Season 4

Jim Infantino:
The word mindset is bothering me. Have you come across the word mindset

Lionel:
Yeah, sure.

Jim Infantino:
recently a lot? Where,

Lionel:
Not a lot.

Jim Infantino:
yeah, I'm just seeing it. I'm seeing it all over the place now. Mindset. What in the heck do we mean when we say mindset? It's like, it's like you've got that mindset. You've got that liberal mindset or you've got that blah,

Lionel:
Yeah, we've

Jim Infantino:
blah

Lionel:
talked about

Jim Infantino:
mindset.

Lionel:
this before. It's like keeping it real.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
Something like

Jim Infantino:
What

Lionel:
that.

Jim Infantino:
does this mean?

Lionel:
You're just trying to foreclose an argument by using a word.

Jim Infantino:
You've just got a different mindset. Like we don't speak the same language.

Lionel:
Right. You're just different. And therefore your arguments are meaningless

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
and your views are meaningless.

Jim Infantino:
It's garbage. It's garbage. This is

Lionel:
You're

Jim Infantino:
a garbage

Lionel:
a subhuman.

Jim Infantino:
word.

Lionel:
You're not a human being.

Jim Infantino:
You are just, you're a victim of a different mindset.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah. Sick

Lionel:
Well,

Jim Infantino:
of it. Sick

Lionel:
that's

Jim Infantino:
of

Lionel:
a

Jim Infantino:
it.

Lionel:
happy way to be. I can tell you've been having a good

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
year. What was your last cup of coffee? Or do you drink coffee

Jim Infantino:
I'm

Lionel:
anymore?

Jim Infantino:
drinking green tea. I'm drinking matcha green tea, which is really quite nice, but I think it makes me a little aggressive. I should go back to coffee.

Lionel:
Well, you know, for, for like several years now I've been drinking like Nescafe.

Jim Infantino:
Oh yeah?

Lionel:
And then, so in my new, I got to tell you, I'm, I don't want to jinx it, but I'm really digging Syracuse. So I got on my bike and I bike down to recess coffee,

Jim Infantino:
Nice.

Lionel:
like six blocks away. And I got their medium, 12 ounce medium roast. And it blew the frickin top of my head off. I was like, Oh, so this

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
is what really, and I, I had like the most product. I got more done this morning that I've gotten done in the

Jim Infantino:
Hehehehehehe

Lionel:
last week. I was, I was like that quote I sent you from Mark Langer, you know,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
I'm composing a haiku while scratching my board's always tummy while I clean the Venetian blinds, man. These methodos method read suppositories are out of sight. Uh, and that's the way I was this morning. So I got it. I'm going to. I'm gonna make a few more visits to recess and see

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
if,

Jim Infantino:
no more cowboy coffee for you.

Lionel:
no more Nescafe, baby.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah. That's fantastic. You've got a reliable cafe you can go to. You can try the dark roast, the light roast, the medium roast, the blah blah. I don't believe in complicated coffee drinks. That's another thing. That's another

Lionel:
That's

Jim Infantino:
thing.

Lionel:
your mindset.

Jim Infantino:
My mindset is...

Lionel:
Fuck your-

Jim Infantino:
Your mindset... That... Yeah, I don't want

Lionel:
My

Jim Infantino:
to drop

Lionel:
mother?

Jim Infantino:
another

Lionel:
Let

Jim Infantino:
F.

Lionel:
me tell you

Jim Infantino:
F,

Lionel:
about my

Jim Infantino:
F.

Lionel:
mother.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah. F your replicant mindset. Yeah, so where I don't even know what I was talking about. Oh, yeah. Complicated coffee drinks. I yeah, I'm not alone in this. I mean, if you go if you're going to Starbucks and you're going to buy like a milkshake with some coffee in it, it's a milkshake. It's not a coffee.

Lionel:
Oh, you

Jim Infantino:
I

Lionel:
sound like

Jim Infantino:
blame

Lionel:
such a

Jim Infantino:
the

Lionel:
cranky

Jim Infantino:
French.

Lionel:
old man.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, I am.

Lionel:
Come

Jim Infantino:
That's what

Lionel:
on.

Jim Infantino:
I am.

Lionel:
Yeah, but honestly, yeah, I agree with you. It's like

Jim Infantino:
Hehehehe

Lionel:
basically Starbucks has morphed into Baskin Robbins with a higher caffeine content, basically.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, yeah. And it's, I mean, maybe it started with the Italians. The Italians created the latte so that the kids could drink coffee. Right. But

Lionel:
Oh

Jim Infantino:
nobody

Lionel:
my god, is

Jim Infantino:
in

Lionel:
that

Jim Infantino:
Italy,

Lionel:
true?

Jim Infantino:
no, yeah, it's a kid's drink. It's a latte. It's mostly milk. So Americans

Lionel:
Okay,

Jim Infantino:
are drinking

Lionel:
fine.

Jim Infantino:
like children's coffee, you know, with a lot of sugar in it.

Lionel:
I like a lot. Oh, so lot. So lot days is one of these complex coffees that has earned your disdain.

Jim Infantino:
not a latte per se. Latte in itself is not complex. It's infant, it's pure oil, but it's not complex. Yes, I said it.

Lionel:
I'm

Jim Infantino:
So

Lionel:
glad

Jim Infantino:
and

Lionel:
this

Jim Infantino:
then.

Lionel:
is not a visual podcast because

Jim Infantino:
Ha ha ha!

Lionel:
our listener would see the look of abject horror on my face.

Jim Infantino:
Hehehehe

Lionel:
Pwerile? Look the flag is on the field for several things at the same

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
time. We are not going to use words like Pwerile on

Jim Infantino:
Puerile

Lionel:
this.

Jim Infantino:
or puerile? I thought it was puerile. Puerile?

Lionel:
The fuck

Jim Infantino:
Like

Lionel:
are

Jim Infantino:
Pueblo?

Lionel:
you...

Jim Infantino:
And another thing.

Lionel:
Don't don't send smoke into the air here. Don't cloud the

Jim Infantino:
Okay.

Lionel:
issues. OK, with your mindset.

Jim Infantino:
My

Lionel:
No,

Jim Infantino:
puerile mindset.

Lionel:
I agree with you, which is that I just like getting the 12 ounce Pike's Place drip. That's it. You know, it's like a pack of Marlboro Red. It's like a Fender Stratocaster.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah

Lionel:
It's an American classic. It's like a yardstick. It's like the meter stick in Paris. Everybody everybody refers to it. It's like an American classic.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah. And

Lionel:
And

Jim Infantino:
when

Lionel:
the

Jim Infantino:
I'm

Lionel:
12

Jim Infantino:
home,

Lionel:
ounce, yeah.

Jim Infantino:
I'm not going to Starbucks at home. I mean, but Starbucks on the road was a lifesaver because you didn't know that there would be a recess coffee or a, you know, recess coffee recess.

Lionel:
Recess. R-E-C-E-S-S.

Jim Infantino:
Recess.

Lionel:
Yes.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah. Here it's, oh, yeah, I forget the name of the one that I go to, but there are a number of them. But. There's at Starbucks, they did for a while have these like $50,000 machines that made like one cup of coffee. I think they were called clover machines. And then every once in a while they would get Kona coffee in from Hawaii. And then you could get like a Kona in on the clover. That was pretty awesome because there was no way I could make that at home. Um, but if

Lionel:
Did

Jim Infantino:
I

Lionel:
you

Jim Infantino:
can

Lionel:
have

Jim Infantino:
make it at home.

Lionel:
one?

Jim Infantino:
Oh yeah, I would have them whenever I could, whenever they had them, whenever they had the Kona, I was like.

Lionel:
Whenever the loan officer approved

Jim Infantino:
Oh, you

Lionel:
the

Jim Infantino:
mean

Lionel:
home

Jim Infantino:
whenever

Lionel:
equity

Jim Infantino:
I

Lionel:
loan.

Jim Infantino:
had a 50,000? Yeah, I'm not, not Elon Musk.

Lionel:
Here comes Jim again, white cone on the clover.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, I'm

Lionel:
Look,

Jim Infantino:
sleeping

Lionel:
we...

Jim Infantino:
on the factory floor, but I want the clover over there,

Lionel:
This is going to be the fifth lean on

Jim Infantino:
and

Lionel:
your

Jim Infantino:
my

Lionel:
car,

Jim Infantino:
wardrobe

Lionel:
dude.

Jim Infantino:
is going to take up that part of the office.

Lionel:
And how did it taste?

Jim Infantino:
Oh, that was incredible. It was just incredible. It was like a religious experience. It was wonderful.

Lionel:
Really? Was it that?

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
I mean, you could

Jim Infantino:
it was

Lionel:
feel

Jim Infantino:
good.

Lionel:
it.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, it's not just that it was mild. It was, is it mild? More than mild. You're soaking in it. I, it was, it was just everything coffee should be in a cup.

Lionel:
Huh,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
well,

Jim Infantino:
it was super

Lionel:
that's

Jim Infantino:
good.

Lionel:
an endorsement.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, but they don't make it anymore. They got rid of their clover machines.

Lionel:
Why?

Jim Infantino:
I think probably because there were $50,000 to repair, likely. or they

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
didn't last that long.

Lionel:
No, I always found it fascinating that the epithet, the to me the lesson of Starbucks is the exact same lesson as McDonald's.

Jim Infantino:
Mmm.

Lionel:
Which is, you know, what is the, what is for me the key to McDonald's? The key is, I know that no matter what McDonald's I pull into, and sausage McMuffin with egg is going to taste basically the same. It's that It's that ability to reproduce results consistently over time and space. And same thing with Starbucks. You got the story, the locations are all the same. It's incredible consistency and the consistency of the product. And yeah, it's great. A 12 ounce cup of Pikes, baby.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
It's like,

Jim Infantino:
and it's

Lionel:
it's like

Jim Infantino:
modeled

Lionel:
a $5

Jim Infantino:
after...

Lionel:
bill. Doesn't everybody in the world understands that one?

Jim Infantino:
It's modeled after the suicidal coffee lovers in the Northwest, who it's been raining for five years straight, and damn it, they need a really good cup of coffee.

Lionel:
Yep. We need to get off the pad here, folks. So

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
pour

Jim Infantino:
not going

Lionel:
something

Jim Infantino:
to be able

Lionel:
to

Jim Infantino:
to.

Lionel:
that cup.

Jim Infantino:
Inability to launch. Yep.

Lionel:
So, but yeah, so I went down there and I've been very, but what we're talking about was you being in a slightly unhappy mood or combative mood with this, with this episode, this really, this episode should wind up on the cutting room floor in its entirety. But anyway, you seemed angry and I can tell now, like I can tell, I know that after like getting really angry at people. And I just have to cut it off. It's just, you know that. And then when you start like, when you start like getting angry about something, you're like, it's just the coffee. It's

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
just me being stupid. This is so

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
dumb. I got to think about something else. This is ridiculous. This is just self-indulgent nonsense. And so that's what I did today,

Jim Infantino:
There

Lionel:
but

Jim Infantino:
was,

Lionel:
I got a lot.

Jim Infantino:
it was a great cartoon, a cartoon, I don't know if it's still around, called Too Much Coffee Man. It was just this character that was just a cup of coffee and he was always kind of raging about something or other.

Lionel:
So I read, what did I read? I read one of, I think it was, I believe it was Sarah Elkin's suggestion, which was Planet Fall. which is the story of a community of people living on another planet,

Jim Infantino:
Oh right.

Lionel:
and which is, which there's all kinds of secret. It's basically, a lot of it is, is like murder on the Orient Express or something like that. There's a lot of secrets, you know, people, a lot of people are holding secrets. And then a stranger arrives in town and turns everything upside down. And there's a couple of, there's a A couple of curious flourishes on that. I think as Sarah mentioned the last thing, one of the key things is that the, you hate to call her the protagonist because she's not a lovable character, but the main person in the book, she's a hoarder.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
And what she's consistently doing is fit, well, anyway, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter. She's hoarding.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
And so it's interesting. It's interesting and the book is rather unflinching about it.

Jim Infantino:
Nice.

Lionel:
it gets addressed over and over and over again. And what you realize when you do that, which I found somewhat uncomfortable, but also a little bit relieving is that you realize that hoarding doesn't have to be of material objects. We can hoard ideas

Jim Infantino:
Hmm

Lionel:
and we can hoard resentments and we can hoard embarrassments and humiliations and all that kind of stuff like that. And to a certain degree, we remember things because we're afraid that we'll lose it. If we don't remember it, it'll be lost. And the answer is probably, maybe it's better that way. Maybe that's

Jim Infantino:
No.

Lionel:
not such a bad idea after all to let things go and just realize that, you probably don't even really remember what you think you remember anymore. I mean, I've had a lot

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
of those situations where I actually meet up with people and I say, hey, remember that time, blah, blah. And they go, no, that's not at all what happened. This is

Jim Infantino:
Right?

Lionel:
what happened. Then you're like, oh yeah, you're right. Oh, is the next day. Oh, okay. You're like, okay, I've been pissed off for like 20 years about something that doesn't mean anything. So.

Jim Infantino:
Because memories are stories that you need to keep retelling to yourself in order to remember them, in order to keep remembering them.

Lionel:
oof

Jim Infantino:
And as you retell it, it's a game of telephone with yourself.

Lionel:
Yeah, there's

Jim Infantino:
And

Lionel:
tape loss

Jim Infantino:
they change. Yeah.

Lionel:
and they

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
change.

Jim Infantino:
Tape loss.

Lionel:
And there's

Jim Infantino:
I like that.

Lionel:
my whole theory, which is that, I mean, one of the big things I've mentioned ad nauseum before is that one of the technologies I studied while doing patents was something called low density parity check coding, cue the snore.

Jim Infantino:
Hahaha!

Lionel:
But the interesting thing about low density parity check coding is that... It's almost like black magic in the sense that you can suffer enormous degradation of the original message and LDPC will put it back together again.

Jim Infantino:
Mmm.

Lionel:
Because what it does is it creates this weird sort of I don't want to get into it, but it creates it creates this web of interdependencies between nodes and

Jim Infantino:
Hmm.

Lionel:
it does it and it reconstructs the original message through multiple passes over the same message. So what may happen is all these check nodes are tied to each other.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
And what happens is if, let's say, you go through it and a key and a lot of the nodes, you're not sure what value they are. You're not sure if they're one or zero. Your confidence level's like 10% or 20%. But let's say you have this one check node where you have a 90% confidence level that it's 90%. That's 90% of one. You set that to 100% and then you run the algorithm again. And because that node is now 100%, this node that before had a 20%, you had a 20% confidence level that it was zero, that has now bounced up 70%.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
So now you set that and then there's these iterative passes and you basically are recreating the information from the ground up. With LDPC, it does a very good job of doing this. in a lossless manner, but I think the human brain does this too, except we do it in a lossy manner. We reconstruct memories.

Jim Infantino:
We

Lionel:
I don't

Jim Infantino:
do

Lionel:
think

Jim Infantino:
it.

Lionel:
we remember a lot. I think

Jim Infantino:
We.

Lionel:
actually what we do is we remember certain key bits and then we spackle in

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
the spaces between them with shit we make up.

Jim Infantino:
or

Lionel:
Because

Jim Infantino:
that we try and verify with other people's faulty memory.

Lionel:
Yeah, but let's say we don't corroborate or triangulate. What happens is that over time, I think this is, I haven't tested this and I have no reason to state this fact. I think this is true, which is that we sort of maintain some broad out, like the name of the main character and maybe the general thrust of the plot. But the details start going soft on us.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
So we make them up.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
We say, oh, it's a military movie. There's a military story. So he was wearing camouflage.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
Well, no, he wasn't, but

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
you just spackled that in because you're using logic and tradition and all these probabilities to try to fill the thing in. But the problem is that once you start spackling, I'm sorry, this is going on way too long, but all I'm saying is that nothing that should be a surprise to anybody. I think memories, it's very possible that memory is incredibly faulty, but it goes back to the hoarding thing, which goes back to

Jim Infantino:
hoarding

Lionel:
planet

Jim Infantino:
memories.

Lionel:
fall. Hoarding memories, hoarding objects. and why people hoard objects. And so, interesting book, not a great book.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
There is sort of like this supernatural theme that runs over the entire thing. And there is a resolution to it, but the resolution really has nothing to do with really the rest of what's going on in the book.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
It really feels sort of disconnected from what's going on in the rest of the book. But the rest of the book is very much of deceit and lies, hiding lies and people taking revenge. So it's happy, it's a family book. It's

Jim Infantino:
Nice.

Lionel:
a kids, yeah, it's

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
a lovely

Jim Infantino:
read

Lionel:
book.

Jim Infantino:
it to the kids.

Lionel:
Read it to the kids, see it on the big screen. But, so I read that. And then I read the second book of the silo thing, which was

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
Dust.

Jim Infantino:
right.

Lionel:
And I still, you know, I still think the same thing. Just.

Jim Infantino:
Like what, that it's some kind of Christian parable?

Lionel:
No, no, I'm past that because I've talked to some other people. They said, hell no. No, no,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
no. I don't know. They I don't know if they know any more than I do. But on reading the second book, it's just like I really just don't like his writing. I just

Jim Infantino:
Mmm.

Lionel:
don't. I mean, it's interesting what he's getting at, kind of. But it's just not. I don't know. I just don't. There's no humor. There's

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
no humor, there's no wit. It's just grind. It's just like so many books we've read, you and I, so many of the books we've read recently, they're just relentless. They're just no fun, no funny. It's just pounding you over the head. Now, the good news is that with something like the Ministry for the Future,

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
well, yeah, okay. It's a grim subject. And he has a lot of cred.

Jim Infantino:
Oh yeah.

Lionel:
Kim Stanley Robinson.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
And he gets the right to write a really oppressive, unrelenting book. Go for it, Kim. You're fighting the good fight. But when it's something like this, I don't even really know what the guy's getting at with the whole silo thing. And it just seems to be like another, our lives are being controlled by a vast conspiracy. It's like, okay. We've been hearing this for the last 50 to 70 years. And it's clever, you put them in a bunch of silos and they go out and clean the lens and all that kind of stuff. But fundamentally, I was thinking it's very interesting. I just feel like a lot of stuff, a lot of things really head back to 1984 by George Orwell.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
It's amazing how tremendous that book is. Well, it's a tremendous book, but how much flows from that? Because I don't know if there's anything quite like it before it. But he definitely introduced that whole idea of the horror of the modern world and the oppressiveness of the modern industrial totalitarian state and perpetual surveillance.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
And that's really what the silo trilogy boils down to. It's a surveillance state, and people are trying to rebel against the surveillance state, which is what 1984 is about. And it's about as cheery as 1984 is.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah. And the moral is you can't.

Lionel:
You can't.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
You can't. You lose.

Jim Infantino:
Because they own your thoughts. Yeah.

Lionel:
Right. Anyway, so what did you do this week?

Jim Infantino:
Well, I got back on X, the Twitter. No, sorry, I'm trying to draw a parallel between 1984 and X. I am moderately back on social media. I have to say, very tempted to stay off it now that I've been off it for a month. I recommend taking a month off anybody who's on it, because I'm not counting certain things as social media. What we're doing here is social media in a sense. Um, sub stack is social media and that there's a, that's another topic actually I want to bring up. Um, and Patreon, our Patreon page is patreon.com slash Jim Infantino. You can support the podcast and a bunch of other things that I'm doing. Um, uh, you're not supporting Lionel because I think Lionel doesn't need support, but, uh, if he does, I would be able to support him from, uh, I don't have a separate Patreon for funny not funny. The podcast is what I'm trying to say. It's just funny. It's just patreon.com slash Jim

Lionel:
It's just not funny.

Jim Infantino:
The, so yeah, I've been back. It's strange, you know, the only one that I'm actually enjoying now a little bit is Facebook. And I guess it's just that threads is kind of leaving me dry and it just doesn't, it's not captivating. X is just, you look at it, you open up, you look at the app and it has an X on it. And you're like, okay, I won't open that app.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
right? It's like, delete this. You know, I wonder why nobody's ever called their company X before. Well, because it means

Lionel:
It's

Jim Infantino:
cancel.

Lionel:
what you put over the eyes of dead people.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
It's what

Jim Infantino:
it's

Lionel:
you do to cancel something. Yes.

Jim Infantino:
not

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
a positive thing. And I haven't looked at Instagram yet. I don't know. I'm just, I'm, it's I do need to promote things, so I'm going to be there. But in terms of like sharing my thoughts, it just does not feel like a fun thing to me anymore, at least on these platforms. I don't know if there would be a platform where it would feel more fun, but none of these seem that way. Slaps is actually still kind of fun. That's a social media app.

Lionel:
And what distinguishes Slaps? Why is Slaps moderately intriguing whereas the others are not?

Jim Infantino:
Well, because you're posting, you're not posting like a, you know, I, it's raining. Boo. You know, you're, you're posting a song and then

Lionel:
So

Jim Infantino:
people

Lionel:
it's not

Jim Infantino:
are

Lionel:
this

Jim Infantino:
listening.

Lionel:
stream of consciousness nonsense.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah. Like you've made something and you post it up there and other people who make stuff comment on the thing that you've made in, you know, time coded to different parts of the song. So

Lionel:
Right,

Jim Infantino:
if

Lionel:
right,

Jim Infantino:
something

Lionel:
right.

Jim Infantino:
hits them at this point, then you get a reaction from them at that point in the song. And that's exciting. That's like Wattpad. Wattpad is great because it's. people get to write in the margins of what you're writing. So they get to react to a paragraph. I think it doesn't get any more granular than a paragraph, but you put your stuff up, you put a chapter up, and then people read it and then they write like, where is this going? Or I really like this character or something like that. And so you're interacting with an opus. You're entering into it with... you know, an opus and then,

Lionel:
Well, there's an object of focus.

Jim Infantino:
yeah,

Lionel:
The conversation

Jim Infantino:
and it's

Lionel:
is

Jim Infantino:
yours.

Lionel:
focused on something rather than just people doing their random stream of consciousness nonsense.

Jim Infantino:
Right. Here's something I did. You put that on. So I have the new video for spinning back from the Snorri brothers in Iceland. And it's fantastic. And I'm looking forward to releasing it. But I'm, but, you know, just the whole process of releasing it just feels like such a chore to me now. Right. Getting it up on YouTube and then putting it on Facebook separately and putting it on all the other platforms. And then, you know, making sure that I get all the information right and all the links right and whatever tags that they need. It doesn't have the feeling like I'm listening and reacting in real time, the way those other two platforms, Wattpad and Slabs do. That's different. If there was a Slabs for videos, that would be kind of more interesting. View with comments, view without comments, the comments could overlay the video in some weird ways.

Lionel:
Huh, interesting. You're

Jim Infantino:
I just

Lionel:
talking

Jim Infantino:
gave,

Lionel:
to somebody who has

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
like zero, like absolutely zero social media involvement.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, I think

Lionel:
So

Jim Infantino:
it's.

Lionel:
a lot of this is me listening to you talk about a Truscan pottery, because I have no idea.

Jim Infantino:
Far more interesting, Etruscan pottery. Yeah, no, I think that it's a healthier way to be. Here's the weird thing. All of August, I was off social media. July felt short to me and August felt long. And not long in like, it's taking too long. It's like my memories of August are more complete. because I wasn't putting things up as posts. I wasn't sharing pictures of everything I was doing. I wasn't sharing little comments about whatever political thing was happening. I didn't do any of that. And it's as if I've reclaimed my life from August. It's just me. It's just me and my family and my friends just interacting. So my memories are of those interactions instead of these little text interactions. So that's interesting to me. It's like the speed, time like slowed down. more, more life. Not that you have anything to compare it to because you don't do this sort of crazy neurotic

Lionel:
Don't.

Jim Infantino:
thing, but yeah, many people do. So if you have any thoughts about this, you can, you can

Lionel:
Post

Jim Infantino:
gite

Lionel:
it.

Jim Infantino:
at, line will at, don't bother, hashtag, forget it. I have I've been reading The Magician's Nephew to the daughters.

Lionel:
OK.

Jim Infantino:
I had read it to them when they were maybe five and seven. And now I'm reading it to them again. And it's richer. It's a it's a it's a more grown up book in a sense. It's also it is also a children's story. And it's written as a children's story.

Lionel:
It is.

Jim Infantino:
But the subject matter is pretty grown up because the uncle, the magician is seriously awful.

Lionel:
Yes.

Jim Infantino:
It's just evil. And what I really loved, one part of it I love, I mean, the wood between the world and the description is beautiful and their realization that it's a hallway, it's a tunnel rather

Lionel:
Right.

Jim Infantino:
than a destination is great. And I have just read up to the point where they are about to drop into a different world. But what I loved was, that when the uncle is describing his experiments on guinea pigs. and experimenting, oh, and having sent the girl to

Lionel:
Right.

Jim Infantino:
the other world. The protagonist, the boy says something like, that's an awful thing to do. What, what, what's going to happen to her? And, and CS Lewis writes, he looked at me like he couldn't understand what I was saying. Nothing involving empathy, like that character can't comprehend thoughts about other people. He's

Lionel:
Well,

Jim Infantino:
so

Lionel:
then.

Jim Infantino:
completely self-focused.

Lionel:
Right. And and the interesting thing, and when you reread The Magician's Nephew, you really start to see the links between it and Piranesi and the

Jim Infantino:
Mm hmm.

Lionel:
other in Piranesi is that not only

Jim Infantino:
Absolutely.

Lionel:
is he callous, but he's manipulative.

Jim Infantino:
Yes.

Lionel:
And so that every bad thing that has to be done, he blames on the other person. Oh, if you don't go and rescue her, that will be on your life

Jim Infantino:
Right,

Lionel:
forever.

Jim Infantino:
right,

Lionel:
You know, and that, and you could,

Jim Infantino:
which

Lionel:
you know,

Jim Infantino:
is

Lionel:
you

Jim Infantino:
a

Lionel:
could

Jim Infantino:
manipulation.

Lionel:
tell, you could tell that Susanne Clark was really, really modeling it closely after the uncle in the magicians. I think she actually used the same name,

Jim Infantino:
I, yeah, not the

Lionel:
the same

Jim Infantino:
first name,

Lionel:
last

Jim Infantino:
but the last

Lionel:
name,

Jim Infantino:
name. Yeah.

Lionel:
the last name,

Jim Infantino:
Kettering.

Lionel:
Catterly.

Jim Infantino:
Ketterly. Yeah.

Lionel:
Yeah, Catterly.

Jim Infantino:
And it is, it's nothing against Piranesi. It's a fascinating kind of homage in a sense. But yeah, I was really fascinated just in terms of the depth of understanding certain personality. types and it must have been somebody that CS Lewis had come across that when you said something like but this is going to be terrible for them they would just stare at you like you had just spouted nonsense

Lionel:
Uh huh.

Jim Infantino:
because it was so important to the experiment

Lionel:
Yes.

Jim Infantino:
that individuals were irrelevant or maybe they were a sociopath

Lionel:
Consequences

Jim Infantino:
can't yeah

Lionel:
are irrelevant. And there's a lot of that. Frankenstein and

Jim Infantino:
yep

Lionel:
the mad scientist, the mad scientist will stop at nothing and doesn't care what he breaks or what the consequences are of the experiment. But again, Ketterle is different. And that's where CS Lewis and Susanna Clark take it one step forward. It's not that he's uncomprehending. and not just uncomprehending. He is a sociopath and he's happy to manipulate other people.

Jim Infantino:
Right. But it's written before this notion of sociopath that sociopathy was really, you know, in the popular

Lionel:
Right.

Jim Infantino:
milieu.

Lionel:
But it's just interesting how he manipulates and it's great. It's not just he's just an unthinking, uncaring monster who can't communicate with people. He's very good at communicating with people and he's very good at trying to con people into doing what he wants them to do, especially by guilting them and flipping situations upside down and putting the blame on the other people, which is spine tingling.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
It really is. So anyway, yeah, it's good to reread those books. To a certain degree, I see Piranesia as sort of a retelling of the magician's nephew for an England of 1980s-ing.

Jim Infantino:
Yes. Yeah, I can see that. But they each stand, I mean, it stands alone. It doesn't feel

Lionel:
Oh yeah.

Jim Infantino:
like a copy of anything. And it's certainly much more mature. There's a wonderful scene I'm giving. We've already given away most

Lionel:
Who

Jim Infantino:
of the

Lionel:
cares?

Jim Infantino:
book in the last podcast. But there is a great scene where

Lionel:
Which book are we talking about?

Jim Infantino:
in Piranesi, where Valentine Ketterle has the plan to get rid of the cop. and trap her in the flood.

Lionel:
Right.

Jim Infantino:
And because he's just a certain type of intellectual, it's very clear that the plan that he has mapped out is not one that he can execute, right? It all worked in his mind. Oh, wow, something went, did you hear that?

Lionel:
Yeah, a little bit.

Jim Infantino:
It all worked in his mind, but it doesn't work in real life.

Lionel:
He can't dirty his own hands with it.

Jim Infantino:
Well,

Lionel:
Or

Jim Infantino:
no, he just

Lionel:
is it?

Jim Infantino:
doesn't have the he doesn't have the dexterity. He doesn't have any training. You know, he's mapped out a very complicated thing whereby he's going to inflate the boat and he's going to get the gun and he's going to shoot the person and

Lionel:
Right.

Jim Infantino:
get in the boat. And that while, you know, the room is filling with water, that's not how it's going to go.

Lionel:
Right,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
yeah. But I like where he tries to convince Piranesi, he says, you know, you're probably gonna have to, I think it's better if you shoot her.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
You know, he tries to convince Piranesi that really, you know, I'm not, I shouldn't have to lower myself, I shouldn't have to dirty my hands with this, you know. I think, you know, you are much more adept at this, and in fact, it's probably your responsibility. In fact, you're required to do it.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
And that's the thing that's really, that really makes your hair stand on end. is just the unbelievable manipulativeness of this character and

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
how beautifully she describes it. I mean, really, again, I like Susanna Clarke for the reason I don't like, you know, other people. Her sentences are great. Like her sentences are great.

Jim Infantino:
So, Hugh Howey, you really don't feel, you're really, yeah. So it's just, it's a stylistic. It's funny,

Lionel:
It's just

Jim Infantino:
you

Lionel:
true.

Jim Infantino:
mentioned the humor thing. I mean, I think of other really heavy authors like Steven R. Donaldson. I don't detect any humor in any of his books.

Lionel:
but it was clearly fantastical.

Jim Infantino:
See ya.

Lionel:
It was so ridiculously over the top.

Jim Infantino:
It's so over the top that there's sort of a humor in that.

Lionel:
It's

Jim Infantino:
Like

Lionel:
operatic.

Jim Infantino:
in all of his books, it's so beyond dramatic that you go with it.

Lionel:
Right. It's theater. Whereas the problem is that all the people who followed after like Tom Clancy, is they try to make their stuff sound like a new skit. They try to make it sound like fact.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
You know, and they give all these details to make it sound like actually like this actually happened.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
And it's like, no, it's

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
just fiction. You know, with Stephen R. Donaldson, I mean, it's really different because with Hugh Howey, he's positing something that takes place on earth. that theoretically could happen. It's not in the realm of, you know, it's far less speculative than some other speculative fiction. You know, it's not like going to the ring world or anything like that. And so it just tends to be really kind of grinding after a while. Whereas Donaldson's thing is so ridiculous and so over the top. I mean, and the names are ridiculous. Angus

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
Thermopylae and, you know, and just the whole thing is just completely nutso. And it's just a space opera in the grand trund... I mean, it's not funny really in any... It's not like Hitchhiker's going to the galaxy, ha ha, it's not

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
that at all.

Jim Infantino:
right.

Lionel:
But it's like the ring cycle of Wagner, you take it all in one sitting and it's performed by a bunch of people who are completely out of their minds. It's, you know...

Jim Infantino:
It's odd too, you know, you take somebody like Neil Stevenson and there is a sense of humor there,

Lionel:
There is.

Jim Infantino:
like with Termination of Shock. And mostly it's how the characters are drawn. So that certainly goes a long way.

Lionel:
Yes, if it wasn't for that, I think Stevenson would be basically unreadable. I mean, the key thing I remember from him that made me laugh out loud was in, was it, no, I don't think it was Snow Crash. It was another one.

Jim Infantino:
The Diamond Age or?

Lionel:
No, it wasn't Diamond Age. It was maybe it was Snow Crash, but the one where the guy's talking about he's in the Philippines. He's

Jim Infantino:
Oh,

Lionel:
a contractor for a startup and he talks about

Jim Infantino:
Cryptonomicon.

Lionel:
eating rice. Is that what it is? I thought

Jim Infantino:
Cryptonomicon,

Lionel:
it takes place in the 1700s.

Jim Infantino:
is it a data? Oh, it's 1700s, oh, no then

Lionel:
No, no,

Jim Infantino:
I don't

Lionel:
no.

Jim Infantino:
know

Lionel:
I

Jim Infantino:
it.

Lionel:
thought, I thought CryptoNomical is 1700. I'm talking about what the passage I'm talking about takes place in the present day and the guys for a startup company that's building a fiber optic network throughout the Pacific to enable expatriate workers to remit payments. But that's, that's like a footnote to the entire thing. But what the piece is about is he's, he's like this contract worker living in, I think Manila and what, and it's like a two page description about. eating Captain Crunch in the Philippines.

Jim Infantino:
Ha ha ha!

Lionel:
And he says, you have to get the milk so cold that just merely by squeezing the container will cause it to enter into its crystalline form. He says, and he talks about the whole thing and you, it's just this two page digression on how to pour the right, how to pour the Captain Crunch in the bowl, how to pour, because it's blast, it's blast furnace hot outside.

Jim Infantino:
Right,

Lionel:
It's like 105

Jim Infantino:
right,

Lionel:
degrees and

Jim Infantino:
and

Lionel:
90%

Jim Infantino:
humid.

Lionel:
humidity. And he says, you put the thing and you do this and you have to wait to the precise moment. Because if you do it too early, the Captain Crunch will scrape the roof of your mouth.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
But if you wait too long, it'll all turn into... And it's just, and I thought, okay, dude, I'm going to cut you some slack on this one, because

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, it's pretty great.

Lionel:
this is really funny.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
And that's when you see like little, what do they call it? What do they call it? The diamonds? What do they call it? Something's embedded in the diamond? What

Jim Infantino:
I don't

Lionel:
are they? Inclusions.

Jim Infantino:
filaments.

Lionel:
inclusions. There's little, I see little fragments of Mark Layner

Jim Infantino:
Mm hmm.

Lionel:
embedded

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
in

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
William Gibson and Stevenson and other people. But definitely, certainly. Yeah, that whole thing about eating Captain Crunch was just was just great.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, a

Lionel:
I got

Jim Infantino:
little,

Lionel:
to

Jim Infantino:
a little laner goes a long way.

Lionel:
A little later goes a long,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
long way, baby.

Jim Infantino:
it's very, it's strong stuff.

Lionel:
But yeah,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
I've found, I mean, again, that's one of the overarching, this whole podcast thing has forced me to read a lot of books.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, me too.

Lionel:
And sometimes you learn something about yourself and it's like, boy, when there's no humor, it's really humorless. Like when there's absolutely no wit, no humor. And some of these books just really feel like people just like building a cinder block building. It's like, okay, here comes this chapter and I gotta do this and here comes this plot element.

Jim Infantino:
That's, I think some of that has to do with being on deadline. You know, doesn't that, doesn't it seem like, I mean, a good editor would say, look, you need to spice this up. This, you know, you can't just, you know, recount what happened. It's not enough to recount what happened. That's not actually a story. Now, what was it Malcolm Gladwell said? There's a difference between a story. Ah. a story and an anecdote. In an anecdote, there's no turn. He doesn't put it that way, but there's no betrayal. In a story, there's a betrayal, and not literal narrative betrayal, but there's a betrayal of the expectations that are set up in the story, so that the reader is surprised.

Lionel:
price yet it's o'henry it's the trick

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
ending to the story it's the punch line it's the surprise

Jim Infantino:
It's a surprise.

Lionel:
and yes

Jim Infantino:
There's

Lionel:
i agree with that.

Jim Infantino:
a sting, you know?

Lionel:
Right.

Jim Infantino:
And without that, you've just got anecdotes strung together. You know, I went to the store and they were all out of milk. Not really. I mean, it's almost a story because I didn't expect that. But, you

Lionel:
Right.

Jim Infantino:
know, listing the contents of your freezer is not a story.

Lionel:
Yeah, it's not a story. And yeah, we could go, yeah, I could go on and on about this. But it helps when there's a little bit of humor. There's really, there's a ton of humor in Piranesi.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
There's a ton of incredibly refined wit

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
in Piranesi. The trick is to really appreciate a lot of it. You have to read The Magician's Nephew. You have to know about Aleister Crowley. It helps a

Jim Infantino:
Mm.

Lionel:
lot. Even if you know the littlest bit about Alastair Crowley and the whole British occult movement during the 1960s and seventies, all you need to do is read a paragraph from Wikipedia. You need, you need to be in that British vibe. You know, it's, it's Monty Python. It's, it's a Harry Potter. It's, it's all

Jim Infantino:
Douglas

Lionel:
those people.

Jim Infantino:
Adams.

Lionel:
Douglas Adams, JR Tolkien, CS Lewis, all of them. And they're all talking. in her book and she has her own voice, but it really helps a lot. There's just some great, great wit and humor in some of those paths and it's very subtle. It's almost hard to quote. It's almost impossible to quote it.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, well, some of it you can't tell. Sometimes the humor is almost, you know, it's, Eric Palin's, I mean, it's an old saying that, you know, comedy is just tragedy inverted, or comedy is, yeah, comedy is tragedy with a kind of a sting to it. But some of the, I would probably include in humor, maybe the broader definition of humor. in some of these because tenderness and sadness contribute to that.

Lionel:
Yes.

Jim Infantino:
In one of Donaldson's books, in the Gap series, there's this sad character that is ineffectual throughout, and they do this immensely huge thing, which is they swallow a spaceship into a black hole. It's horrifyingly sad. But there's something about the way it's written that feels almost humorous.

Lionel:
Triumphant, yeah,

Jim Infantino:
Triumphant

Lionel:
or humorous.

Jim Infantino:
and, you know,

Lionel:
I

Jim Infantino:
it's

Lionel:
don't know,

Jim Infantino:
tragic.

Lionel:
I don't know what section you were, I don't remember this one at all.

Jim Infantino:
There's a character who launches a black hole at a spaceship, but he's got to travel along with the black hole. And

Lionel:
Oh, okay. Then

Jim Infantino:
yeah,

Lionel:
I

Jim Infantino:
they're

Lionel:
probably.

Jim Infantino:
like, you know what you're doing? Yeah, suck them all into a black hole. And with knowing the character right exactly, it's kind of comical, but it's awful, right?

Lionel:
Right.

Jim Infantino:
And there's

Lionel:
But it's

Jim Infantino:
a lot

Lionel:
triumphant.

Jim Infantino:
of that in Piranesi.

Lionel:
It's somebody dying for a cause.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
That shows up in so many places. That meme shows up all over the place. But yeah, humor helps a lot. Humor helps a lot. So anyway, those are the two books I read. I wanted to get even, I just, I want to, I want to put the stake through Dracula's heart. I wanted to buy the third silo book and

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
just get it over with. But honestly, like the Kindle version is $18.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
There's

Jim Infantino:
It's

Lionel:
no

Jim Infantino:
so popular

Lionel:
use cop.

Jim Infantino:
right now.

Lionel:
Yeah. It's just

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
like, I'll just, honestly it doesn't really mean all that terribly much to me. It really

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, it's

Lionel:
doesn't.

Jim Infantino:
not, I think it's just not your thing. If you're not into his writing, I mean, I enjoyed it. But if you're

Lionel:
Who knows?

Jim Infantino:
not into his writing, then yeah.

Lionel:
I mean, I'll see him through to the end. I'll check the third book, maybe the middle book. I don't know. Sometimes people put on a burst of steam. God knows. I sat through a lot of William Gibson books that were less than thrilling. So I'll see Hugh to the end. This is a movie. Sorry,

Jim Infantino:
Okay, yeah.

Lionel:
this is a really hideous podcast.

Jim Infantino:
Hehehehe

Lionel:
But this is a movie. that is on Amazon Prime right now. That is an old, old movie that probably you watched when you were 12 years old, because that's when I saw it too. And then I rewatched it probably about 20 years ago. And I only watched it a couple nights ago because I was completely desperate for anything to watch. And I wasn't gonna watch The Croods, and I wasn't gonna watch some reality TV. So I watched The Day of the Jackal.

Jim Infantino:
The day of the jackal.

Lionel:
from 1973, which was a movie adaptation of the astoundingly successful Frederick Forsythe book, The Day of the Jackal, which was sort of one of the founding books of the whole born identity.

Jim Infantino:
You're right, right.

Lionel:
It has an international scope, and it's these professional killers and these professional spies who chase each other. And it's... Today it's Barcelona, tomorrow it's Tunisia, and all that stuff. And Force and The Day of the Jack was really one of the first of those and sort of spawned a lot of the genre. And I remember watching it and it's a fun book. I mean, it's a fun movie. It's really cool. It's kind of dated.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
And so I was just kind of watching, look, I already know what everything happens in here. And I know, you know, he gets the rifle and I know they do this and they do that. I, it did not prepare me at all when I watched it again. It was great.

Jim Infantino:
Great.

Lionel:
It was a great, fabulous, fabulous movie because you start to appreciate the movie making

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
and you start to appreciate like the, they had these enormous crowd scenes in Paris, like these huge parades around the Champs-Elysées, around the Arc Triomphe, like thousands of people, they couldn't stage that. It had

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
to have been that there was actually a real live event going on because they

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
had like battalions marching by. So they must have had guys with cameras running between them and stuff like that. And it's a really, really good film. So I recommend it. It's two and a half hours. But as Roger, because I read about it afterwards, as Roger Ebert says, it goes by in about 10 minutes.

Jim Infantino:
Wow.

Lionel:
I don't think it goes by in 10 minutes. I think it goes by in about two hours, but it doesn't really feel like a, it feels like, it feels like Bridge Over the River Kwai, which is a long ass movie.

Jim Infantino:
Hmm

Lionel:
But it feels okay because it's such a fabulously well-made movie that you're okay with it. But it's just the... It's just, you can tell there's a lot of love that went into the film. It's just great cinematography. The plot moves along. It's a great film. So, I don't know if it really links into anything else. That was a film

Jim Infantino:
Well,

Lionel:
that had no humor.

Jim Infantino:
it does

Lionel:
Go ahead.

Jim Infantino:
actually. Yeah, for me it does, but I wanna take a break.

Lionel:
Okay.

Jim Infantino:
Give me four. So that reminds me that a common friend of ours or a classmate of yours

Lionel:
that.

Jim Infantino:
recommended that I check out the books of another classmate of ours, Robert Whitehill, who I don't know whether, I think he might've been my year, which would make sense if you didn't know him. I don't think he was your year at the Ford, but I'm gonna read a book called Deadrise by Robert Whitehill. And I think it's along these lines of the day of the jackal. So it's a bit of a genre change for me, more of a thriller, you know,

Lionel:
Right. Then a

Jim Infantino:
than,

Lionel:
sci-fi kind of thing.

Jim Infantino:
yeah. But

Lionel:
Well, I'll read

Jim Infantino:
I did,

Lionel:
it too.

Jim Infantino:
yeah, so that, yeah, if you want. Anyway, he's an acquaintance, so he might come on the pod if we both read his book.

Lionel:
Did you ever read any of the, did you ever read like any John LeCouré?

Jim Infantino:
I haven't, I think I read Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.

Lionel:
That's a big ass book. Yeah,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
it's a hard book to get through.

Jim Infantino:
Isn't that the one where he ends up with the Afghans? No, there's one where the, where... He ends up in Afghanistan.

Lionel:
That's how Tinker

Jim Infantino:
Not

Lionel:
Tailor

Jim Infantino:
that one.

Lionel:
Soldier Spy.

Jim Infantino:
A spy who came in from the cold?

Lionel:
Well, Spire came in from the cold, was L'Carré's breakthrough hit, and was made into a movie with Richard Burton. Famous movie, very good movie, but no, it all takes place in Berlin in

Jim Infantino:
Oh.

Lionel:
the 1950s. So Afghan is not part of it. I mean, L'Carré wrote, I forget how many, but it's probably close to 40 books.

Jim Infantino:
Mm.

Lionel:
So it's hard to keep them apart. But Did you ever read any of the Bourne books?

Jim Infantino:
I didn't read the Bourne books, I watched the movies, because

Lionel:
Yeah, there's

Jim Infantino:
I

Lionel:
the

Jim Infantino:
think

Lionel:
Bourne

Jim Infantino:
Matt Damon

Lionel:
books,

Jim Infantino:
was great in them.

Lionel:
and then there's Frederick Forsythe. And there's a whole bunch of guys who create this. And then there's the guy. Forget the guy who wrote the book, the Odessa file. These are all guys writing in the 60s and 70s, who sort of single handedly created like this whole genre of like, you know, the Nazi hunters. That was

Jim Infantino:
Hmm

Lionel:
a big theme to, you know, hunting down the boys from Brazil. That's a famous book about Nazi hunters, you know, guys from Israel. hunting down the last of the Nazis, much of it fantastical. But it's sort of the stew out of which a lot of this stuff grew. There's also Mission Impossible, which was a big 1960s television series using a lot of the same themes, technology, international, trickery,

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
deception, deceit, treachery, spies, governments. All that kind of stuff. Even the 007 movies, the James Bond stuff, to a certain degree fed into all that. Again, technology, trickery, deception, saving the world, all that kind of nonsense. So Dead Rise by Robert Whitehill.

Jim Infantino:
Robert Whitehill, Robert Blake Whitehill.

Lionel:
Okay.

Jim Infantino:
And he, yeah, he, let's see, X'd me. He said, have some fun with Dead Rise. Maynard Shawk is a scene stealing baddie, so I'm told. Sort of Hyacinth wrote Born. So.

Lionel:
Oh, Carl Hyasson wrote the Bourne stuff.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
Oh, Hyasson like H I H I A S E

Jim Infantino:
A-A-S-E-N.

Lionel:
N right. Carl, Carl Hyasson from Florida. Have you read any of his stuff?

Jim Infantino:
No.

Lionel:
Carl Hyasson is, so do you know Tony Hillerman?

Jim Infantino:
Yes.

Lionel:
Okay. So Tony Hillerman is like this guy who writes basically a murder mysteries, let, you know, fairly light touch cop stories, all based in New Mexico. Tony Hillerman is all about New Mexico

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
and the indigenous people in New Mexico. A lot of it takes place on the reservations and

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
in the various places. Carl Hyassin is all Florida. And it's all really fun. And Hyassin is pretty darn funny. And he actually wrote a whole bunch of series of kids books based in Florida, which are pretty, you know, they actually may be a little too kid-like for your daughters yet, but I remember reading them with Lily and they're actually pretty good.

Jim Infantino:
Hmm.

Lionel:
I think one's called scat. They're all like one syllable words.

Jim Infantino:
Ah.

Lionel:
But he, I think he wrote at least three of them, Carl Haas and their, their young adult or kids books that take place in Florida. And they're all, they're all, they're basically the same as his grownup books. It's, it's some nutty adventure. It's

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
some weird thing with some MacGuffin, like there's, you know, the, the last of the, the Everglades Ocelots is missing. You know, where did it go? And then it just becomes like, you know, a wacky cast of characters all chasing you. It's like, you know, it's a mad, mad world taking place in the Everglades.

Jim Infantino:
Well, this could be fun. I mean, yeah, sort of if Hyacin wrote born.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
So it sounds

Lionel:
So.

Jim Infantino:
like it might, this might be a nice diversion.

Lionel:
Junction

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, nice

Lionel:
or

Jim Infantino:
junction.

Lionel:
you know might tie together a whole bunch of things

Jim Infantino:
I

Lionel:
be

Jim Infantino:
could.

Lionel:
interesting to see what threads he's pulling on

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Lionel:
And stuff like that.

Jim Infantino:
I

Lionel:
So

Jim Infantino:
did see Dungeons and Dragons, Honor Amongst Thieves.

Lionel:
Do you still consider me a friend?

Jim Infantino:
You owe me.

Lionel:
You are a big time.

Jim Infantino:
No, I have to say it was a bit of a piece of trash, but

Lionel:
It was.

Jim Infantino:
also sweet, you know, kind of sweet and fun.

Lionel:
Influen-

Jim Infantino:
And,

Lionel:
ehh

Jim Infantino:
you know, yeah, I mean, I don't know how many tomatoes I would give it. It was certainly not a waste of time to watch. It was fun. It was just like,

Lionel:
It

Jim Infantino:
it

Lionel:
was

Jim Infantino:
was just,

Lionel:
entertainment,

Jim Infantino:
yeah, it was

Lionel:
pure

Jim Infantino:
Popcorn.

Lionel:
and simple.

Jim Infantino:
Pure

Lionel:
And it

Jim Infantino:
entertainment.

Lionel:
wasn't trying to establish any bigger themes. It wasn't trying

Jim Infantino:
No.

Lionel:
to enforce ideas about the sanctity of the ecosphere. It was just like, we're on a mad chase here

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
and we're trying to get to the other end.

Jim Infantino:
And it's funny though, you know, using the name Dungeons and Dragons, it sort of made sense. They could have done more with that because the main character is a whatever, seventh level bard, you know, the kind of character that gets killed immediately in a campaign. A bard, what can you do? I can play the loot, you know,

Lionel:
Die!

Jim Infantino:
I can hit you with the loot. And that's roughly what Chris Pine's character does. He's like the lowest level possible. And you've got a... You've got a magician who can or a wizard who can only cast like magic missile, you know, one. And then he has to kind of find the confidence to

Lionel:
Did

Jim Infantino:
be

Lionel:
you

Jim Infantino:
a better

Lionel:
do Dungeons

Jim Infantino:
wizard.

Lionel:
and Dragons?

Jim Infantino:
I did. I loved it. Yeah.

Lionel:
So I guess it must be a much different experience for you, because I didn't catch any of that stuff.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, yeah. Right. So then I sort of recognized you had a... Right. You had the... You had sort of the warrior, you had the paladin. I did like... There were a number of funny things. I mean, the paladin is really good at everything and is lawful good.

Lionel:
Which one is the paladin?

Jim Infantino:
The paladin is... They meet up with him to get...

Lionel:
Oh,

Jim Infantino:
They have to get something and, you

Lionel:
right,

Jim Infantino:
know, like...

Lionel:
he's the one that everybody, he's one of the bad people. He's one of the red, red priest

Jim Infantino:
He was,

Lionel:
people.

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
He was, but he escaped and he's going around like saving babies and.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, so he's chaotic evil and now he's lawful good. And right, he saves babies and he's just good at everything. He's like a 10th level paladin or whatever. You'll be

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
in Dungeons and Dragons speak. But there's this moment when they realize that he's really no fun to talk to.

Lionel:
Oh, and he doesn't understand metaphor or anything

Jim Infantino:
No sarcasm.

Lionel:
like that.

Jim Infantino:
You can't

Lionel:
No

Jim Infantino:
do sarcasm.

Lionel:
sarcasm,

Jim Infantino:
Not

Lionel:
no

Jim Infantino:
allowed to,

Lionel:
irony.

Jim Infantino:
really. It doesn't fit the lawful good

Lionel:
He's like

Jim Infantino:
profile.

Lionel:
Dax from Guardians of the Galaxy.

Jim Infantino:
And he says, well, then I'll leave you with a story to go. And Chris Pine's character says, okay, goodbye. And he walks away. And they're like, he walks in a straight line. Is he going to go around the rock? Is he going to go around the rock? Nope, he's going over the rock. He walks in a straight line. They're like so sick of him. So that was really funny. I mean, that really felt like D&D to me, but the rest of it was just like any other kind of Disney movie.

Lionel:
Right, but a lot of those movies, sometimes I watch them and they're kind of cloying, like they annoy me on other levels. This movie didn't. This movie, I think was acutely aware, sort

Jim Infantino:
Yes.

Lionel:
of like, I mean, of course, the most cringe inducing movie in the world, but also I found there are a lot of people on this planet who secretly love this movie, which is the fifth element.

Jim Infantino:
Oh,

Lionel:
Um,

Jim Infantino:
I love that movie.

Lionel:
yeah. And it's just the fifth element. It's not trying to, it's

Jim Infantino:
No!

Lionel:
not trying to do anything. It's not trying to do anything. And even when it gets serious, it's like, okay, yeah, war's bad. We good. We're good with that one.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
But other than that, it's just basically a French bedroom forest that goes,

Jim Infantino:
What?

Lionel:
takes place over several planets. And like, that's it. And I felt that same way. I felt that same sort of lightness of touch with Dungeons and Dragons, at least, at least they know they are. And what I think is interesting is that you liked it. You

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
didn't hate it. And

Jim Infantino:
Didn't

Lionel:
I

Jim Infantino:
hate

Lionel:
liked

Jim Infantino:
it.

Lionel:
it. And I don't know Zippo about Dungeons and Dragons, the game itself. So that in itself is perhaps a bit of an accomplishment.

Jim Infantino:
They probably, that's probably on purpose. I mean, really, if you only made a movie for Dungeons and Dragons players, you'd have five people show up at the theater. I mean, it's bigger than that, but you'd have thousands of people rather than what you want, you know, just hundreds or millions, hundreds

Lionel:
Well, I

Jim Infantino:
of

Lionel:
think

Jim Infantino:
thousands

Lionel:
I may

Jim Infantino:
or

Lionel:
have

Jim Infantino:
millions.

Lionel:
mentioned this is that I was watching, I was, I was watching either the first, I think it was the second Wreck-It Ralph. Wreck-It

Jim Infantino:
Hmm.

Lionel:
Ralph wrecks the internet. And there's one point where he's floating inside some kind of sphere and he has to get to the inner core of the sphere and to get in, he has to do a combination. And there's these buttons and they're like the cursor buttons on the thing. He says, yeah, you have to hold down shift and do left, right, right up on.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
And there's like 20 people in the audience who broke out in hysterical laughter.

Jim Infantino:
Hehehehe

Lionel:
And I think what it is, is like, it was this well-known like cheat code

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
in

Jim Infantino:
for like

Lionel:
some,

Jim Infantino:
Zelda. Yeah.

Lionel:
yeah, something like with some kind of control that you, you know,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
some kind of physical control, like there's this one thing that everybody knew is the thing you did to get like 20 extra gold or something like

Jim Infantino:
God

Lionel:
that.

Jim Infantino:
mode, yeah.

Lionel:
And I thought that's really hilarious. Like there's a bunch of people for whom this is an immensely funny, to me, I was just like, yeah, okay. What did I miss here?

Jim Infantino:
An Easter egg.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
Okay, so we've overstayed our welcome, right? It's 6 37.

Jim Infantino:
I think around minute five, we were overstaying

Lionel:
Yeah

Jim Infantino:
our welcome. I did just come from a, I was invited to be like a guest speaker at a university event by one of my guys, I used to be an RA at Bennington College and he reached out to me and said, I teach English. Would you like to do English tea where you can talk about writing, writing songs and all the different things you do and then take questions from my class. And I did, and that's actually where I was coming from. That's why I was late today. But it was delightful. Steve Engel, I got to talk about myself for quite a long while. I hope it was valuable to the students there. None of the students asked me any questions. It was all the other teachers in the room, but

Lionel:
Really?

Jim Infantino:
the grownups,

Lionel:
The students

Jim Infantino:
yeah.

Lionel:
didn't ask anything?

Jim Infantino:
They didn't, no,

Lionel:
Oh,

Jim Infantino:
no.

Lionel:
too bad.

Jim Infantino:
And I gave them a lot of prompts, but not really.

Lionel:
It's funny, I got a text message from my daughter earlier this afternoon. And she says, what object represents me?

Jim Infantino:
What?

Lionel:
And I wrote back, I said, I'm not, I usually don't think of object people as being representable by objects.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
She wrote back and says, it's for an assignment.

Jim Infantino:
Hehehehehehe

Lionel:
I said, okay, can opener.

Jim Infantino:
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe

Lionel:
If that's all the context you're giving me,

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
you know, okay, here's an object. But yeah, academia got a lot of it. What object represents you? Let's

Jim Infantino:
A fork?

Lionel:
talk about the premise of the question to

Jim Infantino:
Hmm.

Lionel:
begin with before I even offer an answer. I mean, it's like.

Jim Infantino:
The Grand Canyon? I'm not... Is that an object?

Lionel:
The

Jim Infantino:
Not

Lionel:
charm

Jim Infantino:
sure.

Lionel:
quark. I mean, what, what are we talking about? The antipositron fotino or something. Oh, it's just ridiculous.

Jim Infantino:
I am the subject, not the object.

Lionel:
Yeah, that's just hurl some Zen at them and

Jim Infantino:
Did

Lionel:
baffled with

Jim Infantino:
what?

Lionel:
bullshit.

Jim Infantino:
So the class, they're literally asking the students to objectify themselves?

Lionel:
Who knows what?

Jim Infantino:
What?

Lionel:
I'm getting it. Look, I'm getting it from her, which already there's about five layers of telephone

Jim Infantino:
Okay.

Lionel:
right there. So who

Jim Infantino:
Dad,

Lionel:
knows

Jim Infantino:
I need...

Lionel:
what's actually going on?

Jim Infantino:
Dad, I need the thing. Wha...

Lionel:
Can't

Jim Infantino:
Yaa...

Lionel:
you think of an object? It's like,

Jim Infantino:
My...

Lionel:
why do I have to come up with objects here? This is the horror of instantaneous communications. Go do your homework yourself,

Jim Infantino:
This

Lionel:
for

Jim Infantino:
is

Lionel:
God's

Jim Infantino:
not

Lionel:
sakes.

Jim Infantino:
a hard assignment. You

Lionel:
Yeah, come

Jim Infantino:
shouldn't

Lionel:
on, kid.

Jim Infantino:
have to go to your dad for this.

Lionel:
Yeah, just look out the window. I

Jim Infantino:
Right,

Lionel:
spy

Jim Infantino:
pick

Lionel:
with my

Jim Infantino:
an

Lionel:
little

Jim Infantino:
object.

Lionel:
eye.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
I'm a Venetian blind. Why? I don't know. Whatever.

Jim Infantino:
Here we go,

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
acorn.

Lionel:
Oh,

Jim Infantino:
I'm an acorn.

Lionel:
yeah. That's a good

Jim Infantino:
Oh,

Lionel:
one. Whoa.

Jim Infantino:
there we go. I'm a lotus flower.

Lionel:
Sorry, that one's taken.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
OK. But yeah, it was fun. She called me a couple of days ago and said, do you want to just get out of here for a while? I said, yeah, OK. So

Jim Infantino:
Nice.

Lionel:
we got in the car and we drove around. We went to a town nearby called Casanovia. These are beautiful towns. And visited a brewery there, had a beer. Then we jumped in the car again and we drove over to. Skinnyatelus is how they

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
pronounce

Jim Infantino:
that's where my

Lionel:
it.

Jim Infantino:
friend Barry Kremenz is from.

Lionel:
So we went there. That's a beautiful town. I mean,

Jim Infantino:
I have

Lionel:
ridiculous.

Jim Infantino:
a sweatshirt that says Skinny Attalus on it.

Lionel:
I mean, they look like sets from a movie production of Our Town by Thornton Wilder. I mean, they're just ridiculous. It's just like you're expecting one of them to fall over.

Jim Infantino:
Barry Kremenc would always say, I am from a little town in upstate New York called Skinny Atlas, which is a Native American word that means beautiful lake surrounded by fascists. I miss him.

Lionel:
It's a beautiful lake. It's a god awful beautiful lake. And there's a lot of money. There's a lot of money around that lake.

Jim Infantino:
Hmm.

Lionel:
I mean, just impossibly manic. I mean, just beautiful, really nice. But so anyways, we had a great time driving around. One of the benefits of living close to your daughter at college.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, that's great.

Lionel:
She

Jim Infantino:
I mean.

Lionel:
just said, look, I need to get out of here. It's been, because she got there and she immediately got COVID. So

Jim Infantino:
Oh

Lionel:
she

Jim Infantino:
wow.

Lionel:
missed like the first four days of class.

Jim Infantino:
Oh God.

Lionel:
And she was very upset about that until she realized that everybody else had COVID too.

Jim Infantino:
Right.

Lionel:
There's a huge COVID thing

Jim Infantino:
Yeah,

Lionel:
swapping

Jim Infantino:
it's a surge.

Lionel:
through.

Jim Infantino:
It's a surge. We'll see what's going on here.

Lionel:
Yep. And so I think it sort of threw her off a little bit. And it's also really hot here.

Jim Infantino:
Mm-hmm.

Lionel:
It's in the 90s.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, I was in New York City, TMI. I

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
got reports.

Lionel:
And there's no air conditioning here. There's no air conditioning in their dorms.

Jim Infantino:
Oh.

Lionel:
So I think that's sort of contributing to her. to her angst

Jim Infantino:
kind of hard to focus when

Lionel:
when

Jim Infantino:
you're

Lionel:
you're

Jim Infantino:
sweating.

Lionel:
sticking to your

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
bed. And so she says, can we just go somewhere? I said, yeah,

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
I'll come by and pick you up and we'll

Jim Infantino:
Oh,

Lionel:
just

Jim Infantino:
she

Lionel:
drive

Jim Infantino:
wanted to go

Lionel:
around.

Jim Infantino:
somewhere because your car has air conditioning.

Lionel:
No, she wanted, well, that probably didn't hurt, but I think she just wanted, I think it's tough. You know, it's tough. I remember when I first came to Haverford, I had a mental, I had a miniature breakdown.

Jim Infantino:
Yeah, me too.

Lionel:
Yeah. And I think she's having one too. And on top of that, she had COVID and on top

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
of that, a bunch of other things. And she says, look, I got to get out of here. And so as a father, you think to yourself, well, should I really intervene here? Or is this part of the growing thing? And then the other part of me said,

Jim Infantino:
Oh,

Lionel:
fuck

Jim Infantino:
take

Lionel:
that.

Jim Infantino:
advantage. No, enjoy.

Lionel:
Yeah. Come

Jim Infantino:
Enjoy.

Lionel:
on kid, jump in. Let's get out of

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
here. I needed to quite

Jim Infantino:
Sure.

Lionel:
frankly, I need, I need to get out of the house and we need to drive around and see what's going on around here. Work isn't everything, which

Jim Infantino:
Yeah.

Lionel:
is my problem. School isn't everything. which is a lesson she needs to learn. Work is not everything, that's a lesson I need to learn. So we both learned that by jumping in a car and driving around and just seeing where the road took us. And it took us some really nice places. So that was fun,

Jim Infantino:
Nice.

Lionel:
it was good, it was really positive. So how we really, now have we come to the end of the runway now?

Jim Infantino:
Oh, yeah, I think, I mean, we are off the runway. We've like skidded, rolled slowly off the runway.

Lionel:
Yeah.

Jim Infantino:
The pilot's asleep. Yes, I had one other thing.

Lionel:
This is like Monty Python.

Jim Infantino:
And this is just technical. I'm thinking about moving our entire podcast to a different platform, moving it to substats.

Lionel:
instead of what.

Jim Infantino:
Um, so it, you know, this is all, it's too

Lionel:
This

Jim Infantino:
technical.

Lionel:
is distribution issues, right? Oh,

Jim Infantino:
It's a distribution issue. So

Lionel:
I couldn't

Jim Infantino:
right.

Lionel:
care less.

Jim Infantino:
I'm distributing it myself off of our website right now, but I think there are advantages to distributing it through sub stack and I'm just going to figure out what it takes and pull the trigger with that and we'll get better metrics and I'll be able to, you know, post the episodes with, with the references there, but I also want to maintain the website. I'm making more work for myself basically. That's not, you know, if anybody, if one of your listeners has a horror story and they're like, no, don't move your distribution to Substack. I want to hear about it. So let me know on patreon.com slash Jim Infantino. You can try me on Facebook, jiminfantino, facebook.com slash jinfantino maybe. And I probably won't be checking X that often. But you can always email And if you have any questions for Lionel or myself, please do feel free to send us an email at jimatbigego.com. I think it's also funnynotfunnyatbigego.com. can check that quickly here. Nope, it's Jim at BigEgo.com. So we'd love to have another mailbag session. Send in your comments or questions and we'll do our best to answer them.

Lionel:
Cool.

Jim Infantino:
All right, Lionel.

Lionel:
Good night.

Jim Infantino:
Good night.