The Substance, Atari Gamestation Go, & Indiana Jones & the Great Circle

 

About This Episode

We watch a new HBO series about the cast & crew of a superhero movie series, see what new features Apple has brought to their latest mobile phone offering, and grab our whip & fedora for a new digital adventure with Indiana Jones.

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Show Notes

Transcript

Speaker Transcript
Jon Welcome back Gen X grown up podcast listener to this episode, 183 of the Gen X grown up podcast.
Jon I am John joining me as always, of course is Mo. Hey man.
Mo Hey, how’s it going?
Jon Not a show without George. How are you doing, George?
George Hey, how’s it going, guys?
Jon It is going good. ah We have a little bit of break. Glad to be back. I had a couple rewinds. In this episode, though, we watch a new HBO series about the cast and crew of a superhero movie series. See what new features Apple has brought to their latest mobile phone offering and grab our whip and fedora for a new digital adventure with Indiana Jones. Those topics and many more coming your way in this episode. First, though, we always like to get the show kicked off listening to one of our fourth listeners. Now, the three of us are here.
Jon Two or three of us may listen. There’s no guarantee. But if anyone else does that, you are our fourth listener and our fourth listener. This episode is a longtime listener and Patreon supporter and fan of the show, Kat.
Mo Oh, cat.
Jon She dropped a salon. Yeah, Kat. All about the 1984 Billboard Hits episode. That was a few months ago, back in 2024.
Mo Yeah, that was a bit ago.
Jon Yeah. Yeah. I’m still catching up on the mailbag. I’m getting caught up. Here’s what Kat has to say. I have so many fourth listener comments that I haven’t shared yet, or can’t make sense of because I didn’t take good notes, but right now, and right in response to the 1984 Billboard Hits episode that I interrupted to type this, huge kudos to George from me for his appreciation for Wham! The band, and for wake me up before you go-go.
George yeah
Jon Oh, and the WAM documentary, which he mentioned on another music-related episode, and I was so happy to hear it then, too.
George Oh yeah.
Jon So there you go.
Mo Wow.
Jon Praise from Kat, George.
Mo A triple praise.
George Nice.
Jon Yeah, yeah. Does that make up for all the the left out of the other ones that they criticized? Yeah, it ought to, because it’s Kat. She’s so sweet.
Mo Yes, right.
George What?
Mo That definitely makes up for every single bad thing has ever been said.
George Left out of what now? What am I being left out of? and Apparently this conversation, cause I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about right now.
Jon Uh-oh. Oh.
Jon When fourth and listeners leave you out or include you last, and Kat has all this praise for you.
George Oh,
George it’s always nice to hear when a fourth listener gets things right and writes in about it. I always appreciate that. So yeah, and I am praising cat for being correct.
Jon So, so you’re saying praise of George is accurate is what you’re saying. That’s correct.
George Yep.
Mo Ah.
Jon I She goes, cat she goes on to say also, so happy. I could help John with his excellent red flex. Oh, also so happy. I could help John with his excellent reflex reporting about the Duran Duran song.
Jon She’s a huge Duran Duran fan.
Mo Ah.
George yep
Jon Also general appreciation for Mo.
Mo Wow, I’m the George of this letter.
Jon It’s right is’ like praise, praise, praise. And Mo was there too. Thanks Mo.
Mo Oh, yeah. Hey, Mo. yeah
George yeah
Jon ah She wraps it up by saying P.S. I forgive Mo and John for not being able to appreciate wake me up before you go go. It’s because it’s dumb. but you help would read a book It’s just dumb.
Mo Yeah.
Jon I don’t like this.
Mo I just see people doing the cult into that, you know.
Jon And you never heard from him again. Wham. Yeah. Cat, thank you for listening. Thanks for taking the time to actually write some notes that you could write in with. We love hearing from you. We appreciate your listenership and your support over on Patreon.
Jon ah Fourth listener, if you would like your email featured here on the show, like we did cats, it’s drop dead easy. Just hit us up at podcast at genexgrownup.com. We’ll read every single one. And most of them, like cats, will eventually make the show.
Jon With that good business behind us then, it’s time to jump into the body of episode 183 after this quick break. All right, media. In five, four, three, two,
Jon We’re gonna get cooking as we always do, talking about media that we have been checking out since we last spoke. And it’s been a few weeks. Now this could be television or movies or films or books or comics or music or whatever you have been enjoying.
Jon And I’m gonna start with you, Mo. There’s something you’ve been checking out that I saw a few months ago and loved.
Mo Yeah.
Jon What’d you see?
Mo Yeah, it’s the the substance ah which caught my attention because Demi Moore just went to Golden Globe for it.
Jon Yep.
Mo um Wow. OK, so how do you gauge a good movie? Right. It’s it could be, you know, you come out of the theater thinking, wow, it’s a great movie or it’s a movie that you’re still thinking about days later.
Jon There you go.
Mo Right. This is definitely in the latter category.
Jon Yeah.
Mo I i hesitate to say like I I should say people should see it, but I can’t say I recommend them to see if that makes sense because I don’t want to be responsible. It is a bizarre movie, but I was just just engage the entire time. Like I was just trying to figure out what the hell was gonna happen next on this thing. um Like I said, Demi Moore stars in it. And the basic premise, this super high level, is that it’s about an aing and aging actress who is getting like basically passed over for a younger, looking for a younger replacement for her. And she gets involved with this this big secret where you could take this drug and it creates, and I’m gonna use that word exactly, it creates a younger version
Mo of you basically and there’s a lot more to it than that statements but I don’t want to ruin it so go see it to understand that but it’s basically and the the twist is that you have to kind of revert to your old self every week and that’s where the movie got really interesting because you know your old self is still tired you know this young self you’re all happy and you have to go back and forth very interesting movie very
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo very well written, you know, in a sense that like they took this bizarre topping, somehow made it like I was, I was all in on this, even though it was ridiculous, I was all in on it.
George So I just wanted to ask a question based on your criteria that you stated at the beginning of what makes a good movie.
Mo Mm hmm.
George You said something that is a movie that you keep thinking about days after you’ve seen it, right?
Mo Yeah, yeah.
George So does that mean Marcus secretly loves Midsummer?
Jon Hmm.
Mo Absolutely.
Jon He just doesn’t know it.
Mo I think he’s secretly infatuated with that movie.
Jon He doesn’t realize it.
George No, but but it it’s a good film. I’ve only seen 40 minutes of this and I’m still thinking about it months later after only seeing that 40 minutes up to the point of the separation of the old and young self of the main character that you described.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo Right.
George Um, I am interested in finding out about that whole, uh, you know, reverting back to the old self for a period of time. I guess it’s like a recharge point kind of thing or something maybe, but it’s.
Mo Something along those lines, yeah.
George Like you said, it was a strange topic. I find it a very, not strange topic, but a very intriguing topic because what it’s essentially trying to say with the statements and the movie and what it’s telling the story is talking about how we should view how we think of ourselves and how we portray ourselves in our real life as well as in our minds.
Mo Oh.
George Cause we’re all in our fifties now.
Mo Yeah.
George I remember in my twenties going, what the fuck is that old 50 fucker looking? I mean, just you, would a 50 year old would look incredibly old to you.
Jon Is that weird?
George I still feel like I’m in my twenties in my mind. Even though I know my hands ache all the time from arthritis and it’s hard for me to stand up in the morning sometimes and everything.
Jon Yeah.
George That’s what this movie kinda is pointing out for me.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon Yeah, I’m glad you brought it up, Mo, because I mentioned it briefly back in October when I first saw it when it was in the theaters.
Mo Yeah.
Jon I saw it in the theaters, but it wasn’t the the movie I talked about in the show specifically other than to recommend it.
Mo Yeah.
Jon and um i So I’m glad you’ve now seen it and George got a chance to see some of it. Hopefully you’ll you’ll finish and get to. um There’s there was way more. Like it kind of changed movies. It started as this, well, it it I guess it stayed this commentary on, you know, entertainment and how we view aging actresses in particular, or just aging people in general and their value to society and that kind of thing. But then it kind of it also evolved into, it just kept adding layers of, well, now it’s this weird body horror. And now this is this crazy,
Jon existential crisis about what it means to be you and who you are and kind of things. And it kept adding these layers. And so it’s funny to me, George, you’ve only got about 40 minutes in, maybe halfway or so. Like you have two more but corners to turn in this movie that add what this movie actually is.
Mo yeah
Jon and I think it’d be interesting. um Yeah, i like you, Mo, I would recommend it too. I think anybody who has even a passing interest in topics like this, it’s really well done. And she deserved that that award that she got.
Mo yeah Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Jon And she got no rewards up until then. No Oscars, no nothing.
Mo Nothing.
Jon ah This was her first big award and well deserved.
Mo and Yeah, for sure. And actually, and I get props to her because she I mean, Timmy Moore is sixty two, sixty three, something like that now.
George Mm hmm.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo And she has the body of a 60 something year old. I mean, and she showed I mean, I was like, wow, good for her. You know, i’m like, you know, rather than trying to hide it and do all this stuff, I was like, yeah, she’s and she’s older.
Jon Mm hmm.
Jon She was real.
Mo Yeah, she’s real, you know.
Jon She’s real, genuine. Put it all on the line. Yeah.
Mo yeah So yeah, definitely props to her. So yeah, like I said, I’m not going to, if you, if you hated it and you see it, you know, I don’t recommend it, but you should see it.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo So that’s what I have.
Jon Yeah.
Mo So how you John, what do you got for us this week?
Jon Yeah. Cool.
Jon Oh, so I picked up on a new series that is made by HBO, but it’s showing on Max or HBO Max or show, whatever they call themselves, HBO conglomerate.
Mo Yeah, whatever it is now. Yeah.
Jon um And it’s funny because we’ve talked several times on the show about superhero fatigue and the multiverse problem in Marvel and the DC challenges they’ve had.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon And, you know, we talk about it and imagine what those people are going through and making decisions. Well, this series that I found on Max, it just started called the franchise. is kind of about the behind the scenes of that. It’s not a documentary, but it’s the series about all the producers and directors and actors on a superhero movie who are getting all of the challenges you might imagine.
Jon in the making of superhero movies and existing inside of a franchise. And it’s it’s kind of a it’s a workplace comedy sort of in a way. So to give you an example of what’s going on, they had this huge scene. They had this older actor who’s kind of like an Ian McKellen type, like he’s very dignified and he’s stooping to play the superhero role. So he’s kind of a prima donna. You have this young up and coming superhero that wants to make sure that none of the other superheroes are more powerful than him because he’s the star.
Jon And then they have like they have this big scene and it’s like the boss men and the fish men are there. It’s almost like this Wakanda scene with all these characters and they’re already and then this so big muckety muck from the the studio comes in and goes, yeah, I got bad news for you.
Jon And the movie right before yours, um we killed all of the fish men, the whole planet’s dead. So you got to get rid of the fish men. Well, like we just shot the scene with the fish men. Right. And then they have problems.
Jon Like they had to bring in a female actress because they were going to make a basically um um was the the Miss Marvel thing that that that had all these you know female super heroines.
Mo Yeah.
Jon They canceled that so they gotta to figure out how to wedge a female hair superhero into their film. And it’s just it’s backstabbing and prima donna kind of behavior. Like I said, and I watched maybe three or four episodes of it on the plane when I was headed out to Vegas a couple of weeks ago. And I think I’m going to keep watching it. I picked it up because I’m like, well, this will kill some time. And it ended up being really entertaining. And it’s almost I would be fascinated to hear some of that actually works on like Marvel franchise movies, to know how close this is to the kind of politics and weird stuff. And of course, you have the interpersonal, this guy used to be married to this woman and now they’re boss and subservient and all that kind of stuff, as you might imagine. So I’m not finished with it yet. I don’t know if it’s going to flop or keep going or land or whatever, but it’s called the franchise on Max. I would recommend it.
Mo Yeah, I mean, it’s a I assume it’s a comedy, right?
Jon It is, I mean, there’s drama in it, but it’s at its core, it’s a comedy, I think, yeah.
Mo Oh, I see. OK, gotcha. Cool. Well, I said I’m always curious how that stuff looks behind the scenes. So it sounds pretty interesting.
Jon yeah Yeah, and I’m sure it’s a tongue-in-cheek version. It’s not a documentary, like I said, so.
Mo Yeah.
Jon All right, let’s round this out.
Mo Cool.
Jon ah George, what have you been checking out in media?
George Yeah, i’m so I’m going to cheat like we always joke about.
Jon Oh, sure, of course, naturally.
George I want to talk about two things, but um the first one, just a blurb real quick. If you haven’t seen it yet, there’s a movie that came out recently called Juror No. 2.
Mo Oh, yeah.
George It’s available on streaming services.
Jon Ooh.
Mo Yes. Yes.
George If you want to go watch a a TV show that, or sorry, not TV show, a movie that gives you a moral dilemma and really makes you think about what you would do in that same situation.
Mo Yeah. Oh, yeah.
George Go watch Juror No. 2. It stars Nicholas Holt. It’s got a couple other big names in it for brief periods of time. J.K. Simmons, Kiefer Sutherland, a couple of other people that are in this. ah But it mainly focuses around Nicholas Holt and a trial that he’s placed on as Juror No.
George 2. I don’t want to say any more about it than that.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo yeah
George Just go check it out. If you want to go watch a film that will make you go, holy shit, what would I do in that situation?
Mo Yeah, absolutely.
Jon Yeah. Yeah.
Mo Mm hmm.
George ah The thing, though, that I decided to talk about mainly um and I think because
Jon Hmm.
George I recently finished a rewatch of Falling Skies. You guys remember that sci-fi TV show that was on TNT back in the early 2000s, I think it was.
Mo Oh, yeah. Mm hmm. It was a while ago.
George um It starred Noah Wiley. And that’s why this series popped up on my radar.
Jon Okay.
George ah It’s called The Pit. and it stars Noah Wiley from Falling Skies and ER fame and The Librarians, a few other things.
Jon Hmm.
George But ah imagine if you took ER, modernized it with a dramatic retelling, but applied the Kiefer Sutherland TV show 24’s format to it.
Mo like real time ish kind of.
Jon oh
George That’s what the pit is. So it’s everything is real time and each episode is an hour in the day that they’re telling in the season.
Jon Okay.
Mo Oh, interesting.
George So it starts off with him showing up to work at 7am and the title of episode one is hour one, 7am to 8am. Uh, Noah Wiley is a, um, an emergency room.
George I guess he’s a director. I don’t know what the person who’s in charge of the emergency room is, but anyway, he’s that in this place in Pittsburgh.
Mo Attending.
George Hence they call it the pit because a the place never gets any funding, but it’s also in Pittsburgh, double entendre, ha ha ha.
Jon OK.
Jon In the pit.
George Um,
George he’s He’s coming to work on a day that he normally has not worked in several years since COVID because the former person in charge of the ER department, who was his mentor, died during COVID on that particular day.
Mo Okay.
George So he’s got a lot of PTSD kind of stuff wrapped up in that day’s significance for him. He is in charge. We get a whole fresh ensemble cast thrown at us in episode number one. We get, you know, the people he’s been working with for a while that are his standouts and whatnot.
George The nurses who really know everything that’s going on is very ER-ish in those regards.
Jon Hmm.
George We get a whole new group of ah trainee doctor people that are coming in, including the one young woman who played the um Android in the Picard series in the first two seasons.
George I can never pronounce her name, but ah she is one of those new doctors coming in.
Jon Oh, yeah.
George ah We see several patients This is on Max, just like John’s other series that it was mentioned earlier. So they don’t shy away from the gruesome or nudity because this is on Max.
Jon Ooh, yeah.
George So they’re going to show you everything in its raw form. Now, what I really appreciated about it was it was not done to be salacious and it was not done to be gratuitous when they showed you something disturbing.
Mo Mm hmm.
George It was done for a specific reason and in a specific way ah when they showed nudity and a couple of brief moments. it wasn’t like oh you know the supermodel man or woman is being nude on camera to titillate us or anything it was no this person needs to have their clothes cut off so that we can save their life kind of a feeling.
Jon Mm hmm.
Jon Right.
George um very intriguing so far they’re releasing it week by week which is unique in the days of streaming so far there are three episodes out the third one just dropped yesterday so I haven’t watched that one yet but the first two episodes are really really good I love Noah Wiley if you’re gonna make
Jon Hmm.
Jon Hmm.
George a dramatic tv series about an emergency room department you gotta fucking have noah wiley in it really i mean he’s i you know he’s kind of the cornerstone uh you know he started yeah er he was in the very first episode was all the way through to the end um it’s a it’s a really interesting good series
Mo Apparently.
Jon Or what are you even trying? Right.
Mo Mhm.
George I don’t know if it’ll get enough recognition to do another season. And because 24 is so synonymous with that whole real time format, I don’t think it will punch above the weight of that show in order to garner an audience because of that.
Mo Mm-hmm Okay
George But I think it’s a deserved watch for most people who like drama TV.
Jon There’s something cool about that 24. I haven’t seen anybody do that 24 mechanic, certainly not well, or I can’t remember many people doing it. There’s something about the urgency and the immediacy of knowing that time passing is real time passing. Now, of course, there’s the irony that everything crazy seems to happen at one minute till the top of the hour, so it can be a cliffhanger to the next episode. But that’s the structure of TV, and that’s kind of what makes it fun. you know It was a water cooler show for me.
Jon So I, I, I’m not a big medical show guy, but I liked the comedy you gave us the St. Dennis medical. So I’m willing to give this one a shot.
George yeah Now completely opposite of saying no question.
Jon I think because of the mechanic. Oh yeah. So different thing.
George This is this is not going to make you laugh. This is going to make you feel a little sad, a little depressed based on because you get the sense that. what they’re showing you feels like it’s probably fairly true to life, right?
Mo Hmm.
Jon Mm hmm.
George Like when we’ve seen other, yeah, when we’ve seen other medical drama shows, they have sometime been fantastical, you know, these people coming up with these wild diagnoses off the top of their head and saving the life and all that kind of, that doesn’t happen so far with this show.
Jon Which is scary.
Mo Right.
George This show feels grounded in reality. So, You may not want to watch it if you’ve got any plans to go to an ER anytime soon, but you may want to watch it if you’ve got some plans to go to an ER anytime soon.
Jon oh
Jon Got it. I think I will check it out, though. Cool. Thanks for the recommendation.
Mo Cool.
Mo All right. For tech and toys for inaugural new year’s 2025 tech and toys.
Jon Oh, yeah.
Mo Uh, let’s have, yeah, George, why don’t you kick us off?
Jon Yeah.
Mo What do you got for us today?
George I don’t know what that put on the damn list.
Mo I don’t know.
George Uh, let me see. I changed it like six times. So I know, right?
Jon We did say we’re all over 50, right? I mean, that was clear. We said.
George I was going to talk about a YouTube get, which is this tool that John had given to me a long time ago that helps you to download videos directly from YouTube.
Mo Mm-hmm.
George And the only reason why I wanted to talk about it was just, I was trying to grab some episodes. I found a playlist and what I was fascinated is that YouTube get, you can copy the link to the playlist and it will download each one of the individual files for you instead of you having to do each one separately.
Jon Yeah. yeah
George That was neat. But I decided instead to talk about a tool that I am using to create a new YouTube channel.
Jon Double dipping.
Jon Nope.
George And John and Mo don’t know shit about this. They’re looking at me right now like, ah, whatever.
Jon yeah
George Um. I’m not, uh, the channel is, I’ve got a few videos out on it so far, but I haven’t, um, I haven’t made them public yet.
George I’m going to build up about 20 or so on it. But anyway, uh, this, this new AI tool, not, I don’t know if it’s new, it’s new to me called sunno AI S U N O AI.
Mo Hmm.
Jon Hmm, okay.
George I know John and Mo have researched this stuff here and there for different reasons. This is another one of these tools that creates music for you based on a text prompt that you give it.
Jon Okay, I have played with that once or twice maybe, yeah.
Mo Oh, okay. Gotcha.
George Okay. So this one you’ve played with in particular, you mean.
Jon Now that you mentioned it’s about music, it sounds familiar, but I don’t use it regularly or haven’t gone back to it yet.
George Gotcha.
Jon It was a novelty for me, really.
George ah Sure. So um I’m using it to create some music for a channel that I wanted to start and I’m using chat GPT to generate the song and the lyrics. And then all I’m doing is taking the lyrics and the title of that song and what style I want that song to be, putting it in this ah program and then letting it generate the music for me.
George Even on the free plan that I’m using right now, it literally takes 45 seconds to generate two versions of the song that you ask it to create. It does that, um, regardless of whether you ask it to or not, it always creates two versions.
Mo and Okay.
George Uh, they are different timelinks because it takes different tacks with it, but not only are the songs full music, they are full voice as well.
Mo How’s about the asset? Interesting.
George So this AI program creates virtual singers to sing your song that you’ve put in.
Jon Mm hmm.
George So what I’m essentially doing is saying to hell with all the creative artists out there in the world, and I’m just using AI to create my own shit because I’m basically talentless when it comes to that stuff.
George um
Jon You can type, though, so you got to.
George I’m writing a chat. GPT is writing a song for me in like 15 seconds.
Mo You can type a query.
Jon Mm hmm.
George Sono is creating the song in like another 45. So in under a minute, I’m creating a song. I’m using another one that I’ll talk about in the next episode that I’m creating the videos for those songs from.
Jon I see. hu
George And then I just pair them together in a yeah video editor. I have the video editor create the lyric tracks for the bouncing ball kind of stuff along the bottom of the song.
Jon ye So my first question is.
George And I’ve got a whole song created and ready to go on YouTube with SEO and titling and everything in about 20 minutes.
Mo Jeez.
George Mm-hmm.
Jon Are they good songs? So what are you producing that are worthy?
Mo Yeah, how did they come out?
Jon You think people are going to want to watch and enjoy on YouTube? I’m guessing there’s some value. You wouldn’t keep doing it. How are you finding them in terms of like somebody coming not fascinated by the AI, but in the actual song quality?
George Mm hmm.
Mo Mm hmm.
George So the song quality, um how do I describe it? for i’m I’m targeting a specific audience of viewers.
Jon Okay.
George So that part makes the songs need to have a specific genre and um they need to come out a certain way. The first song that I asked it to create The two versions that it created, I swore to God, they sounded professionally produced with real singers in a real studio.
Mo Hmm.
George I could not tell the difference between a human being and what this thing put out. It is
Mo Yeah.
George Unbelievable how good this particular tool is at creating those songs. I’m totally happy with the product that I’m getting out of this for free. ah They do have a ah paid tier.
Jon Yeah.
George I just haven’t signed up for it yet. Um, but yeah, it’s, it’s kind of breathtaking. Now, Chad GPT is already pretty good and I’m using that for some stuff.
George Uh, but also, um, the, the one that creates the videos for me, that one, eh, I’m trying to find alternatives for that one because it’s the only one I know that does the thing, but it’s super expensive.
Jon Hmm.
George Um, I can basically for the $10 a month I’m paying on that one, I can create one song’s worth of videos per month, which is not going to be good. I need to produce like 10 or 15 per month to have any impact on YouTube.
Mo Right.
George Um, but this particular, the thing that creates the song sono AI, it’s brilliant. I love it.
Mo Interesting.
Jon Well, I look forward to getting a link and invitation to subscribe.
Mo Yeah.
George Yeah, yeah, at some point.
Mo Like and subscribe.
George All right, John, ah the thing you put on your list, now that I’m actually looking at the list again, ah is something that we are all three pretty familiar with thanks to some recent coverage that you have taken upon yourself in Vegas.
Jon Yeah. yeah
Jon Yeah. ah Now, I’m sure I’m going to talk about this again later when this thing is released, but I didn’t want to wait to talk about it in five or six months. I want to talk about it now because it’s really remarkable. And it’s it’s it’s in some ways more than in some ways less than people were expecting.
Jon but I think it’s gonna make a splash when it releases. So what you’re alluding to, George, is that ah just like last year, I was happy to be invited out to the Consumer Electronics Show ah to so stand at the booth with My Arcade and help them introduce their new products for this year.
Jon And the one that was by far the showstealer and the one that made it on the most other videos of other tech channels and everything was a new handheld, kind of think like a Nintendo Switch or a Steam Deck called the Atari Game Station Go.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon ah Now this, ah really, if you you’ve never seen it before, it’s easy to imagine, imagine it as endo switch. That’s Atari games. That’s kind of what it is. um It’s an evolution of the game station pro, the plug and play console that we got back in the fall of 2023. But this is an elevated set of internals and an elevated chip set and in a handheld version, but you can still plug it into your TV and play all those games if you want to.
Jon And like the Game Station Pro before it, it includes Atari 2600 and 5200 and 7800 and arcade games and some other games on there that aren’t. Plus the internals now mean Atari recharged games are being recompiled to run on this thing. These are modern versions, the ones that Atari put out just recently. ah But the thing that I think is stealing the show and George, you even talked about on your your bit by bit news roundup last week was about all of the inputs on this thing.
George Mm hmm.
Jon So the Game Station Pro had a joystick, three buttons, oddly placed, we could argue, and a paddle. So you could turn it and play, you know, like breakout style games.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon This thing has a D-pad and A-B-X-Y buttons and four shoulder buttons and a numpad and a track ball and a paddle.
Jon All of this on this handheld, it’s littered with input. So the options for what you can do and what you can play are I’m nearly limitless.
Jon It’s not perfect. There are things we can improve. There’s a paddle, not a spinner. We talked about that before. And in fact, right now there are so many, it’s not out yet. There are so many questions about it. I’m currently working on a video that will be out by the time you hear this episode where I go through all the comments on our initial reveal videos and pick the top 10 most frequently asked questions.
Jon I kind of dive into the answers and why they are what they are.
Mo Hmm.
Jon But you’re going to see more about this as as is the release approaches. It’s scheduled right now for an August 2025 release, including it and the two accessory game pads and a big arcade stick you can play with.
Mo Oh wow.
Jon All those are options on this thing. It’s really the evolution of what they did back in 2023. In fact, they released it in 20… In fact, they first showed it in 2024 at the early CES, but it was delayed. It’s not gonna release until this year and they spent that time to improve on it. So you’re gonna hear more about the game station go. You’re gonna hear more about a lot of the other products they showed off at CES, but keep an eye on us, especially on our YouTube channel. We’ll be talking more about this as the as the release date nears and we get a chance to take a closer look. So I’m excited about it. I’m sure we’re all looking forward to getting one in our hands and trying it out.
Mo Very cool.
Jon Okay, um Mo, how about you? What are you looking at in the world of tech and toys?
Mo Um, yeah, so I recently got married as you guys know and so we’re now in the process of consolidating all our accounts that we have, you know, Netflix and Disney and which has the added benefit of we’re able to now kick off our children off these accounts because like, Hey, sorry.
George Ah, yeah.
Jon Wait, you can do that? I didn’t know you could do that.
Mo Sorry. We got to, we got to, we’re switching. So you can’t be on it anymore. You got to get your own. You have a job. Um, and so one of the things we did was we merged our cell phone plans and
Jon Hmm.
Mo I had the, um, iPhone 14. Very, very happy with it. Had no intention of upgrading, but when I switched over to from AT&T to T-Mobile, you know, they said like, Hey, for like 10 bucks, you can get the brand new phone.
George Mmm.
Jon New phone.
Mo And it’s like, sure, why not?
Jon Right.
Mo So, so I want to gain the new iPhone 16. Uh, it’s the pro max.
Jon Hmm.
Mo So it’s the one that’s a little bit bigger is a little bit. beefier, I guess. um And I really didn’t care to get the new one because I didn’t think it really had enough features to make it worthwhile, quite honestly.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo um And I still kind of feel that way, actually, even having gotten it.
Jon Yeah.
Mo It does have a couple of things which I think are cool, and I think are very convenient. Like it has a camera button on the side, which is nice.
Jon OK.
Mo that you could just like, you want to take a picture you just pushes one button inside and it’s your camera and it has like, it’s a button but you could slide your finger up and down so you could change camera settings as well, right from there.
Jon OK. and okay
Mo So again, if we want to take a quick picture as a neat little feature to do that which I said okay that’s kind of cool. um It’s USB-C, which is the biggest reason I can see for getting that. Thank God.
Jon Finally, Apple, geez.
Mo You know, yeah, get rid of all those freaking lightning cables in the house now. We don’t need them. um And it has the the Apple AI thing. built into it now. So it has a whole bunch of AI tools now that are built into it.
Jon So.
Mo It has one that does your pictures. It has things like you can do a picture and it’ll turn it to a cartoon for you. You could take a picture and say, remove something.
Jon Oh.
Mo It’ll remove things from your pictures for you using AI.
George right yeah
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo its And now those features, admittedly, work surprisingly well. I was actually shocked, you know, I was like, I got rid of a person of a picture, it’s like, just gone.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo And I was like, Holy crap, you know, um if you look carefully, you kind of see where they were. But you know, it’s good enough that the casual person would not have any idea, you know, and also the, you know, the Siri feature, you know, which on it is also now using AI to answer your questions and do stuff like that as well.
Jon Mm hmm.
George Right, yeah
Mo So that’s what they added. Is it worth the extra money? I say probably not. But it’s still a solid phone.
Jon It’s like if you didn’t have a phone, hooray, all this stuff, right? So you got it in a plan, extra 10 bucks a month.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Do you have any idea what, so you you got the the big Mac daddy, you got the pro max, super duper ultra, whatever.
Mo Yes.
Mo Yeah.
Jon That’s gotta to be like a 12, $1,500 phone, right?
Mo Oh, yeah, it’s like I think it’s so he’s almost 13.
Jon Yeah, yeah.
Mo It’s like ridiculously priced. That’s why i I had no intention of upgrading at all, you know, but they said like, you know, 20 bucks.
George I mean, that’s not that ridiculously priced though, compared to like the flips and folds that are out there these days that are two grand.
Mo That’s true.
Jon No, no. Yeah.
George Yeah.
Mo Yeah, they’re they’re all thinking crazy price.
Jon Yeah.
Mo I mean, John, you’re the one that started me on this whole Apple trip way back when I remember you got one. I think it was yours.
Jon And then I jumped ship on you.
Mo I know they leave, but yeah, that was the iPhone two. Was that your first one?
Jon No, the three GS, I think was the very first one I ever got.
Mo Three GS, something like that.
Jon Yeah. And then I had up until the six and that was when I just decided to try Android and I’ve never gone back.
Mo Yep.
Jon I’ve been happy with it. Well, I guess I’ve been happy with Samsung because that’s kind of the premium phone of the Android line.
Mo Yeah.
Jon I think the criticism of Android often is like, it’s all over the road and there’s no consistency. Well, Samsung kind of is the Apple of Android, aren’t they? They kind of make it uniform with your own your own UI.
Mo Right.
George hey Certainly in this country. I mean, there’s other manufacturers in other countries that we don’t have access to, unfortunately.
Jon Like Huawei. Yeah.
George Yeah, but yeah.
Mo Yeah, but they said so there we get a new phone. I mean, it’s a nice screen. The screen is a bit bigger. It goes out to the edge a little bit more than the old one does. It’s strikes. It’s like mostly waterproof for the for all intents and purposes. If it gets you in the rain, it gets caught. It’s it’s fine. Like this watershed damages as easily as the other ones. So it has some little things which I’m like, OK, they’re nice.
Mo Again, if any of the circumstances I would not have upgraded at all, you know, my old phone worked perfectly well.
Jon Yeah.
Mo The best thing I like about it of all the features that they did is the fricking USB-C.
Jon of course, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mo That’s like my favorite feature on this thing. So go figure.
Jon Did you trade in your old phone, the 14, or did you give it to somebody else?
Mo Yes, I traded it.
Jon ah So sometimes a couple of years old, what’d they give you for it, any idea?
Mo It was a trade in. Yeah. Uh, Oh God, they gave me a lot for it. Actually.
Jon Do they?
Mo Uh, I think they gave me like 600, 700.
Jon Oh, that’s nice, yeah, um that’s like half of the cost of this phone, that’s good.
Mo And then, yeah. And then I had to, well, I then, and then they had a deal for switching. You got the super discount on the new phone.
Jon Yeah, okay.
Mo So the new phone run up cost me like a couple hundred bucks. All said and done.
Jon Yeah, it’s not enough to,
Mo So for that, I’m like, yeah.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Although it was funny.
Jon It’s not enough to pull me back to Apple, but I i’m am curious about those AI tools and it’s just software. There’s no reason it couldn’t come to Android.
Mo Yeah. Well, but there’s a new processor on it now.
Jon Somebody’s just got to do it. Yeah.
Mo I guess that’s supposed to be able to handle it. Who knows, right?
Jon They always say that.
Mo Yeah, I know that’s exactly.
George I, John, if you want to, if you want to make sure you feel good about staying with Android, those features and AI tools have been available on Android for years. So yeah.
Jon Have they? Okay. Maybe I’m just not using them.
Mo Yeah, yeah, pretty probably probably of those.
Jon Good. Welcome to the party, Apple.
George I mean, I don’t know about Samsung, but I know they’re on Google pixel.
Jon Oh, okay.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Oh yeah.
Mo I know. Uh, one of the funny things is that, you know, Apple now makes a really easy trade up phones. Like, matter of fact, kind of put your phones together. You’re new in the old one and it copies everything over for you.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George Yeah.
Jon Yes.
Mo You know?
George yeah
Jon Yeah.
Mo And so it lays like, Oh, this will take like five minutes.
Jon Yeah.
Mo 47 minutes later. She’s like, how much stuff do you have on your phone? I’m like a lot.
Jon Yeah. All right. but Well, to echo George, Samsung’s had that for years too. We’ve been doing that for a long time.
Mo Oh yeah.
George Yeah.
Mo Oh yeah. Absolutely. They say Apple just waits till Samsung does it and then tries to do a little bit better, but not always.
Jon Yeah.
Jon They do. They do. And they typically do. Yeah.
Mo Yeah.
Jon So ah glad you’re happy with it and didn’t have to pay through the nose for it.
Mo Yep.
Jon So that’s good.
George Time to talk about games. And if anybody out there listening to this podcast loves it, when George gets really pissed off about something, just stick around to the end of this segment.
George Cause I’m really fucking mad about the game that I’ve been playing.
Jon Wow.
Mo Oh, OK.
Jon Oh, goodness.
George Uh, but before we get there, let’s go ahead and start with John and let him talk about a game that hopefully he’s happy with.
Mo Well, no one’s gonna care. It was fast-forwarding now, George.
Jon That’s right. No one’s going to listen to anything Mo and I have to say at this point. Thanks, George. They’re like, I gotta to get to the rant. how Are you kidding me? I’m going to talk about a cutesy little game. That’s fun to play. So if if you don’t want to hear rage, stick around. I just, I enjoy playing.
Jon digital versions of board games as a video game. You know, like more than I like playing the physical sometimes, which is weird, I guess, like Settlers of a Catan. I played that physical once. I was so infuriated with the micromanagement of all little pieces and stuff, but I’ll play Settlers of a Catan on the computer at the drop of a hat. Love it. ah Board games in general on computers, because I like the structure of board games.
Jon So I was I went down a ah path of browsing like what board games are available on, you know, UNO is out there and things like that. And then I came across a game that I enjoyed playing as a board game as a kid and found out that in December of 2020, a sequel, a digital only s sequel came out, The Game of Life 2.
George Oh.
Jon is available to play on computers. ah So it’s a digital version of life, the spinner, you know, spend a little spinner, you drive a little car and you add pegs and you get jobs and you get taxes and everything.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon And you get to the end when you retire and you try to have the most money and you know rewards and everything. up So first, this is a digital game that’s cross-platform multiplayer, meaning if you’ve got it on the Switch and the PC or the PlayStation or whatever, you can all play together.
Mo um nice.
Jon There’s like a, ah kind of like a jack box room code. It’s not even like matchmaking. You just say here’s a code for friends, they all type it in and you all end up in the same little room to play together.
Mo oh
George Mm.
Jon um It is very candy coated cartoony version of the game of life, which is fine for me. It’s very cute. You pick little avatars and dress them up how you want and um And there are expansion packs that you can get there’s like the regular one and then there’s like the the snowy one and the haunted house one and the tropical island one and whatever they’re really the same game with other skins, but they’re all updated so that the the careers that you get and the job paths that you take and the houses and stuff that you can buy are themed and they’re updated for the modern day.
Jon So like you might, you know, you get your first job, you draw cards and it used to be like, you know, architect, doctor. And now it’s like web designer, YouTube personality.
Jon or you know It’s all these weird digital modern kind of things that you can get.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Not all of them, some of them are still traditional. And like, if you go and do the, yeah There’s a like a fantasy one and the jobs might be, you know, a dragon slayer and vampire hunter or whatever, you know, it’s like whatever fits in that universe.
Mo c
Jon And I already I sucked in a friend that I’ll often play with. You mentioned Marcus earlier and he’s actually recovering for some surgery. so She had lots of time off. So I said, hey, you want to try this game? And so he picked it up.
Jon It was on Is there any deal for nine bucks? It is, it is the ultimate in let’s play a game for 20 minutes and then do something else kind of game. It’s not uber replayable.
Mo Okay.
Jon But it’s one of those that we kept you know, several days later, I’d get a ping go want to play a game of life, like it’s just easy to get into. It’s not a big commitment. And the multiplayer aspect, there’s a lot There’s a lot of chance in what you spin and how you roll and that kind of thing.
Jon And I found I really enjoyed it. I bought the expansions because I wanted all the cool little avatars and cool stuff when I dress my guy up in a Frankenstein costume or something. I thought that was cute, but I didn’t know it existed. And once I played it, I thought I would mention it here on the show as something that for about nine bucks, you can get into it and play it.
Jon It’s fun to play by yourself. Even more fun if you got a buddy. If you get it, hit me up with a Discord server. I’ll jump into a game with you because I’ll play it anytime. It’s it’s quick and easy. Game of Life 2.
George Genexgrownup.com slash discord.
Jon ah
Mo There you go.
Jon There you go. I knew Georgia pick it up.
Mo All right.
Jon All right. All right. Mo, one more game to get through before George gets to go on his rant. So what have you been playing?
Mo Oh, I know. Yeah. Well, I’m kind of curious about his rant now, but so actually, John, this is a game that you started to play and then got booted out of.
Jon but In case anybody’s listening.
George Ah.
Mo um I went up getting it and playing it through.
Jon Oh, Indy.
Mo So it’s the Indiana Jones and the great circle again.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo So, so yeah when you described it to me, I was already had my eye in this game.
George ah
Jon Yeah, I’m ready.
Mo I wanted to get it and I saw it.
Jon Sure.
Mo I looked at it. I heard your commentary on it. I’m like, ah, screw it. I saw like a 10% off and I bought it. I was like, good enough. You know, um, don’t regret it.
Jon There’s only $99 now.
Mo Yeah, I actually don’t regret it. It’s it’s a really good game.
Jon I know.
Mo It is a really, really good game. It’s and it’s like you go to different parts of the world. Of course, they have the Indiana Jones, you know, the map with the little red line with the music going over when you travel place to place.
Mo um But the. The story feels like it could be a movie, like you’re like the plot and the story behind it, like, oh, this totally could be part of a movie.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo There’s so many little side things you could do that you don’t have to do, but you can do and you kind of want to do them because they’re interesting. You know, they kind of like you don’t want to avoid those things. And Each area you go to, I keep thinking like, okay, the game ends at the end of this section. Nope. It takes you to another part of the world and there’s a whole nother big, huge thing. And I’m like, okay, this is the last part. Nope. It takes you to another big part. I’m like, what the hell? How big is this freaking game?
George Hmm.
Jon lot of value, I guess.
Mo um Yeah, it’s it’s I haven’t finished it yet actually and I’ve been playing it a f freaking ton because I have been doing a lot of the side things on it But the mechanics behind it are really good.
Jon Hmm.
Mo It’s kind of a tomb raidery I guess like you kind of said like tomb raider sort of style game um Yeah, ah but it’s first person though.
George Yeah, it makes sense.
Jon Mm hmm.
Jon Yeah.
Mo You have a ah Yeah pretty much
Jon Well, isn’t Lara Croft basically a female Indiana Jones anyway? Kind of.
George Right.
Jon This makes sense.
George That’s what I was thinking. Yeah.
Jon Yeah, right.
Mo pretty much, um but they have like these, you know, the side characters that you introduce and you meet are very interesting. It’s a lot of fun. The, the adventures like you go to Egypt and you go to type, you know, Taiwan, you go. I mean, all these very exotic places, they really do a good job of laying out just the whole areas in the scenes that even though it’s somewhat guiding you, it doesn’t feel like you’re being led around. You know, you feel like you have some independence and you’re choosing to do these things.
Mo Um, you get to wear disguises, you know, of course there’s Nazis.
Jon Oh, good.
Mo So you get to kill Nazis. Always a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. It’s one of the two things you can kill without being, you know, in trouble, right? Nazis and zombies. So, yeah so there’s Nazis.
Jon There you go. Free reign.
Mo Um, but you go to Rome and the Vatican. I mean, again, it’s like all these things that you definitely could see, like, this could have been like a movie. The voice actor, the guy who played Indiana Jones does an amazingly good job.
Jon Mm hmm. Yeah, that crazy.
Mo Amazingly good job. You know, it sounds so much like him. It’s, it’s kind of funny, but overall, I said, I, you know, I would still in hindsight, yeah, maybe wait till it comes out a little bit more in price, but you know, but when it hits that like $30 range, I would say definitely get it.
Jon Yeah.
Jon Oh, yeah.
Mo You know, as if you get down to that price to say still worth it, I think of that at that price, but ah they said fun game.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo Good. I’m glad I got it.
Jon Yeah, well, mine’s still installed. I just need a key. I need to wait until the price goes down and I get a key.
Mo All right, George, what do you have for us today?
George Hmm.
Jon Oh, we’re out of time everybody. Thanks for tuning in.
George You might want to cut it off right now. That’s for sure.
Mo Let me turn the volume down a bit.
George Oh.
Mo Hold up.
George ah So this is a, this might, um, John might be happy about what I’m about to do because John has always stood for journalistic integrity.
Mo All right.
George I am neither a journalist nor do I have any integrity. However, in this particular case, I think I’m going to uphold his ideal.
Jon Okay.
Jon Okay.
George We are very good friends of the new version company of Atari. We talk with a lot of their people. We get a lot of their products that we um review on our YouTube channel.
George A lot of their games. We are ah very happy with, ah you know, the um the stuff that comes out of digital eclipse, which is now owned by Atari.
Jon Especially killer.
Mo Yeah, yeah.
George The Atari stuff themselves, like the recharge series and everything that has been out lately.
Jon Well,
George ah we We really enjoy Atari. We we love Atari. fuck them on balls of steel though. God damn it. How did they fuck this up this badly?
Jon wow
George Holy shit.
Jon What happened?
Mo Yeah.
Jon It was the pinball game, right? Balls of steel.
George Yes. So yeah.
Jon And you’re a pinball super fan. nobody Okay, all right, I’m ready.
George And that’s why I’m mad. Um, so John, you previewed the physical device that balls of steel is going to come out on later in the year at CES.
Jon All right.
Jon Right, yeah.
George Um, I wasn’t terribly impressed because I thought they could have done more with what they had available to them. But I was like, okay, at least they’re, they’re, they’re testing the waters in that market.
George And there’s a lot of, um, virtual pinball stuff going on right now because it’s a growing movement.
Jon Hmm.
George Uh, there’s even, um, uh, what is it like an 80% sized pinball that’s going to come out later this year. That’s on Kickstarter right now. That’s under a thousand dollars.
Jon Hmm.
Mo Okay.
Jon Oh, wow.
George So yeah, there’s a lot of good things going on in pinball balls of steel is not one of those good things.
Jon Oh.
Jon Oh, my.
George So. The original balls of steel came out in I think it was like around late 90s, 97, 98, something like that.
Jon Sounds right.
George That game was fun. It wasn’t groundbreaking. We had already had full tilt pinball on Windows back in Windows 95, which had probably one of the most famous of all time virtual pinball machine space cadet.
Mo Oh, yeah.
George It would even got put into Microsoft as a default game like with Solitaire and everything else at some point.
Jon Oh, yeah, that’s right. Hmm.
George um Those games were fun. Their physics weren’t great, but they weren’t bad either. Like the ball didn’t feel like it was floating away or anything like that.
Jon Hmm.
George This balls of steel remake, which is done by another company and then published by Atari. The physics are awful. therere The ball at one point feels like it has no weight and then at another point in the exact same movement feels like it has the weight of three pinballs.
Mo Jeez.
George The play fields are terrible. They have this scrolling effect because they can’t show you the entire play field on screen on four of their six machines. and there’s no way to go full screen and shrink the pinball field down and turn off that scrolling effect, which is very disorienting when you’re playing because of the rapid way that the field scrolls.
Mo Oh.
Mo Oh, yeah.
George um It’s virtually impossible to hit a shot. ah If you’re playing pinball and anybody out there who enjoys pinball knows, you just keep trying a shot until you figure out on the flipper where you need to hit the button for that ball to go to the place.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon Right.
Mo Right.
George You can’t do that with balls of steel because no matter where you hit the button, the flipper and the ball are just going to do whatever fuck they want. And that’s when you can see the ball on screen multiple times.
George And I’m running a heavily powered gaming computer, right?
Mo Yeah.
George Multiple times I have the ball disappear. I have the screen freeze momentarily and come back. And I have installed this on both a regular spinning drive and on an M2 drive.
George So it’s not that. My graphics card is, you know, like from a year or so ago, top of the line at that point, um my CPU is a Core i9 with 32 gigs of RAM in the fucking system.
Jon Yeah.
George There’s no way I should be having any problems with a simple virtual pinball machine. And as a matter of fact, I play pinball FX and pinball FM and VPX all the time and have no problems whatsoever with any of those systems.
Jon Probably much more demanding too, those others that are with more 3D rendered and stuff.
George Those are way more demanding. Yeah, 3D rendered, you’ve got anim animations, voiceovers like Moe was talking about in the other stuff.
Mo Yeah.
George hey Those games are way more intense for a CPU and a GPU than this game should be. So I don’t know what happened. It feels like it’s a bunch of poorly written, slapped together code and nobody at Atari maybe vetted it before it got out into the world.
Jon So you mentioned, and you’re right, this is a re-release.
George Mm hmm.
Jon I think it doesn’t, it probably doesn’t include the Duke Nukem table because they lost that license probably, but it has the other new, so it says five or six or seven tables, whatever.
George It does not have the Duke Nukem table in it. No. Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Do you, and you, mm-hmm,
George There’s like four of the original tables and then two new tables that are based on Atari properties.
Jon yeah, yeah. do You kind of touched on this, but I’m curious what you think, what do you,
Mo Hmm.
Jon think happened Like, did you ever play the original?
Mo Yeah.
Jon I did not. Do you think this was a sloppy port?
George Mm hmm.
Jon Do you think the original was bad like this and it was, this is faithful or what do you think?
George So the original in my memory, at least wasn’t this bad.
Jon Okay.
George Uh, now granted, you know, that original came out, like I said, end of the nineties.
Jon Mm-hmm.
George So I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot from that time. Cause that’s over 20, you know, five years ago at this point, 26, 27, 28, whatever years ago at this point, um, when I played it, uh, it’s.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo Mmhmm.
Jon Yeah. Yep. Jesus.
Mo Yeah, way too long.
George It looks to me as though, cause it’s a completely different company that was who originally program. I don’t know if they brought on any of the original programmers. If they ever got ahold of the code, I don’t know what they used to create this game.
George It feels like something that a high school person would create in a programming class for their project of the semester.
Jon Hmm. Yeah.
Mo Ooh.
George It’s that fucking bad. I have seen better projects come out of educational institutions for video games than this ever will be. I mean, it’s just, it’s bad.
George It’s bad. It’s bad. And it really makes me upset because I love pinball and I love Atari and I wanted this to be good.
Mo Sure.
George And I did everything I could to make it good. And God bless the Atari people. If they listen to this, I’m not saying don’t ever send me another key again, because I love it.
Jon ah
George When you guys send me keys to try these games out on, but for the love of all that’s holy, just, I don’t know, do a little bit more quality control before you publish something that somebody else wrote.
Jon Right. I mean, they’re not gonna, but you’re not saying that.
Mo Hmm.
George This is not good.
Jon ah You said you’re playing this on PC. I wonder if this is a problem. This could be true. ah Like some things have problems on PC that don’t have problems on like switch or whatever. I wonder if like a version was good and the others got ported and didn’t get vetted properly or something.
Mo As possible.
George Yeah.
Jon I know you haven’t tested all those, but you don’t know.
George And I know, of course, I got this key from the good folks at Atari because I asked him, I said, Hey, I heard you came out with this pinball thing. I’m trying to do more pinball content on our channel.
Jon Right.
George I’d love to check it out. I don’t even want to put a video out about it because I don’t want to be this mad at Atari in one of our videos. I don’t mind doing it here in the podcast, but I don’t want to put a video out that, that throws that much shade at something that Atari has their name on.
Jon Yeah, yeah what we like to do videos about what we celebrate and when we criticize explain why and you’re perfectly like you said, you’re journalistic integrity.
Mo Yeah, I get it.
George Mm hmm.
Jon It’s important that you speak your mind and you did. That’s how that’s how companies improve. That’s how they know where they’re where they’re missing.
Mo Yeah.
Jon So, yeah, all that kind of stuff is valid. um I appreciate that you did take the time ah to share this and if they’t they’re here, they they could patch it. They could fix it if they were, you know, of a mind to as possible.
George Hopefully. Yeah.
Jon Yeah.
George I w I would love for them to, I mean, I’m playing this through steam. If they patch it, I’ll obviously get the update and I’ll give it another shot and see if it’s any better. But who boy, they, they got some work to do to convert me to a fan.
Jon Now, as we come into the last segment of the show, you know we always like to take a moment here to talk about the things we’re currently looking at or looking forward to between now and the next time we get together. And I have a few that I’ll get started with.
Jon ah First, I’m surprised you comic book guys didn’t get this one, but there’s a new series coming to Disney Plus, January 29th, Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.
George Mmhmm.
Jon This is an animated series that looks to be following the young Peter Parker in school and his school stuff. Then the movies, we see him in school, then he goes on to be a superhero and don’t really focus that much on the school stuff.
Mo Right.
Jon And this is just looks to be a kid in high school being Spider-Man in the early days of Spider-Man. It looks very comic booky. It looks very interesting. And me being a non-comic book guy, I love Spider-Man.
Jon This looks really good. and I’m excited about that.
Mo Cool.
Jon um The next one I have is I wish I was more excited about, but I am looking forward to it. This is ah what they call a long trek, a Star Trek movie called Star Trek Section 31 coming to Paramount Plus January 23rd, which I think is just the day after this episode drops.
Jon And I say, um I wouldn’t say I’m not looking forward to it. I’m cautious about it. It looks very dark. It looks very bleak. It looks, and that’s what Section 31 is about.
Jon It’s the secret organization inside of Starfleet.
Mo Mm hmm.
Jon I get that. but From what I’ve seen, it doesn’t feel much like what I want out of Star Trek, but I’m prepared to be wrong, if that’s the case.
Mo okay
Jon you know it yeah it’s i want I’m gonna watch it. I’m gonna watch it. And finally, what I’m probably most looking forward to, just dropped today as we record this, so and it’s coming out week by week, and that’s the second season of Severance on Apple.
Mo Oh, yeah. Mm hmm.
Jon that motor both of you talk talked to me about severance way back a couple of years ago when it came out, you were excited about it.
George Mm hmm.
Mo It was wild, yeah, yeah.
Jon And I never watched it. I watched the first episode when that’s interesting and didn’t go back to it. And then when I heard a second season was coming, I’m like, oh, well now maybe I’ll check it out. And I’m so glad I did. And I’m so glad I didn’t watch the first season until recently because after the last episode, I’d have been so pissed off for two years.
Mo Yeah, yeah.
Jon But as it is, I binged it in a but couple of months ago. And so I just had like a month or two to wait. And so it’s just starting now. And it’s going to be running through March. I think it’s another 10 or 12 episodes. ah Really great series.
Jon If you haven’t watched it, I know you guys have. Listeners, it’s really good. I’m looking forward to the second season coming out now and in the next few weeks.
Mo Nice.
Jon um That’s me, George. What do you have you’re looking forward to?
George Well, ah so everything I’m looking forward to ah is on a personal level. All the stuff that you guys are talking about and you’re looking forward to in the entertainment world, I am absolutely looking forward to Star Trek, ah Section 31, The Neighborhood Spider-Man, Severance 2.
Jon Mm hmm.
George Mo’s got a TV show in his looking forward to thing that I’ve been waiting for it’s season four forever, it feels like.
Jon Yeah.
George but um On the personal side, um I haven’t given many updates about this subject, but I wanted to talk just a moment about my wife and her recovery from her stroke.
Jon Hmm.
Mo Mm hmm.
George So the first thing in my list is that I just recently completed some bathroom renovations for her. So I’m super happy that we’re getting an opportunity for her to be able to get back to a little bit more of a normal routine with the um with the disability that she has now that she’s working through for rehab, but at least now she won’t have to go to the other bathroom down the hall to take a shower.
George Now she’ll be able to take a shower in her bathroom that’s attached to her bedroom so that she feels comfortable.
Jon Hmm.
George That’s a big win for me. And yeah, I spent a crap ton of money that I wouldn’t have normally spent on this type of a thing, but it was for her.
Jon Yeah.
Mo What are you gonna do?
George So ah that made it okay for me.
Jon yeah
George And the second thing on my list is more improvements for her. So Grace recently um has been doing really, really well. with the with the physical side of things and ah going back to work.
George So she’s now working for six hours a day at her state job remotely.
Jon Hmm.
Mo Wow.
George On the physical side, she has gone from just walking a couple of laps around the living room back in September to now she walks pretty much all the time everywhere in the house with her walker.
George ah so much so that she even recently at the therapy place started walking flights of stairs with just holding on to the handrail of the stairs.
Mo Wow, that’s awesome. but That’s awesome.
Jon That’s fantastic. Oh, wow.
George and That one’s crazy because walking stairs for a person who has lost functionality of one of their legs is incredible.
Jon That’s so good to hear.
George It’s one of the most difficult things they can do and she is going up and down not even having to step on the same step with both feet, but literally alternating stairs like you would normally walk them.
Jon Like regular stair walking.
Mo That’s fantastic.
Jon Yeah, when you told me that the other day, I was I was so <unk> so excited.
George Yeah. And she’s very, yeah, she’s very happy and proud of that.
Jon So happy.
George And I am happy and proud for her. um And I think the thing I’m most looking forward to is I’m starting to see a little bit of a light at the end of this years long tunnel to where we can start to plan regular life stuff again.
Jon No.
George I couldn’t plan for us to go on a vacation.
Mo right
George Just too cumbersome and too stressful for her and me and anybody else who might be going with us. Uh, now we’re looking forward to things like SFGE for next year because I wholly believe she’ll just be walking around the convention and doing what she wants to do.
George Now she’s going to be a little slow and she’s going to get a little tired because it’s a very big place that you walk around in at that convention.
Jon George, in fairness, we’re a little slow and get a little tired too, because we’re old.
George But she’s going to have a good time.
Mo I know. I was like, she’ll still be faster than us.
Jon So that’s okay.
George I, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Mo I mean, come on.
Jon That’s all right.
George But, um, I think, I think she will, um, she’ll certainly be in far better shape. I fully expect her to be a hundred percent on a roll later by that point, as opposed to just a regular Walker.
George Uh, and I think at the physical therapy place, she’ll probably even be on one of those canes that has like four legs and stuff on it in therapy.
Mo Mhm.
Jon That’s tremendous.
George So. Yeah, she’s pushing every day. We’ve got appointments with a specialist coming up here in February to do more scans and stuff, but she’s getting better and that makes me happy.
Mo It’s awesome.
George So everybody who’s thrown support over on discord, genexgrownup.com slash discord, or through video comments or ah emails that you’ve sent over.
Jon Mm hmm.
George Thank you so much. Your good thoughts and prayers are definitely seeming to help because she is getting better. So.
Mo That’s great.
Jon Tremendous. Good news all around.
George Mo, what do you get to top that?
Jon Thank you.
Mo Yeah. I don’t I. I’m just going to just.
Jon He’s just stealing the thunder of every segment this show.
Mo i You know, you know, all right, so here’s what I got. You know, everyone cares. um So I am happy. Obviously, you know, happy, amazingly happy for Grace and her progress.
Mo That’s just freaking amazing.
Jon Yeah.
Mo But also looking forward to Star Trek Section 31.
George Hmm.
Mo Like John, I’m kind of. But I’m going to watch it.
Jon We’ll see.
Mo I know I’m going to watch it.
Jon Yeah.
Mo Right. The second one and John, this is something for you and your daughter. There’s a horror movie coming out called Presence.
Jon Don’t know that one.
Mo It’s coming out January 24th. It’s already on pre-reviews.
George Okay.
Mo It’s doing extremely well. It’s about a haunting, but they say it it flips the whole genre of ah like people moving to a a haunted house, basically, not knowing that it’s haunted.
Jon Oh.
Jon Okay.
Jon I never heard of it. I’m in.
Mo They said it it it’s they say it’s changing the whole genre.
Jon Thank you.
Mo They say it dictates it’s one of the scariest movies, but love maybe it’s all hype. I don’t know.
Jon Yeah.
Mo but
Jon That’s a big setup. We got to be careful, but I’m interested.
Mo It is.
Jon Yeah.
Mo But yes, it comes out January 24. So definitely looking forward to that.
Jon Okay.
Mo What I’m most looking forward to, George mentioned it earlier, is Mythic Quest season four.
George Mm-hmm.
Mo Finally. Oh my God. I love that show from the very first season. um And the way the last season ended, where basically he was going off and they’ forming a brand new company.
George Yep.
Mo And great i I just can’t wait to see where that where that goes. you know And um so that’s coming out on Apple TV January 29.
Jon Right around the corner.
Mo And um I think they do. They do that weekly. George, you remember they dropped the whole thing. I don’t remember.
George I, before I believe it was, they were dropping it weekly because I remember having to wait for episodes in season three.
Mo Yeah.
Jon Okay.
George I was shocked that we got a season four because it had been so long.
Mo I ditch i thought I was over.
George I didn’t think we were going to get one.
Mo Yeah, I thought it was over, but nope, they they’re doing another one. So, and for those of you don’t know, it’s basically about a company that has like a world or Warcraft kind of game that they built.
Jon Yep.
Mo And it’s about all the characters who are involved in around with it. The third season was so, I don’t know how to put it. It just, it’s so heartbreaking in some parts with like some of the friends and I mean, it was just, it was just crazy.
George Oh yeah.
Mo So great show, really funny. So definitely worth seeing. But, um, but before we move on, let’s talk about, sorry,
Jon Yeah.
Mo I should just jump right into the patron question. Okay. So before we end the show, let’s go to our patron question.
Jon Aha, yeah.
Mo And for those who are interested in giving us a question, it’s super easy. All you got to do is go to jennascrove.com slash patreon. Little as a dollar a month. And we will answer your question right here on the show.
Mo And this week’s question is from Joe H, who’s actually submitted questions before. And this one I thought was simple, but then I started thinking about it and it got really difficult.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo So here it is. What person living today would you want most as a guest on your podcast and why?
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo Anybody want to jump on this one right away?
George nope
Mo All right, I’ll go first. How about that? I’ll change it up.
George yeah
Jon Well, you remember George has pana. She’s got to hold it, right?
Mo Oh, that’s right. That’s right. He’s the pre Madonna. He’s going to come in later.
Jon Yes, right.
Mo So The, uh, so mine, I, I gave us a lot of thoughts. I’m like, who would I really, and I had some criteria. I says it’s gotta be somebody who obviously have some interest in and somebody who I think would be a good fun person to have a a conversation with, you know?
Mo And so my person is Mark Hamill.
George Nope.
Mo Um, one for Star Wars, obviously I’m a huge Star Wars fan.
George Okay.
Jon Okay.
Mo Um, but not only that, but just his work that he’s even done lately.
Jon Mm hmm.
Mo He accused in the house of usher. I don’t know if you guys watched that one at all. He was in that one did amazing job.
Jon Yep.
Mo You know, and everything I’ve seen, everything I’ve read about it is that he is, he’s one of the few people that has not poo pooed his start Star Wars stuff. He’s done like, you know, he’s always been super supportive of fans.
Mo He’s always appreciated people who say they’d like his work. And he seems like he just generally likes talking about all of that. you know Like he even does cameos in some of the Star Wars stuff that no one even knows it’s him who’s in costume you know because he just enjoys it that much.
Jon Yeah.
Mo So he’s my choice of someone I would like to talk to because I think I could get easily get an hour conversation out of.
Jon Yeah. All right.
Mo That’ll be you, John.
Jon I’m happy to go next. And mine is interestingly also an actor, though I considered several others who weren’t actors, but
Mo Yeah.
Jon Really, before I had a podcast, before I had a YouTube channel, before anything, I had a list of like four or five people who I would most like to, like some people I like, but I wouldn’t want to sit and have a beer with, you know?
Mo Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jon Like I think, I think Penn Gillette is one of the most fascinating people in the world, but I don’t have anything to talk to him about. I just think you’re cool. That’s all I have to say, you know?
Mo yeah
Jon But really one of the people who was on that list for years and who would still be on my my bucket list to have is Wil Wheaton.
Mo Yes.
Jon and yes he’s been he’s been a figure in Star Trek and of course I’m a big Star Trek nerd as all of us are, but really it’s more about his work.
Mo He, I crossed my mind.
Jon that has spawned and his activism and everything that come out of his recognition in Star Trek and other stuff. I mean, he goes back to a Stand By Me, one of my favorite films.
Mo Yeah, yeah.
Jon He was a young child actor, toy soldiers he was in, and then of course his Star Trek stuff.
George Mm hmm.
Jon And since then his novels he’s written about ah growing up and his challenges being a young a young actor and how his parents didn’t necessarily treat him right in the environment around him.
Jon And he just he strikes me as someone who unlike some other people I mentioned and didn’t, I think I would enjoy just sitting down, whether I had a microphone or not and talking to him and being in his airspace.
Mo about anything, right?
Jon And I just find him a fascinating individual and how outspoken he is and how how outspoken he is for the rights of others.
Mo Mm-hmm.
Jon and just He’s a fascinating guy.
Mo Yeah.
Jon he’s He’s fearless. I think he’s just really amazing guy. So Will Wheaton is the one I would pick. And thank thankfully,
Mo Good one.
Jon He’s alive.
Mo All right, George.
Jon Could still happen today. It’s quite possible. So, all right, George, you’ve had some time to ruminate.
George Yeah. Right. Well, I’m going to cheat. I’m going to mention a couple of names before I get to the one that I would pick.
Jon Of course. Nice, naturally. Yeah.
George Uh, so if I were going with a celebrity, uh, there’s two actors that spring to my mind right away. And it’s just funny because just like three or four nights ago, my son and I were having a conversation when we were sitting on our couch and my son was like, acting like who is my favorite actor of all time kind of stuff.
George And I’m like, holy fuck, that’s just impossible for me.
Mo Mm. Yeah, really.
Jon It’s tough.
George i mean living dead there’s so many different criteria it’s ridiculous to even try and think about that but these two names popped up as part of that discussion ah one would be stanley tucci i would love to sit and talk with that guy i really enjoy his work and what he’s done in the genre
Jon Mm. Fascinating. Yeah.
George His stage work um is tremendous. ah The other one is Keanu Reeves. I just find him fascinating that he is seemingly the most down-to-earth, nicest good guy celebrity on the planet right now.
Jon Oh, yeah.
Mo Apparently, yeah.
Jon Mm hmm.
George Humbles, rides subways, gets up and gives a seat up to people, you know, just a normal nice human being who arguably is head and shoulders financially and socially above me or anybody I know.
Jon Yeah.
George Um, but you guys know John and I have been friends for a long time. You know, I don’t really get star struck. We’ve done these Star Trek conventions for so long.
Jon yeah
George I see these people. I’m like, yeah, you’re just another person.
Mo Hmm.
George You got to put your pants on same way. I do. Fuck off. You know, it’s, I don’t care. Those two guys I would like to talk to, but the person I would most want to have on my particular podcast would be my mother.
Mo Hmm.
George she has to me what would be a truly fascinating life story and I’m not saying that because she’s my mother I love her to death and she is but she has a really
George I just, the storyline, the through line of her life, starting off so dirt poor, like outhouse, no electricity, humble beginnings in Kentucky to raising a family in North Florida and moving into upper middle class throughout the whole experience and, you know, dealing with somebody like my father and somebody like me and, you know, all these different things that she has had to, I know, right?
Mo she
Jon poor woman
Mo I know that by itself was a whole novel.
George It’s just, you know,
George I just think she would be a fascinating guest. It might be difficult to get her to open up a little bit, but I think once I would be able to get her talking, I feel like it would just all spill out. And I feel like it would be really fascinating from one of those PBS NPR kind of day in the life of a regular person storylines.
Jon Man, you ought to make it happen, man. I’d listen to that.
Mo You should. Yeah.
Jon I’d listen to that three times and and four times on Sunday.
George Right.
Jon That sounds great. Yeah, that sounds fascinating.
Mo Yeah. Yeah, you definitely should draw because actually there’s like my grandmother. I wish I had the opportunity to do that with.
George Hmm.
Mo You know, I mean, um like if I could go back in time and, you know, this, I mean, like so she lived a long time, so I had plenty of opportunities, but just to sit and just like ask her her whole story, just beginning.
Jon Yeah.
George Right.
Jon It just never came up, yeah.
Mo I mean, I’ve heard bits and pieces, but just to have her just tell it, you know, I would give anything to for opportunity again.
George Yeah.
Mo So.
Jon Yeah.
George My only, my only problem is I don’t have a podcast.
Jon Oh.
Jon You share this one. You have one. It’s right here. Just, okay.
Mo yeah umll ask your questions about you
Jon We would love to talk to her about you at length.
George Oh no, no, no. This is, this is me interviewing her. You two fuckers aren’t getting access.
Jon Right. Right.
George That’s all there is to it.
Jon The sequel podcast is always asking follow-ups, you see, right? That’s the one who gets the ratings.
George o
Jon ah oh What a sweet answer, George.
George Hmm.
Jon I had a great question, Joe. Thank you for that. so So Joe was able to ask us that question because he’s one of our financial supporters over on Patreon.
George Yep.
Mo Yeah, I’ll ask your questions about you.
Jon And so many people do that. I have a couple more I wanna thank. Two more folks who headed over to Patreon dot.com slash Gen X Grown Up opened up their wallets and their hearts and said, we want to support what you guys do at Gen X Grown Up.
Jon Jared B and Kevin C, two more Patreon supporters with a regular monthly financial pledge for as little as a buck a month.
Mo Wow, that’s awesome.
Jon Like Mo was saying, it doesn’t have to be more than that can be. We love it. We welcome it. But just to show your support, every little bit helps and it does add up.
Mo Yeah.
Jon So Jared and Kevin, thank you for adding your names to that roster of amazing people who really keep the lights on and keep us motivated here. We really appreciate you. That then is going to wrap it up for this edition of the Gen X growing up podcast. Don’t worry though. If you were worried, don’t worry. We’ll be back in two weeks with another one. Next week is the backtrack edition of our show for the first backtrack of the new year. We’re going back to a, ah we’ll call this a science themed PBS show that I absolutely loved. Three, two, one contact.
Jon maybe one of the most memorable theme songs to a show too. We’re gonna run down the history of that and what the show was like and its legacy. you remember You can remember along with us. Until then though, I am John.
Jon George, thank you so much for being here.
George Yes, sir.
Jon Mo, you know, I appreciate you, man.
Mo Always fun, man.
Jon Fourth listener, it’s you, we all appreciate most of all, and we cannot wait to talk to you again next time. Bye-bye.
George See you guys.
Mo Take care, everybody.
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About The Author

Mo As someone who barely manages to squeeze in as a GenXer my memories include more of the 70's than those younger GenXers. Reading and movies are my passions with some video gaming thrown in there for good measure!

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