Welcome everyone to 2 guys to the Dark
tower king Podcast podcasts red discuss the characters
and connections in the ever expanding universe that
revolves around Stephen King's Dark tower. I'm Jay
Russo,
and I'm Sean.
You can email us at 2 guys dark
tower at g dot com. Thank you to
our patrons for your continued support of the
show. In this bonus episode, we'll will cover
Missus Todd's shortcut found in skeleton crew.
Let's start the show.
Within a framing story, a main caretaker tells
us the story of an out of town
woman who is obsessed with finding shortcuts.
Because if you can save enough distance, you'll
save time as well.
When he finally takes her up on a
ride using a shortcut,
he encounters some very strange things.
Some very strange things indeed, Sean.
Your recap are getting more and more subtle.
I dig it. Jay, Missus Todd's shortcut was
first published in the magazine Red book in
May of 19 84, and then the next
year as part of the skeleton crew collection.
And as far as I could tell, there
might be 1 dollar baby film of this.
It's listed on the Dollar baby
website as coming soon and the last update
was 2015.
So it may or may not have been
finished, but
I think that this is 1 that could
have worked very well as a nice half
hour movie in the vein of a twilight
zone episode or an outer limits type of
thing
it it's set up very nicely with that
for that sort of format. Yeah. I really
like how compact
and tight the story is. It just basically
3 characters
and 1 of them is doing more listening
than anything. Yep. So it's really just 2
characters and an adventure that they go on.
Right It's it's great. It's just enough to
make this thing fun, interesting and really engaging
and no crust at all. Exactly. And King
uses a familiar structure that we've talked about
now on
many
occasions, and that's this framing story, and it's
not only a single frame but a double
frame. So we've got
the narrator of the story
on on the outside telling us about,
homer
and then homer are telling us the story
on the inside of of what happened between
him and missus Todd. So there's the the
3
3 levels of this story here,
which also works very nicely. Right? Because we
get a little piece of the story from
each 1 of those characters and each 1
of those stories along the way. And I
also wanted to talk about sort of this
nostalgic feeling, like, both you and I enjoyed
this story. Yeah. And how much
it really brings back peak king for me.
I think... Me too. Yeah. My first encounters
with King were via his short story collections,
and I really read those over and over
again. So I can't remember reading this probably
in 35
plus years. So it was like reading it
new and yet I had that feeling throughout
of, like, oh, yeah. This is what I
love about, King. Mh. Yeah. I'm right there
with you. I think I read this maybe
twice
but certainly not in the last 20 plus
years. And it's interesting. Like, for me, certain
short stories really stick with me and stand
out But then there's like, another, like, step
down in my memory banks, what I remember
the titles. Mh. And this is 1 of
those that I the title has always stuck
with me. Something about the sort of
esoteric nature of it. Like, what the heck
is missus Todd shortcut. Right? But has always
stuck with me. And I'm so glad we
reread this for the show because this story
was awesome. I loved every minute of it,
and I just kept it. Every time I
I read a line that I enjoyed every
time I saw a little bit of, you
know, king just piling on and doubling down
on the main stuff, and, you know, the
the old con saying, like, Ey and stuff
like that, like,
Yeah. This is king. I love it. You
know, and the story just on its own
just for those reasons and the nostalgia of
what I was experiencing in my life, the
last time I read this and now and
the connections that the story itself brings for
me. Just made this all the more enjoyable.
Yeah. And within the story, there's a nostalgia
as well. So we... The the first framing
story is the narrator telling us
about a discussion he had with his friend
homer, which was 2 years prior, and in
that discussion 2 years prior,
overt tells a story of what happened.
I think it's at least 8 or 9
years if not further back when he first
met missus Todd and and learned about her
shortcut. And within that story, there's this nostalgia
for
what things were like in Small town maine,
Mh. With the out of town coming in
and home being a caretaker and what their
thoughts are on the out of town, how
they're not as interesting as they think they
might be and how they live a different
type of life than the the small town
folks of of Maine, but also sort of
the pieces of that life.
The 2 of them are sitting in a
on the porch of a of a general
store basically, Right? When the story takes place.
But they're rem about the way cars used
to be and the jobs they had when
they were kids,
and
just sort of life in general. Mh. And
just by the nature of the small town
or how small the town is,
everybody still kinda knows everybody. So everyone knows
who misses Todd is. Everybody knows her husband.
Everyone, you know, There's a level of being
in each other's business that only really happened
in small towns. We talked about this with
Salem lot. Right. That was a bigger town
than this seems to be but it's still
1 where everyone knew everybody's business.
So it it has a lot of those
same elements. And I think that that dynamic
between the locals
and the people from out of town, the
visitors, the summer folk that's something that King
likes to talk about is something where he
likes to spend some of his attention. And
I think he does it really, really well
and I enjoy it. Right. So it's... That
part of the nostalgia kinda spends both elements
that we've been talking about both within the
story and our own.
At least for me, that's part of the
joy I get from meeting these stories. Yep.
And to your point about how these small
towns, everyone knows
everyone. So, you know, they they know the
current missus Todd and the the first missus
Todd, and everyone knows a lot about everyone
else's business.
But even within that characters still have secrets.
Even within the small town, I mean, that
was a whole bunch of salem lot. Right?
Like, Yeah. Even though on the surface, we
knew 1 thing. There was a sort of
underneath level. There's this underneath level 2 where
the narrator says, like, Homer been itching to
tell the story about missus Todd. The first
missus Todd, and he just has to open
up at at 1 point even says during
the frame like He was afraid he said
too much, and then Homer was gonna shut
down. Mh. But then Homer got back to
it and told the rest of the story.
And he wants to hear this story because
this is really
the gist of it. Right? Like, missus Todd
disappear and no 1 knows what happens.
You know, I'm sure there's rumors galore, but
come here knows the true story and wants
to get to it. So I love that
piece of it too how there's the secret
even within the piece of everyone knowing each
other's business.
And the secret is between these 2 friends.
Like, these are 2 men who are very
close friends. It seems. They they they really
like spending time with each other, and there's
this between them that 1 of them has
not yet shared. Yep. And the other senses
he wants to, but he hasn't found the
the right moment to do it. I guess
he needed need to have another glass of
mineral water and another hard boiled egg and
then he'd be good to go. Right.
So I'm starting to realize J y and
I like this story so much and why
I don't know if it had that much
of an impression on me when I read
it. The first time when I was younger,
But now that we're 2 old men discussing
the discussing the story of about nostalgia, I
think it has maybe more of an impact
than it would when I was 15 years
old.
Absolutely.
Yeah. The key to this is homer story
and homer story is really homer decision. He
either made this decision and felt he needed
to justify the decision to his friend by
telling the story, or he needed to run
this decision past his friend by telling the
story. But either way, the act of telling
the story is homer
finalizing his decision to follow in the footsteps
of missus Todd. And there's no way that
we the audience or homer friend
could fully understand and certainly not support his
decision unless he shares the whole story, and
we at least to some degree believe his
story. Yeah. Because otherwise, it's it's nonsense. Otherwise,
he's a man act. Right? So if what
he tells us in this story really happened,
and it is a path that he can
follow. It is a shortcut he can take.
Right? Then we understand now why he's made
the choice he has and maybe to a
large extent, we agree with his decision and
think that
it's crazy. It's risky, but it's still smart
move. Yeah. So Homer friend, David is the
narrator.
And it would seem like they must trust
each other implicitly for David to believe this
story. Yeah. He gets just enough of it
where he sees a car pull up at
the end when he sees homer go away,
and there is a woman who looked younger
than she should have, and he realizes like,
oh, yeah, all of this is true. And
in that moment, you can tell, like, he's
wondering if he's made the right decision. So
the the story sort of for homer it
ends on an up note. Right? He's going
off with the woman he loves
on this adventure. Mh. But for our near
narrator, you know, he says how
he ends with a a line along the
lines of, like, how he wishes he hadn't
given up smoking.
Because he still has that tension or stress
that he's feeling and, like, here I am
stuck in the small town when homer going
on this great adventure. Yeah. I don't think
he feels like he's stuck. I think he's
definitely a little en, but I think he
realizes that the the boundaries to his life
and the way he's lived it. And will
live it for years to come. His boundaries
art castle rock, Mh and that's as far
as he's gonna go. Yeah. He's able to
make a little bit more of leap, so
he even says at some point that he's
gonna tell people that he's gone off to
Vermont. He said something along the lines of,
you know, Vermont is as far as most
of them can see inside their heads. Like,
for most of the people living in castle
rock. It might as well be another world.
Right? Like, people won't even ask questions like,
month. That's
millions of miles away. So he he doesn't
even feel like he's lying when he says
that.
Yeah.
So, like, 1 of the really important parts
of of the story is that every time
missus Todd
takes 1 of these shortcuts.
When she gets back,
she has, like, turned back the clock on
her age.
She's getting more and more youthful
with each of these shortcuts.
And
that must be part of the magic of
what's going on here because she talks about
the power of a shortcut, the power of
knowing the shortest distance
between 2 points. And it seems like it's
not just her. It's whoever is in the
car with her. Because homer starts to d
age too. Right. David says, the last time
I saw, he must have been near 70,
but he looks 60.
It made me wonder, like, does he need
to take extra trips without her so that
they can get to be close to the
same age or... Yeah. And the fact that...
Like, at the end of the story, she
looks like she's not even old enough to
have driver's license. Right.
Unless they do something like that, He'll never
catch up to her And if they keep
taking new shortcuts, are they eventually just gonna
turn into little kids and it's gonna be,
like, you know, mu it babe he's driving
this car around. Right. Yeah. And it almost
seem like they don't care though. Right? Yeah.
Like, that's not the point. The point is
that they're together, and that's the attraction that
the 2 of them have to each other,
and what drives homer to make that decision
because when he first takes the shortcut the
first time, he seems scared out of his
mind. Mh. Terrified,
like, I don't wanna do that again, especially
at night if we have to go back
no way
and he tries to talk her out of
the shortcuts,
even after she takes more and more after
that ride. He's like, I don't know if
you should be taking those. And yet he's
willing to overcome that for her and to
be with her. Yeah. I I think a
lot of that is probably that attraction he
has for her that he falling in love
with it. And by the time we reached
the end of the story, I strongly suspect
that it's completely mutual.
We should talk about that some more. But
another thing that just occurred to me is
that maybe the effect of the getting younger
thing is sort of like a an eli,
like a drug and that despite the horror
scene that some of the the parts of
the path take them through. When they're done
with the trip, they feel so good because
they've been imbued with this fresh youth. Like,
you know, we get descriptions of her with
like, a power ex exerting from her a
light coming from her eyes that is fearsome
some to behold. This is like getting your
batteries
recharged to the max and and like, that's
a sensation that you'd wanna keep chasing. Right.
Yeah. So I'm sure that that's part of
it too. On that first trip, he was
scared out of his mind because he didn't
know that there were this other benefit.
Oh, so if you said, hey, you know,
you can maybe take a few years off
of your current age, but it's really scary
and you might get your head ripped off
by a tree.
That's bargain a lot of us might take.
Right? Right? Dash sure. And he's willing to
put that sense of adventure above that prudence
like you said. Right? Like, Yeah. I'm willing
to take that chance because it feels good
and it's because with the person I love.
And it's really quite apparent that
homer has fallen in love with her.
When he first is with her, and he's
a caretaker.
He makes it clear like, hey, you've got
a husband, and I have to get home
to my wife She's making pot roast. Mh.
So she wasn't making pot roast, and it's
only when his wife's out of town that
he's willing to take that shortcut for the
first time. But then after that, missus Todd
seems to be okay with the interest that
he's showing her, her husband seemed somewhat distant.
He seems like a good man. Not only
does he wait the 7 years to declare
her dad after she goes missing, but he's
even willing to tack on 1 more before
he rem
to the second, missus Todd, but homer is
falling in love with her, not just because
of her beauty, but because of who she
is, and that to your point, I think
that sense of adventure that she can open
up the doors for him too. Yeah. And
and I suspect that a big part of
the reason why she's falling in love with
him is because unlike probably everybody else in
her life, including her own husband,
Homer is the only person that's truly engaged
with her on her obsession with shortcuts. He
has the intellectual capacity. He has the curiosity
to really connect with her at her level.
And he's curious enough and bold enough to
actually go with her on 1 of these
rides.
And then they have the shared experience. So
there's so much to build a relationship upon.
It's real stuff. I mean, what happens in
the shortcut is well, not really real, but
the real life analog to that. That's how
friendships are formed. That's how relationships start. It's
the common ground that mutual respect. So it's
not hard for me to understand why she
would fall in love with him even though
he's a much older man and he's
and they have different lives. Right. But they
have this in common. And, you know, even
like you said, Homer had to wait until
his wife was out of town so that
he could do this. But when he said,
maybe another time, he meant it. Yes. Because
as soon as that opportunity presented itself, he
reminded her. He didn't just wait for her
to ask again. He said, let's take that
shortcut. Come on. And she's like, what? No
one's ever wanted to come with me. Sure.
Let's do it. Right. So, Jay, we've talked
around the issue, but what is the shortcut?
Like, they talk through the scientific piece of
this and how long it is to get
from Castle Rock to Bang and, you know,
how the best roads to go, and she
knows them all, and she's able to cut
down that time even when it seems like
she's backtracking in some instances, she's still getting
there sooner. And eventually, she is making it
where it's an impossible distance. Yeah. And an
impossible time? So what is this shortcut?
Well, it's gotta be at affinity. Right? I
I mean, this isn't our dark tower Thin
section where we're talking about connections between books
and and stories and characters. This is like
an actual thin in the story. Right. I
believe that Missus Todd shortcut is actually her
passing through a series of.
Like, every time she makes 1 of these
turns
into another road and another side alley service
road dirt track. She's actually crossing into a
parallel earth.
Another parallel dimension, that just like Call did
just like Roland and and his C did,
just like the walk ins. In Maine did
in book was it 7 of the Dark
tower? People are just cri crossing all the
time, so why can't missus Todd have discovered?
Or because of her passion and every time
she does this, maybe it's easier for her
to find more. I think that there's no
question. It from a dark tower perspective, looking
at this through that lens, these are thin.
And that's why when homer says, It looked
like sometimes we were in a place that
was back in time. Well, of course, if
you go to a parallel world that is,
you know, 200 years prior to the 1
you just left. It's gonna seem like you
went back in time. Yeah right?
And that's how they can cover
a direct line distance in your miles
because time and distance stop making perfect sense
when you start cri crossing like this. Look
at all the struggles that we had on
the beach in book 2 of the dark
tower. Right. Like we didn't even know which
way was east half the time. Yep. Definitely
playing with direction and space here and it's
interesting that homer says at 1 point that
when they're going through the shortcut,
he says that
I knew we had to be close to
someplace place all the time. I mean, these
days you always are. So he's like, even
though we're on these roads, we didn't know
felt like we are near someplace place. And
that's probably because he was. It was just
that inner cut dimension piece that he was
near someplace place. It was just shifted over.
Probably. Yeah. It's not that it was physically
a half a mile that way. It's that
it was a whole dimension over shifted in
some way. So he felt close to some
place but it wasn't the same someplace place
you was now. Yeah. It's really cool when
you think about it, like, if you're ever
driving on a really
you know, sit back in the country road
or hiking in the woods,
you can feel like you're not near anything.
And then a car drives by in a
road that you still can't see and you're
like, oh, yeah, I'm still in audible distance
to civilization. Right. Or you make a turn
and suddenly, like, there's a city in front
of you. Right? So it's possible for us
in the real world to have these
sensations and totally relate to what homer is
describing, but we know that there's a little
bit more going on here with their shortcuts.
Yeah. And there's something about that space that
as you said before when we were talking
about them getting younger that makes missus Todd.
She says, I tell you I'm different over
I am all myself over there,
and there's something about that space that makes
her feel more alive and it is because
it's
it's going into a different dimension that she
becomes changed in some way. And so that
the the Thin has different powers than maybe
the Thin we've seen in, it's got that
additional power, we should say. In addition to
to sort of cutting off space and and
and moving through time. It also makes you
younger. So it's almost an additional piece there.
Yeah.
It's the best kind of any.
So we've talked about the
actual thin that's in the story. Maybe we
should talk about some of the dark tower
and other things that exist.
Yeah. Let's do it.
Alright. So
we've already talked about how this is a
castle rock. Story. It's mentioned right in the
first page of the story, I believe that
that this is set in Castle rock because
many of kings works were. Mh. And there's
a direct reference to another castle rock story
early on, and that's a reference to K.
He say how folks are still not done
talking about Joe Cam, who was maul by
his dog.
Yep. Yeah. It's nice little
touch that king puts in the the mouths
of his character.
There was
Description of 1 of the times that missus
Todd comes back from a shortcut and there's
a whole bunch of dead animal, parts and
stuff stuck to a grill,
And, you know, normal long drive, you come
back and you got some dead bugs. Right
on your grill. This time, she comes back
and there's a moth, the size of a
spa and its wings are still flap. Right?
To me, this this sounds like the mist.
There are so many creatures big and small
but they all were sort of, like, cthulhu
style p
versions of some of the things we might
recognize. From insects to dinosaurs to tent beasts.
Right? So the fact that homer could see
when he went on his ride, these very
dangerous things happening, and they were, like, reaching
for him and he saw this creature that,
you know, just looked like, it would do
some real damage if it got its hands
on you kind of thing. And then this
giant moth, the size of a bird? Like,
you gotta really think about or or is
this like in the mist? Is this
When missus Todd is crossing it through these
s, as she going through to dash space
and picking up the road kill of To
dash. Right. Anyway, Yam here.
And it's not the only creature. Right? So
there's another 1 that when she ends up
getting home before homer does, and homer says
that he sees something that it it looks
like by the way that it's on the
Mercedes grill that it must have jumped towards
the cars if was gonna try to attack
it. Mh. And he says it looked like
something which come of a mating between a
wood chuck and a we but there was
other stuff thrown in that a body didn't
even wanna look at. It hurt your eyes,
Dave, worse than that it hurt your mind.
Mh. It's felt was mad with blood and
there was claws on its pad. It had
big yellow eyes, only they were glaze, and
this is close to sounding like some sort
of evil d billy bum.
Or could just been a regular billy bundle
that was, like, oh, crap. I'm about to
get run down by this, you know, glowing
eyed beast of a Mercedes. I better fight
back. Right? Yeah. It did it didn't seem
as cute as oil though? No. And what's
weird about this is that when he mentions
it to missus Todd. She's like, oh, yeah.
It was just a Raccoon or something. And
she doesn't even seem to think of it.
It's almost as if that space has done
something to her mind as well.
Yeah. Or she's just unwilling to
acknowledge the fact that there's more danger
there than there is. That's true. It could
be that as well.
So another thing that I liked here is
that there's a line here where homer says
to David
there is holes in the middle Dave, you
know that. And, of course, when I heard
about holes in the middle, I couldn't not
think of the George S line about that
the column of truth has a hole in
it, which...
Well, that's a whole big dark tower thing
for us isn't it? Absolutely.
I I noted the same thing and thought
the same thing. Getting to the point of
there's a reality beyond what we know, and
there are pieces to it that we may
never know. And I think that that's the
point of that poem in that line and
why king has drawn to it because we
see 1 thing, but there's a piece underneath
that we can't see. And that's why it
came up in the dark tower and why
it came up in Salem lot and when
it... Why it's come up here again as
well. Mh. And an analogy did scientific discovery
in general. Right? Yeah. The whatever scale you
get down to, there's gonna be just another
level of mystery, but you keep looking in
if you figure that level out, guess what
new 1 underneath. Right? So that hole will
always be there in the middle of a
column, And that leads to my first fun
stuff Jay, which is that they spend a
decent amount of time,
missus Todd and Homer discussing Roger Ban foreman
minute mile.
And how she says You know, I read
this scientific article about that was written in
the thirties
that talked about the limits of the human
body, and It was very scientific. We checked
out all the math. It had to do
1 based on Man's
muscle length and
how the physics of the body worked and
the scientists said without a doubt there would
never be a 4 minute mile because of
this. And yet, it's happened. Right? And on
your manager has done it. And so even
with all that science that you know, there's
that difference between theory and application between what's
actually
scientific and what can actually happen. And most
of that is probably due to what we
as humans just don't understand yet. There's a
a piece of knowledge we don't know. And
I like to think of that as the
place that Stephen King loves to play in.
Mh. Right? They... That's that gray area where
I could take it right up to the
limit, and then I'm gonna go beyond it.
And it might seem like it's supernatural, but
maybe it's just on the edge of what
our reality is. And that seems to be
what this Todd Shortcut is about in some
ways. Yeah. If you take away the whole
dark tower
interpretation and you just let this stand on
its own Maybe that's all that there really
is. Right? She's not traveling to other worlds.
She's not doing anything that's completely magical. She's
just her obsession is allowing her to just
kinda bend the rules a little bit. Right.
Yeah.
I really like the line about how maybe
there are lots of roads all over that
are just going begging. And this was homer
sort of thinking about how there have gotta
to be just roads all over the country
that so few people ever have a reason
to drive on, whether it's because There just
aren't a lot of people there or some
super highway has sort of made those roads
redundant and
inefficient, but they're all there still, and they
don't go away. They just stop getting used
very much. And they're begging for somebody to
drive on them. Right? And that's part of
the magic of missus Todd's obsession. Like, I
don't care if the highway is faster. This
is shorter and shorter is better.
And there's like kind of
implied
anti highway sentiment going on here too. Like,
the modernization of the transit system the the
road system by by drawing these these straight
lines between big places makes you skip all
the little ones, and somebody like homer from
a small town in Maine, maybe he resent
that a little bit. Maybe he doesn't wanna
get skipped over by the highway. Maybe he
wants people to have to drive through Castle
Rock. On their way to vermont. Right? Yep.
And that has changed now because of the
highways, But missus Todd's spec, and she's saying,
no, let's let's embrace those words. Let's go
down those roads. And another cool thing is
Homer and king through homer goes into quite
a lot of detail in his descriptions of
what these roads look like. And a lot
of them especially the ones with rock walls
on both sides, sound a lot like the
road that came was walking on when he
was run down by van.
And part of the reason why he got
hurt his badly as he did to was
because there is no place for him to
jump out of the way. There is, like,
the rock wall there. So a classic New
England Road was part of his doom. Yeah.
Your point about these roads that want people
to drive on them in some way, reminds
me of my father law. He would never
take the same route home as you would
to get someplace place. So when he would
take my wife and Eye out to dinner,
we'd go on direction and then come an
entirely different direction home and, you know, he
had lived in that town for his whole
life and he would be able to point
out, like, oh, yeah. Let's go by this
way, and this is what happened here, and
this is what happened there. It was always
interesting. That's kinda cool. It is It is.
A... It's a it's an interesting way of
doing it, and I I see myself doing
that sometimes. Where ride I drive around places
and I'm sure my kids are bored with
me because they hear the same story. I
oh, yeah. That's where you had pizza dad.
What other fun stuff do you have, Jay?
I really like the line about cutting the
air around her mouth, thought that was a
really neat c for just, like, ji jab.
You know, you could be more crew about
it, you know, kind of diarrhea of the
mouth or whatever. But what I like that
cutting the air around her mouth. It's just
words that are just coming out. They don't
even mean anything anymore. It's just like a
lot of other of words, and they're just
cutting the air. That's a good 1.
When homer and missus Tat discussing how the
shortcuts might work, she talks about how folding
the map might be a way that this
is actually working. Right? Mh. And that's how
they're able to cut. And that reminded me
a lot of a wrinkle in time because
that's how the space time piece worked in
a wrinkle in time where they were able
to take a string and say, hey, this
is how you get from point a to
point b, and then this is who I
think. Put the pieces of the string together
and said, this is how we do it.
Right? And there's that wrinkle in time. And
I like that idea folding the map to
get to that same way. I was just
kind of blown away by king falling back
to this kind of scientific theory. Right. Of
space and time travel, like, Einstein and Hawking,
I think we're maybe more hawking. They've talked
about this in their theories. Like, if you
can bend
space,
then the distance
produces. Right. That's what this whole story is
about. Right? Absolutely.
1 thing I really liked here was
how
enchanting
missus Todd was. Mh. And whether it was
because she was excited in the moment about
the idea of a shortcut or she was
currently driving on a shortcut. She had just
gotten back from a shortcut. At various points
in the story, she becomes this this person
who home finds
irresistible for many reasons.
And I think a lot of it is
just this innate energy. This the obsession with
the shortcuts is making her very, very interesting
to him. And as I mentioned before,
I could see a lot of reasons for
her to have mutual feelings
for homer. You know, he's he's meeting her
at her level. He's really interested in what
she's interested in. And he's willing to take
the risk of going on these these journeys
with her. So as these characters,
were getting to know each other and having
these shared experiences, they were falling in love
and, I always appreciate a story where when
characters fall in love with each other that
it's presented in a way that is
so effective that I can't help, but fall
in love with them a little bit too.
Mh. To me, that is the storyteller doing
the job very, very well. And that reminds
me of Ba Le, Romeo and Juliet. Like,
Leonardo D cap and Claire Danes, their characters
fall in love with each other in that
movie.
And
I fall in love with them every time
I watch it. I know. It's probably on
being manipulated by the crazy set pieces and
the wonderful music, but their performance are a
big part of that too. And if I
am sharing the similar emotion that the characters
are having on screen or in the the
story, like, this Tat shortcut. That's a storyteller
doing some superb work.
And I I was right there along for
the ride.
Yeah. Good stuff.
Good stuff indeed. My last fun stuff is
just a line I like that the narrator
states after homer takes off and that is,
October is a time when men think mostly
about far places and the roads which might
get them there.
And it's just a nice sort of summary
of why homer decides to leave and October
seems to be such a special month for
King.
A lot of his stories that take place
in October and I... Usually it's death and
destruction and vampires. Yeah. This time it's nice.
That nice nostalgia piece again. But king comes
from a part of the world where winter
really just kinda collapse down on things.
It really puts a freeze on your life.
And more than just a cold, you know,
all the snow, all the ice, things become
less mobile. People become less mobile.
So that October
period of time is when the weather's changing
summer truly done, but it's not too late
to bug out. Yep. If you want to.
So there's kind of an instinct,
this is my last chance to to leave
this place where I am standing right now
and go someplace place where I won't get
frozen in place by the winner. Yep. And
if you also think of the year as
a metaphor for a person's life. Mh. October
might be that 70 year old range. Right?
Yep. This is your last chance. And it's
home last chance. Yes. Absolutely. I had just
1 more. It's another fun line that I
liked or more as a fun analogy that
arthritis is 1 bugger great old fishermen.
I just like the analogy to making arthritis
a fishermen because
extending the analogy is that, you know, arthritis
is like fish hooks in your your knuckles
and your joints. Yep. So it's the fisherman
of just laying his fish hooks into your
bones.
Is I think very apt. Yes. Indeed. Well,
I'm
super happy that we had a chance to
read the story and shared it on a
Bonus episode. It was, well, written, just great
character authorization,
interesting story, and the fact that it had
so many dark tower Thin and references was
just an added bonus. So hopefully, you enjoyed
it as much as I did. I definitely
did. So that'll be all for this episode
of 2 guys to the dark tower came.
Thanks, Jay. Thank you. Links all of our
social media is available in the show notes
if you like to show please rate us
on apple podcasts. Look for more exclusive content
at patreon dot com slash 2 guys dark
tower.
For Jay Russo, I'm Sean Mc.
Thanks for listening.
Cons
professionalism. As always.
You should have heard the point I made.
It was...
I'm sure it was superb.