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#57-The Daily Show - Transforming Death, Controversy at Morey's Pier, and Modern Architectural Wonders
Imagine a burial practice that not only memorializes your loved ones but also positively contributes to the environment. Curious, aren't you? This episode will leave you in awe as we unpack the workings of Capsula Mundi, an eco-friendly burial capsule that transforms death into a source of life for a tree. As we mourn the tragic loss of actor Matthew Perry, we explore the capsule's role in commemorating loved ones while shedding light on the importance of mental health.
We then take you on a trip to Maryland, contrasting two iconic boardwalks and their unique attractions. Here we delve into the contentious debate on whether video poker redemption games, like those at the newly renovated Morey's Pier, are genuinely skill-based or merely rely on luck. Shifting gears, we marvel at the architectural wonder that is the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum and the idea of ValoSwim? With advanced technology and sustainability at its core, these structures are a testament to modern design excellence. Tune in, for this conversation is brimming with fascinating insights and thought-provoking discussions.
to the LBX Daily Show, brought to you by the LBX Collective your community to connect, engage and inspire. Now let's get ready to roll with your hosts, Christine Bier and Brandon Wiley. All right, it's Monday.
Speaker 2:I know, welcome everyone. Oh my gosh, it's the last Monday of October.
Speaker 1:I know, I know I'm excited. I'm ready for Halloween. I'm excited for Halloween.
Speaker 2:I feel like Halloween's over for me, so last week I'm done.
Speaker 1:No, no, we just we just got our pumpkins. We're going to be carving them today. You know people coming over to the house tomorrow just to hang out in the driveway while kids come by with candy, like you know, but then again we don't have like a foot of snow.
Speaker 2:So yeah, it's awesome we have so much snow here and it's snowed over the weekend again. I'm like this is, this is just brittle. So what do you do? Go out in your snow suit with like a face mask on or something. It's just, it's just not the same. You know, not the same.
Speaker 1:No, no, with your suit, with your costume getting all wet and because it's got sits in the snow and it's just not fun yeah who likes to be cold and trick or treating, I tell you Mm.
Speaker 2:Hmm. Well, oh my gosh, such sad news over the weekend. I'm kind of beside myself. Like we've talked a lot about friends lately.
Speaker 2:We've talked, brought some things up and I was shocked to hear that Matthew Perry is passed. I mean, so tragic is tragic incident and I just what a shock. You know he's so young, just it felt like it was just wrong. You know, I know he's been struggling with some mental issues for a long time and sounds like that played a part in the incident itself probably. But yeah, what a what a sad, sad, sad weekend for the friends family. I know I was reading a little bit about his passing and I know he had made a statement at some point in his life, just because he had struggled so hard with mental health issues, just saying he hoped that he wasn't remembered just for what he'd done with the Friends show but for all the help that he'd offer the world and some of the community stuff that he built. And I believe he built a Center for Addiction or something like that that's in his name now, just to help other people that have issues. So yeah, sorry, matthew Perry, but thanks for everything that you've done in this world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. I know he'll be remembered by certainly the those who he's helped.
Speaker 2:So so yeah, but you know it's interesting. It kind of got me thinking about death a little bit, which I know it sounds morbid. It's the season of haunted and spooky things. So I guess and you know, I came across this a few years ago and I just thought it was so interesting I just had to share this with you. So these folks here this is Anna and Raul these two guys have created this new way of utilizing your body as fertilizer once you pass. So what they've done is they've created this capsule called Capsula Mundi, which means world capsule, and it's a tree burial pod and you can kind of see they're kind of creating a fake one here. I think a tree. But this is, this is kind of a picture of the capsule.
Speaker 2:Let's move on to the next slide. Here. What they're trying to do is they're creating this capsule where they can either put your dead body into it and it gets buried in the ground with the tree on top and the tree is able to access your remains to use as energy to grow. The tree on top and you can see over here on the picture on the right there's these little eggs on the bottom. What they've been able to do so far. What they've been approved for so far is only using cremated ashes of your body, putting them in one of these eggs, which is kind of like a biodegradable egg, and it gets planted in the ground and the tree grows on top of it and it gets used. It uses your body for energy.
Speaker 2:I just I thought this was such a cool little way to an environmentally friendly way to decompose of a body. Quite honestly, like I mean, if you think about it, there's so many people. If you're not getting cremated, you're going to the ground in a casket, like there's all that metal and all that junk that's just never going to go anywhere, it's just gonna be stuck in the ground. But they. This idea just makes a whole lot of sense to me. And so, instead of planting grave markers everywhere, you're planting a whole forest with all these trees on it.
Speaker 2:And one of the cool things I learned is that and I don't know if this is just in the US, north America but if you plant a tree on top of a body, it's illegal to cut that tree down, which is kind of neat. So here we are we're planting forest. We're doing really cool things. At this point, they haven't been approved for the body being in the pod. They're still working towards that and they think that they'll have some success down the road, but at this point in time, you can only just get your ashes put into the ground, which is still cool and then I'll just quickly go on.
Speaker 2:They have a cute little marketing campaign like here's this tree, someone hugging grandma as it grows hey, dad. Which I think actually acts as a really neat place to go and visit the person that's past or the people that are remaining, to be able to talk to them or find a place where they still exist and they can feel that they get connected to that person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. I think this is a really interesting concept. I love the idea of the sustainability idea and whether or not it continues to be a law, that's, you can't cut down a tree that's on top of ashes where there might be, at least for a period of time. You've contributed to help with climate change and I think for me, I probably would choose either a cottonwood tree, if it's gonna be a tree I don't know if you could choose which tree, but I would certainly then choose a vine, a grapevine, and vines do really well over ashy soil, so volcanic ash and stuff like that, and so I could imagine down the line having like a brand and vintage wine from 2073 or something like that.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that would be super cool. Kind of creepy, but cool. I mean all the things that you drank and consumed over the years would impact the flavor of the wine and the profile. It would be so cool.
Speaker 1:I'm really sorry. Exactly, exactly, so yeah, this tastes a little bit of Brandon mixed with soil, and so yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm interested. If I had a choice, I would plant a nice big red rose bush right on top. Gorgeous color but little thorny, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh man, good stuff, well. So I was obviously gone on Friday, so you did another solo show, so you've done a lot of solo shows last week, so good job on that. But I had a chance to go to a couple of different boardwalks and so on Friday I was traveling. So on Thursday I actually visited Ocean City, maryland and Rehoboth it's such an odd word to say also in Maryland, and I've checked out those two and both of them really interesting, different fields even though they're only about 45 minutes apart, very different fields from a boardwalk standpoint. Good mix of F and B and arcades, and Ripley was there. At both locations there was a Ripley's attraction and so definitely had a good mix of attractions and it was a lot of fun just seeing those and visiting those.
Speaker 1:Then the next day I'd crossed the little channel on a ferry and the next day I went to see Maury's Pier and it was really cool actually. So I got a behind the scenes tour of all three of Maury's Pier's from Sam, who also is behind, an owner of International Rides Management, and so he can buy us and sells rides and stuff like that and also is involved in some of the F and B work at Maury's, but what I thought was interesting there when I was there is I went to their biggest arcade. This is Mariners Arcade. It's actually on Maury's Pier. This is actually owned by the Maury family Well, it was, so, you know, a portion of the Maury family, maury family and one of the things that came across which I've never seen ever they had just got new carpet. They were just doing some renovations. It's a brand new carpet. They're putting an intercard game system, but notice here that this is video poker, like literally video poker from like casinos, like old school video poker with redemption connected to it.
Speaker 1:And so, anyway, I'm not gonna go into a whole lot here on this on the show, but there is a really good conversation happening on our Discord Interestingly, it's actually in the sound off channel in the Discord server and just around the debate about redemption being skill versus luck and unfortunately, you know my take on this is this definitely pushes the conversation towards redemption being more luck than skill and, you know, has implications in, you know, for general acceptance and public acceptance and also, you know, some legality, depending on how it's conveyed and construed. So, anyway, go join that conversation, dig into that a little bit more, but I just thought that was super interesting. I'd never seen this take on a redemption before, like actual video poker. And then I did have a chance to stop at Atlantic City for 30 minutes on my way to the Philadelphia airport. And just all I'll say about Atlantic City is that apparently that's now going to be the next place where there'll be a pickleball venue. So, amongst all the other stuff that's gonna be there, pickleball of course is going to Atlantic City.
Speaker 2:Amazing, I don't know. I just I don't get it, I really don't get it. But there must be something we don't know.
Speaker 1:I don't know. It's just it's there's nothing spanty, it's like literally just a big venue. You pay to come in and play pickleball and there's like 30 pickleball courts inside this big open, a convention center looking space and whatever. It's a pickleball in Atlantic City so you can go gamble, you can go play arcades, you can go do other stuff on the boardwalk and then play pickleball afterwards.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, for sure, oh gosh, yeah, I agree with you, Elise Theria. We should take a drink every time pickleball venue opens. We would just be constantly drunk. That's the problem, that's the issue.
Speaker 2:And I just wanted to mention also that if you don't have an opportunity to get into the Discord, just put your comments in any of the posts that you see these recordings on to let us know how you feel about the whole arcade piece, because I think we are a little bit concerned about it and think it might be something we need to start taking action on figuring out the right verbiage or how to kind of fight back with this kind of stuff. Okay, halloween truly was over for me, but I just you know it's so funny. I just wanted to mention this.
Speaker 2:I saw that Chuck E Cheese had a super awesome sensory sensitive Sunday this last weekend and I just really thought that they deserved a nice little call out like right on for doing that kind of stuff. It was in partnership with Autism Speaks. They opened up two hours earlier so the kids could come in and enjoy. They took the time to reduce the noise of the arcade games, which we all know is a heck of a lot of work Dim some of the lights, which again, that's all a lot of work, and you have to go back and correct it afterwards. They have staff that are trained on how to deal with the guests and how to handle them if there's issues that arise. They had a different kind of dining experience and any kid that showed up in a costume got 100 tickets, which you know. Just a shout out to Chuck E Cheese for doing the right thing and being, you know, really inclusive in this world. I just I think it's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I think so. Do you know, is it every Sunday, or is it on occasion, once a month, or just select Sundays?
Speaker 2:Once a month and I believe it's usually the first Sunday of the month, but they moved this one just so it was closer to Halloween.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, got it. Yeah, I mean I think it's interesting for two hours to go through all that work for two hours once a month and have specially trained staff there. That means they really are going out of the way to provide something really interesting.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome, all right. So very much not sensory sensitive is a car wash in Chandler. So like right in my backyard, practically so, chandler, arizona, there's a car wash. It's Vavacity Auto Spa and as far as I can tell, they just have a couple of like local locations. They're not some big franchise or chain or family owned and they converted their car wash for every Friday and Saturday night for three hours into a haunted attraction, and so I'll just go ahead and throw this up on stage.
Speaker 1:They're calling it the Vavacity Auto Spa Haunted Car Wash and it was called last year's best haunted car wash in Arizona, which I think is amazing, because I think they're the only haunted car wash in Arizona as far as I know. So you know they probably are the best, but I thought that it's pretty cool. For 20 bucks you can go in and you go in and, like, the car wash is not running. So they're just using the car wash as a way to provide a spooky experience. You stay in your car and because you're in the car, there's not. There's going to be very minimal human contact, but it's just really meant to be jump scares, that kind of thing, and I'll just play a little portion of this video that they've made to promote their car wash. It's pretty, you know, pretty well done.
Speaker 2:It would have been so fun making this video.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, I mean, you see the cameras. There's like these creepy guys just standing with a pound mass balloons and you don't really know what's going to come up, and then there's people looking at the cameras and obviously going to bang in your car.
Speaker 2:So unfortunately, this is not something for me. I would be too scared.
Speaker 1:I would actually think this would be a lot of fun. I wish that I had found out about this before it actually put it in your calendar.
Speaker 2:Put it in your calendar for next year, so you don't forget.
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely, yeah, no, no, for sure. I will 100% not forget this next year and recently we do, but I thought what a cool way to take a facility like a car wash and generate additional revenue. They're not clearly doing car washes at six o'clock and eight o'clock at night, so why not use that space to generate additional revenue, and definitely something that we could be doing in our venues on these nights.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally, totally yeah. Speaking of earning additional revenue in spaces and transforming them, I saw this in the news today and I just thought it was so cool. I think everyone's starting to get tired of the old wave pool and the water slides, or I don't know, maybe that's just me again, but I think this product is so cool and it's going to breathe new life into these aquatic facilities that are just kind of pools. Anyway, it's called Ninja Cross and it's kind of an aquatic spin on the Ninja Warrior Coast course, and what I thought was so cool about it is it's not like the way it's installed is.
Speaker 2:It's installed from the roof down and you can push it off of the pool and you can pull it back onto the pool, which is really neat, so you can pull it out when it's going to be used, at times when you have like open swim or if you're booking birthday parties in, and also you can see the little things that this kid is kind of going through here. You can change those, you can make it harder, you can make it easier for all the kids. Here's another picture I'll show so you can kind of see an overhead view of how it hangs over top of the lanes. Again, it's pushed back into the wall and it can be moved out of the way, which is super cool and super fun. Now it's been installed in two locations in the US so far and they say they're doing really well. They're starting to create leagues and they're starting to do a birthday party program, which I thought of course they are Right on. Good for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is awesome. What a great way to, because, especially a lot of cities have aquatic centers tied to the cities and so much empty space. You can go into these things and there's a bunch of lanes that are just unused because people aren't doing that kind of hardcore swimming. They're like more free play, free swim, and this is a great way to utilize that space for sure and hopefully drive revenue. I don't know if they're charging extra for it, but it definitely would be a way to drive some extra revenue for some of these facilities.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure I agree with you, and the next thing I can see that would be super cool here, just in the space in this room, is let's throw some VR stuff onto the wall or some AR stuff and make it like those chaos carts and make swimming fun Again. Get out there and get some physical activity and really create a cool experience for the kids.
Speaker 1:Yeah, maybe that's ValoMotion's. Next thing is they have the ValoJump, they have the ValoClime, now they have ValoSwim and you can swim and as you're swimming along the water, you're touching different stuff that's projected onto the water Be super interesting.
Speaker 2:I just want glow in the dark swimming wings. What are they called?
Speaker 1:Oh, like Blacklight Sunny lanes or something.
Speaker 2:No, the wings, the things that go around your clothes Floaties. Floaties. Oh my god you don't have a great swimmer, but it can just be so much fun.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh my gosh, that would be a lot of you. I was like, yeah, cosmic swimming.
Speaker 2:Cosmic swimming oh, I love it. It's got a great ring to it.
Speaker 1:All right. So just real quick mention, apparently, altitude Trampoline Park. So speaking of ninja courses, that kind of thing, altitude Trampoline Parks has announced that they're opening 20 new locations in 2024 in the United States. And when I think of that I'm just like where? Where are we opening 20 more Altitude Trampoline Parks, like they're Gen 2 trampoline parks, climbing walls, some dodgeball? If you're open and you have that kind of a venue, then that's awesome. If you're considering opening a trampoline park, really take a second thought, considering where you're opening that Make sure there's not saturation Within a five mile radius of my office here in South Phoenix. I could drive to three Just in five mile radius, and there's easily 100 more in the Phoenix market and I just do not understand why we need more, especially of Gen 2 trampoline parks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Again, I just feel like we need to study, like I wish we had more data, more understanding, like why, where's the opportunity here? Right, and maybe there is. Maybe it's just a great way for kids to get exercise and so there needs to be more of them. I don't know, but first thought around it and some of the research and things that we've seen, I'm just surprised.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, so anyway, yeah, next one, all right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, speaking of Interesting things, let's talk about masterpieces for a minute. Um, this was so cool. Um caught this in the news today. Anyway, this is the Chengdu Science Fiction Museum in China, and when I first saw this I'm like, oh, this is just like an AI picture, like it's just a fake news, it's just been generated, but it's not so. This is an actual museum that they created in China and it's using an advanced plan of technology, sustainability and kind of ties in the local cult, the local culture, to kind of create this amazing metallic structure that floats over the water and uses like just such dynamic technology and different things to kind of create the ideas of mountains and clouds, and I mean, it looks Unbelievably amazing. But what is so fascinating to me about this is they commissioned this in 2022, so a year ago, a year and a bit ago and they they wanted to have this so that they could host the 81st annual World Science Fiction Convention, which happened this year in this facility. Okay, this is 59,000 square meters big, which is enormous, but something like this typically would take four to five years to build. The designers that actually were awarded the project started building it two weeks after they got it, just because they had so many different tools, tools that they could use to design it on the go and share with different people. Like technology has advanced so much, they were able to pull this together really, really fast, which I thought was incredible.
Speaker 2:Hearing in a split to the next picture, just so you can kind of get a side view of it, so you can have an understanding of what this looks like, like just some of the structure and the way it's built, is unbelievable. So they, you know here, let's just let's move on to the next picture. I've grabbed a couple of what the inside looks like here. So when they were building, so the technology they were using, this particular Skylight was used so that they could minimize the amount of lighting that they used within the facility, which is really, really cool.
Speaker 2:Then there is this picture, which is one of the hallways. It's kind of a, it's a multimedia corridor and it flashes different pictures and different designs all through it and takes you for one Part of the museum to the next, which is, I mean, so cool. I just want to walk down this hallway and soak it all in because it looks so neat. Then they have other things inside, like they have this one. It's a mirrored hallway with, like, the different types of metal and everything to kind of create a futuristic look inside of the facility, so you feel like you're in a completely different world.
Speaker 2:And then this last piece was so neat. So this is their main theater, where people go in and they watch presentations, which is beautifully designed in itself, but what's so cool about it is it allows the audience to actually watch what's going on outside, and so they were doing drone drone showing I can't spike drone shows outside and creating these cool LED displays that they can people could watch just from their seats inside of the Cedar, like what a cool way to tie everything together right now. No, go ahead, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So just, I mean just, quickly find out what's going on. I mean just quickly. Finally, this is located in the city of Chengdu and it's the home to 20 million people. Of course, it is that's like you need this thing with people to create something. That's awesome, but what they're doing is they're trying to create this future city there that's gonna focus on universities that are gonna come in and different laboratories and offices that are gonna be focused on the science fiction industry there and building it out. And I guess also this is the birthplace of the most red scientific magazine in the world, called science fiction world. I'm not familiar with it I don't know if anybody else is, but what a cool structure.
Speaker 1:Hey, yeah, it's absolutely beautiful and you know I just two quick thoughts because I know we're running a little bit late, you know. The first one would be this is something that can only really happen that quickly in a city or in a country like China and a city like Chengdu and you know, or the UAE, for example, where they can streamline all the red tape, where you don't have to worry about Permitting, you know it's state sanctioned and so you know you have to worry about zoning changes and you know making sure things are inspected and like all that stuff is streamlined. So I think, from at least from a red tape standpoint, you don't have any of that that we typically deal with here in the US or Canada or other other places. And then I think the second one is you know, I just generally have a while.
Speaker 1:I think it's beautiful, I think, like when everything we try to do science fiction or futuristic, it gets aged very quickly. So be very interested to understand what their plan is, to keep it updated and keep it modernized and and always looking forward to the future so we don't end up with like a tomorrow land situation where you know, 10 years later it looks like, oh yeah, the future doesn't look like that anymore. Things have changed so significantly and it's not, doesn't look like, it's in behind unbelievably beautiful structure and, you know, definitely a priced piece, I'm sure, for them. So Awesome. Well, yeah, that wraps up our LBX Daily Show for October 30th, tomorrow's Halloween edition. So who knows what we'll end up doing. A little something, a little bit special, but otherwise, until then, to CB and BW signing off, stay tuned and keep kicking ass.
