FH Mini 18 - Rattlesnake!

[0:00] Okay, hey, it's me, Stuart Wellington of the Flophouse Podcast.

[0:08] Now normally on this podcast, we watch a bad movie then talk about it, but tonight, oh,

[0:13] you're in for a treat.

[0:14] We're not doing anything movie-related at all.

[0:17] Just to let you know, I'm Stuart Wellington.

[0:19] I'm Dan McCoy, I guess.

[0:21] I'm Elliot Kalin.

[0:22] Just astonished at how smooth and professional Stuart is as a host right out of the box.

[0:27] Don't know why this is really the first time he's doing this since he's clearly got the

[0:33] gams, you know?

[0:34] Somehow.

[0:35] Yeah.

[0:36] I don't know.

[0:37] You know, I think it's beginner's luck.

[0:38] Okay.

[0:39] So tonight, instead of watching a bad movie and talking about it, I am going to introduce

[0:44] you two fellows, my co-hosts, to a little book that I wrote when I was a child, an age

[0:50] I don't know, nor is there any mention of how old I am, a book called Rattlesnake.

[0:57] I just texted you the cover.

[0:59] Now, this is an original work of fiction by me that is accompanied by illustrations.

[1:04] Now, those illustrations I will be sending you over the course of the book as I read

[1:09] it out loud to you.

[1:10] Feel free to make constructive comments if you wish.

[1:13] I love.

[1:14] So here on the cover, it's a flag that it's a little wavy, but you can tell that it says

[1:17] don't tread on me.

[1:18] I'm going to give you a little, one, topical, love it.

[1:21] It's really tapping into the political divisibility of our times.

[1:25] Tread is spelled wrong.

[1:27] I'm going to chalk that up to your age at the time, which is I am assuming younger than

[1:31] 15.

[1:32] But I will say the one thing I wanted to say is very legible writing, which is not true

[1:39] of many children.

[1:40] Yes.

[1:41] Yes.

[1:42] And I like the logo, the rattlesnake logo, which looks like it's made out of wood.

[1:44] Doesn't necessarily look like the snake, but it does look like a Flintstones type thing,

[1:48] which I like.

[1:49] Yeah.

[1:51] Are those, you think those are speed lines or are those scales?

[1:52] Yeah.

[1:53] I will say that you got, you know, that's sort of a bubble lettering.

[1:58] There's not a lot of consistency to whatever fonts you're trying to get across here, but

[2:04] it's good.

[2:05] It's good.

[2:06] It's very clear.

[2:07] Yeah.

[2:08] Yeah.

[2:09] Yeah.

[2:10] I was just talking to somebody about how doing like an animal print or an animal pattern

[2:12] is harder than you would think because it has to be like both natural and also like

[2:17] a little bit like asymmetrical.

[2:20] You know what I mean?

[2:21] Yeah.

[2:22] Yeah.

[2:23] I think that's what I was trying to go for here.

[2:24] Obviously, you know, I guess it's up to the audience to decide how well I achieve my goal.

[2:28] So let's dig into this.

[2:30] Now this is a, not a particularly long book.

[2:33] I think it is, wait, ooh, six pages.

[2:37] There's a seventh page with a number.

[2:40] There is nothing on that page.

[2:42] So your reach exceeded your grasp.

[2:43] Well, that represents how the future is unwritten.

[2:46] Sure.

[2:47] Sure.

[2:48] Yeah.

[2:49] I just, I want to mention that Sarah Connor told you that one, right?

[2:52] For a, I just, I want to mention for the record, my son, Sammy's book, The Mystery of the Sinky

[2:58] Cheese, which unfortunately will be, the ending will be untold on this podcast, nine pages.

[3:05] So I'm not saying that my son is smarter than you Stuart, I'm merely saying he has more

[3:08] story to tell.

[3:09] I mean, the longer the book, the better, right?

[3:12] For a child's endeavor, a nine page book might as well be war and peace.

[3:17] I have to say that's a lot of commitment.

[3:20] Okay.

[3:21] So let us begin the tale of Rattlesnake.

[3:26] One cool fall morning, an Eastern diamondback rattlesnake inched toward his prey.

[3:33] His prey was a mouse that was making a breakfast of seeds and nuts that fell from a tree.

[3:39] Getting just close enough to strike the rattlesnake, slowly rears its head back in strike position.

[3:46] Now, okay, I mean, just off the bat, there are a couple of things that occur to me.

[3:51] Number one, strike position seems like a very Stuart, like a turn of phrase, like even at

[3:58] this young age, you had a real personality.

[4:01] I like that, that you've, you've, I guess, mimicked the stream of consciousness thinking

[4:06] of the rattlesnake by running two different sentences, getting just close enough to strike

[4:10] and the rattlesnake slowly rears its head back in strike position into one sentence,

[4:14] repeating getting just close enough to strike the rattlesnake slowly rears its head back

[4:17] in strike position, which made me think the mouse was about to strike the rattlesnake

[4:20] at first.

[4:21] But then, oh, no, no, no, finish that sentence.

[4:23] No, no, no.

[4:24] Yeah.

[4:25] I mean, that's your, it's a twisted tale that this, that rattlesnake weaves.

[4:29] Now, I like, I like also that you explained the origin of the mouse's breakfast.

[4:33] That is clearly was bothering me at the time.

[4:36] Well, he says he's going to make sure that the, that I didn't break the illusion of reality.

[4:41] I liked that.

[4:42] He's, you say he was making a breakfast of seeds and nuts rather than having a breakfast

[4:47] of seeds and nuts.

[4:48] I mean, like, you know, neither one is more correct than the other.

[4:51] And I think making is a more unique turn of phrase.

[4:54] I like just mentioning that, that it came from, it fell off a tree because that means

[4:58] we don't have to worry about a prequel to rattlesnake that explains the origin of that

[5:02] breakfast.

[5:03] I just want to note, there is no, there is no tree depicted in the illustration.

[5:07] Well, let's move on to the illustration.

[5:10] Yeah.

[5:11] So this rattlesnake looks a little bit kind of like one of those, it looks more like a

[5:15] sock puppet kind of than a, than a snake, but, um, there's something kind of seasonal

[5:20] to see.

[5:21] Yeah.

[5:22] Yeah.

[5:23] I like, just as, as mentioned, it is the morning.

[5:25] The sun is rising in the distance over the horizon line.

[5:28] And the rattlesnake is positioned between what might be too many volcanoes.

[5:33] They could be two garbage bags, uh, because there's two leaves that are either hanging

[5:39] in midair or somewhere on the ground behind the rattlesnake.

[5:42] Yeah, there's a lot of symmetry here.

[5:44] There's two, two, what I assumed were rocks, twin peaks, if you will, and then two leaves

[5:49] falling from the sky, uh, and then a little, little mouse.

[5:53] And the rattlesnake's tail, uh, unlike a normal, uh, traditional rattle, which tapers is just

[5:59] kind of a uniform thickness, like a pencil eraser or perhaps an uncircumcised penis.

[6:04] It looks like a big gray marshmallow.

[6:09] But it is a nice picture, you know?

[6:10] Yeah.

[6:11] Oh, thank you.

[6:12] It's a good snake.

[6:13] It's got personality.

[6:14] Uh, page number two.

[6:15] Moving on.

[6:17] Suddenly lunging his whole body weight forward, extending his dagger-like fangs, he finally

[6:22] grasped his target.

[6:24] Finally.

[6:25] Slowly, steadily, the poisonous venom enters his prey.

[6:30] Releasing the mouse, the rattlesnake waits for the venom to react.

[6:35] After the mouse is dead, the rattlesnake starts the slow process of swallowing his

[6:40] prey.

[6:41] Now, it's both, it's both scientifically accurate and also makes me worry that this is a young

[6:45] serial killer in the making.

[6:46] Now, Stuart, I mean, we're gonna, now, the, the, the, the nature of this podcast is such

[6:52] that we're gonna burn you a lot during this, but I have to say, you know, for a child again,

[6:58] like, unless this was, you know, done when you were, say, 16 and we've misjudged things.

[7:06] This is some impressive writing because you've got, you've got like a dependent clause here.

[7:10] You've got like, releasing the mouse, comma, the rattlesnake waits for the venom to react.

[7:16] And that comma makes up for the lack of comma in commas and other sentences that needed

[7:20] them.

[7:21] So.

[7:22] I also enjoy the way, like, you have, we didn't talk about this before, but the words

[7:28] here are not handwritten.

[7:31] You have done like a little paste up here with the typewritten words on your illustrations

[7:36] as if, you know, this is gonna be, this is ready to be sent to the printer.

[7:39] Oh yeah, absolutely.

[7:40] But no, I would think, speaking of word choice, lunging is really good.

[7:46] Poisonous venom is a bit redundant, but I love it.

[7:48] It's very evocative.

[7:49] Dagger like fangs.

[7:50] I love that.

[7:51] It's, yeah, there's a lot of, this is some very, this is some very visceral writing,

[7:58] which is great.

[7:59] Yeah.

[8:00] I think, I think I'm really trying to draw the, draw the reader in.

[8:03] Now, obviously the illustration, you have those two rocks again, there seems to be some

[8:07] kind of bale of hay behind him.

[8:09] Yeah.

[8:10] It's a sprig of wheat.

[8:11] The rattlesnake.

[8:12] It's the kind of sprig of wheat you might see inside of like a white, all white vase next

[8:15] to a fireplace in an interior decorating magazine.

[8:17] Yeah.

[8:18] And the, the, the, the snake is negotiating the space between these two rocks.

[8:23] Like it's in, you know, that snake video game.

[8:27] Yeah.

[8:28] The rocks themselves have shrunk quite a bit since the previous page, but I'd like the

[8:31] consistency of their being there, even if they are not, you know, to scale.

[8:36] Yeah.

[8:37] It's, I mean, it's, I mean, Scott McCloud would praise me for my visual storytelling.

[8:41] He would, I'm sure he would.

[8:44] Yes.

[8:45] And as you, as you'll see the, at this point, the snake is already swallowing his, his prey,

[8:51] as I mentioned before.

[8:52] And this, the snake, the rendering of the snake has a pleasing three-dimensional shading

[8:56] quality to it.

[8:57] Thank you.

[8:58] Okay.

[8:59] After he completely digested the mouse.

[9:03] We have some comments about this illustration when we get, when we get to that part.

[9:10] Okay.

[9:14] After he completely digested the mouse, he slithers to a hiding spot.

[9:19] Very soon it is night.

[9:21] Since rattlesnake are nocturnal, he slowly moves out of crack in the rock.

[9:27] Okay.

[9:28] Setting aside some of the missing letters and words in these sentences, this drawing

[9:31] has a sort of a unpleasing aspect to it, which I'm going to, I'm going to say is that it

[9:36] appears to be a rattlesnake emerging from a vagina, perhaps the, the, the rock is, has

[9:42] a cleft in it that makes it appear as a human buttocks.

[9:45] Yeah.

[9:46] It has a vaginal quality.

[9:47] And then yes, the rocks top has the arc of some buttocks, although also the, you know,

[9:54] the mouse ate this, or sorry, the snake ate this mouse and there's like now a bump.

[10:00] Pump is the rock, but it does kind of bring to mind the Little Prince, the snake who has eaten an elephant.

[10:08] Yeah, or it could be a hat. Yeah, sure. But the cleft in the rock really does appear.

[10:13] Yeah, I'm not doing myself any favors with that one.

[10:16] I will have to take you to task for – there's some tense issues here.

[10:21] After he completely digested the mouse, he slithers to a hiding spot.

[10:28] So yeah, you're kind of jumping around in time, but again, pretty sophisticated.

[10:34] But that's okay. I mean it's after he digested. That's in the past, and slithers in the present.

[10:38] It's unorthodox, but he's just trying to distract from the fact that this snake has made its home inside of human genitalia.

[10:47] Yeah, sure.

[10:48] Yeah, yeah.

[10:49] I like that you said, since rattlesnake are nocturnal, that use of the singular for the plural is very –

[10:54] I like it. It gives an epic quality to it, an old Beowulfian epic.

[10:59] Yeah, that's what I was shooting for.

[11:01] Yeah.

[11:02] Okay, let's see. Let's move on to the next page here.

[11:04] There also seems to be – and this might be getting a little too in the weeds,

[11:07] but there seems to be some disagreement on the page over what number this is.

[11:10] Maybe we're just seeing through to the next page, but it looks like you erased the number.

[11:14] No, I think you're right. I think I wasn't quite sure what page we were on.

[11:18] Now, Stuart, I want to pause here for a moment and ask you what kind of research you did on this book.

[11:23] Well, I'm sure there's a works cited page at the end, right?

[11:27] In fact, actually, there's a note from my teacher that criticized me for not including a bibliography.

[11:33] Okay, well.

[11:36] Bibliography, Stuart's brain.

[11:42] Okay, so moving on.

[11:45] Suddenly he hears the special rattle.

[11:51] It is the rattle of a lady looking for a mate.

[11:54] He moves slowly at first, then faster.

[11:57] He passes a bush, and there in the clearing next to a woodpile is the lady rattlesnake.

[12:04] Now it feels like the picture from before, now it seems like the subtext is just becoming the text.

[12:11] Yeah, I guess you're right.

[12:13] But with passing the bush and all, but also what I like is that you leave us in suspense whether it is a lady rattlesnake

[12:18] or a human lady when it's the rattle of a lady.

[12:22] But it is a lady rattlesnake.

[12:25] I feel, guys, was little Stuart a horny boy?

[12:31] I mean, you would know better than us.

[12:33] For snakes, specifically?

[12:35] I don't know. We're figuring it out.

[12:37] I mean, again, I commend the complexity of the sentences.

[12:41] He passes a bush, and there in the clearing next to a woodpile is the lady rattlesnake.

[12:47] I wonder, though, now is this accurate to snake mating procedures?

[12:52] Do they mate based on rattling?

[12:55] I feel like I was very into various forms of reptiles and dinosaurs as a kid.

[13:03] But I kind of haven't kept up with that hobby, so I can't tell you if it was right or not.

[13:09] There is a sort of Zork-esque aspect to this, a sort of text game, as you mentioned,

[13:14] each of the landmarks that it passes, things like that.

[13:17] It's all about world-building.

[13:19] Even at a young age, that was all about creating a universe.

[13:23] And to Dan's point, if there are any herpetologists listening to this,

[13:26] please let us know.

[13:27] Write in and let us know if there is a special rattle that represents sexual arousal in a lady rattlesnake.

[13:33] Shit's about to get real, guys.

[13:37] As he inches toward the lady rattlesnake, he feels the presence of another boy.

[13:43] As he looks around the clearing, he sees the other boy.

[13:47] The two boys move toward each other as they lock in combat.

[13:52] Then they begin the death game.

[13:56] Again, a very short turn of phrase.

[14:00] During the game, pain rings all throughout his back.

[14:05] He uncoils to see what had hit him.

[14:08] He sees a person baby.

[14:11] Suddenly, a shot rings out.

[14:13] The bullet just grazes him but hits the other rattlesnake.

[14:18] Ooh, rattlesnake, good eatin'.

[14:21] Here's where some dialogue enters.

[14:23] Yeah, leaving aside for a moment this sort of cliffhanger here where someone has entered the story.

[14:28] It's not a cliffhanger, Dan.

[14:30] We know that rattlesnake is dead.

[14:33] We know that we don't know who this person is who says, ooh, rattlesnake, good eatin'.

[14:38] I just want to ask you, Elliot, as a person who has had two person babies in your life,

[14:47] is this accurate to your experience of having person babies?

[14:51] In that I will just leave them in clearings next to wood piles in the hopes that they will draw out rattlesnakes that I can then shoot because that's good eatin'.

[15:02] Got to feed your family, you know.

[15:04] There's a lot of good eatin' on a rattlesnake.

[15:06] It's like a slim Jim that can walk.

[15:09] Can walk?

[15:12] Well, you know, crawl.

[15:16] So my, you know, we're nearing the end of this.

[15:21] This page has a real Robert E. Howard influence on it.

[15:24] I feel it's very strong.

[15:27] So my mother mailed me this work of fiction that I had made as a child.

[15:34] And at the time when I got it, you know, a couple months ago, I read it.

[15:39] And reading it again now, I'm still surprised by every page.

[15:46] That's the mark of great fiction.

[15:48] I will say your rattles seem to have improved on this page.

[15:53] Thank you.

[15:55] I've been waiting for you guys to say that.

[15:57] They have the distinctive stacker look to them.

[15:59] Exactly.

[16:00] You can discern the individual coils rather than in the past where, again, it looked like sort of like maybe the bottom of a chair.

[16:07] Yeah, or like an old-timey microphone.

[16:09] Yeah.

[16:10] Yeah.

[16:11] You've got to, on the other hand, while the tail end of this rattlesnake, it's hard to know which is the original and which is the intruder.

[16:18] Well, the tail end of the rattlesnake is very well delineated and rendered.

[16:22] The head seems to have turned into like – it's a little hard to tell.

[16:27] It's got kind of a tombstone shape to it.

[16:30] You can kind of see the mouth, I think.

[16:33] I think we are to believe this is from below.

[16:36] We're seeing – snakes don't really have like a traditional chin in the way a human might.

[16:44] I think we're seeing below the snake's head, the chin area, and the eyes are away from us maybe.

[16:51] Yeah, it's the underside.

[16:52] Yeah, I think you're right.

[16:53] I think we're seeing the underside of the snake, yeah.

[16:55] Yeah, he's been shot and he's falling back.

[16:59] He's like, oh, you shot the wrong snake.

[17:01] Oh, I see.

[17:02] That's the hole.

[17:03] I just noticed that's the hole, yeah.

[17:04] Yeah.

[17:05] I thought that was the snake's belly button and I was like snakes are not placental.

[17:08] They hatch from eggs and so don't have umbilicuses or belly buttons.

[17:12] But I was like maybe this is a cute snake with a little wittle booty belly button.

[17:17] That's possible, yeah, or a cool piercing or something.

[17:20] Yeah, the one thing that is unstuart-like about this is there's no arterial spray from that hole.

[17:25] That's true.

[17:27] Okay.

[17:29] Well, that's because that snake's cold-blooded.

[17:31] So all of his blood froze and it doesn't flow out.

[17:34] Oh, I see.

[17:35] Yeah.

[17:36] The rattlesnake finally found a mate.

[17:39] Later, the pair of rattlesnakes had a clutch of eggs, which resulted in a group of identical baby rattlesnakes.

[17:46] On that fateful day when the boy rattlesnake was run over by a truck,

[17:52] the driver was not obeying the don't tread on me flag.

[17:57] The baby rattlesnakes were there to take the boy rattlesnake's place.

[18:04] Wow, there's a lot to unpack right at the end.

[18:07] This is just like the parts in To the Lighthouse where the events of the family's lives are just kind of glossed over

[18:13] while we hear about what's going on just in the house and how the furniture is settling and the dust falls and the light.

[18:19] The natural world, it works at a different pace than each of our individual little minor blink of the stories.

[18:28] And like in To the Lighthouse, it kind of touches on the idea of the son overtaking the father.

[18:36] Oh, yeah. Generations taking their place.

[18:39] What I like is so that so that cliffhanger of who shot the rattlesnake is never answered.

[18:44] It's just never answered. Some yokel, I assume, wearing, say, like overalls with one strap undone underneath.

[18:50] It's like a peekaboo long underpants. He's got a straw hat and a piece of straw in his mouth.

[18:55] Kind of scraggly long white beard. No mustache. Just on the chin.

[19:00] Just a chin. Possibly a clay jug with three X's marked on it.

[19:04] Possibly, likely. And now he's going to take it back to his wife.

[19:10] His name is Snuffy Smith.

[19:14] I mean, but these are all these are all just moments in this rattlesnake's life.

[19:18] Like we're just getting snapshots of this rattlesnake's life.

[19:20] Well, I like how you say on that fateful day when the boy rattlesnake was run over by a truck.

[19:25] Now that assumes that this was inevitable. Like we all knew this was going to happen.

[19:29] It's foretold in legend. It's like Ragnarok.

[19:32] We all have trucks coming for us.

[19:35] You didn't clarify. Then it's a parenthetical phrase.

[19:39] The parenthetical is the driver was not obeying the don't tread on me flag.

[19:44] I like that you felt like you needed to explain why a truck might run over a snake.

[19:50] No, I took that as like a punkish little jape from young Stuart.

[19:54] Kind of like, I guess he wasn't looking at the flag since he did.

[19:58] I mean, he didn't just he didn't tread on that rattlesnake.

[20:00] He ran right over it.

[20:01] It's not like his truck, instead of wheels, just had four feet that were treading on things.

[20:09] It's not Fred Flintstone's car, in which case you would not want to drive over a rattlesnake

[20:13] because it can still bite you, but in this case, and the image of course to describe

[20:17] for the readers, there are just two lines delineating either side of a road, very Vemelmans

[20:23] in how simple it is and yet how evocative, and the top half of the rattlesnake and representing

[20:30] the fact that it has, I guess, been crushed is just a few dots where it has been separated

[20:35] from the rest of its body.

[20:36] I will say this must be a very large rattlesnake based on comparing it to the road size.

[20:44] This half of a rattlesnake crosses most of the road.

[20:48] It's possible it's a bike path.

[20:51] It is an eastern diamondback rattlesnake.

[20:54] I believe they can get pretty big.

[20:56] I saw a diamondback in my neighbor's yard a few weeks ago, and it wasn't big enough

[21:03] to stretch across an entire lane of a highway necessarily, but it was pretty big.

[21:09] It was a sizable snake.

[21:11] That is terrifying.

[21:12] Do you have any pictures to back this story up?

[21:15] I don't have pictures, and therefore, we have to believe it didn't happen.

[21:19] I imagine that the rattlesnake, in its final death throes, managed to crawl into the bike

[21:24] lane maybe in the hopes that it could get some strength from a passing bicyclist, and

[21:30] that's why the road is so narrow.

[21:33] We get some strength from a passing bicyclist?

[21:35] Yeah, you know, bite onto the tire and let that air just puff it up.

[21:41] Or like he would bite one of the bicyclists, they would die and turn into a turkey leg,

[21:45] which he could then consume to get his energy bar up.

[21:50] We did sort of address this already, but I do want to talk a little bit more about how

[21:55] this book ends.

[21:56] Yeah, it does end on a cyclical note, the idea that, of course, it says the baby rattlesnakes

[22:04] were there to take the boy rattlesnake's place, just reminding us all that it's all transitory

[22:12] and that we're all interchangeable, basically.

[22:14] It's something I remind my dad about every time I see him.

[22:19] They're identical baby rattlesnakes.

[22:21] Each one, at the spur of a moment, you just pick one up, doesn't matter which, they're

[22:26] all the same.

[22:27] One of them dies, toss it away, replace it with its son, and that's how God treats people

[22:32] too.

[22:33] We're all the same.

[22:34] Now, I wouldn't recommend picking up those rattlesnakes, Elliot, just as a tip for you.

[22:39] Burn a snake handler, die a snake handler, that's my motto.

[22:45] So yeah, that was Rattlesnake, a work of fiction by me, obviously TM, TM, nobody can steal

[22:51] Rattlesnake from me.

[22:54] I think I wrote a follow-up that was basically romancing the stone, but from the snake's

[22:59] perspective, I think it was like a what-if scenario where instead of Michael Douglas

[23:05] killing a snake, the snake survived and then became the hero of the story.

[23:10] Hmm.

[23:11] Now, that is very intriguing and I don't know if I have a copy of that lying around, but

[23:18] maybe this is just the kind of teaser that this podcast needs to, I don't know, get into

[23:24] the big leagues?

[23:25] How do you get into the big leagues of podcasting, Dan?

[23:27] Well, I assume it involves big league chew in some way.

[23:31] Yeah.

[23:32] Especially if the person hosting is already a famous celebrity.

[23:35] Oh, okay.

[23:36] Well, I'm not that and I'm talking, we're doing a podcast where I'm reading a book about

[23:42] a rattlesnake I wrote as a child.

[23:44] Yeah.

[23:45] While standing in your storage room.

[23:47] While standing in my storage room, yep.

[23:50] Living the dream.

[23:51] Now, Stuart, I like that.

[23:53] It sounds like even when you're young, you had found your muse, which was snakes.

[23:57] Uh-huh.

[23:58] Yep.

[23:59] And so what other snake works are you working on now?

[24:02] How else are you telling the story of the life of a snake with the more mature storytelling

[24:06] tools you now have in your kit?

[24:08] That's the thing.

[24:09] I mean, like, I guess the next step, I've already done a rattlesnake and I think the

[24:18] Romancing the Stone rip-off was about a bushmaster, which is also a snake.

[24:24] Maybe I will have to do a cobra, but I have to do research because clearly this book was

[24:33] clearly well-researched.

[24:34] I mean, I mentioned an Eastern Diamondback, I mentioned how the mating ritual involved

[24:38] a special rattle, I used region-specific dialogue from the yokel who shot the rattlesnake.

[24:48] Now, Stuart, you did mention that your teacher raked you over the coals for no bibliography,

[24:57] but do you have a grade on this?

[25:00] Do you know what you got for this?

[25:02] I have a post-it note that's stuck on the inside of this book.

[25:10] The post-it note has the image of a rose on it with a little bird carrying it, and it

[25:15] says, For all you do, this bud's for you.

[25:18] I'm like, it doesn't relate to my story at all, but that's okay.

[25:22] Here's the note.

[25:23] The note says, Stuart, I like the humor and the way you drew the pictures, but there was

[25:32] no bibliography and only two communications.

[25:38] I don't quite know what that means.

[25:40] So it was a dot, dot, dot.

[25:43] I think there was a second note, and the note is gone, so we're going to have to figure

[25:47] it out ourselves.

[25:48] As literary criticism goes, that's not the best I have read.

[25:53] I think that the book itself surpasses the critique.

[25:59] Thank you.

[26:00] Thank you.

[26:01] I mean, it's rare that criticism is better than the art that it's critiquing.

[26:05] Let's just be fair to the teacher on this one.

[26:08] It's rare that someone's like, I love that movie, but did you read the review of the

[26:12] movie?

[26:13] I mean, I would hope that there's been movies that our podcast has covered that people prefer

[26:19] our podcast to, but.

[26:21] Yeah, but I wouldn't compare your book to one of those movies.

[26:23] Come on.

[26:24] Thank you.

[26:26] That's really why we did this, so you guys would admit that my book is good and should

[26:31] be turned into a movie.

[26:33] So Hollywood, call me up.

[26:35] So Stuart, who are you going to cast as a rattlesnake in the inevitable movie now that

[26:38] this book has heat on it?

[26:39] John C. Reilly, obviously.

[26:41] That guy's great.

[26:42] He can do anything.

[26:43] Also, he, you know, he's got a kind of energy that I'm into and like, I could see him, you

[26:50] know, like I could see him like fighting for fighting for love, fathering children and

[26:57] then inevitably dying.

[26:59] Now I get what you're saying, but do you think he's sinuous enough to be a snake?

[27:05] I mean, if we're just basing it on sinuosity, you'd have to be what, Doug Jones?

[27:11] Yeah, I think.

[27:12] I mean, he's pretty much the only sinuous actor in Hollywood these days, you know?

[27:16] Yeah.

[27:17] What do you think?

[27:18] Do you think that there's parts that are being written and they're like, Doug Jones type

[27:22] and they're like, oh, it's like the evil skeleton, parentheses, 20s, Doug Jones type.

[27:31] Hear all the stories.

[27:32] Man, now I want to fucking watch this movie.

[27:33] You hear all the stories about actors going in and auditioning for roles where they're

[27:45] like described as like X type and they are X themselves and not getting the roles.

[27:53] But I cannot imagine somebody going in and be like, and like Doug Jones going in and

[27:56] be like Doug Jones type and like not getting it.

[28:01] That's exactly what happened with the movie X vs. Sever, which was described as an X type

[28:06] and X did not get the part, strangely enough.

[28:12] Weirdly, Sever played X and X played Sever.

[28:15] Yeah.

[28:16] Well, that was a little game they played.

[28:17] They made a bet with each other.

[28:19] So, yeah, so I think Doug Jones, he could play the body of the snake and maybe John

[28:25] C. Reilly does like the voice.

[28:26] Yeah.

[28:28] But then they also have to mocap the face because, I mean, I need John C. Reilly's face.

[28:34] There's a commercial that plays during Jeopardy every night in Los Angeles for the lottery.

[28:39] Do you guys have the same commercial where it is a human finger with a man's, or maybe

[28:43] it's for a casino, a human finger with a man's face on the end of it and he's going to press

[28:47] like a casino touch screen and it is the most frightening thing and it's on TV every night.

[28:52] It's this giant finger with a man's face on the end going, ah.

[28:58] Do your children wake up with nightmares from this face finger?

[29:03] Oh, well, I wake them up and I say, come in here, I got to show you something.

[29:07] Yeah.

[29:08] And then you say, think about that.

[29:10] Think of what hell it would be to be a finger.

[29:14] Not to change the subject too much, guys, but while we're here, I might as well tell

[29:16] you about this dream I had last night where I met Chris Hemsworth at a kid's soccer game

[29:22] and my son invited him to come to lunch with us and he asked us what we were going to have

[29:26] and he was probably seven and a half feet tall, eight feet tall in this dream.

[29:29] He's a hugely tall man in the dream and my son goes, pizza, and he goes, yeah, I could

[29:34] go for a pizza, sure, and I'm like, when am I going to talk to Chris Hemsworth about it

[29:38] at lunch?

[29:39] And that's when I woke up.

[29:41] So guys, what should I talk to Chris Hemsworth about at lunch if should I have this dream

[29:45] again, you know?

[29:46] Oh, jeez.

[29:47] Oh, well, I mean, you got to start with what he wants on his pizza, right?

[29:52] I mean, that's going to get exhausted pretty quickly because we'll order the pizza.

[29:56] I mean, you know, to tie it in, you could talk to him about the snakes of Australia.

[30:00] They have a lot of the world's deadliest snakes there.

[30:04] That's very true.

[30:06] You should ask them if they have any pizza toppings in Australia that we don't have here

[30:13] in America.

[30:14] Do they twirl the pizza in the opposite direction when they're tossing it in the air?

[30:20] Yeah, that's a good one.

[30:21] Yeah.

[30:22] Probably what happens, they throw it at the floor instead of up at the ceiling.

[30:23] Yeah, sure.

[30:24] Yeah, that's what the Coriolis effect is.

[30:25] That's why they've never eaten pizza in Australia, because they're like, ugh, it's on the floor

[30:36] now.

[30:37] No, on the floor.

[30:38] Forget about it.

[30:39] Yeah, it's like when somebody scores a touchdown in a football game in Australia, they throw

[30:42] the ball in the air instead of bouncing it on the ground.

[30:44] Yeah, they throw it up there, and when they sneeze in Australia, the spit goes back into

[30:47] their heads.

[30:48] Everything's backwards in Australia.

[30:49] Oh, that's great.

[30:50] Yeah.

[30:51] Yeah, in Australia, Bizarro is called Superman.

[31:02] So Australian listeners, I know that we have quite a few based on our breakdown.

[31:07] If you aren't angry at us, write in and let us know if we're accurate on this.

[31:14] Yeah.

[31:15] Okay, well, thanks for letting me read my book, guys.

[31:19] Oh, it was wonderful.

[31:20] It was wonderful.

[31:21] Thank you for sharing it with us.

[31:22] Yeah, thank you for having your authors reading with us here at the Flop House.

[31:26] Uh-huh.

[31:27] Yeah, you guys got the exclusive, and we're part of the MaxFun Podcast Network.

[31:33] Our normal episodes are, I don't know, slightly more focused than this.

[31:38] Thanks to our producer, Jordan Cowling.

[31:41] Thanks to my friends, Dan McCoy and Elliot Kalin, and I am author of Rattlesnake, Stuart

[31:47] Wellington.

[31:48] Maximumfun.org, comedy and culture.

FH Mini 18 - Rattlesnake!

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