DC News, Bill and Ted 3, and Smart Home Security

Hey you guys, this is The Mask, and you guys

are listening to the Geekcast Radio Network.

And you know what? You are smoky! You are tuned

in to Steve Megatron on Altered Geek. Hello and

welcome to Altered Geek. I'm your host, Steve

Megatron Phillips, and in this episode... It's

been cold. I don't know about you guys, but I'm

in the Midwest, Michigan. It's been f - freezing

so anyway we're gonna talk about a variety of

topics in this episode from the google home to

a lot of film and uh... uh... television news

and uh... yes some some other things to along

the way uh... so we got a bit of news uh... for

one Matt Reeves the Batman gets June 2021 release

date, which means they're finally gonna actually

do something. Yeah, so they've given it a June

25th, 2021 officially and in the studio is also...

dated a rebooted Suicide Squad, which James Gunn

is in talks to direct for August 2021. Yeah,

and there's gonna be other things, but yeah,

Affleck is pretty much done as the Caped Crusader.

It just remains to be seen who they're gonna

cast to be Batman, and obviously they're gonna

go younger. It's just knowing who they're gonna

cast. One of the ones that that I had thought

of a while back was like Jensen Ackles or somebody

from Supernatural, but he's even kind of starting

to get up there so funny enough boss logic says

Since Matt Reeves is looking for a younger Batman.

I think they should give Robbie Amel a test shot

because quite honestly like He kind of looks

like he could play a pretty presentable Bruce

Wayne and Yeah, I would be down with that actually

he almost like think he could play it like Either

Bruce Wayne like young Bruce Wayne as Batman

or like a Terry McGinnis Either way, I'd like

to see what they do with it But yeah, I think

that this could be very interesting dynamic if

they went with that for him to be Batman but

yeah it's a little sad Affleck didn't get much

more under his belt and getting to use the role

and whatnot but you know it's it is what it is

and DC's kind of botched their entire superhero

universe so they're having to restart everything

from scratch other than Wonder Woman and Aquaman

which are really their only two that they have

going for them at the moment. That and Shazam,

which doesn't even play into the same continuity

until they decide it does. So, yeah. It's a little

interesting, anyway. And then, of course, they've

teased Margot Robbie's new Harley Quinn look

for Birds of Prey with kind of, it looks, I don't

know, more 80s, in a sense. They gave her more

of an 80s haircut, pop star looking thing. Had

a, like, see you soon short teaser video for

the female driven Birds of Prey film. And it

looks happy or not, like so drug induced as the

first film of Suicide Squad. So yeah, we'll see

what they do, but it's a very 80s... Styled Harley

Quinn, so Yeah, we'll see how this comes to play

but Yeah, they're gonna have Decent cast of people

that are that are well -known like Mary Elizabeth

Winstead and Ewan McGregor and Yeah, Winstead

is gonna be playing Huntress and Black Canary

is gonna be Journey Smollett Bell And Renee Montoya

is going to be played by Rosie Perez to save

Cassandra Cain, who is Ella J. Basco from The

Black Mast, which is McGregor. Honestly, sounds

interesting, and I'll probably check it out.

It's more interesting than what I thought it

was going to be, just based on even that bit

of small information. but Yeah, well, we'll see

how it comes to play out that I suspect we're

gonna see a lot more of that as time progresses

and Yeah And then agents of shield like I haven't

paid attention the show and forever and they

Dropped a new trailer and they're saying did

of the agents of shield trailer spoil Avengers

endgame and It gives like shields new look with

Mac as their head of the organization Daisy quake

back Yeah, they've got some things with you know,

very You know the the shield being out in the

open and kind of policing the world with You

know the whole thing with endgame you know basically

the world expecting them to to kind of play it

out yeah and of course Nick Fury, Spider -Man,

Maria Hill are back in Spider -Man Far From Home

so they're saying that SHIELD will get some kind

of a nod and game probably and then they they

showed Phil Coulson, Agent Coulson but he was

a hologram at the first part And up until the

final shot the entire trailer was about how Coulson

died then at the end Coulson is back and They're

saying that he seemingly has no recollection

of the organization. He was a part of which Probably

means that they're either universe jumping or

they're taking something from Captain Marvel

with the Cree or the scroll Yeah, because he

had Cree blood before. But yeah, the show will

probably, you know, explain how he's back because

it's obviously not the same Phil Coulson considering

he had his hand chopped off and the other one

died because of the whole, you know, super blood

thing, scenario, something. I don't even know

what happened in the last season because I didn't

watch. I kind of gave up on it. But... Yeah,

it would be interesting if he was from another

dimension or another, you know, basically because

the snap of, you know, having the two maybe two

different Marvel universes colliding upon each

other. So like the the dead, you know, taking

place at certain points in time. It gets very

convoluted with the whole snap situation which

of course Kevin Smith thinks that Spider -man

far from home could technically take place before

infinity war began which I could see that too

because The whole thing with the with spider

-man getting on that He gets on that that bus

to go over to the field trip in Far From Home,

and he does the same thing in Infinity War, which

leads me to believe that they take place concurrently.

The only difference is he's not present because

of Infinity War, if that makes any sense, and

then... With Endgame and reversing the snap and

changing history and changing everything else,

it could in essence nullify Infinity War and

Endgame for all those except for the ones that

are going to meet their fate in the film. Thus

setting spider -man on his correct course before

he got the iron spider suit and Therefore sticking

with his original suit in it or basically partially

upgraded suit in far from home So I could see

that too. It's just it remains to be seen how

how all this plays out either way I plan on checking

them all out But yeah Disney is finally gonna

take over Fox and have them be expected to be

complete by June. It took forever, man. On comicbook

.com, they have this strategic growth and transformation

drive of Disney's acquisitions. And it says,

under Mr. Iger's leadership, Disney has created

tremendous shareholder value driven by organic

investments and successful integration of key

acquisitions. And then they show in 2006 Disney

agrees to acquire Pixar and it starts showing

them going up a little bit and then it started

to taper off you know in 2009 because they really

didn't have anything that was decent and you

know pirates and John Carter and all these other

things like flopped like a fish and then Disney

in 2009 signs an agreement to acquire Marvel

Entertainment and then it gets higher and it

gets higher and then it starts to taper off again

around like 20 you know mid -2011 before 2012

and then Disney agrees in October of 2012 to

acquire Lucasfilm which I predicted like four

or five months before I even saw anything about

it. Somebody brought it to my attention. I think

it was Optimus Solo on a GCN Wars episode of

Star Trek for Star Wars. And then from there

on, it just progressively climbed and climbed

and climbed and climbed until 2015. And then

it started to sink a little bit and then jumped

back up at the end. And then it started to sink

around 2016. And then in 27 or 2000. 2017, if

I can speak English, Disney acquires majority

ownership of BAMTech, whatever that is, which

really didn't do much for them. And then in December

of 2017, Disney enters into a definitive agreement

to acquire 21st Century Fox, which I didn't think

it was gonna take that long. And then... June

of 2018 Disney enters into a revised agreement

to acquire 21st Century Fox and then finally

They're going to Fully integrate by June and

close and everything else But they're saying

that basically Igers from 2016 or 2006 to 2019

has driven the company's Acquisition and shareholder

return up 485 percent which is insane. Oh man,

yeah, that's crazy. But yeah, it's only gonna

keep climbing with their new Disney Plus app

that comes out later this year and seeing how

that plays out and seeing whether Hulu... In

Netflix and how all these services lose all of

the Disney and Marvel Lucasfilm Fox content Libraries,

it's gonna be a little bit insane. I foresee

Fox will stay on whatever platforms it's on for

now until Disney gets fully up and running But

I could imagine that they're gonna power on through

that pretty quickly So yeah, we'll we'll see

how that goes One thing I'm kind of excited for

is... It's terrible because I like reprisals

of old cast movies, but Dumb and Dumber -er kind

of tuned me out to that. And it's kind of sad,

to be honest. But Bill & Ted 3... Might release

this Christmas says the producer of the film

and and they've got You know the executive producer,

which is Steven Soderbergh, and then they've

got Keanu Reeves and Alex Winder returning they've

talked that Sadler will be back as his death

in this one because the film's gonna be called

Bill and Ted face the music So yeah, I'm I'm

pretty excited about that because They're gonna

have kind of a cool dynamic and it's supposed

to be pretty fun. I wonder how they're gonna

pull off these two old guys trying to act either

young again or... Yeah, because they're basically

supposed to be, as far as the plot's concerned,

that it picks up with Bill and Ted. basically

doing the daily grind of middle -aged, you know,

family men, and in fame and fortune of rock star

life has yet to hit their band, you know, the

Wild Stallions and the lack of success manages

to create a tear in time which then sends the

pair off on an all -new time -traveling adventure

to set things right once more. And they've talked

that they might have them run into their past

selves from the first movie when the thing first

shows up. um so yeah it'll it'll be interesting

to see how this thing kind of takes place and

and uh um what what they do with it um so no

on the other hand sequels that don't need to

happen space jam 2 that's out there too i just

i can't i can't even fathom it um But yeah, it's

crazy. So we did have something interesting happen

this week, other than the fact that I'm closing

in on one more week of work despite the giant

frost going on of the polar vortex in Michigan

and in the extreme cold weather. They just had

a energy company have some... facility fire and

they're telling people to turn their heaters

down to 65 degrees instead of actually having

it warmer in their house because they can't sustain

the grid they've got. variety of problems going

on now technically I shouldn't even have my computer

on and should be in bed or something and have

the lights off and all that fun stuff but yeah

they asked because of the natural gas and everything

else that's going on that it's supposed to help

everyone keep power as they figure this out and

in the polar snap is supposed to be over mind

you I'm recording this on a Wednesday so the

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday are supposed to

be the worst days of this whole polar vortex

scenario, mostly between the Wednesday and Thursday.

And Friday is supposed to climb back into the

20s and then Saturday it's supposed to climb

into the 40s again and then stay in like the

30s and 40s after that. But yeah, it sucks. And

so by the time this episode comes out... The

whole the whole advisory thing and the whole

polar vortex will be done thankfully, but yeah,

it's it's been Obscenely cold and then plus the

fact that because it's been cold one of the locations

of the business that I work for Now mind you

I have two weeks left now at the time this errors

and will be one full week left of work before

I'm unemployed and The one building keeps closing

because again customers aren't going to leave

and aren't going to go to the store because the

one day it was open this week that didn't do

very well and then He owns a few other businesses

and so I was able to go into one and do like

IT maintenance on computers and then and work

on the websites and work on the social media

for the other stores for the food stores and

everything and so I was at least able to go in

and keep busy, although I should have been able

to work from home and still get all my hours,

but he's like real weird about it. Never mind,

I did it for like a year and a half and I still

did all my work and wanted more and they just

didn't have it. So I've lost considerable amount

of hours already, which is going to be terrible

on the next check. But yeah, so I'm launching

My own business Now mind you I'm still looking

for regular work and if the right opportunity

comes along pretty much anything that's got decent

pay decent hours and good insurance I will be

taking that in a heartbeat, but I will still

be doing this as a side project Outside of that,

but I am trying to do it as my main hustle right

now because there's nothing else going, no phone

calls, nothing. So I'm launching my scp21studios

.com, which I've had since 2012 but I've not

really done much with it. In 2016 I got a DBA

for it. So you can go to the website scp21studios

.com and you can see a variety of the things

that I've done. It shows the websites I've built,

it shows the some audio stuff I've done, not

all the podcasting of course, but there's a lot

of stuff there. It shows some of the computer

stuff I can do, it shows some of the video stuff

I can do. So and a lot of the graphics heavy

on the graphics. So if there's things that you

guys need or you want or like I do podcasting

services, whether it's distribution, whether

it's the website aspect, whether it's editing

or helping you construct your your craft or give

you pointers. And by no means like a a. Hardcore

professionally paid podcaster, but I've been

doing this for almost 12 years actually have

been doing it for 12 years and I like to think

that I've picked up quite a bit of things along

the way of what I've done wrong what I've done

right what I should have been doing the entire

time and so It's it's something that I'm very

passionate about and and I've actually spent

uh 20 minutes after one of the Alternate geek

spotlights conversing with one of the guests

and he was like so how many episodes have you

done and I was I told him I'm like I'm gonna

record episode 316 and he's like whoa he says

you've been doing this a long time and I says

well yes and no I'm like I have a variety of

shows I've done a lot of different styles a lot

of different topics a lot of different opinion

pieces a lot of different interviews I says I'm

just kind of playing now And so like I'm having

fun doing the interviews because it's something

different. And I'll probably get some higher

profile people on after a while. Not that the

people that I have on aren't great because they

are. But I am looking forward to more voice actor

interviews again. And it's been fun to explore

this side of things and kind of... discuss things

with people that I normally would not have met

had I not done this podcast guest experience.

So yeah, it's a lot of fun. But back to the SCP

21 studios, I will do podcast art, I'll do graphics,

I'll do things for the website, I do things for

print. The health food stores kind of help me

branch out to things that are not geek related

and come up with art, which... At times can be

difficult But it's not something that I can't

figure out. It's just it's it's just going in

that direction So yeah, I've been having fun

with that I've been doing that and I Really need

the money so I'm gonna have to do these as a

side hustle for a while and kind of figure out

how it's going and I've been applying to a lot

of jobs. So we'll hopefully I'll find something

But yeah, I thought I would throw that in there

as a little bit of a update slash teaser. I am

going to have an article in a local magazine,

which is kind of cool. It's freelance, so I would

love to write for other magazines or online platforms

and get paid too, but there must be something

about me because I don't get phone calls back

and I don't get... emails back a lot of the time.

I get ghosted a lot, which is unfortunate, but

I don't think it's just me. I think it's kind

of the whole market as a whole. But on a lighter

around with the Google Home with my kids and

funny enough, I tricked our Google home. It was

really funny because we were standing there with

the kids and a lot of time we'll be like, hey

Google, play this. Hey Google, do that. And then

it will. I've tried to trick it and ask it questions

and it's got a voice print for my wife and I

thought I wonder and so I'll do like I've done

like I discovered I can do a Pat Butchram impersonation

which I learned from which is my impersonation

of Rob Paulson's Pat Butchram voice So I'll I'll

actually walk around doing that just because

it's funny and and I'm like it's it's something

different Or I'll roll into crying or something

else variety of different voices anyway, you

know, I'll talk to the smart speaker in in those

voices and So I discovered that the Google home

can misidentify a person if you change your voice

to sound like someone else point in case I purposely

sounded like my wife. I took on her cadence and

how she speaks and how she says particular words.

And the Google Home thought I was her. But if

I talk like myself, it doesn't recognize my voice

and then says that It doesn't recognize me. I'm

not a You know one of the the program voices

and So I posted this on Twitter and booth ninja

goes feature because I said security issues and

he says feature and puts the the laughing crying

Which I could see that is both but I think it

could be a security issue if you can change your

voice and then trick the device because I was

like He you know like hey Google. How old am

I and then it it told me how old she was like

based on birthday and then it you know, you know

says what's my name and then it'll it'll said

my wife's name and then and then I deep in my

voice like this and It's like I'm sorry. I can't

answer that question. Just like if you ask it,

you know, what's my address? It won't answer

you if you don't have the voice pattern But if

you say where am I at right now, it will give

you the address It's just how you ask it and

it's really weird I may do a demo with that sometime

when I'm like solo in the house or something

and try it out, but I think it's funny But yeah,

that's that's that's kind of what's been going

on Lately I've got a few things that I'll probably

talk about on the next episode don't really want

to talk about it right now because one I don't

have a co -host and it's just Getting late and

I have multiple episodes to record. So Yeah,

it's it's fun times fun times But yeah, oh and

I also I also Guested on a podcast from Hank

Davis which you may remember from Tiger Prince

Entertainment TPE and Yeah, he he's doing a series

on podcasting for People kind of getting into

the medium and there's a lot of these things

going around like You know like the New York

Times has a beginner's guide to getting into

podcasts which In all honestly you got to take

with a grain of salt when they come from any

of these like corporate entities because They

don't fully understand the platform. They don't

understand the podcast. They don't understand

like, yeah, they gauge them by success of the

podcast and like how much ad sales and how much,

you know, downloads it gets because, you know,

a radio show is converted into a podcast or they

have a different, you know, they come up with

a particular chunk and kind of call it a podcast

and it's, and while they may be podcasts, they

don't fully understand the medium. And that's

why all these companies like half of them are

jumping ship and half of them are climbing into

the podcast market after these other ones left

and so it's it's just It's There's plenty of

room for everyone to play I think the problem

is is all these ones that are these corporately

backed entities get most of the the first looks

whereas they may not be as just as as interesting

and some of the other ones that are very niche

or kind of buried in the mix and not powered

by big money. And so it gets difficult. It really

does. You know, depending on what you're looking

for or, you know, not looking at, you know, looking

at particular standards. Like some people are

like, well, I have to have the NPR standards.

But I also want to hear voices. So yeah, it's

just finding what you want. And you can ask them

Google Home too if you know the name of a podcast.

Like I can say, hey Google, play Altered Geek

or play Altered Geek podcast. Now if you ask

it about play a podcast by Steve Megatron. It

will play all things Transformers. I discovered

this earlier and it tells you the name of whatever

the file is or whatever the episode is. Now you

can't skip it unless, I'm sure you can if you

play for Google Play, but if you don't, it plays

the first most recent episode of any podcast

just on the free plan. I don't know what it does

if you pay for it because I don't intend on doing

that. It's funny regardless Yeah, I it's such

a fun device to mess with and and so I Recommend

that people just have fun with it. Try it out

and see what they do Same token you probably

should be careful what you say because I'm sure

a lot of it gets recorded, but yeah Regardless,

it's it's fun. So I think I'm gonna call it a

night on this podcast, so until next time, you

can get a hold of me on the Twitters at SCP -21

or AlterGeek and get AlterGeekGeeky with the

AlterGeeks.