Speaker 1: And I would like to talk about a product that
Speaker 1: I'm very angry about. I'm also good like that's something
Speaker 1: I've got. Some rants make words go.
Speaker 2: Now you know what the public's like, a page full
Speaker 2: of guinea pigs.
Speaker 3: Good night, you stupid idiots. We're nearing the end of March,
Speaker 3: and this is culture. Sighing.
Speaker 4: In Princeton, New Jersey, is Rob Long, Hi sighing, Rob Long,
Speaker 4: how are you?
Speaker 5: I'm doing very well, John, how are you?
Speaker 3: I am well? And in Washington, d c.
Speaker 4: As with a copy of Doune over his left shoulder
Speaker 4: is Jonah Goldberg.
Speaker 3: Jonah, how are you?
Speaker 6: I'm all right? I consider myself there of size, So
Speaker 6: I feel like Rob's taking my material.
Speaker 5: But Prince of size s I D H S or
Speaker 5: s I z e H s I.
Speaker 4: G plays some corn hole with the Prince of size.
Speaker 3: Well shall we?
Speaker 4: I mean you guys did see the story we did
Speaker 4: text about the story about the cornhole champion who is
Speaker 4: a multiple amputee be arrested for murder because not only
Speaker 4: can he play cornhole though he has wellcated arms, but
Speaker 4: he can also shoot someone with a gun while he
Speaker 4: has no arms and legs. He's like a really successful
Speaker 4: versus Black Knight from He's the Black Knight as the
Speaker 4: Black Knight would wish to be in yea Python.
Speaker 5: My question though, is is he is he? Really?
Speaker 6: Is he?
Speaker 1: I mean, I hate to do this, this is unfair,
Speaker 1: but is he a corn hole champion or is he
Speaker 1: a special corn hole champion?
Speaker 5: You know that you have this to.
Speaker 6: Cornhole, which, by the way, is is never a good idea.
Speaker 4: And by the way, I think that that is you are.
Speaker 4: This what you've done there is you have othered him
Speaker 4: And just because he's accused of murder and been arrested
Speaker 4: for murder does not mean that you need to other him.
Speaker 3: That would be my just shame on you.
Speaker 6: Do you remember those missus Jones and missus Jones jokes
Speaker 6: when we were kids. I mean, I know, I'm a
Speaker 6: little younger than you. I was like, missus Jones, Missus Jones,
Speaker 6: can Bobby come out and play?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah?
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, yeah, no, you know he can't. He doesn't
Speaker 6: have any arms and legs. And you're like, well, can
Speaker 6: you play second base? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 6: The marble jokes and marble and horrible and whatever, but like.
Speaker 3: Okay, more horrible jokes.
Speaker 5: They were funny.
Speaker 4: My daughter says to me the other day, do you
Speaker 4: know that my generation believes that Helen Keller was a fake?
Speaker 4: Apparently there is a TikTok, there was a whole yeah,
Speaker 4: TikTok that is devoted to either proving or just suggesting
Speaker 4: that Helen Keller was in fact not a genius socialist
Speaker 4: memoirist hero who learned the fundaments of language from Anne Sullivan.
Speaker 4: That it was all answer, then the whole thing was
Speaker 4: a fake. Did you know this theory?
Speaker 6: I've heard of this.
Speaker 1: I've heard of this, but I think it is an outgrowth,
Speaker 1: a bad cultural outgrowth of the truth, as sometimes these
Speaker 1: theories are, which the truth is that she was a
Speaker 1: terrible person.
Speaker 5: She really was.
Speaker 6: Apparently she's just a terrible, parial person.
Speaker 1: So people now want to take from her, you know
Speaker 1: her like although you know, you know how she burned
Speaker 1: the side of her face right answering the iron, she.
Speaker 3: Burned her hand trying to read the waffle iron.
Speaker 5: Oh that's true, Yeah, right, okay, but so fine.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying, like, I did not know that this
Speaker 4: was one of the many otherwise a conspiracy theory so old,
Speaker 4: yeah that you know it? How I didn't even know
Speaker 4: people knew who Helen Keller was anymore. I guess maybe
Speaker 4: maybe schools still staged the Miracle Worker or something like that.
Speaker 1: I did once have a brain kind of a mini
Speaker 1: stroke in my head once, and I two more different people.
Speaker 1: I can't imagine, but I was trying to talk about
Speaker 1: the eponymous diarist, famous Amsterdam girl diarist who wrote a
Speaker 1: diary and then went to Holocaust and went to Auschwitz.
Speaker 1: And I was for some reason, I kept saying the
Speaker 1: Diary of Helen Keller. But you know, Helen Keller when
Speaker 1: she was betrayed by the by Dutch collaboration.
Speaker 4: Okay, that is an interesting, uh whatever you call that
Speaker 4: kind of thing, solicism or brain peart. Because another thing
Speaker 4: my daughter did, who has been doing research on contemporary
Speaker 4: Jewish topics for her bachelor thesis, a friend of hers
Speaker 4: sent her this thing from summer camp, uh, Jewish summer
Speaker 4: camp from nineteen ninety or something like that, on whom
Speaker 4: do you admire? And so the list of people was
Speaker 4: as follows, whom do you admire? You talk Shamir, this
Speaker 4: is a Jewish summer camp.
Speaker 3: Then okay, this is Martin.
Speaker 6: It's not where Tucker sends his kids to camp. That's
Speaker 6: what you're saying.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right, that's.
Speaker 3: Right, Martin, Luther King and Frank or Helen Keller.
Speaker 6: These were the four Attle four choices you got.
Speaker 3: So your.
Speaker 4: Your kind of confusing, and Frank and Helen Keller has
Speaker 4: a cultural root dating back decades to the Jewish summer camping.
Speaker 1: I liked the idea, though when the minute you said,
Speaker 1: you know, she's doing this thing in contemporary Jewish topics,
Speaker 1: all I could think it was like topic one, my
Speaker 1: prostate hicks me forever to pee you are.
Speaker 3: She's twenty one, and so.
Speaker 5: Those are still topics. Those are still topics. Those are
Speaker 5: our cultural topics.
Speaker 4: They are topics you know what make fun of Jews
Speaker 4: all you like. But I did point out on the
Speaker 4: commentary podcast today that the baseball season has started and
Speaker 4: the first game was the Yankees versus the Giants, and
Speaker 4: there was the Yankees pitch to shut out, and the
Speaker 4: shutout pitcher was Max Freed, one of the few Jews
Speaker 4: in the major leagues, and somebody who played for Israel
Speaker 4: in the Macabea Games when he was in high school.
Speaker 4: Score one for my belagued people. Let's see, if you
Speaker 4: know Hassan Piker wants to take on Max Freed.
Speaker 5: It does.
Speaker 1: I mean, look and I, of course, as you know
Speaker 1: I I I love all peoples and all all creeds.
Speaker 5: Do you do well? You love them all equally. Let's
Speaker 5: just put it back. Well, I didn't say that. I
Speaker 5: mean I'm not.
Speaker 6: I'm not.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not a saint.
Speaker 6: I am.
Speaker 1: I don't think at least today or probably this week,
Speaker 1: you will do anything more perfectly in line with every
Speaker 1: anti Semites idea of Jewish people than to watch a
Speaker 1: baseball game on Opening Day and say good for the Jews.
Speaker 5: Find the Jewish angle in it.
Speaker 3: Hey, I can't help I can't help myself.
Speaker 4: You know, there are like three really good players in
Speaker 4: the in the in the in the you.
Speaker 1: Have like a divining rod. You're like a dowser. You
Speaker 1: just find you. You can find anywhere you like.
Speaker 4: My my mother who grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota,
Speaker 4: there was a Jewish paper as there was an even
Speaker 4: city as small and Saint Paul with a small and
Speaker 4: Jewish population, there was a Jewish paper in Saint Paul
Speaker 4: and wasn't Star Tribune, no, actually, but my mother, uh,
Speaker 4: there was a feature in the in the weekly. Her
Speaker 4: favorite feature and in every featured in every Jewish newspaper
Speaker 4: in the United States.
Speaker 3: Called our fellow tribe members.
Speaker 4: And it would be a thing about, hey, guess who's Jewish.
Speaker 4: And the greatest moment of her life, when she was
Speaker 4: I don't know, eight or nine years old, was when
Speaker 4: she discovered the Dinah Shore, who was from I think Charleston,
Speaker 4: South Carolina, was in fact a Jew.
Speaker 1: Well, people forget about Charleston. That is the thing that
Speaker 1: people forget. How incredibly Jewish Charleston.
Speaker 6: But a veiled reference to the slave trade rep it.
Speaker 3: No, it has one of the too old.
Speaker 6: Some other Jewish thereia type.
Speaker 4: As the second oldest synagogue in the United States something
Speaker 4: like that is in Charleston anyway. But Dinah Shore, that
Speaker 4: was a great moment. So we we take our we
Speaker 4: take our comradeship with our lunesman very seriously, particularly if
Speaker 4: they are involved in fields not ordinarily known for their Jewishness.
Speaker 3: So that's why I'm mentioned Max.
Speaker 6: There's also something a lot of people don't understand about
Speaker 6: Jews playing count the Jews or celebrate is it's actually
Speaker 6: a very patriotic thing. It's it's it's like We're part
Speaker 6: of America. Look how cool this is?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 6: Oh you mean for America. Yeah, yeah, for America. I'm sorry,
Speaker 6: but well Max Reid isn't playing for the television, friend,
Speaker 6: But I want to get back to like, like I
Speaker 6: think I am. I was well trained by my father
Speaker 6: in the importance of holding utterly meaningless but ancient intellectual
Speaker 6: grievances and carrying receipts for a very long time. So
Speaker 6: I kind of I'm enamored with the idea of trying
Speaker 6: to expose that fraud. Helen Keller, I am.
Speaker 3: It is great. I'm sorry, it is absolutely great.
Speaker 6: I agree. I just don't know if it's true, but like, like,
Speaker 6: if it were true, I'd be like down for it.
Speaker 6: It does raise the question, who is someone that you're
Speaker 6: that you think are someone that we are told by
Speaker 6: conventional wisdom that we are supposed to revere who you
Speaker 6: you will not let go of your more balanced interpretation
Speaker 6: of their character. Oh, I'll go first, you guys, So
Speaker 6: I'm not gonna do Martin Luther King because I think
Speaker 6: the people who wanted to and then right, that's fine whatever,
Speaker 6: Martin looking good and important. Man, it did important things.
Speaker 6: My guy is Gandhi. Gandhi was a pretty terrible person
Speaker 6: in all sorts of ways.
Speaker 5: He was.
Speaker 6: He refused to let his wife get life saving medication,
Speaker 6: but on the grounds that it was some you know.
Speaker 6: He was basically RFK in a toga, and he had
Speaker 6: all these theories about modern medicine, all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 6: and his wife died because he wouldn't let her get
Speaker 6: medical treatment. But when he needed medical treatment, he got it.
Speaker 6: He was the guy who told he was obsessed with
Speaker 6: his bowel movements to a point that we don't need
Speaker 6: to dwell on too much here.
Speaker 5: And his.
Speaker 6: His whole violence never solved anything. Stick He only used
Speaker 6: that against the Brits basically and the way and just
Speaker 6: referred to Hitler as his friend and never told him
Speaker 6: violence never solved anything. He did tell the British that
Speaker 6: they should just surrender to the Nazis and that the
Speaker 6: Jews should all kill themselves in an act of civil,
Speaker 6: disobedient resistance to the Nazis. So yes, I'm sorry, I'm
Speaker 6: going to problematize Gandhi a little bit.
Speaker 4: There is a magnificent piece that was published in commentary
Speaker 4: magazine Richard eighty two by Richard Grenier called the Gandhi
Speaker 4: Nobody knows because this movie had been made that yeah,
Speaker 4: every Oscar by Richard Attenborough, starring and absolutely brilliant Ben Kingsley, who,
Speaker 4: by the way, is absolutely brilliant this year on this
Speaker 4: Disney Plus show wonder Man Spectacular. He is one of
Speaker 4: the great actors who has ever lived, and he was
Speaker 4: great as Gandhi. But the movie is a giograph hegiograph
Speaker 4: portrait of Gandhi, and so Richard wrote this, Oh you
Speaker 4: want to know who Gandhi really is, well, let me
Speaker 4: tell you. And then I was remembering, It's interesting you
Speaker 4: brought this up because I was thinking about Iran and
Speaker 4: the trouble that Iran has made in the world for
Speaker 4: the last forty seven years, and I remembered a totally
Speaker 4: forgotten cultural event that Richard Granier wrote a really funny
Speaker 4: comic novel about that is now it would cost me
Speaker 4: one hundred dollars to buy it on Amazon, so I'm
Speaker 4: not going to buy it on Amazon. But it was
Speaker 4: called The Marrakesh one two and it was about the
Speaker 4: making See if you guys remember this of a movie
Speaker 4: called Mohammed Messenger of God with Anthony Quinn as Mohammad.
Speaker 6: And it both the Pope and Mohammad. That's impressive.
Speaker 3: He can't play anything.
Speaker 4: And a New York City copp and across one hundred
Speaker 4: and ten street. I just want to buy a Vincent
Speaker 4: Van Goh, I believe.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 5: But wait a minute, are you?
Speaker 1: Are we off of the idea of like of good
Speaker 1: people who are really secretly No?
Speaker 3: Yeah, please, no, go ahead, please.
Speaker 1: I think everyone I mean, as you know, I love everybody,
Speaker 1: and I wish everybody well. So I think we're all
Speaker 1: beloved children of God. So I don't have the hatreds
Speaker 1: that you and Jonah seem to have in Nurture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't go too soon with Helen Keller.
Speaker 6: You can't.
Speaker 5: I actually this doesn't make me unusual.
Speaker 1: But I I'm not crazy about Eleanor Roosevelt.
Speaker 6: That's good.
Speaker 1: I like it, not crazy. And I heard a great
Speaker 1: story one it's very moving story of my friend who
Speaker 1: a wonderful writer names Bob Samd's a wonderful writer, very
Speaker 1: funny guy, and he grew up in New Jersey and
Speaker 1: in the he's older. He's an older guy, so I
Speaker 1: don't hold he is now he's old to me and
Speaker 1: he grew up in He got a got a great
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties kind of vibe, early sixties vibe to him
Speaker 1: growing up. And he had a very hard childhood in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. His father was a kind of a
Speaker 1: difficult guide. But his mother died when he was very young,
Speaker 1: went not very like eleven or twelve, so like a
Speaker 1: really important time, and he absolutely depressed. And his older
Speaker 1: sister lived in New York City. He went through months
Speaker 1: and months and months of his sort of glum depression,
Speaker 1: and his father was no help. And his father instantly remarried,
Speaker 1: like within a month, and did this thing where he
Speaker 1: brought this woman home and said call her mom now.
Speaker 1: Like it was like from a bad novel, right, but
Speaker 1: it's real. And his sister said, want you to come into
Speaker 1: the city tomorrow, and said They came in the city,
Speaker 1: and he took the train in and walked around when
Speaker 1: New York City was a black and white city, and
Speaker 1: they went down to NYU to see a panel or
Speaker 1: some presentation of something with Elwen or Roosevelt. And she
Speaker 1: was very old at that point. And there's a big
Speaker 1: and they're big up at a front row. They're watching
Speaker 1: this thing unfold, ik foret what it was. And Roosevelt
Speaker 1: was in the on the dais and and she started
Speaker 1: to she fell asleep, started asleep, and her head lolled
Speaker 1: to one side, and her tongue came out, and there's
Speaker 1: this huge stream of drool came out of her mouth
Speaker 1: as she was asleep during the speeches, and then she
Speaker 1: started to snort and snore, and no one could wake
Speaker 1: up Eleanor Roosevelt. And he started to laugh, and they
Speaker 1: started to laugh in the front row, and he laughed
Speaker 1: and they laughed. It couldn't stop laughing. And it was
Speaker 1: said it was the first time he'd laughed in almost
Speaker 1: a year, and and he felt much better after that
Speaker 1: after laughing at an elderly, disgusting, snoring, drooling Elander Roosevelt.
Speaker 6: So so I'm one. I'm wondering because Rob, you're a
Speaker 6: You're you're a token, uh wasp, careful guy here right? Well, no,
Speaker 6: just like in popular culture, uh I when you said
Speaker 6: you don't like Eleanor Roosevelt, which I'm totally sympathetic to,
Speaker 6: I immediately went to the grand the matriarch in the
Speaker 6: Christopher Walkens fa family and wedding crashers Oh yeah, who
Speaker 6: talked about how F g R was just a doll
Speaker 6: and a sweet man. But I'm just quoting a movie here, people.
Speaker 6: But Eleanor Roosevelt was a big, dumb dyke, useless rug muncher.
Speaker 6: That's when they put a bed wondering if maybe there's
Speaker 6: this this, this, this, this digital wasp thing about uh
Speaker 6: uh Ellen Rose.
Speaker 1: Also, we were crazy about Franklin either, let's get you
Speaker 1: know Eleanor's collateral damage.
Speaker 6: Well that's the thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was a trader in general, just sort of
Speaker 5: an American enterprise.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I go with media figures. Edward comes immediately to mind.
Speaker 4: All the worst he the A lot of the pomposity
Speaker 4: relates to his use after his death and the idea
Speaker 4: that he represented the finest and greatest and noblest of
Speaker 4: American traditions.
Speaker 3: He himself was I think a more mixed and amusing figure.
Speaker 4: You know, he used to do these interviews with people
Speaker 4: with this giant television screen, and he was much more
Speaker 4: pop and he was, you know, Christian amanpour pompous. I mean,
Speaker 4: he is a sort of like a big TV star,
Speaker 4: and he played himself as a big TV star. But
Speaker 4: then in the wake of his relatively early death. He
Speaker 4: then became this totemic example of the glories of CBS
Speaker 4: News and that kind of thing. And so though I
Speaker 4: don't like, but like, who the hell was he? I
Speaker 4: understand he was in He was in World War Two.
Speaker 4: So we're hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reporters who
Speaker 4: don't get the credit that he gets. But I'm trying
Speaker 4: to think of like other I mean, there are you know,
Speaker 4: I feel very negatively about Bob Woodward, who, by the way,
Speaker 4: has just released a you know, is releasing a memoir
Speaker 4: in the Fall, in which he promises to name names
Speaker 4: of dead people who you know, gave him secrets he
Speaker 4: couldn't say until after they were dead.
Speaker 3: I think he's a liar. I think he lied.
Speaker 4: His book about Iran Contra features a climactic event I
Speaker 4: do not believe happened, and that I think he made
Speaker 4: up because he didn't have a sort of news hook
Speaker 4: for the book, because he didn't get anything.
Speaker 3: And that's this supposed him.
Speaker 4: Sneaking in too Bill Casey, the CIA Directors hospital, saying
Speaker 4: why did you do it? In Casey with his last
Speaker 4: breath saying I believed and then dying. That's made up right,
Speaker 4: And I do not believe that happened in Casey's family.
Speaker 4: Does I believe that happened. And I think a person
Speaker 4: who can do something like that is beneath contempt and
Speaker 4: so uh.
Speaker 3: And of course you know they.
Speaker 6: Don't like it.
Speaker 5: You don't like people forget, he's not your cup of tea.
Speaker 3: He's not my cup of tea.
Speaker 4: I mean, there are many, many, many people who are
Speaker 4: not my there.
Speaker 6: I think that's been established.
Speaker 1: I think, I think if you look at the glop archives,
Speaker 1: I think that has been.
Speaker 6: The list of people that are your cup of tea.
Speaker 6: These days, John is becoming ever more selective.
Speaker 3: It is true. And I don't even like tea.
Speaker 4: I don't like tea, so all right, But yeah, but
Speaker 4: pomposity is what archness, pomposity, self seriousness, that's those are
Speaker 4: the things that get under my.
Speaker 6: But it can't be people who are famous for it.
Speaker 6: Can't be people who are famous for being arrogant. It
Speaker 6: has to be people who have a reputation of being
Speaker 6: salt of the earth, wonderful wise, faintly, saintly and.
Speaker 1: Were decent or something. You know who I really hated,
Speaker 1: you know, I really hated Princess Diana.
Speaker 5: I like that fay Ed guy.
Speaker 6: I did.
Speaker 5: Well. You know, he was just a guy in tight
Speaker 5: pants and a golden necklace trying to, you know, score
Speaker 5: with the babes. I remember when she died.
Speaker 1: The morning she died, I could always tell I had
Speaker 1: these English friends I had in La, in La at
Speaker 1: the time, and you know, you come to La, you're
Speaker 1: kind of like un especially if you're English, you're kind
Speaker 1: of unconnected to the English social system, so you don't
Speaker 1: really know who's who.
Speaker 5: Right when they're in La.
Speaker 1: They're all driving around acting like they're from La, and
Speaker 1: you I could always tell me. You couldn't tell from
Speaker 1: their accents because like the upper class English people always
Speaker 1: adopt a kind of a slightly lower class accent, and
Speaker 1: so I could. I knew instantly which of my English
Speaker 1: friends were sort of aristocrats and which were not by
Speaker 1: how they respond to the death. So the ones who
Speaker 1: were not aristocrats said things like, oh, what a tragedy
Speaker 1: people's princess, and the ones who were aristocrats said, thank
Speaker 1: god she's dead.
Speaker 7: Mad as a brush, I've never heard that.
Speaker 5: It isn't it good? I don't know what it.
Speaker 4: Means, but it's us that is a fantastic phrase.
Speaker 5: I wonder how I will tell you?
Speaker 1: I will I know we want to move on to
Speaker 1: pop culture but tons British sounds.
Speaker 3: A pound is obviously a really.
Speaker 6: Down as a pound.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, well you know you steal steal them all
Speaker 1: from Woodhouse.
Speaker 5: You know they're all great to all the ones in.
Speaker 1: And now we're gonna take a short break because I
Speaker 1: want to tell you about a great new podcast. We
Speaker 1: hear a lot, especially online, about conservatives attacking other conservatives.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it even seems like conservatives are fighting each other
Speaker 1: more than they fight the left. And that is where
Speaker 1: this new podcast, Conservative Crossroads, with Henry Olsen, who is
Speaker 1: a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center
Speaker 1: comes in. It doesn't shy away from these disputes. It
Speaker 1: leans into them by putting two conservatives who disagree about
Speaker 1: an important issue together to hash it out on the
Speaker 1: air in a civil and fun and interesting fashion. Every
Speaker 1: other week, Conservative Crossroads does what no other program does,
Speaker 1: and that is explore conservatives Conservatism's disagreements without name calling.
Speaker 1: Conservative Crossroads is the podcast for conservatives who want to
Speaker 1: understand what's happening to the movement now and what might
Speaker 1: be happening down the line now. If you have listened
Speaker 1: to the Rickshire podcast, you already know Henry Olsen. He
Speaker 1: is a great, great guest. He's one of our favorite
Speaker 1: guests on that podcast. He always brings a lot of
Speaker 1: clarity and light and good humor and incredible depth of
Speaker 1: knowledge about politics and policy and voters and the great
Speaker 1: sweep of American political history. He's a great guest and
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled that he is now the host of Conservative Crossroads.
Speaker 1: So if you, like me, have been hoping for someone
Speaker 1: to start a series like this, your hopes have been granted,
Speaker 1: so please check it out. Join Henry Olsen and his
Speaker 1: guests at Conservative Crossroads every other week as they hash
Speaker 1: out the ideas and principles that will decide the future
Speaker 1: of the right. Download Conservative Crossroads from our partner Ricochet
Speaker 1: or any platform where you get your podcasts. Conservatism is
Speaker 1: at a crossroads, which is why all conservatives need Conservative Crossroads.
Speaker 1: Listen today. Before we move on, I just want to
Speaker 1: share a moment of my new life. I was in
Speaker 1: the library as i am and a fellow, a classmate,
Speaker 1: came up to me and they're.
Speaker 5: Doing a little.
Speaker 1: Comedy sketch show tonight, which I will not be I
Speaker 1: can't be there for it. But and he said to me, hey,
Speaker 1: so I'm just doing these lists of things. It's like
Speaker 1: in the style of the Jeff Fox where you may
Speaker 1: be a redneck if but it's like you may be
Speaker 1: a seminary and if it's kind it's a funny. And
Speaker 1: so he said, do you have any any any ideas
Speaker 1: you know? And he's like writing him down, you know,
Speaker 1: And so I gave him one and he said, oh,
Speaker 1: that's that's good.
Speaker 5: That's good.
Speaker 1: And then I gave him another and he said too wordy.
Speaker 1: I thought, go yourself. This is my job.
Speaker 3: I always love that. I love that.
Speaker 4: I love that when I have occasionally in my life
Speaker 4: been impressed into service by my wife or something like
Speaker 4: that to do a service life where could just help
Speaker 4: write a press release for this station. And then I
Speaker 4: write the press release and it's like, no, no, it's
Speaker 4: really good. I have some kind of note. I think
Speaker 4: one and I'm like and I'm like, do whatever the.
Speaker 3: F you want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is not this did not this is not me.
Speaker 1: And but I did not say this. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to say something that is a racial joke, and no,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say something's a racist joke, but it's in context.
Speaker 1: So I'm hanging a lantern on it right now. A
Speaker 1: very good friend of mine's a wonderful writer, was driving
Speaker 1: in LA with his son and his son's friend, and
Speaker 1: his son was like, I don't know, eight or nine
Speaker 1: or ten, you know, not a teenager look young. And
Speaker 1: they're driving on I think it's like Wilshire Boulevard in
Speaker 1: Santa Monica by a and they, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: there's a bunch of stores there, and they see a
Speaker 1: sort of large black guy carrying a flat screen TV.
Speaker 1: And my friend says, huh, I wonder who he stole
Speaker 1: that TV from. Yeah, and it's a joke, right, because
Speaker 1: that's the k And he sort of looks at the
Speaker 1: very mirrorcause the kids are young enough. They're in the
Speaker 1: back seat and they're just a gas and his son says, Dad, you.
Speaker 6: Can't say that, Dad, I can't believe you said that.
Speaker 6: And he pulls over and he has he's embarrassed.
Speaker 1: By it, but he has like kind of a milk
Speaker 1: and he goes, oh, I can't Oh, Oh, do you
Speaker 1: like the house we live in? Do you like your
Speaker 1: swimming pool, doude, do you like that where we're driving
Speaker 1: now to the thing?
Speaker 5: Do you like that?
Speaker 1: Because that is all paid for by Dad's inability to
Speaker 1: stop himself from saying things like that.
Speaker 5: And the kids looking back, you're like terrified.
Speaker 1: Their eyes are wide, and he like gifts the car
Speaker 1: back and he like steams and he comes the next thing.
Speaker 5: He tells us the story. He goes, right, am, I
Speaker 5: right am?
Speaker 6: I right?
Speaker 1: Like, well, you know you might want to tone it
Speaker 1: down in here too, by the way, you might want
Speaker 1: to tone it down, but like so, yeah, I get it,
Speaker 1: the same imphos in a box. Well that is that
Speaker 1: that is a very good detail. But I but the
Speaker 1: answer is no, because you had to know what it was.
Speaker 1: Well he was a just more like, excuse me.
Speaker 4: That the person was black has nothing to do with
Speaker 4: the question of whether or not somebody.
Speaker 5: Walking on it was a perfect setup. They where they
Speaker 5: it was a good setup.
Speaker 4: Might very likely have taken it out of somebody's house
Speaker 4: and was walking into there.
Speaker 3: Now maybe they were given it.
Speaker 1: And I I think I've told this story that I
Speaker 1: did that once with somebody in the car, and I
Speaker 1: think it was at a bus stop I was like
Speaker 1: parked of the inner stopping in the intersection of red
Speaker 1: light and to the left at a at a bus bench,
Speaker 1: bus stop bench in la in the corner of Montana Avenue,
Speaker 1: and something there was a very enormous, enormous woman, I
Speaker 1: mean enormous. There was no room on the bench or
Speaker 1: anyone else. Put it out, a very very large woman
Speaker 1: looking at her phone and sobbing uncontrollably. And you know,
Speaker 1: you're in the car and you both but notice this thing.
Speaker 1: And I went at it, and I said, she just
Speaker 1: read a text that says, I ate the roast beef
Speaker 1: sandwich that was in the refrigerator.
Speaker 3: Williams poem about the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I hate the refrigerator that you were saving
Speaker 1: for your mid morning pre pre snack snack.
Speaker 5: Yeah it was delicious.
Speaker 6: I was at, ah, if we're going to tell these
Speaker 6: kinds of stories, I was at a thirty years ago
Speaker 6: now and I've matured. Yeah, better, I'm a better person.
Speaker 6: But uh, when I was early on, when I was
Speaker 6: a producer for doing PBS stuff, we were invited to
Speaker 6: this incredibly lavish press thing. Uh they you thing for
Speaker 6: a new super multicultural kid's television show. Cartoon with you
Speaker 6: know the kids. All the kids looked like America, let's
Speaker 6: just say, right in the cartoon, and they had different ethnicities.
Speaker 6: And so at this big thing where they rented out
Speaker 6: a big space at Union Station, they had different stations
Speaker 6: of food representing the different cultures of the characters in
Speaker 6: the show. So Hispanic food for the Hispanic kid and whatever.
Speaker 6: And I remember turning to my friend, I'll just say, Scott,
Speaker 6: who we were. We're at the Native American table. Yeah,
Speaker 6: let people figure it out. And we had the Native
Speaker 6: American table and for the cute little Native American kid,
Speaker 6: and they had some sort of tortilla thing that and
Speaker 6: I said, oh, Scott, you got to try the Native
Speaker 6: American and stuff. This food is great and like their land,
Speaker 6: it's free. And I apologize, I want to land acknowledgement.
Speaker 6: It's not free. Came a terrible suffering or whatever. But
Speaker 6: we have now used we referenced that moment for thirty
Speaker 6: years about.
Speaker 4: Come on, these are the greatest moments of our lives.
Speaker 4: Let us are Let us not be pompous or you know,
Speaker 4: or apologetic. When you get that absolutely vivid soular plexus punch,
Speaker 4: you know, there's nothing better let's let's think it.
Speaker 1: No, and you and you and also right, well, it's
Speaker 1: just a joke, man, Like, it's just a joke.
Speaker 6: I think Louis c. K figured out a way to
Speaker 6: pick the lock on these problems pretty well, sort of
Speaker 6: at a pretty woke time.
Speaker 3: He had that button maybe but maybe well.
Speaker 6: No, he had this, he had this. I remember he
Speaker 6: had this running jokes about how racist he is. And
Speaker 6: he would say every time I see like a Chinese
Speaker 6: guy cross just walking down the street, I think I
Speaker 6: wonder what he's thinking. It must be something like bing
Speaker 6: bong bing ching chung ching chou jou. What a perfect
Speaker 6: topic for our last clop before we're in prison.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the classic the classic thing about ethnic comedy and
Speaker 7: stereotypical ethnic comedy is that the ethnic groups themselves get
Speaker 7: enough of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they love it.
Speaker 4: Have you ever tried to watch a Tyler Perry movie,
Speaker 4: like your head explodes? It's like watching a bad eighth
Speaker 4: grade play.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: The acting is egregious, the writing is over delay like
Speaker 4: it's it's horrible, and it's all incredibly stereotypical, and the
Speaker 4: people who it is made for adore it.
Speaker 1: It's it's like a representation there. That's actually fairly accurate.
Speaker 1: People tell me, you know, it's like a it's it's
Speaker 1: totally recognizable.
Speaker 4: But even if it weren't like there was for Jews
Speaker 4: in the mid century, you know, like there were obviously,
Speaker 4: you know, there was wonderful writers and a great great
Speaker 4: intellectual tradition and nobility and Wroth and Almond and Bellow
Speaker 4: and you know, and such great things. And then there
Speaker 4: were these writers who wrote kind of like idle die
Speaker 4: Lil Didyle, Sam Levinson, and there was another guy named
Speaker 4: Harry Golden who wrote a book called Oldie in America
Speaker 4: is always like missus lefk of it's black. Who bought
Speaker 4: those and you know, like commentary would publish pieces about
Speaker 4: how offensive these were, only in stereotypical and who bought
Speaker 4: those books in the millions?
Speaker 5: Jews did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And one one of those Jews who bought that
Speaker 1: book only in America gave a copy of it, signed
Speaker 1: copy by Harry Golden to somebody in my family as
Speaker 1: a gift because I have read that book. It was
Speaker 1: on my parents bookshelf.
Speaker 8: Right well, it sold like it was right next to
Speaker 8: the Torah.
Speaker 3: Did God sign that?
Speaker 6: No, I'm just kidding. Most we didn't have a tour
Speaker 6: in the house.
Speaker 1: John, your mom no tours.
Speaker 6: In the house.
Speaker 4: You know what, if you had the Bible in your house,
Speaker 4: you have the tour in your house. My friend might
Speaker 4: drop first half. It's the first d.
Speaker 6: More than the first half. It's the first to some
Speaker 6: of us.
Speaker 4: Some of us do not think that sequels are better
Speaker 4: than the original, is all I'm saying. You know, yeah, Jonah,
Speaker 4: because I mentioned Dune is over your shoulder, So the
Speaker 4: trailer is out for Dune three. You are reading Dune
Speaker 4: or a fan of the first two movies, which I
Speaker 4: think we're really good. Dune three is coming. Dune three
Speaker 4: based on the second novel in the Dune series, Dune Messiah,
Speaker 4: and it's going to stink, because Dune Messiah stinks. Everything
Speaker 4: that came after Dune stank. And we are now heading
Speaker 4: into a situation exactly like Wicked two, which is that
Speaker 4: Wicked two was the second act of the musical Wicked,
Speaker 4: and the first act of the musical Wicked, which was
Speaker 4: Wicked one, was actually pretty good, because the first act
Speaker 4: of Wicked is pretty good, and the second act of
Speaker 4: Wicked was terrible, and the movie based on it was terrible.
Speaker 4: And now they're going to spend two hundred million dollars
Speaker 4: on this Dune three based on Done Messiah, and it
Speaker 4: is going to be terrible unless they change the plot,
Speaker 4: which of course they will not do. Do you agree
Speaker 4: with me that Doude Messiah is terrible? Skeptical?
Speaker 6: I am. I am more hopeful than you in all things, really,
Speaker 6: but I uh, I think I think they will have
Speaker 6: sufficient license to deviate from the text where necessary. And
Speaker 6: so I don't know. All I know is from the
Speaker 6: trailer I did not like. I did not love doing Messiah.
Speaker 6: I like the fourth one God Emperor of Dude, and
Speaker 6: so uh, I think it just the amount of money
Speaker 6: alone is so important to the studio and to the franchise.
Speaker 6: But maybe they will just say, let's just make a
Speaker 6: good movie, because, like the Dune fans, you've bought so
Speaker 6: much goodwill by managing to make even a say good
Speaker 6: dude movie, given how many times people have tried. I
Speaker 6: think that he might feel like he can take whatever
Speaker 6: license he needs to take. But I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know either.
Speaker 4: I'm just saying I think it's inferior, uh, inferior product
Speaker 4: and source material.
Speaker 6: But you know, there are things that are bad books
Speaker 6: that lend themselves to good movies, right, I mean, so
Speaker 6: who knows?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so well. I mean, honestly, I was
Speaker 1: not crazy about the book. I can't believe they even
Speaker 1: read it, Hail Mary.
Speaker 5: No, I know why I read it.
Speaker 1: I'm in a book club project, Hail Mary, and we
Speaker 1: all get to pick our books, and so someone picked
Speaker 1: Project Hill Mary.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: And I you know, it was like I suffered. I
Speaker 1: didn't suffer through it. I just thought it was kind
Speaker 1: of silly and it was a scary spider. But from
Speaker 1: all accounts, the movie is fantastic. I'm eager to see
Speaker 1: the movie.
Speaker 3: And you know why the movie is fantastic. I don't
Speaker 3: know why, because it's a buddy comedy. Had we haven't
Speaker 3: had think of how long it's been since there's been
Speaker 3: a really good buddy comedy, like Wedding Crash Ago, which
Speaker 3: was twenty years.
Speaker 4: Ago, the last really good buddy comedy, and like the
Speaker 4: buddy comedy was such a staple of our youth if
Speaker 4: you think about it.
Speaker 3: Redford Newman, Butch Cassidy, The Sting, Sure.
Speaker 4: Forty eight Hours, Lethal Weapon, the whole thing where the
Speaker 4: real relationship in the movie is between these two unlike
Speaker 4: men who come to love each other. Midnight run all that,
Speaker 4: and then somehow I just died.
Speaker 3: Died away. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is.
Speaker 5: A theory that went on.
Speaker 1: I mean, as we'll just say, it is a theory
Speaker 1: that people talk about, uh and never talk about it
Speaker 1: for attribution.
Speaker 5: This is true.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not even making a joke. It's a
Speaker 1: theory about what happened to comedy, especially that kind of comedy,
Speaker 1: and that is that the decision making executive suites in
Speaker 1: studios and TV networks, for a lot of really great
Speaker 1: reasons and fantastic outcomes, became more diverse in a gender way,
Speaker 1: meaning more women and just very different tastes in movies
Speaker 1: and very different tastes in comedy. And it's the comedy
Speaker 1: that we're referencing here is not appealing. Why are you laughing,
Speaker 1: because if you'll laughing at the end of my career
Speaker 1: gets it.
Speaker 3: No. I was just thinking that.
Speaker 4: It's a very different kind of comedy because you can
Speaker 4: name literally two female writer directors in the history of
Speaker 4: motion pictures who have made funny comedies. Maybe three maybe three.
Speaker 4: Penny Marshall say, that's only because well, I was thinking writer,
Speaker 4: I was thinking of North Nancy Myers, but you could
Speaker 4: add Penny Marshall. And now, of course women didn't get
Speaker 4: that much chance to direct and all of that.
Speaker 8: But you know, like the yeah, the thing about the
Speaker 8: there's a relationship comedies though, there's a relationship comedy, right,
Speaker 8: which are great, by the.
Speaker 5: Way, not you know, but they're not the same thing
Speaker 5: as two dudes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, rob a banging out. Yeah, yeah, they rob a bank.
Speaker 4: They're both cops, they're.
Speaker 5: Both dodgeball anchorman, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that island.
Speaker 6: That's a buddy comedy.
Speaker 4: I mean, so Project tail Mary just like in the
Speaker 4: sixties when the sitcom got stale, you ended up having
Speaker 4: sitcom families, but like one was a witch or they
Speaker 4: were they were were you know, Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula's daughter,
Speaker 4: you know, or something like that, like to freshen up.
Speaker 4: So Project Hill Mary is a buddy comedy about a
Speaker 4: guy alone in space who ends up finding himself in
Speaker 4: proximity to an alien. The single cutest piece of puppetry,
Speaker 4: like is Yoda level. If you took Yoda and Elmo
Speaker 4: and you put them together, and you may character out
Speaker 4: of it because the character as you remember from the book,
Speaker 4: is a very able scientist who is actually hundreds of
Speaker 4: years older and vastly smarter than our hero the human,
Speaker 4: and is better at what he does and has to
Speaker 4: kind of be really patient with the human who is
Speaker 4: a bit of a adult.
Speaker 3: And it is just delightful.
Speaker 5: That's great.
Speaker 3: I'm in it is. It is a delightful, delightful movie.
Speaker 1: And I stud feel like sometimes movies can take, you know,
Speaker 1: the the ponderous narration that kind of gets on my nerves,
Speaker 1: the sort of indicating language that people use, and the bad, stupid,
Speaker 1: wry jokes that some novelists put in, thinking he's so clever,
Speaker 1: you know, you you you take all that out and
Speaker 1: you punch it up and it story just everything's elevated.
Speaker 1: I remember, like there's a great detective novelist, Lawrence Block,
Speaker 1: and he's so good. But yeah, Matt scudder. But uh,
Speaker 1: but a lot of the a lot of the stuff
Speaker 1: around those books. In the books, the narration and the
Speaker 1: details are just so irritating. The the young black guy
Speaker 1: kid from the Deuce, who's his friend, and this is
Speaker 1: supposed to be contemporary, and it's like that's that's a fact.
Speaker 1: Jack it's like, oh God, please, no stop. And he's
Speaker 1: always going to the local bar and getting a Yarlsburg cheeseburger,
Speaker 1: which is like, do not ever write those words. And
Speaker 1: and but on the other hand, the mysteries are really good.
Speaker 5: And in the movie, I think that somebody made a movie.
Speaker 6: At one I thought it was pretty good because.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you just take out all that stuff and you
Speaker 5: and you end up with a really good story.
Speaker 3: So uh.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so anyway, that's that's a you really shouldn't
Speaker 4: see projects even if you don't like science fiction, because.
Speaker 3: It is uh.
Speaker 4: And and and by the way, eliminates the longers of
Speaker 4: the book, which are very extreme, because they are about
Speaker 4: these guys decoding this crisis, this like universal crisis where
Speaker 4: its sons are being attacked literally our son and other
Speaker 4: sons are being attacked by kind of virus and they
Speaker 4: have to figure out.
Speaker 1: Yes, we should support it just for this reason alone.
Speaker 1: But it is about the imminent destruction of the earth,
Speaker 1: and it is not about climate change.
Speaker 4: It isn't in fact, the climate change that is caused
Speaker 4: in the in the book and then the movie is
Speaker 4: freezing is this is an ice age?
Speaker 6: But it's not because.
Speaker 1: Because gases are being being because I'm on cold morning
Speaker 1: to let my car run for half an hour before
Speaker 1: I get in it.
Speaker 7: That's it.
Speaker 6: Put it the way, It's not my fault. That's one
Speaker 6: of the things I like about this Paradise thing. Although
Speaker 6: they do at one point finally have to Yeah, this.
Speaker 3: Show I'm talking about, they.
Speaker 6: Had to get a dig in a climate change, but
Speaker 6: for the most part it wasn't the climate change related
Speaker 6: apocalyptic event, and it was just like, Oh, that's just
Speaker 6: so refreshing to have the world.
Speaker 3: And Interstellar was like that too.
Speaker 4: Interstellar is a movie that has a lot of similarity,
Speaker 4: weird superficial similarities to Project Hill Mary, but Interstellar, which
Speaker 4: is about a same also a miss and to save
Speaker 4: the Earth from a bizarre blight like weather blight like yeah,
Speaker 4: essentially like a kind of bowl weavil plague that develops
Speaker 4: the Earth and they have to go off to try
Speaker 4: to figure out how to either how to save the
Speaker 4: Earth or how to move somewhere else. And that was
Speaker 4: referred that was sort of like the Hidden Code that
Speaker 4: Christopher Nolan was not a comedy like it was the one.
Speaker 3: Guy who was a kind of high tory.
Speaker 4: We got in a hint of that from the plot
Speaker 4: of The Dark Knight Returns, which of course is essentially
Speaker 4: a kind of portrait of a radical terrorist taking over
Speaker 4: a radical leftist terrorist taking over a city and what
Speaker 4: Batman has to do to stop him. And then he
Speaker 4: made Interstellar, in which the villain is a climate scientist
Speaker 4: played by Matt Damon who and I don't.
Speaker 3: I it's just a little too weird that his.
Speaker 4: Name is doctor Mann, and doctor Man was the guy
Speaker 4: National review talking about the hockey Stick when National Reviews
Speaker 4: said his hockey stick portrait of how climate change worked
Speaker 4: was a fabrication.
Speaker 6: Correct you on your characterization.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, I got it wrong. But the villain is
Speaker 4: named weirdly shares the same name as the as a
Speaker 4: client as a climate science activist in a movie that
Speaker 4: deliberately made the Apocalypse not about climate change. So Christopher
Speaker 4: Nolan now about to release The Odyssey, very interesting.
Speaker 6: I also finally saw Sinners, which I have. Yeah, so
Speaker 6: I like, you know, it's difficult with all the hype
Speaker 6: about it. I think there's stuff because of it's such
Speaker 6: an impressive audio and visual assault on the senses. There
Speaker 6: are linear narrative things that are pretty badly written that
Speaker 6: you kind of overlook and so, but beyond that, it
Speaker 6: was just nice to see a like a particularly creative
Speaker 6: new take on a bunch of old themes. You know,
Speaker 6: I liked it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I saw it the night it open. I loved it.
Speaker 4: I was not expecting much from it. I didn't think
Speaker 4: it was going to be good because I'm not that
Speaker 4: and I'm not that crazy about now Oscar winning actor
Speaker 4: Michael B.
Speaker 3: Jordan.
Speaker 4: But you know, it starts and there is this setting
Speaker 4: that you've really never seen before in a movie, right,
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty two, Clarksburg, Mississippi. Right, And it looks a
Speaker 4: little LIKEO Brother We're out there though it's though it's
Speaker 4: much more documentarily like I think accurate, or feels that way.
Speaker 4: And the whole thing takes place in a day and
Speaker 4: it's about the opening of a juke joint. That's literally
Speaker 4: the story of the movie is a juke joint is
Speaker 4: opening in this town. These two gangster brothers returned to
Speaker 4: town to get away from the Chicago mob and open
Speaker 4: a juke joint. And then it turns out that there
Speaker 4: are Irish vampires in town.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: That's basically the plot of the movie. Except then it
Speaker 4: layers in the great mythos about Robert Johnson, the blues player,
Speaker 4: you know, who is said to have.
Speaker 3: So in order to be the greatest.
Speaker 1: The deep, the deep myth is that he didn't know
Speaker 1: how to play. That he played at a at a
Speaker 1: juke joint as a young man and was terrible and
Speaker 1: was laughed and who didn't And the girl he was
Speaker 1: chasing could have spurned him because he was no good.
Speaker 1: And then he went away for less than a year
Speaker 1: and came back and picked up the guitar and then
Speaker 1: astonished everybody. And that apparently that part the devil, that
Speaker 1: part is true. Maybe the actual the intervening months may
Speaker 1: have been longer. But he was terrible, and then he
Speaker 1: came back and he was Robert Johnson, and and people
Speaker 1: could only attribute that to the devil.
Speaker 6: And well, can we get a ruling from the seminary
Speaker 6: in here? Yeah? Sure? What did he sell us old
Speaker 6: to the devil? Is that the only way you can
Speaker 6: get really good at guitar? I mean, like this is
Speaker 6: the great like talk your book.
Speaker 5: He almost certainly sold us sold to the devil. I'm
Speaker 5: ninety certain.
Speaker 4: I've heard the Robert Johnson recordings and I know that
Speaker 4: Eric Clapton the greatest.
Speaker 5: Well it's a thing he says he was the greatest.
Speaker 3: And they all say it was the greatest.
Speaker 5: It's like, eh, not for you, not your cup of tea.
Speaker 6: Girl, It's it's not it's full your companee.
Speaker 3: It's not like.
Speaker 4: It's not like when you hear you know, I don't know,
Speaker 4: it's a Pelman play the violin and you're like, oh
Speaker 4: my god, this is the greatest thing I've ever.
Speaker 6: Had to go to. Its Peerlman.
Speaker 1: That had to be your example. You had to go
Speaker 1: to the Jew, had to be a Jew. It's not
Speaker 1: like when you hear Oscar Levant. I'll wait a minute.
Speaker 4: His daughter is a friend of mine and might be
Speaker 4: listening to this, so I mentioned her.
Speaker 3: Fine is that fair?
Speaker 1: Yeah, because it's like Peerlman, isn't it isn't referenced enough
Speaker 1: in the music world. Yeah, okay, that's fine. Well, I
Speaker 1: could you know who's underrated. It's not chroman Is It's
Speaker 1: never been said. How about this, how about he's no Liberaci?
Speaker 1: Another baby showman.
Speaker 3: There you go, and a master of tickling those ivories.
Speaker 5: But by ivories you mean yes, that's for sure.
Speaker 4: I am going to tell a story that you have
Speaker 4: told on this podcast maybe twice, but we've been doing
Speaker 4: this podcast for.
Speaker 3: A well over decade.
Speaker 6: What is the story?
Speaker 3: Came up last night? It came up last night.
Speaker 4: I was talking to somebody and I mentioned Paul Lynde
Speaker 4: and he said, this is weird that you're mentioning pauland
Speaker 4: because on Instagram or TikTok or something, for no reason
Speaker 4: that I can understand, I keep getting served up cut
Speaker 4: pieces of Paul Lynn's answers on the Hollywood Squares. Somebody
Speaker 4: is like going and like taking out the Paul Lynde
Speaker 4: answers on the Hollywood Squares. And he says, it's like
Speaker 4: it was like one of the joys of my day.
Speaker 4: Like it just pops up and I get to watch
Speaker 4: thirty seconds of Paul in being hilarious on the Hollywood Squares.
Speaker 3: And I remembered this your story.
Speaker 4: Which I'm now going to tell because I'm stealing it
Speaker 4: from you, but I am giving you credit for.
Speaker 5: Yeah, sure that.
Speaker 3: One day you were watching the Phil Dona Hue show.
Speaker 6: Oh yeah, I was not watching it. I heard this.
Speaker 5: This is I was not seeing it. To be fair,
Speaker 5: I do not.
Speaker 3: See you now now it's second.
Speaker 1: But a producer on that on the Hollywood Squares was
Speaker 1: there in the studio at the time.
Speaker 4: Okay, so Phil Donahue before he became the pre Opera
Speaker 4: just had a kind of local Chicago morning show and
Speaker 4: Paul Lynn was on the show. But he was doing
Speaker 4: the thing where he walked through the audience and had
Speaker 4: the audience ask questions with the wandering mic, and he
Speaker 4: stops at a woman and the woman says, Oh, mister Lynde,
Speaker 4: you're so charming, You're so delightful. Why hasn't a woman
Speaker 4: snapped you up and swept you up and taking you
Speaker 4: off the market. And in Rob's telling, heard from somebody else,
Speaker 4: Paul nd said, have you been living under a rock?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Yeah, no, well yeah, it's just.
Speaker 1: The I mean, you know, yes, your version is because
Speaker 1: like you got to said, the joke needs attention, which
Speaker 1: is that it's the last. It was always a very
Speaker 1: complicated thing to take the stars of Hollywood Squares on
Speaker 1: a tour because they drank and they corroused. George Goebel
Speaker 1: was always getting drunk and not showing up, and Paul
Speaker 1: Inn was like, you know, it was.
Speaker 6: Like basically like all of.
Speaker 5: Judy Garland's husbands alcoholic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, author like you know at four in the morning,
Speaker 1: that they'd be run out of town by the by
Speaker 1: you know, the by the parents of teenage boys carrying torches. Right,
Speaker 1: so like with with Paul, and so this was their
Speaker 1: last stop and they had gotten through it, and but
Speaker 1: Paul was a little drunk for Dona hughetting them. And
Speaker 1: the woman says this, and it's near the end of
Speaker 1: the show. And what he says is, you know how
Speaker 1: why is not why some some woman not scooped you up?
Speaker 1: And there's this pose that everyone's breath is stopped because
Speaker 1: like we're almost home, and Paul says, where have you
Speaker 1: been living in a cave? There we go, and then
Speaker 1: she looks confused, and then one that's confused and then
Speaker 1: filled on.
Speaker 5: He says, that's the.
Speaker 6: Guest Hollywood Square, thank you very much.
Speaker 1: And then it's like that's the end of the show
Speaker 1: and they all got go home. It needs, you know,
Speaker 1: it needs some setup in some theater around it.
Speaker 4: John Baron, if I screwed it up, okay, But I
Speaker 4: do want to say that while I am happy that
Speaker 4: Metta lost this tour, unlike the Wall Street Journal, I
Speaker 4: am happy that Meta was found liable in this lawsuit
Speaker 4: involving Instagram and it's addictive and the addictive qualities of
Speaker 4: its efforts on the Internet toward children, because I think
Speaker 4: this is a very important moment in our cultural history.
Speaker 4: Having said that, my experience of Instagram in the last
Speaker 4: couple of years has been nothing but delightful to me
Speaker 4: because all I get are snippets of great Hollywood dance numbers.
Speaker 4: I just saw yesterday from a movie I'd never heard of,
Speaker 4: a musical from the nineteen fifties, the dancer Russ Tamblin,
Speaker 4: who we if you know he is, you would know
Speaker 4: him from playing Riff in A West Side Story. And
Speaker 4: then later he was on Twin Peaks. But he was
Speaker 4: also in Sevenbrize for Some Brothers, and he was an
Speaker 4: incredible acrobatic dancer. And he did a number in a movie,
Speaker 4: a black and white movie, in which he does a dance,
Speaker 4: a tap dance, standing on two shovels that he is
Speaker 4: hoisting himself up on and then tap dancing on. But
Speaker 4: of course in order to do that, he has to
Speaker 4: keep lifting the shovels while he is on the shovels.
Speaker 4: It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen. I'm sixty five
Speaker 4: years old. I'd never heard of this movie. I'd never
Speaker 4: seen it. Instagram showed it to me. I get to
Speaker 4: see the Nicholas brothers do dances, Ray Bolger doing dances,
Speaker 4: and movies you've never heard of. You know, musical numbers
Speaker 4: from musicals of the eighties, seventies and nineties that are
Speaker 4: clipped and stuff like that. And I know it's bad
Speaker 4: for teenagers, and I know that it sets up all
Speaker 4: this depression and all that.
Speaker 3: But for me, why can't you nothing but pleasure?
Speaker 1: There's like somebody uploading every almost every single episode of
Speaker 1: Cheers called Cheers clips, and they're sort of now, like
Speaker 1: in the seventh season or eight season now, and so
Speaker 1: I basically I am reliving my career. I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: And sometimes I'm like, oh, that's a that's a funny joke.
Speaker 1: Kind of forgot that. It's something to think, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: we let that go. Oh my god, what a how
Speaker 1: lovenly we were. But I think you should be able
Speaker 1: to sell or to share. I should say your algorithm like, okay,
Speaker 1: I like I like what you're watching. I want to
Speaker 1: why am I not watching what you're watching. Oh well,
Speaker 1: here's a little bit of my algorithm for you, and
Speaker 1: then you should be able to set that for your kids.
Speaker 4: Share it there on Spotify, right, people can playlist playlists
Speaker 4: and stuff like that. So, but of course you don't
Speaker 4: have control of your algorithm. You don't even know what
Speaker 4: your algorithm looks like. That's that's what they got on you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think I know yours looks like it's
Speaker 1: one hundred percent paul In in nineteen thirties movies.
Speaker 3: It's not and cavalcadd Jews. I don't get the paul In.
Speaker 4: I have, however, been getting getting a lot of because
Speaker 4: I have kids in college and kids and a kid
Speaker 4: in high school and all this, I've been getting immense
Speaker 4: numbers of private schools showing me the decisions that they're
Speaker 4: that they're well making about where they're going to college
Speaker 4: that I never even heard of. You know, some school
Speaker 4: in like Saint Louis and it's like, you know, Kevin
Speaker 4: Smith has committed to Boulder. You know, it's Colorado College.
Speaker 4: I'm like, why am I seeing this? What the hell
Speaker 4: is happening? I think the algorithms aren't quite as perfect
Speaker 4: as they as they seem to be, but particularly given
Speaker 4: that Twitter is such a horrible, monstrous cesspool. I find
Speaker 4: that Instagram for me, you know, for a couple of
Speaker 4: minutes is like it's like us, It's like sorbet.
Speaker 6: A little break. But you know what we should do.
Speaker 6: We should give We should give John Up the first
Speaker 6: annual Glop Culture Prize, because you know clearly this is
Speaker 6: the way you get what you want out of people
Speaker 6: is by giving them, you know.
Speaker 1: I should we have a statue statue.
Speaker 3: Can I can? I can I sign?
Speaker 5: You can sign box?
Speaker 1: Yes, but the pick your picture will be you at
Speaker 1: your desk, leaning forward in an imposing manner. You know,
Speaker 1: you know what what only we described as a parody
Speaker 1: of leadership.
Speaker 4: I strongly believe that Trump deserves Trump. Kennedy Center named
Speaker 4: for him and after him for this reason, which is
Speaker 4: that as people as you Jonah and Rob, I'm sure
Speaker 4: you've been there. I've been there, as you may know.
Speaker 4: The Kennedy Center dedicated to the memory of John F.
Speaker 4: Kenny Junior open I think in nineteen sixty nine. It's
Speaker 4: gigantic and ridiculous lobby, which is like it takes like
Speaker 4: two football fields long at the far end of it,
Speaker 4: there is a sculpture, a bust of John F. Kennedy
Speaker 4: that is the ugliest piece, is remarkably ugly of laboratory sculpture.
Speaker 3: That you have ever.
Speaker 5: Is it uglier than the one at the Kennedy Library,
Speaker 5: which is also kind of weird.
Speaker 3: Yes, well, it is.
Speaker 4: Thirty feet high and I'm now gonna it looks like
Speaker 4: it was molded out of dog.
Speaker 1: No, that's how you know Helen Keller was real because
Speaker 1: she did that sculpture.
Speaker 4: And Trump, if he wants this to share this name
Speaker 4: after the two years of renovations, there better be a
Speaker 4: bust of Trump right there next to Kennedy, also looking
Speaker 4: like dog like. That is the perfect tribute to his
Speaker 4: renaming the Kennedy Center after himself. Because no rational human
Speaker 4: being when they presented this idea for the sculpture of
Speaker 4: Kennedy to the Board of Community, why someone didn't say,
Speaker 4: are you out of your mind? Why would anyone want
Speaker 4: this to be the tribute that we are paying to this?
Speaker 4: You know Martyred assassinated president.
Speaker 1: Weird choices that people make, Yeah, but weird tastes in
Speaker 1: the past are their own weirdness, right, I mean like you.
Speaker 1: There there were people in the established art establishment, in
Speaker 1: the culture establishment, who looked at that and said, this is yes, yes,
Speaker 1: I know, and that is That's always the way it is.
Speaker 6: That's always the way it is.
Speaker 3: It's not somebody somebody thought that the okay, some.
Speaker 5: People looked at Madison Square.
Speaker 1: People looked at Madison Square Garden and thought, yes, a
Speaker 1: big round thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, come on. Is the premier example of a art form,
Speaker 6: aesthetic form, whatever you want to call it, where the
Speaker 6: practitioners care so little, if at all, actually have contempt
Speaker 6: for the taste of the public and only care about
Speaker 6: a very thin slice of avant garde peers and what
Speaker 6: they have to say about it. And like, I don't
Speaker 6: love all of Donald Trump's aesthetic castes, to be sure,
Speaker 6: but they are more mindful of like the everyman's taste
Speaker 6: about what a nice building looks like than the architects are.
Speaker 6: The architects are in it for their own status group
Speaker 6: and not for the public.
Speaker 3: But can I tell you when I look at him
Speaker 3: when he's in the Oval Office with all that gold
Speaker 3: leaf stuff that he in the Oval office, and I
Speaker 3: think about a couple of times that I was in
Speaker 3: the Oval office, which is a very big room, but
Speaker 3: it's not you know, a football field size room, and
Speaker 3: a lot of people end up in that room.
Speaker 4: I am telling you that three or four times a
Speaker 4: day somebody is tearing is get punching a hole in
Speaker 4: their suit jacket because they lean up against one of
Speaker 4: those gold things that's protruding from the wall, and there's
Speaker 4: a little and then like a thousand dollars suit is ruined.
Speaker 4: I'm telling you it happened.
Speaker 1: Probably not though, because I think those things glued to
Speaker 1: the wall are like styrofoam with the spray painted gold.
Speaker 6: They're from home depot. I think Trump Trump trump ingram.
Speaker 6: You can't fait gold, and they're not from home depot.
Speaker 6: But he didn't get the joke, so it's entirely possibly
Speaker 6: are from home depot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you are right that that Trump's aesthetic more more
Speaker 4: precisely mimics, you know, the sort of classic aesthetic of
Speaker 4: the psychotic palace dweller. But I do have to say
Speaker 4: I he can do whatever he wants to with the
Speaker 4: Oval office, and whoever comes in next can remove what
Speaker 4: has done like it, just as he put the stuff up.
Speaker 3: It's his office. I have stuff in my office that
Speaker 3: someone's gonna I have.
Speaker 4: I have Al Jolson albums in my office, I assume
Speaker 4: behind me as you may see, and Elvis al Jolson.
Speaker 6: That's just Youngeler.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's just your vote.
Speaker 4: That's Asa Joelson, son of a Canter, uh, the plot
Speaker 4: of the jazz singer. But I have all this stuff,
Speaker 4: and when someone succeeds me, they will remove my ridiculous memorabilia.
Speaker 3: But but I do.
Speaker 4: He's sitting there talking about the war and stuff like that,
Speaker 4: and I can't get my eyes off this hideous, you know,
Speaker 4: golden eagles thing that's on his back. It's like, why
Speaker 4: why did you do this? Does that really make you happy?
Speaker 4: Like you were in the Oval Office like one of
Speaker 4: the grandest like spaces on earth, and you just like
Speaker 4: cluttered it up, Like but okay, it makes them happy.
Speaker 6: What can I say?
Speaker 5: You can't.
Speaker 4: But whatever it is, it's not as ugly as the
Speaker 4: Obama Library, which is which may end up being the
Speaker 4: single ugliest building constructed.
Speaker 6: It's like out of and Or, right, it looks like
Speaker 6: one of the buildings on and Or.
Speaker 5: It's a very strange choice.
Speaker 4: But in and Or they're more attractive because they're surrounded
Speaker 4: by flying ships and you know, and like, I don't
Speaker 4: even know what the hell this thing is supposed to be.
Speaker 4: It looks like a dental floss dispenser.
Speaker 6: That GE's exactly my point. Nobody except a couple hundred
Speaker 6: architects and art critics think that, yeah, looks awesome.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: This is a tell about Barack and Michelle totally because
Speaker 4: that's their library and they said yes, And you know
Speaker 4: what that means. It means they have crap taste. And
Speaker 4: he may have brought he may have been the person
Speaker 4: who was going to make the oceans recede, and uh
Speaker 4: and and and and bring about the you know, the
Speaker 4: the harmonizing of the spheres. But I wonder what like
Speaker 4: his guest bedroom looks like, because if that's the building
Speaker 4: that he chose, I am not don't want to stay
Speaker 4: in his house, right that.
Speaker 1: Is, I don't like I think that's going to have
Speaker 1: that invitations coming. I just I'm not sure, you know
Speaker 1: my feeling about that building. It looks like it looks
Speaker 1: like it's the It looks like they have the they
Speaker 1: had ground level on the wrong spot. It looks like
Speaker 1: it should be the first three the top four stories
Speaker 1: are really the first four stories that you can see
Speaker 1: from the ground. The rest of it is the basement
Speaker 1: with the parking garage and all that stuff. That's what
Speaker 1: it looks like to me, Like it's just oh oh
Speaker 1: you oh, you built it wrong. All of this stuff
Speaker 1: is supposed to be underground. This is the archives, this
Speaker 1: is the the climate controlled area. This is not this
Speaker 1: is no the community center. That's just the little tippy top.
Speaker 4: I mean, like, you know, a brutalist would go and
Speaker 4: show up, you know, brutalists from the forties, you know
Speaker 4: CORP would show up, stand there on on Garfield Boulevard
Speaker 4: in Chicago, look up at the building and go, well,
Speaker 4: this is too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean pretty ugly. Yeah yeah yeah, Paul, can
Speaker 1: we can make it look nice? We can pretty it
Speaker 1: up a little bit.
Speaker 4: Maybe you could you put like a people maybe maybe
Speaker 4: a cornice a little maybe.
Speaker 3: A lattice, you know, Juliette balcony. So just to.
Speaker 4: Just to anyway, So I think it is the final
Speaker 4: end of the the of of the Obama myth that
Speaker 4: this is how he will be remembered, uh by history,
Speaker 4: by this.
Speaker 6: You know, I I think we're saying the same thing,
Speaker 6: but slightly differently. I think his it says less about
Speaker 6: his taste than a certain kind of intellectual insecurity about
Speaker 6: this stuff, where he allowed himself to be bullied into this.
Speaker 6: This will be recognized one hundred years from now as brilliant,
Speaker 6: pathbreaking architecture blah blah blah blah, and spoiler alert, it
Speaker 6: won't be. And I think that's that's the the issue.
Speaker 6: It's like, I don't, I would not. My point is,
Speaker 6: I would not surprise me at all if Obama when
Speaker 6: he's alone and talking to some friends saying, man, that
Speaker 6: thing's ugly, but they tell me it's really smart, you know,
Speaker 6: or it's really cool, or it's.
Speaker 1: Oh that that's a very generous way to look at it.
Speaker 1: I actually don't think he knows. I think he thinks
Speaker 1: he's internalized at all. And so and I think he
Speaker 1: thinks that, you know, I'm a I'm a better architect
Speaker 1: than my architect. I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what I wanted.
Speaker 1: It's gorgeous because I won fifty popular vote, which means
Speaker 1: I'm an architect too.
Speaker 6: Well, that's just kind of I think people do that.
Speaker 1: Celebrities do that all the time, you know, I years ago,
Speaker 1: there was a guy that's right, There was a guy,
Speaker 1: an actor, Michael Moriarty, who played I think I may
Speaker 1: have it wrong. He was on Law and Order, yes,
Speaker 1: during the Clinton years when lown Ora started and he
Speaker 1: was played the the DA It's a true attorney. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that was during what Attorney General Janner Reno was
Speaker 1: trying to reduce the amount of violence on TV.
Speaker 6: Was that was the big problem, the epidemic of violence
Speaker 6: and TV.
Speaker 1: And he decided this is the first Amendment issue because
Speaker 1: he felt like for some reason Law and Order was
Speaker 1: going to get it, which was not what she meant,
Speaker 1: but whatever, and he uh demanded that the networks, et cetera,
Speaker 1: you know, stand up to her. And he had a
Speaker 1: bunch of meetings in which he he seemed to forget
Speaker 1: that he didn't go to law school. He seemed to
Speaker 1: think that he was speaking as the you know, attorney
Speaker 1: general or the district attorney or and I think he
Speaker 1: said someone who's there said, he said a few points
Speaker 1: when I was in law school as a lawyer, and
Speaker 1: people kept saying, but you are a lawyer an actor.
Speaker 1: You never went to law school, and he just it
Speaker 1: just didn't compute for him, and I think once you
Speaker 1: once you're a celebrity and people are telling you how
Speaker 1: great and smart you are, you just think, well, I'm
Speaker 1: I can do it at all.
Speaker 6: Well, there's not a great history of lawyers who I mean,
Speaker 6: he convinced themselves of their economists, you know, Robert Reich
Speaker 6: a boring cast. Right, It's something we're going on back to.
Speaker 4: Reminds me of the fact that nineteen ninety five, when
Speaker 4: the V chip was a subject, this was something people
Speaker 4: but there was a there was a proposal to put
Speaker 4: a computer chip in every television that would allow parents
Speaker 4: that would require a rating system, and parents could press
Speaker 4: a button and therefore their kids would not be able
Speaker 4: to watch a show that had violence on it or
Speaker 4: I guess sex, depending how we were going to set it.
Speaker 3: But it was called the V chip, and.
Speaker 4: I ended up in a debate at the Museum of
Speaker 4: Television with of all people, Dick Wolfe, who was the
Speaker 4: who was then just the guy who did Law and
Speaker 4: Order and is now thirty five years later, the guy
Speaker 4: who has done Law and Order for thirty five years
Speaker 4: and various other shows.
Speaker 5: Not to be fair, was that a planet debate or
Speaker 5: are you just there and was.
Speaker 6: Getting some lunch, and you just like, excuse me, yelled
Speaker 6: at me.
Speaker 4: He yelled at me, rob I didn't yell at them,
Speaker 4: and you made sure I think I'm irascable. True, But
Speaker 4: there are yeah, there are six hundred episodes right of.
Speaker 5: Law and Order. Yeah, fall in what we call a knowledge.
Speaker 3: Literally not a beat.
Speaker 4: There's literally not a plot, beat or a moment or
Speaker 4: something like that. That that is not you know, if
Speaker 4: you if you binge watch a show, well, I mean
Speaker 4: it was like a facewatcher, like.
Speaker 3: We watched Suits.
Speaker 4: We watched up to the Suits and right because it
Speaker 4: got bad, but we enjoyed its junk, but we called it.
Speaker 1: We got a Blue Skies was the USA network Blue Skies, Right.
Speaker 4: But you watch them in sequence, You're watching like two
Speaker 4: or three a day, and you cannot believe the tropes,
Speaker 4: how they how much they rely on tropes.
Speaker 3: I know that's something you know.
Speaker 4: But like for example, Harvey, the hero of Suits, someone
Speaker 4: comes in and says, look, if you don't settle this
Speaker 4: case right now, we're going to go to the jury
Speaker 4: and they're going to reward US seventy five million dollars
Speaker 4: in damages. So if you want to make an offer.
Speaker 4: You make an offer right now, and Harvey says, oh,
Speaker 4: I get it. You're saying I should do every single.
Speaker 5: Episode You're out of order counseling.
Speaker 4: Two people say, two people say, oh, I get it.
Speaker 4: And the other thing is that it begins with somebody
Speaker 4: walking through a glass door into somebody's office with a
Speaker 4: blue file and putting it on a table and saying,
Speaker 4: there's my brief. And the scene ends with somebody saying
Speaker 4: you better get right with this because we're going to
Speaker 4: lose this case, and then walks out the glass door.
Speaker 4: And so it's almost as though you could write it
Speaker 4: just watching.
Speaker 1: There is a knowledge base that is that you know,
Speaker 1: you put it all in and you and you you,
Speaker 1: that's exactly what happens. I know somebody who at the
Speaker 1: gym would start his workout on the treadmill watching Law
Speaker 1: and Order right at the top of the hour, which
Speaker 1: is always on in the middle of the day, like
Speaker 1: I don't know what you know, USA whatever, whatever, and
Speaker 1: knew that when they when they when they have the
Speaker 1: scene in the medical examiner's office, to get off the
Speaker 1: treadmill and then you can go do you know legs
Speaker 1: or arms or squats or something and tell the first
Speaker 1: interrogation scene, and then you do something else, and then
Speaker 1: when you when it's in the trial, and then the
Speaker 1: reverse you you, and so the full workout was just
Speaker 1: simply timed by what was on Law and Order, because
Speaker 1: you could actually do that, and you could still do that,
Speaker 1: and there's nothing wrong with it. I mean, there's an
Speaker 1: old I mean, I mean then just to bring it
Speaker 1: back to seminary and the Lord. But I mean, but
Speaker 1: this is good because but you like this part, you John,
Speaker 1: because it's Psalms, right, if you read the Psalms all
Speaker 1: the way through, right, and you know in the Book
Speaker 1: of Common Prayers there's also Assaulter. There's like they're divided up.
Speaker 1: So you could read a morning and eating, morning and eating,
Speaker 1: morning and eating. And if you do that thirty days,
Speaker 1: you've read all the Psalms. You know, it's like they
Speaker 1: all start the same way. Oh my god, I'm just
Speaker 1: set by enemies. Everybody hates me. I'm just all my
Speaker 1: enemies are trying to destroy me. I've lost, I've lost,
Speaker 1: I've lost. And then at the end we're like God
Speaker 1: ha saved me. And God comes and saves me and
Speaker 1: takes me and brings me to a broad place and
Speaker 1: I'm now I'm happy, And then you start the next
Speaker 1: psalm and he's like, oh my god, I'm beset by enemies.
Speaker 1: Everybody hates me. And then that happens four or five times,
Speaker 1: and you have to ask yourself, what is happening between
Speaker 1: the psalms? What are we not seeing this person do?
Speaker 1: Because like it's bad and then it's good and then
Speaker 1: it's bad.
Speaker 6: What what what are you? What are you doing?
Speaker 3: These are different? Taylor swift eras, Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 4: You know, it's like one's the what you know, David had,
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of stuff going on. He was
Speaker 4: the psalms and you know, some of them was good.
Speaker 4: Some of it he was like his heartbroken by Travis
Speaker 4: Kelcey and you know, happy with Travis Kelcey.
Speaker 3: All right, so we gotta go.
Speaker 6: Yeah moly, this is why I have remained quiet. I
Speaker 6: don't want to feel any longer.
Speaker 5: I will I will only I have nothing.
Speaker 1: I have nothing to promote, but I do want to
Speaker 1: ask our listeners if we still have any at this point.
Speaker 1: I have this idea that what we should do is,
Speaker 1: like on the rest is history, have a glop club
Speaker 1: of like people who pay money and then they get
Speaker 1: extra stuff.
Speaker 6: And one of the things I thought we should do
Speaker 6: is to have a book club.
Speaker 1: And like read a book and then every month and
Speaker 1: I get together and trash the book.
Speaker 5: It doesn't have to be a good book.
Speaker 6: It could be a weird book. But a book an
Speaker 6: announce at the beginning and then do it. I don't know,
Speaker 6: but they.
Speaker 5: Would require us more effort on our part, and then
Speaker 5: I think more.
Speaker 6: I am not trying to laziness, but I'm going to
Speaker 6: plead laziness in terms of the fact that I'm trying
Speaker 6: to write a book right now, and uh perfect. I
Speaker 6: think movie club makes more sense. A movie club. Okay,
Speaker 6: that's a discrete amount of time watch some movie. Oh
Speaker 6: by the way, yeah, okay, bad movie. Tell you guys.
Speaker 6: The Turner Classic Movies Film Festival. They have asked me
Speaker 6: to come out and introduce a face and a crown.
Speaker 3: Oh wow, okay, I'm so mad.
Speaker 5: So it's not even a humble brag. I'm just like,
Speaker 5: what a great movie?
Speaker 3: Too unfair?
Speaker 4: This is so why I've been writing about movies for
Speaker 4: forty seven years. I wish I could say you're what
Speaker 4: Ben Mankowitz yeah, I've even like praised your podcast on Twitter.
Speaker 3: This is the thanks I get that.
Speaker 4: My dearest, my one of my dearest and closest friends,
Speaker 4: is gonna be like, well, you know, Bud Scholberg screenplay
Speaker 4: has many many interesting angles as a question of whether
Speaker 4: or not the this is a this is sophisticated I've
Speaker 4: been satire or is it actually more of a parody
Speaker 4: of Yahoo's by Hollywood's fistic kits.
Speaker 6: Wow happened in May or May late later. I'm very
Speaker 6: happy for you.
Speaker 1: I think it's like, well, you know, I I got
Speaker 1: to be when he when Ben called me up and
Speaker 1: asked me who I think should do it? But if
Speaker 1: I first saw it was Jonah, I guess it's because
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen I got to be a guest. You know,
Speaker 1: they were you They have those guest ghost.
Speaker 6: Things and I did it, sure, and the two movies
Speaker 6: you have to pick something that's in their archives, and
Speaker 6: so the two movies I picked. I can't imagine why
Speaker 6: twenty sixteen I would have these movies in mine and
Speaker 6: gave well, but that's not an archive, so right, So
Speaker 6: like I was saying about Network, but they didn't have
Speaker 6: that blah, blah blah, and so it came down to
Speaker 6: a Facing the Crowd, which I love and yes, and
Speaker 6: mister Smith goes to Washington. Oh yeah, so right, but anyway,
Speaker 6: everybody can say hi to everybody.
Speaker 4: I wonder whether our listeners watching Face in the Crowd
Speaker 4: made in nineteen fifty seven, would they start debut performance
Speaker 4: by Andy Griffith, who was never anything remotely like what
Speaker 4: he is like in A Face in the Crowd ever again,
Speaker 4: because of course he became Andy Taylor and then America's
Speaker 4: beloved you know, widowed father and not a demagogic, psychopathic
Speaker 4: folk rapist folk singer, which is really the character he
Speaker 4: plays in A Face in the Crowd.
Speaker 3: I wonder whether people would watch that and think this.
Speaker 4: Is just liberal problem like attacking you know, nice conservative
Speaker 4: people all over again.
Speaker 3: I wonder how it would play now. I loved it.
Speaker 3: I remember seeing it.
Speaker 9: Oh it's great Walter mathat Walter Math and yeah, it's
Speaker 9: fascinating because Sick trans of Glory in Mundy it was
Speaker 9: actually like based on the story of.
Speaker 3: The guy who was maybe the was sort.
Speaker 4: Of like the I don't know what you call him,
Speaker 4: like the biggest non acting star of the television era.
Speaker 4: In the nineteen fifties, a guy named Arthur Godfrey, who
Speaker 4: was a hosted a kind of variety show and suddenly
Speaker 4: found himself having enormous power.
Speaker 6: It sorted like Helen Keller.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the loathsome Helen Keller, the egregious le Helen Keller.
Speaker 3: You know, you know, you know how you know how
Speaker 3: Arthur Godfrey ended.
Speaker 5: Up with a burn on his face and answering, Helen Keller.
Speaker 3: Bader do you guys?
Speaker 4: Hm?
Speaker 6: That was great.
Speaker 3: Invitation?
Speaker 6: There do we go? How do we stop it?
Speaker 5: How?
Speaker 4: Uh you can just how do we stop it? I
Speaker 4: think I hold on, I just gotted.
Speaker 1: To say, recording stuff. Let's not do anything until we
Speaker 1: see that. Otherwise we have to do all of this again.
Speaker 1: I know, all my joke