Mondo Bizarro
From the paranormal to cryptids, heavy metal and horror movies. It’s a big weird world and your hosts Thick Nick and Andrew are here to talk about it every week.
Mondo Bizarro
Media For All -or- Sailing the seas with Mondo Bizarro
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Welcome back!
This week we're talking about the importance of media accessibility, we rant about some nerd stuff and when all else fails, hoisting the sails.
Illegitimi non carborundum
Welcome to Mondo Bizarro, it's a weird world, someone's got to talk about it.
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Priestess - Lay Down
Alestorm - Keelhauled
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For thousand years, the Indians of the Great Lord West.
SPEAKER_00Like these youngsters, thousands of others will be dressed in their favorite costumes on Halloween night. They will all be excited, but they must be careful when they go trigger treaty of the case.
SPEAKER_04With me as always is Andrew. Say hello, Andrew.
SPEAKER_05I'm here today.
SPEAKER_04He's here every day. You just don't see him. We've got I'm I'm hopped up today, man. I'm I'm it I'm on one. I'm in a fucking mood. Um I've got a white monster and I'm mad. So we are we are gonna talk about something, and this to me is important to anybody not in the same realm that we all exist in. They're gonna go, what the fuck is wrong with this guy? Which is that's valid. I think there's a lot. But for this specific instance, let me let me preface all this with saying the whole reason I want to talk about what it is that we're gonna talk about today is the week that led up to us recording, Sony decided to shoot itself in both feet on two different occasions. They earlier in the week whipped out their piece, pointed it directly at the center of the foot, and pulled the trigger, looked directly into the camera and said, Hey, I know that you guys paid for these movies, but we're removing all of them off of PlayStation. Good luck. Proceeds to point at the other foot, blows a hole in it the size of a tennis ball, looks back at the camera and says, In the near future, we're no longer making physical games. Well, okay. Okay, you know what? That's fucking dumb. That's fucking dumb. And then shortly thereafter, Microsoft lays off over three thousand employees and then says, you know, we're we're fucking around with the idea of having uh no disk drive in our next console. Okay. Okay, well, let's let's pivot and look at Nintendo. What's Nintendo doing? Well, anybody that's in the the video game sphere knows the whole game card fiasco and all that. So uh Nintendo is releasing a Yoshi toy that lays eggs and licks stuff up, so that's cool. Um and and then of course, with Steam and their bullshittery of the Steam machine costing uh uh what a thousand dollars with no controller. So uh I mean that's ridiculous.
SPEAKER_05The Steam Deck OLED is what eight hundred?
SPEAKER_04It's like six fifty, seven hundred bucks, something like that. Which uh that makes sense because it's it's it's a portable computer.
SPEAKER_05Sort of it's not a portable computer in the sense of like the Legion Go or the uh the the ROG ally, but it runs its own its own OS. Yeah. Rather than running Windows like the competition does.
SPEAKER_04So with all that bullshit happening, I thought to myself, man, there is a lot to unpack there. There there is a lot to to sit back and go, okay, well, uh, if if you are a retro game collector, you are familiar with going into a game shop and looking at a copy of Pokemon Emerald that's $250, uh, which is ridiculous. I think that is asinine at best. Um, or uh $100 for a copy of Pokemon Red, right? One of the best-selling games of all time. There's probably more copies of Pokemon Red in the world than there are people who actually want to play it, but a hundred dollars, right? Okay, so uh I then I started to thinking about um about movies and and and horror movies specifically, uh, that have either entered an era of uncertainty, right? So either the rights are in limbo or it's just not streaming anywhere because nobody's paying for the rights. Um there's a lot going on between various forms of media, whether it be video games, music, movies, books. There is a lot going on. And for me, I think accessibility to these things are very important. And I will say it now, and I will say it at the beginning of this episode. So if you do not agree with my ethics here, that's fine. You don't have to listen to us ever again, you don't have to listen to this episode. But if buying something digitally does not mean that you own it, then pirating is not a theft. And I will die on that hill. I do not care. If any of these video game manufacturers, producers have made a game that is no longer able to be purchased, it is completely fine to go online, find a way to play it, and play it. There is no way that they can continue to make money once that game was initially sold. Same thing with movies, same thing with books. Once that thing is no longer in circulation, whether that's because it's no longer made or whether because it's purchased and then is being sold on a used market, those individuals are no longer profiting off of that media. Full stop. I'm not here to argue, and there is nothing anybody can say otherwise that can convince me otherwise. That is that is the hill I will die on. That being said, there are places that you can go to get things like this. Internet Archive, which is a perfectly public, perfectly legal website that you can access, that is something that is a top-level place that you can go to find things. All I ask is that if there is a way to support the artist that has made the media that you're consuming, support them. But there is no way for me to buy a copy of Ape Escape from what 1998, 99, 2000? Somewhere in there. New where Sony gets a kickback for that. It just does not exist. If I want to play it the way that Sony wants me to play it, I have to buy a PlayStation 4 or a PlayStation 5, I have to pay for PlayStation Plus, which is also the most expensive of all the subscription-based services. And then I can only play it digitally until they decide they're not going to have that game on that service anymore, which you do not get a say in. So I go and find a copy of Ape Escape, which is funny because I though that's funny that I'm using that one specific game because I actually still own my childhood copy. But I go online, I find a version of Ape Escape to play, and I download it. I now have it. It is on a hard drive. That way, no matter what happens, if my disc is destroyed, if Sony decides that PlayStation Plus doesn't deserve to have one of the greatest games of all time, I've got a copy of it. Games like Resident Evil, where every other console generation Capcom says, hey, let's port zero through seven or zero through eight onto it. That's that's great. You can still get to play Resident Evil and support Capcom. But there's situations where you have movies that are no longer able to be viewed. You just can't. They do not exist in a capacity where you can say, I'm going to go to one of these 130 online platforms to that I either pay a monthly subscription fee to or a one-time rental fee and watch these movies. So the most perfect point is I was watching a video about underrated horror movies. And one of those movies was The Night Flyer, Stephen King. And I was like, hey, this movie right up my alley. I love the cast. I love Stephen King. I like early 90s horror movies. Let's rock. It is out of print. You cannot buy it physically without paying way more than what a DVD should cost. And it's not on any kind of streaming platform. But it is on YouTube. It is an unofficial upload that somebody just had a DVD copy, they ripped it, they put it on YouTube. You can watch it. That's where I watched it. It's a fantastic rip. And it's a pretty good movie, all things considered. I really enjoyed it. Um if you if you like vampires, give it a shot. It's it's not like anything else. Highly recommend it, but that is wild that I had to go to a direction to watch a Stephen King adaptation. Somebody who's incredibly popular, somebody who's incredibly alive, and you can't just watch it. So in in that that same breath, I started to realize that number one, not everybody has the know-how or the ability to download things legally or otherwise, to be able to view them or hold on to them for preservation's sake. So I started thinking these things should be accessible, specifically movies, right? Not not everybody's into video games, and that's fine. Um, not everybody reads, which is not as fine, but I get it. But everybody watches movies. I haven't met anybody that doesn't watch a movie.
SPEAKER_05The Amish don't watch movies.
SPEAKER_04The Amish don't watch anything because they don't exist. Huh.
SPEAKER_05Bold take.
SPEAKER_04Bold take. I will also I will also die on that hill.
SPEAKER_05No, so I have a I have a movie that's in a similar vein of this. Um one of my favorite movies of all time, and you guys out there can judge me for this if you want. But one of my top five favorite movies of all time is uh Airheads with Brendan Fraser, Steve Bushimi, and Adam Sandler. It is a fantastic movie. It it tickles the funny bone. It's got all kinds of uh high-end names in it that make cameos, including Lemmy of all people, makes a cameo in that movie. And for the longest time it was streaming on HBO Max. And then one day it just disappeared. And I'm looking for it, and I'm looking for it, and I can't find it. I'm like, okay, maybe I can go find a DVD or a Blu-ray. Nope. If you want a DVD, it's trending around $100 for the DVD right now. If you want a Blu-ray, which technically speaking, I don't think actually ever got a release, but from what I've seen, you can get one for about $300. For a Blu-ray of that movie. Fortunately for me, I did find the movie on Internet Archive. Uh and uh I downloaded it. Unfortunately, that phone no longer works and it's no longer on that phone. So I'm back to square one. But but I'm on the same hill as you when it comes to uh if there's no way to watch it, purchase it, anything like that, but it does exist. Like Airheads, like many other movies out there, uh then you should have the ability to pirate it because at that point nobody is profiting from that film. So they cannot claim theft because there's no profit lost.
SPEAKER_04And that's that's exactly my whole thought process there is I have not ever downloaded anything and then burnt a copy and went to the flea market and said, Hey man, I got Terminator 2, five bucks. I'm not I'm not doing that. I'm I'm downloading things that I want to watch or I want to have a copy of for whatever reason. Right. So if I can purchase it, I do. I just go and I buy it. If if if they still have pink flamingos uh available to purchase, I'm going to go buy it. But the day that they say, hey, no more John Waters movies are to be sold ever again, well, okay, then I'll download the fucking movies, I'll fly to Baltimore and I'll give them a hundred dollar bill. Like, I just don't get the stance of people wanting to defend billion dollar companies. That's so fucking stupid. Like, Sony does not give a shit about you, me, or the loudest Sony fanboy. They do not care. Otherwise, they would say, hey, you know what? People really, really like all these games that we've made. Why don't we, because we're charging the most for this subscription service, put the vast majority of these games permanently online. You don't want me to download your games and consider it theft, then give me a way to be able to give you money for it. I have no issue paying for it. I have an issue saying if I want to play uh I'm trying to think of a really obscure game, um WCW Monday Nitro on PlayStation. That was the first thing I thought of. Jersey Devil. Um then if I can't go to Mr. Sony and say, hey sir, I would like a copy of this to play, and they say, No, go fuck yourself. Here's another version of The Last of Us or another remake of God of War. You can't have anything other than the same three things that we've been pumping out for the last almost 20 years, then okay, I'm gonna go do my own thing.
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_04And and no video game company is free from that criticism. Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, the only ones that are manufacturing consoles. I would say Valve with with the Steam machine, but Valve doesn't really make games. We've only been wanting Half-Life 3 for our entire fucking lives. We will never get that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, Gabe's gonna make sure of that.
SPEAKER_04Tell you what, you can put the Steam Machine out for a thousand dollars and say, if you buy this, you get a copy of Half-Life Episode 3 or Half-Life 3. I would spend a thousand dollars to play that. I would. And and uh I'm not the only one. I mean that note if ten people do that, that's ten grand. If a hundred people do that, that's a hundred thousand dollars, and it just keeps going. But I there they hopefully they don't do that because that would be a real dick move to put something behind a thousand dollar paywall, but it would only be a matter of time before that shit got uploaded online, so yep, fuck them. So I realized. That there's not people I realized that there are people who don't have access to uh computers or the internet or be able to afford to pay for subscription services. So I wanted to go over a a couple, a few places that you can still get media completely for free and completely legal, and for the most part, the artist still benefits, or at least has benefited. So the first the first two kind of go hand in hand, and that is the any kind of free online streaming platform. Now, the caveat here, you have to have the internet. It's 2026. I think most people have the internet now. There's a lot of affordable options. Uh T-Mobile has got their 5G home internet. I keep seeing ads for that. It looks super cheap. I don't know anything else about it, but regardless, things like Pluto and Tubi are amazing.
SPEAKER_03I love both.
SPEAKER_04I love both of those platforms. Just last night, my wife works nights and she got off work, wasn't ready to go to bed, so what does she do? She pops open Tubi or Pluto. I I can't remember, my apologies. And she goes, you know what? I want to watch the Ghost concert movie again, right here, right now. She pops it on, watches it, and then goes to bed. And I and that is one of the things that prompted me to want to talk about this was the how simple was that? Exactly. I'm ghost got a little bit of money for us watching the the video, the movie, and I just had to pay my internet bill. That was it. You know, that transaction done. Nobody's hurt, everybody got to watch what they wanted to watch, and it's completely free. And if you haven't seen it, if you like things like uh Tommy or The Wall or Ghost, and you haven't seen it, it's free right now on Tubi or Pluto. I'm sorry, I can't remember. Go watch it. It's great. I love Ghost, it's one of my favorite bands. I've seen them like three times, four times. I've seen them once of them. And there are there's there's movie just as I was walking back here, the TV, of because of course every TV is a smart TV, was showing an ad for Transformers Age of the Beasts or whatever the uh the the Beast Wars Transformer crossover movie that they did, uh in the Michael Bay continuity. Free on Pluto. You can just watch it. That's fucking great, dude. That's awesome. I I you there are so many old cartoons on Pluto and Tubi that don't have a physical release and that don't exist anywhere else but there. HBO Max just purged a shit ton of cartoons because they just didn't want to pay for the licenses.
SPEAKER_05And it was all the late 90s, 2000s Cartoon Network cartoons. Yep, primarily, um, because uh I remember when that happened because I regularly was watching those on HBO. Now, uh Amazon Prime did pick them up, at least the majority of them, but they put it behind a paywall. You gotta pay for the the the prime streaming, but shows like Ed, Ed, and Eddie is five seasons with the prime streaming. You can watch the first three seasons. They want you to buy digital copies of the fourth and fifth season to me. That's some shady shit. Agreed. It's it's underhanded and it's it's taking away that accessibility. Why do I gotta pay for your service and pay for the for the media just to be able to watch it? What happens when you decide to remove it? I can't watch it anymore. And so I didn't mean to cut you off, but it's it's that that that whole saga of HBO just purging all of those cartoons pissed me off. Because I'm like, that's my childhood vanishing into thin air right there.
SPEAKER_04Absolutely, absolutely, and that's there is just something so fucking diabolical to me that a company can say, pay for this platform, and now pay for specific parts of of media, and at any point we can just say, nope, it is no longer on this platform, you are shit out of luck. Go fuck yourself. That's that is that literally makes me so mad I can feel my blood pressure rising. Because that's that's ridiculous. And I I love Nintendo, but Nintendo said, hey, you know, we're shutting down the the 3DS servers, so go fuck yourself. What about every single person that bought games digitally? You just told them that their purchases mean nothing. Okay, if I don't own something when I purchase it digitally, then it's not piracy. It I mean it's it is as simple as that. If you want to change the the situation here, if you say, okay, Amazon, you I buy something on here, and you give me a code to download it, and and you have ample time to download the media that you purchase, and then they remove it off the platform and you didn't download it because you just didn't, that's on you. But they don't give you that choice. They say, here's season one, but season two through five, you have to pay $7.99 a season for, buy all the seasons at one time, and you are good to go. We'll give you a discount. But in eight months, in a year and a half, in five years, when Amazon no longer has the license, when they decide that they want to take this show off in favor of putting some other bullshit on, what about the purchase that you made? You now no longer have anything to represent what you gave them money for. So we all know with streaming platforms, they rotate what they have. Sometimes they renew the license, sometimes they let go of the license, sometimes they get new stuff. It's a constant rotation. So a platform like Tubi or Pluto, where it's completely free, sure, there's commercials. Oh well. Oh no. We have gotten crazy about not wanting to see commercials on like television that I'm like on YouTube, it makes sense, right? I don't want to see ads on there.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_04I don't want to see I don't want to see ads when I'm scrolling through Instagram or Facebook or whatever. That's fucking dumb. Yeah, that's annoying. I sure as shit don't want to see them on a smart TV. But if I'm getting something for free, the only thing that I'm using is electricity and internet, which I would be paying for anyway, then yeah, I don't mind four or five commercials in a movie that I'm watching. That gives me a time to hop up, run to the bathroom, I'm good to go. Right? And if Pluto and Tubi says, hey, you know, we're taking the Beetlejuice cartoon off of the platform, I'm not out anything. So if I didn't get to finish it, that's on me. I just didn't manage my time the way that I should have. If it was that important, I would have finished it. But that's a whole other type of discussion.
SPEAKER_05It's funny that you mention the Beetlejuice cartoon being removed from Pluto. Or from Tubi, I'm sorry, it was on Tubi. Because that was my oldest kiddo loved the Beetlejuice cartoon, and I had to break her heart and tell her that it was leaving. And that she wouldn't be able to watch it anymore. Because it's not anywhere else. Right. And so that hurt me because I'm like, I'm sorry, kiddo. You that that show that you love watching, it's they pulled it, we can't watch it anymore. And try explaining that to a s to a seven-year-old. She doesn't understand. She doesn't know what all that means. Yeah, well, she wants to know where her so where her show went.
SPEAKER_04Let's explain shareholders. Let's explain licensing rights. No kid gives a shit about that. Like my my son is is uh he's a teenager, but when he was a little younger, he loved to play Little Big Planet 3, I think, on the PlayStation 3. And he played it all the fucking time. He would make levels, upload them, download levels, play it, and then one day, no warning, Sony was like, no more servers for this game. Game's dead. He he he can't really do anything on it. He was so sad. What the fuck?
SPEAKER_05What EA did the same thing with Anthem.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I mean, I mean, like you make a game, you fuck the game up, and instead of saying, okay, we're gonna work towards making this game better, they just pull the plug. Fallout 76, that when that came out, it was a mess. And I'm a I love Fallout 76. I fucking love it. I have got hundreds, if not a thousand hours in that game, and that is not even an exaggeration.
SPEAKER_05No, and I and I could drink to that. I've got over 500 myself.
SPEAKER_04And they uh Bethesda said, We fucked up. Let's fix it. Yep. And they have for the last several years worked their asses off to make it an experience worth playing. And I st I think the game holds up. I think it is fantastic. Are there still issues? Abso fucking Lutley, it's a Bethesda game. But they there's so much to do, there's so much content, there's so many freebies. It's it's it's worth giving it a shot. And if you like it, you can pay a subscription service for Fallout to get extra stuff, and that's that's great, but you don't have to. There's nothing that really you it doesn't hinder you other than some item storage stuff. But uh at this rate, they may end up just making that aspect of it free. Like I I have no idea. Uh place, though, to be able to find media, and this this is uh across the board. Now each of these places are different, so it may not be the same experience for you. But libraries. Yep. I was it is free. 100% free. It is free to get a library card, it is free to check things out, and most places like my local library has gotten rid of uh late fees. If you just don't return it, they won't let you check anything new out until you resolve that issue. Not a big deal. My library, movies, music, books, magazines, comics, manga, everything, newspapers, and video games. My local library has video games, and now I know what you're thinking. It's probably gonna be some bullshit. No, they have PS5 games, they have Switch games, they have Xbox games, and these are newer titles, Spider-Man 2 on the PlayStation, the new Pokemon games. They are with it. In addition, they have a program where it's just called rent anything. They have uh pressure washers, they have DVD players, they have think of a thing, they will let you rent it for free. There is nothing that they charge you, and they have almost everything. Dog, I shit you not. I wanted to know how out there I could get with trying to find specific media at and and and the only reason I'm not saying the name of the library, even though you and I both know the library, is because it is the same city that we live in, and that's a little too close because we don't live in a big place.
SPEAKER_05Right.
SPEAKER_04But they had motherfucking martyrs on DVD, and I could not fucking believe it. I was like, there is no fucking way that you have martyrs. They had high tension, they had Eden Lake, they had and then they had good movies. They had repo, they had Boondock Saints, they had Fear and Loathing, they had the Big Lebowski, they had I could just go on and on and on, and it's free. It's free. Libraries are such an important pillar to your community. Yeah. Because not everybody has got the same life. Some people have to rely on programs from the library, some people only get to experience fun things because of the library. The local library we live by has fishing stuff that they let you take without having to get a fishing license to go fish. They have a seed exchange, they have clubs, they have meetups, and it's free. It's free. So please, if you take anything from this, and and and and you take anything from any episode, is support your local library. Even even if you don't like reading, the library may have something that gets you into reading. They have audiobooks. It stimulates the same part of the brain. If if reading is difficult, if you have dyslexia, listen to an audiobook. If you just don't like reading, listen to an audiobook. Or have somebody read to you. Uh yeah, I have zero problem if you are like, Nick, I really want to read The Telltale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe, but I just fucking can't. I will record myself reading it and upload it for you so you can listen to it. I I reading is so fucking important. Like, I've I've told both my kids, I'm like, you can be a whatever, you can love whoever. I do not give a flying shit or a fuck about any of that. But so help me fucking god. If you don't read books, I don't want nothing to fucking do with you.
SPEAKER_05God. I've been parenting all wrong. Shit. No, 100% agree. And you know, I've watched that particular library grow so exponentially over the last 10 to 15 years. Where it was to what what it has become, when you drive by that library, it's always busy. You know, there's another library nearby over here where I'm at. And uh I drive by it uh every Friday, running errands, and there's always 20-30 cars in the parking lot. So I'm gonna reiterate that fact support your local library because for all we know, one day all this stuff is just gonna be gone, and there's gonna be no one to help us find it.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_05It's one of the reasons why uh early on, when I, you know, became an adult and had adult money, I bought quite a few uh DVDs. I have a particularly decently sized DVD collection. Granted, I understand that more or less nowadays, because of the quality of televisions and the quality of media playback, that DVDs are kind of dead. You know, in sub in lieu of Blu-rays.
SPEAKER_04Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_05So I don't care about that shit. If I want to watch the fucking Power Rangers movie, I own that shit on DVD and I'm gonna put that into a DVD player and I'm gonna watch the goddamn Power Rangers movie.
SPEAKER_04Dude, 100%. I still have the fucking VHS tape. Like, that's and I and I get it that certain things have become like oh stylish to be into. Like, oh, I I listen to cassettes, I listen, I only watch movies on tape or Betamax, like whatever, dude. I will just watch something on based on what I have. I've got a shit ton of tapes. That's what I'm gonna watch. I bought I I uh the literary festival that I went to a couple weeks ago. The only thing I bought was a sealed three-pack blockbuster exclusive of Halloween one, two, and three. Because three is my favorite, followed by one. Two, I don't care. But two out of three is not bad. But it's a sealed, factory sealed. I bought it for like 20 bucks. Hell yeah. I was just curious and looked up what it was selling for on eBay. $400. $400. You know what I did? Opened it. I ripped that plastic off like it was some slutty little panties, and I watched those motherfuckers. And you know what? It played great, it looked great. I loved it. I watched one and then three. Again, I don't care for two. People love it, it's just not my thing. I don't care. If you want to sell me a toy, I'm gonna buy the toy, but I'm taking it out of the package because I want to play with it. If you're gonna sell me a video game, I'm taking it out of the package, I want to play it. If you are going to sell me something and it does a thing, it is not going to be able to do the thing if it's still in the fucking. Package. That's dumb. I have Funko Pops. I don't have a single fucking box for any of them. Why? Why would I want the box? I can't see it as clearly as I can outside of the box.
SPEAKER_05So I'm guilty. I'm guilty of the Funko box thing. Not all of my Funko are in boxes, but I do have all but one from the Disney's Gargoyle set. And they are in their boxes sitting on my desk, neatly placed. And then I have uh we have uh Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger, that we got for our first child's uh baby shower, and it's her without the helmet on. It's a special edition, and it's still in its box.
SPEAKER_04I think I remember that.
SPEAKER_05But I I'll openly admit that I'm guilty of the Funko thing. Just because, you know. I like having them on display right there on my desk. The ones that I want to mess with, you know, and goof off with. Those are all in a in a bin about two feet below where the gargoyles are sitting. And they're all within reach. So if I want to be goofy, you know, I've got a claptrap Funko. I've got Super Saiyan Goku as a Funko. I have a Saiyan Prince Vegeta mini Funko keychain on my key ring. He is Vegeta, Prince of all keys. And he's fantastic and I love him. But I I I am guilty of keeping some of them in the box.
SPEAKER_04You know, I I I get it. Everybody does their own thing. I just am not an in-box person. I I can't do it. I can't do it. I want I I just I don't get the point of buying something and not being able to play with it. Like my wife and I both collect uh He-Man and She-Ra toys, but we exclusively collect loose figures. And we have I have all of the He-Man like series one through three. We have all the first wave of She-Ra, and we have every single fucking um like play set, like Castle Gray Skull, Snake Mountain. Um we have everything except for the Eternia playset, because that's the huge, big, crazy, expensive play set that every kid in the 80s wanted. Same thing with like the uh carrier from G.I. Joe. That motherfucker's like six feet long. But I don't I don't want them in the package. Can I appreciate how cool it looks in the package? Yeah, dude, for sure. But how am I gonna pose them if they're in the box? Like, that's just that's just my my thing. If you're if you're an inbox collector, that's fine, I get it. Um, but you will see me online opening shit and making the value drop drastically. Especially uh I I've got a few friends that run a retro gaming group, and I will purposefully buy uh graded video games, and then I will break them out of the case and uh play them. J I I hate that shit. I hate that shit, I hate that shit. Because let me let me explain something. Every single fucking thing videos, video games, when I say videos, I mean videotape, sorry. DVDs, Blu-ray, books, magazines, comics, newspapers, all of these things degrade over time unless they are preserved. These stupid ass uh CGC Beckett, whatever the fuck cases don't preserve them. They j they they are they're a jerk off. That is all that they are, man. Graded stuff is so stupid. Fight me. Fucking fight me.
SPEAKER_05You know what makes it even stupider is the higher quality the item, the more you pay to get it graded.
SPEAKER_04Which you don't know until you fucking send it. Correct. I'm like, what are you gonna hold my shit hostage? I I gave you a hundred dollars to put my card with a piece of paper that says this card is in a better condition than fucking anything else, but now I gotta pay more money because it's better than everything else. What kind of business model is that? Oh, you like this car? Well, you can have this car, but you're gonna pay five thousand dollars more because you like this car, or we'll sell you this thing that you don't like for the same price. Go fuck yourself. It the whole the whole the whole thing is fucking stupid and it and it drives people nuts. I've been kicked out of groups because I will open shit or my all of my collection is is open. I have a 200-something dollar trick-or-treat studios Halloween 3, like one-sixth scale uh action figure set. I don't know what the fuck to call it. Uh, I bought it brand new. Still, I mean, it had the shipping wrapper on it. After I checked out and I owned it, I sat there and I opened that motherfucker up, and people were livid. They were livid. I was opening my toy, Andrew.
SPEAKER_05Like, holy shit. How dare you open something that you paid money for to physically own yourself? You are the worst kind of person.
SPEAKER_04The first, the the person to the left of me that had not finished checking out yet, and this was at Texas Frightmare, and I bought these from Texas Frightmare because they had items that you could buy based on the guests, and they had uh a few of the people from Halloween 3, which is great. I'm just not big on waiting in line to tell somebody that I love them in a movie. Um, let alone play paying for an autograph. It that's just me though. Like I I get it, and I think it's awesome, and I've met a lot of great people. But I just I if I don't have to, I'm not going to. But the guy to the next to the left of me, next to me in line, looks me dead in the fucking eyes and says, You could have had Tom Atkins sign that. You just lost so much money. Dude, I am a man in my mid-30s who just spent $200 on a fucking toy. What the fuck do you mean I'm a I lost money? I I'm a man that bought a toy. That money was going. It is it that I only work to afford to do this by magic cards, buarhammer figures, and and groceries and pay my bills. That's it. Yep. I don't I don't work 40 hours a week not to get to play with my toys. And if you don't think I don't got those kids in like kung fu poses kicking the shit out of each other, you are sorely mistaken. And there are things that that, and we'll use Trick-or-Treat Studios for an example. They have a Goosebumps toy line that the box looks like uh the book that the character comes from. That's awesome. That is so cool that they did that. The box is great. That doesn't change the fact that I took the toy out of the box and just put it in front of the box like a diorama. But that's that's cool that they took that into consideration. But it's only 20 bucks. Like, you don't need to to buy the whole set, send it off to fucking jerk off's grading service just to be like, well, I've got a I've got a perfect tin. I'm the only person in the world that has a perfect tin haunted mask action figure. Who gives a fuck? Who are you trying to impress? And there's there's it does that make you happy? Like you you paid somebody money to put a barrier between you and your toy, or you and your card, you and your whatever, like magic cards, Pokemon cards are meant to be played, but not graded. How how I how am I gonna play Commander if my Sephiroth is in a thick ass plastic sleeve? Like earlier today, we were talking about magic, and I sent you a picture of uh a trolley or whatever the fuck it is, just sitting in my bulk cards. It's a $40 card. Yeah. Like, I mean, I not to sound cliche, but that shit don't mean nothing to me, man. It's just a card. It's a card I'm gonna play with. Now I'm not saying I'm gonna throw this under my truck tire and run it over, but I'm gonna play with it. I yeah, I could. I bought the fucking thing, so I'm you know, I'll do whatever. I mean, nothing's stopping me. That's what I'm gonna do after this. When we go on break, I'm gonna go run that fucking thing over. Guess who else has got trample?
SPEAKER_01God damn. Let's go let's go take a break real quick, and we'll be right back.
SPEAKER_04So that first half, we sat, we complained, we stood on some hills. Uh come at me, bro. I I don't know what else to say. The my biggest takeaway here is go to your local library, yeah, get a library card, and use the resources that are there. But we're gonna get off the soapbox now because there is like breaking news, motherfucker. Like, and Andrew doesn't know this because I forgot about it until we were in the break, and I said, Oh shit, stop that music, you fuck. We gotta talk about this. SCP is getting their own feature-length VHS movie. VHS being the horror franchise that has the vignettes with an overarching story, it's all found footage, one of my favorites. We are getting a VHS SCP. Let's go! I am so fucking pumped. So fucking pumped. I fucking love SCPs. I love most of the VHS series, I love the format. I'm I'm fucking pumped. I'm so excited. Fucking go. Unfortunately, that is the that is the extent of what we know right now. That's it. It was announced. That's it. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_05Um the SCP movie sitting right next to Elder Scrolls 6. What do we do?
SPEAKER_04Well, I mean, i yeah. Well it next to Fallout 5, next to Half-Life 3, let's just come full circle.
SPEAKER_05Like that's Welcome to Limbo, motherfucker.
SPEAKER_04No shit. No shit, man.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but sometimes with this stuff, sitting in limbo is fun. The the weight and the anticipation makes it worthwhile.
SPEAKER_04You know, and that's it's one of those things, and I uh we we talked about it earlier with uh with with Half-Life 3. I I really don't know that I truly ever want that game to come out because it's such a meme. It's just such a thing. It's like we still say, you know, this computer can play everything except for crisis, right? We uh we talk about how Half-Life 3 is going to be announced at Christmas at midnight or whatever. It's a meme, and it's it's more of a meme than it is something I think people actually want. I don't know. I don't I don't know if I if I really want a Half-Life 3 after all this time. Like when Kingdom Hearts 3 was announced, that was a huge amount of time to wait for that game to come out. And now we're we're waiting for Kingdom Hearts 4. And it is a fucking slog to wait for that game. But it, I mean, it is what it is, like that anticipation builds the hype, that hype gets people excited, and then one of two things happens either it uh uh it meets and exceeds expectations, or it's like the Duke Nukem game that came out on 360.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but in the Duke Nukem game, you can walk around with a poop. Can you really? Yes.
SPEAKER_04I had a friend in school, Ryan. If you're listening, shout out, homie. Um that was so excited for that game to come out. And he bought that motherfucker day one, paid full price for it. And I remember the look on his face. Holy shit. He was so mad. He was so disappointed. And and truthfully, man, I've only played a little bit of it, and I I don't really have an issue with it. I just don't think waiting between 10 and 15 years for a game that's middle of the road is is worth it. At least not for 50-60 bucks. Um, if you come out and say, hey man, here's a $20 serious Sam game, sign me the fuck up. But I just don't see that happening. $100 Grand Theft Auto.
SPEAKER_05Well, I mean, in the same vein of, you know, the Half-Life 3 meme, we're about to lose the we got X before GTA 6 meme. Because GTA 6 is coming out.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and it's kind of sad. Again, you know, Rockstar, I really feel it shot themselves in the foot twice by going, hey, we're gonna have a physical edition, everybody applauds, but it's gonna be a code in a box. Okay, one foot blown off. Okay. Uh so if you're gonna do just a box without a disc, surely that means it's gonna be cheaper, right? No, no, no, no. Quite the opposite. The standard edition, which does not contain all the content, is 80 bucks. If you want everything else, here's another $20 for a hundred dollar code in a box. Other foot blown smooth off.
SPEAKER_05I just heard rumors of them requiring face ID to prove that you're 18 to play the game.
SPEAKER_04I mean, that I don't know. It's it's an M-rated game. You know, I mean the ES look, here's the deal. If Rockstar has to do that, it's because of the ESRB.
SPEAKER_08Right.
SPEAKER_04Which the only reason that we have the ESRB is because of the PMRC and Tipper Gore. That bitch. Fuck you. Alphabet's super like I I get it. Certain games should not be played by certain age ranges, age demographics. But all you need to do is just explain to a parent, hey, you know, your eight-year-old doesn't need Call of Duty because there's violence in it that is somewhat realistic that they probably shouldn't be watching, as well as online interactions. Because let's be honest, you and I have been in Call of Duty lobbies. You and I have been called the N-Word more than any other kind of name because it's a Call of Duty lobby. It's ridiculous. It's why I don't play online games. I don't want to hear people talking like that because there is no recourse. I don't want to hear people talking hateful, so I just don't get involved with it. An eight-year-old, a 12-year-old has no business playing shit like that. They sure as hell don't need to be playing GTA. But I mean, I I don't know how I feel about the whole like face ID thing, like and I I know I don't know enough um about all of that to to really give a full long-winded soapbox statement. Um, but what I do know is when I was getting on Blue Sky, um it asked me to verify my age, and I did, but I just thought it was a little weird. You know, I just you know, I I don't do anything um other than talk about Warhammer on on Blue Sky and Magic uh in horror movies. Um but you know, I just I just I thought that was weird, and I'm just you know trying to understand like who is this designed to protect? Um it's I I just I I have a hard time with things that are oh, we don't want equity. person to have X thing. So we are going to make it illegal for that person to have that thing. Like that's not that's not gonna fix the issue. Because if you're worried about kids vaping and you just say hey kids aren't allowed to vape, yeah sure dude, I get that. Kids are also aren't allowed to smoke. Kids also aren't supposed to be drinking four locos but they do it anyway. Like that's that's the problem. Not you you can say oh well we ID okay well you know what I was 16 once and I wasn't a very good kid and I bought cigarettes and never got carded and this is at like brand name stores not some mom and pop you know corner store in the middle of nowhere this was a 7-Eleven or even Walmart. Like so they're like well we're just gonna raise the age to 21 what the fuck good is that gonna do like that does not stop somebody from doing something just like saying okay face scan to play GTA 6 hey mom look at this all right thanks bye like I I'm just it just it's just so funny to me that I think if we have discussions about the content or have discussions about the products and explain why that you know you know hey hey little Jimmy you're 14 years old um you know Call of Duty is fun Grand Theft Auto is fun but it's got a lot of content that you may not be able to fully understand at your age and I think you'll not just be able to adapt better to what you're going to witness but you'll appreciate it so much more when you are of the right age where you'll understand these jokes. Like even my my daughter who is a full-on adult she's in her 20s waited until she turned 18 to play Grand Theft Auto 5. That was all she wanted to do was Grand Theft Auto 5. And she did and she was like wow this was so much better because I waited okay cool so there that that worked in this situation why like I just I I don't know I I think I think by saying shit like oh Mortal Kombat and and uh fuck what was that stupid ass game on Sega CD? Uh Night Trap is the most violent video game ever made oh my god guess what you've done you've sensationalized it now every fucking kid wants to play it like and Mortal Kombat it's really not that bad especially nowadays like when you have games like Manhunt or GTA Call of Duty like there's some really dark shit that happens especially in Manhunt which is not really a new game I realize now it's like 25 years old but um you you when you sensationalize it kids want it there was a huge uproar about vaping kids want to vape back and I'm not back whenever you and I were kids kids smoked. You know back when you and I were kids we were drinking MD 2020 and Arbor missed wine. Yep now I don't know what they do because neither one of my my kids are fucking nerds man like I don't they don't they don't have any interest in smoking they don't have any interest in drinking they've never used drugs once in their entire fucking life they just don't care. My my daughter wants to buy packs of cards and do scrapbooking and art by the way that is the person who does our artwork so shout out um my son does not give a flying fuck about any of that shit. He just wants to play video games and watch cartoons that's it they they don't see the interest in stuff like we did then and I think it's just because I I didn't sensationalize oh don't smoke. People are going to tell you to smoke and you got to say no I just explained to them hey man look I was a heavy smoker. I smoked a lot I smoked for a long period of time. Your mom did too. These are health things that we may experience in our lives and these are people that you know that have or will die from smoking related illnesses if you're gonna smoke okay there's nothing I can do about that. You're if you're 18 at the time before it got changed to 21, which I still forget about or if you're gonna drink you know there's nothing I can do to stop you, you're 21 I I never sensationalized it. I always said look if you want to do this thing within reason if you want to do this thing here here's what this thing is this is what the potential repercussions are going to be this is what the potential payoff can be. Yeah what do you want to do? Okay well and one of them waited till they were 18 to play GTA and the other one his biggest thrill is staying up late to play video games with his friends I I could not be any happier in that situation than I'm just like oh my kids no man they're fucking nerds like full on and I love him for that I love that because we share so much we play DD we paint Warhammer figures I've tried explaining how to play magic to them and they're just like shut up dad I don't want to fucking mill three thank you what the fuck is manifest red why do you keep fucking counterspelling everything um but yeah I mean that's that's just kind of of where we're at like they they wanna they want to play video games and hang out and go to the library and you know do shit like that. They want to be uh artistic um and autistic let's be honest here but shut up yeah the apples don't fall apart from the tree at all yeah banging around next to each other stop it um but man I I really really hope that that shit gets better with because if you you start pricing out every one of your customers you're not going to have a successful launch you just you won't I I can't tell you how many games I have purchased day one of recent times. I I've only ever waited for them to go on sale if if I bought them. That's fair if if they're on game pass I'll play them if they're on PlayStation Plus I'll play 'em fucking Nintendo most of what I do on the Switch is playing the virtual console shit I'm just playing GameCube that's it and and it's not I it not for a second that I'm like oh new games are bullshit the there are just better games from 10-15 years ago to me you know yeah Donkey Kong Bonanza is an awesome game so much fun the new Mario Kart also a whole lot of fun but you know what else is that a lot of fun Wind Waker Luigi's Mansion Billy Hatcher Sonic Dude right that was a little PlayStation 2 shout out that was a good game Jack and Daxter Sly Cooper tie the Tasmanian Tiger that got a fucking uh HD remaster the first three games I was like hell yeah dude um but yeah man I just and again uh same thing I'll say about movies same thing I'll say about video games even books it's not that the stuff now is bad it's just the choices were better then I mean you're you you're telling me that people are gonna sit and say the PlayStation 5 is the greatest system of all time because I can play Madden 2025 Fortnite and whatever game is popular right now Valorant I don't fucking know dude the PlayStation 1 had Metal Gear Solid Final Fantasy 789 Tactics it had Spyro 1 2 and 3 Crash Team Racing Crash Bandicoot 1 2 and 3 Crash Bash it had Silent Hill it had two persona games it had like I the list of games that I could just we would be here for another hour intelligence cube twisted metal one two three and four siphon filter one and two and three two is my favorite but Tomb Raider one two three Chronicles last revelation it was just banger after banger after banger. Now don't get me wrong there was a lot of games that fucking sucked did I like Madden 98 did I like Wayne Gretzky hockey no but you know what I did like Wheel of Fortune on the N64 that game fucking rocked like it's it's just there was just a lot more a lot a lot more games that I would consider better from the I would say starting from Atari up to PlayStation 2 Xbox GameCube era the integration of of the internet and we I was just talking about this with my family I feel is what really fucked games up because people started to go oh well we can make money off this we can we can sell you the game incomplete then we can make you pay for that again and pay to be connected online to be able to get it you're just pricing people out of the hobby is all you're doing and to tie it back into the first half and that's where you start getting piracy i'm I'm not gonna pay $80 for GTA 6. I'm not paying $100 that's for fucking sure for GTA 6. I will wait a year I not even a year dude in three months six months that motherfucker will be either on the Steam summer sale or the steam winter sale for 30 40% off and I might pick it up I just bought Red Dead Redemption 2 because it was $7.99 I I am not going to pay full price for a video game there especially if it's digital there's no recourse there once you buy a game digitally what can I do I have a specific window that I can return something on Steam to get my money back. And if I play it too long or if I own it for too long they say no refund. Okay well what what happens if it if they say oh hey GTA 6 broke some sort of of law and we're pulling it from the market what what then? You don't own it. You own a code in a box that you've redeemed congratulations you played yourself. Welcome to the machine dude for real so and I don't I don't want to get stuck on another tangent because then this will be a three and a half hour episode and at this point you'll start seeing hobbits walking towards a fucking volcano so we'll wrap it up we'll we'll we'll get this one shut down buttoned up and taken out back and put the fuck down so before we go with all this shit that's going on what better way than to end this with a little advice from Andrew. Andrew what do you got today?
SPEAKER_05I don't got nothing scary I don't got nothing silly I've just got straight facts support your local library I that is a message I can get behind.
SPEAKER_04I can even see Steve coming out of his room because he is he's in favor of this he is going to go with me to get a library card. So like I say every week thank you so much for tuning in. We love you we like you kisses be good to yourselves be good to each other but most importantly don't let those fascist motherfuckers win. You do what you need to get the things that you want to be able to enjoy this short period of time that you have on this planet. If you need something get it do not allow the pigs to win and keep it creepy