Andy and Alyssa read Goosebumps HorrorLand #5: Dr. Maniac vs. Robby Schwartz, which achieves the distinction of being the worst book they've read for the podcast (so far). Along the way, they discuss questionable fashion choices, Ice Capades, unhinged male villains, veggie burgers and nachos, bizarre catchphrases, the blending of the main story with the HorrorLand plot, the Gingerbread Man, imaginary family members and missing children, disturbingly elaborate revenge plots, and R.L. Stine's death rolodex.
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[00:00:04] I hurried downstairs. I could see Mom and Dad through the front window. They were on their knees, planting seeds in the flower garden by the driveway. They sure love being outdoors.
[00:00:14] I walked into the kitchen and pulled a bag of nachos from the cabinet. I grabbed a can of Coke from the fridge and started to the den to see if any good movies were on cable.
[00:00:22] I was about to drop onto the sofa when I heard a noise upstairs, a loud crash, and then a high scream of horror. Brooks scream!
[00:00:30] The Coke can fell from my hand and rolled across the den rug. I tossed the nachos to the sofa and took off running.
[00:00:35] I bolted up the stairs and ran down the hall to my room.
[00:00:39] Brooke, what's wrong? I cried. What happened?
[00:00:41] Someone had slid the bedroom window wide open. The curtains were blowing out.
[00:00:46] Brooke stood by the window with both hands pressed against her face. Her eyes were wide with fright.
[00:00:51] What happened? I repeated. What was that crash?
[00:00:54] Sam! She stammered.
[00:00:55] She pointed to the open window. Robbie, Sam is gone.
[00:01:04] And welcome.
[00:01:05] To Say Podcast and Die.
[00:01:07] The podcast where two queers sit in their closet and talk to you about Goosebumps.
[00:01:11] Yeah, Goosebumps. Welcome to- wait, what is this series called? Horrorland? Just Horrorland.
[00:01:15] I think so.
[00:01:16] No welcome.
[00:01:16] Yeah, Goosebumps Horrorland.
[00:01:17] Yeah.
[00:01:17] Hey, you're not welcome.
[00:01:18] I don't recall saying welcome.
[00:01:19] Okay, Goosebumps Horrorland number five or so.
[00:01:23] Five, yeah.
[00:01:24] Dr. Maniac versus Robbie Schwartz, which is sadly not a legal drama.
[00:01:29] There's no courtroom whatsoever.
[00:01:30] Curses.
[00:01:31] It does have a lot of fake outs.
[00:01:34] It does.
[00:01:35] Also, who are we?
[00:01:36] Oh, I am Andy.
[00:01:37] I'm Alyssa.
[00:01:38] And should we do the cover and then the flyover and then the thing?
[00:01:42] Let's do the thing.
[00:01:43] As is our tradition.
[00:01:45] That cover is not nice to look at.
[00:01:49] There's a guy with a lot of teeth, like really a lot of teeth.
[00:01:53] Big ones.
[00:01:53] Big jaw.
[00:01:54] And they're all like front teeth.
[00:01:56] Yeah.
[00:01:57] He looks like he got veneers.
[00:01:59] Yeah.
[00:01:59] In the same veneer all over.
[00:02:01] Oh my god.
[00:02:01] They are all front teeth.
[00:02:02] Yeah.
[00:02:03] And he's, let's see, in front of a keyboard.
[00:02:06] There's some purple stuff sort of under the monitor and the space between the monitor and
[00:02:11] the keyboard.
[00:02:12] Yeah, there's like rectangles coming out all around him.
[00:02:14] You know how the internet does.
[00:02:15] Yeah, the internet just comes out in rectangles at you.
[00:02:19] Yeah.
[00:02:19] Maybe it's like Hypercube.
[00:02:20] I wish it was like Hypercube.
[00:02:22] You know, a lot happened in that movie.
[00:02:23] Yes.
[00:02:24] A lot did happen.
[00:02:25] Well, things happened in this and then it turned out they didn't.
[00:02:29] Or did they?
[00:02:31] I don't have anything else to say about this cover except that he also has a little like
[00:02:36] Star Trek symbol on his shirt.
[00:02:38] Yeah.
[00:02:39] A little red one.
[00:02:40] Which I don't recall Dr. Maniac having.
[00:02:42] No, he wears all, oh wait.
[00:02:44] We'll get into it.
[00:02:45] He has a leopards skin.
[00:02:46] He has a leopard skin cape.
[00:02:48] And yellow feather boots, which I can't really picture.
[00:02:51] But it sounds like something you'd see at MoMA.
[00:02:53] Yeah.
[00:02:53] In their design section.
[00:02:54] It's like the boots with the fur, but not quite.
[00:02:58] The flyover version of this is, and it is a flyover book, so you know, stick with us,
[00:03:04] but you don't need to read it.
[00:03:05] We'll, we'll give you what you need.
[00:03:07] Um, so Robbie draws comics featuring villains mainly.
[00:03:14] And first you think you're hearing him talk about that, but it turns out it's actually a comic he wrote, which turns out to actually be a comic he wrote, which turns out to actually be a comic he wrote.
[00:03:27] About writing comics, about writing comics, about writing comics.
[00:03:31] And that's all you need to know.
[00:03:33] That's actually a more generous summary than I would have given.
[00:03:36] I would have said, you know what happens in this book?
[00:03:37] Fuck all happens in this book.
[00:03:39] Hey, there's an ice capades plot.
[00:03:41] There is.
[00:03:42] A 24 hour ice capades that'll make you the richest boy in all of this city.
[00:03:47] I'm so excited to talk about that part of the plot.
[00:03:49] All right.
[00:03:49] And that's really the only thing I'm excited to talk about.
[00:03:52] You know what also, it is, I said I wanted less likable protagonists or like less cool popular guy protagonists than we got it with Matt whatever.
[00:04:03] So this was a be careful what you wish for scenario for you then.
[00:04:06] Yeah, it was, it was.
[00:04:07] This guy is not very likable.
[00:04:09] His name is Robbie.
[00:04:10] He doesn't like camping.
[00:04:12] He, that's, that's relatable for sure.
[00:04:14] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:04:15] His parents like the outdoors.
[00:04:17] Yeah.
[00:04:17] When, when it opens, he's going on a camping trip with his brother, Sam and his sister, Taylor.
[00:04:23] Um, Taylor's character trait is that she's the youngest and cutest and favorite.
[00:04:27] And gets away with everything.
[00:04:28] Yeah.
[00:04:29] Robbie's character trait is that he has a klutz and has a lot of hair and otherwise he and Sam are basically the same.
[00:04:33] Well, and also there's a lot of body negativity in how he describes Sam.
[00:04:37] RLS has apparently not gotten over that yet.
[00:04:40] And his mom's trait is that she's a vegetarian who thinks nothing is funny.
[00:04:45] And likes to point out shrubs.
[00:04:47] Yeah, I know.
[00:04:49] Um, and then the dad, it gets a little weird and we'll have to, when we're putting together what this book is about.
[00:04:57] Do you remember his nickname for his dad when he draws a comic about him?
[00:05:00] No.
[00:05:01] Pink head.
[00:05:02] Oh, that's right.
[00:05:03] Which sounds like a John Waters inspired porn.
[00:05:05] It does.
[00:05:06] Yeah, because his dad's bald and apparently is really aggro.
[00:05:10] At least again, we can't, we don't really know what's happening because this is a series of fantasies nested within fantasies.
[00:05:15] But at least within this central nest in the fantasies, Robbie's dad like drinks a bottle of water and then spits it all out at Robbie and is like jealous of his hair because he's bald.
[00:05:28] So, I don't know.
[00:05:29] Yeah, that's the main character trait besides dad likes the outdoors.
[00:05:32] Is that a character trait?
[00:05:34] Like, in this book, it is a character trait.
[00:05:37] Well, I just think that we could see some of Robbie's obsession with creating male villains who are a little unhinged as related to his dad, if his dad is indeed how he describes him.
[00:05:46] Fair enough.
[00:05:46] Male villains who are unhinged and girls who are kind of boring.
[00:05:50] Yeah.
[00:05:50] Not Brooke.
[00:05:52] You think Brooke is boring?
[00:05:53] I mean, she doesn't get a lot of time to have a personality either.
[00:05:58] I thought she was adorable.
[00:05:59] I thought she was like, if Carly Beth didn't have mean friends.
[00:06:02] Or maybe you get a personality from people being mean to you.
[00:06:04] I don't know.
[00:06:05] Yeah.
[00:06:06] We don't even know if she's real.
[00:06:07] That is very true.
[00:06:08] So anyway, Robbie is on this camping trip trying to quote unquote get a network so that he can upload his webcomic, Dr. Maniac, the totally mental maniac of mayhem.
[00:06:18] And he gets inspiration from dumb shit he sees.
[00:06:21] Like, he sees a chipmunk and is like, ah, Dr. Maniac versus chipmunk boy.
[00:06:24] Yeah, he doesn't try very hard.
[00:06:26] But it's like our kid, I'm going to try not to tell too many kids stories on here, but her class needed to name their pet Fish.
[00:06:36] And the other kids in her class were like, oh, we'll name it Fish.
[00:06:39] And she was, I guess, looking at a toy plastic phone and was like, we can name it Phone.
[00:06:45] And yeah, I think that's just looking at things saying how about that is the plot point.
[00:06:50] And to be fair, she convinced at least one other kid that it should be Phone and another kid that it should be Fish Phone.
[00:06:58] The fish is now named Pascado.
[00:07:00] All right.
[00:07:01] So, and he's like, oh, I wandered off and I found a leopard print cape or no, he didn't.
[00:07:07] He found Dr. Maniac.
[00:07:09] Later, he finds a piece of a cape.
[00:07:10] Yeah.
[00:07:10] Dr. Maniac shows up and says, eat this dead squirrel.
[00:07:14] And it's obviously a fake out.
[00:07:16] And then we cut to, oh, hope I didn't confuse you, he says.
[00:07:21] That last chapter was just a comic I drew.
[00:07:23] I was like, what?
[00:07:24] You didn't, that wasn't a comic?
[00:07:25] You didn't draw it.
[00:07:26] Were you just like, I think what happens is he was just saying this to his mom.
[00:07:30] Like the whole thing is just him like trying to get attention from his mom.
[00:07:34] Yeah.
[00:07:34] But in the next sort of level, he's showing this strip, the comic strip to Sam while they're in the car going camping.
[00:07:42] This is where we learn Sam doesn't like writing stories.
[00:07:44] He likes games like Battle Chess.
[00:07:46] Yeah.
[00:07:46] Do you remember where we've seen Battle Chess before?
[00:07:48] It was definitely in an earlier book.
[00:07:50] Yeah.
[00:07:50] It was in Egg Monsters from Mars and Night of the Living Dummy 2.
[00:07:54] Oh, man.
[00:07:54] It's really gotten, it seems to be somewhat popular in this universe then.
[00:07:58] Two significantly better books.
[00:08:00] Yeah, well, because at one point Robbie is like, oh, Broken Sam must be the only kids in the whole of America who play this game.
[00:08:08] But there's at least four others.
[00:08:12] Well, we learn more about the Dr. Maniac comic.
[00:08:15] Dr. Maniac wears red and blue tights.
[00:08:17] He has a gold M on his chest.
[00:08:19] He has white boots with yellow feathers and a leopard skin cape.
[00:08:22] Not a leopard print cape, a leopard skin cape.
[00:08:24] Oh, I didn't catch that.
[00:08:26] Yeah.
[00:08:26] Seems kind of inconveniently sized potentially.
[00:08:30] Heavy also, you know, for flying.
[00:08:32] Yeah.
[00:08:32] We get another fake out where Robbie says, oh, it's Dr. Maniac, but it's his brother.
[00:08:37] And my next note just says, lazy.
[00:08:39] And then this is where he sees a bit of leopard skin in a tree.
[00:08:43] Yeah, everyone eats hot dogs except for mom who's a vegetarian.
[00:08:47] And I think R.L. Stein has maybe never seen a veggie burger before because he said it's green.
[00:08:53] He's like, well, it's made of vegetables.
[00:08:55] It must be green.
[00:08:55] I've never seen a green veggie burger.
[00:08:57] I mean, I've seen little bits of green things in it.
[00:08:59] Yeah.
[00:08:59] Like little – but you know.
[00:09:00] Mm-hmm.
[00:09:01] Have you?
[00:09:01] No.
[00:09:02] No.
[00:09:02] No, they sort of go out of their way to not make them green.
[00:09:05] They make them brown or they put little pieces of vegetables in them.
[00:09:08] Yeah.
[00:09:08] But they're mainly brown.
[00:09:09] Yeah.
[00:09:10] Or gray.
[00:09:11] So they tell jokes and pal around until it's time to go to sleep.
[00:09:15] And then the Dr. Maniac thing happens again.
[00:09:17] It's the same thing with the dead squirrel.
[00:09:20] And Robbie's horrified by him eating dead meat.
[00:09:22] But they like literally just ate hot dogs.
[00:09:24] That is a really good point.
[00:09:25] Maybe – well, to the extent that Dr. Maniac is acting out his repressed feelings.
[00:09:32] I mean, it could be the part of him that sees the world that he's in as a very bizarre place, right?
[00:09:40] A defamiliarization, you know?
[00:09:41] Fair enough.
[00:09:42] So maybe that's what it is.
[00:09:43] He's like, oh, man, I just ate the hot dog and the thought I was repressing is this is a dead mystery animal.
[00:09:50] This is also where we get the introduction of the Purple Rage who will be a character in this for a little while.
[00:09:56] For most of it.
[00:09:56] Dr. Maniac's not in this as much as Purple Rage.
[00:09:58] Yeah.
[00:10:00] He wears purple and his face is all red because he's mad.
[00:10:03] And he always says –
[00:10:05] Oh, I listed all of the things that he says.
[00:10:07] Actually, I gave up after like five.
[00:10:09] You just picked my favorites.
[00:10:11] But you know the phrase, that really grinds my gears?
[00:10:15] That really X's my Y.
[00:10:16] Yeah, he does that.
[00:10:17] It's his go-to.
[00:10:19] So, yeah.
[00:10:20] It was just another comic strip because fuck you.
[00:10:24] We cut to Robbie hanging out with Sam and Brooke.
[00:10:27] So, Sam we know.
[00:10:29] Brooke is a friend because I think Arlstein forgot there was another girl character.
[00:10:34] Why do you need to?
[00:10:35] Yeah, exactly.
[00:10:36] She has a turned up nose and kids call her elf.
[00:10:38] She's a very good supportive friend.
[00:10:41] She's like, your drawing gets better and better.
[00:10:44] I could really feel your fear in the comic.
[00:10:46] She's being a good audience.
[00:10:48] And Sam's computer is broken.
[00:10:50] So, he leaves so that Sam and Brooke can play battle chess.
[00:10:55] And then while he's downstairs, there's a crash.
[00:10:57] He hears Brooke scream.
[00:10:58] When he gets back upstairs, Sam is gone.
[00:11:01] The window's open.
[00:11:02] And what Brooke tells Robbie and his parents is that Dr. Maniac took him.
[00:11:06] But we need to back up for a second and talk about what Robbie pulled out of his kitchen cupboard.
[00:11:11] A bag of nachos?
[00:11:12] What the hell is a bag of nachos?
[00:11:13] Is this supposed to be nacho chips all over again or taco chips?
[00:11:17] I just – first, I want to picture a bag of nachos.
[00:11:20] So, this would have to be you made nachos or bought them.
[00:11:22] And then put them in a bag?
[00:11:24] In the cupboard.
[00:11:25] Like a plastic bag.
[00:11:26] In the cupboard, not in the refrigerator.
[00:11:28] Yeah.
[00:11:28] And then just let's all imagine together the sensation of opening up that bag, which surely has cheese streaks all down the side.
[00:11:35] And just reaching into it, getting a little cheese all over your knuckles and stuff and pulling out.
[00:11:41] And then he throws them on the couch.
[00:11:43] Oh.
[00:11:43] Are you a psychopath?
[00:11:45] Yeah.
[00:11:45] That's how you know he's an unhinged character.
[00:11:47] I know.
[00:11:47] It must really be like nacho Doritos, right?
[00:11:50] Like with the powder?
[00:11:51] I would think so.
[00:11:52] Or it's just – yeah, like you said, taco chips.
[00:11:54] It's just tortilla chips.
[00:11:55] It feels fancy.
[00:11:56] Like, ooh, I'm having nacho chips.
[00:11:57] Maybe this is also a British version thing.
[00:11:59] Oh.
[00:11:59] Or that's what they think nachos are.
[00:12:00] Yeah.
[00:12:01] There's a British version thing down the road a little bit here that I Googled for us.
[00:12:05] Excellent.
[00:12:06] Well, they call the police.
[00:12:13] Yeah.
[00:12:15] Yeah.
[00:12:15] There's yellow feathers in the room and Robbie is trying to say, you know, this is Dr.
[00:12:20] Maniac when the doorbell rings.
[00:12:22] And this is one of my two favorite, like –
[00:12:26] Oh, yeah.
[00:12:26] I just lost my absolute mind.
[00:12:29] It's the police.
[00:12:30] And they show up and they say, we have your son.
[00:12:32] Everyone looks at him and says, that's not Sam.
[00:12:34] And the kid goes, my name is Jeremy.
[00:12:36] Jerome.
[00:12:37] Jerome.
[00:12:38] They pulled a random kid off the street and was like, you're coming with us.
[00:12:42] You must be the missing kid.
[00:12:43] You're a child here.
[00:12:45] Like, what the hell?
[00:12:47] I know.
[00:12:47] And he's like, yeah, that's what I kept telling them.
[00:12:50] They're like, you just – you're missing a boy child.
[00:12:53] Here's a boy child.
[00:12:53] Have one.
[00:12:58] Well, then – so Brooke starts telling the cops the story.
[00:13:01] And then something that, like, really made me stop, eventually Taylor, the younger sister,
[00:13:07] comes in and she's like, what's going on?
[00:13:09] So mom makes Brooke start the story over again so Taylor can hear the whole thing.
[00:13:14] Like, she's telling it to the police.
[00:13:16] Like, they can fill Taylor in later.
[00:13:18] Like, why is she restarting?
[00:13:19] I don't know.
[00:13:20] Nothing makes sense.
[00:13:21] I mean, and in the spirit of nothing making sense, so Robbie wanders into another room where the TV is on and it's a show called – the TV person – it's like his talk show.
[00:13:36] The talk show host is Red Martinson.
[00:13:39] And he has Purple Rage on as a guest.
[00:13:43] Yeah.
[00:13:43] And that doesn't make sense at all.
[00:13:45] No.
[00:13:45] And then he – Robbie says, Mom, Dad, come see this.
[00:13:48] And his mom's like, that's Congressman McClue.
[00:13:51] I feel like there has to be a story going on there that I'd be more interested in.
[00:13:54] Like about, like, what's going on with parking signs and marking meters in this small town?
[00:14:00] Or, like, is the congressman in on something?
[00:14:02] Or is he the Purple Rage?
[00:14:04] Yeah.
[00:14:05] Oh, also Red Martinson I think was a reference to Red Skelton because I think R.L. Stine would have been the right age to have been aware of this TV show Funny Man.
[00:14:15] I only knew about him from my dad.
[00:14:17] I Googled him and holy shit, his Wikipedia page is long.
[00:14:21] But I guess people thought he was really funny.
[00:14:23] And I was reading his bits and it's like, oh, he would do imitations of how people eat donuts.
[00:14:31] All right then.
[00:14:32] That was like a huge bit in the 50s.
[00:14:34] Right.
[00:14:35] Really killed in the 50s.
[00:14:36] Uh-huh.
[00:14:36] And then he would, like, say – he would pretend to be a little kid and say, I dood it.
[00:14:42] Huh.
[00:14:43] Yeah.
[00:14:43] And they were like, oh, that is how kids talk.
[00:14:46] I think one of the most interesting things about him is that after he retired from comedy, quote unquote comedy, he spent the rest of his life painting clowns.
[00:14:55] Do you see any images of these paintings?
[00:14:57] No, I was not going to look those up.
[00:15:00] It could be a reference to Red Fox, but I think Red Skelton seems like a better fit because he was super corny.
[00:15:06] I don't know who Red Fox is either.
[00:15:07] Red Fox is like – he did like really raunchy stand-up for a while and then he was on Sanford and Sons.
[00:15:13] He was also a comedian.
[00:15:15] All right.
[00:15:16] Well –
[00:15:16] I mean, I've never actually listened to his stand-up, but Krusty the Clown says he was smutty.
[00:15:22] Yeah, there's like an aside.
[00:15:25] Good to know.
[00:15:25] You remember when Krusty is like becoming a stand-up and he's like, these lady comics saying stuff that would embarrass Red Fox.
[00:15:31] Yeah.
[00:15:32] Okay, fair enough.
[00:15:32] That's what that was.
[00:15:33] Okay, so this is where we get the introduction to the Purple Rage's catchphrases.
[00:15:37] X my Y.
[00:15:38] X my Y.
[00:15:39] And so they start out being like kind of weirdly suggestive.
[00:15:43] And they get just increasingly lazy and unhinged.
[00:15:46] So here they are in order.
[00:15:48] You know what really pinches my piano?
[00:15:50] You know what really burns my bubble blower?
[00:15:52] You know what really paddles my pancakes?
[00:15:54] That's where I was like, what?
[00:15:55] You know what really snaps my shorts?
[00:15:57] You know what tweaks my tutu?
[00:15:58] You know what honks my horse?
[00:16:00] That's where it gets lazy.
[00:16:01] You know what crunches my credenza?
[00:16:03] Okay, that's funny though.
[00:16:05] You know what gripes my goatee?
[00:16:06] You know what bites my giraffe?
[00:16:08] And then it gets suggestive again.
[00:16:09] Bites my giraffe?
[00:16:09] You lost the alliteration.
[00:16:10] Yeah, I know.
[00:16:11] See, lazy.
[00:16:12] Increasingly lazy.
[00:16:13] I don't know.
[00:16:14] Crunch is my credenza.
[00:16:16] It's not especially lazy.
[00:16:17] It's not especially.
[00:16:18] Just strange.
[00:16:19] Yeah.
[00:16:20] I don't really know what a credenza is.
[00:16:22] Is it a desk?
[00:16:22] Yeah, it's like a bureau, right?
[00:16:24] Like adjusted drawers or something?
[00:16:25] Yeah.
[00:16:26] You know what crunches my credenza?
[00:16:29] There's nothing.
[00:16:30] I don't have one.
[00:16:31] Yeah, it's true.
[00:16:33] But yeah, tweaks my tutu and snaps my shorts and paddles my pancakes.
[00:16:37] I was like, we're on a weird little streak here with these ones.
[00:16:41] Well, Brooke and Robbie go to the TV station to.
[00:16:44] Oh, wait.
[00:16:45] I have a, it's the 2000s moment to just mention is that Officer Rawls sends, he's going to send,
[00:16:50] he says, I'm going to send in my crime scene people to invest in.
[00:16:54] Ooh, we've got forensics now.
[00:16:58] Also, kind of late 90s to be like, you know, eventually they'll show up after you guys have
[00:17:02] all like walked all over your house and touched everything.
[00:17:04] Right.
[00:17:04] Yeah.
[00:17:06] I mean, they're not in any hurry.
[00:17:07] It's just a missing kid.
[00:17:08] But like, there are kids all over the place.
[00:17:10] Yeah.
[00:17:11] Boulder PD over here.
[00:17:13] Well, Robbie and Brooke go to the TV station.
[00:17:16] They pretend to be from the school newspaper.
[00:17:19] They're like have a back and forth with the receptionist.
[00:17:21] And then Red Martinson shows up.
[00:17:22] Wearing a Cleveland Rocks t-shirt.
[00:17:25] Yeah.
[00:17:25] Which is a song by Ian Hunter that was played every Friday at 5 p.m. on Cleveland radio station
[00:17:32] WMMS beginning in 1979 and was covered by the presidents of the United States as the
[00:17:37] intro to The Drew Carey Show.
[00:17:38] That's where I know it from.
[00:17:39] Yeah, it makes sense.
[00:17:40] But it's from the 70s.
[00:17:41] So, yeah.
[00:17:42] It's weird that they would play it every day at Quentin time.
[00:17:45] I mean, they're just really.
[00:17:46] Or every Friday, rather.
[00:17:47] It's the first time someone noticed Cleveland.
[00:17:50] Well, Red Martinson is like, yeah, he said he was a supervillain and I was skeptical,
[00:17:55] but he convinced me.
[00:17:56] Anyway, he went up to the roof.
[00:17:58] So they run up to the roof.
[00:18:00] We just let these children go running to the roof.
[00:18:02] Yeah.
[00:18:03] Then Robbie falls off the roof, but the Purple Rage catches him.
[00:18:06] There's some, another fake hour.
[00:18:08] Drop him, catch him, drop him, catch him.
[00:18:10] Yeah.
[00:18:11] His powerful arms held me tightly against his massive purple chest was a line I took note of.
[00:18:17] Well, the Purple Rage says that the Dr. Maniac has teamed up with the Scarlet Starlet, which
[00:18:22] is from Robbie's first comic strip.
[00:18:25] And he takes Robbie to his lair.
[00:18:27] And as he flew, he held me in front of him like a loaf of bread.
[00:18:31] How do you hold a loaf of bread?
[00:18:33] I don't know.
[00:18:34] Like, it sounds like R.L.
[00:18:35] Stein thinks you, if you have a loaf of bread, you have to hold it way out in front
[00:18:38] of you or something.
[00:18:38] Like a puppy that's peeing or something.
[00:18:41] Which is also not how I hold a puppy, but it's what came to mind.
[00:18:44] I mean, I'd hold a loaf of bread by the part of the plastic that's held together by the
[00:18:50] twisty thing.
[00:18:51] Like, you know.
[00:18:51] Maybe it's a baguette from your local neighborhood bakery.
[00:18:54] I feel like then I'd hold it like a baby kind of.
[00:18:58] Yeah.
[00:18:59] I don't know how often R.L.
[00:19:01] Dahl, R.L.
[00:19:01] Stein buys bread.
[00:19:02] I was thinking about R.L.
[00:19:03] Dahl just now.
[00:19:04] Whoa.
[00:19:05] That was crazy.
[00:19:05] Because like, remember when Charlie comes in with his loaf of bread and he's like, how
[00:19:08] about this?
[00:19:09] He kind of holds it out in front of him.
[00:19:11] To show people.
[00:19:12] Like, this is just how he carries it.
[00:19:18] Well, the Purple Ridge takes Robbie to his lair.
[00:19:21] It's set up with cameras and a tank that he fills with scorpions.
[00:19:25] Mm-hmm.
[00:19:25] And he throws Robbie in.
[00:19:27] Oh, man.
[00:19:28] It's very fear factor.
[00:19:29] Yeah.
[00:19:29] And he broadcasts this as some kind of warning to Dr. Maniac.
[00:19:34] Oh, yeah.
[00:19:34] My next note here is remember how the last book had a plot?
[00:19:37] Okay.
[00:19:37] There are some fun asides here, though.
[00:19:39] Robbie's like, I created you.
[00:19:41] And Dr. Maniac's like, I was created by a scream from Thor.
[00:19:45] Oh, shit.
[00:19:46] Is that why you want us to watch Toy Story?
[00:19:48] No.
[00:19:49] Okay.
[00:19:49] Because we rewatched Toy Story like last night.
[00:19:52] And it's like a Buzz Lightyear moment, right?
[00:19:55] Mm-hmm.
[00:19:55] But anyway, then also there's an aside where he's like, Dr. Maniac asks him his name.
[00:20:03] Or, I mean, Purple Rage is like, what's your name?
[00:20:05] And he's like, Robbie Schwartz.
[00:20:06] And he's like, hey, is your dad the Bucky Schwartz who shrunk my tights at the dry cleaners?
[00:20:10] And he's like, no, my dad's a lawyer.
[00:20:12] Yeah.
[00:20:12] Norman Schwartz, lawyer, Esquire.
[00:20:15] So, I don't know.
[00:20:17] Or else I'm just writing words down, I guess.
[00:20:19] Yeah, just you got to – there's a number of words you have to write.
[00:20:22] They don't need to be in a particular order.
[00:20:24] Just write them down.
[00:20:26] So, Robbie, he kicks himself for not inventing any superheroes.
[00:20:29] But I feel like he did.
[00:20:31] It's just himself.
[00:20:32] Yeah, that's true.
[00:20:33] Not very inventive if it's yourself.
[00:20:35] No, of course not.
[00:20:36] But the question, why did I only create villains, I think is at the heart of this book.
[00:20:41] And I will follow up on that later.
[00:20:43] Excellent.
[00:20:44] Looking forward to it.
[00:20:45] I had to entertain myself.
[00:20:47] Yeah, this is really a – you know, you have to bring your own fun to this party if you're reading this book.
[00:20:53] I mean, I studied 17th century literature for like 10 years.
[00:20:56] And you also have to bring your own fun to get through this place.
[00:21:01] Well, Robbie gets the idea of taunting the Purple Rage until he gets mad and breaks the glass.
[00:21:07] So – and then Robbie runs away.
[00:21:08] And he runs down a hallway and falls into a sewer?
[00:21:11] Yeah.
[00:21:12] Very unsafe conditions in this apartment building or whatever it is.
[00:21:17] There's some gross out stuff.
[00:21:18] He finds a ladder and he gets out of the sewer two streets from home.
[00:21:21] His mom is not very surprised to see him.
[00:21:24] She's like, just take two showers.
[00:21:25] She doesn't seem super worried about her other missing kid.
[00:21:28] I guess, again, it makes sense that this is a book written by a child.
[00:21:32] Yeah.
[00:21:33] I knew you were going to say that, but there's –
[00:21:35] I knew – yeah.
[00:21:36] You know what drives me nuts about this is that it wasn't really written by a child, was it?
[00:21:40] Well, it's someone imitating writing by a child.
[00:21:42] Yeah.
[00:21:43] I don't think he was thinking that deeply about it, though.
[00:21:46] It's the only way I can salvage this.
[00:21:47] I think he was just fucking lazy.
[00:21:48] Anyway.
[00:21:50] So, yeah.
[00:21:51] Then Robbie remembers Brooke in time for his mom to be like, oh, Brooke's missing.
[00:21:55] Have you seen her?
[00:21:56] And then Robbie goes to his computer and he finds a comic strip he didn't write called Maniac on Ice.
[00:22:02] Yeah.
[00:22:03] And then I guess we're somehow inside that world of the story and Dr. Maniac is going to make all the kids in town ice skate all the time.
[00:22:12] For 24 hours a day so that he can become rich.
[00:22:16] And so my first question is like, who would watch that?
[00:22:19] I don't know.
[00:22:20] And it's not actually an ice rink.
[00:22:21] It's the public pool that they just froze.
[00:22:23] Yeah.
[00:22:24] They're not doing a routine.
[00:22:25] We're going to see.
[00:22:26] They're not teaching them a number.
[00:22:27] It's just a bunch of kids sadly skating silently.
[00:22:31] I know.
[00:22:32] But then we do go to ice rinks where kids are skating sadly in a circle.
[00:22:36] People aren't paying to watch those kids.
[00:22:38] They're paying for their children to be skating there.
[00:22:39] Yeah.
[00:22:40] And they're usually playing music.
[00:22:42] Yes.
[00:22:44] I don't know.
[00:22:45] Again, remember this is written by a child.
[00:22:48] But it wasn't.
[00:22:49] I know.
[00:22:49] I know.
[00:22:49] Well, anyway, he gets context clues from the strip that say this is the public pool.
[00:22:54] So he goes there and – or he's on his way there.
[00:22:57] But the cops – Officer Rawls shows up and he goes to show him the comic strip.
[00:23:01] But it's vanished.
[00:23:02] No one believes him.
[00:23:04] He goes to the pool and he thinks, ah, I'll go in the back door.
[00:23:06] That'll be sneaky.
[00:23:07] So he goes in.
[00:23:10] Look, it was one of the, like, things that happens.
[00:23:13] There are not many things that happen in this book.
[00:23:15] You did a very good job keeping a close eye on every step.
[00:23:18] I appreciate that.
[00:23:20] Alyssa was willing to take this one for the team a little bit so that I could spend less time note-taking and more time focusing on my –
[00:23:27] Looming final exams.
[00:23:29] I appreciate it.
[00:23:30] Well, he gets to the pool.
[00:23:33] There are a couple of kids there.
[00:23:34] It's frozen.
[00:23:35] And Dr. Maniac throws a net over him.
[00:23:37] And then the Scarlet Starlet is there.
[00:23:39] Her main characteristic is that she needs attention.
[00:23:42] So she's like, where's my audience?
[00:23:44] And Dr. Maniac says, you'll get lots of attention when the ice show starts.
[00:23:48] But for some reason, she's not in it.
[00:23:50] She's just like a producer.
[00:23:51] Yeah.
[00:23:51] So I don't know –
[00:23:52] Maybe she'll get award ceremony attention.
[00:23:54] She doesn't seem like a delayed gratification kind of person though.
[00:23:57] Well, they tell Robbie that he'll never see his friends again.
[00:24:01] They also – I forget who calls Dr. Maniac Maniac.
[00:24:05] But do you remember that part?
[00:24:06] No.
[00:24:07] He's like, hey, it's Dr. Maniac.
[00:24:09] I have a university degree in maniacal studies.
[00:24:12] That was a good moment.
[00:24:13] Yeah.
[00:24:14] Ish.
[00:24:15] Yeah.
[00:24:15] They make Robbie skate.
[00:24:16] They luckily have skates in his size.
[00:24:18] And if he doesn't skate, they'll tickle him till he pukes.
[00:24:23] I don't like that.
[00:24:24] No.
[00:24:25] I think I missed that.
[00:24:26] I don't like any of this.
[00:24:27] No.
[00:24:28] And it's also like, man, what low stakes.
[00:24:30] Yeah.
[00:24:31] But also, what the hell are these adults?
[00:24:33] But we learned they're not.
[00:24:34] They're not.
[00:24:35] They're other kids.
[00:24:35] Yeah.
[00:24:36] But it's like – you know, they did just like strap two blades to your feet.
[00:24:40] Like you can do stuff.
[00:24:41] Yeah.
[00:24:41] I don't know.
[00:24:41] Whatever.
[00:24:42] It's lazy.
[00:24:42] Yeah.
[00:24:42] Go kicking.
[00:24:43] Yeah.
[00:24:43] Yeah.
[00:24:44] Then the purple rage shows up.
[00:24:45] And they – the Scarlet Starlet and Dr. Maniac defeat him by making him so angry that he explodes.
[00:24:52] Yeah.
[00:24:52] They laugh at him.
[00:24:53] Yeah.
[00:24:53] And then there's like purple blob pieces of his flesh all over the ice that they have
[00:24:58] to skate around.
[00:24:59] Yeah.
[00:24:59] That's gross and cool.
[00:25:00] That's yucky.
[00:25:01] Yeah.
[00:25:01] As our kid would say.
[00:25:03] Yeah.
[00:25:03] So he and these two kids are skating just for hours.
[00:25:07] It's just two kids?
[00:25:08] Him and two other kids.
[00:25:09] But they go out and they're kidnapping other kids and bringing them.
[00:25:12] I see.
[00:25:12] So eventually the rink is filled up with dozens of kids.
[00:25:16] Dozens of sad kids.
[00:25:18] Again, skating silently.
[00:25:19] And again, it's a public pool.
[00:25:20] Like it's crowded.
[00:25:22] They must have just not told them what the real reason was because that – again,
[00:25:27] it doesn't make sense.
[00:25:28] Yeah.
[00:25:29] What the real plot – what their evil plot is.
[00:25:32] Yeah.
[00:25:32] Or like what's the dance routine?
[00:25:35] Like what's the – do we have pyrotechnics?
[00:25:37] Are there costumes?
[00:25:38] Like who's paying to see this?
[00:25:40] I know – again, I know written by a child.
[00:25:42] It's a book for eight-year-olds.
[00:25:43] But like you weren't giving me anything to hold on to really.
[00:25:46] Maybe Earl Stein is writing this book specifically to all the kids who are like,
[00:25:50] I could be just like you.
[00:25:51] My name's even Robbie also.
[00:25:53] And he's like, oh yeah?
[00:25:55] Do you want to see how hard it is to write a book?
[00:25:57] You know how none of this makes sense?
[00:25:58] That's what your writing's like.
[00:26:00] I don't know.
[00:26:00] This doesn't seem – make it seem like it's hard to write a book.
[00:26:03] Seems like it's hard to write a good one.
[00:26:05] Yeah.
[00:26:05] That's different.
[00:26:05] That's not what you said.
[00:26:06] That doesn't have huge plot holes in it.
[00:26:08] Well, anyway.
[00:26:09] Eventually Robbie realizes that there are more kids than villains and he starts trying to
[00:26:13] organize an uprising.
[00:26:14] He says to everyone, head through the door at 8.30.
[00:26:17] He's like, pass it on.
[00:26:18] You know, whispering it.
[00:26:19] And then the ice starts to melt.
[00:26:20] Like basically –
[00:26:21] Why at 8.30 and not just right now?
[00:26:23] I don't know.
[00:26:23] Like yell out.
[00:26:24] Let's all.
[00:26:24] Go to the door.
[00:26:25] And so everyone's screaming.
[00:26:27] The kids start falling in.
[00:26:28] But like it's a pool, right?
[00:26:30] There's no undercurrent.
[00:26:31] Like it's warming up.
[00:26:33] It's colder.
[00:26:34] It's – yeah.
[00:26:34] But it's just like –
[00:26:35] Maybe some of them can't swim.
[00:26:36] Yeah.
[00:26:36] Got ice skates on.
[00:26:38] No, no.
[00:26:38] Fair.
[00:26:39] Anyway.
[00:26:40] It probably has a shallow end somewhere they can go to.
[00:26:42] Yeah.
[00:26:42] I mean our YMCA pool was at its deepest four feet deep.
[00:26:47] Which to be fair was over my head for a long time.
[00:26:51] So Dr. Maniac is doing this all at a computer terminal.
[00:26:54] Robbie gets out of the pool, runs at him like he could have done at any point up until now
[00:26:58] and grabs his face and rips it off and it's Sam.
[00:27:01] And it turns out the scarlet starlet is Brooke.
[00:27:06] And that's why they were like, you'll never see your friends again.
[00:27:09] Who cares?
[00:27:10] And then the police bust in and I don't know.
[00:27:14] He – his solution is like I'm going to delete this story.
[00:27:19] Yeah.
[00:27:19] He goes to the computer terminal that apparently controls the pool temperature.
[00:27:22] That's in the swimming pool.
[00:27:23] Yeah.
[00:27:23] In the swimming pool area and hits the delete key.
[00:27:25] Because fuck you.
[00:27:26] That's why.
[00:27:27] Yeah.
[00:27:28] And then I guess I had a question.
[00:27:31] So I read this book once.
[00:27:33] I know it's not over yet.
[00:27:34] But I read this book once and I just like fell asleep and did not take in what happened.
[00:27:41] Then I read it again and I was like, oh, I guess I didn't actually miss anything.
[00:27:45] Yeah.
[00:27:45] That's how it is.
[00:27:46] It's not like going wounds where you miss the entire end of the book.
[00:27:49] This morning I was taking notes on it and I was like, oh, there could be something interesting
[00:27:53] here.
[00:27:54] So what happens next is it's actually him telling his mother about the story he wrote and
[00:28:00] his mom is like, oh, you that's so interesting.
[00:28:03] You like made up that you have friends and siblings.
[00:28:06] Yeah.
[00:28:07] And siblings.
[00:28:09] But is it that this is actually the real version and he's been telling us stories within stories
[00:28:15] all along?
[00:28:16] Or was the second to last one also a real version and he deleted his friends and it's like Cuckoo
[00:28:23] Clock of Doom where they did exist, but he deleted them because he has this like story
[00:28:27] creator power to influence reality?
[00:28:30] I think he'd say that.
[00:28:31] I think he'd say that if it were true.
[00:28:33] Maybe he doesn't even know.
[00:28:34] He doesn't seem to understand like his creation.
[00:28:37] Well, I think he's just – no, I think it's just an imagination because his mom leaves and
[00:28:41] then, you know, in the comic his imaginary friends show up and say, we didn't like
[00:28:44] your ending.
[00:28:45] There's a better one at Horrorland.
[00:28:47] The end.
[00:28:48] But it's like this is just what's been happening throughout the whole book.
[00:28:50] He's just imagining it again.
[00:28:51] Well, it could be a black mirror sort of a thing though.
[00:28:54] It could.
[00:28:54] It could.
[00:28:55] It could.
[00:28:55] It could be like an evil Adobe illustrator behind it all.
[00:28:58] Yeah.
[00:29:01] Well, I think part of the reason this book is so much worse than the others is because
[00:29:04] the walls are starting to melt between the chaotic nonsense of the Horrorland scenes
[00:29:09] and the what was up till now somewhat untouched classic Goosebumps territory of the main
[00:29:16] stories in each book.
[00:29:17] Yeah.
[00:29:18] This is the first time where it didn't have a solid enough ending to stand on its own.
[00:29:22] It had to be like, but wait, there's more in Horrorland.
[00:29:25] Yeah.
[00:29:25] He says, you'll come join us there.
[00:29:27] Yeah.
[00:29:28] It's not self-contained anymore.
[00:29:29] Right.
[00:29:31] Okay.
[00:29:32] Should we talk about horror taxonomies?
[00:29:34] Yeah.
[00:29:35] What you got?
[00:29:36] Your creation comes to life.
[00:29:39] Like the gingerbread man.
[00:29:40] Mm-hmm.
[00:29:42] In Stephen King's story, Secret Window, Secret Garden, where the villain from his stories
[00:29:46] comes out and is accusing him of plagiarizing him.
[00:29:49] Yeah.
[00:29:50] You know?
[00:29:50] And they plant corn.
[00:29:52] Yeah.
[00:29:52] He plant his dead wife in some corn.
[00:29:55] Anyway, I guess this idea that you could think something up and it could become a reality
[00:30:02] is scary, especially if you're paranoid and you think, oh, my thoughts.
[00:30:07] You know, a lot of us are taught that having a bad thought is also wrong and you're a bad
[00:30:12] person if you have bad thoughts, even though everyone has bad thoughts.
[00:30:15] Yeah.
[00:30:15] And so here it's like, oh, my bad thoughts are taking on a reality.
[00:30:19] And I think it's also his bad impulses, right?
[00:30:21] The side of him that is full of rage, for example.
[00:30:24] The side of him that is desperate for attention.
[00:30:27] They're all being turned into these supervillain characters as a way to have a safe outlet in
[00:30:33] fiction and creation for those sides of his personality that are socially unacceptable.
[00:30:38] And then the fear is, oh, they're not being safely contained anymore.
[00:30:42] They're actually concentrated and taking on this whole new form.
[00:30:46] Yeah.
[00:30:46] And it's not just bad thoughts, right?
[00:30:47] We see this trope a lot with people who write things, right?
[00:30:52] I'm thinking like The Dark Half by Stephen King.
[00:30:54] It's all over the place.
[00:30:54] It's not just Stephen King, but where it's, oh, you wrote it down and that manifested it
[00:30:58] in the world.
[00:30:59] And it's weirdly like a warning against genre.
[00:31:03] In some ways, I think it's a response to people who suggest that things like horror or
[00:31:09] violent video games are the cause of bad things rather than an exploration of perhaps tendencies
[00:31:17] or thoughts that everyone has.
[00:31:19] Yeah, I know.
[00:31:20] And it is hard to know when something that you're fixating on, that it's like healthy to be doing
[00:31:25] that versus making the problem worse, right?
[00:31:28] I don't know what the gingerbread man is supposed to be.
[00:31:31] The side of you that wants your cookies to be alive so you can hunt them down.
[00:31:38] The party that just wants to eat cookies and not have to work for it?
[00:31:41] See, when I've been telling that story lately because of being a parent and all, I was starting
[00:31:47] to get the idea that actually you're supposed to be identifying with the fox.
[00:31:50] Because if there's a moral, the moral is like if you can't catch someone, trick them.
[00:31:56] But I don't know.
[00:31:58] The gingerbread man is in the story for most of it.
[00:32:01] Yeah.
[00:32:01] That's a good question.
[00:32:02] The moral for him is like don't trust anyone.
[00:32:05] I don't know.
[00:32:06] It's also making me want to pick up a copy of the stinky cheese man and read that version
[00:32:11] of it because that's the one I mainly remember.
[00:32:13] To the library.
[00:32:15] Well, my first taxonomy is imaginary families.
[00:32:19] I thought of marrow bone.
[00:32:21] There's obviously psycho.
[00:32:23] Good night, mommy.
[00:32:24] Those examples are people who had family members and lost them and imagined them into existence.
[00:32:31] There's one called The Voices where Ryan Reynolds is imagining his dog and cat talking to him.
[00:32:38] Remember the one with the little girl in that old house out in the country?
[00:32:42] It was like an English one and she keeps like going to the road where her sister died.
[00:32:47] Yes.
[00:32:47] That was a fucking cool movie.
[00:32:49] Don't remember the name.
[00:32:50] Oh, it was so good.
[00:32:50] But yeah, so –
[00:32:51] She's like being haunted by her dead sister.
[00:32:54] Yeah.
[00:32:55] Yeah.
[00:32:55] And those are all – again, those are all a little different in that it's – there
[00:32:58] was at one point a sibling or a parent or something.
[00:33:03] But yeah, here he's just made them up whole cloth because he doesn't have anyone.
[00:33:08] Yeah.
[00:33:08] And he says he's not lonely.
[00:33:10] He says he just likes making up stories.
[00:33:12] But –
[00:33:16] And maybe he's telling the truth.
[00:33:17] Maybe his mom's interpretation is wrong.
[00:33:19] And maybe he really just likes having the ability to just say, hey, sit down and listen
[00:33:24] to me tell you my comic strip.
[00:33:26] But who knows?
[00:33:28] Yeah.
[00:33:28] Don't get enough character development to figure it out.
[00:33:30] It's very true.
[00:33:31] But I mean the stories with a fake family member are a lot of times – yeah, like you said,
[00:33:36] usually it's because there's someone actually missing.
[00:33:38] So it's a way of being like, oh, that person never leaves you really.
[00:33:41] Your family always has that extra like missing limb, phantom limb.
[00:33:49] And when I guess if there was never such a person in the first place, it is like a phantom
[00:33:53] limb story too in the sense that it's like the family – the thing isn't complete.
[00:33:59] Yeah.
[00:33:59] Right?
[00:33:59] Yeah.
[00:34:00] It needs this one other element whether it's to get something out again that like isn't
[00:34:06] being said or spoken or to fulfill some kind of need.
[00:34:08] So maybe the need isn't to be around other people but the need for Robbie must be something
[00:34:13] that he's fulfilling by telling these stories.
[00:34:15] I mean I would say probably boredom because that's why a lot of us get into fantasies.
[00:34:21] Well, yeah.
[00:34:21] A lot of what he's doing is making these people vanish so he can go out and pursue them.
[00:34:24] It's not actually like about hanging out with them.
[00:34:26] Yeah.
[00:34:26] Because even in the fantasy where they're all hanging out together, he's like if you guys
[00:34:29] go play battle chess and go eat chips.
[00:34:30] Yeah.
[00:34:31] He just I guess is looking for a sense of purpose.
[00:34:33] He doesn't actually want the companionship.
[00:34:34] That's a really good point.
[00:34:36] Thank you.
[00:34:36] Okay.
[00:34:37] My next one is Missing Children.
[00:34:40] There's The Deep End of the Ocean, the Michelle Pfeiffer.
[00:34:43] I think it was at one point in Oprah's Book Club book.
[00:34:45] Yep.
[00:34:46] But it's about this woman whose kid goes missing and then she refinds him like 12, 13
[00:34:52] years later.
[00:34:53] I think I've talked about it before on here.
[00:34:55] There's also Flight Plan where I know I've mentioned that one where Jodie Foster like falls
[00:35:00] asleep on a plane and she wakes up and her daughter's gone and everyone's like you don't have
[00:35:03] a daughter.
[00:35:03] Mm hmm.
[00:35:05] There's just a lot of like missing child movies because it's you know, it's like an
[00:35:10] instant scary thing.
[00:35:11] Right.
[00:35:12] Especially the element of it that's not only do you not know where they went, but they're
[00:35:18] not reliable narrators to get themselves back to you.
[00:35:21] Yeah.
[00:35:21] They might not know where they live.
[00:35:23] They might be easily have their like memories overwritten.
[00:35:28] And so I think in this book, possibly because the kids aren't real, it's not really treated
[00:35:33] as a source of horror.
[00:35:35] But for the fictional parents, they're probably panicking, especially when they're trying
[00:35:39] to rely on the kid, Brooke, to tell them what happened.
[00:35:44] And she's like, a monster came in my window and took them.
[00:35:47] Mm hmm.
[00:35:47] You know?
[00:35:48] Yeah.
[00:35:49] Like just tell us what really happened.
[00:35:50] Yeah.
[00:35:52] The movie Hook is actually, I think actually tonally more similar to this.
[00:35:55] Right.
[00:35:56] But it's similar.
[00:35:57] It's like, oh, the guy from a story came and took your kids.
[00:36:02] But Hook, in its attitude towards lost children, just like Peter Pan's attitude towards lost
[00:36:08] children, like from the children's perspective, it's more fantastical and chaotic kind of
[00:36:13] story than the horror story or thriller story it is when it's told from the parents' perspective.
[00:36:18] Yeah.
[00:36:18] And actually, a movie that came out around the time, probably a little earlier than this
[00:36:23] book, is the Angelina Jolie movie, The Changeling, which I believe is based on a
[00:36:27] true story where a woman's child went missing and then the police brought a different kid
[00:36:30] back and they were like, no, this is your kid.
[00:36:31] Oh, damn.
[00:36:32] So I think that that's what that scene is a reference to.
[00:36:34] That's cool.
[00:36:35] Which then it gets played off very humorously to be like, no, I'm Jerome.
[00:36:39] But it's also like incompetent cops feeding into that, right?
[00:36:43] And the parents being totally alone and isolated.
[00:36:46] Yeah.
[00:36:47] Well, my next one was Meat Eaters Find Meat Grotesque.
[00:36:51] Yeah.
[00:36:51] This is a big, big horror one.
[00:36:53] I love that.
[00:36:53] Usually what happens is the only way to make that move is to make the meat human, right?
[00:37:00] So Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Fresh, Sweeney Todd.
[00:37:05] The one you watched last night.
[00:37:05] Yeah.
[00:37:06] What You Wish For and The Horror of Dolores Roach.
[00:37:10] Yeah.
[00:37:11] The one I watched last night is What You Wish For.
[00:37:14] Somebody even points, they're doing this thing where they're, you know, killing people to eat them.
[00:37:19] Sorry for any spoilers.
[00:37:21] Too late now.
[00:37:22] But, you know, the guy, one guy says, you know, don't you feel bad for them?
[00:37:25] And he's like, well, I don't feel bad for a pig when I eat it, which is like a very honest call out of like what eating meat is.
[00:37:32] Yeah.
[00:37:32] I think it's about like not having empathy or preferring your own appetites over that empathy.
[00:37:40] Yeah.
[00:37:40] And like I get that the thing with Dr. Maniac is that he's offering something that's like kind of rotted and, you know, but I think a lot of it is you just like Robbie doesn't want to see essentially what he was eating earlier.
[00:37:53] And also I think doesn't have a very good imagination for what's scary.
[00:37:56] So there's that too.
[00:37:56] I mean part of what he emphasizes with it being a rotted squirrel or whatever is it's like, oh, you're eating a dead animal, you know?
[00:38:02] Because I feel like it's already a little bit horrifying to be like I'm going to eat an animal, but then you're like, oh, I just picked up – like it's disgusting.
[00:38:11] Like people – many people think it's gross to eat roadkill, right?
[00:38:14] It's like a stereotype of like whatever, like a hillbilly thing to do.
[00:38:19] Is it what's gross about that you're like, oh, but that's dead, right?
[00:38:23] Yeah.
[00:38:23] Or died a different way than it used to.
[00:38:25] Yeah.
[00:38:25] It died less recently.
[00:38:27] Yeah.
[00:38:27] Or something.
[00:38:28] I don't know.
[00:38:28] So in a lot of horror it has to go to these lengths of it being a person for it to be scary.
[00:38:34] But as I was Googling for this I found sort of a bonus subtaxonomy which is movies I haven't seen but I think would be better than this book related to food.
[00:38:42] Thanksgiving, Poultry Geist, Night of the Chicken Dead.
[00:38:45] Uh-huh.
[00:38:45] We've seen Thanksgiving.
[00:38:47] No, we saw like Blood Feast or Blood Rage.
[00:38:49] Oh, you're right.
[00:38:50] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:38:51] Slaw, which the reason I clicked on this one is has the same style cover as Saw but with – it's got an L in it.
[00:38:58] What about coleslaw?
[00:38:59] Foodie Brothers, Gordon and Martha – yeah, it says brother.
[00:39:02] I'm just copying the description.
[00:39:03] This is what I got.
[00:39:04] Foodie Brothers, Gordon and Martha do not like when someone ruins their dining experience.
[00:39:07] They kidnap and make them pay for their misties using Mama's Tasty Coleslaw.
[00:39:11] Wow.
[00:39:11] I'm curious.
[00:39:12] And then a couple more were Flesh Eating Mothers, Pan Man, which had a – featured a picture of a person with a pot on their head.
[00:39:21] Confusing.
[00:39:21] Microwave Massacre.
[00:39:22] Uh-huh.
[00:39:23] And Attack of the Killer Donuts.
[00:39:24] I think I've heard – I think I've heard of Microwave Massacre before.
[00:39:28] I've definitely heard of that one too, yeah.
[00:39:29] Because it's – you have to plug it in to actually make it a threat so it's kind of hard to realize as a villain.
[00:39:35] I don't know if those would all be better than this book.
[00:39:38] I would take that bet.
[00:39:40] Okay.
[00:39:40] I would guess.
[00:39:41] I would bet.
[00:39:42] And also I want donuts now.
[00:39:46] Well, they're not nearby but we can get them.
[00:39:48] What is your next taxonomy?
[00:39:50] Well, I was just going to say to follow up on that one.
[00:39:52] It's interesting too because I think R.L.
[00:39:54] Al Stein has done this a few times before where he has one character, usually the mother, be vegetarian and acts like it's some kind of sacrifice.
[00:40:03] And it's like, but you're eating hot dogs, you know?
[00:40:06] Yeah.
[00:40:07] That's not better, you know?
[00:40:09] Yeah.
[00:40:09] It's not like, oh, we've got this top shelf delicious thing and you are so sad to have this soy burger.
[00:40:15] It's like you both just went to the refrigerator aisle and grabbed a thing that was $5, you know?
[00:40:20] Yeah.
[00:40:21] A little packet.
[00:40:22] My mom has two soy burgers.
[00:40:24] Yeah.
[00:40:24] Anyway, but I guess my point is alongside that horror of eating dead animals, there's, oh, I have to also remind myself though that it would be so much worse if I weren't eating dead animals.
[00:40:36] Because then I'd have to eat plants.
[00:40:37] Yeah.
[00:40:38] So this is stealing from you a little bit, Alyssa, but you had said that you at one point thought about making one of your taxonomy categories disappointment.
[00:40:49] Yeah.
[00:40:50] And I got, I told Andy that this morning and I also explained that I got too lazy because sometimes it's really hard to remember, first of all, movies that I've seen.
[00:40:57] And second of all, bad movies that I've seen, like off the top of my head.
[00:41:01] So I didn't do it.
[00:41:02] But thank you for picking it up.
[00:41:03] Well, I'm going to narrow it a little into disappointing installments in a series.
[00:41:08] Great.
[00:41:09] So, for example, the Simpsons episode where you learn that Principal Skinner is actually an imposter.
[00:41:19] That, for many Simpsons fans, is one of the moments where the show really took a downward turn.
[00:41:25] Yeah.
[00:41:27] And, I mean, you know, now at this point there's many seasons that are disappointing.
[00:41:32] But that's an example.
[00:41:34] So there's the Saw 3D episode, extremely disappointing.
[00:41:40] Plus Jigsaw, which I mostly don't acknowledge the existence of.
[00:41:43] But, yeah.
[00:41:43] Yeah, it's just sad because if you watch those, it'll have all your worst feelings about the series confirmed.
[00:41:50] But if you actually watch the beginning, it's not like that at all.
[00:41:53] Like the first Rambo movie or the first Rocky movie, they're actually really thoughtful movies that then get kind of cartoonishly caricature-y by the end.
[00:42:02] Yeah.
[00:42:03] In light of recent political events, I, for some reason, have been really interested in really extreme horror.
[00:42:08] So I went back and watched Hostel thinking, well, maybe it'll be one of those things where you go back and you realize like, oh, there's actually this like merit in it.
[00:42:14] Nah, it's still bad.
[00:42:15] And I just remember the feeling of disappointment at the time too, just being like, this is awful.
[00:42:19] And like, it's gross.
[00:42:20] It's unnecessary.
[00:42:22] It is all those things.
[00:42:23] Yeah.
[00:42:23] And the thing is, Arlstein has, as he often says, written over 300 books.
[00:42:28] They can't all be winners.
[00:42:30] And I feel like this one is a real dumping ground for a lot of things that didn't quite pan out.
[00:42:35] I wouldn't say a lot of them because there's not a lot going on.
[00:42:38] Well, there's a lot of things that don't add up, right?
[00:42:40] We've got the ice skating plot.
[00:42:41] We've got the plot within a plot.
[00:42:43] Like, why is this guy wearing leopard skin and feathers?
[00:42:46] Was there like another character in there that we never actually ended up writing?
[00:42:49] You know, the Scarlet Starlet doesn't really fit with the world of these other two guys.
[00:42:53] Yeah.
[00:42:53] But it's less like he took a bunch of things, like a bunch of ingredients and made a soup out
[00:42:57] of them so much as like, here's some lint I found in my pocket.
[00:43:02] It's not substantial.
[00:43:04] No, it really isn't.
[00:43:05] But they can't all be winners if a franchise goes on long enough.
[00:43:09] Some of them have to be Friday the 13th, part five.
[00:43:13] Fair enough.
[00:43:14] Well, my next taxonomy was Welcome to Fantasyland, where you're just living in someone's fantasy
[00:43:19] or their dream.
[00:43:20] A classic is Jacob's Ladder, although that one feels more high stakes, I think.
[00:43:25] Than this?
[00:43:26] What?
[00:43:27] There's Vanilla Sky and then there's the original Abre Los Ojos, which I have not seen, but
[00:43:32] I've heard is better than Vanilla Sky.
[00:43:34] Total Recall, obviously.
[00:43:35] There's this question of, is this just this dude's fantasy after his brain has been destroyed?
[00:43:39] That's what I'm saying about the last chapter, Alyssa.
[00:43:42] And then the other one is there's a through line in the series, A Murder at the End of
[00:43:48] the World.
[00:43:49] And skip ahead 30 seconds if you don't want that spoiled.
[00:43:52] But it's basically like VR slash chat GPT did it.
[00:43:55] Like, it's like, oh, this kid was playing this fantasy game.
[00:43:58] He didn't realize he was actually being an instrumental murder.
[00:44:01] And that's what I'm saying about the, like, fantasy, the very first taxonomy category I
[00:44:06] talked about where it's like, oh, you have these fantasies, but what if they actually aren't
[00:44:11] contained safely, right?
[00:44:12] What if your thoughts are out doing stuff in the world?
[00:44:15] Yeah.
[00:44:15] Yeah.
[00:44:16] Scary.
[00:44:17] Not realizing you're having this big effect.
[00:44:19] Like, ooh, also skip ahead if you haven't seen Wicked yet.
[00:44:23] But like, what happens with the flying monkeys?
[00:44:25] Mm-hmm.
[00:44:26] You know?
[00:44:27] Yeah.
[00:44:27] You don't know what you're doing.
[00:44:28] It's true.
[00:44:29] Oh my god.
[00:44:30] Wicked was so good.
[00:44:31] It was very good.
[00:44:32] My last one is Elaborate Revenge.
[00:44:36] So what we learn, sort of, and this is going ahead towards the Horrorland segment, but I think
[00:44:42] we should address it too.
[00:44:44] One of the characters suggests that actually what's happening, and I can't remember if it
[00:44:48] was Carly, Beth, and Sabrina or Molly and Brittany, but one of these pairs is like this
[00:44:53] whole park was built for revenge.
[00:44:56] You know, all of the villains we know, they all basically got together and brought us here
[00:45:00] so they could all take revenge on us, which is wild because building an amusement park to
[00:45:06] get revenge on someone is years of effort, especially because they had to have started building
[00:45:12] the park before the events of these stories.
[00:45:15] Well, did they build it or did they, is it under new management?
[00:45:18] Yeah.
[00:45:19] That actually makes even more sense if they're like, okay, this amusement park exists.
[00:45:22] It's had a lot of violations.
[00:45:23] It's been shut down.
[00:45:24] Well, because the last time we saw Horrorland in a book, in Return to Horrorland, it was
[00:45:30] under new mismanagement.
[00:45:32] Mm-hmm.
[00:45:32] That's true.
[00:45:34] Well, House on Haunted Hill, for example, where the house in the movie, it's like populated
[00:45:39] by the spirits of the mental patients who killed the guy who ran the house, right?
[00:45:46] Am I remembering it?
[00:45:46] Yeah.
[00:45:47] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:45:47] And then the house, that spirit kind of brings the house to send invites to bring all these
[00:45:53] people.
[00:45:54] The descendants of the people who worked there.
[00:45:55] Yeah, the descendants.
[00:45:56] Exactly.
[00:45:57] Yeah.
[00:45:58] So.
[00:45:58] Most of Saw is elaborate revenge plots.
[00:46:00] Yeah, it's true.
[00:46:02] With very little motive.
[00:46:05] You better not have, I don't know, been late with John Kramer's coffee one day.
[00:46:09] Or told your son, like, oh, can I talk to your daughter or whatever it was in a few minutes
[00:46:14] and finishing an email.
[00:46:15] I was a little brusque with my patience.
[00:46:17] Yeah.
[00:46:20] But the idea, oh, actually, my psychoanalyst read me a chapter from this book where this guy
[00:46:28] recounts, Alyssa's heard this before, but this whole story about, it's a true story.
[00:46:32] It's about the guy's father, the psychoanalyst's father who wrote this book.
[00:46:35] And his father was wanting to become a rare book collector.
[00:46:39] And he basically spent years and years deceiving this, the rare books librarian at Harvard into
[00:46:47] thinking that he had this trove.
[00:46:49] He pretended to be this old man in Pennsylvania who had this trove of, like, early American
[00:46:55] super rare books.
[00:46:56] And he, like, kept sending him, like, little pieces of them.
[00:46:59] Like, he was ripping up the books and sending them.
[00:47:01] Because he only had those pieces.
[00:47:02] If it's valuable.
[00:47:02] He actually only had those pieces.
[00:47:04] But the librarian thought and was, like, so devastated that this, what he thought was
[00:47:08] happening was this trove of rare books was being destroyed by this confused old man in
[00:47:11] Pennsylvania, which this guy was not.
[00:47:14] He was a not confused middle-aged man in New York.
[00:47:18] Anyway, the reason he did this, apparently, is because years earlier, when he was first
[00:47:22] wanting to become a rare books collector, he went around to all these university libraries
[00:47:26] to, like, learn about stuff.
[00:47:29] And at this library, the librarian invited him into his office and talked him through stuff,
[00:47:34] but never asked him to sit down.
[00:47:37] So this is the revenge mechanism he put into place.
[00:47:40] Yeah.
[00:47:41] There's, um, in season one of The Purge, there's the person who turns out to be the big bad.
[00:47:46] You find out he's stalking this one person because one day he opened the door to a coffee
[00:47:51] shop and she walked through the door and didn't say thank you.
[00:47:54] So he's going to kill her.
[00:47:55] I've, like, encountered people like that before.
[00:47:57] Yeah, totally.
[00:47:57] I want you to just not hold the fucking door.
[00:47:59] I don't like it either.
[00:48:00] Like, please.
[00:48:00] I don't like it.
[00:48:01] It's awkward.
[00:48:01] It's like a power move.
[00:48:02] No.
[00:48:02] This woman, she was, like, holding the door.
[00:48:05] I forget if it was a subway or something.
[00:48:07] I, like, walked through and she's like, oh, well, I'm not your servant, you know.
[00:48:11] You can say thank you.
[00:48:12] And I was like, I didn't ask you to hold the door and you're being, what the fuck, man?
[00:48:17] I'm just trying to get through this door and onto the train.
[00:48:20] Yeah.
[00:48:21] Elaborate revenge is scary because most people are like, oh, I'm so pissed off.
[00:48:24] And then they get over it.
[00:48:25] Yeah.
[00:48:25] And it's scary to think someone could be biding their time over something.
[00:48:29] Yeah.
[00:48:31] Well, my last category I called no stakes, which I was Googling and I realized this is actually
[00:48:38] very hard to do in horror.
[00:48:39] Like, horror is inherently a high stakes genre.
[00:48:41] It's your life that is at stake most times.
[00:48:44] I kind of had to look outside the genre.
[00:48:46] But basically, like, I was on high alert after the first fake out.
[00:48:49] And the moment we got the second, I was like, okay, this whole thing's a fucking comic.
[00:48:52] It doesn't, like, none of this matters.
[00:48:53] Like, it was so frustrating to read because it was like, doesn't matter.
[00:48:57] Doesn't matter.
[00:48:57] Just get through it.
[00:48:58] Which I think is probably how Erlstein felt about it.
[00:49:00] Unless he, it's like I said, and he really does have the power to delete lives.
[00:49:04] He doesn't even know it.
[00:49:06] That's nice.
[00:49:06] Well, if he doesn't know it and it's a first person narrative, then, like, that doesn't
[00:49:09] help me.
[00:49:10] Like, then you gotta figure out a way to tell me it's true and then make that the point
[00:49:15] of the book.
[00:49:15] You want some sequels?
[00:49:16] No.
[00:49:18] Well, I remember having this feeling early on in Inception when I saw it first.
[00:49:23] It was like, oh, this is about dreams.
[00:49:24] It's gonna be really hard to make high stakes.
[00:49:26] They try.
[00:49:26] It's whatever.
[00:49:27] But at the end of the day, it's a movie about, like, dreams.
[00:49:30] Yeah.
[00:49:30] But not like Nightmare on Elm Street where you die in the dream.
[00:49:33] Exactly.
[00:49:34] See?
[00:49:34] Horror.
[00:49:35] High stakes dreams.
[00:49:36] For me, this is a personal opinion.
[00:49:38] And I understand that many, many, many people will disagree.
[00:49:42] But for me, a lot of superhero stuff is like this because 90% of the time, you know, this
[00:49:48] superhero is gonna win.
[00:49:49] And I think that's the appeal of it for a lot of people.
[00:49:52] A lot of people like the sort of character development along the way.
[00:49:54] But for me, that makes it, like, I don't know, a little hard to feel heavily invested.
[00:50:00] And again, I know that there are many movies like Logan, for instance, where they upend
[00:50:04] that.
[00:50:06] But in general, like MCU, I'm like, I don't really care.
[00:50:10] Yeah.
[00:50:11] And then there are a couple movies that sort of go metal with this.
[00:50:16] And they're actually, the examples I have are both Coen brothers.
[00:50:18] There's The Big Lebowski and Burn After Reading, where in both cases, people are getting super
[00:50:23] worked up over nothing.
[00:50:25] And that's sort of the point of the movie.
[00:50:26] And they take it in a very humorous slash, I guess nihilistic is the wrong word given
[00:50:31] The Big Lebowski.
[00:50:32] But like, at the end of the day, you're realizing people are just caught up over, you know,
[00:50:37] and like lives get lost over kind of nothing.
[00:50:39] Yeah.
[00:50:41] Yeah.
[00:50:41] Yeah, I know.
[00:50:42] The book had no stakes.
[00:50:43] And that was a little bit of a frustrating thing about it.
[00:50:46] I guess if there are any stakes, the stakes are, will Robbie make it as an artist?
[00:50:53] And that is the question that Robert Stein may be asking himself, too.
[00:50:59] Do you think it's like, will Robbie make it as an artist in the same way as, will Tommy
[00:51:05] Wiseau make it as an artist?
[00:51:07] Like, well, I mean, again, Robbie is like-
[00:51:10] Kind of following.
[00:51:11] Yeah.
[00:51:11] But R.L.
[00:51:12] But R.L.
[00:51:12] Stein is probably at a point where he might be questioning himself a little.
[00:51:16] This is what I was saying about, like, why do I only create villains, right?
[00:51:19] So Robbie asks himself, why do I only create villains?
[00:51:22] Why didn't I create like better characters, basically?
[00:51:24] But his answer is they're more interesting.
[00:51:27] Well, R.L.
[00:51:28] That's a good point.
[00:51:29] Yeah.
[00:51:30] But I'm just, I mean, R.L.
[00:51:31] Stein is now stuck halfway through this series he created where all the villains have to
[00:51:35] be characters and like continue on and be in the horror land part.
[00:51:40] And maybe it's a little bit like, why did I paint myself into this corner?
[00:51:44] Why are we still doing this?
[00:51:45] Yeah.
[00:51:46] For the money is probably the reason.
[00:51:48] Yeah, I know.
[00:51:49] But it seems a little hollow.
[00:51:51] I think this just feels a little bit like a book where he's beating his head against the
[00:51:55] wall.
[00:51:56] And he wants us to feel it.
[00:51:57] So that in that regard, it was successful artistically.
[00:52:00] I feel his pain.
[00:52:02] And his frustration.
[00:52:03] Yeah.
[00:52:03] Right.
[00:52:03] Just like Brooke was like, oh, I could really feel your fear in that story, Robbie.
[00:52:07] And also, Robbie is a character self insert.
[00:52:10] And again, I think, I mean, this is Jovial Bob.
[00:52:14] He's Robbie also.
[00:52:15] So maybe this is a character insert for him, too.
[00:52:18] Maybe he was sitting at his computer turning around to Matt or his wife or whatever and
[00:52:22] being like, dude, do you want to read this story I just wrote?
[00:52:26] You know?
[00:52:27] Or should I delete it all?
[00:52:29] And yeah, he was feeling what Robbie's feeling.
[00:52:33] Yeah.
[00:52:34] Theories and queries?
[00:52:35] Mm-hmm.
[00:52:37] Well, did you notice the police officer's name?
[00:52:40] Rawls?
[00:52:40] Mm-hmm.
[00:52:41] An obvious reference to philosopher John Rawls.
[00:52:44] Oh, of course.
[00:52:45] Yeah.
[00:52:46] So I'm sure, as you may remember, Rawls' basic theory is of justice as fairness.
[00:52:53] And he's known for his...
[00:52:55] Oh, yeah.
[00:52:56] You lose a boy, you get another boy.
[00:52:58] Oh, shit.
[00:52:58] You're right.
[00:53:00] Perfect.
[00:53:00] Take a boy, leave a boy.
[00:53:01] Yeah.
[00:53:03] I mean, maybe.
[00:53:04] So his little thought experiment is the one where it's like you don't know who you're
[00:53:08] going to be in this society.
[00:53:10] So what society should you create if you could end up as the person in the worst position?
[00:53:16] Mm-hmm.
[00:53:16] Which, you know what?
[00:53:17] I don't really think people take that gamble.
[00:53:20] No.
[00:53:20] But I got...
[00:53:21] Not in this country.
[00:53:22] He got the shock prize for logic and philosophy in the National Humanities Medal in 1999.
[00:53:28] And, I mean, we should all be so lucky to get the National Humanities Medal.
[00:53:33] Well, and what better ethicist respondent could you have than President Bill Clinton, who said...
[00:53:41] Ethicist respondent, huh?
[00:53:43] Uh-huh.
[00:53:44] He said, this medal is to recognize how your works revived the disciplines of political
[00:53:48] and ethical philosophy with your argument that a society in which the most fortunate
[00:53:52] help, the least fortunate, is not only a moral society, but a logical one.
[00:53:58] Did people think no one had had that idea before 1999?
[00:54:01] 1999?
[00:54:01] Right.
[00:54:01] Like, every child on the playground.
[00:54:03] Yeah.
[00:54:03] But anyway, the thing that I'm asking is, is this a Rawlsian book in any way?
[00:54:12] Like, the society where the worst are still okay is the society we want?
[00:54:18] Well, the worst off would be, I would say, first of all, the kid who was grabbed off the
[00:54:22] street by the cops.
[00:54:23] Jerome.
[00:54:24] And second of all...
[00:54:25] He had a flat tire, too.
[00:54:26] And the kids who...
[00:54:27] And no one helped him with his flat tire.
[00:54:29] No.
[00:54:29] His bike's probably been stolen by now.
[00:54:31] Tire with a Y because it's a UK version.
[00:54:34] And also, the kids were all skating.
[00:54:36] Mm-hmm.
[00:54:37] We don't actually know if they all survived.
[00:54:41] That's true.
[00:54:41] Yeah, I was thinking about that.
[00:54:42] That's when you were saying the low stakes.
[00:54:44] I'm like, oh, well, what about the story where the lady dances to death?
[00:54:47] You know?
[00:54:48] The red shoes or whatever.
[00:54:49] The Christmas shoes.
[00:54:51] You know?
[00:54:51] Where she's dancing until she dies.
[00:54:53] And meets Jesus.
[00:54:54] Yeah.
[00:54:55] But the ice skating, like if they're ice skating all the time forever, they could die in a
[00:55:00] really embarrassing, stupid way.
[00:55:02] Yeah.
[00:55:02] Yeah.
[00:55:04] And so does the society...
[00:55:08] Can it be measured by the way it treats those people?
[00:55:10] Yeah.
[00:55:10] I mean, it's kind of our society, right?
[00:55:12] I mean, it was in the 90s.
[00:55:15] Now, I think the worst off are worse off.
[00:55:17] Yeah.
[00:55:18] But yeah, I feel like there was a time where it felt like...
[00:55:21] Well, you're just like, oh, here, you're going to work forever and make no money off
[00:55:24] of it.
[00:55:25] Oh, yeah.
[00:55:25] That is our society.
[00:55:26] Yeah.
[00:55:27] It's like supposed to be making someone money, but it doesn't make sense that it would.
[00:55:31] Yeah.
[00:55:32] Yeah.
[00:55:32] Okay, you're right.
[00:55:35] I also think you're Jerome.
[00:55:37] You could take this child.
[00:55:39] Now it's fair.
[00:55:40] Yeah.
[00:55:41] Well, it's King Solomon, right?
[00:55:42] It's the King Solomon without somebody objecting to it.
[00:55:45] Yeah.
[00:55:46] I guess the parents are like, oh, it's not our kid.
[00:55:48] We don't want him, but...
[00:55:49] But it's a logical proposition.
[00:55:50] Yeah.
[00:55:51] A equals A.
[00:55:52] This kid, that kid.
[00:55:53] Yeah.
[00:55:53] It's still a kid.
[00:55:54] Yeah.
[00:55:54] Here you go.
[00:55:55] It's a boy.
[00:55:55] What do you want?
[00:55:56] Like, a boy for a boy.
[00:55:59] What theories do you have?
[00:56:00] Why an ice show?
[00:56:01] I did a quick Google of the ice capades and like their heyday was way over by 2008.
[00:56:06] It's probably something Arl Stein would have grown up with, but like, why an ice
[00:56:10] show?
[00:56:10] Or was it just a like, I love lamp situation?
[00:56:13] Well, maybe this was coming around the time of the Winter Olympics.
[00:56:16] Because it would be Olympics in 2008.
[00:56:19] I don't know which.
[00:56:20] But there was 96 Summer Olympics and 98 Winter Olympics.
[00:56:27] So I guess 2004, 2008 would be summer.
[00:56:30] Yeah.
[00:56:30] Because 2002 Salt Lake City.
[00:56:32] I don't know.
[00:56:34] Maybe he was trying to think of something cheesy.
[00:56:37] Because this is a real cornball book.
[00:56:39] Sure is.
[00:56:41] Yeah.
[00:56:41] Probably just like, what's the, oh, maybe he had just watched Batman, the one with the
[00:56:46] Joker.
[00:56:47] With the Joker?
[00:56:48] With Arnold Schwarzenegger?
[00:56:49] Isn't there one where it's like, what's happening with the penguins?
[00:56:53] Oh, yeah.
[00:56:54] That's Batman Returns though.
[00:56:56] That's early 90s.
[00:56:56] Yeah, but maybe he just watched it.
[00:56:58] Isn't there something like that where it's like you're doomed to do something really stupid
[00:57:02] for all of eternity?
[00:57:03] I'm just thinking of the one where Arnold Schwarzenegger freezes everything and there's a bulldog
[00:57:06] in the middle of peeing.
[00:57:08] That's pretty stupid.
[00:57:09] That is pretty stupid.
[00:57:10] I think it's, yeah.
[00:57:11] I mean, probably he's just channeling B movies from his youth, which the Batman movies are
[00:57:17] obviously part of and referencing, where because it's for kids and because someone's throwing
[00:57:24] it together, they make something that is just cartoonishly silly as the bad thing that happens
[00:57:30] and, I don't know.
[00:57:32] He's like, probably got a Rolodex and he spins it and he's like, I skate to death.
[00:57:37] All right.
[00:57:38] I like that.
[00:57:39] Arlstein's death Rolodex.
[00:57:40] Yeah.
[00:57:41] Yeah.
[00:57:42] Any other theories and queries?
[00:57:44] Yes.
[00:57:46] So I actually was going to ask about the what is Arlstein working through.
[00:57:52] I was kind of wondering why battle chess is so important in the Gooseverse.
[00:57:55] I thought I remember you said you played it at one point, right?
[00:57:58] No.
[00:57:58] Okay.
[00:57:59] But it exists.
[00:58:00] Yeah.
[00:58:01] It is a video game released in 1988 with 2.5D graphics and fighting animations showing
[00:58:08] the result of one piece moving on to the square of another.
[00:58:10] Sure.
[00:58:10] I think maybe that R.L.
[00:58:13] Stein heard about this game around the time it came out and then was like, I will not learn
[00:58:17] anything else about video games.
[00:58:18] It's just like, that's what the kid's like.
[00:58:19] Yeah.
[00:58:19] I'm not going to update my references.
[00:58:21] Okay.
[00:58:22] I mean, it's funny to say like battle chess.
[00:58:24] Yeah.
[00:58:24] I think he just thought it was inherently funny.
[00:58:27] It's not wrong.
[00:58:28] And didn't stop thinking it was funny.
[00:58:29] Yeah.
[00:58:30] I had a question at one point about allegorically we have mania fighting rage.
[00:58:35] I honestly don't even feel like making hay over that though.
[00:58:38] I'm kind of tired of this book.
[00:58:40] We've been talking for over an hour about a book that has like no substance to it.
[00:58:44] Well, I do want to tell you something of substance, which is to do with the Horrorland
[00:58:48] verse.
[00:58:49] So we go into the Horrorland verse, right?
[00:58:51] We're entering it.
[00:58:53] Carly Beth and Sabrina are there and Robbie meets them.
[00:58:56] And then he uses the phrase piggy in the middle.
[00:59:02] Have you ever heard the phrase piggy in the middle?
[00:59:04] No.
[00:59:05] But you know.
[00:59:05] Monkey in the middle.
[00:59:06] Monkey in the middle or keep away.
[00:59:08] So I looked this up.
[00:59:09] It's the UK way of saying keep away.
[00:59:11] This game is played all over the world, unsurprisingly, keeping something away from someone.
[00:59:16] Yeah.
[00:59:16] That's what children play when there are three of them.
[00:59:18] So in Canada, they call it pig in the middle or monkey in the middle, depending on if you're
[00:59:24] in the west or east part.
[00:59:26] And in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, they say piggy in the middle almost exclusively.
[00:59:32] In German, it's called dummerhans.
[00:59:35] Dumbhans?
[00:59:36] Yeah.
[00:59:37] Silly John is what it says here.
[00:59:39] In Turkey, the name translates to rat in the middle.
[00:59:43] In Denmark, it translates to butter blob.
[00:59:46] I think some of this might be like need citation.
[00:59:48] It's like someone fucking with Wikipedia.
[00:59:50] Yeah.
[00:59:50] Read it anyway.
[00:59:51] I'm going to read it anyway.
[00:59:52] If you are in Denmark, tell us if it is butter blob.
[00:59:54] Yes.
[00:59:54] And in the Netherlands, it translates to, it says ap in het midden, monkey in the middle.
[01:00:01] It's silly Johnny in Poland.
[01:00:04] In Egypt, I like the best.
[01:00:05] If this is true, I hope it is.
[01:00:09] The name of the game translates as indecisive dog, which is actually how we play it with
[01:00:14] our dog.
[01:00:14] With our dog, yeah.
[01:00:15] Although he's not indecisive, I would say.
[01:00:17] He's just running back and forth.
[01:00:18] Yeah.
[01:00:18] Some other names in Greece, it translates to sucker.
[01:00:24] And Israel donkey in the middle.
[01:00:26] And apparently, there's a New York City game word for it, which I like hesitate to say because
[01:00:31] I'm like, is this like somehow a problematic word?
[01:00:34] But I Googled and no one seems to know why it's called this.
[01:00:37] I guess like probably if we talked to some New Yorkers from the mid-century, they would
[01:00:40] have heard it called this salugi.
[01:00:44] S-A-L-U-G-I.
[01:00:46] It does.
[01:00:47] Like it sounds like it's some sort of anti-Italian.
[01:00:49] Yeah, it does.
[01:00:50] Then the only other thing that comes up is there's a type of dog called a saluki.
[01:00:54] Yeah.
[01:00:55] That I know.
[01:00:55] Oh, okay.
[01:00:56] Well, of course.
[01:00:56] Yeah.
[01:00:57] But anyway, that's a thing.
[01:00:59] I think the most straightforward of those, what is it?
[01:01:01] The Greek one that's just sucker?
[01:01:03] Yeah.
[01:01:04] It's just fuck you, man.
[01:01:06] All right.
[01:01:06] That's my last point.
[01:01:09] You want to talk about the rest of the Horrorlandverse?
[01:01:11] Yeah.
[01:01:11] So it turns out it was Robbie that we saw at the end of the last book.
[01:01:16] He bumps into Carly, Beth, and Sabrina.
[01:01:18] They dig under the fence.
[01:01:20] To get out of the werewolf compound.
[01:01:21] Yeah.
[01:01:23] Carly, Beth, and Sabrina recap the previous books to him so he knows what's happening.
[01:01:26] It seems like the worst stuff is happening to the girls.
[01:01:29] Yeah.
[01:01:29] You know, going invisible, being disappeared.
[01:01:32] So as they're running, Robbie trips over a stuffed snake.
[01:01:35] That's the scare.
[01:01:37] And then Carly, Beth, and Sabrina make fun of him.
[01:01:40] Appropriately.
[01:01:40] Also, I noticed he doesn't have a friend with him.
[01:01:42] No.
[01:01:43] I don't think he has friends.
[01:01:44] No.
[01:01:46] Well, anyway, they're running and he gets distracted by something called the Game Preserve, which
[01:01:52] is a big arcade.
[01:01:53] He starts to feel like he's being hypnotized and he gets pulled to Dr. Maniac's World of
[01:01:59] Pain.
[01:02:01] I was so bored.
[01:02:02] I know it was like, oh, it's about bread.
[01:02:07] Sorry, I forgot I wrote that.
[01:02:09] So is it like a Panera knockoff?
[01:02:12] Dr. Maniac's Panera.
[01:02:14] Anyway, so he puts on a helmet with an orange visor and yellow gloves and Dr. Maniac appears
[01:02:21] on the screen.
[01:02:22] Vampire seagulls.
[01:02:23] That's cool.
[01:02:23] They're vampire seagulls, which are cool.
[01:02:25] I mean, seagulls are already.
[01:02:26] They're already scary.
[01:02:27] Yeah.
[01:02:28] Robbie has a blaster with no ammo.
[01:02:30] He has to run through a bunch of mazes.
[01:02:31] He loses, but Dr. Maniac taunts him into playing again.
[01:02:35] And then he can't let go of the handle.
[01:02:38] Yeah.
[01:02:38] Or the gloves or the helmet.
[01:02:41] And then he sees two girls who turn out to be Brittany and Molly.
[01:02:44] He begs them to unplug the game, but they say it's not plugged in.
[01:02:47] There's no on-off switch.
[01:02:48] He faints and then they're able to get the stuff off of him.
[01:02:52] And then they say they have to go to the other park, which is where special guests were brought
[01:02:57] for revenge.
[01:02:58] And Molly has a token for Panic Park.
[01:03:00] So I guess we have some sort of like Tomorrowland, you know, spin-off situation.
[01:03:04] Robbie thinks he's being hypnotized.
[01:03:07] And then Slappy shows up.
[01:03:09] And Slappy really wants him to pick up the token.
[01:03:12] He and Slappy tussle.
[01:03:13] Slappy bites his ear.
[01:03:15] He commands Brittany to pick it up and hold it in front of Robbie.
[01:03:18] He closes his eyes and then Carly, Beth, and Sabrina are back.
[01:03:20] So the tokens make you transport for some reason.
[01:03:23] Yeah.
[01:03:24] It seems like he dreamed it, but then he has the gold token.
[01:03:28] Yeah.
[01:03:28] This is the slowest way ever to get cheats to help you through the levels of this game
[01:03:33] that they created to tie in.
[01:03:34] I feel like they realized way too late that the idea of bringing in additional characters
[01:03:40] was so bad.
[01:03:42] Like, because it's just like, because half of it now is just recapping what's already
[01:03:45] happened.
[01:03:46] I know.
[01:03:46] And I get that these books were coming out, what, probably a month apart.
[01:03:49] But like, there's already a previously in Horrorland page.
[01:03:53] I just don't think it's necessary.
[01:03:55] Anyway.
[01:03:55] I think he didn't want to write it.
[01:03:57] Well.
[01:03:58] So he just was filling in the pages.
[01:04:00] I feel like he should have asserted some creative control there.
[01:04:03] Then like, no, it'll just be one story.
[01:04:05] Anyway.
[01:04:06] Yeah, I know.
[01:04:06] Is this really the series that you're going to be like, I am putting on the front of
[01:04:10] every book that I assert that all of this is by me?
[01:04:13] You know?
[01:04:14] Like, is this the one you want to really stake your flag in?
[01:04:18] Well, probably more important that I went to the original Goosebumps series, isn't it?
[01:04:21] Mm-hmm.
[01:04:22] Because they were reissuing them all.
[01:04:23] Oh, that's true.
[01:04:24] Yeah.
[01:04:25] Well, on a scale of one to five bewares, what would you give this book?
[01:04:28] One.
[01:04:29] I give it none.
[01:04:30] My first zero bewares.
[01:04:31] I'm going to come in hot and say – this is not coming in hot.
[01:04:34] We've been talking for over an hour.
[01:04:34] But I'm going to say, this is the worst book we've read for this podcast.
[01:04:38] Yeah, I agree.
[01:04:39] Completely.
[01:04:39] Yeah.
[01:04:40] If I could give this zero stars, I would.
[01:04:41] Yeah.
[01:04:42] It's our podcast.
[01:04:43] You can.
[01:04:43] Oh, well, I'm giving it one, actually.
[01:04:45] Because I did like some of the jokes.
[01:04:47] What are we reading next week?
[01:04:49] Who is Your Mummy?
[01:04:50] Yeah.
[01:04:50] It's about a mummy.
[01:04:51] I assume.
[01:04:52] It might not be.
[01:04:52] Or just a British mother, you know?
[01:04:54] Yeah.
[01:04:54] Yeah.
[01:04:54] Or about flowers.
[01:04:57] Mums, you know?
[01:04:58] Oh, yeah.
[01:04:59] I don't know, man.
[01:05:00] I don't know what it's about.
[01:05:01] The mummers parade.
[01:05:02] Tell us why you hated this book.
[01:05:04] Or if you liked it.
[01:05:05] Tell us why it's good.
[01:05:06] Sell us on it.
[01:05:07] Yeah, sell us.
[01:05:08] You won't, but you can try.
[01:05:10] I'm open to it.
[01:05:12] Yeah.
[01:05:13] Let us know your thoughts, your theories.
[01:05:16] Rate, review, and subscribe.
[01:05:18] Yeah.
[01:05:19] If you can.
[01:05:19] If you dare.
[01:05:21] On Apple Podcasts, et cetera, wherever you got this one.
[01:05:26] You can also drop us a line at saypodanddie at gmail.com.
[01:05:29] You know what?
[01:05:30] Sometime after finals, I will be recovering from top surgery.
[01:05:36] And maybe that's when I will catch up on our emails.
[01:05:39] In Instagram.
[01:05:39] Since I will be unable to do anything.
[01:05:41] Yeah.
[01:05:42] And our Instagram is at saypodanddie.
[01:05:45] Listener beware.
[01:05:46] Those were the scares.
[01:05:47] The scares.
[01:05:48] Those were the...
[01:05:49] That was the book.
[01:05:51] The end.
[01:05:52] Good boo.
[01:05:53] Neutral boo.
[01:05:55] Mediocre boo.
[01:06:30] I turned back to my laptop.
[01:06:31] Next time I want a bigger part.
[01:06:33] I didn't get to do anything in your dumb story.
[01:06:36] The Scarlet Starlet added, we don't like your ending.
[01:06:39] We have a better ending.
[01:06:41] And finally, Dr. Maniac, grinning out at me like an evil fiend, said, you won't like
[01:06:45] our ending, Robbie.
[01:06:46] But we'll be showing it to you real soon.
[01:06:49] We'll be waiting for you.
[01:06:53] In Horrorland.
[01:07:05] It's hard to find a good one.
[01:07:07] Yeah, a page that you actually want to read.
[01:07:08] Yeah.
[01:07:09] That you can stomach reading.
[01:07:11] Without barfing.
[01:07:13] Mm-hmm.