like a pancake.
00:36:46
Speaker
a burnt between two irons. So instead of putting just the batter in a pan, you make a thicker batter and then you put it in between like the burning iron. So it's not exactly waffle, but it's also not a pancake. And the chicken is definitely not fried because they had never heard of that before. That did not exist. So they had a slow cooked boiled chicken. So that's why I was picturing chicken. So it's a wet slow boiled chicken on kind of like a thick half baked pancake. And that just sounds disgusting.
00:37:13
Speaker
yeah i was gonna say well you said that it was not going to be like anything like it i was picturing boiled chicken that was my first thought yeah yeah the dutch are are terrible with flavors and flavoring so our signature dish is like a potato i mean okay no look here's a signature dish for you uh one that i actually enjoy a lot that is very very dutch
00:37:38
Speaker
uh okay this is this is gonna be we're gonna do recipe time here for for like a minute awesome the dutch the recipe in dutch is called which literally translates to farmer's cabbage and it doesn't make any sense but there it is farmer's cabbage so all these will be a metric because i don't know what a cup is they have a cup of butter and i don't know how much that is because we do everything by weight because that makes sense um so what you do is you just get
00:38:05
Speaker
five or six big potatoes and not the potatoes that when you boil them for a half an hour, they're still rock solid. You need the ones that you can kind of mash, right? So if you want to buy potatoes that are quick to cook and easy to mash, that's fine. So you get those. Then you get about, see, I'll try to translate for you, uh, two pounds worth of kale and sometimes called curly kale, but it's just kale.
00:38:31
Speaker
And if you can, you need to get the kale without the stem. Because if you have to cut the kale off of the stem, you'll be there for hours. So if you can get shredded kale, no stem. Stem is disgusting. It's too bitter. Don't do that, right? So you put the potatoes. You peel them. You cut them. You put them in a pan. Then you put the kale in the pan. And then you let that boil for about 20 minutes to half an hour.
00:38:59
Speaker
then obviously you get you get a very bland kind of dish so what you do is you put um what is that called the little tiny cubes of flavor that you put in soup for for bullion yes yes that's what we call it but i thought that was gold anyway um put bullion but not gold just one in there wait so if i use gold i'm in the wrong spot
00:39:23
Speaker
You're in the right spot because you have access to superfluous gold. Depending on your love for butter, once that's done cooking and boiling, you drain it. You get rid of all the water that's in there and you get a big masher. You put a little butter in there. Half a stick is definitely too much. So like quarter or a fifth of a stick, you just put that in there. You mash it through.
00:39:50
Speaker
While you're doing that, you are cooking up some bacon, but not bacon strips, but the what do you call a little chunks of bacon? Mm hmm. I forget what that's called. There's a name for it. But tiny chunks of bacon, little cubes or whatever, you cook them up on the side. And now the most important thing is, is you have to import a specialty smoked Dutch sausage, which is very popular. But any sausage will do really.
00:40:18
Speaker
And what you do if the sausage is already smoked, some sausages are smoked and you have to do them, like you just warm them up in a pan of water for like 15 minutes, you know, those kinds of really nice smoky sausages. Instead of warming them up in the water, the last 10 minutes of when the stew is actually boiling, you put the sausage on there, right? Then you get the sauce out, you drain the water, you get the bacon, the bacon grease, you mash all of that through in there, you get some gravy,
00:40:48
Speaker
and then you just slab 2000 calories worth of the you know the stew on your plate get the bacon in there cut a bit of the sausage on top of there and that will be good for a day of hard work that is the farmer cabbage signature dutch dish
00:41:05
Speaker
You know, I cannot think of a better way to have ended this episode than a recipe from the Netherlands. So Joe, you can end the episode right there. That's our fade out. We got a recipe. That's our show.
00:41:24
Speaker
The show can be found on Twitter at goblinlurepod, or you can email us any questions, comments, or concerns at goblinlurepodcast at gmail.com. Titus Lunder can be found at Titus Lunder. That's L-U-N-T-E-R. Joel Redman can be found on Twitter at Findhorn. That's F-Y-N-D, Horn. Hobbs Q can be found at Hobbs Q. And Alex Newman can be found at Alexander Newham.
00:41:53
Speaker
Goblin Lore is a member of the Geek Therapy Network. Geek Therapy celebrates how geek culture can save the world through podcasts, videos, blog posts, community outreach, education, and convention appearances. It's a network of like-minded creators who believe that all different facets of nerd culture are important to understanding how our minds and communities work. Check them out at geektherapy.com or at geektherapy on Twitter.
00:42:23
Speaker
Thank you all for listening, and remember, goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.