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Author, Podcaster, and Filmmaker Ryan Lieske
30 Plays5 days ago
Jack of all trades and master of some, Ryan Lieske shares his experiences with depression, films, podcasting, and overcoming his fear of mental health meds. TW for suicidal ideation.
We also talk horror comedy, gen AI, opium dens, and why MAGAboys think saying "you have cats" is some kind of insult. We also talk zombies, environment, and how kids intuitively engage in art therapy. We also parse TV's Bates Motel pilot movie (RIP Bud Cort) and do a MadLib.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Mentally Oddcast
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You are listening to The Mentally Oddcast, where we talk with creatives about neurodivergence, trauma, addiction, and all the other things that impact and inform our art. Our goal is to show everyone that no matter what you're going through, you are not alone and you can make art about it.
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Music
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You are listening to the Mentally Oddcast. My name is Wednesday, leave Friday. Do visit us on Ko-Fi. That's K-O-F-I to support everything we do.
Ryan Leeski's Creative Origins
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This week, our guest is Ryan Leeski, who was born December 1973.
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And he's been bothered by that ever since. His early creative endeavors include staging plays at his parents' basement, building haunted houses in neighbors' garages for trick-or-treaters, making comic books, and recording fake radio shows.
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In junior high, a friend loaned him a Charles L. Grant paperback, and while reading that, Ryan decided writing would be his life, and he set about writing his first novel.
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In 10th grade, his parents bought him a camcorder and writing was no longer enough. Things were progressing well until college when issues with mental health entered stage left.
Mental Health and Horror: A Deep Dive
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And that's where the real story begins. Welcome, Ryan.
00:01:30
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Thank you so much, Wednesday. I'm Delighted to be here, actually. Well, I am glad you could be here. This is this was a long time in coming. We had ah an array of scheduling and technical problems that were keeping us apart. Yes. We managed to overcome.
00:01:46
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So that is delightful. Now, ah we always start by asking our guests to tell us the story of the first horror movie that you remember seeing. So let's have it.
00:01:58
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Yeah. Okay. So... i For years, I sort of lived under the, what do they call that, the Mandela effect. Because i had I was convinced that the first horror film I ever saw was Creepshow.
00:02:14
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The George A. Romero, Stephen King, EC Comics homage classic. And I thought that was it. And then it dawned on me one day that when I saw that movie, which was over at a friend's house in the early eighties, he was one of the few people in our small little town that had cable.
00:02:37
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Right. Right. And so I remember all of a sudden remembered right after creep show, we watched poltergeist and I had already seen poltergeist and he hadn't.
00:02:50
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And I was telling him about the, so then I realized the first horror film I saw had to have been poltergeist um and obviously growing up when i did in the 80s i was a big steven spielberg nut and so obviously i probably begged and pleaded to see poltergeist because his name was attached to it and that pretty much i Yeah, I don't know what to say Like, and it's weird, too, because horror was not my first love as a kid. Like, that was an anomaly for me. That and Creepshow. Like, those just were not...
00:03:30
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No, I mean, starting out, I was a science fiction fanatic, okay probably because of the triple threat of Star Wars, Star Trek. And um there was this anime that ran on on TV back in the late 70s, early 80s called Star Blazers. Okay. Yep.
00:03:52
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Addicted to that. And I loved Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, all that stuff. Like that was my life. And then shortly after that, I started to get into the sort of fantasy and action adventure stuff after I saw Raiders the Lost Ark.
00:04:07
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um So up until about junior high, horror was not really a big thing for me, which is weird because it kind of took over my
Defining Horror: Jaws and Zombies
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life. Yeah, I mean, I very much think of you as a horror person. Yeah. um But but no, it sounds like not. Now, I do have to clarify, though. Surely you would have seen Jaws before Poltergeist. No, no, really. I has i actually.
00:04:36
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Go ahead. Well, people do disagree on whether or not Jaws is a horror movie, but I think if a child is eaten alive in front of you, that that just counts, regardless of how much action is in it. so Yeah. No, Jaws, I definitely think it's a horror movie. And on a side note, I recently took my nephew to see Jaws in the theater for the 50th anniversary. Nice. And my roommate came with me who had never seen the movie before.
00:05:04
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Wow. And yeah, neither of them had so and I've seen it what? a hundred gajillion times. So it was really neat to see their reactions to it. And afterwards I asked them, I said, now, do you guys consider that a horror film? Cause part of me thinks it's more just like an adventure movie or a thriller even, but they both were like, Oh no, that's a horror movie. That scared me. Like they were 50 years later this 12 year old kid in late 30 year old,
00:05:38
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friend of mine we're still intensely nervous and frightened while watching it yeah well yeah it's a horror movie i i don't think people ever stop being afraid of being eaten alive Sure, sure. Which I would say actually brings me to my next point, which is that you and I met because of zombies.
00:06:01
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we Yeah. not Not because zombies occurred, but because we had i wish some zombies. Now, we can't really talk ah in detail about the project, but...
00:06:12
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I was aware of a project that you had done that I was very impressed with. And yeah we had we had some dealings with regard to that. um Now, zombies, in a way, are almost their own genre it separate from horror because so much has been done. and the I mean, there's zombie romance now.
00:06:33
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I'm not saying I'm in favor of it, but I am aware that it exists. ah You know, there's zombie comedy. There's, ah I don't know if you know, Stefan Petruca. He's been on the show and he wrote The Dead Man Walking, which is a zombie detective.
00:06:46
Speaker
Nice. Oh, it's fantastic. You got to read. There's audiobooks, too. Oh, okay. But I think he's working on another one. um Okay. But yeah, that's that's good stuff. Good stuff right there. Now, don't forget the Zom Rom-Com.
00:07:00
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Of course. What is that, Warm Bodies or something? Warm Bodies. I even think they consider Zombieland a Zom-Rom-Com. Oh, wow. I think Shaun of the Dead probably...
00:07:13
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kind of kickstarted that because it does have that whole dealings with him and his girlfriend in it. So maybe that's the culprit, whatever. Well, Shaun of the Dead is such a bromance though. Oh, it's totally. I love that aspect of it so much because it shows like dudes that get on each other's nerves and yet somehow not talking about it is what works for men.
00:07:37
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Yeah. yeah and and so As a lady, that's that's not generally how we do things. So I've heard. So I've heard. Actually, speaking of which, um again, i actually had the privilege, I would say, of showing Shaun of the Dead to my
Horror Comedy and Nostalgia
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nephew.
00:07:56
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Same nephew, aforementioned nephew. We watched it last night. He'd never seen it. and Oh, wow. he He thought it was fantastic. so Well, yeah. Yeah.
00:08:07
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I mean, I think it's a near perfect film in general, but one of the best, easily in the top five of perfect horror comedies. Like it just is. I agree. I, you know what? Now I think we need to parse what the top five horror comedies are. Cause that certainly is one of them. Tucker and Dale versus evil has to be up there. Agreed. Agreed.
00:08:31
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I honestly creep show but belongs up there. If, if you want to go so far as to call creep show horror comedy, not everyone does because there's a lot of, of straight horror in it. Yeah. But, uh, well, the Stephen King segment is hilarious. I mean, which is strange because it ends on such a bleak note, but it's well, I mean, maybe it's just Stephen King playing a hick is just funny, but you know, yeah, no, there's, it's actually, it's got aspects of horror comedy to it. So sure. Yeah, I guess. I think that was a movie that was like the movie where I learned that you can't just quote things in movies in front of grandma. Yeah.
00:09:11
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Right. Because the phrase wearing your balls for earrings is not something you should say to your brother in front of grandma. And believe me, when I tell you, I found that out the hard way. yeah i Yeah, I imagine I would have suffered the same fate had I ever made that mistake. Yeah. Okay. All right. So that's three. So let's yeah's say two more. um Honestly, I kind of, well, there is Abbott Costello, Me Frankenstein, which I think most people...
00:09:39
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It wasn't the first horror comedy hybrid, but a lot of people cite that as a sterling example that even movies today are trying to duplicate. See, I would have to watch it again and see if I can separate the nostalgia from it. Because I certainly loved it as a kid, but I also watched WWF wrestling as a kid. And that's not something I would do now unless John Cena is doing something really cool. Right, right, right.
00:10:05
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Now, let me see. Now, some people talk about the Addams Family movies as if they're horror comedies, but I would put those in an entirely separate category. They're adjacent for sure, but I usually lump those in as like fantasy comedies, like because there's ah obviously a fantastical element to some of it. Well, maybe not even with Addams Family.
00:10:27
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Now that I think of it, there's there's no magic in those, right? They're just weird. Well, I mean, thing is whatever he's got going on. That's true. He has a reanimated severed hand. Yeah, I mean, okay it' it seems like Wednesday would be better at killing Pugsley if she really wanted to do it. So maybe there is some sort of protective amulet happening there that we've never seen. True, yeah. Or she's just into the edging aspects of it.
00:10:57
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um Not in that way, but, you know. certainly not. Hey, going to get you right close to the end and, oh, no, you're still alive. Sounds like me and my brother growing up, so whatever.
00:11:12
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Wow, you know what? I'm like blanking on all the horror comedies I like now. Maybe we should just leave it at three. would What would you would would you think? Maybe Scream?
00:11:23
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mean, I know it's... think so. Like, that's that's more wry than laugh out loud funny, but yeah, I mean, that's certainly a contender. i mean, the one I would throw in for sure is Ghostbusters.
00:11:35
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Okay. Well, in Scary Movie, there's the the original Scary Movie is a fine, fine horror comedy. It's been, I saw that in the theater opening night and I have not seen it since. I remember laughing a lot, but I was drunk. So h and I saw it together and I think that I was one of maybe three white people in the theater and that place was raucous, man. Okay. Okay. And that, I think that really helps when you have a super engaged raucous crowd for a movie like that. It's just such a better time than if you got a bunch of somber people or people on their fucking phones. like I can't stand that. no are you kidding me i like go home you're not that important you don't need to be reached at all times i go i go slightly ballistic if i see
AI in Creative Content
00:12:22
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it i try to ignore everybody when i'm in a theater but you know i'm looking around my apartment for clues as to horror comedies that i want to make sure and mention and i don't know how i could forget the cocaine bear
00:12:35
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I think that one that one needs to marinate with me a little bit more. But I will i was amused. I was amused. See, that's the thing. Like with B movies, there's so many B movies that end up being funny and you're not always sure if they meant it. Like Velocipaster, they mean it. Velocipaster means it. Inhuman Witch, definitely self-aware and delay have you seen Inhuman Witch yet? I have not seen Inhuman, which i didn't I've never even heard of it. so oh my god, dude. Dude, i will honestly say i think it is the...
00:13:09
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one of the the greatest just in terms of sitting down and watching it and seeing how much heart it has low budget films of all time. Like you can tell how much they, I mean, but the thing is like, like there are sets that are literally like poster board with a drawing of a, of a control board on it that like, I would bet you this movie was made for about $75, but I just love it.
00:13:34
Speaker
Okay. I'm looking it up now. i want to add it to my, uh, oh my God, that poster. Okay. All right. Yeah, I'm adding it to my Letterboxd watch list. You know, it's one of those things that I haven't actually bought it yet because it was on YouTube for a long time and then I was like, oh, it's not free. And then I said, wait a minute. If anybody deserves my $12.99 for this movie, it is these people. Because it's right up there with ah you know Santa Jaws, which I love. I thought Llamageddon was really good.
00:14:10
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Lava Lantula. Yeah, yeah, both of those are great. Like, hey, I wonder what the Police Academy cast is doing doing now. oh yeah Nothing? Great, get them in here. That's great. No, I'm going to have to i definitely have to look into this.
00:14:28
Speaker
i um I recently downloaded or not, I shouldn't have said that. Can you edit that out? I recently came across a film called um Nano shark It's like inner space, but with they go into somebody's bloodstream to fight a shark. This, a nano, I i mean, nano shark. What else do need to know? That's fantastic. Yeah, I'm going to watch that shit.
00:14:55
Speaker
Well, because there have been so many great, bad shark movies lately. um they're And they'll shock you. Like, Ghost Shark 2 is surprisingly well written. It's like someone dared somebody to make that movie good.
00:15:10
Speaker
Really? Ghost Shark 2? Yeah. Because, you know, the first one has Richard Mole in it. um R.I.P. And, you know, and and it's OK. It's what you think it's going to be. And the cool thing about Ghost Shark is that it'll show up like in a water cooler or a slip and slide, like any place where there's any water at all, the Ghost Shark can appear.
00:15:33
Speaker
oh wow so it's very versatile yeah but then two because the first one is pretty zany and then the sequel is uh i'm like wait this this is ghost shark 2 right i'm i'm looking at the right thing because it was surprisingly like why are you all trying this hard i mean thanks yeah but i'm shocked And I thought it's a Weegee shark is another good one. And that one has one actor in particular, a child actor who is like the Millie Bobby Brown of this movie. Like, okay. World is that child doing in this movie? He's so talented.
00:16:09
Speaker
Right. So, yeah, I mean, everybody gets to start somewhere. I mean, indeed. i Like in right now they could, if they offered me a paycheck, um,
00:16:20
Speaker
and I cashed said paycheck and it actually went through, they could get me to write 10 Ghost Shark movies. I would do it because I'm in the sellout mode or sellout phase of my life right now.
00:16:33
Speaker
um so And I am not ashamed of it whatsoever. Yeah. Well, I mean, you're allowed to write things that you're not passionate about. i used to When I started writing like for money, I was writing SEO. I was writing advertisements and describing wallpaper and shit. Right. Because I wanted to get paid for writing, and that made me feel like a writer.
00:16:53
Speaker
Exactly. so So, you know... Go Shark 3. If you guys want to make it, call me. du I haven't even seen him yet, but I'll do it. Dude, you know who's actually writing super serious now? It's Thunder Levin, who wrote the first four Sharknados.
00:17:10
Speaker
Are you serious? Yeah. yeah Finally. Well, good for him. Yeah, he used to be on Twitter. I used to be on Twitter, so I was aware of him being on Twitter. But um yeah, and last I heard, he was throwing down on a serious screenplay.
00:17:25
Speaker
Nice. Okay, well. Yeah, I'm not on Twitter anymore either. so um He was mad that I asked him if it was his real name. His name is Thunder Levin.
00:17:36
Speaker
Like, yeah, I realize that's kind of an iffy question coming from me, but that that doesn't make Thunder Levin any more believable. I'm just Right. But, you know, sometimes people have amazing names and they just come naturally. Wolfgang Van Halen. yeah exactly. Wolfgang.
00:17:55
Speaker
Where'd you get that name? You know, I sometimes wonder that too, because it's like how, I mean, just it's a simple sounding name, but Stephen King, like you were blessed with that name. Like that just yeah Clive Barker. Those are just great author names.
00:18:13
Speaker
good on your parents for calling you like we could all with I mean you've got a you've got a great unique name I I hate my name I'm always struggling with should I use it or come up with a cool pseudonym but yet and why not like I just don't think my name ever sounds like a writer name which is silly I know but I'm always like ah the the Liske trips people up and and it just doesn't have a ring to it I don't know but you know First of all, problems, I guess. Well, but that's the thing. is it It becomes a writer name because it's synonymous with writing.
00:18:48
Speaker
Sure. now sure there's ah There's a writer who's been on my show and when and we went to undergrad together. So a lot of people, when they hear the name Scott Sigler, they think of a very specific genre and some very specific books. you know Horror and sports together. a lot of science-y stuff. you know It's got...
00:19:08
Speaker
but But when I say Scott Sigler, I mean, it's the guy that is in the house next door, and I'm going to see when the party starts. Like, that's, you know... Right. Like, but what is a writer name to some people is ah that guy name to me.
00:19:21
Speaker
Yeah, no, you got a good point. You got a good point. um But that's just me. Yeah, you know. No, no, I hear all have that stuff about ourselves we don't like. So...
00:19:34
Speaker
I want to get back to zombie fans on that note because, um, in my experience, a lot of zombie fans and horror fans in general, they're people dealing with ah mental health issues, emotional health issues, trauma, uh, anxiety, PTSD, a lot of that. What would you like to say about that?
Horror as a Mental Health Coping Mechanism
00:19:55
Speaker
Um, wow. Yeah. Uh, this is, um, This is actually something I've thought about for most of my adult life, um because as someone who was very undiagnosed for a long time, and also someone obsessed with consuming and creating horror stories um in various mediums,
00:20:23
Speaker
I, you know, it's something I've always wondered about. And I've um not, ah not just in terms of myself, but in terms of everybody that's kind of in the community like that, um you know, and I've read a lot of stuff where, you know, interviews with famous horror filmmakers or um writers and stuff who, I mean, I think it was Stephen King who, and I'll paraphrase because I don't remember the exact quote, but I remember reading an interview where he said,
00:20:52
Speaker
Yeah, I'm I'm pretty mentally unstable and a lot of people have told me I should see a therapist. But instead, I write down all my fears and anxieties and you pay me for them.
00:21:07
Speaker
And I was like, when I read that as a young lad, i was like, that's genius. That's that was what I was like, because I'm I wanted to do that. Like, I wanted to put all my yeah i didn't even know how to explain it back when I was a tween or a teenager. You know, it was a few years.
00:21:27
Speaker
you know And obviously discussions of anxiety disorder and depression aren't as weren't as on the table out in the open as they were as they are now. Because i grew up in the 80s. I was in high school until the early 90s. And we knew about it. i mean, everybody knew what those things were. But nobody really liked...
00:21:48
Speaker
talked about it. um At least, you know, or you just make jokes. um And then once I got... Particularly for men, I think that even now, but even more so back then, men were less encouraged and more judged, I think, for saying that they needed mental help.
00:22:07
Speaker
Oh, sure. she Yeah. You know. Well, and it's one of the things that kept me for a while from even doing anything about it was because i you know, was...
00:22:18
Speaker
indoctrinated or whatever to think, yeah, that's a weakness. And um so I guess for me, the reason I was somewhat drawn to horror and decided I had a ah not only a fondness for writing it, but a knack for it, um, was because I i think I, uh, what would you say, uh, subconsciously knew that I was channeling something, um, whether it was for me or something,
00:22:52
Speaker
you know, i that I saw happen to a family member or a friend and just didn't know how to process it. In my mind, i you know, this is even before I ever put pen to paper or ever picked up a video camera, I made up movies and books in my head.
00:23:09
Speaker
Um, like, and I wish I still had these, but I would fill notebooks with hand-drawn made up posters for made up movies. And I even had made up actors that would star in those movies and they often starred in other ones. And I had made up directors and, um,
00:23:30
Speaker
I would just, if, if I saw something, I didn't quite, you know, I, I'd go home and draw a little movie poster and say, this is the blah, blah, blah, blah. And it stars Ryan Liskey and all his friend, Nathan. And, and we were the actors in them. And and I would just, you know, and then that's what I i so which said in the intro, you know, and sometimes I'd turn them into little comic books and, um,
00:23:55
Speaker
ah So yeah, I guess what i I... So having all that in my... you know That I was already doing throughout my whole life... That when I finally found horror, I just felt a kinship in it. Because there was... It was this sort of like... I don't know what you want to call it... But it was like a box in my head got opened... Where it was like, oh, there's other people that are scared of this stuff too. And they don't know what to make of it either...
00:24:25
Speaker
And I think what they're doing is making up imaginary worlds to deal with that stuff. And i just wanted to be a part of that. So um I think when it comes down to it, I think it's a you know, and it's the old cliche, it's the vicarious roller coaster where you get to experience death and violence and all these horrible things, but it's over in two two hours and you get to go safely back to bed. And just because it's a cliche doesn't mean it's not true.
00:24:58
Speaker
um So, yeah, I think... I'm probably in line with a lot of other horror people that would say the same thing that it's, uh, what do they say that, um, good, uh, art should comfort the, um,
00:25:15
Speaker
Oh, um yeah, it should comfort the afflicted and discomfort the privileged or something. Something. Yeah. Yeah. that I think that's what it is is. I was one of those people that it comforted me years and years before I even knew what was wrong with me.
00:25:34
Speaker
um now Yeah, you hit on something that I really want to tap with a hammer because as a kid, you weren't a horror guy. You liked action and and sci-fi, um which like I find that that there's a strong correlation between kids with certain kinds of autism and sci-fi because sci-fi can be so...
00:25:58
Speaker
like knowledge-based and intricate and there's so many especially something like Star Trek you know if you're one of those people that knows about Star Trek and can tell you like the specs of six or seven different enterprises it's like yeah you know like you need something to do with your mind so you're doing that and I wholly approve of that but but the other part of that is that once you started ah realizing and making ah discoveries about your own mental and emotional health, that's when the horror started really appealing to you.
00:26:31
Speaker
Yeah. And i I love that. Well, I always think of ah Tom Savini was the first person that I had ever heard of who I was aware used horror as a ah coping mechanism because he was in, I guess it would have been Vietnam. Yeah. And, and yeah, and he saw horrible things. And when he came home, he channeled that into art.
00:26:53
Speaker
and yeah And, you know, some people would say that it's not art or whatever, but those people are just straight up wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Pish posh all over that. I mean, like like they say in the Larry Flint trial, like you're describing a matter of taste as opposed to a matter of, you know, what something actually is like the reality, like you don't have to like Dawn of the Dead, but you don't get to say that it's not art because the people who made it made art, you know, you ask them, Hey, what are you doing? I'm making smart. um
00:27:26
Speaker
And that's, you know, that that's why AI shouldn't be making movies because it's not art. Exactly. That's something we talk about here a lot is the the the difference between art and and product, you know, right because they're they're called the humanities for a very specific reason.
00:27:42
Speaker
Right. Yeah. No, I'm with you. um I have very mixed feelings about AI. Yeah.
AI: Tool or Crutch?
00:27:51
Speaker
Obviously, I think like any tool or any technology, it can be used as a tool to a certain degree. Sure. Sure. I've used it a couple of times on some videos, some really stupid videos I made for my YouTube channel. And, yeah.
00:28:10
Speaker
I used it to make it look purposely bad. Like I wanted to make really bad looking AI art. So I just said, well, why not just use the AI to do that?
00:28:22
Speaker
um And everything was mine. I simply used it to a to animate the lips of the people talking because I don't know how to do that. Um, and I had to make my cat talk. So it was like, you know, I'm just going to do that. And I think it turned out funny, like, but it's not something I would do all the time, but you know, I'm like, well, why not? Let's just see what this can do.
00:28:47
Speaker
And, but would I ever do it to make a whole movie or write a whole book? Hell no. Because, I know that what I put into it was my stuff. It just sort of gave me, it just helped me pull that off.
00:29:04
Speaker
um Rather than me feeding a bunch of prompts into it, I specifically tailored it to do something to meet my specs. if that makes sense. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, i think that's a really important distinction is the distinction between generative AI, where you say, Hey, AI, make me something versus I need to use this very specific tool. Sometimes like I have, I'm, what do they call it? Aud HD. So I'm kind of autistic, but also I'm just a scatterbrain.
00:29:37
Speaker
And so if you ask people, Say, say ChatGPT, for example, to organize information on different cultures as it pertains to a specific religion and how that might interface with specific kinds of characters. Like, yeah I can't even get my head around that.
00:29:56
Speaker
Right, right. But if I get... It's kind of like Wikipedia. like I know this isn't a real research source necessarily because it's cause you know it's it's not it's it's a lot of different people saying things and it's hard to know for sure what's right, but...
00:30:16
Speaker
you can, you, you know, you have to double check it. So it's, it's, I see, I actually consider that safer if I get something and I'm like, okay, this probably isn't all right. This is more for ideas than anything else.
00:30:28
Speaker
Yeah, no, I agree. I completely agree. So, cause I do that sometimes with my, my other podcasts. If like I'm in a real hurry, I'm like, okay, could you just take this movie that we're reviewing and,
00:30:44
Speaker
and give me a real quick rundown on the main cast and crew and any awards they might have won, any controversies in their lives. any Can you just put it all together like in a one-page synopsis for me? Because I just don't have the time to do all that. So then I just basically have a cheat sheet that I can read from. And if there's something that strikes me...
00:31:08
Speaker
what do you call it? um Meets my eye. Is that a saying? If I find something that, yeah, if I find something that catches my eye and I'm like, Oh, I want to elaborate on that. Then I'll go and do it myself.
00:31:22
Speaker
But to me, it's just like, it's to me, that's no different than like looking at IMDB and saying, okay, this guy did this and that except in this case, I've got it all on one sheet.
00:31:34
Speaker
So But again, it's not generating anything other than what's already out there. um So yeah, I don't know. I guess that's why I'm saying I have a love-hate relationship with it because if i if I was given the opportunity to flick a switch, I would turn it all off and stop it from ever happening.
00:31:53
Speaker
Yeah, well, and the the environmental impact is another thing. mean, it uses so much energy, so much water, and that's another thing that poor communities are going to pay for. And to me, that's the best reason to use it sparingly, if at all.
00:32:08
Speaker
Yeah, agreed. But honestly, I had to leave a job ah last year because the boss wanted us to use AI for everything.
00:32:19
Speaker
oh And I didn't want to use it at all, but he wanted little movies. And so he got this program. I think it's Google Gemini, but it's like a paid version of it. Okay. Okay. And you just tell it a prompt and it will make a little movie that's like 10 seconds long.
00:32:35
Speaker
And I think you get like five a day or something on the plan we were on. And in all honesty, like three of those five would be pretty entertaining.
00:32:46
Speaker
They'd be. ah Like, I mean, maybe I'm just really good at prompting. I don't know. Some people think it's a skill. um but But I learned a bunch of things about it. Like it AI ah visuals, they don't understand three d okay So I was trying to get a spider to jump through a flaming hoop, but it doesn't understand through. It can only have it jump into a hoop.
00:33:09
Speaker
Ah, okay. Because everything is two-dimensional. So okay I found that interesting, even as I'm like, yeah, this is interesting, like...
00:33:20
Speaker
i like when when kids cut open a ah you know fruit or whatever to explore the insides. It's only interesting because it's like new to me, even though I know it's bad.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah. but oh i know Yeah, same here. I get it. like it's It's so fascinating, especially as a kid that loved science fiction. you know this is this is those aspects of you know when you were a kid and you're like, I wonder what things are going to be like in the future. Well, that's, that's this, you know, we've got her tomorrow.
00:33:56
Speaker
Yeah. We've got phones in our hands that have more computing power than early NASA spacecraft. So it's like, okay, we are kind of there now, but it's in its infancy.
00:34:08
Speaker
And obviously the genie's out of the bottle. It's not going back in I'm realistic enough about that. Um, but yeah, It still bugs me.
00:34:19
Speaker
And then again, I was the most, ah I was so appalled in the early nineties when CGI started working into movies, as much as I thought Jurassic Park looked cool. When Toy Story got announced, I was like, no, absolutely not. computer generation.
00:34:38
Speaker
Jurassic Park used a lot of modeling though. A lot of that stuff was much more old school. Yeah. and And that's kind of why it didn't bother me. But, but then I went and saw Toy Story and I was like, oh my God, that was brilliant. Damn it. Damn it.
00:34:52
Speaker
You made it good. You had to make it good. Didn't you? And now I'm like, okay, whatever. It's a CGI cartoon. I don't care. Like, so are we going to get that flipping about AI in like 20 years? Probably. um Not that that's a good thing, but we probably will. well so The issue that I'm having, i mean, the thing about AI for me is that like, it's fascinating and it's bad for me.
00:35:18
Speaker
Well, I love drugs, so that's not going to be a good argument. That won't keep me away from it because when things are fascinating and also bad for me, i just want them more. so Exactly. It's honestly difficult for me to resist AI.
Balancing Creativity and Mental Health
00:35:33
Speaker
like I have to because it's bad, basically for the same reason I'm not drinking a Mountain Dew Code Red right right now. Right. Because it's so bad that like i don't i would I would be embarrassed to tell people that I was using a ton of AI. Right.
00:35:48
Speaker
Yeah. like No, i I mean, I know it's bad. I'm with you. Like, I love drugs. I love I'm on. Well, I'm on a lot of prescriptions, but I love edibles. I used to be a.
00:36:04
Speaker
you know, I was never an alcoholic, but I was definitely a drunk. And I don't, I haven't, I've pretty much had maybe a teaspoon of alcohol in the last five years.
00:36:16
Speaker
um Well, if you can get all the THC you want, I really don't see the point of alcohol. No, I'm so glad I don't do it anymore. But it's like,
00:36:28
Speaker
There was a time when it's like, i know this is so bad for me and I'm to act stupid, but in rich but in a weird detached way, I'm fascinated by the fact that I do get stupid when I drink it.
00:36:41
Speaker
So I'm going to do it because like you said, it's just like, I know it's bad for me. I know it's wrong, but I'm so fascinated by it. I have to, I have to play with it. I have to. And as creatives, we're always in danger of wanting to make sure that we're interesting.
00:36:59
Speaker
Yeah. Well, yeah. You know, I mean, would you rather be in a, in an asylum or be boring? it's It's a tough call for a lot of people. Like, well, which asylum?
00:37:12
Speaker
Is it one of the nice ones? Because if they have art therapy and good food, yeah, I'll take a couple weeks. Right! To quote the immortal poet poet and sage Billy Joel, I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.
00:37:28
Speaker
Yep, yep. There you go. Is he problematic now? Sorry if he is. i don't um I don't see how he could be. Yeah, I don't know. I know he had an alcohol problem, but. Well, psh, psh, psh, psh.
00:37:42
Speaker
Yeah. No, actually, i think, I think I would probably know if Billy Joel were problematic because I follow Billy Martin and he loves Billy Joel, so. Oh, does he? Okay. Did not know.
00:37:53
Speaker
So I'm sure that I would know. Yeah. Okay. Good. Good. Good job, Billy, for staying out of trouble. So I want to talk about your diagnosis, your mental health diagnosis. Right. um How old were you?
00:38:09
Speaker
oh Let me think. Gosh, um I want to say this was in 95. It was definitely mid ninety s um And it was a very, very, very hard to break out of breakdown. That was a terrible way of describing it. It was a pretty intense breakdown that was in the wake of three other.
00:38:36
Speaker
breakdowns that slowly built in intensity until this one in the mid nineties. I'm pretty sure it was around 95. This was the one that kind of broke me.
00:38:47
Speaker
Um, I've had a few cents that were even worse, but at that time, um, so I must've been 22, maybe 20, somewhere around 22, 23.
00:38:59
Speaker
um So it's all fog now, man. But it was around then I, that was at that time had been the worst, uh, breakdown in my, in my short up to that point life.
00:39:14
Speaker
And this was the one where my mom had to pull me out of bed to get me to do anything. Friends were coming over, trying to get me out of bed, like laying in a dark room in my bed, 24 hours a day.
00:39:29
Speaker
um, for various reasons, it would take, I could do like a whole seven seasons worth of podcasts on what it was like in my head at that point and what was, had led to the breakdown. But, um, that was the point where my mom actually came down, forced me out of bed, forced a phone into my hand and made me call a therapist. Um,
00:39:52
Speaker
And I did. i went in They diagnosed me as, um you know, depression, generalized anxiety disorder, um which I don't even know what it means. But.
00:40:06
Speaker
um And they recommended I get on Paxil or whatever it was at the time, probably Paxil. aye And I was like,
00:40:17
Speaker
I, at that point, had heard nothing but horror stories about psych meds. And everybody, yeah you know, hey, you can get in a car accident and you'll have all your limbs severed and you'll just be laughing. That's how much it takes away the feeling and your personality.
00:40:33
Speaker
um What were these people on? My God. I don't know. Probably pot. Like, are you all on Thorazine? Because you shouldn't be. Yeah. Yeah. I'm like, whatever you guys were on, just tell me because what, what, okay. Anyway, long, I'm getting ahead of myself, but yeah, I, pretty much flat out refused to take the meds.
00:40:56
Speaker
And to this day, that is one of my biggest regrets. My life would have been so much simpler and a lot easier if I had just done it, but I was afraid. I thought, I thought I would start taking them. And my mind was in such a,
00:41:15
Speaker
Part of it was, and this is going to, it's hard to describe these things to people because as someone who has heard other people talk about their mental illness or whatever they've got going on in their brain. And then I hear it and go, well, that's not, that's not that big a deal. Why are you worried about that? You know, that kind of thing.
00:41:35
Speaker
Yeah. Take your own advice, Ryan, because mine was i had gotten to a point where I convinced myself that if I even thought of the word death, I would die. Like I thought I was going to mentally um think myself to death like I was going to will myself.
00:41:54
Speaker
dead. It would make my body shut down. Like I was convinced of this and I would sit in my room all day until I got exhausted and fell asleep. Just repeating the word life, life, life, life life in my head over and over hours upon hours.
00:42:12
Speaker
Um, I couldn't work. I couldn't drive a car. I, because I, if I even let my mind slip once, In thinking the word death, I started to get tingly.
00:42:23
Speaker
I felt my limbs seize up. um My head would just start getting just like electric crackles. And I would i get tunnel vision.
00:42:35
Speaker
And... I was horrified. Like, I was like, I don't know what to do. I can't live the rest of my life like this. I'm only 22 or 23. I don't want to die, but this is the end. This is it.
00:42:47
Speaker
Like, what do I do now? I've somehow cracked some code humans weren't supposed to know. And I'm going to be the one that wills them themselves to death. And it was horrible.
00:43:00
Speaker
And, I don't, to this day, I don't know why i didn't take the medicine, but I think in being that that was the state of my mind at the time, I thought the medicine would unhook my mind even more.
00:43:15
Speaker
Like I would become even more, more detached from my own brain if I took the medicine. And then, So I just didn't. But then after about three months of this, I just basically sat up one day and said, fine, fuck it die.
00:43:33
Speaker
And I didn't. And obviously I'm sitting here talking to you or am I, but yeah, I didn't die.
00:43:44
Speaker
So I was like, okay, I broke it And because I did that, i got it in my head that i don't need help because I broke that.
00:43:58
Speaker
So anytime something bad happens, I just have to train my mind and be strong and, you know, fight it. um and then long story short few years later another breakdown occurred this time i did get on the meds and damn it i wish i'd done it sooner like it changed my life completely sure sure so what that's that That is a really common um conundrum that people get into when they first realize they have ah an official mental health diagnosis because...
00:44:39
Speaker
I mean, I can tell you from my own experience that, yes, the wrong medication will fuck you up. I was... You know, I have bipolar 1, which is a lot. So... And and I was misdiagnosed because...
00:44:56
Speaker
On the day that I went to see the doctor, I was depressed. So he diagnosed me with depression. And so he gave me Welbutrin, which is one of the worst things that you can give to someone with bipolar disorder because it makes them manic.
00:45:10
Speaker
and And it was bad. and Because the thing about depression depression, as you know, it keeps you from getting things done. You you don't function. Mania will blow your life up because mania is where you want to tell everyone what you really think of them because they need to know.
00:45:27
Speaker
And you have a great idea for a project. And if you could just get a few thousand dollars together, you're all going to be rich. Plus, you know what? I think I'd like to move. And I don't know how I actually feel about my partner anymore. Maybe we should talk it out. Or maybe I should have an affair first. I don't even know. So I'm like, that's what mania is. Mania is a whole bunch of bullshit that seems really reasonable suddenly for some reason.
00:45:51
Speaker
And, you know, it it took me a few tries to get on the right medication. They gave me something. I don't even remember what it was, but I woke up one day and thought it was five years earlier and started getting going, getting dressed to go to a job that I didn't have anymore. Oh, wow. Wow.
00:46:07
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. and That happened in front of H. I was already with H at that time, and he found that very scary. and Yeah, that is... Well, and he reminded me of where I worked and what I needed to do when I got there. and i I showed up to work and was there for like an hour, and they were like, you should go home.
00:46:28
Speaker
I'm like, I can't. I'm the store manager. And they're like, no, you're the shift manager. You can go home. like Oh, wow. Sweet. And I remember that I went home and I sent a pizza to my work and they were like, did you mean to send us a pizza? And I was like, yeah, because I went home. Like by that time I had kind of regrounded myself again. they're just like, look, you wackadoo, we don't know what's happening, but thanks for the pizza.
00:46:54
Speaker
Yeah. Well, luckily you had a nice coworkers or whatever.
Substance Avoidance and Upbringing
00:47:00
Speaker
Cause I imagine in some cases that could have gotten and you fired on the spot or just not necessarily fired, but like, uh, um, should we call somebody for you? Like, right. Well, I mean, but that's the thing. If it was an unscrupulous team, they could have cleaned out the safe. I mean, anything could have happened when you have like no, nobody like running things. That's true. Yeah. But no, no good team. Um, so did you feel like, I mean, it sounds like you certainly wish you'd, you'd taken the med sooner, but, uh, what other kind of coping tools did, did you have at your disposal? Uh, well, unfortunately it was very shortly after that, that I, uh,
00:47:49
Speaker
got into drinking because I did not even touch alcohol until I was about 23 or 24. Um, I never got into drugs in high school, never got into alcohol.
00:48:04
Speaker
I smoked cigarettes and that was about the extent of my rebellion. Um, as far as, you know, illegal substances, cause I started smoking before I was 18. Well, for those of you that don't know, 18 is the legal limit in Michigan for cigarettes. Is that the way it is all over the U.S.? i didn't know i would I would guess so. But when I was a kid, they sold cigarettes in machines. So it was oh yeah i'm here not rigidly enforced, i think. Where do you think I got them all? Oh, you know that bowling alley down the street? Yeah, there's a cigarette machine in the lobby. they don't Nobody's standing there. Just go buy a couple packs. All righty.
00:48:41
Speaker
Um, so yeah, then you could buy them with a change in your pocket too. Right. They were like $2 and 50 cents. Um, so yeah, I, uh, I just, I, I don't know for some reason, it's just something in my head as a teenager warned me that you don't want to touch that stuff.
00:49:02
Speaker
Um, and when people described it, it never sounded fun to me. It sounded scary, Like, like to this day, i mean, I've, I've experimented a little bit since then. But I've never touched anything harder than marijuana. Like I, people are ah I've actually had inveterate acid dropping people. What do you call those people? Acid droppers?
00:49:27
Speaker
What do the kids call them? I don't know. They just call me wetness. I, nobody really, I didn't know there was a name for that. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, I've had people that have done acid a lot who have told me point blank, Ryan, do not try acid because they know me so well. They're like, no, you will. You will probably die because you will go so dark, dark and deep into your own whatever abyss you have in the center of your mind and you will not come back. I know you well enough to know it will ruin you. Don't do it.
00:49:59
Speaker
ah So yeah sounds like I don't do it. a Possibility. Yeah. And I don't want to do it. Like i I, have never wanted to do it. I never wanted to touch cocaine or heroin or anything like that. Like I saw a train spotting and I didn't think the first half hour looked fun. Yeah. I was like, no, no, because I know where this is going. And yeah, it looks like they're having a good time, but no, I'm good. Like, I wasn't that guy that was like, oh, but didn't it look so much fun? Yeah, so did Scarface. And then he ends up.
00:50:34
Speaker
you know, bullet riddled in a pile of cocaine. Like I'm not stupid. I know how these movies end. um Yeah, but see all the weed movies end just fine. Exactly. That's why I'm now, i wasn't, big and I don't like smoking marijuana. I just don't. It it hits me too quickly. Edibles are amazing. um once Once I finally discovered edibles, and I'm holding some in my hand right now, I...
00:51:03
Speaker
Was like, where have you been all my life? These are perfect. yeah you yep If you time them right. who I say this as like my most perfect...
00:51:17
Speaker
timing was seeing Oppenheimer in the on the big screen because there was a moment where the music kicked in and my edible kicked in at that exact moment and I turned to my friend and I went holy shit dude I love this movie I timed that perfectly and he was like me too and we were just like so into that movie all of a sudden like I don't even remember the scene but it was something with the look on an actor's face the way the music hit And then they cut to this wide shot of them assembling the...
00:51:50
Speaker
the town and i was just like oh boy i'm in let's do this christopher nolan like wow i love it i love edibles so i'm not nice right now it reminds me of the time i saw natural born killers on acid because there's oh jesus yeah because uh you know i was like i don't know 22 or some stupid thing watching this movie and just as they got to the desert i was like oh my god think We're in the desert. Are there snakes in here? I hear snakes. I'm aware of the snakes. You know, but. Ah, yeah. You're a braver, braver person than I i wouldn't do that.
00:52:28
Speaker
I'll tell you what, man, LSD led me to some life changing decisions. And okay I don't know that I well, it's very weird because like after college, I didn't have any money and I'm kind of fucked up. And so I had to go move back in with my mother, who is my abuser and her husband and, you know, all that shit there. So it was terrible.
00:52:49
Speaker
It was terrible. And I would get out of town whenever I could. And so one time I was not very far, like my parents are in Royal Oak. I was in Saline.
00:53:00
Speaker
So, okay you know, was that like an hour? um And and we had done acid the whole night, me and my buddy Finster. And um the next day i was like, wait a minute.
00:53:13
Speaker
I didn't think about any of that the whole time I was there. Oh, it only matters because I think it matters. Oh, my God. So if I stop thinking that that matters, it doesn't matter. And I don't have to go back. And that's when I went no contact with my family. So that's that's great. See, that is awesome. And and yeah, I've heard a lot of stories of people that psychedelics, you know, help them.
00:53:43
Speaker
And if I knew I could come back from it, I would totally try it. But I'm terrified. Like, actually, that's not I mean, I have I'm imagining in the next couple of years, I probably will eventually try mushrooms because I've got a couple of people that are really good. don't what you call them, but they guide people. Yep, well, that's what they're called. It's a type of doula, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah, definitely a guide. Because, I mean, psilocybin is much less intense. It's like a softer high. But you still want to be very careful when it's your mind. Now, I actually want to touch on something else that you said. Okay. Because I think it speaks to a common problem that we have in the mental health community.
00:54:31
Speaker
And that is you didn't want to take medication at first because you had heard a lot of misinformation. And I'm curious to know, like, ah obviously a doctor can't force someone to take medication, but I really wonder what kind of steps they're taking and what could be done that is more effective.
00:54:52
Speaker
in terms of helping people understand like what the legitimate risks are because of course there are legitimate risks to medication but also like ah a benefits analysis to see like yeah yeah this might give you a runny nose and make you less sexually and make make your sex less intense but also you won't be suicidal you know you gotta like risk Risk benefit analysis that. So yeah do you have any thoughts on that? On like what we could be doing differently? What doctors could be doing differently?
00:55:23
Speaker
Yeah, i don't I don't know that I do because it wasn't really my doctor that the that I had a problem with with that. It was more um was more other cultural input I was getting plus friends um who...
00:55:43
Speaker
i pray um I don't know if it was because I was impressionable or if it was just... I think what it was was I was looking for an excuse not to take it. So rather than listen to my doctor who i or the therapist, who I actually quite liked and did trust, i it was that whole like...
00:56:03
Speaker
One person will tell you the truth, but nine people will tell you the lie. And you're going to go with the nine people for some reason. i don't know if that makes sense, but... No, it does. I just think that... um I would assert, and I don't want to like dictate your experience to you, but I would assert that it's your doctor's job to help you understand the realities of of that. And to...
00:56:31
Speaker
you know and And yeah, people are hard to convince and we trust our buddies more than we trust people we pay. like All of that makes sense. But I mean, at the core of mental health, if if what you're getting out of therapy, whether it's a prescription or a coping tool or some sort of relaxation technique, whatever, if it's not actionable, if if it's not actually going to take place, then you know that kind of blows up the whole thing.
00:56:58
Speaker
Right. So, yeah, I don't know. I mean, that's a very good question. And I guess it's been so long for me that I don't quite remember. i i know it happened and I know the general reason why I didn't take it. But there's so many nuances to that, to to where I was as a person back then, that i could just as easily say i I caught an episode of Saturday Night Live that made me laugh.
00:57:24
Speaker
And I decided i was okay. You know what I mean? Like I was so young and um in in impressionable and um not impressionable, but just so i wasn't a very world weirdly, world, worldly kid. I grew up in a very small town in Grand Rapids or near Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's a lot bigger now, but yeah.
00:57:47
Speaker
you know i I grew up in kind of a... I mean, I went to a secular school, and I certainly had friends that lived in bigger towns that I would visit. So it's not like I had this entirely closed-off life, but I would say at least up until I was 18, it was a pretty insular experience. like We didn't travel a lot to places other than re you know, Mackinac and stuff like, I mean, I wasn't traveling to New York or overseas or anything. It was just, and I, my parents were very conservative and they, you know, didn't put much stock in a lot of things that I, you know what? And I can't even come up with examples for that, but because it's, it's so hard to explain why I was the way I was at the time, but,
00:58:46
Speaker
I don't know. I guess once I just got into college and me and my friends started, we were more on our own then. Cause you know, you, you can wake up on your first day of college and be like, nah, I'm not going to go.
Challenging Conservative Beliefs
00:58:59
Speaker
And you know what? You can do that. Like no one's going to stop you. And, and so it was more like, you know what? Let's not go today. Let's drive to fucking Detroit. Yeah.
00:59:11
Speaker
Why? i don't know. Let's just do it. Okay. And so we started, you know, just us little hit kids from Caledonia just started experiencing the world a bit more.
00:59:21
Speaker
And that's, I don't know. So i guess it's just, I just for so many years growing up in such a small, somewhat contained conservative little world that I believed that the boogeyman's, you know, oh pills are bad. This is bad. Psychiatry is bad. And well, you know, I gotta say i was raised by what sounds like a a similar, um political leaning. you know, both of my parents that I lived with were conservative, a little bit racist, but not, not overt about it, but you know, Northern Michigan racist, um, Oh, yeah. I know all about it. so is Right. And, you know, sort of the appearance of Christianity, but not so you'd notice. Just to be like, yes, look how normal we are. You're all Christians and we're Christians, too. That sort of thing. But but no, like, sincere, like, we're all going to do this because we're Christians and that's what we do. Like, there was that was not part of our our ethos at all.
01:00:30
Speaker
And then, so so I learned a lot of things that... I think there's an underlying attitude to conservative theory that if you don't believe what they believe, you're stupid and naive.
01:00:47
Speaker
Whereas I think on the liberal side that a liberal is more likely to say, if you don't believe what we believe, it's because you're selfish and callous and you lack empathy. um Right. Those those are kind of the two sides. So if you're on the conservative side and you're afraid of being a sucker or an idiot or falling for it.
01:01:07
Speaker
That means that all of your misfortune, you're bringing it on yourself. Anything that's bad that happens to you, it's because you didn't listen and you trusted somebody you shouldn't have trusted. And you wore a face diaper just because Fauci told you to. And, you know, and that's... That's what it turns into. It turns into, i mean, well, you have eyes. You know what we're living with. It's like the people that are still MAGA at this late date, they are so angry.
01:01:35
Speaker
And they are just clinging so hard to things that are obviously false. And then because they didn't have that experience where you get the hell out of your town for a little while and you meet people that grew up thinking things that your parents made fun of. yeah Right. Right.
01:01:53
Speaker
And so, and that's why conservatives think that college is indoctrination because we're not, nobody's making us change our mind. We're realizing that y'all were full of shit.
01:02:04
Speaker
You told us a bunch of fearful garbage that, you know, to like be xenophobic and racist and homophobic. And it, when it turns out that like Rick Santorum was lying the whole time and yeah she trans people weren't the real groomers all along then yeah, kids are going to feel betrayed by that.
01:02:24
Speaker
Yeah. You know, it's like Santa Claus times a million. Like, why did you lie to me like that? I remember like, I think the first time as a teenager, I really had my mind blown.
01:02:37
Speaker
Um, now keep in mind, I was, you know, I was reading a lot at this point, a lot of sci-fi and horror and, I was being exposed to a lot of strange things through the fiction I was reading. I mean, come on, Clive Barker. um You know, when you're 16 and start reading Clive Barker, it's kind of mind blowing because you're like, holy shit. he He doesn't just have gay sex.
01:03:03
Speaker
Uh, there's things in this book, having sex that he can't even describe and he can't even describe the way they are having sex. And I love it. This is awesome. Like, I want more of this.
01:03:15
Speaker
You're kind of like, holy shit. What, what, what were they telling me in Sunday school? That doesn't make any sense. right Like, and so now, but I remember my first girlfriend, her parents were, I guess what back then we called new age, okay um, You know, plate of crystals in the living room. ah the light your shoulders and whatnot. Yeah, literally introduced me to Inya.
01:03:39
Speaker
Like, I'm not kidding. She thanks called me on the phone one day and said, have you ever heard Inya? So yeah, that's how new age, early nineties, her parents were. And her and I were driving home from a date one night and we used to out by my, on the highway by where my parents live, there was this big, huge billboard that said, Jesus Christ is coming soon.
01:04:06
Speaker
And to me, that was just normal. That was like, yeah, yeah, he's coming soon. I get it. We all know that. Right. So I'm driving past this with her and she just looks at this billboard and goes, I fucking hate things like that.
01:04:21
Speaker
And I look, What? What did you just say you hated something that had the words Jesus Christ on it? And that's when she explained to me, like, she's like, yeah, I've never, my parents don't believe in any of this. I don't either. We don't, I've never been to a church.
01:04:40
Speaker
Little old Ryan. Bam. i was like, Oh wow. So there are people out there that really, you know, and That was kind of mind blowing to me as silly as it sounds. Now that was one of those moments I'll never forget because something broke then. Like it took a, cut it took a few more years to fully crumble to pieces, but something cracked in the, in the facade that was my world at that time.
01:05:15
Speaker
And, you know, reading about it in a book is one thing. But then when you meet somebody in the flesh, that's like, no, I don't. I think all of that's garbage. You're just like they're normal. They're not some kind of baby eating satanic drug. Yeah.
01:05:31
Speaker
You know, goat rider or whatever. No, this was just some girl that I took to a movie and we had dinner at McDonald's. Like this wasn't a weird thing. it was just.
01:05:43
Speaker
Yeah. You know, and yep yeah, I got into Enya for a while. So what do you want? ah Well, I won't blame you for the Enya. I have to say my experience with all of that, with religion as a kid, was different.
01:05:57
Speaker
I think because it wasn't instilled in me in any sort of... way that would stick because i remember i had a bible i had an old old king james that had my name on the front of it in gold which you know symbolism please um but when i was a like i really really wanted to believe that there was a god in the sky that loved everybody and was looking down and had a grand plan but i knew it wasn't true Like I couldn't make myself believe it.
01:06:28
Speaker
And man, I tried. I was so jealous of people that because I mean, to hear the hype on it, it was a great way to live. You had community because like I got pitched by that all the time. There were a bunch of Baptists on my street.
01:06:44
Speaker
And they were so like, we'll send a bus to your house and pick you up, but you can go to church. And I'm like, OK. And then my mom was like, oh, no, you're you're not doing that. So and I didn't know why. But like the thing is that, like, I very much felt like my mom was doing it for mean reasons because she didn't want me to go around being with people that were nice to me.
01:07:05
Speaker
Which sure was that was accurate to a point, I'm sure, but also very legitimate reasons to not send a young girl to church with a bunch of people that you don't know by herself. And and I didn't know that then, but but I know it now. so Yeah, absolutely. no then But I will say, one bit of childhood ah hype that I did fall for as a kid was that drugs are bad and only bad people do them.
01:07:32
Speaker
Oh, yeah. ten or eleven and and finding out that the beatles did a lot of drugs And if you well, but the thing is, if you believe that anyone that touches any drugs will end up a bum in an alley penniless and hated within weeks, you know, that that's what happens when people do drugs.
01:08:06
Speaker
And yeah then you hear that the famous most beloved band in the history of music did tons of drugs. Like, yeah oh, so that was all a lie then.
01:08:19
Speaker
So yeah all drugs are probably fine. And I shouldn't listen to anything any of you say about drugs, which which also was not the the best message to take in. No, but, you know, you think you get the balance later. you Well, yeah, that's the thing. I had to figure all that out by myself. And, you know, basically my takeaway from all of that is that it's really sad that we can't get opium anymore like we could in the 90s. That's that's my takeaway.
01:08:46
Speaker
It's like those jackasses must be making it all into heroin or some shit. No, bring back the black stuff. um I get it. Oh, dude, i I convince myself every so often that I would be the new Edgar Allan Poe without the cousin thing if I could get my hands on opium on a regular basis.
01:09:06
Speaker
i But now now I worry that I'm too old for it because my heart is bad. Right. Well, it does get to that. I mean, even I now I'm like, yeah, there's certain things I just don't want to get into because of my age. Like, i kind of wish I'd, you know, been maybe more of an absinthe drinker at one point, but. Why? I don't know. Cause it was sounded cool at the time. and um, but I'll tell you what, I had, when I finally had a glass of absinthe and I did it up with the sugar cube and the fancy slotted spoon and everything, man, I took three sips and I had to go to bed. It knocked me on my ass.
01:09:43
Speaker
I couldn't tell you what the high was like. The high was like, I'm sorry, you guys, I'm going to bed. That's, that's what the high was like. yeah I don't even know if that is a high. Yeah. i yeah I had a very similar experience because we we tracked down a bottle of it and I had a friend who's like oh man I lived in Amsterdam for a year let me help you do this and so we did it all by his book and i remember giggling a lot for about 20 minutes and then being like god I'm tired and
01:10:17
Speaker
The only other thing I remember is I didn't wake up with a hangover, but I didn't see green fairies. I didn't sing Moulin Rouge. I didn't, I didn't write,
01:10:29
Speaker
um I don't know. I was trying to think of a writer that was on opium, but all I could think about was Johnny Depp in From Hell. so and he He wasn't a writer. um So, you know what I mean.
01:10:43
Speaker
Trying to think, what's the play where the guy is yelling at his mother that he's been going to opium dens? Because she asks him why she's, oh, it's the Glass Menagerie. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I've been going to opium dens, mother. It's like, no, you haven't. What?
01:10:59
Speaker
I want to get back on the subject of depression and how that impacts your productivity. Oh,
Impact of Undiagnosed Conditions: ADHD and Autism
01:11:05
Speaker
God. Yeah, this is this is where it gets rough. um Yeah, like I said earlier, that while getting on to...
01:11:15
Speaker
The Paxil or whatever back in the 90s was, by not getting on it, was my one of my biggest regrets. Because um if if my if my mental illness has done anything to me,
01:11:30
Speaker
um it has been robbed my levels of productivity. i To this day, I like to say that I'm about 10 years behind. Because when I got finally got on the meds was about 10 years after I'd first been you know i prescribed them.
01:11:51
Speaker
So that's why I think that mentally, emotionally, and everything, I'm i'm still about 10 years behind from where I should be. Because I lost so much time.
01:12:04
Speaker
um like if you had seen me in high school i was literally writing five short stories a week i'd already written a complete novel by that point uh was writing screenplays for me and my friends to perform um books of poetry which We'll never see the light of day because they're God awful. But I was so prolific. And even in the first year of college, I was just on fire. Like I was ready to go out there, get published, start making movies, doing all this stuff. And immediately or not immediately, but the summer after high school,
01:12:48
Speaker
Bam, it hit and it derailed me for at least a decade is in terms of productivity. And so um once I finally did get diagnosed again, or once I finally did take the meds,
01:13:04
Speaker
I noticed over the course of maybe two or three years, my productivity got a lot better. And, um you know, it's not that I didn't write. It's not that I didn't do stuff. It just was not nearly as prolific as it was And, you know, and believe me, I'm not saying every one of those five stories I wrote a week in high school were worth anything, but it's just the fact that I did it. Oh, yeah. And had the energy to do it and the the mental stamina to do it and the mental clarity.
01:13:34
Speaker
um So, yeah, that that has been a big thing in my life that I would say that mental health, my mental health issues have robbed me of the most would be my productivity vis-a-vis the time.
01:13:50
Speaker
that also stole because if you're going to be productive, you need time. And if you wasted all that time, not being productive, you don't get that time back. And yeah so when you do become more productive, you have less time, you know, so and it fucking stresses you out, which could throw you off your game too. That is so relatable.
01:14:08
Speaker
Yeah. It's, it's, whole I mean, it's, I, I, I don't, I'm not saying I would get teary eyed over it, but if I really wanted to get, you know, some tears going, I could just sit there and think about how many years of my life I wasted.
01:14:24
Speaker
um Because I didn't, I don't know if it's wasted is a good term because once I realized it was an illness, I realized it wasn't my fault necessarily. Right.
01:14:37
Speaker
So I'm not going to sit there and say, oh, I was, cause I was lazy. no man. but I know that's what I felt like at the time, but yeah. Well, yeah. yeah See, ladies that are in Gen X, we never got diagnosed with autism or ADHD. So we went through our entire childhoods, 20s and often 30s as well, thinking that we were lazy and slow and just not trying hard enough.
01:15:01
Speaker
yeah and And I think that that's given me the kind of of anger that that you described. Like, to well, goddammit, that's not fair. You know, because your whole life, you're compared to people...
01:15:17
Speaker
from functional families with true beliefs and mental health. And if they don't have, you know, if they even if they have mental health issues, they get taken to a doctor and people that know about those issues suggest strategies, medications, and like you get the things that you need eventually. And if for whatever reason you're not able to get those things, then yeah, it absolutely feels like lost time. Yeah. Yeah.
01:15:43
Speaker
It's like, wait a minute, you you were not taking me to the doctor and then you were complaining that I read too much. You know, like, oh, you're wasting your life with books. Like, yeah, the books are helping me not want to kill myself, but thanks Yeah, exactly. But but you ah you also have OCD, is that correct?
01:16:01
Speaker
Well... I'm going to be honest. i my I've never been officially diagnosed with that. And i've never I'm not one of those self-diagnosis people because I know that's BS.
01:16:17
Speaker
um I wouldn't go that far. ah Okay, yeah, sorry. I didn't really quite mean it that way. I meant more like... um I'm not going to just read the description of something and go, oh, I do that too.
01:16:32
Speaker
I must be this. Like, i I'm not saying that it's wrong. I'm saying that if I, I would be the type to want to make sure i was that before I ever said I was that. Okay.
01:16:46
Speaker
If that makes any sense. So I apologize if if i if I misspoke there at the beginning. No, no. I get it. I get it. i But I definitely have had a lot of people with OCD tell me that, like, dude, you should get checked for that because you – and like, no. i what No, I'm just i'm just disciplined. you know And they're like, no, you're kind of fucked up. Like, you should – and I've actually had medical professor professionals say that, you know, if you did that, I wouldn't be surprised if you had that. So I'm going to do it.
01:17:21
Speaker
Like I do want to get tested for it. And I'm going to blow your mind. I'm going to blow your mind. Did you do it know, did you know that fucked up is not actually a medical term?
01:17:32
Speaker
It's not even in the DSM-4. I know. And like most of the people I know have it. Everybody has fucked up, but I didn't know It's in there. Yeah. man. Yeah.
01:17:44
Speaker
haven't lied to my whole life. Right? it's It's distressing. um That was the first thing the doctor said to my mom when he pulled me out. He's like, right your boy's got a serious case of the fucked up.
01:17:56
Speaker
And then he hit me and I cried. it was terrible. Yeah, they do that. It's trauma, man. and um So you are a YouTube creator.
Creative Ventures on YouTube
01:18:05
Speaker
Yeah. what What do we need to know about that?
01:18:07
Speaker
guy No, i um this is something that's kind of been new. I've been doing podcasting for a while, and um I just hadn't you know hadn't really ever thought of doing anything on YouTube, even though, like as you read in my intro, growing up, i um you know I staged plays. I did haunted houses. We shot home movies. we I used to make fake radio shows. I've been on...
01:18:37
Speaker
local independent radio. I had a, I produced and starred in a public access television show in the early 2000s. So one day I was sitting there going, why And I was saying this to a friend. I'm like, i know we're doing the podcast, but why are we not doing stuff on YouTube? Like if this had been there when we were in high school, we would have owned this platform. Like this is what we were doing. Right.
01:19:02
Speaker
We just didn't have any place to show it other than public access or at friends' parties, you know? And yep so I said, you know what I'm going to do is I'm just going to start fucking around and making stupid videos.
01:19:16
Speaker
And I say stupid as a very, very... sincere term of endearment because I love stupid. I love idiocy. I love absurdity and silliness. So I basically started making these silly guessing games.
01:19:33
Speaker
Like I'll show you 100 movie or 100 shots from movies featuring people standing in front of bridges. And you have six seconds to guess the name of the movie. And cause there's like thousands of those out there. And i'm like, well, I could make these.
01:19:50
Speaker
You know, why not? And so I started making those. I started making me and my nephew do videos. Um, where you know Because I'm introducing him to all these movies with his parents' permission, of course. And we do little videos. And I've got this other podcast coming out I'm doing. And um I'm just like, I just need to start making stuff. Even if it doesn't serve any purpose other than occupy my time.
01:20:21
Speaker
and make me happy, then I don't care. um but it seems to be catching on. Um, I've only been at it for a couple months, but every day my subscriber count is growing. So, nice um, nice I'm just going to keep making shit. Like I've got a little short film. I just shot with my cat fighting a wind up zombie toy.
01:20:42
Speaker
And, um, Yeah, it's just fun for me to do because I'm ah I'm working on another book right now. I do have a ah day, a couple of day jobs. And I'm also just was like, screw it, I'm going to be a content creator. In fact, it's you who got me over my aversion to that word. and Because you one day made a post about, you know what, I do create content. And I was like, God damn it, Wednesday's right. I need to stop being so elitist about this term. um
01:21:15
Speaker
So, and I think one of your short story collections...
Identity and Political Discourse
01:21:19
Speaker
yep Is like content created by Wednesday. Yeah, I've got that. yep I can't see it from here, but I i do have that. oh that's That's my first collection, actually. Creepy, stabby, and mentally odd.
01:21:29
Speaker
Yes, stabby. I love that word. Well, because ah the phrase mentally odd is something that I actually thought of way back. I talked about it on LiveJournal, so probably 20 years ago, if not more. And I said, I'm going to tuck that phrase away and do something with it later. And then I put it on that book and people commented on it. I started using it in my, eyes I said mentally odd in some of my social media profiles.
01:21:58
Speaker
Yeah. and And MAGA boys really zeroed in on it as a thing to insult me about. And I was just like, you you think you're insulting me by repeating the thing I said about myself? like what Yeah. what I do not get that mentality. It's like, no, I put that there as a warning to not say that to me.
01:22:17
Speaker
No, please don't point out that I'm fat. I'll be so upset if I don't think I'm a size eight. Like what? Well, yeah. And I had somebody one time, like, I'm not trying to compare myself to anybody else who's been bullied, but one time somebody was like, yeah, well, dude, you have cats.
01:22:33
Speaker
And I was like, brilliant deduction. I only have 90 pictures of them on my Facebook page. And um yeah it's like, Willie, that's all you got? Is that I have cats? Well, what kind of fucking sociopath thinks that's an insult? Well, i think what it was was because I was bitching about Trump.
01:22:54
Speaker
um Spoiler alert, I don't like him. No! I know fucked up. um So I was bitching about Trump and this guy was going on about, well, my kids and this and that, and I got to protect the children. And I was like, yeah, but look, you're doing this or that, you know, this isn't going to help your kid. He's like, well, yeah, well you only have cats or something like that. And I was like,
01:23:19
Speaker
What? like I know. I'm not saying I'm a parent. I'm saying that what you're saying has nothing to do with parenting. and And it was just, it was stupid. And that's why I don't get involved in political discourse anymore online. But, but you know, that's a MAGA thing that they say, that the assumption is that if it doesn't,
01:23:41
Speaker
relate to you personally then you must not care because that's what a maga boy would do yeah that doesn't impact me or anyone that i am directly related to so i don't care yeah no that's also why they don't like cats because cats don't kiss your ass they only want things they can control so yeah they want a dog that they're mean to not a not a cat who is independent exactly that's why i'm just the fuck out of you if they don't like you Yep. Because a cat does not um a cat does not want your approval is the thing about that. Your attention maybe, but not your approval. Exactly. right
01:24:18
Speaker
I said, I was joking the other day to somebody that, uh, cause i was recording an episode of my podcast with somebody. And I said, i said, yeah, I'm that's me. I'm a childless cat daddy. I'm the second most hated person by JD or the second most hated demographic by JD Vance. Um, And I said, the only thing that make would make me make him hate me more is if I had tits because, or no, a uterus. I don't remember. But we were making fun of J.D. Vance is what I'm getting at. And I'm like, yeah, i I realize how much he hates childless cat women.
01:24:53
Speaker
What must he think of us childless cat guys? Like, God, we're so not, we're not manly enough. And we we we we haven't put our sperm to good use, I guess. Mm-hmm. sorry sounds like you and i should split a bottle of blue hair dye just to make sure extra extra offensive so what your your new podcast is the where you watch uh it's a movie recommendation and then you discuss the movie with the person that suggested it to you yes so how's that good i write did i write that in the thing i sent you
01:25:33
Speaker
Yeah, that's how I found out. Oh, okay. Because I was also going to actually ask you at some point to be on that show. So I didn't know. was like, did I already see? Well, you've got to fucking watch Inhuman, Mitch, dude. We got to talk about Inhuman, Mitch.
01:25:49
Speaker
Yeah, well, we'll get to
New Podcast: Thrill Me
01:25:51
Speaker
that in a second. But um yeah, um so I have been doing a podcast with my friend Rick called The Unidentified Flying Podcast. We've been doing that for a couple years. We're slowly, very slowly, much too slowly for my liking, working our way our way through the science fiction films of the nineteen fifty s year by year title by title we do occasionally lump some of them together for double features because a lot of them are if not repetitive as hell are very short um but we're so far we're we're about halfway through 1952 and we've got more episodes of that coming on but oh isn't them 1952
01:26:32
Speaker
No, them is 54, I believe. Crap. Next year, 1953 is the year where the decade really kicks off. Like, that's the one pretty much every movie, barring a couple that are now considered classics of that era. Yeah.
01:26:52
Speaker
53 is when it really kicks in. You got a couple before that, but 53, it's like, oh boy we're going. 52 kind of sucks, but we're getting there. We're getting there. um But I was, i being this person that just wants to constantly be creating stuff, decided to do my own podcast called thrill me.
01:27:16
Speaker
And yeah, like you said, I, I reach out to people of all different walks of life and, or people of all different types. It's a sort of star Trek podcast,
01:27:27
Speaker
infinite diversity, infinite combinations thing that I'm really into. And I, they have, the only prerequisite is it has, you know, has to be a movie I haven't seen. I'm not going to what, you know, I'm not going to critique something I've already seen. So people, I'm right now I'm in the process of editing the episodes. I wanted to have about three in the can and, for my day one launch. And then there'll be some more following that. And we're also doing a side sort of side quest on that one with the occasional special episode, but more on that to come because I haven't quite finalized the details, but yeah, that'll be called, that's called thrill me. And I'm hoping to launch it the first week of March.
01:28:17
Speaker
Okay. um And that'll be produced through my cinema milkshake, uh, label, or I don't know what you call it. Cinema milkshake studio. I don't know what I have.
01:28:28
Speaker
Um, but that's, it's, it's basically just, uh, You know, it's a podcast that's more about the guests than it is about me. And it's it's sort of an experiment in seeing how movies are a great way to teach empathy to people. Because yeah you're not only seeing, it's not just the movie itself that can teach you empathy, but listening to what that movie makes someone else feel or think. Yeah.
01:28:57
Speaker
can take, can be a good source of, or a good teaching tool for empathy. And that's why I wanted these people to kind of come in and not so much defend the movie to me, but sell it to me. Tell me what it is you, or even if it's a movie you hate that you wanted me to watch so that we could hate it together, or it's a movie you're not quite sure of and you wanted somebody else to see it and that might help you decide,
01:29:25
Speaker
what you think about it. That's the whole concept is I want to know why you liked it, why you hated it or why you weren't sure about it. And what, what can a conversation about that bring to both of us? And I've actually had it where movies that I was a little lukewarm on by the end of the interview I had warmed up to a lot more because they sort of convinced me that like, okay, seeing it through your eyes, I actually think this is better than I thought it was then. yeah So, yeah and in some cases it's the opposite. I'm like, no, I kind of think this movie sucks more now, but i'm but it's also like you, it's not a gotcha podcast. It's not, I'm not there to make fun of anybody. It, I definitely,
01:30:18
Speaker
I want people to love what they love unabashedly and I want to have fun with it. So it isn't, you know, ah a show where you're going to come on and I'm going to take pot shots at you and your taste in movies. It's because I'm no one to talk.
01:30:35
Speaker
um Oh, I love a whole bunch of trash. i they got and I love trash, period. yeah yeah Caligula is one of my favorite movies of all time, and I'm not saying that ironically. No, I will fight anybody who talks trash about any Malcolm McDowell movie. I don't care if it's Island of the Dead. I will throw down for Malcolm McDowell.
01:30:55
Speaker
Yeah. i Okay. now I agree. Yeah, no. Caligula is a trash masterpiece. oh yeah I don't care what anybody says. Now, I want to talk a little bit about your book, which is called Fiction.
01:31:08
Speaker
And I first want to point out how ballsy it is to give a book that title. Why not just call it Book? that's Well, yeah i've been I've been asked that a lot, and I've actually had a few reviewers that, even though they liked it, they did poke fun of that title. But um that is actually that book came from a screenplay I wrote in my late twenty s that was turned into a movie, but the movie never got finished.
01:31:38
Speaker
Um, it was all shot. It's just never been finished and it never will be. And that's a whole nother story. But several years later, I decided to turn it into a novel and I went back to the original source, you know, I E my, my untouched draft of the script, um,
01:31:57
Speaker
I did not want to use any of the movie we shot because I didn't want to use anybody else's ad libs or anything that wasn't mine. I didn't, which happens on a movie. um I didn't want any of that in the book. This had to go back to me.
01:32:12
Speaker
Because I didn't want to steal anybody else's stuff. Because I had actors who were brilliant ad-libbers. And you know every day the cast and crew would come up with something some cooler idea than I had. And I didn't want to steal anybody else's stuff. So I went back to my original.
01:32:32
Speaker
Anyway, the reason I call it fiction, I don't want to spoil it. But I have had a number of people that by the time that they get to the end of the book... They're like, oh, I know why you called it that. Okay. All right. There is a reason why it's called that. And some people don't see it right away, but most people that have read it have said, okay, yeah, no, that's a perfect title for that. So while it does seem generic, it's 100% intentional. Okay. And so unfortunately that book is out of print and i am in the process of
01:33:10
Speaker
I was trying to find another publisher for a while, but nobody will touch reprints. um Oh, dude, I just signed my first three books with Barnstormer Publishing. Really? Yeah, they're all reprints.
01:33:23
Speaker
Yeah, because I wanted new paperback editions. So we'll we'll talk about that afterwards. Yeah, okay. I got you. I didn't know that because I was going to just start. Okay.
01:33:34
Speaker
Yeah, all right. Yeah, I want to talk to you about that. Yeah, definitely. Because, yeah, I wanted i want it to
Writing Challenges and COVID
01:33:40
Speaker
get back out there. And um I'm definitely proud of it. ah I sometimes go back and read passages from it. I'm like, who wrote this? Like, even though it was only a few years ago, I'm like,
01:33:54
Speaker
wow, how did I do this? sentence them You know what I mean? You get that feeling like, how did I sit down and write this? But ah especially, I mean, yeah, i I feel that because in between writing of my first couple of of long form books, I found out that I have autism and ADHD. So I felt much more comfortable giving myself permission to write short stories instead.
01:34:20
Speaker
And now the idea of writing a whole ass novel is super daunting. I can't even finish my savior trilogy. You know, my third book, Don Jr. went to all the trouble of becoming the president's son again.
01:34:33
Speaker
And I cannot manage to finish my book about the president's son trilogy because the first two were, you know, done and out and everything. But yeah. Yeah, because the... I read them and enjoyed them. Well, I mean, I think the the first book is is just wonderful. It's so sincere. Saved the President's Son is just like... i I thought about it for years and kept talking myself out of writing it.
01:34:57
Speaker
And so I really wanted to explain why I felt the way that I did. Because I really have always genuinely liked Don Jr. until... until MAGA, but when it started, you know, I was sure it was fake. Well, you read it. I was sure it was fake. i had it It had to be fake. How good it how how could it not be? Right.
01:35:16
Speaker
And so I explained to the world why I thought he was really a decent guy and that it was kind of a secret now because of, you know, blah, blah, blah with the family. And I i felt really good about it and I published it and it came out and I was proud of it. And I told everyone. And two months later, he fucking led a seditious attack on the Capitol.
01:35:36
Speaker
Right. I remember you posting about that. So, yeah, i know I feel silly. And then I had to write another book. But then it was like 2022. And that was when I got sick. That was I got COVID and it knocked my heart off its rhythm. So I was sick, like in bed sick, basically for like six or eight months. And yeah so I was working on that book. It was like the only thing I could do. But then after a while, I couldn't even sit up straight. And I totally just thought I was like dying or whatever. So I didn't really do anything about it. Plus, you know, we're poor. You can't just go to the hospital just because you think you might be dying. um Right. Because you never take yourself out of that financially. My God, look at what just happened to James Van Der Beek. so Right, yeah. No, it's a nightmare. so So yeah, so I didn't really do anything about it. So I thought that I was like consumed with sadness and hatred. But in fact, I was not angry. I was unhealthy. Like I was sick physically. So so that the second book is...
01:36:37
Speaker
It's real, real mad. It's it's a very angry book. But it has some great characters in it. Like the ladies. I don't know if if you know this. But, you know, fishnets and scones are two chicks I went to undergrad with. And they are wonderful people. And they're in the third book.
01:36:54
Speaker
Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah. So, so yeah, so I am really trying to finish the third book, but every time I start writing about politics, the actual politics gets so crazy. and I'm like thinking and thinking like, how do I outdo this? How do I spoof this? How do I parody it? And finally i said, you know what?
01:37:15
Speaker
I'm just going to put aliens in this book. And as long as aliens do not come to earth and take over, I won't have to change the book again. And I will be God damned if I did not wake up that Saturday to president Trump telling people that he saw aliens and that they see them to shoot them out of the sky.
01:37:32
Speaker
Oh, OK, wait a minute. I missed this. Wait, he said that was a while ago. Yeah, it was some somebody saw lights or something. And Trump was like, well, I guess you better shoot him out of the sky. And all these MAGA boys were like, OK, getting their guns and going out. It was ridiculous.
01:37:48
Speaker
And then they figured out that it wasn't actually aliens. And right. You know, I think I'm eating Epstein files. I don't know. But yeah, I didn't know. Wow.
01:37:58
Speaker
Like, I don't, I, I think i posted about this the other day on my Facebook because I used to be quite a bit more outspoken about this stuff, but um I decided for my own, mostly for my own personal sanity to really scale that back um this year.
01:38:17
Speaker
And actually last year was when I started to scale it back, but. Best thing for you, really. Yeah, but I mean, I still keep tabs on the news, but, you know, yeah you know, and that's what I posted about was that, you know, my head's not in the sand. But I swear to God, I had no idea he told people to shoot UFOs. I missed that completely. And that's the one headline I wanted. I would have wanted to have seen. right Like, what? Like, are you kidding me? You know, it's funny. I think Colin Jost, and this would have been probably 10 years ago at this point when he was doing Update.
01:38:56
Speaker
Trump had just been like subtly implying that someone's death, not Epstein, but someone else, that their death was like foul play. And he was like, you know, normally president accuses man of murder would be like a big headline. But now it's just kind of this, oh, wacky Trump saying things. What ah what a troll. LOL. You know, like, I know. It's so it's so bizarre. It is it is surreal. It is positively surreal.
01:39:29
Speaker
I can't get over it half the time. mean, like the director of health and human services just explained to us that he doesn't fear germs because he used to do cocaine off toilet seats.
01:39:39
Speaker
I know. Which, if normally if somebody said that to me, I would be like, okay, that's cool, man. Cool. that's But that's the same guy who says that people who buy soda and chips don't deserve health care because they're making unhealthy life choices.
01:39:54
Speaker
Like I'm saying, if this is some dude I ran into at the bar... Right. Or exactly that I worked with said that I'd be like, Right on, man. but Not the guy that's in church. Oh, Jesus Christ. Yep. Yeah, it's it's so fucking surreal. I don't... Me and my brother, because my brother's got two kids, and we're often talking about, like, how the hell are you going explain all this to him when he gets older? Because they're doing a pretty good job of shielding him from the worst of it. Well, as long as you can tell them that you were on the right side.
01:40:28
Speaker
Oh, for sure. You did the right thing. I mean, I already told him that if I ever catch him even whispering the name Andrew Tate, I will disown him as my uncle. And his father then goes, yeah, and I will no longer be your father.
01:40:45
Speaker
excuse like and He's like, no, i I'm like, no, no man is fair. None of it. um we raised you better, even though I didn't raise him, but God damn it. I have some stake in it. I'm making them watch Friday the 13th movies in order. Well, sound like the fun uncle for sure. Oh, I'm yeah. They called me up. um This was about a year ago. And my brother was like, so asking about horror movies and we figure you might be the best person to, so do you want to start coming over and you showing them some horror movies? And I'm like,
01:41:21
Speaker
I've been waiting for this phone call for so long. Right. It's like that friend from college. Yeah. I have like every once in a while I'll hear from somebody and and that's, that's basically the conversation. My kid is such and such an age. What's safe to show them?
01:41:35
Speaker
Yeah. Like they really liked Coraline and, ah you know, Frank and weenie. What do I show them next? Like, yeah. Sit down my friend and I shall tell you a tale. Oh my God. Yeah. Norman is so great.
01:41:50
Speaker
I love Perry Norman. And it's it's so fun now because tv like movies for kids are so much better than they were. like We had Disney movies, which were like, you know, they're pretty good, but yeah not not great messages, particularly for girls. Because in the majority of Disney stories back in the day, the girl stories end with a wedding. And the boy stories, except Pinocchio, they they generally end up king. so Yeah.
01:42:19
Speaker
that's agree That is not a great message, but we are actually getting toward the end of our time. So I want to make sure that that we covered everything that you want to cover. Did we miss anything that you want to tell people about?
01:42:33
Speaker
mean... i mean Not really. I mean, I'm more concerned that if you, did you get to everything you wanted to do? Oh, totally. Yeah. I'm not used to being a guest on these. I'm usually hosting. So I think I talk too much because I'm the one who's used to having to fill in all the gaps. Um, But, oh um, yeah, want make sure you got everything, but if not, then, um, yeah, I basically, um I'm out there.
Online Presence and Future Projects
01:43:01
Speaker
Um, I, you know, semi-private, but I also enjoy entertaining people. So I don't mind making new friends and acquaintances and, yeah.
01:43:12
Speaker
If you want to find me, I'm pretty easy to find ah in terms of my work. um And that's just to Cinema Milkshake. And you can find if you just type that into Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, Blue Sky Letterboxd.
01:43:34
Speaker
You can find me on there. right Or a link tree. I don't. but ah But I'm going to because you suggested it in the email. You sent me to prepare for this podcast. So I will have one of those. And I am worried. I just... Okay, yeah. And just...
01:43:50
Speaker
okay yeah and i did just um I just bought my domain. So I will, I am in the process of working on a, a actual fancy website. And, but any of those places you should be able to go and find links to my podcasts, my video, my YouTube channel. And eventually when my book comes out again and some of the short stories and the novella I'm working on right now,
01:44:18
Speaker
um all that nonsense um so i guess if you are interested in any of my silliness um i can promise it's entertaining promise all you actually left something out the podcast that you do with your partner um he's sexy i i think that's that's something people people deserve to know um so yeah just throwing that out there what what partner rick Oh, Rick. Yeah. Sexy.
01:44:51
Speaker
He's, he's a hottie. you You didn't have to agree with me. I was just pointing it out. I don't. You neglected to mention it. So, you know, you're right. But, but the reason I didn't mention it is because it's through cinema milkshake now. So, um, but yeah, if you want to listen to, if you're a fifties science fiction fan or just someone who's into classic era films in general, um,
01:45:18
Speaker
I can't promise that it's as academic as TCM, but we'll, we'll do our best to make you laugh. Um, it's called the unidentified flying podcast. And that is also available on blue. You can find that on blue sky letterboxd. And, uh, what's the other one I said earlier, uh, uh, Instagram.
01:45:40
Speaker
So yeah, all that stuff's out there. um And come join me as i do my best to um assuage some of the darkness in our lives with absolute frivolous entertainment and guessing games and assorted kitty cat nonsense.
01:46:02
Speaker
Well then, that we also like to give guests a chance to ask me a question if they have one. So if you do, now is the time. Okay. ah um God damn it.
01:46:15
Speaker
yeah I came on, I was like, I'm so used to being, ah to hosting these and asking the questions that I was like, you know, ah this is fun. I can just not think. Right. Just answer. But now I've got to think of a question. um Well, no, you don't have to.
01:46:33
Speaker
I mean, I'm not i that' that interesting, you know? No, I think you're pretty interesting. But it see, all the questions you... Because you years ago, you did an interview for me for my now defunct blog where I was doing interviews with people about their reading habits. Yep, yep. And I feel like all the interesting stuff we talked about on there...
01:46:53
Speaker
um Tell me what you really think about the made-for-TV film Bates Motel. That's what I really want to know, because I know you're a big Psycho fan.
01:47:03
Speaker
um Is that canon? No, no, no, it is not. Okay. I'm serious, though. I did want to know this. but No, um because it's ah it's an 80s movie, Bates Motel, ah you know with ah Bud Court and Lori Petty. R.I.P. Bud Court. Miss you, buddy. Yeah, um I know.
01:47:25
Speaker
But no, ah because it starts at at the open. Norman is is dead. And what is canon? What is canon is Psycho 4, the McGarris movie that was made for Showtime. And Norman is very much alive in that. So, so no, so it is not canon. But that said, I am in favor of those who respectfully want to add to the Psycho mythos.
01:47:52
Speaker
um okay I did not feel that that's what was happening in this case. I felt like someone owned the rights to the property and wanted to make a series of it. So they stitched some shit together and got some good actors. And, you know, the pilot did not work. It did not become a series. um Oh, it was a pilot.
01:48:11
Speaker
Yeah. I did not know that. I've seen it. I saw, I watched it the night it debuted. My parents, I was so excited and my parents let me watch it. And I remember being so bored.
01:48:21
Speaker
Like, I mean, I was a kid, mind you, but I remember being like, where's Norman Bates? Where are the stabby people? Where where's anything happening? And I haven't seen it since. So that's why I was interested, because um I didn't know it was a pilot. Wow. OK.
01:48:39
Speaker
Yeah, there's actually a single DVD that has all of the sequels. It's 2, 3, 4, and that pilot. And the premise, that the really the thing that's that's the most wrong with it is that it introduced supernatural elements.
01:48:56
Speaker
Because the focus of it was supposed to be that different people were going to come to the hotel and some would end up in the house for some reason. and all these crazy supernatural things were going to happen. And even as a kid, I was like, I'm not allowed to say this is bullshit, but this is very good. And I don't like it. No, I get it. i get it. I remember having a similar reaction to that Friday, the 13th show. Yep. Like, I'm like, wait a minute.
01:49:26
Speaker
Where's Jason? Does he work at this antique store? like is he Does Jason sell them the the evil lamps? And I'll tell you what, the thing about that show being such a crashing disappointment is that when HBO started Tales from the Crypt not long after, we were so thirsty for it.
01:49:46
Speaker
you know And it just hit that spot so well. Because Tales i yeah from the Crypt, like I'm mad that it's not on HBO streaming. like that' That is bullshit. That you can't stream it.
01:49:58
Speaker
cause And I'm sure it's just like a rights nightmare, but there are so many episodes that are just... like they're They're classic television in and of themselves as individual episodes. Oh, absolutely. so i mean, we could do a whole episode just talking about Tales from the Crypt episodes. No question. Let's do it. No, I'm just kidding. All right. Well, we can't though, because it's time for the Madlib.
01:50:19
Speaker
but a little boatot Okay. All right. So, you know what? we're I haven't done one of these in decades. All right. well Get ready for it. Let's see. One, two, three, four, five, six. Looks like seven nouns. And those are going to be singular nouns.
01:50:37
Speaker
Okay.
01:50:40
Speaker
I've got to come up with seven nouns. Yeah, you do. And you got to tell me so I could write them down in the Madlib book. Pliers. It's my first one. Okay. um oh it's an Oh, this counts. Sour cream. Okay. Alright. Yep. Yep. um Acorn.
01:51:05
Speaker
Uh-huh. Go right ahead. just looking around my desk. Yeah, that's what happens. um um Toilet paper. I ran out a Kleenex.
01:51:16
Speaker
That's none of my business. I need one, two three, four more. Four more. Yeah. No, I've got four here too. Okay. Well, let's have
01:51:27
Speaker
Vaseline. But I promise you it's ah it's a um chapstick. It's a song. Vaseline. Flaming lips, man.
01:51:39
Speaker
um Let me see here. Cat. I would say sleeping cat, but you probably just want the cat. No adjectives. Noun. Two more nouns. Oh, yeah. You did say no adjectives. um A copy of Let's Go Play at the Adamses?
01:51:54
Speaker
No. um One word, Jump. Come on. You know what a noun is. I do. Hard drive. And one more. Yep.
01:52:06
Speaker
You're going to get a word that is... Skull. Alright, actually need one, two plural nouns.
01:52:20
Speaker
Plural nouns. Didn't I? I gave you one. Well, I need two more. Okay, you need two more. So you need edibles. That's a plural.
01:52:31
Speaker
And you need um... Damn it. Um... Socks. Alright, I need an adjective.
01:52:42
Speaker
An adjective. You're going to get... um Jesus, I had a good one and it just slipped my mind. um Cozy.
01:52:55
Speaker
All right, I actually need two more adjectives. Two more adjectives, damn. Okay. Blurry. And...
01:53:03
Speaker
ah yeah blurry
01:53:07
Speaker
and
01:53:12
Speaker
Uh, that's not an adjective. Shit. Um... Fiery. All right, I need a verb. Holy shit.
01:53:23
Speaker
Um... Jog. And a place? Actually, two places. Two places? Mm-hmm. Give me the first place. Shower?
01:53:34
Speaker
is that... Or do you want, like, a proper... Like, a city place? Any place. Any place. Okay, shower... And then, um street corner.
01:53:48
Speaker
And finally, I need a last name. Now, usually that's the guest, but I'm not going to hold you to that. No, do it. Liskey. Okay. Okay. Here we go. So this is called a League of Their Own. And we are on the sporty section of the Madlib book.
01:54:06
Speaker
So here go. Did you know that there used to be a professional baseball pliers for women? It was called the All Cozy Girls Baseball League.
01:54:17
Speaker
When America entered Sour Cream War most of the men went off to jog. Which we would. yes in order to keep professional baseball blurry some team owners decided to make an acorn for women some some team names were the shower daisies the street corner bells and the rockford edibles These toilet paper breaking women inspired a movie called Vaseline of their own, which star which starred Tom Leesky and won two Golden Cat Awards.
01:55:01
Speaker
The fiery players were all inducted into the baseball hard drive of fame and have become an inspiration to socks everywhere. It goes to show you that you can accomplish anything if you set your skull to it.
01:55:18
Speaker
Now that I like. That should be on a bumper sticker. Yeah, you can't do that with AI. Well, you can, but you shouldn't. Yeah. But, oh my god, how did my ad lib have end up having so much sexual and and youd win innuendo? Oh my god. oh We used to do these these at parties. These were like the quintessential Wednesdays party thing. And my god, they were so foul. And every once in a while, a kid would come over and be like, oh, Mad Libs, can I look? Like, no, no, no, no.
01:55:44
Speaker
Every conceivable drug, violent, and sexual activity is within the those Mad Lib pages. Don't go near it. Yeah, we we did something similar. We had a little, ah this was when I was in 10th grade and we me and my friends had like this, you know, like a stand by me where they've got that, i think it's a tree house, but ours was more on the ground, but we had an an issue of penthouse letters stashed away.
01:56:10
Speaker
And we would do Mad Libs using words found in penthouse letters. And we would, so whatever we thought were the best sentences from each, we wrote in black marker on the walls of the tree house. It was, Oh my gosh. Oh, good times, man. But seriously, an inspiration to socks.
01:56:29
Speaker
Oh, well, do you know what guys do with socks? yes Yes, I do. i had, buts um, um, I had brothers and I did laundry. So yes, I am aware of these things. um Dude, I am so glad you could be here.
01:56:45
Speaker
it Oh, me too. Wonderful having you. And this was a great conversation. So I hope people got a lot out of it. um I know I did. i i yeah yeah I don't know if you heard we shut down the magazine so we are no longer sponsored by sometimes hilarious horror so if if you want to support the podcast the best way to do that is on coffee um and yeah that's where we are we'll have links in the description and we will also see everybody next week so thanks everyone