Overview

In preparation for last weeks episode with John Bruening, we talk about pulps. We really are time travelers, and this episode got caught in a time slip, so it isn’t appearing until after the episode with John.

Ah, who cares, we have a good talk about the new Dungeons and Dragons movie also.

Recommendations

https://youtu.be/gZDvhQl1Ffo

YouTube

Transcript

Okay so we’ve got another guest coming on next week.

Alan: Very good. John Brenning. Who it, I love pulps. We might have talked about this before. When I was growing up, I discovered pulp Heroes like.

The Shadow and Doc Savage and so forth. And what’s interesting about them is that they were written in the thirties and forties, they’re some of the oldest heroic fiction in the United States. And they were called Pulse because they were printed on really cheap paper that was like, not meant to last.

So finding those guys as opposed to comic books were never on good paper either, but they really were meant to be like disposable, like many of them were collected for the war drives and stuff like that. Yes. So having said that, there’s like a poll. Style, a pulp ethos that goes with them.

There are a lot of film noir reads like a pulp. I really love Doc Savage cause that’s back when the world wasn’t fully explored. And so to have this guy traveling the world and discovering hidden civilizations and, dinosaurs and stuff like that was really cool. And that’s all that is.

Reason for saying John Bruning does modern pulps. He really, he writes a character called The Midnight Guardian that you and I are both familiar with. We both met him. Yes. And have had really nice conversations and stuff with a minute. Wow. It finally occurred to us, no, hey, that’s that we like,

Stephen: so he said oh man, do I have to iron a shirt?

And I said, nah, we don’t bother. So don’t worry about it. Yeah.

Alan: I put on a polo today. I actually have a collar. What? What

Stephen: am I, yeah, that is unique. Are you like, Going out. Is there a funeral or a wedding to go to?

Alan: I wore my finest shorts for the funeral, yes. Oh,

Stephen: good. Yeah it’ll be fun talking to him. I it’s weird how some of those things happen that I ran into his partner Jim in flinch books at a Exactly one of the crypted conferences that Colin and I went to, and Colin was doing a talk at, and there was a guy there, Jim Beard.

That had X-files, books and some other books. I’m like, oh, that’s cool. And then I come to find out that he wrote one of the stories for a Star Wars comic that I had. Cool. So I was like, whoa, I gotta give this guy to sign it. He’s from Ohio. So I looked for him, and finally found him at another conference and went up, got ’em to sign it.

And I have that. And he has a partner. And it turns out his partner lives right here in Cleveland and I ran into him and they both go to the pulp fest down in Pittsburgh. It’s just another one of those Yeah, coincidences that just all, mish together. And then I went to a thing a while back.

At the KGA Library, which they do tons of great author events. Okay. And he was there and I was just like, oh,

Overview

Today we welcome a special guest, John Bruening. John is the author of modern pulp books starring the Midnight Guardian.

We discuss pulps of old and new and how he came to write these books. John has also been to PulpFest in Pittsburgh, which he tells us about.

And just when you thought we couldn’t have anymore exciting geekery discussion, John tells us about his partner and their publishing company, Flinch Books.

Recommendations

John C. Bruening author page on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/author/johncbruening

Midnight Guardian series page on Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/The-Midnight-Guardian-3-book-series

Flinch Books page on Facebook:www.Facebook.com/flinchbooks

PulpFest – https://pulpfest.com/

YouTube

Transcript

Alan: How’s that? There we go.

John: There we go. Okay. How’s the look, how’s. Looks fine. I got that sort of shiny thing going on here. That’s

Alan: true. You got the, a little bit of glare from the window, but it casts your face in

John: a heroic, it’s a noir kinda thing there.

Exactly. Yeah, I had a second.

Stephen: All the radiation from his monitor and that’s what makes him,

John: yeah it’s gonna turn me into some kind of a superhero or something. That’s what we would hope. Try these, this boy. Okay, there we go. Exactly. These are for like, far away. And this screen is it’s like my eyes have reached a point where there’s no sweet spot.

You just have to like,

Stephen: to nerd it up there, my glasses so I had Lasix a couple years ago when I had cataract surgery, and so I can see far away. I can see things just fine, but up close I. Can’t see. So I asked them specifically my glasses to tune them for how far away I normally sit to the computer.

So these glasses, I can’t really read with them, but at the computer it makes everything look perfect. So there’s nerding it up. I think

John: I followed that. Yes. I just had an high appointment in December. I had a, I had an appointment in December and I’m in the earl They told me early stage cataracts, which really sucks.

I’ll be 60 at the end of this year and I’m just I’m gonna need eight months. I’m gonna need the eight months between now and December to just get my head around that concept. But yes, yeah, we’ve

Alan: actually talked about that before. I don’t have any diagnosis of cataracts yet, but I’m really not looking forward to it because I’m really flinchy Ah-huh.

We’re gonna bring that in about things going near my eyes. I hate putting in eyedrops. I hate, like, when I get puffed at, when they’re doing the they don’t do that anymore. Test and stuff like that. It’s just

Stephen: they’re modern now, Alan, they don’t do the puff. They have a device.

Overview

We start off with an intro to Relentless Geekery. You’re at episode 138 I hear you say, why would you do an intro now? Well, because it’s our podcast and we can do an intro whenever we want to. We also are going to see about other geek podcast playing our intro and we’ll play there’s. So when you hear other geek podcast people talking, that’s why.

We had a couple good weekends. Stephen got to meet some great people. First up was – MACGYVER! Absolutely the most influential show and character on his life. It was amazing and wonderful.

Then, he traveled to another festival – Scares that Care – and met Armin Shimerman (who has been on Discovered Wordsmiths) and also Jeff Strand. Jeff has become one of Stephen’s favorite authors and recently wrote the novelization to Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (which is hilarious). Jeff will also be on Horror Lasagna soon.

Alan went to Fan Expo in Cleveland and did a well received talk about the multiverse. Of course he spent more moolah than he should, but it was all in support of artists and authors.

And he’s preparing to go to mind games and play a ton of new games.

Recommendations

https://www.steelcitycon.com/

https://scaresthatcare.org/authorcon

https://jeffstrand.wordpress.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_of_the_Killer_Tomatoes

https://fanexpohq.com/home/

YouTube

Transcript

Stephen: Hey, Alan. How are you? Good

Alan: morning. Doing fine, thank you. Got a little went to what now that we’re back on, zoom back with the backdrop and stuff, and there’s all these beautiful nature scenes to

Stephen: share yes. All right, before we get started on our topics, let’s do a quick little clip that I can cut out and trade with other podcasts geek podcasts and try and exchange audiences a bit, grow the reach a bit.

Okay. So I was just gonna do a little Hi, welcome. This is Relentless Geek Re I’m Steven. You’re Alan. And here’s some stuff we talk about and see where we go. If we don’t like it, we’ll redo it. Okay. Alright, so this is relentless geeky, Alan. Welcome. How are you?

Alan: Doing fine. Steven, how are you?

Stephen: I am good. So Steven and Alan, we do our relentless degree weekly and we talk about a few things. We made a list when we started. Alan, tell us some of those things we’ve talked about. Much

Alan: like the ever-growing list of, so here, we’ll geek it up right away. Yeah. While bagger the, infinitely prolonged in the hitchhikers guy at Trilogy said that he would insult the universe.

And when it was, of course, explained to him that with birth rates and such outrunning his ability to reach people, he just cocked eyebrow and said, A man can dream, can’t he? So we made this initial list of a huge outline of all the things that we should talk about because the realm of geekery and nerdom is big and wide.

Overview

We have a fun trivia question this week, and it leads to updates on what we’ve been listening to lately.

Al visited the fan expo while Stephen was at a local author conference. Hear about both and why they were worth attending.

Recommendations

Trivia

What was the 2nd all female group to hit #1 on the Billboard charts?

YouTube

Transcript

Anyway,

the I really should clean up my office and make it so that it’s a more beautiful backdrop than you can, but I’m so used to hiding behind oh, I’m in near the pyramids. That’s where I am. Yeah, that’s the thing.

Stephen: You notice I’ve got my muses up here. There we go.

I’ve got weird Al and Charlie Brown and MacGyver and Stephen King and Brahm Stoker and Ed Golan Poe. And somewhere I’ve got Jessica Fletcher, but she fell and I can’t find her. So I’ll put her up there as soon as I find her. That’s a

Alan: very good set. We have a couple not Funko Pops, but Bobbleheads that we have collected.

Like you said, it’s Shakespeare, it’s Einstein. You know what I mean? Yeah. The whole smarty set downstairs. That one has ’em up here, but

Stephen: that’s cool. Okay, so we both had cool weekends, some cool stuff. But before we start, I have a trivia question for you. Okay.

Alan: I have one for you as well, Billy. Oh, no.

Okay, great. Something.

Stephen: All right. So here’s mine. Who, what or who was the second all female group to reach number one on the billboard? Top 100

Alan: singles. Something Motown, the Supremes, the shells,

Stephen: the number two, not number one, not the first week. Okay.

Alan: So was there a, let’s see, Peter, Paul, and Mary, unfortunately Peter, Paul.

How about more, something more modern, maybe the Runaways or the Bengals, or the Did it, is it, am I moving too far into the future? What? I’m not gonna give you a

Stephen: clue cause it’ll make it too easy.

Alan: Let’s see. Alvin and the Chipmunks. No, that’s okay. No, I give,

Stephen: You were you were, your guesses were really good.

So you said the Supremes, they were the first Okay. Back in the sixties, but there wasn’t another one until early mid eighties with the Gogos, so I should’ve

Alan: just kept going. See that? Yeah. Yeah. You would’ve got it. Yeah. You would’ve given me the hint. I would’ve started spitting out girl names, et cetera.

Yeah. Ok.

Stephen: And yeah. Cause, but that’s like almost 20 years difference between them hitting number one. It’s just it seems weird to me because love The Supremes obviously. I love Motown. The baseball. And I love the Gogos. I thought the Gogos had some good albums. I liked their stuff, back in the pop 80 days.

Yeah. Yeah. But it’s just, it’s weird that, to me,

Overview

This week we answer:

* is nude or partially clothed sexier?

* is Mad better than Cracked?

* would you climb that?

* does a friendship last over 40 years?

* do the Crash Test Dummies still rock it?

Recommendations

https://www.banffcentre.ca/banffmountainfestival/tour

https://www.madmagazine.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash_Test_Dummies

https://kentstage.org

YouTube

Transcript

Alan: Good morning, Alan. Good morning. There we go. I okay. Wow. You’ve neatened up the background. It

Stephen: looks great. Yes. Thank you for noticing. I’m glad I, I don’t look like a, a teenager putting up rock posters, . It looks official almost. It took me a while. I still, I keep saying I gotta put my muse shelf up, so I gotta get my muse shelf up.

That’s funny. So

Alan: we’re that this week, , I really was that guy in college. I had rock posters up of all my favorite groups. Usually on the dorm room, there wasn’t that much wall space, so I put ’em on the ceiling. So when you’d go to sleep, you’d see Pink Floyd and Kansas and Genesis and you know, like classic

Stephen: album come, you know, most guys put like girly pictures up on the ceiling.

So you’re putting rock band guy. I don’t know about that man. ,

Alan: actually, this is, so one of my summer jobs was I worked for a place called Clarkville Printing. If I remember correctly. And they did some of those girly posters, not explicit, but like who was popular back then? Cheryl Lad, Susan Anton.

And, and they had big print runs and not all the posters were perfect. And so I said, you know, hey, this is a little blurry, but do you mind if I take these? They’re just scrap. Anyway, that’s why over the course of my summer job collected them, I must have had like a hundred brought ’em to college and I didn’t, you know, that you’d go to the poster store and get ’em for five to 10 bucks.

I was like, how about three? How about one? And so all, all manner of people had Farrah Faucet majors, actually when she was fair, or Faucet wasn’t majors yet way back then because al the the naughty merchants, you know, it wasn’t porn, but, but it was the big hair and it was, I don’t know. Boy, there, there were like, there was one with Cheryl Ed where she looked like a classic, and this was going back really far.

Let’s see. Sorry, who was, did you ever see LA Confidential? And they Veronica Lake. Veronica Lake. She did a poster that looked just like a classic pose from Veronica Lake. And, and I’ve almost thought that you can really be beautiful without being perian. And I’m sure that I’ve just lost my guy card, you know what I mean?

It’s okay. And I, I’ve read all kinds of things, like if you’re in a, if you’re in a swimsuit or in lingerie or clothing,

Overview

We babble on a bit about colors. Then we talk about our buddy John Bruening who wrote the Midnight Guardian series – which you should check out. And if you want more good books, listen to the Discovered Wordsmiths podcast.

We discuss the new spate of changing books so they aren’t offensive. Whoo boy. But when you hear things like what Scott Adams said, you understand the reaction to a degree.

Recommendations

Midnight Guardian

Discovered Wordsmiths

Orphan X

YouTube

Transcript

Stephen: Oh, okay. Morning.

Alan: Good morning. Hey, there’s the the Baldis office. Instead of the background, you can kinda see the wonderful orange glow, the friendly orange glow. getting up in Skynet. There we go.

Stephen: Do you think maybe that when you were in school they were sending messages to your brain and that’s why you like orange

Alan: We. We just had a big conversation about this. Who knows why people like the colors that they do. I’ve always found orange to be like, energetic, and it just, it makes me happy. And I like the flavor of orange and I like many things that orange are involved in. But then people like don’t you worry about prison jumpsuits and safety cones and stuff like that.

And it’s those exist too, but that’s because orange is like an eye-catching color. And I think I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been incredibly lucky. Of course, I haven’t moved to cities to be able to get more orange, but I’ve lived in Chicago and then Champaign Urbana and now Cleveland where the sports teams are orange and blue or or that kinda thing. , orange and brown. And so it’s like I’ve never had problems going into a store. , when I’ve been all around the United States with Colleen, we’ve been all over the place because we’ve seen all the state capitals and you go into a gift shop and you’re looking for a fun t-shirt that’s gonna commemorate, Hey, I was at the Grand Canyon, and some places they’re entirely devoid of orange.

They think everybody only wants to wear black. Yeah. Or whatever. And I love Halloween as a holiday, but not because of the orange. But I’m happy to be at Halloween where it’s like more pumpkins, more it just, it really energizes me. And it’s funny. I, in, I wear a lot of orange. It, hon Honestly I do more variety on our podcast than I do in my real life.

I wear a lot of orange some people I’m in Mensa. We’re both in Mensa and. People that were meeting me as I expanded out of Chicago would be like, oh, you’re the orange man. It, that’s not a good connotation cuz apparently there’s some guy on the East coast that’s a creep and so it’s I’m not that guy.

I don’t know what the East coast orange reputation precedes me. But and it’s funny, I know at least one or two people said we’re just sitting here talking to you and you’re not at all creepy. Why do you have this reputation? It’s apparently there’s more than one guy, me and someone else that likes to wear orange.

So it’s and boy I’ll,

Overview

Why do we like the shows we like? We aren’t sure, we just know we like them. While not all shows have been super throughout, many have been good overall – like some of our favorites with DC and Star Wars.

And sometimes, something just doesn’t click with you. Maybe you don’t really get it or your mind was expecting something else.

Recommendations

https://www.the-sun.com/tech/6965767/movie-secrets-avengers-game-thrones-neil-degrasse-tyson/

YouTube

Transcript

Alan: Going on there. Yeah.

Stephen: Okay. Which that’s something that needs to be looked at with VPN companies, . Exactly. Okay. So May, there’s so many things to talk about, but real quick before I forget, I just gotta share this fun little dude, dad thing. Okay. So I was watching an old episode of Supernatural with Jensen Ales and Jared Padalecki.

And they traveled back in time. They went to the Old West. So Dean went and got ’em some Western gear and they went they were using that. So they traveled back in time and they enter this saloon and in the show it’s a kind of a joke. They’re constantly identifying themselves as F B I and they always use rock band names.

Alan: Pagen plant or things like that. Exactly,

Stephen: yes. Yes. Ok. Ok. So this time they walk in and everybody looks at him and Dean’s oh, hi. And he points to Jared Beki and says, this is Walker, Texas Ranger. And why that’s you know why that’s so funny?

Alan: I, he doesn’t have a partner, but anyway, I don’t know.

Stephen: No. You know what TV show Jared Padalecki is doing now? Is it the rebirth of Walker, Texas Ranger . That’s funny.

Alan: Wow. Premonition. That’s pretty funny. Okay. I didn’t,

Stephen: yeah, I’ve not heard that. I’m like, really? The show’s been on for three years and I’ve not seen any memes about that, but it was, was dying.

That’s the stupid little things that I, that make my day Yes. I’m, I know I just had something like that happen and it’s not coming to mind, but where something that you thought was like un disconnected or unconnected through time resurfaces again. So I know they’re doing that often with movies now that like in Cape Fear it was originally Robert Mitcham as the crazy convict that’s obsessed and then he actually becomes the father of the daughter.

Alan: Or maybe the judge being pursued because. de Niro took over the role, right? So they’ve done that now where it’s the previous player of the role gets to reappear, like Christina Ricci, just they’ve remade, not remade a new addition to the Adams family can. And his Wednesday she’s a teacher at the place, in fact, a villain as I recall, , I’m not sure I there’s still so much to be revealed in this series, but it must be interesting to, they’re like, be there, be on set are the new ones. Asking for advice or are they saying make this your own? Is there jealousy? Is there I don’t know. Yeah. Sometimes artists say, yeah, I really went and talked to the original person.

Overview

We geek it up with movies and games. Stephen is getting the big Cryptozoic DC Deckbuilder that happened. Tons of great gameplay.

We talk about how kickstarter has changed gaming and geekdom. In a good way, mostly.

We cover some old silent movies like Phantom Carriage and the modern bands that have provided soundtracks.

Alan tells us about a new miracle drug that helps regulate blood sugar and also lose weight.

We talk about:

* VPN

* Kickstarter

* silent movies

*

YouTube

Transcript

Stephen: Yeah, and we’ve talked about VPNs, how great they are for security, how they help out with, but there’s a lot of things they really break , exactly. So that’s why I figured I would take that out of the stream here you and I talking and whatever else.

Alan: It’s I’ll turn. What I have to do is remember of course, to turn it back on before, Hey, let’s go online banking and investing, that’s right. I really have a, I don’t know how much I really needed it at home because I have my firewall in place. I have a whole, the usual cascade of important things to make sure that I’m not exposed to the world.

Where I really need it, of course, is mostly when I’m on my phone or on the laptop when I’m out of town in a, an unsecured wifi connection and all that kind of stuff. And so I’ll get better about maybe not worrying about it as much as at. , biggest things besides this thing, maybe it really will be that zen cast will be improved.

I’ve noticed that for all kinds of streaming services they’re already very suspicious about, Hey, are you coming in from the wrong zone and you really shouldn’t be able to see this content? And when, what, whatever the I use express vpn, whatever they have as their servers around the place.

Usually when I’m here in Cleveland, there’s nothing super close to Cleveland. So I connect via New Jersey, Washington, dc, New York, and who knows what, that’s still in the United States, so you’d think I’d still be in, I’ll be like zone three or whatever else it might be. But anything where they can’t identify an i an IP address that looks like it’s connected to an at and t server or something like that, they, I think have some suspicions in place.

Yeah. And so often when I use Google to search things now, , it throws up a verify. One of the little captures where I have to say, show me all the staircases or whatever like that’s their way of saying whatever I look like to them, it’s suspicious.

Stephen: And that’s a super good point, , because VPNs are getting pushed a bit more and we’ve talked about ’em.

And like you said, if you’re doing things like banking or online transactions, it’s not bad to have. But it video especially is very affected by it, because what’s happening is it goes to your router and it goes to a server in Cleveland, and then instead of where your Netflix or Zencaster, it then goes to New Jersey and then it goes to so you’re adding jumps and hops to it?

Alan: Yes. And that’s the kinda stuff that I don’t know.

Overview

If you like reminiscing about music in eras gone by, this is a great episode for you. We talk about music often because we are (as Alan puts it) omnivorous music fans. We recall how different music used to be and the enjoyment of getting new music from your favoite artists. Of course, this extends into the same with books. So, come journey with us to the past.

If you haven’t heard of the new Hogwart’s Legacy – now you have. This is an immense game set in the Harry Potter world, but taking place over 100 years before Harry and friends. The best part – Alan’s nephew was a part of creating this great game!

Alan recently took a cross country trip to deliver some comics. He recounts his trek, but we also discuss how doing that has changed over the years from the AAA Tritik to the Garmin GPS.

We had some tech problems and had freezes and drop outs. the audio may be a bit choppy.

Trivia

What was the original group name for the group – War?

Recommendations

Cupboardmaker Books

COSI – Center of Science and Industry

Hogwarts Legacy – Home

YouTube

Transcript

Alan: Over. So I’m centered. .

Stephen: Can you

Alan: hear me? There we go. I can hear you. Okay, let me also get, I was turn on night shift on my display. Cause that way I tend to be a little bit less. Let’s see how that works. See? Oh, is that beautiful? Wow. There sure is a lot of sunlight

Stephen: coming. . Damn that sunlight wasn’t doing in Ohio.

Exactly. I’ve got some weird little colors I can do on mine. I never played with it much, but I know it’s got intensity and oh, there’re a a little more warmth. So before we start, I wanna hear all about your trip cuz it sounds like you had an adventure. Take. Take a look at my shirt.

I got this at Christmas.

Alan: Ah, there we go. The Ango Montoya. Very

Stephen: good. But the little design is the text of the book. It’s William Goldman’s book of the Princess Prize. To make the design. Exactly. I thought that was pretty nerdy thing.

Alan: and actually, so we should already start recording cuz we can talk about that you got it.

Okay. The I got a similar one for Colleen from the little house on the prairies books where it’s got the log cabinet and stuff like that. But yes, in whatever six point type it shows the entire first chapter. I don’t think it’s the entire book. No, I don’t think it’s the entire book.

Yeah. How much you can fit on a shirt, but and she was very tickled by that. You know what I mean? I just, that’s another one of those things that as technology marches on, as someone gets a bright idea and says, I wonder if we could do that. Because my fear would be Yeah, if they don’t find the good quality shirt and the good quality ink that it will last a couple of washings.

It would be terrible. Start to have dropout of the story where whole squashes are what I mean particle.

Overview

We talk about the realities of using social media as a content creator. We continue to try new things to get our geekery word out and there are some things we are trying. There are social media platforms that are better than others with a reason to use or not use them.

Social media has also given voice to some interesting new cultural norms. We don’t agree with trolls and people flaming, and we don’t like people ignoring the facts that are available. Makes for a messy social media landscape.

We discuss enjoying Dr. Who through the years and why we think they have gotten better. And we don’t think they all need to be white guys.

Recommendations

Doctor Who | Home

YouTube

Transcript

Stephen: I was looking at all our stats, I was looking at all the different podcasts and mobile is almost all of it. And looking at all the little clips and videos that other people have they’re stacked and they fit in a phone and ours are horizontal. So I’m like that’s going to probably turn people off.

So I’m like, let’s see, let’s try it. If you go look at

Alan: YouTube, even though you know you could take that phone and turn it 90 degree, cause mean they don’t . Yeah, absolutely. But they don’t do the interface so much. If you’re on Facebook, you looking at the reels you hold it, you click it, they show it, and you just flip it’s Tinder just flicking.

Stephen: People don’t do that. Okay. Uhoh it. I have no problem. I hope it’s it. One of the joys of relentless Geek Cree is let’s try new technology, or let’s return to previous technology and see how well it’s improved. And just that making us more accessible and available to more listeners.

Alan: Good idea. It just it’s one of those things that I am always amazed at how people’s habits they get inured in a certain way of doing things. And then even though companies make a point of, it’ll run in both landscape and portrait or it’ll, they’re they do things so that even the differently abled people can get to things cuz hey, it’ll read it out loud to you if you want. And yet people. Whatever this is sweeping statement, whatever things people do the first time, that’s how it should work. There’s all kinds of psychological proof that says your first experience is something kinda is the first way your brain maps it.

And anything after that is confusion and wrong and worse has opposed to, whereas I’m always like incremental improvement. I’m almost always willing to try new things unless it’s really I need it to be just the way I always want it to cause I need to get something done. And I want it to be that things are where they should be on the keyboard and where my eyes go on the screen are where they should go.

Stephen: That’s interesting. I never thought about that. Explains why my sex life sucks. .

Alan: So are you gonna tell us about your first experience, Steven? we’re not gonna go there. Let’s stick with the landscape mode, which could be interpreted very, not only too, but I was on a a group call last night for a bunch of authors and they were talking about this pl...