We're back, bitches. We're back. Hello. Hello. Are you excited? Perhaps it's you. Of course they're excited. They've been waiting for us to return. Because it's their favorite, basically everyone's favorite, Unsolved Mysteries Rewatch podcast. In fact, we might be the only one left. I'm not sure. But we have the best one, and we've been on hiatus, and we're finally back. Samantha did her time for robbing that Chuck E. Cheese and violating her parole, and we're just glad to have her back as a reformed member of society. I promise I'll never rob a Chuck E. Cheese again. You certainly won't put your name and address on a label on the gun and leave the gun at the scene.
That you're not going to do. Admittedly, that was a mistake. Live and learn. Live and learn. We have sort of a welcome back special today because we have a lot of updates. So we're not actually going to be doing any Untold Mysteries recapping. So sorry. We're just going to be doing updates, Snacks with Stack, Found Loves, all those other segments. Chit-chatty. Yeah. I hope you like that kind of content because that's what you're getting today. Tone in in two weeks. I don't know what to tell you. Or head over to Patreon. We should have some Patreon content. If not out already, out soon. True. I'm sorry it's behind a paywall, but it's only a dollar.
yeah at this point within like i don't think we can raise that price we're locked in and everything else costs like a ridiculous amount of money and our patreon just stays the best deal in town so inflation can't touch it we love a bargain yeah so it's a dollar and some change go fish it out of a fountain send it to us and then you can we've been doing some we had some beyond belief episodes while we were on hiatus those are so fun to do um and you'll definitely want to listen to those because how else will you know if they're true or fact fact or fiction how else will you know how else will you know if a man wrestled a dead body for 20 minutes For 20 minutes. Yeah. Always a good time. How else will you know if a horse understood the value of money to such an extent that it appraised a motorcycle? Yeah. Yeah. Fact or fiction. Fact or fiction. If you are at our $5 Patreon tier, you get a monthly coloring sheet. And the last coloring sheet was all Beyond Belief, like our favorite things that have happened on Beyond Belief. And that was so fun to put together because, man, there's just been some real ridiculous.
Dogs barking means people are going to die. Horses appraising motorcycles. All sorts of things. That carrot that saved that little girl's life by giving her the will to live. Those people that had their wedding rings stuck together, so they missed their honeymoon, but then they ended up stuck on the Hindenburg. The Hindenburg.
That was a twist. No one saw that twist coming. No, who could? Who could and who would? So we're back. We're glad to be back. Thanks for all of the well wishes you have sent Samantha's way. That's really why she can be with us today. Much like that parrot, your well wishes gave me the will to recover from back surgery. It's all the good vibes, the healing energy, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. And in fact, I wanted to shout out a few specifically. In fact, I'm sort of in front of before me is sort of a spread of things people have sent me. It's kind of incredible. So a number of people sent me.
cards or postcards etc i want to thank um specifically hold on i gotta open this one this one is travis's favorite also i mean it's up there with me too uh steph sent me a giant card that has like a grim reaper and a dead woman on the front and the grim reaper is just asking her have you tried drinking water though and it says get well soon there's a capybara capybara on the inside it's pretty amazing absolutely hilarious i sort of think it needs to be framed on my wall um Okay, so TJ sent me a postcard with Mothman on the front and some stickers, which were adorable. Love them. From me and Mothman is what TJ said. So thank you to TJ and Mothman. Thank you, Mothman, yeah. Those well wishes. Someone sent me a card. This was Katie P sent me a card. The cover of this is you and I if we were dogs. We're driving a little convertible. We have what I can use as a polar water with a little straw, our little bandanas, and our sunglasses. I really appreciate that card. Adorable.
Someone's knitted me a pair of socks, which is incredible. This was Jen. Jen, thank you. I'm actually wearing the socks right now. They're very warm. I will be living them all winter long. Yeah, Jen, can I have some socks? Jen specifically said that you could request socks if Jen got a shout out. I'm requesting socks, yeah. Possibly purple. Do I learn how to knit? Do I need another craft? I mean, you already crochet, so you already have yarn. It's not really going to increase your stash, I feel like, right? Because you already have yarn, right? Well, that's famous last words, but yeah, in theory.
in theory you just need some knitting needles if i wanted to knit socks though i think you have to use sock yarn jen correct me if i'm wrong yeah yeah it's probably smaller it's a slippery slope as we as crafters know i believe um i don't have a list of names of the folks who sent me books but i hope that if you sent me a book you received your thank you so they're all sent through my amazon wish list and you can like scan a little qr code and send a thank you note which i did to everybody also i read all the books that everybody sent me um so i hope you know you're appreciated and i thank you all i don't have names. I don't remember who sent each one, but I really appreciated that. And I read a lot of books while I was laying in bed for basically every day for six weeks. So that was much appreciated. And then this is a good transition into Snacks with Stack, I think. Patrick sent a whole box full. First of all, Patrick sent me a Japanese paranormal magazine. It's very cool. Liz and I spent a lot of time at Punch Pizza reading using the Google Lens like translate app. It's fascinating.
I really enjoyed it. So thank you, Patrick. I love it. It's fantastic. And with that, Patrick also included a lot of Japanese snacks. So we got to have a little snack time. We got to have a little snack time. I'm so excited. I sent some home with Liz. Very excited. Which type of Kit Kat do you want to try first? I really want to try the ice cream because I don't think we've ever tried ice cream. I don't think we have tried it. It literally has a picture of a scoop of ice cream and it just says ice cream on it in English. Do you think it's just going to be like vaguely vanilla? Or do you think it's actually going to taste like ice cream? Ice cream. Okay. So it's the like white kind of Kit Kat, not the chocolate kind of Kit Kat. It smells kind of like a vanilla candle. A lot of these novelty Kit Kats smell like candles.
Okay. This does taste like ice cream. I think this is really good. You know what? It does taste like ice cream. It tastes like ice cream somehow, not just vanilla. And it actually has vanilla flavor, not just like plain flavor. Yeah. This is really good. It reminds me of those like wafer type cookies old people eat. What are those called? I don't know. This is really good. But better. You know what I also like about this? So it seems like American companies...
American novelty snacks. There's like a thing with cooling sensations right now. Yeah. I feel like if this was an American KitKat instead of a Japanese KitKat, it would have some sort of menthol or shit in it that would give me a cooling sensation in my mouth because it's ice cream. And I really hate that. So I appreciate that this just tastes like ice cream and doesn't actually feel cold. I love this. This gets five out of five rubber stacks from me. I think this is one of the best novelty KitKats we've tried. Okay, so another one I want to try, and I don't know if you have one of these, is there is a strawberry cheesecake. I think we've tried cheesecake, but I don't know if we've had a strawberry cheesecake. I don't recall.
Give it a try. Tell us. Okay, this one looks exactly like the ice cream one. It's white. It smells like strawberry, though. This is delicious. I'm jealous. It was really good. Yum. I'll see if there's any more in there. I'll save you one if there is. Yeah, right. Yeah, right. Travis, Patrick, wants to thank you for the banana Kit Kats. Yeah. Do I get to try one of those now? Go ahead. Yeah. Travis loved it. I don't like banana flavored things, so I gave all this to him.
and i got the rest of them oh okay split them between him and liz i'm excited because this is a chocolate type of kitkat and if you are familiar with snacks and snack i feel like every time we have a fruit flavored kitkat i say oh but i wish this also had chocolate right yep well this is chocolate so it's gonna be chocolate banana and i'm so excited oh hell yes this is what life is all about i love this thing if i could get these on a regular basis this would be a problem i really like it Is it chocolatey banana? Yeah. Like the outside is chocolate and then the layer in between the wafers is banana. This is like an ideal fruit Kit Kat to me because when the outer coating is the fruit part, I really crave the chocolate. Yeah.
Yeah, again, five out of five Robert Stacks. I love this. There's another thing I want to try, which is these Pringles. Oh, wait, I have one more Kit Kat. Ooh, go for it. While you're doing that, I'm going to open this Pringle box. Okay, so this one is in a peach wrapper, and I just used the Google Lens to translate it, and it says, special adult sweetness. It doesn't have a flavor. It's strawberry, but it's less sweet because it's for adults, not for kids. Oh, I have one of those. Let me grab it.
okay so yes this one the less sweet strawberry okay so this is what i'm talking about this is the like the outer coating is the fruit flavor there's no chocolate so that's a little disappointing oh it smells terrible it tastes fine but i'm not i feel like i need the kid little sweetness it's a little more tart i mean yeah that's okay i can tell that it has less sugar or less sweetness and that's kind of interesting but i don't know that i love it it does taste more like strawberry but it also has a observation very chemically aftertaste A lot of these have that I'm not into. It's a little bit more like a yogurt-covered pretzel type of thing. Yeah, I don't like the aftertaste. Because there's no sweetness there. So it just tastes weird. You can kind of tell that there's little bits of maybe freeze-dried strawberry in the thing. There's probably real strawberry in this, which is weird. That wouldn't be true with an American Kit Kat.
It doesn't, it's not working for me. I'm going to give that maybe a two. That seems generous though. I'm not a fan. No. I think I also need the child level sweetness. When you get your boba, what level of sweetness do you ask for? You know, when they add like 50%? Yeah, I'm always 50 or lower. Yeah. I feel like this has only maybe 20% sweetness. Yeah. And I need more. Yeah, I do want candy for, maybe that's really American to me, I don't know. Okay, these curry Pringles smell like the seasoning packet in instant ramen. Okay, I'm sure.
That's exactly what they smell like, which is not unpleasant. That was just an observation. Okay, I get the curry. These are delicious. I really like them. Oh, shit! I feel like Matt would be really into those. I should try to find some. It's a little bit like eating the seasoning packet of instant ramen, but it tastes more curry than it smells. It's not very strong curry flavor, I will say that, but it is good. I love a savory chip, and this is very good. Yeah, I don't know why we don't have more creative... We only seem to get spicy and spicier chips. We don't seem to get more creative chips. I don't know. Maybe they don't sell well here. These are good. I wasn't sure at first, but these are delicious.
All right, I'm going to have to find some of those for Mac, I think. That sounds like a home run. What do you rate them out of five Robert Stacks? Out of five? Oh, that's a five. Wow, okay. Patrick, great job. Great job, Patrick. Great care package. We are very excited. And if you ever want to send us snacks for a Snacks with Stack segment, we have an address on our website. Yes, it's an acupuncture clinic. Send it there. Normal. The acupuncturist throws the packages into my yard. It's a whole system. We're paying her to be our P.O. box instead of paying the post office. It's fine. It works great. It well works out.
It works fantastic. This is maybe not the, you know, biggest budget podcast out there. You don't say. We don't have like a studio or, you know, there's not really a place people can send mail, that kind of thing. But we're hitting it there. We're still in the top 1%, baby. So I don't know. Yes. Being the, it seems like what only, what gets you into the top 1% is merely just not quitting. However, however, still, still here we are. So deal with that enemies. I know you're listening.
Okay. What else? Oh, so there's a, you have perhaps seen, there is a new sort of behind the scenes look at Unsolved Mysteries that was produced by FilmRise. It's made by the producers of Unsolved Mysteries. It's called Unsolved Mysteries Behind the Legacy.
And it is now streaming for free on Pluto TV. If you would like to watch it, it's like 90 minutes. They had a few screenings at Alamo draft houses. So on Wednesday night, Samantha and I went out to Woodbury, Minnesota, so that we could see this Unsolved Mysteries documentary. Look, I haven't been to an Alamo draft house before. I don't know who decided to put it in Woodbury. I'm guessing someone not from this area. Look, maybe not. Maybe it's been very successful. I feel like the location is a mistake. I feel like it's just like a little too far out.
from the metro because i go to the movies like a lot and i have not yet to go i've yet to go there and other cities like sold out this event and uh what would you say maybe a fourth of the seats were sold at this maybe not many not many i think all of the five could have been there and we yeah it was not that successful of a thing and we did not some places got a cut out of robert staff to take your picture with and i'm so disappointed i was expecting more props i was expecting it to be more of an event but we got there it was basically empty that theater is also in woodbury lakes which is a like an outdoor mall and it's not like that mall i swear like since it's gone in like has threatened to go out of business like once a year like it's just not a very popular mall um and so like it's not a busy place it was in the middle of the week kind of a chilly time people don't go to outdoor malls i don't know so like we get there and there's no there's one employee and we saw nobody else So we got to our theater. I got into our theater. It was completely empty. It was a weird vibe. I wanted it to be like a red carpet with a Robert Stack cut out. It didn't really feel like an event, I'll say. No, no. So that was disappointing. I also would like everyone, and maybe you've been to an Alamo Draft House and maybe you already know the answer to this question, but I want you to guess to yourself in your mind, how much do you think popcorn costs at the Alamo Draft House?
I just want you to think about it. Did you say 10 fucking dollars? Because that would be the correct answer. Was it bottomless? It was bottomless, but they bring it out to you in like a bowl. So that would mean that every time you wanted more, you would have to get the server person to call.
Yeah. $10. The strawberry milkshakes we got were delicious. They were super, super delicious. I will say that. With tips, Amanda, how much do you think those two milkshakes cost? With tax and tip. I'm guessing like over $20. Liz paid because she handles all of our business expenses because of course this was a business expense. It was $30. Shut the fuck up. It's $30 for two milkshakes. That's absurd. So we'll thank you Patreons for paying for overpriced milkshakes at the Alamo Draft House for the Alzheimer's disease behind the Legacy premiere. Because, okay, so.
the alma draft house is very strict about people being late if you're late they won't let you into the movie so your ticket says on it like be there 30 minutes early which was completely unnecessary and then as we're sitting there i was like oh they just want you to buy food 100 because there's no reason we had to be here so early for an assigned seat No, it's just a normal theater. It's just a normal movie theater. People get up to the bathroom. It's not that disruptive to just come in and sit down. I don't understand. Other than, yeah, they just want you to buy their overpriced food. The atmosphere was weird. The vibes were off. I wanted it to be a little bit more... We could meet someone who was very excited about Unsolved Mysteries. I was obviously wearing one of my Unsolved Mysteries shirts, and she was very excited about that. But otherwise, I don't know. People weren't that excited about it. No. The vibes were off. Whatever. If you think of going to the Barbie movie, and then you think about...
like yeah whatever the opposite of that is that's what this was but i did like the documentary i mean it's fun it was fun to see unsolved mystery stuff on a big screen even though it was shot for tv so like the resolution is not there right like making it huge does not make the picture better it kind of points out that it's not that good but um but it was so fun like that aspect of it was fun i it's not like a hard-hitting documentary it's made by the people who made unsolved mysteries it's more like them being nostalgic for yeah like the nicest thing you could say is it's kind of a thank you to fans for like still watching and like keeping it relevant after all these years because it is kind of it felt to me like back in the dvd era when there would be those extras on the dvd basically what it was i would put it more into that than like an actual documentary because it would just have like little segments and then they would talk to like a couple producers and maybe a director about like what do you remember about shooting on location or whatever and then they would talk about that but it's not like they were like really dug deep with any of it um it was funny to hear some like behind the scenes stuff and see some like
just like clips of Robert Stack smiling or cracking up or or we all remember when he holds that beautiful golden retriever for that dog segment and that dog was like not having it it did not want to be held it's like it was so ugly Robert could not hold on to it he was clearly cursing but they like cut it so that you couldn't actually hear him curse so that's disappointing I wish they'd left that in um because he's clearly being like son of a bitch because the dog like will not stay still um so there were some like little anecdotes about filming stuff that was kind of interesting um something I never thought about because they shot on film obviously and they shot so much stuff like at night is that someone said it would often take six hours just to do the lighting because it needed so much lighting in order for anything to like even show up on film and that would be a lot easier nowadays um when they admitted to like purposely trying to make it scary which i think is obvious but i guess i never really thought about it um so they were filming at night with the fog with the trench coat with this creepy music like they were purposely trying to make it spooky and scare you and that's what people liked and kind of people coming back so yeah
So they shot basically all of the segments on location, wherever the mysteries happen. So a lot of times, you know, like in smaller towns, rural areas, whatever. And so they sort of explained that that's why the acting's not very good. Like they didn't fly out talent from LA. Like they flew out Robert Stack and that was it. So they're working with like maybe people that usually do dinner theater or whatever, or they're just literally the people that really were the cops or really were involved in that. And so sometimes they're like really overacting or really underacting, but it was more important to them that they looked like the people in the mystery since they were trying to, you know, get wanted fugitives caught or whatever.
But they told this story that once the guy that they cast was so, looked so much like the real guy, that he was out at a restaurant in LA or something and he got arrested because people thought he really was a wanted fugitive. And then from there on out, they gave the actors little cards to carry around with them in case they were ever stopped by police. They'd be like, no. I was the actor that played this person out on Salt Mission. I was just in the reenactment. I'm not really the murderer, which is so funny. You know when you said that this wasn't a hard-hitting documentary, there's, I feel like.
You know, we love this show, but there are some valid criticisms of them. And one that they definitely danced around, I think, was using the, like, victims of these crimes in the reenactments. One guy was like, yeah, you know, sometimes it was hard because they would get emotional. And it's like, you know, shit, these people are traumatized. You're having them act out the worst day of their life. And of course, they're doing it because they think it will help further, you know, make it more believable so that they'll get justice or whatever. And I just think that was, like, maybe not as necessary to, like, re-traumatize people. It kind of seems like a way to get around union rules. I don't know if that's true. But, like, you're clearly not using SAG, right? You're using all these, like...
community theater people or you're like oh remember that time you found your son's body could you act that out for us it's like um that's really messed up actually yeah that's not like very strange savory element of the way unsolved mysteries did things but you know like you said this is like a love letter to the fans i think that it's cute you know they just like threw some segments on at the end like okay here's my criticism about this documentary which is they picked three segments to play at the end to highlight like i mean i'm guessing their favorite or what they think is the best example of all their segments and i would not have picked any of these three maybe the rain boy that one was funny i would have picked rain boy for sure but that's the only one okay because they picked poor i think it's angie who gets kidnapped from season one oh i never wanted to see that again as long as i lived it's heartbreaking it's so horrible that case is still unsolved if you remember that's the mystery you did not solve that case why are you so enamored with i'm not sure why they highlighted that one when they didn't solve it yeah it's the one where she's at the phone booth talking to her fiance and he hears her kidnapped and so he drives his car over there and
And she's like being pulled off in this, this pickup truck and his car breaks down and he just like sees them. I hate it so much. It's one of the saddest. So they did that one. And then the last one they did was that unknown arsonist. The one where the videotape was found and it had the arsonist voice on it. He's like filming his, his crime. And obviously they were like, Oh, is this satanic? It was just some punk kids who were setting a bunch of fires. But I mean, that was creepy, but I don't really know why they highlighted that one. Yeah. Being one of the best fan favorite. That case gets solved, I guess.
I don't know. I would have liked if they had maybe done a summary of some of the big cases that helped solve. They sort of talked about they had this really surprising success rate and that's part of why people kept tuning in was for the updates. But I don't know. I don't know why they picked those segments.
seemed a little random. It made me think of which segments I would pick. Okay. And I immediately thought of the nudist column. So did Matt! I feel like that is the one I would have loved to see on the big screen because the shots are just so good. I would have loved to hear from the director of that segment about how complicated the blocking was so that people's private areas were always obscured. That would have been very funny to learn more about, even though it's a sad case. It would have been very funny to learn more about how they filmed that. But yeah, some of that stuff they kind of glossed over a little bit. They should have done a UFO one, in my opinion. They should have highlighted the paranormal.
i mean i guess the rain boy is an unexplained phenomenon but i think they should have done like an alien or a ghost they didn't even talk about those that much and i guess at the beginning of the show it was less of a part of it but i do think that's something people really remember and they did act like it was more of like a true crime call-in show yeah the only one they even mentioned because they would mention segments along the way that they had like interesting stories about and they mentioned roswell but really only because of like they had to like recreate the it was like a big production to do that segment because they had to recreate a life-size version of the supposed craft. I don't know. I just feel like if they were going to pick a segment to show, they should have picked one of the paranormal ones. That would have been really interesting. I also selfishly wanted to see the Magic Rock or some mention of it. Yeah, I can't believe that's not the proudest moment of their legacy. They should have told us where the Magic Rock was. We are very convinced that they fucking made that up. So I'm sure that wouldn't maybe make the cut of this documentary. But I mean, I just want them to admit it because it's so absurd.
I would say watch it if you want some like little behind the scenes footage of Robert Stack and just to hear some little tidbits about filming and stuff. It's definitely not like a must see situation. But if you just want something new that's on self mysteries, you can watch that for free. You might as well. You know, it's not earth shattering in any way, but it was fun. Yeah, I would agree with that. We had a good time with our delicious yet expensive milkshakes. I don't know. Yeah, it's all just a little odd.
The whole night felt a little off, I will say. We had to be there as the local Unsolved Mysteries celebrities. Exactly. Did the documentary mention us? Spoiler? No. What the hell? The only thing that even came close is they mentioned the wigs of Unsolved Mysteries Instagram account. If you're listening and you run that account, congratulations. I hope you've got some sort of royalty. No offense if you are listening, but I don't know that that is the best Unsolved Mysteries Instagram account either. No, I don't think so.
you know mustaches oneself mysteries should have gotten a shout out for sure i mean that's really they didn't even mention how many months they had it done what if they had highlighted the twin segment and they we got to see that man doing his like workout short shorts on the big screen nature's whimsy i would like to know where the twins are now but due to some mysteries curse they're probably dead they probably wanted to go there they probably wanted to interview a lot more people and then every person they were like oh they're just dead oh they're dead i was once helping to organize this um show at the museum i worked at of ceramicists from the 60s and 70s um Yeah, there should have been a lot of artists that were alive to come give talks. But because glazes have so many toxins in them and people back then really were not taking proper precautions, like literally they were all dead. Oh, God. That's so depressing. So people were like, why aren't we having like so-and-so come in to talk? And I'd be like, they are dead. Also, they are dead. And they are dead.
Yes. That's extremely depressing. So if you were an artist out there, take proper precautions for your materials. Don't be so- Good ventilation. Yes. You think those things won't catch up with you, but they very well could. And so could the Unself Mysteries Curse. The Unself Mysteries Curse you can't control. I mean, I just don't go on Unself Mysteries, but- Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah. I don't even know you should be listening to this podcast. It's very dangerous. It could be. It really could. So yeah, it's a little rude they didn't reach out to us, but that's fine.
Obviously, they should have said that us and the Five are really what's keeping the interest alive, but whatever. It's fine. You're certainly driving some traffic. You would think. You would hope. I guess we just have to be satisfied we haven't gotten a cease and desist letter yet. That's all we can ask for. Just take it at that. We're so careful not to violate copyright that we don't put any music or any clips or anything on here. You're welcome, Unsolved Mysteries. We make sure that we really, really follow the law so we don't have to argue with anyone about it. Okay, so that was our big news. That was our big update.
Did you want to do some found loves? I think we should. I will do a rapid fire, as rapid fire as I can, round up of the books I read while we were on hiatus. Sounds great. Because a lot of our listeners sent them to us, and I would love to tell you what I thought of them. Okay. These are mostly books you had requested, correct? Correct. So even if you hated it, that's really on you. Well, here's the thing about that, is that every book someone sent me, I actually loved. And I'm not just saying that. Like, I don't know if it was my powers of...
knowing what I would like or if the listeners looked through my list and just kind of knew what I would like. But props to you, listeners, for sending me some good books because I legitimately don't really have anything bad to say about the books. I have bad things to say about some other books, but the ones that I was sent genuinely loved. Or was it that you were on so many painkillers that every book seemed good? You know what?
The books I disliked are ones that I read a little bit more recently. So you might be on to something. No, I think they actually were really good. Okay, okay. So I'll go in order and I'm going to do like a quick blur. I probably have more to say about some of these than others. So I actually did not read anything or do anything except sleep for the first two weeks after my surgery. So the majority of these I read in the last four weeks and to present. So we've been on hiatus a little bit longer than I was actually laid up. But anyway, so I'm going in order. The first book I read was The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune. I thought this was the perfect book to read.
while I was laid up because it was delightful. This is like a fairy tale. It's an adult novel, but it has some YA vibes. I would say it's about like a magical, it's like a home for magical children, orphanage sort of situation. There's a gay love story. It's a found family, which is like my favorite. The second you said it has YA vibes, you kind of lost me. So you have to pull me back in now. Magical children, what? Magical children, magical beings. The gay love story is very adorable. You might like that. It's good. I really liked it. I thought it was delightful. It's not like...
the type of book i would normally pick up because i'm really not a fantasy person but i thought that it was really sweet and really cute and i really liked it okay this next book is like completely the opposite i'm not sure you could pick a more opposite book i read last days by adam neville um this is horror and what i will say about horror i read a lot of horror and i'm constantly on the lookout for books that will legitimately scare me i'm not trying to sound tough because i scare very easily when it comes to horror films um but i don't for some reason scare that easily when it comes to books and so i'm always curious to hear like books people have read that have legitimately spooked them this book legitimately spooked me to the fact to the point where There were two occasions I was trying to read it while I was home alone at night and I had to put it down because I was so freaked out. This is a really long book, but I thought it was action packed from start to finish. It's about a documentary film crew that is hired by kind of an enigmatic, mysterious millionaire to make a film about a 1970s death cult. And so they're going around all these locations where the cult was and researching and spooky things are happening along the way.
loved this book. I thought it was so spooky, very creepy, and had, like, it was very fast-paced, even though it was really long, so loved it. Okay, I'm very intrigued. Wait, you have to read these out of five Robert Stacks. How many Robert Stacks do you give that? Well, I can tell you how many stars. So I gave five stars, five Robert Stacks, to The House on the Cerulean Sea. I gave five stars to Last Days by Adam Neville.
I gave four stars to The Sentence by Louise Erdrich. This is a literary fiction novel set in Minneapolis. I put it on my wish list because I thought it had a paranormal element to it. And it technically does. So this follows an indigenous woman who is incarcerated. Not wrongfully, necessarily. She did the crime, but she was incarcerated for like seven years. When she gets out, she gets a job managing a bookstore in Minneapolis. And that's where you kind of pick up the story. The bookstore is Haunted, which...
This book is not spooky. It's not paranormal. It's really a metaphor for what haunts us all. I mean, it's literary fiction. I kind of should have guessed. But I did like it. The only thing I'll say about this is that I kind of went into this blind. I did not realize that this book where the actual story picks up follows one year in this woman's life. And it is from the fall of 2019 to the fall of 2020. So you're in Minneapolis.
right before the pandemic starts, right before the year 2020. We all know what went on in Minneapolis in 2020. And so the book starts out with like immaculate vibes. It's fall in Minnesota. She like so wonderfully captures how amazing Minnesota is in the fall. I was so into it. And then I like remembered what was coming and the book just like takes a nosedive into bleakness, which again, intentional, juxtaposed, whatever. But it was good. I liked it. I gave it four stars. I don't normally read a lot of literary fiction, but there was so many Minnesota references in this. I did love that. I'm intrigued. It was great. It was a good book.
I also gave four stars. Really 4.5. I really like this one. By stars, you mean Robert Stacks. Yes, I'm sorry. I gave four and a half Robert Stacks. You can imagine Robert Stacks split down the middle. Ew! To Wild Horses of the Summer Sun by Tori Bilski. I love this. I don't have a lot to say about it. This is like a travel memoir. She spent the better part of a decade once a year going to Iceland to ride Icelandic horses. Wow, cool. This was really well written. It made me want to go to Iceland. It made me want to ride some Icelandic horses. I loved it.
um also she started doing this in her like i forget exactly but it was like her late her mid to late 50s um and she spent yeah a decade of her life doing something that i consider like in the i mean she like went with a bunch of strangers this was not like a touristy thing she did she like met some person who just had icelandic horses like knew someone who had icelandic horses they weren't like doing tours and so she did this all in like the age of like before facebook before you know she was like yeah that's cool how she found these people the fact that she did this it was just like i don't know it was really inspiring you know it's never too late to do something kind of wild like that I gave five stars. I was listening to the audiobook for A Fever in the Heartland by Timothy Egan. This one is about the rise and fall of the Ku Klux Klan in the Midwest of the United States. Oh, shit. Okay. Particularly Indiana. I think people sometimes like to think of the Ku Klux Klan as like a deep south, especially if you're up here and you're like, we're not racist in Minnesota, which. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You like to think of the Ku Klux Klan as like a deep south thing. And what people don't realize is that the Midwest played a big role in the Ku Klux Klan rising to power. And this book is all about that. And it's, you know, very good. Very informative. I like that. I'm going to skip over a few rereads.
um okay i read how to hide an empire the history of the greater united states this is the history of um all the united states various colonized areas um i thought this was great um i don't really know what else to say about it i don't read a lot of like u.s history it's not like my genre but i had heard really good things about this and i thought it was well written and very informative and you know i knew the united states was imperialistic it's not really a surprise but they had a lot of information in here a lot of things that you know you don't learn in school so and how many roberts decks would you give that one what did i do i gave it four four roberts decks If I was more into history, I might give that one a five. Understandable. Did you read our book club pick, A Death on W Street? Did not, no. This is about the murder of Seth Rich. If you aren't familiar with that name, you might be familiar with Pizzagate or various other conspiracies. Pizzagate, you mean that very real thing where the Washington elites meet in the basement of a pizza restaurant to abuse children and control the world? They meet in the basement of the pizza restaurant that doesn't have a basement, yes.
Yeah, they don't want you to know it has a basement because that's where they meet in secret. Yeah, you're right. You are correct. You're so naive, Samantha. Pull the wool out of your eyes, you sheeple. So I gave this one three Robert stacks. I liked it, but at times it felt like it was just a list of facts. It wasn't like a lot tying things together. I thought it was, you know, if you're interested in sort of conspiracy theories and how they like snowball and like kind of our history and where we got.
to where we are today this is a good read i feel really bad for seth's family um they did things that they thought were in the best interest of solving their son's murder that ended up like really making just feeding the conspiracy theorists and they didn't know you know the people advising them didn't know like what kind of a beast they were dealing with until it was too late and it's pretty depressing but there are moments in here you know there's like um the owner of comet pizza suing you know like someone like there's a few like uplifting moments of how people have been fighting back against these horrible conspiracies but it was fine it was fine um i only have four left so hang in there um and one of them's a reread so i read the emperor of all maladies which is a biography of cancer uh of course you did okay this is a very acclaimed non-fiction book i gave it uh 4.5 robert stax i really liked it i don't know really what to say about it, whether that it's very thorough. I wouldn't recommend getting cancer. You're like, this cancer thing, I don't like it. Thumbs down. Would you pick it for Book Club? Probably not, just because of how dense it is, to be honest. I'm not sure that people other than me are necessarily going to like it. If you have similar book tastes to me, yeah, you're going to like this, but I'm not sure that a lot of people do.
But yeah, I thought it was good. It was interesting. Don't get cancer. Got it. I feel like I'm in a bit of a reading slump because the last two books I read were terrible. They were so bad. So the first one was I read, I'm in the mood for horror. This is the thing. It's like I'm sort of a mood reader and it's spooky season. And so I've been trying to find some horror. And I think, I keep saying this, but I'm going to stop taking recommendations from TikTok.
You know, people want very different things from books than I do. And I can't really explain it because there's just like a not meeting of the minds there. Like I really will read something that's gotten like such rave reviews. And I will be like, but this is horrible. Like I don't, I'm missing something. Well, anyway, so I read Echo by Thomas Oldevelt. I'm probably pronouncing that wrong. I think he's Dutch. This is a translated horror novel. This is a horror novel set in the Swiss Alps. Someone gets like trapped in an avalanche or something and gets possessed. I DNF this. I'm not really sure. But this is like.
this is the basic summary i was super into this except that it's horribly written and i don't think this is the translation like they have an american character in this that is talking in like all of these american like slang terms that i feel like was done as a way to like indicate this is an american except they're like very outdated and not how anyone would talk i kind of love that idea for a character this character that's on vacation and keeps saying all that in a bag of chips that's exactly He's saying like, like this isn't worth diddly squat. And like, I've never seen these colloquialisms. And you're like, wow. I have never seen these colloquialisms written out, let alone as many of them as are in this man's point of view chapters. I do not understand. Oh no, that's bad. I thought that was dialogue. It's his point. Okay. No, it's his thoughts. It's not just how he speaks. It's just like how the characters thinks in colloquialisms. Also, instead of, instead of, for some reason, I don't know. I don't know if this is the same thing, but instead of.
using the word because they use cause c-u-z oh yeah okay and i don't understand if this is just we're just illiterate monkeys but why would you roaming the earth ruining everybody else's good time in the alps with our loud booming voices and our weird cliche phrases and yeah wearing tennis shoes and white socks or whatever you know our fanny packs and our 12 cameras are on our necks people are just like look he can't even write out because he just says cause with a z he's also so the the main like protagonist is a man named nick and the american character is his boyfriend and his boyfriend is also like obsessed with his pecs and brings it up all the time that's weird very weird um and Okay, I don't want to read this book, but I do love your description of this book. I read like a quarter of it and got to the point where I went to Goodreads to see if other people thought this was bad and then had my opinions validated and just stopped reading it. It's poorly written. It's confusing. Apparently nothing was happening up to the quarter point mark. Apparently nothing continues to happen until like the very last section. What I will say about this book is that it has one of the scariest opening chapters I've ever read. I was, again, legitimately spooked. It was very well written. It was very scary. And then it immediately...
transforms into something horrible. No, no, no. This is a phenomenon that I have noticed sometimes. People get book deals based off first chapters. So sometimes the first chapter of something is fucking amazing, right? But then they have to go write the rest of that book and they don't have it in them. I do not understand. What I will say, if you're a reader of horror, if you have read this author's other book called Hex, because I saw in the Goodreads comments that some people were like, I cannot believe Hex was so good and this book was so bad. Tell me if I should try reading Hex. Because again, this author can clearly write something scary. That first chapter was terrifying. Yeah. I don't know if he just gave up or what, but... He just got so distracted by the packs and coming up with...
old American slang. Colloquialisms? He was just sitting around watching Family Matters and taking notes about how Americans talk. fascinating um i knew i said it was gonna be rapid fire but if i don't like a book i could talk about it for hours so was that was that one robert stack half a robert stack i well i don't like rating books i didn't finish but i gave it two because the first chapter was scary otherwise i probably would have given it one um now i don't know if it's fair to write a book i didn't finish i'm not sure i also the last book i swear that i just uh is another horror book called black tide by casey jones again tiktok led me astray because everybody said this book was scary this is like a post-apocalyptic book about uh there's a there's two characters there's a male and female character they have some sort of love story um and there's an apocalyptic meteor shower that kicks off the events of the novel i'm not sure this author understands how people feel emotions okay there is a part in this book where the meteor shower is happening and the main male character is on a beach witnessing this apocalyptic world-ending meteor shower does he feel terror
does he run for his life is he panicked no he's like described as being kind of like mildly curious and like craning his neck to see the meteor has hit the ocean i don't first of all why you need to do that you're on a beach your view is not obstructed he was also just like i don't know kind of hungry a little bit horny you know like samantha there's more going on with him than just the world is ending okay like he had i guess he has more in his life like he hasn't eaten it's been like like four hours you know like he's like a little bit he could nibble and it's like time for a wank you know it's like there's like more going on with him than just oh my god all of civilization as we know it is coming to an end like why didn't your perspective it's just i can't even i can't even with this writing i also went to the goodreads reviews on this book and even the bad reviews a lot of them said that this novel's writing was atmospheric and i just want to tell you that weird descriptions does not make a book atmospheric so the main female character wakes up from like sleeping and she's like slept walked outside i don't think that's ever explained how she got outside but she wakes up in like the immediate aftermath of the meteor shower and she's describing the clouds as like shaped like fish and bowling balls i do not understand it's not how you would describe anything and
I love it, though. I really do. Two un-recommendations. But ultimately, like almost everything I read during our hiatus, I really legitimately liked. I didn't get to everything that I wanted to read. You and I went to Barnes & Noble before I went out in my surgery. I bought some books I didn't get to. So I shall continue reading. And if any of them are terrible, believe me, I'll tell you about it. OK, I want to do two un-recommendations and then we'll close up. Yes. OK, this is not as strong as an un-recommendation as the ones that you just gave. But I read the book The Spite House by Johnny Copton. OK, this one's been on my radar. Is it bad?
okay here's the thing it's not terrible i think that the characters are very good i think the dialogue is excellent and that seems to be something people really struggle with for reasons i don't fully understand just like listen to how people talk and write it down but anyway um lots of times dialogue is like very not realistic and i felt like this was super accurate and super accurate to the characters and the characters were like very well developed and you felt like you knew them the problem is the plot just is not plotting like oh okay i'm not gonna like it then all right let me tell okay spoilers everyone i'm going to tell you the secret of the spite house all right hit me it is haunted that's pretty much spoiler that's pretty much it i don't think so but like nothing else happens i thought i knew it was a haunted house story yes that's the whole point is that he like goes there with his young this guy goes there with his young daughters they're like looking for someone to record paranormal activity that happens in this spite house this house that was like built to spite other people um which is a type of structure that does really exist right there's this haunted white house and this rich older woman is looking for people to stay there and like record what happens right like that's the premise of the book it's so long
And like nothing really happens. This is what I listened to when I scratched my cordia and was just like stuck in bed and couldn't open my eyeballs. And I was so bored. Okay. So I don't, I think if you see this on like a list of like spooky books to read for October or whatever, I'm going to say skip this. I do feel like probably his next book is going to be great. Like I think the writing has a lot of potential. I just feel like this story needed something else. It's just not fully a realized thing, you know, but it's his first book. So it's disappointing because the haunted spite house really intrigues me. Yeah. If only there was like really much to that at all.
like there is a story of like how it came to be or what it's just like not that dramatic it's certainly not scary I was kind of like this is it like I've been sitting for in the hours in the dark not able to do anything and like this is all you're giving me it's not enough yeah dang okay so my other thing is we had talked about last year we went to an event by Fever that was a candlelit Halloween music thing and we're going to it again this year actually because we had such a lovely time but my own recommendation is a different event by them and i don't know if this is something that takes place in other cities but i just want to throw it out there in case you see this come up to not go they have an experience called the haunted tavern which at least in our area was described as having four cocktails in this historic mansion and i thought it would be this great time you know i thought we were going to get dressed up and just hang out with friends and drink cocktails for a little bit in this historic mansion sounded lovely to me However, I already know where this is going because I heard all about it. When we got there, we were ushered into the basement of this historic mansion, which was very much like, I don't know, a church basement. Like, it's not fancy. It's not the vibe. No, it was in this very grand house, but it's a basement that was like renovated for community events in like the 70s or something. Like, it's not fancy at all. I don't understand why you couldn't be in the upstairs. I just don't think they rented that part out for this event. Probably cheaper.
it sucked it was not i don't think it's probably a lot of spirit halloween decorations and i don't it's probably something you go through for free but it costs 55 dollars so also okay my main thing was i did not realize maybe i did not read the description carefully enough i did not realize this was like a storytelling thing so with each cocktail a performer would get up and tell like a ghost story was this thematically tied into the cocktail in some way no but also the story was like not good and not funny and not scary and i honestly do not understand the point like even a little bit it had a very like you're in middle school and people came to your school to put on an assembly and you don't know why it had that feel to it what i want to pay 50 to go see oh my it was painful and also they were really strict about people talking while the performers were performing this is the part that gets me because if you have to force people not to talk it just means that your storytelling is not engaging like you're not holding anyone's attention if you have to like like admonish people for talking also
the whole point of this thing is it's a cocktail experience so they are in the span of an hour and a half giving us four hard cocktails and then telling us not to talk and then telling us not to talk to the point where people would get like publicly shamed for speaking and be told like i only have this many minutes left in my monologue so if you could just keep a quiet till then this sounds like a really fun event uh okay at one point they brought some girl on stage and gave her an extra shot of who knows what by the way they wouldn't tell her and then she was talking later and they yelled at her and i was kind of like what did you think would happen Five drinks in her. It has been like an hour. It was very strange and not in a good way. And then afterwards. The drink's good. They're okay. One of them was quite bad. Okay. Also, some of that drink that was bad and also the water they gave us had dry ice in it. And it made it taste weird. It tasted like you get the smoke. I do not think you're supposed to consume dry ice. I swear I've seen this on Bar Rescue. It's not safe. Okay. So it's not safe. So while I'm drinking this thing that's got dry ice in it, Amber's like, did you know that if dry ice is not completely melted, it's poisonous?
I was like, oh, you're not supposed to put it in the drink. So anyway, we were given all this hard liquor. And then the water had dry ice in it. So it tasted terrible. It was just a very, I don't know. I would not recommend this event under like any circumstances. I had like brought cash to tip. And on the way out, I was like, absolutely not. I'm sorry. I hated this. I hated this so much. I mean, you were treated poorly. Like literally shamed for talking. Like you're at a cocktail hour. I would like to say that I was not the person that got shamed for talking for once in my entire life. I was not the person that got like hooked. Why you witnessed other people? Yes. It was not fun. It was weird. The stories were not scary. They were not real. They were not local. They were not like.
in any way something i would be like oh that was cool or interesting or just like things they made up and then performed one of them was like a little bit racist i just don't oh my god for once i'm happy that my back surgery prevented me from doing something social because i wanted to go to this this was like mid-september so i guess i mean i probably couldn't have gone to this because i would have had to drive home and i can't drink five alcoholic drinks and then drive so i would have been no point in me going but i don't i'm honestly as i'm talking about just like still kind of like what was the point what was that i would have had a better time if they just given us drinks and done nothing else that's bad They didn't really need to have the story. They just had spooky cocktails and they could have done it upstairs and maybe didn't have to like pay actors or whatever. I think the whole point of it is that there's actors who wanted to like do it, but nobody was into it. I'm sorry. They did a bad job, so. Also, some of the people I was there with had gone to an Alice in Wonderland type thing that this place has put on before. And apparently this was much higher rent than that. And I was like, oh my God, we're sitting on folding chairs. Like, what are you talking about? So I would say, unless you're going to this like candlelight music thing, other events by them.
I liked the candlelight thing we went to last time. I think you have a good idea of what that is before you go and if that's something that you will like. Literally people playing music surrounded by candles. What it looks like is what it is and it was lovely. It was lovely. And they're very talented. But these like pop-up things that they're also doing, I would skip, man. No. Afterwards, when I was talking to Rochelle about it, our resident history nerd, I was like, look, the upside is we'll be able to complain about this forever. Didn't we have a conspiracy sort of suspicion that maybe these events were supposed to be like something to like drive traffic to their app? Oh, definitely. I'm not 100% sure that these are like...
i don't know it's not necessarily what you might think it is because you have to to use the ticket you have to have the app on your phone but also the app is only for these kind of events so i don't really know i guess i don't understand their business model but yeah i mean as soon as we're done with the music thing i'm just going to delete it again anyway do not go to the haunted tavern experience by fever that is the end of the found loves segment everyone skip that found loves and found hates yes newfound enemies yes me and that woman shushing everyone where i was just like oh my god calm down like okay this story i just have to add more the stories did not make sense like from a point of storytelling where like it was like and then the wife killed so-and-so because she still loved her husband right and then it's like and now she just dances to this music box over and i was like at what point was a music box introduced you cannot throw that in at the end of the story as the spooky thing like maybe he gave it to her on their anniversary storytelling maybe it was a wedding like you have to you can't just throw that in at the end and then have a ballerina dance to a music box you can't that's not how stories work i'm sorry i should have like thrown a rotten tomato
Anyway, that's it. We are now back from our hiatus. So come back in two weeks and we will be back to our regular content, our regular rigmarole. We will have an unsolved mystery. What season are we even on? Eight? It's eight. We'll have a season eight episode for you in two weeks. Wherever we left off, we'll jump right back in. We do have our stuff over at Patreon. So patreon.com slash perhaps it's you. Sign up there.
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