‘Salem’s Lot – Stephen King – Episode 35

The Buddies sink their teeth into Stephen King’s 1975 classic: ‘Salem’s Lot. The Buddies stayed on brand  chatting about topics ranging from WAP to Jesus. This wasn’t the Buddies favorite book but much like Stephen King they found themselves going off on random tangents discussing food and movies. Grab a stake (steak?), say your Hail Mary’s, and join us as we take a bite out of ‘Salem’s Lot.

Intro: (0:00-1:46)
 Stock Up/Down (1:47-30:00)
 Favorite Scene (30:01-32:03)
 Favorite Character (32:04-33:23)
 Love/Hate (33:24-48:14)
Listener Email (48:15-50:11)
Casting the Movie (50:12-54:36)
Conclusion (54:37-56:57)

Next Book: THE GIVER by LOIS LOWRY

Transcript for SEO purposes 🙂

All right. Welcome buddy Book Club. I’m Dylan, here with the strayker to my Barlow. Keith, what’s up? I got that exact same thing. No, you didn’t. All right, we’re on point. We’re already aligned. Well, here at the Buddy Book Club, we’re breaking down Ben a seller. This week we’ll be discussing Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. If you’d like to recommend a book for us to read or reach out to us about any past episodes, you can visit our website buddybook.com, or sign to our GMs on Twitter, Instagram, buddy. Book a podcast. You can listen to us on itunes and spotify. So please download and subscribe. Keith, this is our second Stephen King book. This second. We only did the body. Yeah. So we did one short story, and now we did a long story. So here we are. And I think the sale is pretty much about how if you have unprotected sex, your girlfriend is going to turn to a vampire and you’re going to have to stab her in the chest. So wrap those boys up, right? That is correct. That was the moral. At least I’m a big subtext guy, and that’s the subtext I got. Well, the key, too, is if your son is missing, I would definitely be worried. Unless he’s with a priest, then you’re okay. If it’s your 13 year old boys with a priest, no big deal. I appreciate you bringing that up because it wasn’t in any of my stock up stock downs. But this book was written before the movie Spotlight came out. But Callahan comes back to how, like, no, just tell your parents, like, you’re with me after hours, and then I’ll go back and I’ll tell them that we saw a vampire, and you’ll nod, agreeingly, and they’ll be fine. Sounds pretty rapey to me. Well, let’s jump into the Stock Up, stock down for sale and slot. We did this book because it is becoming a major motion picture. It was supposed to be released actually, this month, but it got pushed out. So if you want to read the book before the movie comes out, check it out and then listen to us and then watch the movie. Hit it three different ways. Like a porn star. I was thinking like DDay, but yeah, I don’t even want to excuse me. He said hit it three different ways. Oh, my God. Where’s your head at? All right, let’s get to stock up. My gun. Stock up. What do you get for stock up? Stock up. Catch 22. So I don’t know if you’re familiar with the book. I’ve never actually read it, but it’s long. I believe the whole premise is that I think they’re flying over is it Vietnam or World War II? I think it’s World War II. Like the whole catch. 22. The principle is that you have to be crazy in order to be, like, flying over and bombing there. But if you go and tell someone you’re crazy, then you can’t be crazy because you’re rational. Like, you know you’re crazy, right? So that’s the catch 22, I think. Okay, but anyway, so the catch 22 in this book is let me get to the real point here, is that you have to be insane to think that vampires are real, but the only explanation is that vampires are real. That’s the whole fucking book. It’s 80% of the book. The problem, too, is that we know vampires are real. We’re reading we’re seeing the other side of the coin, so we know they’re already real. The whole book consists of them talking about our vampires real. I’m like, I know, I know already. What’s the point of reading this? Sorry. I’m not going to get angry because I didn’t really like this book very much. Isn’t that kind of what the whole premise of vampires or zombies or stuff like that is? That when someone’s trying to tell you, like, hey, we can stop this, like, they’re vampires. We can stop it, but in our rational world, it’s like no, but it wasn’t like they were screaming it from the rooftops, right? They were so worried about their ego and their reputation, and they’re just, like, bashfulness about whether they can tell anyone about it or whether they even can believe it, or they’ll be deemed crazy that they don’t do anything. So the two things are you either call the military, call a town meeting, tell everyone we have vampires here. They don’t listen. Fine. At least you tried. At least you did something. What they did was meet together, have debate club, whether things are real or not, as the whole fucking town gets vampired, and then they don’t do shit. So you either go all out, or you just leave the town and say, I don’t give a shit about these people, but they toed the line of, like, well, I don’t want my reputation to be hurt. Who gives a shit about your reputation? These people are dying in this town. What are we doing here, dude, man, for one, I appreciate you turning vampire into a verb that needs to happen. I don’t know if verbs and nouns and all those things are well, you said they got vampired, so that’s the thing. Well, how else will you say that, I don’t know, attached my vampires, whatever. But additionally, that’s kind of one of the interesting conversations I thought that happened in this book was between Matt and Ben. When Matt’s trying to convince Ben that vampires are real, that’s what happened. When he had the whole situation with Mike. And Matt was saying, what you’re saying is like, we got to call the National Guard. We got to do this, we got to do that. And Ben’s like, they’ll throw you in the loony bin. They’ll say, what the heck are you talking about? That doesn’t make any sense. Isn’t that worth it, though? It is, but if you’re in the loony bin, and then no one does anything anyways. How are you helping the cause? You’re not. So Ben says they have to come at it from a rational perspective. They have to convince people to basically rationally play this out in their head. All vampires do exist. They are real. Because if someone bursted in my front door right now and said, there’s vampires in the street, you got to get out of your house. I’d be like, hey, buddy, I don’t really have anything valuable in here. The town population is slowly dying, and you don’t have any reason for it. Isn’t everything on the table for what it could be? Yeah, there was a lot of deaths. We have a small town. There’s a death every five years, and now there’s ten deaths in spite of a week. It’s like, wow, vampires. Let’s back it up, you crazy person. This is a better theater than anyone else is bringing to the table. I did enjoy it. I like, yeah, so a lot of ducks around those pots lately. I don’t know what’s been going on. All right? You could also just be like, you have the people up in the mansion. What was it called? They’re all spreading fucking some new disease. Who gives a shit? Just make something up. It doesn’t even need to be vampires. Just say these people are coming at night and attacking people with some fucking disease that we don’t even know of. That’s not the first time that has ever happened. You can just shape it in a different way. It just seemed like they had this Malays of, like, whatever, we’ll figure it out. I don’t give a shit if all these people die while we do it. I just don’t want my ego to be hurt. I don’t want people to think I’m a crazy person. Yeah, that’s worth risking. I get it. The Marston house, I get it. And I think that that probably would have been a better move, is like, get Dr. Cody involved early, which they did, and then pretty much say, hey, some sort of crazy flu or fucking covet hit in 80. Whatever the case is. Like, everyone’s got to stay indoors. Don’t let anyone in. If someone asks to come in, don’t let them in to at least get ahead of it. But I mean, the town like you said, there’s a general malaise that just is in the town, and people weren’t really interested. But I get the catch point too. It makes sense. Stock up. Ben’s not really tied to anyone. Him and Susan should have just gotten to a car and just drove away. Just been like, we’re out of here. Take your parents. Get the fuck out of there. Everyone’s like, you’re crazy. You’re crazy. I’d be like, all right, we’ll see you later. I already tried to tell you, but what are you going to do? All right, my first stock up is comic books. Because without comic books, mark Petrie would have been dead halfway through the book, and pretty much the whole thing would have gone to shit. He would have gone and unlashed the window to let Danny Glitch in. Fortunately for him, he’d been reading those monster novels, and he knew all the shit he was so on top of everything in terms of this guy’s, how to identify vampire, definitely don’t invite them in. How to defeat vampires. He was on top of all of it just from reading comic books. And question for you, did you ever read comic books? I didn’t. I did read the Sunday morning comics. Oh, the funnies. Okay. But no, like, actual comic book comic books. Have you ever seen a comic book? They’re, like, not just pictures. They’re like paragraphs sometimes. Yeah, I used to be big on it. DC comic book specifically. I could read Spiderman comics, or I could just watch the Spiderman show, which is great, or X Men show, which is great, or Batman show, which is great. So that point I would rather take the option of watching it. That’s the opposite of what this whole podcast is all about, though. We should just do a movie podcast instead of a book podcast. This is movie people listening, getting into books, not the other way around, not being snobs that are reading. You’re in a Catch 22 right now. Yeah. Either way, thank God for comic books, because it saved Mark Petri and made this book 16 hours, which is exactly what you wanted. What else do you have for stock up? Got you stock up. Drinking, use cases. What? Mike Ryerson? Yes. My boy, the guy that basically is feeling lethargic, he’s not feeling great. It basically sounds like he has cancer or something that’s going on. Right. He basically can’t get up during the day. He barely can move. Sounds more like mono, but yeah, or mono. The first thing you think of when all right, this guy sounds like he’s about to die, is you go to the bar. Right? That’s the first okay, just we’re on the same page here. So instead of going to the doctors, which doesn’t make any sense, you go right to the bar, where he runs into an educated man, Matt Burke, who immediately tells him, Stop drinking. No, he doesn’t do that. You go to the hospital. No, he doesn’t do that. Yeah, just come back with me. Whatever. Not a big deal. I think you might have been by a vampire, but whatever. I don’t care. Just come back with me. Yeah. Don’t go to the doctor. Go drink instead. The other thing, too, that I wanted to point out is that Ben at one point says, oh, I can’t drink anymore because I can’t write after a couple of pomp. Which I mean, considering Stephen King wrote the character, and Stephen King said at one point that he doesn’t remember writing one of his books cujo. Cujo. He doesn’t remember it because he drank so much during it. This Ben dude grew up, buddy. Figure it out. You’re not a writer if you can’t drink on a couple of Pops. You’re not a writer if you can’t write. After drinking a couple of Pops and taking a couple of toots, you’re just a loser. And smoking two packs. That’s that’s lubrication. We call that swing juice, aka finger juice type juice. I don’t know. Yeah, it works. I’m going to get into my next stock up, which is a convalescent protagonist. Pardon. Bless you. Like when there’s somebody in the book or movie or whatever that’s resting and recovering or for some reason is bedridden, but they kind of act as the researcher or whatnot I was thinking, like when two neutrons or protons go together, like a convalescent bond. Covalent. That’s covalent bond. Not the same thing. Classic mix up. Definitely different. But yeah, that’s pretty much like what Matt Burke is in this, once he has a heart attack. And I always enjoy it, whether it’s like Rear Window, where he’s kind of stuck in his room but looking at stuff or talk about comic books. We got Barbara Gordon, aka. Oracle and the Batman comics. Oh. Denzel in the bone collector. Have you seen the bone collector? No, I haven’t. The reviews didn’t look very good for this. It’s a good thriller, but basically he ends up in a hospital bed, and he’s, like, trying to figure it out from his hospital bed. Got you. So I kind of like I like that kind of character. And especially when they’re trying to figure out what to do. Matt’s kind of the Bill Belichick in this situation. He’s getting everyone to his hospital bed saying, okay, here’s the whole stuff with vampires. Here’s the plan. You guys do this, you guys do that, break, and then everyone goes out, does their thing, and then comes back to him. I wish there was a little bit more of, like, Barlow actually trying to attack him in his hospital room. That only kind of happened one time and didn’t really but he’s kind of the head of the snake. So if they were able to get him, granted, his bum ticker eventually got him, but if Barlow was able to get him, that would have been the move. But I just like, the idea of this guy is kind of behind the curtains but pulling all the strings. Although there was like 50 pages of them planning. And Matt being like. Here’s all the things we’re going to do. And then they don’t do any of them. And we hear all the 50 pages of him planning it out. And it’s like. Why did we even hear this if they’re just not going to do any this isn’t one of those in a movie where they’re showing that’s a quick flashes of them showing planning things. And things go awry and they have to change they were just like. No. Never mind. It’s not doing that stuff. Or when at the end it’s like, okay, cool, but now let’s split up. And you guys go to March house and we’ll go to Match. And then they’re all like, oh, shit. That was a bad idea. Also, he made 300 stakes. What happened to those stakes? I feel like there should have been a montage of just Ben making stakes in some basement. Do you think they were medium? Medium, rare, medium? What do you think? A-K-E-S different. Someone else ate those. You know, talking about different things, I have one quick one and then the biggest one. Kind of shame that you didn’t say the other one, but the first one, the quick one. Sunday as a nature day. Mark’s parents don’t go to church on Sunday and said they spend their time in nature. Take a hike, walk on the beach, whatever. Stock up to that. Neither of us. Although we both grew up I think you grew up going to church and stuff like that, right? Yeah. Did you do confessions? No, I only did because I think you have to when you get confirmed. Yeah, I didn’t do it before I get confirmed. It was so uncomfortable. I was like, oh, my God. So, yeah, I did that one confession. It was super weird. I think it was mean to my sister or something like that. And he’s like, all right, say two Hail Mary’s, get through the screen and touch my penis and you’re good. I heard the guy being like, what else did you though? I was like, what? You breathing deeply in there. What the fuck? I thought you didn’t do confession. No, I did when I was, like, ten. They force you to do it all the time. And I remember them always being like, Tell me more. I was mean, my sister. And they’re like, no. What else, though? What else? You think about other things. I’m like, what the fuck is going on here? It’s like trying to go on The Tonight Show or something. Like, okay, have a funny story for us at the supermarket the other day. It’s like, okay, what else you got? What else you got? What else you got? That’s it. I don’t have any funny shit that happened. Yeah, I know. And also, how many bad things can you do when you’re like, ten years old? You’re not really doing anything. Exactly. Well, it brings me to my next stock up. Jesus, the man himself. Because all the defenses against vampire have Christian overtones. I mean, except for garlic. Garlic probably that’s known to my pythons. But Mark and Susan knowing the Lord’s Prayer by heart is the equivalent of, like, an armful of grenades when you’re fighting vampires. So huge. Stock up to Jesus, because without him, these guys all would have been screwed. Turning crosses into all this stuff. Father Callahan should have been way stronger component to battle the vampires. Granted, he did kind of save Mark in that situation, and his story kind of was weird. I wondered what happened. That’s in my hate as well. But Keith, I have to ask you. We kind of discussed this earlier, but are you 100% sure vampires don’t exist? No, I’ll never say anything doesn’t exist. Exactly. Like, you just never know. So tell the listeners out there it might be safe to just learn the Lord’s Prayer. Like, just in case. I’m going to make sure I’m not going to keep a silver bullet in case there’s werewolves. What else do we have to worry about? Dracula? Where was Frankenstein? Sex with someone? Otherwise you’ll have to drive a stake through their heart or something. I have no idea why that didn’t make any sense. Is that something of vampire lore that they needed to include? Yes. I wasn’t sure about that either. Did you have sex with her? Now you have to kill her. It’s like, what, so we can’t kill any people that are married? He’s like, Father Kelly and I already drove my steak into her, if you know what I’m saying.

Yeah. Okay. So Jesus, stock up. Let’s get this stock down. Keep it for stock down. This one’s a long rant, probably again, but suspense. Stock down. Suspense. Yes, suspense. Not suspenders. That’s what I thought. Okay, beginning of the book, this is the audiobook. I don’t know if this is the actual book, but we have Stephen King talking about the plot of the book. The plot consists of a vampire in a small town and taking over and all this stuff. And I’m like, oh, I didn’t know that was the plot, but okay, whatever. Not a big deal. We couldn’t say that for the end. So I can go in without realizing this is a vampire book. That’d be nice, but we get that immediately. Then we go right into the prologue, which is two nameless figures, quote unquote, which are clearly by chapter, like two you know who the nameless figures were? What was the point? You had been doing that. Oh, really? I thought that was Barlow. The whole time they were, like, checking the newspaper, being like, what happened in that time? Yeah, and they described his characteristics as, like, a tall, tall, dark, and handsome. And then the kid obviously there’s only one kid that’s followed pretty much the whole book. It’s obviously him. Well, I thought it was maybe like they turned Mark and now they were like, vampires, and they described him as a writer. You knew that right away? Yeah, I forget stuff immediately upon listening to it. There’s just zero suspense. So I knew right when he meets all these people, these people are all going to die or they’re not going to make it out of the town. So when Susan died, that should have been a huge, like, oh, my God, susan died even though she’s character was kind of fucking vanilla ice cream. Vanilla’s delicious. It should have been a big shock, but it wasn’t. It was just like, yeah, obviously everyone’s going to die except these two people. I mean, it would be like going to a ten course meal and the person being like, by the way, the end. We have Terry Masu. It’s the best in the country. It’s the best we’ve ever had. Everything else is okay. Here’s a salad. And you’re just like, fuck, I just want that tame. Now you just have that in the back of your head. That’s the only thing that matters. The ending, and it’s gone. This book should have been anti mystery. That was the genre. Anti mystery. There’s no mystery. There’s no suspense. Just a story that you already know the ending, too. Yeah, I guess. I didn’t know you were a huge fan of Tiramisu. Now that I know I’m a big tiramisu guy, yeah. Okay. Good to know. Thanks. I appreciate that. Over. God damn it. 90% of the reason I like books and like, movies. The payoff. You’re looking for the payoff. And like, books that don’t have much of a payoff. And that’s why the Taylor Jenkins reads or did I say your name wrong? Taylor Jenkins. Yeah, whatever. Those books are, like, impressive to me because there wasn’t this crazy big ending. It’s not like Daisy Jones six turns out her and what’s his name, our brother and sister or something. Yeah. So I was like, oh, I really appreciate this because I liked it. It’s not my typical but this one would be a typical genre. But they literally just crucified it to say the Christian theme. Yeah. Stigmata. Okay. My first dock down is cardi B. So Whoop, you’re familiar with that tune? That number? Yeah, totally. Stolen from Charlie Rhodes, the bus driver who must be one of your favorite characters. They got the bus driver who was like, the curmudgeon that was pissed at everybody. Oh, yeah. There’s like, 50 side characters. I don’t know how you ever keep track of any of that. Go on. But he called at one point. He referred to the principal of the school as a wet ass principal.

He pretty much coined the Whoop phrase. And then Cardi B makes a song about it, and it takes over the country. Yet Charlie Rhodes is just vampire version of charlie Rhodes is just sitting there and his bus pissed off because he didn’t get any credits. I was also wondering I don’t know, my brain is weird. So after reading that, I couldn’t sleep that night because I was thinking like, what is a wet ass? What does that mean? I’m, like, thinking about this principle. He’s like, oh, it’s a wet ass principle? Like a wet blanket. Is that what we’re talking about? Sometimes if you get out of the shower and maybe you don’t take the blow dryer to your butt or spread in front of the AC for a minute. Right? Well, that’s normal. You’re walking around a little warm down there, and it’s uncomfortable. So it’s just like, uncomfortable. I’m confused, but either way. Wet ass principal coined by Charlie Rhodes. Fuck you, cardi b. Stock down. Hey, let me ask you something. When you’re in the shower, where is this going? Now? Do you face the shower head or you turn your back to it? Both. Equal opportunity employer. Really? Okay. Usually, apparently this is like one of those unspoken things, but half the population hits the shower on their neck. The other half hits it on their chest. I probably spend 65 35 pointed away. But initially you get in and you do the whole thing. I mean, I couldn’t imagine just, like, facing the shower the whole time because I like to have my eyes open. Yeah, I’m 95 hitting the neck and then like 5% quick. Yeah. Hey, listeners, vote in or call in. Let us know. We’ll put a poll. Yeah, put a poll up. I got a system for everything. I’m just a little bit of a psychopath, especially with eating stuff. I eat a twix. I usually shower. No, I just mean, like, in general. If I’m eating a Twix, I have a system for that. I eat all the chocolate off and then the caramel off, that kind of thing. And I was even sitting with the SGF the other day, and we were eating peanut. Eminem is watching a movie, and she’s like, how could you possibly eat these? In a weird way, because she almost tried to break my stuff. I was like, well, my system is you suck on it until the candy shell starts to break. You’re a crazy person. And then you squeeze it. So you get all the shell off, and then you suck all the chocolate off, and then you eat the peanut. And she’s like she’s literally like, you’re absolutely psychotic, and I should be with you. I have the same system in the shower. It’s just not with all that other sucking stuff. You got to have a system. It’s all about having a system. So my system involves facing and not facing the shower head. What else do you have for stock down? Stock down. Education and openmindedness. Let me get to it. They want to enlist Dr. Jimmy Cody, james Cody, my boy, into vampire fighting crew. They’re basically getting the boys back together, getting the vampire crew. But they’re like, I don’t know how he’ll react. Matt, the teacher, specifically, he’s like, yeah, when I taught him, he was like a bright eyed, bushy tailed, open minded guy. But now that he went to medical school in college, I don’t know if he’s going to be open minded anymore. And the reason he says that he might not be open minded is because he might not want to go tell the parents of the clicks that just had one of their sons killed and missing. The others just died randomly from some anemia thing. They don’t know about that. Jimmy wouldn’t go and tell them, I’m going to dig up your kid, by the way, pick up his grave and just go through his body again. Let me do that. That’s why he’s not open minded, because he wouldn’t possibly think to do that. It’s like, pardon me. That’s what makes you closed minded, as you wouldn’t fucking pick up a twelve year old’s body from the grave. I’m following. And I also think that was kind of weird, but at the same time, I could see his thought process in that your imagination is open as a child and you’ll believe anything, and then if you get into medical school from a doctor, you’re just like, no, I’ve read studies. Like, this is just not the case. It must be rabies or it must be this. There’s all these other different options that aren’t vampires are taking over our town. That’s true, but I just thought it was funny that like, hey, go tell the parents to dig up this twelve year old body. It’s like, what? It’s like, oh, what, are you fucking closed minded now because you went to college hotshot. Pardon me. Oh, college boy doesn’t want to dig up a grave. Wow. My ex hockdown is home alone. The movie not being home alone. This Barlow guy has Macaulay Culkin beat. I mean, yeah, Home Alone is a classic, but Barlow has not one up. He’s got three up on Macaulay Culkin. We all thought booby traps such as flying paint cans or blow torches or bricks to the face. Where the top of the line? Because our boy Barlow definitely disagrees. His process, instead of Macaulay Culkin’s process, his process is he kills the lights in the whole place. Right? So there’s no lights, can’t see anything, gets rid of all but the top two stairs going down to the basement, but leaves a little more hand rail. So if you can kind of see it from the top of the stairs in the fading outdoor light, it’s like, okay, there’s a full set of stairs here. Oh, contraire Montrerar, there aren’t. There’s only two stairs. So that was really smart, in my opinion. And what’s at the bottom of your fall, though? Is it feathers, paint? Something silly? No, it’s a slew of kitchen knives pointed straight up so when you fall, you are impaled by six sharpened wust off knives. Let’s just say that the Wet Bandits or the Sticky Bandits, whatever Home Alone you’re going for, these guys wouldn’t have lasted 2 seconds in the Bar Aloe house, all right? Home Alone would have gone from an hour and 36 minutes to an hour and ten minutes. Yes. No joke. Especially because this book takes place during the Vietnam era. This is like a Bouncing Betty or some crazy Vietcong trap where there’s just spikes in the ground like some straight rainbow ship bungee sticks. Bungee sticks. I think that’s what they’re called. I dig it. I mean, there’s all sorts of crazy stuff going on. It’s P-U-N-J-I pungeysticks booby traps steaks in the ground. Oh, cool. Good to know. Yeah. So maybe Barlow spent some time on Hamburger Hill and the Mekong Delta, but either way, he got it figured out. Stock up, Barlow. Stock down, McCalley. Culkin. Sorry, buddy. So why are they not bringing, like, candles and flat? They know these vampires, like, only weaknesses. The sun. And they’re like, all right, let’s just show up to these place. We’ll just turn the lights on when we get there. Yeah, no, I thought that too. It’s like, why does anyone have a flashlight? And then they’re like, hey, where’s Ben with those 300 stakes? And then you just smash cut to Ben, like, 50 stakes in just, like, still sharpening stakes in the basement. They need 300. I still don’t get it. The whole point of the stake is it’s reusable, right? You stab someone and then you pull it out and you stab them. I mean, I get having more than that. Maybe he was making a list of people that they’ve slept with so they could kill them. Because otherwise you wouldn’t be able to kill them, right? That was what we learned. Right? Got 300 stakes. This Ben guy must have been quite the Coxman. Did you have any other stock down? Yeah, last one, I think you did this last week, but policing or police officers knocked down? We have a lot of stock down on police, but we got this officer, Parkinson. Gillespie. Yeah, I love Gillespie. He’s kind of a dickhead right away, right? He’s like, hey, Ben, where you been? He’s like, hey, Bad Ryan, you’re new to these parts. Yeah, you’re new to these town, therefore you’re the one main suspect. He just comes out and tells him. He’s like, okay. And then so he goes out and does all his research, calls up the FBI. He’s doing some good police work. Then they come to him and they’re like, yo, the town is overrun by vampires. They’re like, oh, yeah, you know? He’s like, yeah, I don’t really give a fuck about this town. It’s like wait, what? Where’s this apathy coming from? It made literally no sense. They made this carcass or glass Beam. We actually are in his head at some point. And he seems like a normal police officer that wants to protect the town. We get fucking 700 pages of random characters that don’t matter. We get one sentence to describe why he doesn’t give a shit about it. He just says, oh, like these kids growing up, they care about their movies and things. I don’t care about this town anymore. What? Where is the turn? What is this? It doesn’t make any sense. Damn. Why are we reading 18 hours? And we get one sentence to describe why someone just doesn’t give a shit anymore. Why d man he’s like, well, Ben, ever since you pulled up the skirt of that, there Susan naughty. This whole town has been a changing. Yes. Sleeping outside of marriage. We can’t have that in these parts. It’s New Hampshire. Where’s your New Hampshire? I have one accent. It’s Australian. Next to the southern. Yes. God damn it. That put me over the edge. I was so upset when I was like, what are you doing? I’m sure that somebody who’s, like, really smart is going to say that this has some sort of subtext with the whole Vietnam stuff going on. Just the change of the way that the young folk were back then with the change of the 60s going into the 70s. But for me, I’m with you. It didn’t make any sense to me. I was like, hey. I thought he was going to be like, all right, I’m going to grab my double barrel shotgun and we’re going to go up there and I’m going to kill vampire. Let’s get into some favorite scene. Did you have a favorite scene in this book? It’s 16 hours. You better pick one. I like the Mark Petri bully scene, which had nothing to do with the book. I also like the graveyard scene where the person that’s buried the Glitch kid is like, talking to him basically like, yeah, dig me up. That was Mike Ryerson. Oh, was that him? Yeah. Okay. I liked him. Well, I liked the bully scene. I also think the bullying scene is important to set up Mark’s character so that you know that, yeah, he might be like bookish and whatnot, but he can still fight. And he’s smart. He knows that I got to put this bully down and keep him down. I would almost like to better that he gets beat up by the boy and he keeps coming because he’s like, I don’t give a shit. People are bigger. They’re stronger. They’re faster than me. I’ll keep persevere. And that would have made more sense for him. I know that it doesn’t make a lot of sense logically for you with Matt Burke realizing Mike Ryerson is a vampire. Or like the bar scene before that then leads to his house where he realizes he’s a vampire. I enjoyed that as like, okay, here’s the set up for the vampires. Now, the vampires are really in this book because it was like 10 hours in. So I like that one. And I also liked probably my favorite was Ben and Dr. Cody when they sit in on Marjorie Glick. I think this is probably the most cinematic, like, scary, horror cinematic when she wakes up from under the cloth and attacks them. They have this huge fight with her in the morgue that then leads to Dr. Cody getting bit and him having this whole system that he’s going to do to not get the vampire Jews inside of him, which somehow works and was genius. I just thought that fight was fun. And when this comes out as a movie, that’s what I’m probably most excited to see. Or like him cooking up those 300 steaks. Yeah, all this stuff is happening. And they have like sometimes those movies do like two boxes. Like you can see both things happening on the screen. It’s like 24. Yeah, exactly. So one box is like, all this stuff going on. The other one is just like ben, sharpening stakes. Pick your character. Who’d you have for your favorite character in this book. There’s a lot to choose from. I already said Mark Petri. I mean, Percy beats up that bully and then he’s like, all right, I’m going to go over to this house and kill the vampire. He’s just like, I’m taking a shit in my own hands. He didn’t have to fucking do 13 book club meetings like we do here to determine if there’s vampires or not. He’s just like, oh, yeah, there’s vampires. And then he just takes action and just do it yourself. Be a gamer one time so people don’t die. He does that and then he escapes too. Yeah, I mean, marks my character as well. But I thought that they probably should have called a little bit more cavalry or had a little bit more going on besides like one cross that they were then going to go into the Marston house and just like, kill the King vampire. Maybe have a little more susan doing that on her own. She was doing it on her own. And she ran into Mark, who was also doing it on his own. But Mark was like, yeah, I’m a gamer. That’s the difference. Susan was like, oh, I think there’s a vampire here. I’ll go check. By sneaking up there by myself, none of that really made any sense. But I did enjoy his references to Houdini when he’s okay, I got to stress out my whole body to keep the knots loose so that when I destress, I can get out of them. That was all good. Love hate. Let’s get into love. What You Love About Salem’s Lot by Stephen King. I never understood why books had photos of the author on them until this book. Ben’s just casually walking around the park and then see some girl reading his book. And he’s like, I assume he points to the book cover and it’s like, that’s me. That’s huge. You know what I mean? Like, that’s a big upsell. That’s why you do the cover photo? Yeah. Before he pointed to it, he did drop his pants. He dropped his pants and said, that’s me. Do you recognize this? Yeah. I thought that’s some good insight into an author’s mind of like, this is why I got put the cover photo in case I see someone reading it. And I could be like, that’s me. By the way, it is kind of weird. I never thought about that. The paperbacks, they usually have, like, the author’s picture on the back, and then in the hardcover, it’s, like, about the author, and it’s on the back inside flap. I’m never really that interested. Maybe it’s just because the Internet is there now, so if I’d look it up but I guess in the past, you do want to know a little about the author. But imagine Stephen King having, like, 50 books, and it’s like, about the author. It’s like, okay, yeah, I know the guy. But imagine if artists, you sell, like, a painting, and then they put their picture next to it. This is me. I painted this. It’s kind of weird. It is weird. It is weird, but this is why we don’t have pictures of ourselves anywhere. Well, I guess on those videos you make me do. But outside of that, we got to sell an image here. You’re the face, but you just won’t put your face out there. I keep on telling you, you want this podcast to somehow get less downloads. You put my face out there, and we’ll start doing that. I disagree. Impressive. You look wise. I look like Striker. You are the striker of my bar love. What I loved about this book was the word pervert instead of pervert. Did you catch that? Yeah. I didn’t understand. I thought they just read it wrong. The audio book, which I’ve done before. That’s what I thought. Maybe it’s just, like, some weird there. It’s like a New Hampshire thing or something. So I looked it up. Although perverted is a word, so I guess it makes sense. But isn’t it? It’s perverted, isn’t it? Oh, is it? I don’t know. It’s a good question. Yeah, it’s perverted. It’s not preverted. Okay, I’m missing it wrong. Okay, great. Yeah, perfect. I liked prevert, and according to the Internet, it’s a quote unquote humorous alternative to pervert, but it doesn’t really make any sense. Like, wow, is that funny? I don’t understand. So I just enjoyed it every time they said perverted, it kind of made me chuckle. What else did you love? I thought this was kind of funny. The guy gets bit, and he’s like, I liked it. I got an erection from it when he was getting bit by the vampire there. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s the opposite of what would happen, right? If you’re losing blood, wouldn’t you? It’d be the opposite viagra right? Maybe your blood is just trying to run away from the neck wound, and it just goes to your penis. Although I think didn’t we say we read some book where the guy dies and gets an erection, and that’s actually a real thing? Yeah, I think so. But also, it didn’t make sense, too, because he’s like, oh, I really enjoyed it. It’s like, I don’t need a piece of cake or a piece of steak and then be like, oh, man, I really like this, and get an erection that’s not the same thing. It’s like enjoyment and erections. Unless I’m doing it wrong. I mean, sometimes I do, but not every time. Well, yeah, causation and correlation aren’t the same, so you’re definitely doing it wrong. But that’s not why. I think the point is that when the vampires, when they lure you in and they use their other powers and whatnot, it’s like part of their poison in a way. It makes you feel like you don’t want to fight back you’re down for whatever happens. It’s like poison ivy and Batman. Yeah. And because vampires are almost like the opposite of I just said yeah, even though I didn’t listen to what you said. I’m sorry, that was rude. But vampires are like the opposite of God. They’re like Jesus or whatever. It’s like there’s a sexual nature to it. So it checks out for me. It checks out. Okay. And I hope that if I ever got bit by vampire, I’d hope that I’d go out with a boner. Speaking of vampires, my second love here is just classic monsters. Whether we love this book or not, I enjoy something with just some classic monster vibes, so I don’t need these crazy creations and whatnot. I mean, I like some of those, like, obviously Predator and stuff like that the Terminator, those are really fun, but you just rarely get this kind of classic monster movie, classic monster book. And this one was done in the most classic way, meaning it’s not like fast zombies, like in 28 Days Later or something like that. This is a pure vampire book. It’s really just Bram Stoker’s Dracula taken into this sleepy New Hampshire town and let him run amok. So I like that they kept it classic, and it’s something that I thoroughly enjoyed. And when it comes to these kinds of things, I’m thinking vampires and werewolves are two things that I thoroughly enjoy. Not a big Frankenstein’s monster guy. Mummies. The mummy. Brandon Frazier. What’s up? The Whale. People love it. Mummies don’t really do it for me, so I think vampires is probably my top one. What else, Jeffrey? Love a couple of quick ones. Rolling up the sidewalks means closing the businesses. I thought that’s cool. I like that saying, shutting the place down. Yeah, they say that a bunch of times, like, right before they roll up the sidewalks. And I was like, oh, so the sidewalks like grass and they roll it up. Or I couldn’t figure out what that meant. I was like, oh, okay. Yeah. I wonder what the etymology is of that. Or entomology, whatever the thing is, I wonder where that comes from, because I bet you before there were sidewalks, like the local business was responsible for putting some thing out in front of your store. Interesting. I like that my last love is just fucked up shit happening in a sleepy town. It’s a trope, for sure, but it’s a trope. I can subscribe to. It’s definitely a Stephen king thing. Whatever Stephen King book you’re reading, it’s probably happening in some sleepy town, and all of a sudden shit goes crazy. Just you see this town, it’s like everyone knows each other, and then all of a sudden, everything runs amok. I enjoy that. I like that trope. I’m down. Especially if you’re a classic monster in there. We’re good. So I enjoy that as well. Do you have any other loves? Just that people take sleeping pills when they’re in terror. They take sleeping pills and laxatives, which I did not know as a thing. But I’m going to test that out next time. I’m a little worried. Wait, what? During the book, they’re like, typically people in terror would take sleeping pills and laxatives. And I was like, wait, what? No laxatives? But hey, that’s from Stephen King’s mouth to my ears. No, to your butt. Right? But yeah, interesting. I feel like when you’re scared, I mean, the phrase is I literally shit myself. So I feel like you don’t need laxatives. It’s just going to happen. When you get nervous, you get a stomach ache for sure. So maybe that just helps release it. Yeah, okay. I can dig it. Well, what did you hate? Let’s get into it. One of the biggest things was we’re 14 hours in. I wrote this as a note, and I basically was yelling this note when I wrote it. He goes on that dietribe about what everyone eats in the town. We’re 14 hours in. Literally. The plot to be summarized 14 hours in was there might be vampires. That was 14 hours of there might be vampires in this town. Nothing had literally happened. You don’t get a subplot when you haven’t done shit for 14 hours. You would not get that. You have to buy that from me. You know what I mean? You have to buy a sub story. You can’t just fucking throw that in there for no reason. If I’m reading a big, long book, like if you’re reading Brandon Sanderson, right? He’ll do some of those subplots where it’ll just be a side story. That’s fine. He earns that. He earns that from me. He does enough in the plot to get to that. You’re allowed to do that when you haven’t done shit for 14 hours. You don’t get a sub plot. I’m fucking pissed about this. I was reading that, yelling like, what is this bullshit? Get to the story where 14 hours in, you haven’t done shit in this book. Sorry. You get it. The subplot is to give you a break from a roller coaster, not to like, we’re on the fucking track still. That hasn’t moved. You can’t give them now a break from that. Yeah, it’s like the subplot is like the flat part of the roller coaster after you already been through the worldly worlds. And unfortunately, they were still on the flat part. And it was like nonstop flat part. And then I was like, Wait, what? I agree. I did, like, early on. I think it was like, chapter eight or chapter nine when it talks about the town and set up those characters, I was okay with that because I was like, okay. It’s really setting up the vibe of this town who does what whatever. He’s very concerned about the setting and the people in it and to make you feel like you’re immersed in this town before it goes to shit. But it took so long for it to go to shit that I forgot all of what he talked about. And then 8 hours later, we’re talking about what people are eating. And I was like, Wait, who were these characters again? Am I supposed to remember these characters from 8 hours ago? Because the focus was just on these people. I think it’ll translate better to film where you can kind of do the quick cuts of someone sweeping under the shop and turning the sign from open to closed or whatever the case is and showing the woman with her binoculars peeking out the window. And those are the intros, as opposed to these, like, long I mean, this is very Stephen Kingesque, I feel like. But these kind of, like, long moments where it’s like, okay, I get it. I don’t need to know what they’re having for how they like their steak. He likes it rare. It’s like, this person likes the medium rare. This person provides whatever. It’s like, oh, my God. I get it. Yeah. I mean, I was known as for a lot of this book, but in The Body, he earned it. You remember that pie story in The Body that has nothing to do with him? I was like, that’s cool. Yeah, it was great. But this did not earn well on the side. I’m reading Moby Dick, and it’s half earned because the story was really interesting. But then I was actually, like, outside gardening the other day or whatever and put on Moby Dick, and there’s an entire chapter just devoted towards the identification of and the species of all different whales. It was like an hour to 2 hours of this is a right whale. This is a killer whale. This is a blue whale. Is it even accurate? Like, are you just hearing stuff that’s no longer actually well, exactly. And it’s like, from what this guy’s gathered from talking to other sea men, so it’s like, Wait, what? We’re just going through the genus whale and just going through everything. It was fascinating. As someone who likes that animal stuff, I found it to be somewhat interesting. But for the book itself, I was like, Where is this coming from? It’s like they just stopped. The book took an encyclopedia of whales and just stopped it in the middle. Very similar. But he had kind of verdict in. The story was better if I had a nickel for every time I got it up semen, it would be a lot of nickel. So I had a lot of unnecessary characters. My other hate was the Barlow killing climax. We go through this 16 hours book, and I’m like, ready for this huge battle. This is after the whole Cody falling into the knives and like, okay, this is going to be a wild battle to actually kill Dracula. And I don’t know if I wasn’t in the right mind space or something, but I feel like I just missed it. They just took his coffin out of the base and brought him outside and stabbed him and was like, all right, that’s it? Is that what happened? I didn’t really know what was going on, honestly, between that and the priest. Just like, all right, I guess I’m leaving. I was like, wait, what happened with him? What’s the story there? It just seemed like the build up for these characters didn’t make any payoff. Yes, Callahan got bit, but he wasn’t a vampire or he didn’t get bit. He was just like one of his undead. He made him face his past, which must mean that he was touching kids in the past, right? That’s the only answer. What could he have done in the past that was so bad that he had to face that he had to leave the town once he faced it again? Yeah, but they also said early on, when the callaghan thing can talk about your thing, about how the suspense stuff callahan, he says, I’ll never forget that moment. Even in my later years. I’m never going to forget this moment or whatever. It’s like, okay, he lives, but then he lives as, like, one of Dracula’s or like, Barlow’s. Not vampires, but students kind of things. I don’t know. It was a little weird. He apparently comes back in other Stephen King books, but like, okay, yeah, cool. Okay. Did you hear anything else? Susan dating a dude in the town in a small town for a year and a half and then just up and deciding, I’m going to date this Ben mirror guys, and said it’s like, grass is greener, baby. Yeah, I’m like, that’s kind of a especially in a small town. That’s kind of a dick head move now. Well, I live in a small town, and let’s just say JK. Rowling came into town and she was flirting with me. I’d be like, sorry, babe, I got to go. There’s this billionaire freaking writer that wants to hook up. Like, see you. I get it. Imagine the bedtime stories. Oh, my gosh. Imagine just having her read you. Actually, I want Jim Dale reading me. Harry Potter. I’d married. Yeah, well, that’s true. Can you produce a story and then have Jim Dale talk about it? I don’t know why, but all right, fair enough. I guess TJ arca coming to town. But also, she didn’t break up with him or anything. She was just like, all right, I’m dating this guy. And then the guy is like, what the fuck? Keeping her options open. Listen, that’s fair. But also, Sammy Hunt wrote a song about breaking up in a small town. And you got to take that to heart. I don’t know, actually. You don’t know Sam Hunt’s song. Break up a Small Town let’s give it a listen. Country music guy. Yeah, but he’s like country pop, so it’s good. My last hate is, where are the bats? Where are the bats? We’re talking vampire stuff. It’s classic vampires. Where are the bats in this story? They don’t even really reference it. I was waiting. They opened the basement door and like a bunch of bats fly out. Nothing. No bats. They embrace all the other vampire tropes, but they don’t embrace bats. It made no sense to me. I wanted to march the house to be filled with bats in all the trees. And then Ben mirrors becomes Batman. Oh, nice. Ben man. Yes. That’s the origin story of Batman. Right? He gets scared of bats, so yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Checks out. You’ve got mail. This is from Bjorn Burke. Oh, nice. Where’s Bjorn from? I forget. But he’s a tennis player, so good for you. Bjorn, what is the best vampire bookmovietv show other than Twilight or well is that your pain? I’ve never seen them. Are they any good? I like some shitty movies and things like that. I saw some clips of that on TV. It was terrible. The dude became a really good actor, though. That’s in it. Pattinson yeah, he’s a really good actor. He was good at Batman. I actually liked him at Batman. Yeah, no, he’s great. Okay, well, probably number one is Blade. I mean, that movie was phenomenal. And it does not get enough credit. He is a superhero in the DC comic book franchise. So he does not get enough credit for kind of starting this whole superhero thing, the new run of superheroes. So that was really good. I appreciate when there’s a take that’s not like your classic take. What we do in the shadows, that was kind of fun because it’s like a mockumentary about vampires, but I didn’t love it. I mean interview with a vampire. People love true blood. Mine’s going to be a you’re going to go with that chick, what’s her name? You know, it underground or underworld or whatever. Underworld? Yeah. My girlfriend vampires and werewolves. Putting a note for it right now for a Ron. Tomato variance. 31% by critics, 79% audience score. She looks not bad in that movie. No, she looks amazing in it. I think the special effects in that, like the practical effects, do they not hold up? No, are phenomenal. The monster effects are really good. The movie itself is not good. I watched it this last year or something like that because I never seen it. And you talk about it, it was just like, very much whatever. It’s a good, shitty movie, Sunday kind of thing. But if it was between that and Blade, like, I’m taking Blade over that. All right, let’s cast this movie. There’s already been a couple of adaptations. A miniseries in 1979, another one in 2004. And now we’re in for round three, this time with Gary Dalbourne at the helm. He wrote on the It movies, which I really liked. And he’s done some stuff in the conjuring universe. So he’s into the horror vibe. So, yeah, I’m interested in this one. It was set to be released in theaters this month, which is September 2022 but has been delayed until spring 2023. The cast is set and it’s set with Louis Pullman at the helm as Ben Mears. Lewis Pullman. You might remember him from actually most recently Top Gun Maverick, where he plays Bob. Have you seen Top Gun Maverick? Yeah. Oh, my God. Talk about an erection. Phenomenal. Phenomenal. Three and a half stars out of four for me. I bled red, white and Blue when I was in there. He’s in that. And then he’s also in bad times at Royal. Yeah. So in both of those, he kind of played this, like, quiet, definitely introverted person where Ben Mears is definitely more cerebral. But he’s a go out and get him. I mean, he has sex with Susan in a park. Come on. Can you picture Lewis Pullman doing that? Do you think this is the right cast? I recast it with allMORE Alistairs. Go on. I went to John David Washington. This is a Denzel movie. If you made it right, like, with mystery and everything like that. Give me John Dale. Is that the guy from Tenant? Tenant, yeah. Are you thinking that’s a good cast, or what were you thinking? No, I didn’t really have a request for it. I was just more interested. I’m interested to see how he plays the part because he has to be a little more big swinging dick. You also have to remember these actors are all super outgoing and the most people are like drama people when every time they’re playing a shy person they’re just really good at acting. That’s all it is. You know what I mean? Yeah. For Barlow, we have William Sadler who you might remember from such things as oh, my God, he’s been in so many weird movies. He was in Shawshank. He was in the mist, which is another Stephen King movie. Shawshank is what I remember. Yes. Because that’s, like, what I do as well. He’s like in Diehard he usually plays, like, the bad guy in Die Hard Two. Excuse me. I don’t love him as a vampire. I mean, I think there’s been better Draculas. We have Gary Oldman played in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. He’s really good. I casted him. Did you really sparl out? Yeah. I was like I feel like he’s played vampire. Oh, that’s funny. He was. In the Bram Stoker version. All right. He’s running it back with him. But another interesting cast from this Salem slot that’s coming on 23 is Mike Ryerson. Our boy is played by Spencer Treat Clark, who, when I looked it up, I was like, I know that face. Where do I know that face? And I refuse to look it up. And it finally hit me. He’s the little boy from Gladiator. I was like, I’m so glad I figured that out on my own because I was wondering and yes, Gladiator. Yeah. He says it’s the exact same as kind of crazy. Yeah, because he’s an adult now. I was like, Wait, why do I recognize him? I went Mark Strong for Striker, who kind of fits the description. Do you know him? He’s a British dude. He’s in oh, he’s like the Kingsman stuff. He plays the bad guy. Yeah, he just looks like the description. Tall, skinny, bald. Yes, that checks out. That’s a great cast. They use the guy from Game of Thrones who is actually just at the end of Game of Thrones. Pelos bank. I don’t know how to spell his name. What about Burke? Did you have Burke? Matthew Burke? Oh, I probably should have cast him. No. I only cast his father callan. Okay, who’s here for Father Callan? Jean Hackman. I don’t know if he’s old enough to hold at this point, but I just thought that he’s like an Irish, like, drunk a little bit. I just seemed like, that fits me. I can dig it. I can dig it. They don’t have a guy john Benjamin Hall or something like that. I don’t know. Hickey, John Benjamin. Hickey. I don’t know who he is, but for Burke, they cast this guy, Bill Camp. Who? Did you ever watch The Queen’s Gambit? He’s the guy that teaches her how to play chess. Yeah, but it checks out. I think he’ll be really good in that role. I’d say, Would you recommend this book? But I think that’s a hard pass for me. Yeah, well, I remember telling you when we read The Body, I was like, I really liked it, but it felt like much longer than 6 hours. I was like, if it went a little bit longer, this I don’t know if I’d like it as much, but it was a perfect amount of length. This one was like, what would happen if he wrote a book that should be 6 hours and made it 18? I feel bad because last year I had read The Shining and I like The Shining a lot, and it’s like the same amount. It’s like a 16 hours book. And it does have dull spaces, but not nearly as much. And there’s a ton that goes down at the end. So I kind of feel bad that I suggested this one because it was coming out and it didn’t live up for me either. I really wouldn’t recommend it if someone was like, I’m a huge Stephen King fan and I’ve read all of them and I haven’t read Sam’s Lot. I’d say, well, go for it. But if someone said, I’m trying to get into Stephen King, what should I read? I would not say Salem’s Lot. I saw some article being like the top. He’s written 75 books. Insane. Cocaine is a hell of a drunk. The 75 ranked the 75. This was like 18. It wasn’t like you recommended one. That’s like sixty th it was like, this one is pretty well received. So I also think during the era when they had nothing to do that you’re just like, well, give me fucking 18 hours of reading. Yeah. Give me Stephen King’s vampire book. Yeah. Have you ever watched the fucking old movies in the 70s? They’re like three and a half hours for no reason. That’s what this is. Some of them are really good, but yeah, I know what you’re saying. So we wouldn’t recommend the book. We got there next up. So Summer Beach reads are kind of gone now. It is September. We got to start going back to school. So we’re going to do a quick run of back to school books. So we’re going to start with 6th grade reading level and kind of work our way up from there. We’ll probably hit a few of these and we’re going to start with the giver Lewis Lowry. Everyone read this in 6th grade. I feel like it deserves a reread. You definitely do. So we’ll probably have that coming out fairly quickly after this one. So if anyone listens to this and is interested, go pick it up. I’m sure it’s available at your local library. It was available on Libby right now. I didn’t even have to wait. So if you want the audiobook, check that out. Otherwise, go pick up a paperback. Well, this was fun as always, and I guess we’ll see you next time. Alright, bye.