S3E05 - Dr. Maniac vs. Robby Schwartz (Goosebumps HorrorLand #5)

[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.