S2 Episode 79: Ramblecast #3

Transcript of Episode 79: Ramblecast #3

EL: Hello, and welcome back to the Handstand Cast with me, Emmet Lewis and my glorious origami surrounded co-host Mikael Kristiansen. How are things going, Mikael?

MK: Oh yeah, you can actually see my origami.

EL: I know it’s pretty cool. You need more shelves and…

MK: I need more shelves like fucking hell! Like I have the large ass King Ghidorah dragon.  It’s just been lying on the table right behind. I can’t turn the computer because I’m going to make a lot of noise, but it’s lying on the table behind the computer here, so I don’t have a shelf that’s big enough for you.

EL: You need to get basically a Game of Thrones like, you know, a throne made of 10000 swords, blah blah blah. But a throne made of 10000 origami models. It could be the next level of that. What’s the thing in origami, where you have to make 10000 cranes…

MK: I have 1000 cranes laying right there.

EL: So you got a thousand flappy birds, not a thousand cranes. 

MK: Oh, shut the fuck up.

MK: The next time I see you, I will put superglue on your entire gamer chair before you sit down and I shall laugh at you.

EL: It would literally change nothing in my life.

MK: Yeah, fucking word. Yeah, you ask how it’s going. And yeah, it’s definitely not terrible. Where have I been? Yeah, I was teaching my first in-person workshop. Fucking hell, I forgot to click record.

EL: That’s OK, I’ve got it. It’s fine.

MK: Should we just keep going? Now I’m recording – great. So, usually we say recording before we start a podcast. But now things happened. Cool.

EL: We’re like a smart podcast. We’ve got like four different backups on our recordings because everything goes wrong. Anyway, insight into Handstand Factory technology.

MK: I was teaching a workshop in Sweden in a place called Halmstad, which is a gym there run by a guy named Tim. Pretty nice gym. Really good crowd. Fucking hell it was really cool a guy there, he was also at my last workshop at that gym, Bolsay or that’s at least, I’m not sure if that is his actual first name, but that’s what they call him. And Bolsay, he’s fucking 70 years old, and the man is a truck. Yeah, it’s nuts. Like the guy is like me and he’s a proper old guy. I mean, he’s insanely strong. I don’t know if he can do it now, but Tim told me that as he was preparing to learn to handstand, he was able to do a three-minute chest to wall handstand like he can pull out tuck slides for ages like his stomach to wall. He can just stay and stay and stay and stay and stay, and he still  struggling with the balance, but like, it’s slowly coming. So, he was much better now than one and a half years ago when I was there last time. He was able to balance for some seconds with a little bit of sport and stuff. 

But the coolest thing is the passion, the commitment the guy has to wanting to do it. It is incredible because he’ll even get furious when it doesn’t work. It’s amazing to see this really old guy. And he doesn’t swear that much, but he’s just like, “Well, fuck, I was expecting that one to go a lot better, and I didn’t feel that, oh.”  He kind of goes there. It’s great to see someone just having the commitment. He just wants to be able to get up himself and stay there.

EL: Have you subtly suggested that he should get testosterone replacement?

MK: I haven’t. I think he has more test- than the average 40-year-old that doesn’t work out because holy fuck, that guy is strong.

EL: Nice. Awesome to see. I think there’s a life lesson there. It’s like when you look at cultures where aging isn’t as defined as it is in the West and you’re not meant to be dignified in old age and can be a bit of a degenerate. People can still be in shape.

MK: He’s super strong. It was really cool. Other than that. Here I am sitting in my couch. Like previous to the podcast sitting here having a conversation with Emmet, like, “What the fuck are we going to talk about today?” And it has all so come to pass that we are just talking about things today.

EL: Yeah, it would seem to have a ramble cast. We haven’t caught up in a while. As you probably noticed, we didn’t get a podcast together last week because of clashing schedules and Mikael teaching. And I don’t know, I’m blaming my dog. Fuck Albus, he’s done something. Speaking of Albus, here’s my start of The Ramble. He’s decided something. So remember, he came over and he ate your power cable for your laptop. 

MK: Yes.

EL: He’s now decided that he just wants to kill himself via electrocution. So, any sort of power cable he can get is just like he just wants to eat it. But he’s at the stage where it just takes one bite to get through a cable. So far, I’ve been training him to be a bit more-we had him in a dog room, the kitchen and stuff like that, which is fine. I’ve been working on letting him have a bit more freedom around the house to self-actualize and all these kind of things where you project having kids, but actually onto a dog and blah blah blah. Just so we can chill out. 

He likes chilling out in the office and comes and sits on my desk. So far this week, he has trashed my armoured USB cable, not just my normal USB cable, but the armored one that’s meant to be strong. He has trashed my speaker cable, so my speaker is now home. I have to get a new cable together, and he’s made a serious attempt at chewing through, you know, your hose cables you have for computers and stuff like that, but also has the shielding on the outside. He’s making a serious attempt at eating that as well. 

So, you know he’s going to destroy my new computer or kill himself. And I’ve resorted to rubbing it with habanero sauce and everything, and that really slowing him down. It stops him for maybe a few hours.

MK: It’s like when you put, when I was at Emmet’s place, he took this… There is this dog repellent kind of thing that you put on surfaces where they lick and chew and stuff. And a dog just goes over it and just licks the thing fucking off the chair. Yeah. What kind of fiend are you? Incredible.

EL: Yeah, he’s a handful. He’s getting into this weird thing where like when he’s bad, he’s terrible, when he’s good, he’s amazing. There’s no Middle Zone now, which is, yeah, if anyone’s a dog trainer out there and wants to give me some help, please help or not. Other than that, I will train your dog to do handstands. So that’s what I’ve been doing this week is just getting wrecked by Albus and playing with Albus. Also writing the manuals. 

Actually, I want to pimp my stuff. So, Kickstarter. For those of you who listen, or know the other stuff we do. So, the modern methods of mobility Kickstarter, we just crossed 300 percent today. Just a shout out to everyone who’s supported that. Thank you so much or really appreciate your show of support, and I look forward to bending you all. So yeah, all I’ve been doing the rest of the week has just been kind of mixing between dictaphone and keyboard typing to the point where my fingers are sore and kind of swollen.

MK: Sounds pretty good. And speaking of modern methods of mobility, for those of you who have Instagram, that follow them, make sure when they post a story to look at what it says because all it says is Modern Meth in the little picture up there and yeah, the modern meth mob is going to take over.

EL: I know I’m looking forward too. I’ve seriously been debating, because I have so much writing ahead of me now with all these courses that just taking like, I don’t know,  in the history of mathematics, there’s Paul Erdős, who is a famous mathematician, and he used to take copious amounts of amphetamine and do maths. And you know, I used to do maths in university. I spent my time in the academy and I’ve been kind of debating: can I channel a bit of that force into writing these courses by just how much methamphetamine can you do without seeing shadow people? I can’t find the kind of the answer to this online, but if I could find that copiously, I’d be maybe taking some just to get these courses done a bit faster.

MK: I’m searching it on Google now. How much methamphetamine… Wait, I research methamphetamine, shadow people. Let’s see what you get. Troubled people encounter visuals of those, images of people who use meth. Yes, it seems to be a thing. Great.

EL: Yeah. Seeing the shadow people is a thing.

MK: Oh, shit, this is OK. This is a fucking…research article. Yeah, it’s a counter visual for those who use meth. All right. I didn’t know that.

EL: Yeah, it’s one of the most common things. Have you never seen the shadow people? I used to see, like we used to have shadow people when we lived in Berlin, we  lived basically on the site where the old wall dividing Berlin was near Mauer Park for those familiar with it. We used to have shadow people in the apartment all the time. And I wasn’t taking meth. I’m going to lay it on the record right now. I was not taking meth when I lived in Berlin. That was only a couple of years ago. Yeah, you have shadow people, just random shadows walking around your house.

MK: That sounds interesting. I’ll try to stay away from both meth and shadow people. 

EL: Never really done anything harmful. It was just like unless you’re there and people in other apartments would see them as well. It was just like the shadow people in Berlin. There you go.

MK: Sketchy. I had something I was supposed to say, but it went out a window with yes, methamphetamine and shadow people and stuff. I did read something here. Some random shit or I didn’t read anything. Actually, I read a YouTube title that said something about that 35 percent of students are on amphetamine. I guess they refer to what’s it called Adderall and stuff like.

EL: Adderall yeah. Legalized speed. 

MK: Yeah, it’s pretty easy to get your hands on in the States, at least I’ve heard. I think it’s actually I was coaching a guy once asking him, “How’s your training going?” Yeah, it’s pretty good, you know? Some days are good, some days are bad, I guess. Sometimes I just pop one of my wife’s Adderall. So, if I need an extra energy boost, then oh right. 

EL: I guess that’s a thing you can do. 

MK: By the way, I’m not condoning the use of amphetamines to get through a training session just so you know.

EL: He’s not un-condoning it, though. I mean, it’s just one of those things. Yeah, you do you. If you want to take amphetamine before training sessions, do it. We’re not going to… We don’t recommend that you do it. But you know, live your life.

MK: We are not going to judge. 

EL: I want to hear stories. Speaking of the Paul AirDots and Matt Mattson on meth thing. When I was in university for maths, I was doing maths and theoretical physics. One of the guys on the chorus actually got inspired by that idea and decided to start taking amphetamine to study for his end of year exams. And he was going insane, like he was studying 16 and 18 hours a day. He was like, “I can just study 18 hours a day, look at my notes.” And he was showing us binders of notes, more notes for every course. He’s basically copying out textbooks by hand, I think. And anyone has a math textbook knows they’re pretty dense. And then it came to his exams and he got like 10 percent on everything. He failed everything. It was literally no retention. He was very upset because it worked for Paul Erdős.

MK: Yeah. Goddamn it. Yeah. When I was a student, I would just run the good old just don’t study technique or I was just training breaking all the time. I actually did like… I was kind of a very average student in terms of my results when I was doing anthropology. 

So, I read the things, and I guess I have a good general understanding of the primary principles of the academic discipline, which is, I think, what you need and the rest is kind of fluff. So, I had that understanding to a degree which made me kind of able to just slide through the system without any larger hiccups. 

Even though, I would, I remember, that one of the exams that I wrote, kind of a home written exam, where I thought I had two days to, no, wait, I thought I had a week to write it. And then I check online casually, yeah, I’m just going to check, when was it? It’s Friday next week or Thursday next week? That it’s going to be delivered. I’m like, oh shit, it’s tomorrow. I fucking thought we were going to get the assignment tomorrow, but it had to be in by tomorrow. And I check the three various assignments we could do. And like two of them, just out of the question because those were not things that I had paid enough attention to. The third, I didn’t own the book, so I was sitting there with the weight of the world on my shoulders for about 10 minutes until I was like, oh, well, fuck this, I just ran down. I bought the book, I read all of the kind of relevant parts of it. And then I smashed together a paper on like ten pages in some old hours over the night. I didn’t proofread it. I didn’t nothing. I just handed it in and got a B. So yeah, I think that is probably my proudest academic achievement because this was some scrub bachelor level, but still.

EL: Super good! Super good. I think it’s kind of one of those things like when you’re in university, it’s like basically if you attend the lectures and the tutorials and obviously you qualified for the course as well, you are average.

Now, the risk is if you try to study too hard and work too hard, you have a risk of there can be this point of no return when you’ve actually learned too much nonsense. And that takes away from your academics stuff, so you actually get below average, even though you know more. And then there is just like, OK, you’ve managed to channel your effort in the right direction, you know more. But you actually know more.

MK: Yeah, yeah, but there’s definitely I think in general… I guess it’s like even saying, hey, now we’re talking about handstands and they, um, the same kind of thing with learning any physical discipline. If you get too absorbed in the details, like that fucker who literally sits and basically hand writes a textbook and thinks that you need to have the information in the way or like you basically need to remember the information as it was presented. And that is it. And the more word for word that is the better. I think that is kind of the… Maybe it works for some, but I think for me, like understanding the generalized principles and applying them all the time is obviously or at least to me, what leads to greater understanding because you understand the framework and then you start seeing where the details fit in into that. And maybe more importantly, you start seeing which ones are relevant and which ones aren’t to you, which we then might get into maybe much more interesting part, really, particularly in disciplines that are subjective.

Because I mean, doing this in physics, you need to be a pretty serious physicist to be able to do. But for like teaching someone handstands, then you might be like, “Oh, yeah, you know, but that cue that I got from that teacher for all these years now didn’t actually work for me.” So maybe thinking a bit like more like this. And then you start thinking yourself and using your own experience for the frame of reference. 

I think that that that’s much more kind of contributing in at least many, many ways. But then again, if you’re trying to do that in physics, like my friend did when he had been like smoking weed and then he shows me a paper, said, “Yeah, you know, I got a new theory on electron spin.” and I’m like, “You don’t know what electron spin is, motherfucker.” And it’s like, yeah, but look at this and the conversation trailed off because he didn’t know what the fuck he was writing there because he had been sitting up getting stoned all night.

EL: Yeah, it’s always one of these things. Just stoners and physics, they tend not to mix too well. Well, I think they do at a certain point when they’ve actually done the physics thing. The problem is, not that I know many stoners myself or didn’t in high school is it’s like, “Oh, I heard Stephen Hawking’s talk. Clearly, I’m smarter than a machine.” Yeah, which is always what I wonder about Stephen Hawking. It’s like, was he the first legitimate AI?

MK: Yeah, maybe he was like, maybe he’s still there. Maybe just plugged into the matrix and Zoom Zoom.

EL: Oh my God. That’d be a good turn for Matrix. Speaking of which, I’m looking forward to new Matrix coming out.

MK: Yeah, it wasn’t like the what it’s called, the trailer looked kind of interesting. So yeah, depends. It can go both ways. It can go ridiculously bad because I mean, like I think in general with these kind of when you pick up old intellectual property and you decide to beat the dead horse to basically make it puke up more dollars, because that’s what it ultimately is. That’s usually what these kind of projects come from.

EL: The money printer goes, Brr.

MK: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, then the question becomes like, okay, so what are there, is there an actual interesting idea behind it? Or perhaps did they develop an interesting idea through the process? Or is this just like, OK, yeah, we are making a new Matrix movie because now all the scrubs that watch The Matrix and thought it was cool in 1999. Now they’re nostalgic, so let’s hit the nostalgia button for dollars.

EL: Oh my god there’s this triple layer nostalgia going on, because if you look at say there’s generally a nostalgia kick in fashion in 20 year cycles, whereas, you know, nineties is coming back in because it’s our late 90s. I look back, you know, 20 years ago, people are on a twenty two thousand one, but that kind of. Millennials are zoomers, whatever they call themselves. Maybe I’m a zoomer, I’m a zoomer in heart anyway, but they’re looking at 90s fashion as inspiration. I had the same thing when I lived in London, like 80s was in and vintage and 70s were the thing. Well, 90s is coming back. 

You can see this in like fashion trends, but now they’re hitting this double whammy over where they’re trying to get not just the kids, because there’s always this kind of rationale between these kind of nostalgia trips. It’s like, oh, people who are children around this time they’ve seen all the cool kids and the cool adults wearing these styles, and they couldn’t do it because they’re kids. So, they get to now go back and do it their own way. 

Yeah, I couldn’t get behind that. But now it’s because, you know, oh, the people who are  in their teens when The Matrix came out are now getting this double nostalgia hit. So not only were you replicating like 80s fashion at that time, you’re also just like, oh no, you’ve been brought back around into the fold of The Matrix, and then they’re going to do it again in 20 years time. The comeback is like the return to The Matrix, where, Neo was actually going to be the architect. This is going to be like, finally, Keanu Reeves will have aged a little bit and he’ll have a grey beard and be like, “Hello, Neo, we’ve done this many times before. How do I know? Because I just told you that.”

MK: I wouldn’t be surprised if I mean, what’s frustrated me with kind of nostalgia wank is basically… I feel it inhibits coming up with new ideas sometimes. I was actually thinking about this when I was walking to the circus hall today. I was thinking about like, I’ve been playing this video game called Hollow Knight lately. And if anyone out there are into 2D old school platformer games I highly recommend The Hollow Knight. It’s hard as nails and it just kills your ass. 

But to me, when I was just thinking about the concept of the game and the presentation of it, it kind of struck me how interesting in terms of an original idea because, let’s say fucking Star Wars. Let’s take some laser swords and some space wizards. We put them here instead, and then we put them into this topic and then because we are bored and we have nothing else to do let’s just bring back Emperor Palpatine from the first movie because we need a bad guy. He’ll do, and that’ll be it. While Hollow Knight is like, oh, well, yeah, what can we do? We take a king, everyone are bugs, and there is a bug kingdom. And then you make it into this like super dark atmospheric world Allah kind of morder of Lord of the Rings, but a bunch of cute bugs live there. And then they kind of there is kind of a really deep lore and history to it. And you’re just like, hey, yeah, Bug Kingdom, this is awesome. 

Like, just come up with something fucking new. Don’t leave me laser swords and fucking marvel and like, oh yeah, now half the universe is dead because Thanos snapped his fingers in the fucking Marvel movie. It’s like eighteen more. Just reach! Space lizards battling mummies on Mars. 

EL: Space lobsters. And they’ve got laser claws. They’re fighting against the space crabs.

MK:  But they knew how to do this shit in the 80s, like Thundercats and fucking all that garbage. OK, well, it was all garbage also, because they just took an animal. They took Ninja Turtles and then they took Thundercats, and then they took street sharks and they took biker mice from Mars. Thank you fucking animal mutated. Give it some shit and send it off to the fucking chair. Kids can buy them. I have them. I have fucking biker mice from Mars. One of them was Mondo, and he has an eye patch, I remember. We also had street sharks but I think that was mainly my brother.

EL: Yeah, they kind of had a weird thing over here with the TV channels, they got moralistic at some point. They would refuse to play cartoons that were basically made to sell toys. So, we ended up, I think Teenage Mutant Turtles were the closest you got to that. They even shut down Transformers and everything was terrible. You know, Transformers, the animated movie is like the most moving movie ever made.

MK: Is that the one where Optimus Prime dies?

EL: Yeah. Optimus Prime dies and then Rodimus Prime comes to (verify phrase). You’ve got the touch. It’s like when he unleashes his power by opening the all spark and they’re able to defeat unicorn. Oh my God. Like, it’s the most powerful scene in any movie ever. And Orson Welles was Unicron. And apparently, he was a mess during the whole filming, and they just kind of, all his lines are absolutely terrible, but he just kind of sounds like he’s hammered, so he gets hammered and sick, really sick. It was his last movie he was doing.

MK: No shit! It’s like that old classic Plan Nine From Outer Space. Like, very often known as the worst movie ever made by Ed Wood and the movie Ed Wood (where Johnny Depp plays), is actually about the making of that movie. And contrary to popular belief, it’s not the worst. I’ve been to the edge, and I’ve seen what’s there.

EL: I think I have a movie for you that is actually possibly one of the worst movies that you have never watched or heard about. Unfortunately, the name for it is incredibly racist, so I can’t say because we’ll get the podcast cancelled. But it’s not actually a racist movie. It’s just a name that has a racist connotation because it’s a bit of a-

MK: I actually think I know which movie you mean. I think I’ve seen it.

EL: I don’t think you’ve seen the film. Did it contain explicit male on male pornography as a random plot point?

MK: No. 

EL: Then you didn’t see it.

MK: Ok, I want to rant more about fucking nostalgia because I find it interesting. And like you say, it goes in those waves of 20 to 30 years of yes, we all like it, we all are young and fresh. And then we think that, oh yeah, the way we see the world, that is the future. That’s how everything is going to be. And then you turn thirty-seven and you’re like, “Fuck, yeah, the kids are weird and they do other things.” And then suddenly you’re that adult that you thought was stupid when you were fifteen and then you long for all that crap that you watched when you were a kid, the music and all that crap. 

And what annoys me is the fucking A.I. complex of the clockwork money machine basically knows that, oh yeah, ding ding, now it’s time for these songs! I noticed it on some sort of playlist.

EL: They literally have it charted out in fashion. It’s one of my hobbies, fashion, just observing trends and looking at these things. And it is like it’s literally planned because you see all the fashion houses, the big houses that kind of dictate all our styles and kind of get trickled down suddenly like, oh, conveniently, an autumn winter, you know, blah blah blah. Oh, lapel big. All of them have come out with like jackets with wide lapels. The last couple of trends, it’s been like narrow lapels. How did they all manage to do that? Or how come one of them isn’t a breakaway and decided to fuck the trend? It’s always just like, oh, wait, this is in. Oh, pants are getting wide. Like, look at the pants are getting wide again. Baggy pants are back in. If you’re wearing your skinny jeans until next year, you have been like, you’re out of fashion. I’m sorry. Bootcut jeans and square toed shoes are back in. Anyone who held out long enough, you are now the champion.

MK:  Yep. It’s like in music, I noticed that they are taking those late 90s hits. You remember that song I’m Blue? 

EL: Yeah, yeah. 

MK: Shit like that. And like, they don’t even do much with the song. And I’ve been thinking about it twofold. In one way, the hits that were catchy back then, if you use the same kind of scheme of the song, it’s going to be catchy now more or less. Yeah, you will have the demographic that will listen to that because oh hey, that’s what’s fun when I was young. Then you have everyone that has never heard of the song that just listened to it because it’s like they perhaps change a little bit of kind of the sound. So, it sounds more now and then you just you just basically release the same song. And I’ve heard so many songs lately that have been doing that and late ’90s kind of or mid-to-late nineties kind of thing. And of course, like in music, things have always been remixing and changing up. I mean, basically, all of hip hop was basically created off of the back of funk and soul where they started changing things up. 

EL: You could say actually, Hip-Hop is Keizo Funk.

MK: Keizo Funk, yeah, you could say so. But I mean, at least they were super creative with it basically creating an entirely new style of music. Coming from the Afro-American roots of the funk. And then they flip it and take it. All of hip hop is always about that. You take something, you flip it and you create something new with it that kind of stands apart from the pieces it was built from and that was done super cool. So, when all of the sampling and all that kind of creates new styles. I think it’s really interesting. But yeah, with the money machine and all that, it’s just basically, yeah, it anticipates and knowswhat can be used for creating a lot of money. It all gives me that feeling in the back of my head…

EL: This is your mistake. You’re listening to things are kind of popular. You need to take the concept metal pill. 

MK: I go to the gym and I want to stab myself. 

El: That’s the problem. You’re just going to gyms. Gyms naturally have terrible music. Do you know why? Because they don’t want people to hang out there. They want them to get out as fast as possible.

MK: It’s actually a very good strategy.

EL: All you need is the pirate metal pill. Just listen to metal based around being pirates. It’s like sea shanties, but metal. What more do you want? I’ve got a few of them on Clone Hero at the moment, actually, and they are great fun.

MK: Yeah. Speaking of Clone Hero, I was watching someone like absolutely mega new to that like some of the hardest songs that have ever been made on it, like songs that were made for Clone Hero, to be hard. And if you don’t know what Clone Hero is, it’s basically Guitar Hero, but custom so you can make your own shit in it. And there’s like thousands of neckbeards sitting around blasting plastic guitars, playing boink and being better at Guitar Hero than like nine normal people can be at anything in an entire lifetime put together.

EL: Yeah, it’s pretty intense. I made the mistake of downloading Battlefield Division from Doom. Mm hmm. Yeah, so, you know, Doom music, the Doom soundtrack, Battlefield Division, it’s one of the crazier tracks. I downloaded the thing. Oh yeah, this will be fine. And like, I don’t really practice a lot. I just play on, you know, I think I’m pretty good at the game or not amazing, but I’m pretty good. And this one, like, I don’t even know what the fuck is going on to give it an idea. I can 90 percent through the fire and the flames on things so like, you know, people who can go or come close to seeing it or needs to play a lot 10 years ago. So, it’s like, OK, full combo, bitches. You know, that gives you an idea of how good our own expert as well. 

So, let’s say, you know, it gives you an idea. I was like, OK, cool, I can do it. And this one, I’m just looking at it going like, literally the chart is about to give me like, I don’t know, a stroke or epilepsy or something it’s coming so fast. And there’s people who play it?

MK: Yeah, you always find I mean, it’s like those people who are beating Dark Souls with all those different controllers. I’m still in love with those fuckers who like the guy who beat it with bananas. I think that is absolutely awesome. He plugged in a bunch of electrodes in bananas so when he would touch a banana it would count as the input of a button. And then it just beat the shit out of Dark Souls and Dark Souls is kind of known for being a pretty hard game. It’s not the hardest game out there, but it’s going to trash you for the most amount of hours that you play it. So, playing it with — just the creativeness — I am going to take some bananas and then I’m going to play Dark Souls, I just have to commend that. 

EL: Yeah, it’s definitely like, what were you thinking? Like, why not apples? Why bananas?

MK: I guess there’s something in kind of the squishiness of bananas that somehow is able to make an input easy. It’s very, very interesting.

EL: Here’s an idea for a video game controller. Someone is welcome to steal this idea. And if they want to make it, we’ll do the Kickstarter because we’re kind of good at them at this stage. It’s basically, you know that Terry Cruise video where he has electrodes and a drum kit. 

MK: No, I haven’t seen that.

EL: It’s on YouTube or something. I think the joke is that there’s someone hitting buttons and electrocuted muscles, and that makes it twitch, and then he hits a sound or something like that. So, it’s the same idea, but it’s an isometric trainer where you have to like flex your muscles. So, you kind of put electrodes on the body or maybe a suit or a skin suit or something and you flex your muscles and that works as the controller. So then you have to like twitch yourself into…

MK: Yeah, yeah, I mean that would actually probably work if you had some sort of sensor like you tense a muscle and that does something you can get a full on workout by beating your favorite game coming to the PlayStation 17 tomorrow!

EL: We shouldn’t have done that one live, OK? Anyone who has my idea, if anyone patented before me, I will cut you the licensing fee. Please give it to me.

MK: I will cut you! But I mean, other than that, I’m not sure if there’s, well, I’m actually going back into performing soon. Yeah, complete change of topic since this is a ramble cast.

EL: You can always change the topic in a rumble cast if you’re still rambling.

MK: Yes. And yeah, and that’s going to be interesting.

EL: One last blaze of glory.

MK: Going on tour and all that crap. That is going to be…

EL: Is it just around Sweden or is it?

MK: Yeah, for that, for needing peace, it’s mainly in Sweden. We have a couple of shows in Portugal and then perhaps in Prague in August. But that’s TBA still. But yeah, so far there’s a reasonable amount of shows, and it’s going to be interesting to see if this rusty shank can still do it. 

EL: Maybe we should have a Handstand Factory fan club meet up in Prague?

MK: Are there are a lot of people there?

EL: I don’t know, we can all fly in and just go see your show and you know. 

MK: Yeah, that would be good. I mean, Prague, it’s pretty cool. Well, wait, you have to see the Letní Letná. It’s a nice festival, but it’s in a tent setting. And I’m not sure if wait, … 

EL: We are not really going to see your show. We’re like, we are going to see your show. But like, let’s face it, we are going to get drunk and have fun.

MK: Going to get absolutely smashed, that’s what you’re going there for.

EL: Yeah,16 cents a beer or something like that.

MK: But it is actually a nice festival. This show it actually works well in that tent because the most knitting pieces it’s a full ass rig they transport, so all of the lights and stuff are mainly rigged inside of the rig of the show. Like, I think my first real show run with that show in 2013 was on that festival. So, it’s going to be fun, too.

EL: How long ago has it been since you done this? 

MK: I think the last show was in Philadelphia in 2016, in April. If I don’t remember wrong because we were supposed to do a US tour with it and then the entire tour fell apart because one festival went bankrupt or didn’t get its funding or something, something. So, this one festival in Philadelphia they didn’t want to cancel. So, they just flew us in to do two shows and then we fucked off back to Europe.

EL: So, the first one was in Philadelphia. Was it Moisture Fest or something?

MK: I’m not sure because we were at this big kind of arts convention center where they had a large stage and stuff. It seemed more like a concert hall style place. And I’m not actually sure if they had much other stuff in kind of performing arts going on at the time. They might actually not have had. I just remember eating burritos every fucking day, like every day I ate the same burrito because it was amazing. I think, yeah, I think literally we were there for nine days. I ate the same fucking burrito once or maybe twice a day. Some days didn’t go to any other restaurants that were the same things in the burrito, only that.

EL: Fair enough. Was it a proper Mexican place?

MK: Yeah, I don’t remember. I just remember it was insanely good. It was not like, what’s that garbage in? Or it’s not garbage. But that shit you have in Ireland is garbage.

EL: It’s garbage call it what it is. Boojum?

MK: Boojum? Yeah, we have like, I mean, Boojum isn’t bad, but you feel degenerate when you go to Boojum a little bit.

EL: Yeah. Boojum is just like people on an island like we have trends in this country because this is a small country. If a business does well, people rip off your business and immediately they try to basically out business you. Breed like a U.S. fish sandwich, bars and delis. But then burrito places became the in thing. So, every sandwich bar deli became like, yeah, a burrito bar. And then Boojum became like the king of the burrito thing by just outspending everyone, I assume. But like, it’s kind of like you’re trading quality for quantity in Boojum, like the burritos clock in. I think they clock in on the website at about 2000 calories for the base kind of. So, yeah, basically. 

MK: Yeah, they’re chunky. Irish cuisine, by the way, do you have anything except that breakfast of yours?

EL: We have stew like this is the kind of thing our cuisine was potatoes, but then someone robbed them from us not looking at the English. So generally, it’s kind of like, yeah, the history of Irish cuisine is not a strong point.

MK: No, it’s a bit like Norwegian cuisine, we don’t have one, we have some fish.

EL: Yeah, it’s kind of like-

MK: We Don’t have any sauce or anything like that. We just have this fish.

EL: Yeah, it’s kind of like we have stews with the most traditional kind of thing you get. That’s tasty. And then there is kind of like smaller stuff like this is the thing Irish food stew, meat, potatoes, and cabbage. That’s basically your base, your basics. You can’t beat a bit of meat.

MK: And then you have sausage for breakfast. And that’s kind of it. 

EL: Yeah, basically and that’s it. Porridge, you know. A chef pointed out that Irish and English cuisine… Let’s write this off. What he is saying is generally very simple compared to the continent because the quality of the ingredients we grow is so much better that there was no need to develop sources and stuff like that to hide the shit taste. Hmm. Now, whether I believe him or not, he is a chef and he is interested in all this history of cuisine and stuff. So maybe, maybe not. But it is kind of interesting. This is like, oh, when you’re eating meat that was half gone off in the continent, you needed a good sauce to hide it. That kind of initiated their kind of trend. Is it true? Is it not? I don’t know. But you know, I’ll take it as a gold star for Irish ingredients.

MK: Yeah, I don’t think we even have good ingredients in Norway, except like the fish. Fish is good, but that’s because it’s in the ocean. Or at least it used to be. My mom is obsessed about like if the if the fish has been like, what’s it called? Basically, if it’s been grown in a tank or if it’s fresh water or proper ocean or freshwater fish. Which makes sense, I mean, it is better, but she keeps going on these long rants about how you can see it and what’s with it when it’s like that, like this. When I was home last summer, it sounds like half of our conversations was about what’s about that type of fish. And she’s like, “Oh yeah, where do you see this? This white stuff is coming up on the side, and that means that it’s like…” This is me. Right now. I don’t care. Just give me the fish.

EL: Yeah, yeah. Fish, it’s always one of those things that is always fishy. I’m not a big fish man myself.

MK: I can really have some myself a piece of fish.

EL: As you probably noticed, I don’t think I’ve ever cooked fish once any time you’ve been with us.

MK: No, that’s true. That’s definitely true. But Emmet! So, what have you found on the interwebs the last week? Have you found any garbage. Have you found any daily dose of darkness?

EL: Hold on. 

MK: It can’t be so dark that it…

EL: But yeah, that’s the problem. Hold on. I just need to go basically and have a look at my YouTube recommendations. Just make sure it’s PC.

MK: Uh, let’s see if we have any notables from mine. I have someone doing…

EL: I do know you have one that you said you wanted to bring up at the stop of the thing. So we’re going to pretend to segway naturally into that: Hey Mikael, have you like come across anyone promoting some kind of weird ancestral tenants, a lifestyle that you’d like to talk about?

Speaker2: [00:42:28.48] Yes. Oh, yes. Well, what was his name, liver king or some shit like that? So, the guy who looks like he’s on the absolute Stossel, who rants and raves about how he has changed his entire lifestyle and training and everything and optimized by the ancestral way of ancestral man. And he looks like juji mufu. Yeah, and he does all kinds of assault, bike training and weird shit, which is like, well, this isn’t what ancient man did at all, in fact.

EL: What are you talking about? Of course he does. Yeah. Assault bike is well known for being part of the ancestral lifestyle.

MK: Yeah, like it’s also I think that it all seems to, well, frame. I think he even knows that people are going to call him out on the assault. People are going to call him out for this. People are going to call him out for that. And then he just doubles down and goes super hard: I am this bearded, big, buff dude who does all the things. Check me out. I’m so much more yoke than you. It looks like he’s been…

EL: Basically it looks like he’s gone paleo, but he’s made his own set of rules I wanna cite now as well. 

MK: But I think he’s the kind of guy that comes in with a crush and he knows that he’s going to be controversial and because I’m controversial, I’m going to say a bunch of things. And then people, some are going to hate me, some are going to love me. But all PR is good PR. And then I’m this famous buff dude who runs around being a moron.

EL: Yeah, man, I’m just looking at his tenants. So, he’s basically hit like, this is incredibly clever marketing. Let’s just break down some of these, actually because it’s one of these things I study and do case studies on a lot. So, it’s basically in his nine tenants, and he’s hitting every kind of thing you could have problems with to sell you supplements. So, this is amazing. 

So, you got like, all right, sleep. You got to like blah blah blah a few days without sleep, blah blah blah. Finish, OK, blah. However, sleep, got to eat. Ok, you’ve got to eat paleo, blah blah blah. Liquid calories, blah blah blah. I’ll go, fine. We can do that. I’m not going to argue with this one. Move. You’re moving wrong. 

First thing I do in the morning, I walk for 30 minutes. This is my cup of coffee. I walk, I walk my dog for two hours a day. Am I ancestral? Every day of the week. 

MK: Mm-hmm. 

EL: Shield. Ok, we’ve got to shield ourselves from seed oil, fluoride, excessive EMF, excessive wi fi, mercury fillings, perfumes and plastics. Yeah, you definitely want to get them out of your life. And then there’s definitely something he can sell you to help with that. Then we got to connect. Costs and contact with the Earth has slightly negative charge, which provides grounding for electrophysiology. With the advent of rubber shoes, housing cars and elevated beds, we no longer come into contact with this grounding force. But fortunately, the benefits include better sleep, improved blood pressure, blah blah blah.

Well, you know, you will instantly ground yourself if you touch a door handle or something like that. Which is kind of funny, actually, because I remember, here’s a funny aside, we just put these set aside so we can see you again. So anyway, there was in the meditation circles and stuff I run in and in the fringe kind of ones, there was this idea that when you build up a lot of like Chi, you have to ground it somehow. And there’s a group of people who think like, Chi, and all this stuff is your electrophysiology. 

So what they came up with was because they were meditating in upstairs rooms and stuff, they weren’t grounding their Chi like our ancestors. 

So, what they were doing was getting a fucking cable, like a thick gauge copper cable, running the cable all the way down the side of the building into the ground. And then I kid you not, inserting the tip of the cable up their butthole because that’s where your Chi will accumulate and cause prostate issues if you don’t discharge your Chi. 

MK: Fantastic. 

EL: This went along with the whole nofap thing as well, so you’re building up like immense amounts of muscular and vitality. I didn’t do this, by the way. I was saying, it’s just these people I know, and I think it’s pretty common, the old grounding wire where you have to put the wire in contact with the prostate. Yeah. If you don’t put the- if you’re not grounding your prostate, then your electrophysiology, chi, whatever, is going.

MK: Yeah, I got inspired right now to look back on my good internet friend Dr. Nguyen Armand Ra. He’s also one of these guys that basically he says that he doesn’t eat. So, in that sense, he’s a Breatharia. He also has some world records in deadlifts, and he looks like an absolute mutant. And I was looking into this guy because he speaks like Yoda. He sounds absolutely stupid in all his interviews using the most complicated language that you could ever imagine in every school.

EL: You got to understand if he’s using big words, like once you start using three or more syllables, in a word, you have increased the amount of admiration in the room.

MK: Yeah, but listen to this, I found his website. I found all of the books that he supposedly has written, and they are great because he’s a doctor of public health and blah blah blah blah or master in science, etc. Like this, it says here. But then he says he is the author of Ominous Age Inhibition Regimen and organically evolving 8th volume treaty that is the most cogent, coherent, comprehensive solution to bio gerontology ever conceived. He is the author of Mind, Matter, Mathematics and Mortality Concomitantly The Most Momentous, Concise Contributions to Metaphysics and Psycho Neuro Philosophy Ever originator or author of the monograph The Nutritional Neurotrophic Neon Theory The Sound of Scientific Theory of Human Brain Evolution, Ever Advanced. Author of Evolutionary Nutrition The Most Momentous Theoretical Contribution to Physical Anthropology Ever Written, and it’s all garbage. 

I, of course, went down the rabbit hole and checked these resources. None of it. It says they are published in his own publishing company, obviously, and they don’t exist. I absolutely love it. And he’s also he’s also selling you some sort of shit where you’re supposed to stop eating. And that’s…

EL: Is that next level up on like supplements selling? We have people selling your supplements that you need for whatever reason? And then, obviously, they can be neutral in terms of like, OK, we need this because your diet is lacking or it could be like, this is something we’ve made that will keep the aliens away from you, supplement whatever. But like this is next level in terms of business and ship, I’m selling you-

MK: Nothing. 

EL: Nothing. This is high tier. There’s no product here. I’m just literally selling you permission to have an eating disorder.

MK: I’m not even selling you God. I’m just selling you Nothing. I mean but I invented it too, on Instagram, when I had that fucking fitness regime of mine. Nothing size. And it works. You can start nothing size today. Like, all you need to do is you just pay me 500 euros.

EL: Pay me and you get to do nothing. We will instruct you in the ancient arts of Nothing. What can I do Master Mikael? Can I watch Netflix? No, you can’t. You must do nothing. Yeah. Can I lie down in the couch? No, you’re doing something.

MK: Yeah and it’s really the perfect thing, because you can choose when you do nothing too as long as you paid me the 500 Euros. You can do it from home. You can do it at the gym. You can do it wherever. And it’s just Nothing. Perfect. I can’t be sued, either, because I give exactly what you purchased.

EL: Could we dismantle? This is the thing. You solved the problem of logistics and stockholding by selling people Nothing. So now we need to solve it by, yeah. Deliver your package of nothing.

MK: You can buy these books, I found. They cost like two hundred and fifty U.S. dollars. They cost loads. They’re probably just some e-book garbage that he has made. You can also donate on his website. But yeah, basically it’s fantastic because it reminds me a lot of like the same thing as like the free energy scams. I was really into those for a while. Like, not on kind of buying into it, but looking at them because they’re like I was following three different energy scams at the same time, and they were also kind of bickering and fighting saying, “Oh yeah, but your machine doesn’t work, but my machine, it really works.” 

And then you have all these like, really hopeful scrubs on YouTube that has four views on their video where they’re sitting. Yeah. So now I’ve been sitting here on week three, and I think the nano coating has really started to take shape. And that means that like there should be an increase in voltage soon. And like all you can see, it’s a copper wire that is oxidized. It’s a bit green because it is oxidized. [00:52:00.00] There is no nano coating. There is no nothing. There’s no more voltage. You’re just a scrub sitting there thinking and hoping that you’re going to get more electricity. 

EL: Wow. That’s the kind of thing. Yeah, I remember I had a friend. Why do I always know all these weird? I had a friend who was trying to build a free energy device, that I just remembered about. Where he’d actually made something or found something that was kind of interesting, it was like a magnetic spin device that would spin around, and it seemed like it would just go faster and faster. But it turns it wasn’t. It just made it look like if I had visual illusion. I see one of those hypnotic things with a pattern that makes it look like it’s spinning faster. But it couldn’t take a load. It’s kind of disappointing because you totally cracked the secret to free energy.

MK: Well, there were a couple of friends being into similar stuff as well. And of course, a lot of these things very, very often go hand in hand with pyramid schemes, and it is always kind of sad when you see people slip down that whole idea for a short time or sometimes for a longer one.

EL: Yeah, it’s kind of one of those things. It’s like, is there anyone who we know? I wonder if there’s anyone listening to podcasts who has a free energy device that actually works.

MK: Yeah, if you have a free energy device that works, send it to us, we’re definitely not going to patent it or anything. Just going to take a look.

EL: I have a free energy device. It’s called a solar panel. It literally gives me free power. In fact, like, you know, solar panels that are, I don’t know, they probably have in other countries, but they are launching this one here. Whereas like if you have solar panels, you make excess electricity, you can sell it back to the grid so you get paid from the power company.

MK:  So it’s only when you get your enormous monastery or, you know, like just make it into a solar farm. Oh, definitely going to Ireland. There’s never any sun.

EL: Apparently, solar works fine here. The new panels. It doesn’t need direct sun. It just needs light. 

MK: Oh, really? 

EL: Yeah. I was looking into it. You can get an array on a normal sized roof in our climate here, where you could have run all your household electricity, including washing machines, everything. All of it. Needs some batteries for backup and also charges an electric car.

MK: Interesting.

EL: Not that I own electric car. 

MK: No. 

EL: But, if Elon Musk, when you’re listening to the show, please sponsor me with a Tesla. 

MK: Handstand Factory sponsored by Tesla.

EL: Yeah, It’ll be amazing. How else do we get around? But, it’s not just free energy, it’s actually energy that pays you. So, it’s like negative energy I assume.

MK: You’re literally just creating energy and revenue. 

EL: You’re creating wealth out of energy. What more do you want wealth creators?

MK: Yeah, yeah, that’s probably going to be like a new hustle culture. I think we’ll have to deal with on the internet then.

EL: No, what you need to do is you have your solar or like the main costs of mining bitcoin is electricity, so you have your solar array set up to run your bitcoin mining rig. Therefore, everything you make from your bitcoin is pure profit minus the cost of the hardware.

MK: You have cracked the code Emmet.

EL: I have cracked the code.

MK: Yeah, that makes sense.

EL: Right. Yes, we got any more, shall we wrap it up there? It’s about an hour.

MK: I think it’s a good point to wrap it up. We’ve talked about scams. We briefly mentioned handstands, bits and pieces, ups and downs of all kinds of garbage.

EL: I feel like I should loan in Clone Hero and do like an outro track on Clone Hero instead of a normal guitar.

MK: The fucking cluck, cluck, cluck of the guiar is what I find good with Guitar Hero. You have an entire generation of very, very, very coordinated motherfuckers who probably could play a guitar pretty damn fucking well if they spent the hours playing guitar. Instead, they go, cluck, cluck, cluck on Guitar Hero piece of shit. Well, the best thing is you have a song playing in the background and you ruin the entire song with the plastic.

EL: Yeah, it’s just like, I think it would be just like karaoke for rock. That’s what it is. It’s like karaoke. You have the song playing in the background generations of pop star best tracks ever written while we have some drunk dude up there wailing on it who can’t carry a tune. So, this is the exact same.

MK: Exact same, yeah.

EL: So if you got a plastic guitar.

MK: In that sense, I have to agree.

EL: Yeah. Friend of mine won the World Air Guitar Championships. 

MK: Oh shit! Really? I heard about the Air Guitar Championships.

EL: Funny thing is they’re having the regional finals. This is probably about 20 years ago here. They’re having the regional finals in some bar and there’s people who are properly into it, prepared. They were just out there drinking and they came across this and went in and paid the money. And then he decided just, you know, fuck it, I’m just going to go up and try out. No preparation, no practice. No routine. Won! 

MK: And he destroyed it.

EL: He destroyed it. And then you got like he won the sponsorship to go over, flown out of state somewhere and take part in the finals and won the finals with no preparation, either.

MK: He was just a natural God at air guitar. 

EL: Natural God, he just had the passion. Couldn’t even play guitar. That’s how good he was. 

MK: Yeah, that’s a serious guy.

EL: So, if you think I’m bad with my plastic guitar, there’s people out there with no guitar!

MK: So, I think that is a great place to end the episode. There are people out there with no fucking guitar guys. 

EL: Yeah. Save up and buy them one! I’ve been here with Mikael. We are the Handstand Cast. We’ll be back next week with something actually about handstands. Other than that, thanks for listening.