Speaker 1: Oh, hey, Rob, you are not on your mic.
Speaker 2: I don't think what are we going to pretend here
Speaker 2: that there's like, oh our our our, our broadcast standards
Speaker 2: are so high. Yes, okay, well we have we we
Speaker 2: do have them.
Speaker 1: They're just we can't be met sometimes they can't be met.
Speaker 1: It's that simple. Wait a minute, Wait a minute.
Speaker 3: You know this is excuse me a damn fine cup
Speaker 3: of coffee.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the first glop culture of the second Trump administration,
Speaker 1: where we're we're nearing the end of January. I'm John
Speaker 1: pod Hornz in New York. Somewhere in the wilds of
Speaker 1: the state of New Jersey wilds, the place that has
Speaker 1: more townships than any other in the planet Earth is
Speaker 1: Rob Long. Hello wild, Rob Long. You're like, I look
Speaker 1: up my equipment. Rob is having sound. We're having sound
Speaker 1: issues with Rob, so we were going to try to
Speaker 1: we're fixing those on the fly. And by we, I
Speaker 1: mean also Jonah Goldberg in Washington High Jonah, Hey, John,
Speaker 1: I know Jonah and I did a podcast together yesterday
Speaker 1: and then he went on Twitter and insulted me for
Speaker 1: the hours for the fact that I quoted you accurately
Speaker 1: an hour out of my day, he ask me, had
Speaker 1: the fly making fun of me? Okay, that's fine.
Speaker 4: All all I say I did was quote you saying
Speaker 4: not to monologize.
Speaker 1: That's okay. Well, that was consciousness of the fact that
Speaker 1: I was at that moment monologizing, and I think I
Speaker 1: think that that self knowledge should not become the object
Speaker 1: of your sport.
Speaker 4: That's fair anyway, apologize.
Speaker 1: That's okay. You know who else needs to apologize? The
Speaker 1: voters of the Academy of Motion Art, Motion Picture Arts
Speaker 1: and Sciences, who today, as we're recording, gave thirteen nominations
Speaker 1: to a movie on Netflix that it is my estimation,
Speaker 1: according to my scientific study of these matters, that literally
Speaker 1: no one has watched from beginning to end. And that
Speaker 1: is a Melia Amelia Perez, Amelia Perez, watch saw twice,
Speaker 1: You saw twice your life? Can I just tell you?
Speaker 1: I think we talked about this the last time. But
Speaker 1: Amelia Perez posits the following question, what if you made
Speaker 1: a French director made an opera largely in Spanish about
Speaker 1: how el Choppo is trans and wants to become a woman,
Speaker 1: and when El Choppo becomes a woman becomes a social
Speaker 1: justice warrior. And tries to save the world because now
Speaker 1: that he she is the person that she is supposed
Speaker 1: to be, that now she can be they can be
Speaker 1: a good person. And it got thirteen nominations. And I'm
Speaker 1: telling you right now, I have not met a single
Speaker 1: person who has gotten past minute sixty of Amelia Perez.
Speaker 1: I have seen it all the way through because of
Speaker 1: my professional obligations, but I was doing wordal and the
Speaker 1: Spelling Bee through the second half, so fortunately I was
Speaker 1: really not paying that much attention. It is awful, It
Speaker 1: is comically awful, so it is of course a thirteen
Speaker 1: Oscar nominee.
Speaker 4: Do you know you know what it reminds me of.
Speaker 4: It's a story you told, was it? John Hughes who
Speaker 4: had a horrible idea for a screenplay that he would
Speaker 4: test out on studio executives to see if they were
Speaker 4: yes men or not yes right. It was a bit
Speaker 4: like a botched abortion or whatever. And if they if
Speaker 4: they said that sounds great, he knew he couldn't trust
Speaker 4: their judgment. It feels like someone pitched that and no
Speaker 4: one realized it was a joke.
Speaker 1: And then they got thirteen Oscar nominations. Because of course
Speaker 1: it's a movie, and now that one of the star
Speaker 1: of the movie, it was actually not the star of
Speaker 1: the movie, but it's the title character is a trans
Speaker 1: person named Carlo Sophia Gascon got an Oscar nomination for
Speaker 1: Best Actress, And we can get to the question of
Speaker 1: whether or not a person who was born male like
Speaker 1: Leah Thomas in the Swimming Pool should be well, that's good, Rob,
Speaker 1: thank you came, yet you fix it anyway. We can
Speaker 1: talk about whether or not this person is stealing, is
Speaker 1: going to possibly steal an Oscar from an actual biological
Speaker 1: woman or not. But she's all not the star of
Speaker 1: the movie, because the star of the movie is Zoweys Saldana,
Speaker 1: who was actually good in it and is in the
Speaker 1: Supporting Actress category. Nonetheless, this is a fast because of
Speaker 1: course that's why it's nominated for thirteen Academy Awards, because
Speaker 1: it's a movie about a transwoman. But the fact that
Speaker 1: that trans woman is el Choppo does not seem to
Speaker 1: have created any moral hazard for the Academy voters, who
Speaker 1: are perfectly happy to imagine that if you just take
Speaker 1: Yaya Sinhoar and you let Yaya Sinhar become a woman,
Speaker 1: Yaya Sinowar will become Gandhi. I mean that is essentially
Speaker 1: kind of like the theme of the movie. Now, I
Speaker 1: just want to say not to anologize that. Conclave, the
Speaker 1: other movie, another movie that I think has seven or
Speaker 1: eight Academy Award nomination. You are muted, Rob, even though
Speaker 1: your sound was good there first.
Speaker 5: Careful on the spoilers here, Okay.
Speaker 1: I just want to say that there. It would be
Speaker 1: great if Carlo Sophia Skan presented the Best Special Effects
Speaker 1: Award along with the actor who plays the mysterious cardinal
Speaker 1: from Kabul in Conclave. And if you've seen the movie,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. If you haven't, I'm not
Speaker 1: saying anything, so but that would be that would be fun. Yeah, Okay,
Speaker 1: if anybody here cared about so here the here are
Speaker 1: the Oscar nominees, and I would like to know if
Speaker 1: you guys have seen any of Okay, here's here's what
Speaker 1: Here's what they got, Anora, I'm still here. A Brazilian movie, Wicked,
Speaker 1: A Complete Unknown, the Bob Dylan movie, The Substance Body
Speaker 1: Horror with Demi Moore, The con Conclave, The Papal Succession Movie,
Speaker 1: The Brutalist, The Three and a half hour epic of
Speaker 1: post war America and an architect and a rich guy
Speaker 1: and a Holica survivor. Uh, what's watch? What is your?
Speaker 2: What is your?
Speaker 5: Where are you going with this?
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you if you've seen any
Speaker 1: of these films? Okay, that's what I would like to
Speaker 1: know if you, I think you have seen Conclave.
Speaker 5: I've seen Conclave. I've seen Honora, you've seen.
Speaker 1: Yes, and there are eight others and.
Speaker 5: Substance.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, have seen any of these? Literally? Not seen?
Speaker 2: He said Jonas Jonahs, taking the rob chair for this
Speaker 2: having not seen it.
Speaker 1: Usual, I've watches more television streaming television than I do,
Speaker 1: certainly because of his many flights, many plane flights. So
Speaker 1: I I just think it's interesting that this is a
Speaker 1: mark of how movies have Really there's no question that
Speaker 1: they have shifted into a secondary place in our culture
Speaker 1: that they when for most of my lifetime they occupied
Speaker 1: the primary place in popular culture. The most. Everybody's happier
Speaker 1: in culture.
Speaker 5: Everybody's happier in a way, right because they weren't going
Speaker 5: to give the oscars the movies that you like.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Let's hear, since they give I mean I love, right,
Speaker 1: So now that's the one that I loved. But I mean,
Speaker 1: did I like no? Man?
Speaker 2: Right, So so everybody's everybody's getting what they want. I mean,
Speaker 2: the people in show business are getting awards, which, by
Speaker 2: the way, is something that we definitely want in show
Speaker 2: business all the time.
Speaker 1: I have a mind.
Speaker 2: I have a Writer's Guild Award. I'm a Writer's Guild
Speaker 2: Award winner, along with other awards, but my Writer's Guild Award,
Speaker 2: it still says it. Am I buy a Writer's Guild
Speaker 2: Award winner?
Speaker 1: I want?
Speaker 2: I want the Writers Guild for the Earth Day Special
Speaker 2: in like I don't know, nineteen ninety something, and the reason, yeah,
Speaker 2: the reason it got was because everybody giving James. James,
Speaker 2: I'll explain it. I'll explain it if you let me. Awards,
Speaker 2: let me let me if you can, let me explain
Speaker 2: it here, not to monologize, but everyone on every show
Speaker 2: wrote a little sketch with their characters. So the writers did.
Speaker 2: The Earth Day Special of that year had like one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty seven writers, which and they all voted
Speaker 2: for themselves.
Speaker 1: So that's what. So that's one fewer than SNL has now.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so they all voted for themselves to get the
Speaker 5: get the Emmy.
Speaker 2: So I have it, and for a long time I
Speaker 2: had it in the bathroom until someone said, you know.
Speaker 1: That's everybody says, yeah in the bathroom. It's all. It's
Speaker 1: like such a thing to say.
Speaker 2: Well, but the difference is that it says the Writers
Speaker 2: Guild Writers Guild Award Award for the Earth Day Special,
Speaker 2: So it does. That's where it belongs. It's not like
Speaker 2: you have to hear.
Speaker 5: And realize you look at the ingredients.
Speaker 4: So is it your contention that it's early yet, But
Speaker 4: basically cinema, right, film theater going cinema.
Speaker 5: Yeah, use of cinema, by the way, is.
Speaker 4: On the path towards where opera and ballet are today.
Speaker 1: They still exist, right, bad analogy, that's a very good.
Speaker 4: And popular culture, or you can call it or theater.
Speaker 1: I mean, actually, there are two thoughts about this, one
Speaker 1: of which is that it's a minority. It's a it's
Speaker 1: a pleasure that is enjoyed by six seven eight percent
Speaker 1: of the population. That the infrastructure that exists to provide
Speaker 1: that pleasure to people is too large and will shrink. Right.
Speaker 1: That is, these thousands of theaters and large buildings, right,
Speaker 1: and you know all of that, and they will they
Speaker 1: will shrink or they will they will become multipurpose spaces
Speaker 1: where other things happen. And then in those spaces seven
Speaker 1: or eight times a year, something big might happen, like
Speaker 1: like there there are two possibly very big Marvel movies
Speaker 1: this year, and Superman and Wicked too, and you know
Speaker 1: Despicable Me seven and Zootopia two and things like that
Speaker 1: that that might have large audiences where they can be activated.
Speaker 1: And otherwise these spaces will either will become bowling alleys
Speaker 1: or bars or whatever they'll do. They'll they'll be games
Speaker 1: to play or something like that. And that's one possibly.
Speaker 1: The other possibility is that they will essentially go extinct
Speaker 1: because the viewing experience of watching any program is now
Speaker 1: arguably better at home than in a theater, or at
Speaker 1: least be talking. You don't people talking, you don't have
Speaker 1: to go somewhere.
Speaker 2: But the problem is you don't feel compelled. The thing
Speaker 2: about going to movie theaters. You used to feel like, oh,
Speaker 2: I better go. I got to go see this movie.
Speaker 2: Everyone's seeing it. I want to go see it. There's
Speaker 2: part of an outing. Now when you're in your house.
Speaker 2: You have this ability to think, well.
Speaker 1: You turn off Amlia Perez is what you're.
Speaker 2: Saying, or like or not today, I do want to
Speaker 2: see it. I just want to see it today, and
Speaker 2: you know, you can see it tomorrow if you want.
Speaker 2: Whereas a movie, you kind of had to go and
Speaker 2: see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when we were kids, and when we were kids
Speaker 1: and there was a movie on TV that you wanted
Speaker 1: to see, you had to see it, right, there's no idea. Well,
Speaker 1: those were like the big ones. But let's say there
Speaker 1: was a movie that you had heard of and suddenly
Speaker 1: it's on either in prime time or it's on at
Speaker 1: eleven thirty, and it's a movie you'd heard abund the
Speaker 1: Maltese Falcon, and you're you know, you're our age and
Speaker 1: you're fourteen years old, and you better watch it because
Speaker 1: you don't know when it's coming.
Speaker 2: It was the principle, yeah, right, the same principle that
Speaker 2: these movies were on. But I you know, in a sense,
Speaker 2: though everybody gets this is really just a question economic
Speaker 2: terms of the costs aligning with the with the actual upside,
Speaker 2: which is that the movies are really too expensive to
Speaker 2: make considering what they where they are and so everything's
Speaker 2: going to get pressed down. That's you know, It's that
Speaker 2: that's the difference between theater and and ballet and opera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. So that you have very rich people basically
Speaker 2: supporting and subsidizing these art forms, and you're just I
Speaker 2: don't think you have that with movies. I can't imagine,
Speaker 2: although you do in a weird way. You do have
Speaker 2: to do right because you have it in this sense well,
Speaker 2: supporting the different things. It's a slightly different thing though,
Speaker 2: because because it's it's exciting.
Speaker 5: People invest in movies because they want to be movie stars.
Speaker 5: That's why they do it.
Speaker 2: They don't do it because they did a very very
Speaker 2: complicated economic analysis and they run in a team of consultancs.
Speaker 2: They decided that I alone can make you know, like
Speaker 2: nobody nobody hires McKinsey to figure out how to work
Speaker 2: the system at the win casino because there isn't one,
Speaker 2: you know, it's that's they're gonna lose money, so they
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I just to me, that's that's the that's what's gonna happen.
Speaker 2: Movies are just gonna and and and film productions is
Speaker 2: gonna go down I mean, the costs of it are
Speaker 2: going to go down, and the people who are gonna
Speaker 2: do it are going to be people who are more
Speaker 2: interested in doing but do it and having it doing
Speaker 2: it and then get launching it to a tequila brand.
Speaker 1: That's the that's the smart move. But let me tell
Speaker 1: you a story. So the story is the movie The Brutalist,
Speaker 1: which is a remarkable piece of work, and I really
Speaker 1: do strongly urge people to go see it. It's a
Speaker 1: it's an American epic, and it's really remarkable and there's
Speaker 1: a lot to argue over it. And it is also
Speaker 1: remarkable because it's it's more than three hours long, and
Speaker 1: it costs ten million dollars to make, and it's an
Speaker 1: epic set from nineteen pretty much from nineteen forty six
Speaker 1: through nineteen sixty one.
Speaker 2: Multiple thing you have said, none of the words you
Speaker 2: have just uttered yes, have in any way have encouraged
Speaker 2: me to see this movie.
Speaker 1: I am I okay, I encourage you.
Speaker 5: I'm looking at my crystal ball and in my crystal
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Much, but I know one hundred percent certainly you are
Speaker 2: that I will never see this freaking Moore.
Speaker 1: You are.
Speaker 2: There's nothing about it that I think is interesting.
Speaker 1: Or entertaining and very interesting, and you will merely doubt
Speaker 1: that you are incorrect. But and I know you, and
Speaker 1: I know your taste, and I think you would actually
Speaker 1: you would find it.
Speaker 2: Va you lost me at three hours.
Speaker 1: Now, let me explain.
Speaker 4: Sometimes you guys make me feel like I'm listening to
Speaker 4: my parents argue with each other.
Speaker 1: But wait, let me explain why I brought it up.
Speaker 2: You love the most.
Speaker 1: Listen to me. It's three and a half hours long.
Speaker 1: It's an American epic. It's said in the past it
Speaker 1: costs ten million dollars to make in total. Wait, that's
Speaker 1: an extraordinary fact alone. And why did it cost ten
Speaker 1: million dollars to make? There's a little hint of why
Speaker 1: it cost ten million dollars to make. That is both
Speaker 1: encouraging and terrifying to people in Hollywood and probably to
Speaker 1: all of us. Okay, are you.
Speaker 5: Going to tell us why?
Speaker 1: Because they used AI. Now we only know that they
Speaker 1: used AI to help them strengthen. Some of the characters
Speaker 1: speak in Hungarian. That's Adrian Adrian Brody nominated for Best Actor,
Speaker 1: Felicity Jones nominated for Best Actress. Hungarian and they speak
Speaker 1: together in Hungarian, and there are scenes where there's Hungarian
Speaker 1: and apparently they used AI to strengthen the Hungarian, make
Speaker 1: it literate, make it make it correct. All of that.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing that more than Hungarian was done here that
Speaker 1: is that involves AI.
Speaker 2: That movie Queer is it's like this, there's tons of
Speaker 2: AI in that movie and it's almost terrible.
Speaker 4: Okay, but I say, you used AI AI to do
Speaker 4: what well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Sets backwards Une Philadelphia, nineteen fifty one. But my point
Speaker 1: is that this means you can make a giant. You
Speaker 1: could make The Godfather for two million dollars. Well if
Speaker 1: you're bubbling, okay, if you use AI properly. But of
Speaker 1: course everybody in Hollywood, everybody in America is scared to
Speaker 1: death of AI.
Speaker 2: Can we just here's what's interesting about culture and AI
Speaker 2: and movies to me. In the movie Queer with Daniel
Speaker 2: Craig and then an actor whose name I forget now
Speaker 2: Daniel Craig, Clake, James Bond, there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 2: AI in there for like scenery and like Mexico City
Speaker 2: in the fifties and stuff it's like, and they shot
Speaker 2: it all on a back lot, so it kind of
Speaker 2: looks faky anyway, but like the AI kind of does okay,
Speaker 2: but it's gonna look like those really bad rear screen
Speaker 2: projections from the fifties, look like a bad Hitchcock rear
Speaker 2: screen projection, which we all kind of like except now
Speaker 2: because it's Hitchcock.
Speaker 5: But really it.
Speaker 1: Looks terrible, right ye.
Speaker 2: What's interesting about it is that they didn't use AI
Speaker 2: for the fairly graphic sex scenes between Daniel Craig and
Speaker 2: this other dude and Daniel Craig is an action adventure,
Speaker 2: and that just shows you how far we come, because
Speaker 2: you know, if you just say yeah, John Wayne, or
Speaker 2: even like Roger Moore, Sean Connery, you said, look, you're
Speaker 2: gonna be in bed with this guy, it's going to
Speaker 2: be pretty obvious what's happening. And there's really no other
Speaker 2: way to fake it. So it's going to be almost
Speaker 2: like you're like, it's happening. You know, it's not going
Speaker 2: to be it's going to be very very intimate, But
Speaker 2: we're gonna use AI to do the Mountains of Tosco.
Speaker 2: If you're like Sean Connery, how about we do the
Speaker 2: AI for the sex stuff that we Actually.
Speaker 1: It's even worse because Daniel Craig like took this big
Speaker 1: swing for the fences with this part and did not
Speaker 1: work an Oscar nomination.
Speaker 5: And well that's because it's that he was he was stiffed.
Speaker 1: He was stiffed, he was slewed, which is what you're saying.
Speaker 2: People thought it because he did in the movie.
Speaker 1: But the weird.
Speaker 2: Thing about that is that it used to be like
Speaker 2: you would get an Oscar nom if you played somebody
Speaker 2: who was mentally handicapped or sad gay man. And now
Speaker 2: I think you don't. I don't know how you get.
Speaker 2: I don't know how you get.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: One other big thing is that you know yetity you
Speaker 4: play a drug dealer who becomes a woman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's been got transit, here's and here's a big one,
Speaker 1: got a big one for you. You know how it used
Speaker 1: to be to every documentary every year, the best documentary.
Speaker 2: We're just deserly trying to get some jokes in here. John,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've noticed. You keep going back
Speaker 2: to the ospital.
Speaker 1: Said stiffed. I'm the one who said I started that
Speaker 1: whole thing. I know, I know, okay, I don't. I
Speaker 1: just don't want to be accused of it.
Speaker 2: But you finished too soon, That's what.
Speaker 1: That's what he said. Okay, the documentary film category. Every year,
Speaker 1: there were always two films that involved the Holocaust, right,
Speaker 1: always two. There was like a Survivor, or there was
Speaker 1: like no, now we are moving what is now twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four? It is the and guess what, Guess what?
Speaker 1: There is a movie. There is no Holocaust movie, but
Speaker 1: there is of course a Palestinian Jenit are being genocided
Speaker 1: movie in the documentary category.
Speaker 5: Well, I got to get a movie's times.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm saying. So the new thing is going
Speaker 1: to be It used to be Hollywood run by Jews,
Speaker 1: Da da da Holocaust, Holocaust, Holocaust. Now it's going to
Speaker 1: be Hollywood run by woke leftist lunatics, palastine genocide, palicying,
Speaker 1: and genocide palacy. So that's a fun that's a fun
Speaker 1: journey that we're taking, you know, as as the politics
Speaker 1: in America shifts radically in the other direction. But so, uh,
Speaker 1: did you like a Noura rob because I loved Anora.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was fun. It was good.
Speaker 2: I was like a real movie. Yeah, I mean it
Speaker 2: felt like a real movie. It felt like a movie,
Speaker 2: like I mean, I liked I liked the conclavet because
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: I love all that like that specific weird Vatican stuff,
Speaker 2: you know, as a as a as a devoted Anglican.
Speaker 2: It it satisfies my need to to uh to look
Speaker 2: down on the papers, but also think, wow, that's a
Speaker 2: cool outfit.
Speaker 1: Cool outfit, nice hallways like yeah, and also a part
Speaker 1: one hundred and two hotel rooms they somehow just constructed
Speaker 1: in the solely to have there so that they could
Speaker 1: have a conclave every now and then.
Speaker 5: I just like it. I just thought that that was
Speaker 5: it was.
Speaker 1: Pretty it has it has the worst last ten minutes
Speaker 1: of any movie I've ever seen that. Yeah, But nonetheless,
Speaker 1: anyway it is, it is so good. It is so
Speaker 1: fun until that point.
Speaker 5: So that point's kind of fun.
Speaker 1: That was a fun movie.
Speaker 4: I was in London recently with my daughter, Yeah, and
Speaker 4: we saw two shows on the West End, two things
Speaker 4: at theater right, the Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button reset
Speaker 4: in a Welsh seaside town and uh the Stranger Things Play,
Speaker 4: which we can talk about in a second. But after
Speaker 4: we saw the Benjamin Button thing, which was the music
Speaker 4: which we liked, didn't love, but we liked. It was
Speaker 4: too early to get dinner, the hotel us too far
Speaker 4: away to go home, and so me and my daughter
Speaker 4: loved going to the movies. So we went to the
Speaker 4: big Imax theater in Leicester Square and saw No s
Speaker 4: Faratu and biggest Imax theater I've ever been in, and
Speaker 4: I think except maybe with one at the Smithsonian. It's
Speaker 4: kind of nuts and not to go back to the
Speaker 4: opera versus ballet kind of ye. Yeah, the tickets for
Speaker 4: this might as well have been for La Bom at
Speaker 4: the Met. I mean I dropped again. I think between popcorn,
Speaker 4: soda and two tickets for this Imax thing, close to
Speaker 4: one hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: That was the pop corn. Yeah. They don't put butter
Speaker 1: on their popcorn.
Speaker 2: There, yeah they do. Nobody does. Americans know how to
Speaker 2: eat popcorn in general corn nobody else does.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, also when you go when you go to Europe,
Speaker 1: they don't have ice. They don't have ice for drinks,
Speaker 1: that's the other thing. And they don't Yeah, they don't
Speaker 1: have and they don't have butter on the pape.
Speaker 2: Now they have more ice than they used to as
Speaker 2: growing up as a kid, uh, and they don't. They
Speaker 2: still use the little the glasses with the etched in
Speaker 2: line that shows you legally in France anyway, how many
Speaker 2: sent a leaders, You're going to get no more no loves,
Speaker 2: so that there will never be no.
Speaker 1: Like but anything, have anything.
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Speaker 1: Rob.
Speaker 2: Can I ask you a question, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Less about Luhman and more about your role now as
Speaker 4: the probationary spiritual advisor of this podcast. Yes, when you say,
Speaker 4: is it bad that when I hear you say yes,
Speaker 4: most people will give up their resolutions by February. And
Speaker 4: the thing that comes to my mind is I look
Speaker 4: at the calendar and I'm like, awesome, I only have
Speaker 4: to wait seven more days before I can give up.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, as a well known now well known
Speaker 2: Episcopalian clergy member of the clergy recently said publicly and
Speaker 2: in front of the incoming president and vice president, mercy
Speaker 2: is at the heart of our faith. So I will
Speaker 2: pray for you, and I offer you only the mercy
Speaker 2: that God offers you as you break your covenants.
Speaker 5: With yourself, because that's who you're letting down, Jennah.
Speaker 1: Not me, not God, not John. You it's worse to
Speaker 1: let me down. You're okay with that from th So
Speaker 1: what did you like those rato.
Speaker 4: It was pretty gross, I gotta say, and it was
Speaker 4: not necessary for imax, I gotta say. I guess I
Speaker 4: did It was such a.
Speaker 1: Throwback in so many ways.
Speaker 4: It did not feel like a movie made in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five, released in twenty twenty five. It felt like
Speaker 4: it was an homage to a movie that was released
Speaker 4: in nineteen seven kind of thing. And uh, yeah it
Speaker 4: wasn't it kind of kind of like it didn't know
Speaker 4: what it wanted to be. Was it a horror movie?
Speaker 1: Was it an homage?
Speaker 4: Was I mean the guy who played No Saratu was
Speaker 4: uh the guy I think he was penny Wise? You know,
Speaker 4: he's a really penny Wise and they recent it. Yes, yes, yeah,
Speaker 4: he's very good at it. But like if I was
Speaker 4: watching with my dad, my dad would be like, why
Speaker 4: can't he blow his nose? Just like the way he
Speaker 4: talked was just really annoying.
Speaker 1: So I liked it.
Speaker 4: It was interesting to look at, but like you, there
Speaker 4: was no one to really sympathize with in the whole thing.
Speaker 4: No one are really root for and the handful And
Speaker 4: like when I heard that William Dafoe was going to
Speaker 4: be in No Sparatu I just assumed he was going
Speaker 4: to play No Faratu.
Speaker 1: But by the way he did, I oh he did
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, twenty years ago, and he made a movie.
Speaker 1: He made a comedy about the making of the original
Speaker 1: No Speratu, the making of the movie in which he
Speaker 1: played Max Shrek, the actor who played No Saratu in
Speaker 1: the movie, made in Germany in nineteen.
Speaker 5: It's strange though.
Speaker 1: It's like place van Helsing or the version whatever the
Speaker 1: character's name is here in in nos Farta. I loved it.
Speaker 1: I loved it, I have to say much to my
Speaker 1: I thought it was beautiful. I thought it was it
Speaker 1: was really interesting. Look. I thought it was actually quite
Speaker 1: I actually was quite moved by it in ways. And
Speaker 1: I thought it was very intelligently made. But and it's
Speaker 1: a hit. It's a huge hit for a for an
Speaker 1: independent movie of that sort. It's going to make a
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars at the box office, which for an
Speaker 1: R rated horror movie of that sustained grossness, which is a,
Speaker 1: by the way, part of a whole move. Honora's like this,
Speaker 1: the substances like this. No Speratu is like this, the
Speaker 1: Nicole Kidman movie, Baby Girl, and a couple of other things.
Speaker 1: Breasts are back on screen. Baby. It's been like twenty
Speaker 1: years we haven't seen a naked lady on screen and
Speaker 1: let me tell you go to the multiplex. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's like going to the pussy Cat back
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy two. We we have we have breasts,
Speaker 1: we have.
Speaker 2: Since Rodney Dangerfield. But ladies and gentlemen, no, you're yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that's true. A lot of that's coming back.
Speaker 1: You know what Rodney Denserfield could today be Leah Thomas.
Speaker 1: I think in the in Back of School he could
Speaker 1: be diving for the girls team. Sure, yeah, that would
Speaker 1: get on an Oscar nomination, Yeah, at a Nobel Prize.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I'm just saying, Nichole's naked, Mikey Madison
Speaker 1: is naked, and Anora he's naked. Lily Rose depth in
Speaker 1: in No s Ferratu very mere to me more in
Speaker 1: the Substance, More is remarkable in the Substance, which is
Speaker 1: a really weird, weird, inventive fund weird movie that is
Speaker 1: so gross that if you can't if you can't handle
Speaker 1: the gross, you can't handle gross, don't see it.
Speaker 2: But I was going to say that there's also kind
Speaker 2: of as people get used to it, you know, there's
Speaker 2: like it's the it's like the Willem Dafoe thing, you know,
Speaker 2: like when it's one of those when the cars new
Speaker 2: cars come out, because does cars look weird? Who's gonna
Speaker 2: ever want to drive a car like that?
Speaker 1: It's weird?
Speaker 2: And then a couple of years later you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: this car's are normal. When Willem Dafoe is in first
Speaker 2: appearing in movies like who's that weird guy? He's a
Speaker 2: weird looking freak, and now he's the you would never
Speaker 2: cast him as just ferrato because you have a freaker
Speaker 2: guy to do that.
Speaker 5: And I think it's the same thing like it was
Speaker 5: happening now.
Speaker 2: Is a lot of these older women, older actors in general,
Speaker 2: are you know, there's still kind of in good shape.
Speaker 2: And then of course the the to mean more the
Speaker 2: substance is really sort of about that subject. That's the
Speaker 2: subject of it. So uh and with a little bit
Speaker 2: of a I you know, you can you can probably
Speaker 2: take your pants down and tell you're well in your eighties.
Speaker 4: It's getting them back up that becomes a problem in
Speaker 4: your age.
Speaker 1: Well maybe hey, I can, I can do it for you.
Speaker 2: So uh, all right, I'll tell you though, I will
Speaker 2: I'll tell you one uh weird argument we had with
Speaker 2: a standards or practices person in a network about a uh.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's a tag and then and then all
Speaker 5: these guys are going to.
Speaker 2: Uh this guy was sort of an aristocrat and he's
Speaker 2: gonna his father had come to visit him, and he
Speaker 2: expected his father to to basically say you're you're I'm
Speaker 2: cutting off all your money, but in fact his father
Speaker 2: had no money.
Speaker 5: Run through it all.
Speaker 2: But they were But they reconciled at his club and
Speaker 2: he went with his friends to the club and they
Speaker 2: all went up to the plunge pool in the club,
Speaker 2: which says the most disgusting place in the world because
Speaker 2: just a bunch of naked old men in the pool.
Speaker 2: And the last scene was the guy sort of in
Speaker 2: the pool waist up and one of them is like
Speaker 2: all ashen and he says it is is that?
Speaker 1: What is that?
Speaker 5: An old man?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That's stuff.
Speaker 5: I goes, y, Hi, hi Chip, How are you? Is
Speaker 5: Is he facing us?
Speaker 1: Then?
Speaker 2: Oh no, he's no. I actually I have no idea.
Speaker 2: And the standards of practices woman was like, you can't
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 5: It's disgusting, Like.
Speaker 2: What are you what's disgusting about? It's disgusting the idea
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't know that he's so old. And she
Speaker 2: had this whole thing and it was such a great
Speaker 2: it's great to work shop test right, because she was
Speaker 2: so horrified by the idea of age being so hideous
Speaker 2: that you wouldn't know. A naked old person just is
Speaker 2: like a melting candle. It doesn't have a front or
Speaker 2: a back. It's just a loose jacket of skin.
Speaker 4: So apropos is literally other than changing the subject from
Speaker 4: this disgusting topic. I was watching Seinfeld last night, and
Speaker 4: which I sometimes do, which is waiting for like the
Speaker 4: news to come on, kind of thing, And I've seen
Speaker 4: them all so many times, like I very rarely i'll
Speaker 4: still laugh, but I know the laugh is coming kind
Speaker 4: of thing. I completely forgot this scene, and I remember
Speaker 4: of the episode where George is dating a woman he
Speaker 4: thinks is ballimic, and he thinks that she goes to
Speaker 4: the bathroom to throw up after every every time he
Speaker 4: takes her out to dinner and hold to cannery about
Speaker 4: you know, catching her in the act and all that.
Speaker 4: But anyway, when he goes back, when he first comes
Speaker 4: to this, when this thought first enterest his head, he
Speaker 4: goes back to the apartment and he's talking to Jerry
Speaker 4: and Elaine about it, and he's saying, I think she's balliemic.
Speaker 4: I think she's you know. And Elaine's like, and this
Speaker 4: concerns you, and he says, yeah, I'm not getting my
Speaker 4: money's worse.
Speaker 3: I just paint that.
Speaker 4: I completely forgot about that.
Speaker 1: It was hilarious.
Speaker 4: So anyway, maybe we don't have to come back to
Speaker 4: moldering blobs of flesh.
Speaker 1: Eh.
Speaker 5: I don't know, but it gives me at piles of
Speaker 5: vomited talk about.
Speaker 1: Well, nobody has to be beliemic anymore because they could
Speaker 1: just take ozembic when they're twenty pounds underweight. There are
Speaker 1: people who are taking were taking these semiglue tides who
Speaker 1: literally are like they're now looking like they came out
Speaker 1: of the bioffran famine, you know, because they're doing it
Speaker 1: while being at a perfect weight and they're using it
Speaker 1: to get underweight. And you can see it all over
Speaker 1: the place, particularly in like Golden Globes or something like that,
Speaker 1: where it really is like human lollipops. There are people
Speaker 1: who look like human lollipops. They have this like head
Speaker 1: that is that cannot shrink because of the there's nothing
Speaker 1: you do to shrink a skull. And then you know,
Speaker 1: and and the chin from the top to the bottom
Speaker 1: and the rest of their body just shrills away and
Speaker 1: they're just like walking along.
Speaker 4: I don't get it, like Kathy Baits. Everyone from Kathy
Speaker 4: Baits to Mike Pompeo is obviously on these things right,
Speaker 4: and they can't admit it, Like I mean, Pompeo's is like,
Speaker 4: you know, just eating right and out the size. Catty
Speaker 4: Bates will not say that she's done it, And I mean.
Speaker 1: You can tell. You can tell by the way you
Speaker 1: can tell Cathy because because the first half of the
Speaker 1: season of her hit show Mattlock, she looks like Kathy
Speaker 1: Baits and then she was after golden globes and pounds
Speaker 1: thinner and just three pounds thinner. And you know, she's
Speaker 1: a she's a she's a small woman. She's short, which
Speaker 1: I didn't really know because she was I don't know
Speaker 1: who she was staying.
Speaker 3: I know a lot.
Speaker 1: I'm just guessing thirty tiunds.
Speaker 2: And I just say, say, Pompeo, I don't know about
Speaker 2: the time Pompei timeline on these because you know he
Speaker 2: started losing weight like four years ago like I thought
Speaker 2: he was running for president.
Speaker 5: Everyth thought he's lady for president because he dropped a
Speaker 5: whole lot of weight. And that was really before these things.
Speaker 1: Were there were still there was still I think he would.
Speaker 5: Have done it the healthy way, just by throwing up
Speaker 5: after her.
Speaker 1: No, I mean ozempic or the first the first one
Speaker 1: of those came around about four four years ago, as
Speaker 1: I as I recall, so anyway, I just think it's
Speaker 1: a it's a.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 1: It's like human AI. It's like human AI. They're they're
Speaker 1: they're they're using you know, magical, magical medicine to shrink
Speaker 1: into nothing, just as the brutalist shrank its budgets to nothing.
Speaker 1: And it has not it too, will not admit that
Speaker 1: it is using ozeva to get to get to ten
Speaker 1: million dollars for three and a half hours. But I
Speaker 1: mean that's that's sort of like where this is all going.
Speaker 1: And everybody is scared, right, everybody is scared, And I
Speaker 1: just remember, like this the world of people who are
Speaker 1: not going to have jobs because of AI. It reminds
Speaker 1: me that the job, my first job in journalism as
Speaker 1: an adult, is in a category of job that stopped
Speaker 1: existing once the computer came in really once, once everybody
Speaker 1: was working on computers and could access the Internet. I
Speaker 1: was a researcher out of news magazine and there was
Speaker 1: a whole elaborate system of fact checking. Oh I love
Speaker 1: that reporting and this and various other things and that. Basically,
Speaker 1: over the course of the ten years after I stopped
Speaker 1: doing it, it all the entire mid section of the
Speaker 1: news magazine staff disappeared, the separation between reporters and writers,
Speaker 1: to separate the fact that there were right, as I says,
Speaker 1: So that was like, that was the first stage.
Speaker 2: Of the It was so amazing though.
Speaker 1: I remember, like, no secretaries, right, the secretary is gone
Speaker 1: because people could type their own letters and form at them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I used to. I used to write a column
Speaker 2: for Newsweek International, and it was great because you just
Speaker 2: would write, you know, forty five percent of all overseas
Speaker 2: travel is a red eye, and then in big caps
Speaker 2: in parents you'd write, check.
Speaker 5: Check and check it yes, and every now and then
Speaker 5: they would come back.
Speaker 2: And say, actually, it's it's actually a tiny, tiny amount
Speaker 2: of of over the red eye, undermining your entire column.
Speaker 2: Do you want to rewrite it? You say, no, I
Speaker 2: think it still stands. I think this sus to just
Speaker 2: go out like it's a check was fantastic.
Speaker 1: You know. One of the interesting things about the news magazine.
Speaker 1: You could do that because there's nobody was paying the
Speaker 1: slightest attention to anything. These magazine sold four million copies
Speaker 1: a week, and as Charles Grahamer would say, Charles Grammer
Speaker 1: wrote a column every other week on the back page
Speaker 1: of Time magazine, and every couple of years one of
Speaker 1: them would hit and become something that people talked about.
Speaker 1: But that an article in The New Republic with a
Speaker 1: circulation of forty thousand would get more attention, would get
Speaker 1: more response, would get more letters, and would and would
Speaker 1: do him better in terms of his reputation, everything like
Speaker 1: that than a two page piece in a magazine with
Speaker 1: four million readers. And that is that. That was the
Speaker 1: conundrum of the of the news magazine. So Rob, don't worry.
Speaker 1: You could have made it. We could have said anything.
Speaker 1: Nobody was paying the Slice movie.
Speaker 5: Nobody was paying the Slice except.
Speaker 1: For the time. Except for the time that I let
Speaker 1: through as a as a as a fact checker, I
Speaker 1: let through the use of the word cement in the
Speaker 1: building of a dam between Brazil and Paraguay. And the
Speaker 1: word is not cement is the raw material. Concrete is
Speaker 1: what Adam is made out. And the magazine got twenty
Speaker 1: five hundred letters, twenty five one hundred letters saying, oh,
Speaker 1: you idiots client not cement, So that you know, And
Speaker 1: so I felt pretty bad. So thirty years ago, that
Speaker 1: was forty years ago.
Speaker 4: I used to be buddies. I used to be buddies
Speaker 4: with a bunch of the editors at the Public Interest,
Speaker 4: the nerdy, very intense domestic policy journal edited by Irving
Speaker 4: Crystal and Nac Laser, and uh, you know, and Irving
Speaker 4: used to have a rule, you said, if we have
Speaker 4: more than six thousand subscribers, we're doing something wrong. And
Speaker 4: and George Will wrote one of his rare two page
Speaker 4: Newsweek columns about an article in the Public Interest called
Speaker 4: Nation of Cowards, which was a very weird piece that
Speaker 4: my friend Ira Carnahan, who was editing at the time,
Speaker 4: let through about how everyone should have a gun because, uh,
Speaker 4: you should not outsource your own protection and the protection
Speaker 4: of your women folk to the state. And you're a
Speaker 4: coward if you're not willing to exercise your right to
Speaker 4: self defense. And it was a very high falutinant philosophical thing,
Speaker 4: but that, you know, nation of cowards. Everyone should have
Speaker 4: a gun. George wrote a two page column about this.
Speaker 4: The Publican just was inundated with subscribers, who by the
Speaker 4: time the next issue of this quarterly journal came out,
Speaker 4: which was full of stuff on you know, the efficacy
Speaker 4: of negative income taxes and all that kind of stuff
Speaker 4: like what the hell, what the hell magazine, what the
Speaker 4: hell is this? Yeah, so that was always the great Yeah,
Speaker 4: most new subscribers and most cancelations in one like cycle
Speaker 4: like that they'd ever seen.
Speaker 1: Well, it's like it's like the greatest ad ever taken
Speaker 1: out in variety was taken out by Oscar Hammerstein the
Speaker 1: week after Oklahoma premiered in nineteen forty two. It was
Speaker 1: the biggest hip Broadway I'd ever seen, sort of like
Speaker 1: the Hamilton of its time. And Hammerstein had been through
Speaker 1: this long fallow period in which he had had show
Speaker 1: after show after show after show that had flopped, and
Speaker 1: then he got together with Rogers and they wrote this
Speaker 1: show and it was a huge thing. And Hammerstein took
Speaker 1: out a full page ad and he said I failed before,
Speaker 1: and don't worry, I will fail again, Oscar Efferstein second,
Speaker 1: and that is same thing. It's like, we're just going
Speaker 1: to be right here publishing our articles on the negative
Speaker 1: income text. That piece is an amazing piece of writing,
Speaker 1: actually a Nation of Cowards by a guy named jeff
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Snyder. No, I don't think. Yeah, he kind of didn't.
Speaker 1: Nothing much came of it. Okay, we're going to take
Speaker 1: a quick break here.
Speaker 2: And we're back, and we're back.
Speaker 5: Should we have a band playing or something.
Speaker 1: That would be good? You remember those cards. There was
Speaker 1: always a card on the Light Show where it would
Speaker 1: say will be It would say, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1: But that was the card that they showed just when
Speaker 1: they were coming back.
Speaker 2: And well, because that was the card they showed, because
Speaker 2: remember they would they would they would brought be broadcast
Speaker 2: three time zones, three different ways, and a guy had
Speaker 2: to do that, like a guy in the control thing
Speaker 2: would have to take care of all that. There's a
Speaker 2: story that you know, if you'ple watching the old Bob
Speaker 2: Newhart Show. The end of a lot of the old
Speaker 2: Bob Newhart shows, it would be Bob and Emily, his
Speaker 2: wife in bed, and they'd be having kind of an
Speaker 2: argument and they say good night and turn off the lights,
Speaker 2: and then there'd be a beat and then one of
Speaker 2: them just couldn't stand it would turn the light.
Speaker 1: Back on right.
Speaker 2: And there's a famous sort of the guy some guy
Speaker 2: in New York, the guy New York, because in New
Speaker 2: York what they what they would do is they would
Speaker 2: show it was like a coupler because it was a
Speaker 2: thirty five millimeters print and it went right into the
Speaker 2: broadcast camera. So they had the project They projected it
Speaker 2: into the camera. They somehow they did that and they
Speaker 2: had a projection as a good guy in the control
Speaker 2: room and at one point he just kind of I
Speaker 2: gotta know it was breeding porn mag or something. He
Speaker 2: wasn't paying any attention and he suddenly looks up and
Speaker 2: the Bob Newhart Show has gone black and he goes,
Speaker 2: oh no, and then he quickly cuts to the news
Speaker 2: or something. He does something got commercial whatever, and it's
Speaker 2: like there's till two minutes left of material.
Speaker 5: There's a whole scene that then ends up the turning
Speaker 5: on the lights and they have the end.
Speaker 1: Of the show.
Speaker 5: He just he just forgot that that was happening. About NewART,
Speaker 5: It always comes out of one person, you know, one guy.
Speaker 1: So there is this movie that did not get nominated
Speaker 1: for Best Picture called September fifth, which is about the
Speaker 1: day in Munich when ABC Sports ended up covering the kidnapped,
Speaker 1: you know, the hostage taking and the merger.
Speaker 4: Amazing, he has come out here, it is out.
Speaker 1: I've seen it. It's what's what's remarkable about it is
Speaker 1: it is a movie a about how ABC Sports covered
Speaker 1: the technical deficiencies and dealt with the technical problems of
Speaker 1: covering this story in the Olympic village. And that's what
Speaker 1: it's about. There are sort of moments where they're like
Speaker 1: are we doing the right thing? Are we doing the
Speaker 1: wrong thing? But most of it is like how do
Speaker 1: we get the film out, how do we get on
Speaker 1: the satellite? And can we make a chiron? How are
Speaker 1: we going to make the right chiron? CBS has the
Speaker 1: right to the satellite and not us, And it is
Speaker 1: I loved it because that stuff fascinates me. But it's
Speaker 1: literally like looking through the wrong end of a binocular
Speaker 1: at an issue in the United States, do you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? Or an issue on the planet, because
Speaker 1: what happens to the hostage is almost incidental it's like
Speaker 1: the mcguffin almost of the How did they make a
Speaker 1: show in nineteen seventy two with all this all this
Speaker 1: antiquated technology, It's.
Speaker 4: A really good show.
Speaker 1: Was this way to look at it? Yeah?
Speaker 5: It was international terroristic like, and I think it's very.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's very I mean it's it's the fact
Speaker 1: is it's made by these like guys who weren't even
Speaker 1: alive when it happened.
Speaker 5: So that is that is becoming less and less of
Speaker 5: an unusual I know, But I mean the fact that.
Speaker 1: They had, the fact that they were so interested. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you can hear my my dog is
Speaker 1: going crazy for some reason, if you're here, I heard.
Speaker 2: Well that in this way, I did hear a piece
Speaker 2: of bad news. I'm not nobody I knew very well,
Speaker 2: but I just heard the news that a woman died
Speaker 2: to something. She died and she was unexpected her death,
Speaker 2: and like, oh my god, it's terrible.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Some say, yeah, you know it's terrible because you know,
Speaker 2: she's sixty two, and I'm I'm still the person, even
Speaker 2: though I'm not physically that person who says, well, in
Speaker 2: my mind, I was like, well, let me sixty two.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it was a good run. Uh and
Speaker 2: I turned a big round number this year. And I
Speaker 2: have a hard time adjusting to the fact that actually,
Speaker 2: you know, it is unusual to die at sixty sixty
Speaker 2: two is a young age to die. But I still
Speaker 2: have I need to make that transition psychologically to hearing
Speaker 2: that news instead of saying in my head, well, you know, saying,
Speaker 2: oh my god, we have to do something about this.
Speaker 1: Well, there's there's always those. Yeah, there's always those epic
Speaker 1: That's all I can say. You know, you can, you can.
Speaker 1: You can defeat anything withuticals. You know, this guy Barry
Speaker 1: Weis interviewed him and he's got this documentary out and
Speaker 1: he's trying to live forever, same as Brian Johnson or
Speaker 1: something like that.
Speaker 5: He tweets very unusual.
Speaker 1: Because he's busy, because it's unusual for him to tweet,
Speaker 1: because he has to follow his OCD two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty steps a day routines to do the things that
Speaker 1: are going to keep him alive forever.
Speaker 6: But though hearing him talk like what it's not a
Speaker 6: way you want to live? Well, but yeah, here's how
Speaker 6: weird he is. He tweeted this I really I think
Speaker 6: he tweeted like an hour or two hours.
Speaker 2: A side by side comparison chart comparison including number, duration,
Speaker 2: et cetera, comparing his nighttime erections to his nineteen year
Speaker 2: old son's nighttime erections.
Speaker 1: Saw that that was him.
Speaker 7: Okay, yeah, yeah, he said his duration is two minutes
Speaker 7: more than his, which I guess he says, which Hey,
Speaker 7: but I'm like, this kid's nineteen, and I think that
Speaker 7: when that's.
Speaker 2: When that's what you're measuring, there are other things going on.
Speaker 1: I guess I'll say that I don't think you should
Speaker 1: be measuring your son's the length of your son's ended
Speaker 1: excited member, I I mean I I think it's probably
Speaker 1: only one of the three of us who has a
Speaker 1: son and I I so he's asleep.
Speaker 5: But the well's I think it's a there's a machine
Speaker 5: that used.
Speaker 1: Isn't like Louis, It's like, I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, it's ultimately there's an app for that, right,
Speaker 4: But no, I there's one thing. It's one thing to
Speaker 4: measure such things, and that's problematic in all sorts of ways.
Speaker 4: It's another thing to tweet about it.
Speaker 2: To tweet about here's all the categories, so you know,
Speaker 2: so you know the categories, the number of erection episodes,
Speaker 2: the total duration of erection episodes, the average erection quality,
Speaker 2: which I think is understare that's that's who's judging that now,
Speaker 2: And and sleep efficiency.
Speaker 5: That's the fourth.
Speaker 1: M you know, the the uncategorizable writer and one of
Speaker 1: the grosser into it. I can just yeah, so the
Speaker 1: the uncategorizable writer. Neil Stevenson sort of a science science
Speaker 1: fiction writer who is just a poly math of remarkable
Speaker 1: depth and as I wrote a cycle of novels about
Speaker 1: the dawn of the scientific age in London in the
Speaker 1: seventeenth century called the Quicksilver the Baroque cycle, and Quicksilver
Speaker 1: features a portrait of Isaac Newton, who is one of
Speaker 1: the characters in the book who is portrayed as somebody
Speaker 1: who we would now say is very much on the spectrum.
Speaker 1: And what Isaac Newton wants to do at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this book is he's trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: what's going on inside the huge an eye, and so
Speaker 1: he Stevenson describes how in the book and other characters
Speaker 1: who are dealing with him, that's that he puts a
Speaker 1: lens in between his eyeball and and his eyelid and
Speaker 1: kind of like moves it around and it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: scratching his eye. But you know, this is the only
Speaker 1: way you're going to get this information. And it's part
Speaker 1: of the part of the brilliance of this book is
Speaker 1: this portrait of these guys who were trying to figure
Speaker 1: out things about the human body and how the world
Speaker 1: and how the world in the universe works that no
Speaker 1: one had ever looked into before. And so they didn't
Speaker 1: There was no path, there was no there was no system,
Speaker 1: There was no scientific method really as yet, and so
Speaker 1: they were themselves guinea pigs or they were body snatching
Speaker 1: and you know, dissecting corpses from you know, graveyards and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And and so that this guy reminds
Speaker 1: me of that, that is, he thinks he is Isaac Newton.
Speaker 1: He thinks he is one of these guys. He is
Speaker 1: the jet He is going to figure out how to
Speaker 1: live forever. And therefore everything must be measured, everything must
Speaker 1: be calculated and calibrated, and you have to be and
Speaker 1: it is like, maybe this information will live hundreds of
Speaker 1: years later to our human benefit. The way Isaac Newton's
Speaker 1: experiments with gravity and things like that have But.
Speaker 2: But it's also fair to say that, actually, son, yeah,
Speaker 2: nothing good can come of it.
Speaker 5: If this is the guy that lives forever.
Speaker 1: Rights always, that's always the problem. It's like the reincarnation problem, right,
Speaker 1: It's always like why why? Yeah? Why is everybody Cleopatra?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Caesar, I'm sorry. You know what you're gonna be.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be like you're going to be the guy
Speaker 1: who car at the age of nine from Typhus, Like
Speaker 1: that's that's who you are. You're more likely you're ninety
Speaker 1: nine percent likely to be somebody who dies of strep throat.
Speaker 2: Well, if you're if you're a scientologist, yes, and you're
Speaker 2: operating Theayton level seven or something, you are the reincarnated
Speaker 2: great warrior in the thought in the intergalactic battle against
Speaker 2: Xenu or Xena or whatever Xenu, which means that the
Speaker 2: scientologists that we know of now were actually great warriors,
Speaker 2: which I was strange I would work with Christy Ally
Speaker 2: was a lone woman, but I worked with her for
Speaker 2: a long time scientologists. I thought, like, I don't think
Speaker 2: Kirsty was a great warrior in a past. I don't
Speaker 2: she had skills. I'm sure she's very you know, very
Speaker 2: the runs.
Speaker 1: Very very fast. Yeah. And there is a trailer for
Speaker 1: the for the I guess eighth Mission Impossible movie.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And of course in this trailer, the trailer is, you know,
Speaker 1: you must know that in the human you know Ethan
Speaker 1: Hunt world, the world will end and you will watch
Speaker 1: the world end as I laugh. Ha ha ha ha,
Speaker 1: says some villain. And then you see basically Tom Cruise
Speaker 1: running across the top of a pyramid, Tom Cruise running
Speaker 1: across the tower bridge, Tom Cruise running, you know, at
Speaker 1: the top of the you know, Machu Picchu, like he's
Speaker 1: just running. All he does is run. He's like eighty
Speaker 1: five years old and he's running. And my question is
Speaker 1: is he running or they is he walking slowing the
Speaker 1: camera down?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 5: No, he does like this is famous, does his own
Speaker 5: running thing. He does his own stuff.
Speaker 2: It's like, actually it's a real problem in the ensure
Speaker 2: in the completion bond business.
Speaker 1: Right, but the running. But the running he doesn't have
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 5: So it's going to an airplane, you might as well
Speaker 5: do the running.
Speaker 1: So the last Mission Impossible, which I thought was really
Speaker 1: not not very good. Does have this one absolutely fantastic
Speaker 1: scene in the middle where which is slapstick just sheer
Speaker 1: slaps to comedy where he and uh this actress Whateverna
Speaker 1: Haley Atwell are are are handcuffed together in the wrong
Speaker 1: position in a carr and they have to get away
Speaker 1: from and they're running right and they're driving through Rome
Speaker 1: and like it's it's it's hilariously funny. Which is which is?
Speaker 1: I don't know why I brought that up, because there's
Speaker 1: another one coming, but that the movie is otherwise lousy,
Speaker 1: and so this is the sequel to it, so they're
Speaker 1: making a lousy movie sequel. I don't know what is
Speaker 1: going on. My phone is ringing, my dog is for me.
Speaker 1: I'm free, It is okay, I'm free to okay. Uh Severance, Jonah,
Speaker 1: are you gonna watch? Did you watch the original Severance?
Speaker 1: Have you watched the first episode in the first season?
Speaker 4: My wife has decided that she's not interested in the
Speaker 4: second season, and she's told me, you go watch that
Speaker 4: by yourself. So I have not gotten around to it yet.
Speaker 4: I did not love it as much as a lot
Speaker 4: of people did, but I was interested in it to
Speaker 4: see where it was going, but it felt a little
Speaker 4: it felt a little bit like I was getting set
Speaker 4: up for a lost style bait and swet, well.
Speaker 1: That is that is the danger. That is the real
Speaker 1: danger here. And if they, if they, if they don't
Speaker 1: solve the puzzle, or at least three quarters of the puzzle,
Speaker 1: then yeah, we will have been taken yet again. I
Speaker 1: quite like the first episode to say, and I will
Speaker 1: say this, I rewatched a lot of it with my
Speaker 1: son who was fourteen, who wanted to see it, wanted
Speaker 1: to see the first season before the second, and uh,
Speaker 1: there was a there was a big There are nine
Speaker 1: episodes and there is a big reveal at the end
Speaker 1: of the eighth episode that nobody but nobody sees coming.
Speaker 1: And I saw my son and then my my daughter
Speaker 1: told me who is who is? Who is abroad for
Speaker 1: a semester watched it on the plane or something like that,
Speaker 1: having downloaded it, and they I saw my son gasp
Speaker 1: and like go like you know that that. I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know what, this is effective?
Speaker 3: Like the the.
Speaker 1: That really worked, and it only worked as I really
Speaker 1: spent time building it up to get to this surprise.
Speaker 1: And you know a lot of these shows really don't
Speaker 1: ever really surprise. They're just they're just puzzles without solutions.
Speaker 1: But I thought this was a pretty good first episode
Speaker 1: for a puzzle show second season. But I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's like who knows what's what's going to happen that
Speaker 1: I tell you about the Billy Crystal Show. So there's
Speaker 1: a Billy Crystal show on Apple which is a which
Speaker 1: is a called before that is a puzzle show. He's
Speaker 1: a he's a child psychiatrist, and there's a there's a
Speaker 1: seven or eight year old kid who he comes across
Speaker 1: his path who is appears possessed or haunted by eighteenth
Speaker 1: century Dutch people who live in upstate New he is
Speaker 1: somehow having or reliving or he can speak Dutch. Also
Speaker 1: weird stuff. And Billy Crystal is fantastic, And the show
Speaker 1: is so annoying because it's basically like in the end,
Speaker 1: the resolution is you know, as banal as you imagine
Speaker 1: it's going to be, and you know a lot of
Speaker 1: unbelievable things happen. But I have to say he's a
Speaker 1: very good he's a very good dramatic actor and is
Speaker 1: very convincing, and it plays a very flawed character and
Speaker 1: the shows are in the episodes are thirty minutes long,
Speaker 1: Which wouldn't it be great if there were like more
Speaker 1: streaming dramas that were thirty minutes long instead of sixty
Speaker 1: Like I like it, like I kind of enjoy the
Speaker 1: uh enjoy the thirty minute drama. They're never Why why
Speaker 1: did that? Why couldn't that have been a thing? Like
Speaker 1: why was that separation so plain? That comedy sitcoms were
Speaker 1: thirty minutes and dramatic shows were sixty minutes? Rob?
Speaker 3: Do you know?
Speaker 1: Is there an answer to no idea?
Speaker 2: I do think comedy doesn't really work at sixty minutes,
Speaker 2: so comedy was sort of like always going to be thirty.
Speaker 5: I'm much like, I don't know when that happened, Like
Speaker 5: there were weren't there drama?
Speaker 2: I mean like obviously there were anthology dramas that were
Speaker 2: thirty minutes.
Speaker 1: Well minutes, yeah, right, so there were that.
Speaker 2: So there's that.
Speaker 1: So I'm not sure.
Speaker 4: I mean, so what was the last what was the
Speaker 4: last thirty minute drama on real TV? I don't know,
Speaker 4: I mean, honestly, I can't think of one. I mean
Speaker 4: an hour, right, I mean I was like, yeah, Adam
Speaker 4: twelve was.
Speaker 5: There's an hour Dragon emergency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's call those training.
Speaker 1: We're now back, we're back into you know, the sixties here.
Speaker 2: But there was a there was a trend for unfunny
Speaker 2: comedies to be called comedies that were thirty minutes. They
Speaker 2: were like over to drama, ye, and that they didn't
Speaker 2: really last for the drama. I mean liked care days
Speaker 2: and it was an hour. Maybe, but there were no
Speaker 2: I don't think no. I maybe there were.
Speaker 4: Sort of action comedies that we're in now, right because
Speaker 4: like the Intensive Hazard do they have a tense speed.
Speaker 1: And brown Shoe which I love?
Speaker 2: Good for you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that guy that guys made tense, right,
Speaker 4: I mean you can do it in an hour if
Speaker 4: it's also a detective thing, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah right yeah, But yeah, I don't know. There should
Speaker 1: be more things that are shorter. I think that's what
Speaker 1: that is all September fifth, is that it's ninety minutes long.
Speaker 1: I saw a really wonderful new musical on Broadway this
Speaker 1: week called Maybe Happy, ending an hour and forty minutes long,
Speaker 1: no intermissions, like that dream.
Speaker 5: When I first moved to New York.
Speaker 4: That's like the sex scene with Daniel Craig that's right,
Speaker 4: but for.
Speaker 5: Real, I went first through New York.
Speaker 2: I had lunch with a bunch of people, and I'm
Speaker 2: one of the guys that to the guys say were
Speaker 2: Broadaly producers, and uh, and we're just also talking generally.
Speaker 5: And then they said so then they sort of got
Speaker 5: on this jack.
Speaker 2: He said, you know, we need.
Speaker 5: Ninety minute no intermission. Ninety minute no intermission. It's money
Speaker 5: in the bank.
Speaker 2: And I said, really, that seems like a pretty that's
Speaker 2: how hard is that to write a ninety minute no
Speaker 2: intermission comedy. And then they made me promise to write
Speaker 2: one because they were so which I ever did, but
Speaker 2: they were so obsessed with the idea, like not even
Speaker 2: an animation. Did you show up? You see the play,
Speaker 2: you'll laugh, and then you go to dinner, you know
Speaker 2: all along you're gotta get out, you know, you know
Speaker 2: you're out of there.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 2: And that that was a thing that even though that
Speaker 2: is where really where the sweet spot is financially, it's
Speaker 2: still hard to get people to write that or produce that,
Speaker 2: or to act in it or do you know it's
Speaker 2: so even a thirty minute drama which would be a
Speaker 2: thirty minute drama which would be really good if it
Speaker 2: was a really good drama.
Speaker 5: It's hard to get people to do it, even though
Speaker 5: they make money.
Speaker 4: John is just a factual question, a point of information.
Speaker 4: Maybe I'm just misremembering from my own childhood because I
Speaker 4: saw Nicholas Nickel and a couple of things like that.
Speaker 4: But I feel like that used to be a thing
Speaker 4: where they had sort of expedited dinner things where you
Speaker 4: would get fifty minutes during intermission to go get a
Speaker 4: meal at a nice restaurant and then you go back
Speaker 4: to the second half. Does that still happen? Did that
Speaker 4: ever happen beyond the Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, the only show that that has worked like that
Speaker 1: was basically a cash grab, and that was the Harry
Speaker 1: Potter two part play The Curse Child, which was originally
Speaker 1: staged as two plays. You get to buy two tickets
Speaker 1: and you would buy you would see the matinee and
Speaker 1: then you would see it in the evening, and there
Speaker 1: was like ninety minutes for dinner. But that was a
Speaker 1: cash grab because they turned out they could cut it
Speaker 1: very easily, cut it down to three and a half
Speaker 1: hours or three hours, and it's now on Broadway three hours.
Speaker 5: But an Angels in America.
Speaker 1: Was that too too?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: No, I was the two parts were maybe they stayed
Speaker 1: when they when they revived it, maybe they did it
Speaker 1: that way, but.
Speaker 5: Nobody America thought, you know what, just going at a
Speaker 5: quick bite and got right back.
Speaker 1: But you know who, you know who invented this was
Speaker 1: Eugene O'Neil, who was a gas bag of unbelievable proportions
Speaker 1: and wrote two or three shows that were five or
Speaker 1: six hours long and did have and did have meal
Speaker 1: breaks in them. I think more Stately Mansions and Strange
Speaker 1: Interlude both had literally had meal breaks in them so
Speaker 1: that you could be yelled at for three at people's
Speaker 1: scream on stage for three hours, and you go and
Speaker 1: you eat and come back and you get screamed at
Speaker 1: for another three hours by an alcoholic, drunken family revealing
Speaker 1: its secrets to each other in dark, great Dark.
Speaker 4: I think it was a long day's Journey in Tonight
Speaker 4: that I remember seeing on Broadway, and they were bragging
Speaker 4: about how they figured out a way to cut like
Speaker 4: forty minutes out of it by having no one knew,
Speaker 4: by having the actors talk over each other, because the
Speaker 4: whole thing was like normal people when they have arguments.
Speaker 4: They don't wait for the other person to finish. They yell,
Speaker 4: so like if you overlap the sentences by ten percent
Speaker 4: on each end. Sure, it's totally brutalizing to the audience,
Speaker 4: but it does save you forty minutes.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Also, they keep saying, what's wrong with mom? I mean
Speaker 2: at this point, like she's high. That's what's wrong with it.
Speaker 1: She's high.
Speaker 2: You want to call from the from the audience.
Speaker 1: This is not a mystery, So can I can I
Speaker 1: just say this that in nineteen ninety seven I saw
Speaker 1: an extraordinarily brilliant production of The Iceman Cometh, which is
Speaker 1: one of the two great O'Neil plays as far as
Speaker 1: I'm long day serving the Time being the other one,
Speaker 1: the I s Men Comets set in the bar, and
Speaker 1: it's it's about to observe the people, the losers and
Speaker 1: wastrels and the tragic figures in this bar. And everybody
Speaker 1: in the bar is waiting for this character Hickey to
Speaker 1: show up. In the first half hours, people talking about
Speaker 1: Hickey and where's Hickey, and when's Hickey coming, and where's
Speaker 1: Hicke And then Hickey enters and Hickey has a twenty
Speaker 1: five minute long monologue. That is one of the great
Speaker 1: challenges in modern acting to memorize this monologue. It's a
Speaker 1: challenge for the audience too, by the way, it is
Speaker 1: well unless you have a genuinely great, like absolutely transfixing performance.
Speaker 1: Jason Robarts famously made his reputation his career by playing
Speaker 1: this part off Broadway and becoming Jason Robarts as a result.
Speaker 1: And I saw this amazingly brilliant performance that just had
Speaker 1: you at the edge of your seat. And it was
Speaker 1: by Kevin Spacey. So is all in Kevin. Kevin Spacey,
Speaker 1: he was a stage and an even better molester of
Speaker 1: fourteen year olds and you know, completely acquitted. No, he
Speaker 1: would he wasn't acquitted. He was he wasn't acquitted of
Speaker 1: doing what he did to Adam Rapp, who he acknowledged
Speaker 1: that he had basically taking this fourteen year old boy
Speaker 1: and carried him from the kitchen at a party into
Speaker 1: a bedroom and had like had his way with him.
Speaker 1: It was just I don't think he had his way
Speaker 1: with him.
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think he knowledged that it was drunk and
Speaker 1: didn't remember and Rap said it happened, so he didn't
Speaker 1: remember I don't know whatever. Okay, uh So, I think
Speaker 1: it's like you.
Speaker 4: Guys can't keep this podcast from going dark.
Speaker 1: Now we have to go dark by talking about David Lynch. Scott,
Speaker 1: our producer tells us, So, David Lynch, who who got
Speaker 1: the problem with this? Is that like.
Speaker 2: It's been all over So, I mean it's been everyone
Speaker 2: has written there David Lynch articles. So I don't know
Speaker 2: what to say except that I remember there was I
Speaker 2: can't remember the name of the restaurant on Beverly Boulevard.
Speaker 2: He would go there everything.
Speaker 1: Bob It's a big boy. He did go to a
Speaker 1: Bob's wing Boy every day.
Speaker 2: You go to this restaurant on Beverly Boulevard every day
Speaker 2: for lunch. And he always had a tomato soup. And
Speaker 2: if you went there and you said, I think I'll
Speaker 2: have tomato soup, they would say, we don't have that
Speaker 2: on the menu. He somehow managed to even be weird
Speaker 2: about his weird and mysterious about.
Speaker 5: His lunch order, which I think I've always enjoyed.
Speaker 1: I think here's the thing about David Lynch. The Elephant
Speaker 1: Man is a genuinely great and remarkable and extraordinary movie.
Speaker 1: I think Blue Velvet is one of the is a
Speaker 1: great though very hard to watch movie, and the first
Speaker 1: six episodes of Twin Peaks are among the best things
Speaker 1: that have ever been done on television. But don't let
Speaker 1: anybody fool you into wasting your time now that he
Speaker 1: is dead watching the eighteen hour Twin Peaks The Return,
Speaker 1: which was his last work, which was on Showtime six
Speaker 1: or seven years ago, because it was agonizingly boring, agonizingly boring,
Speaker 1: and the whole point of it was to be agonizingly boring.
Speaker 1: His whole purpose was to make to test the patience
Speaker 1: of every human being on earth who would bother to
Speaker 1: watch it, to see whether they would sit for watch
Speaker 1: a guy mop a floor for four minutes, which happens
Speaker 1: at the end of like one of the like the
Speaker 1: third episode, and it's a guy in a bid and
Speaker 1: he's mopping the floor and he mops the floor, and
Speaker 1: he mops the floor, and he mops the floor, and
Speaker 1: he mops the floor, and then the end credits come up.
Speaker 1: And the entire time you're watching, you're waiting for something
Speaker 1: to happen, and nothing happens. So I got to give
Speaker 1: him credit for taking one hundred and fifty million dollars
Speaker 1: from Matthew Blanket Showtime and making a show seeing whether
Speaker 1: people could be fooled into watching somebody mop a floor
Speaker 1: for four minutes. It's like, it's like this way to
Speaker 1: the Egress story about Pt. Barnum. You know when when
Speaker 1: the when the Barnum circus was too crowded, he would
Speaker 1: put up a sign to try to get people to
Speaker 1: leave by saying this way to the Egress, and they
Speaker 1: would think, oh, there's I'm going to see an animal
Speaker 1: called the egress. And of course egress means exits, so
Speaker 1: they would walk out. They would walk out the exit,
Speaker 1: and that was Barnum's way of clearing the room and
Speaker 1: making sure that other people could get in.
Speaker 2: So that was saying Long Day's Journey in Tonight starring
Speaker 2: I will say it's funny.
Speaker 4: I was looking through his movies and I completely forgot
Speaker 4: that he directed The Straight Story, which I loved.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is one. That is the strangest. Yes, that
Speaker 1: is that is the strangest thing on his resume, even
Speaker 1: though you think the strangest thing as the resume is,
Speaker 1: you know one of his strange movies. That's right.
Speaker 4: The fact that it's like when when a freak does
Speaker 4: something totally normal and sweet, you're like, WHOA, that's weird.
Speaker 4: But the straight story is just a lovely G rated
Speaker 4: movie which was actually produced by my friend Neil Edelstein, So.
Speaker 1: There you h It is a beautiful movie about a
Speaker 1: seventy nine year old man who has to get to
Speaker 1: see his brother before his brother dies, and he has
Speaker 1: no way to get there except to drive his tractor, right,
Speaker 1: and not a tractor. It's sort of like it ends up.
Speaker 1: It's a kind of version of what we now call
Speaker 1: it jazzy. He kind of jury rigs a motor vehicle
Speaker 1: that will drive him. It's kind of like miles an hour, right,
Speaker 1: he basically, And it's a real story.
Speaker 5: It's a good movie.
Speaker 1: It is a good movie. And and and he made
Speaker 1: several good movies. And he made several absolutely unwatchable movies
Speaker 1: like Lost Highway and Inland Empire, which are unwatchable, and
Speaker 1: and Dune, which is unwatchable though it has some pretty
Speaker 1: amazing imagery in it. I mean, but we did think
Speaker 1: that Dune was unfilmable until these last two Dunes came out, right,
Speaker 1: and I think we're pretty good, right, I mean, they're
Speaker 1: they're pretty good. They're not great, though, but they're pretty good.
Speaker 1: Have you seen did we discuss the Bob Dylan movie.
Speaker 1: Either you've seen I have not seen it. I have
Speaker 1: not seen it, Okay, because because Timothy shallow May, of course,
Speaker 1: who was the star of Done, plays Bob Dylan. And
Speaker 1: it's a pretty interesting one two punch to have been
Speaker 1: you know what, Deep in Dune Part two at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the year and to be Bob Dylan at
Speaker 1: the end of the year. That's that's one of those like,
Speaker 1: you know, star polls. You know, this is like, that's
Speaker 1: why we're going to be watching him for the next
Speaker 1: forty or fifty years, because he can do that. He
Speaker 1: can do both of those things.
Speaker 4: So what I I have not seen the movie. I've
Speaker 4: never been like obsessed with Bob Dylan. I mean, I
Speaker 4: like dog Bob Dylan, but like I stopped smoking pot
Speaker 4: a really long time ago, and so that took some
Speaker 4: of the appeal away. And I'm not trying to denigrate
Speaker 4: him a great lyricist all that kind of stuff. Have
Speaker 4: just never been obsessed with them. And but I've always
Speaker 4: you know, there are these cottage industries in egghead world
Speaker 4: that I just love. And one of them is the
Speaker 4: Bob Dylan's a closet conservative, or at least he's not
Speaker 4: a stalinist sub genre, which Ron Radosh has been big on.
Speaker 4: There are a bunch of people. I'm sure you got
Speaker 4: him to write about it for the Weekly Standard, and
Speaker 4: that it it's like, you know, I can't remember what
Speaker 4: the word for it is, but there are there are
Speaker 4: kinds of trees that have to wait for a forest
Speaker 4: fire for their seeds to germinate, so they can lie
Speaker 4: in the oil for century, literally centuries until there's a
Speaker 4: forest fire, and then these trees start to put So
Speaker 4: this movie comes out and all of a sudden, it's
Speaker 4: like it's like the game of Telephon where they're you know,
Speaker 4: they're active at these sleeper People holding receipts on this
Speaker 4: fight are activated from across the land.
Speaker 5: And that's a lovely, dark and deep yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, but I have promises.
Speaker 2: To I H yeah, I I I.
Speaker 1: Missed.
Speaker 2: I missed Bob Dylan.
Speaker 1: I just missed it. I missed it.
Speaker 2: I was too young or something. I just never it
Speaker 2: was never a thing. And then when it was a
Speaker 2: thing where I listened to it, thinking, well, I should
Speaker 2: I should like this, right, it's this is officially approved art.
Speaker 2: I should like it, and I just never kind of
Speaker 2: got into it. And yet some of the songs are great,
Speaker 2: and then that, but the covers are good. You know
Speaker 2: Girl from the North uh Country County which is from.
Speaker 1: The North Country, Yeah, which is basically the same song
Speaker 1: as Scarborough Fare right, But that's literally it's the same
Speaker 1: version of the same song.
Speaker 5: The Roseanne the Roseanne Cash cover is beautiful.
Speaker 1: But I.
Speaker 5: I just never I don't, I don't care.
Speaker 4: His cover of the Facts of Life theme song was fantastic.
Speaker 5: Well, it was because he was the original cast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you don't forget that he was.
Speaker 4: He was, he was.
Speaker 1: He was married cheerily to three of the three of
Speaker 1: the girls we're to get from the word gay. Oh
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Bob Bilds. I wrote a piece about a
Speaker 1: complete Unknown which I talk about this fact that the
Speaker 1: movie implicitly is about how Dylan would not did not
Speaker 1: want to be used by the old Stalinists as their
Speaker 1: vehicle for cultural domination. And yeah, I got a lot
Speaker 1: of male from people who are like, but you didn't
Speaker 1: talk about this lyric and what about that Weather chose
Speaker 1: that he that he wasn't really And there is that
Speaker 1: one song. There is that one amazing zion Zionist song
Speaker 1: came out of nowhere Neighborhood Bully, released in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: which could be the sort of like commentary theme song
Speaker 1: about you know they call you the neighborhood bully because
Speaker 1: all you're trying to do is defend yourself and then
Speaker 1: they attack you for it. And where it just came
Speaker 1: out of nowhere and that was he did it, and
Speaker 1: it's there and you can listen to it if you like.
Speaker 1: And now we are going to I say this because.
Speaker 2: On the the in Santa Monica, there's a coffee place
Speaker 2: called the eighteenth Street Cafe, which is in the middle
Speaker 2: of a kind of a weird neighborhood at least what
Speaker 2: was back then, and it was kind of a little
Speaker 2: bungalow thing was because the coffee hit place and it
Speaker 2: was where you'd go, uh. It was near a couple
Speaker 2: of fancy preschools and so like you if you were
Speaker 2: young writer on TV or something and you lived on
Speaker 2: the West Side, that's kind of you were. You'd be
Speaker 2: hanging out there like one thirty in the afternoon waiting
Speaker 2: to pick up your kid. Uh, and so you know,
Speaker 2: we'd go and that's I would go and meet people
Speaker 2: there all the time. And in the basement, the rumor
Speaker 2: was always that there was a boxing gym owned by
Speaker 2: Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan would spend his time in this
Speaker 2: boxing gym in the basement of the eighteen Street cafe.
Speaker 5: And I remember I wasn't there for this, but a
Speaker 5: friend of mine told me the story.
Speaker 2: He's in line, he's getting a cup of coffee and
Speaker 2: another dad from the one of the pre school d
Speaker 2: behind him or next to him, and they're going to
Speaker 2: get their coffee. He goes, is you here in this rumor?
Speaker 2: They're like downstairs, this is like a boxing gym owned
Speaker 2: by Bob Dylan. And his friend was like, that's kind
Speaker 2: of hard to leave. Bob Dylan boxes hey getting boxy? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's like I don't see him boxing. I don't see
Speaker 2: him as a boxer. And behind them little man sid
Speaker 2: why not? And it was Bob Dylan who was just
Speaker 2: getting a coffee on his way downstairs to the boxing
Speaker 2: gym that was actually below it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, there's a photo of Barack Obama hanging the
Speaker 1: Metal of Freedom around Bob Dylan's neck like in twenty twelve,
Speaker 1: twenty thirteen, something like that, and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: that's like my uncle shloyme like it was. You know,
Speaker 1: He's like, you know, we had he had he had
Speaker 1: weird hair and whatever. You know when you saw his face.
Speaker 1: Paul Simon is the same way. By the way you
Speaker 1: look at Paul Simon, You're like, look, you know, it's
Speaker 1: an old juice. He would be he would be in
Speaker 1: Boca yeah, jazz.
Speaker 2: But Paul Siman's like, oh, look, it's an old Jewish
Speaker 2: lady and her husband Billy Crystal or by the way,
Speaker 2: who looks like late Crystal.
Speaker 1: Billy Crystal Crystal is also look is also an old
Speaker 1: Jewish man.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and you know Billy Billy Crystal. But Warren Baby,
Speaker 5: well that's.
Speaker 1: True, but Billy Crystal now looks like the wizard in
Speaker 1: the Princess Bride. We shouldn't make fun of. He lost
Speaker 1: his house. Billy Crystal's house burned down in the fire.
Speaker 1: So got to feel sorry for Billy Crystal.
Speaker 5: But if you're in if you're in a fancy men's club,
Speaker 5: you'll never know if he's facing you or not.
Speaker 1: We've done we've done. No, we've done.
Speaker 4: No politics here, and I don't want to start. But
Speaker 4: in the inaugural inaugural address of a current president, he
Speaker 4: starts talking about the fires in California and that some
Speaker 4: of the richest, most famous people in America had their
Speaker 4: homes burned down. And then there's this long pause and
Speaker 4: then he goes, which is very interesting, What did that mean?
Speaker 4: What was he trying to imply there? I don't I
Speaker 4: don't get.
Speaker 1: I think he was implying that poor people deliberately set
Speaker 1: the fires. To do you think that? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know. That's the only I mean, what what else?
Speaker 1: What else would be interesting?
Speaker 2: I think people just say that Harry Shearer used to
Speaker 2: do this very very niche impression of mister Blackwell, who
Speaker 2: was a fashion kind of weird oddity character, a.
Speaker 1: Real person made the ten worst dress.
Speaker 2: All that an he talks like this.
Speaker 8: He thought he talked the ten best dressed. It's a
Speaker 8: Dolan sleeve. But no, no, yeah, this is the way
Speaker 8: he talked. Actually is the way mister Blackwell talk. And
Speaker 8: he would do this impression of mister Blackwell. And he
Speaker 8: would and he said that the restaurants in Beverly Hills.
Speaker 8: There's a bistro. There's a bistro, Godden. Interesting.
Speaker 5: Interesting, That's that's what Trump is. Trump is basically mister
Speaker 5: Blackwell at this point.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, mister. The the connection, the classic
Speaker 1: glop connection being made between mister Blackwell and Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: And it was fair because Melania did wear that hat
Speaker 1: that made her look like Zoro. That's all I gotta say.
Speaker 1: I love that, and I thought that, I like that.
Speaker 1: I like that, but she did look like Zoro, and
Speaker 1: I thought it was a kind of reach shout out
Speaker 1: to the Mexican people who are about to be slapped
Speaker 1: with a two hundred and.
Speaker 4: Fifty percent like the black coated spy and spy vers
Speaker 4: a spy.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, that's good. I think that's that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Or Zora, I'm still I'm still I'm still going with
Speaker 1: Zora or Cappuccin and the pink panther and Zora. Anyway,
Speaker 1: all right, Scott Emmigrant says the Hamburglar. So we're gonna
Speaker 1: let him have the last word. Milania looks like the
Speaker 1: hamburg all right, Please please don't be offended. We're just
Speaker 1: trying to amuse you.
Speaker 4: We're just running acting here.
Speaker 1: This is until next time. Here's why they don't do this.
Speaker 5: Here's why they don't do one hour comedies.
Speaker 1: Exhibit A.
Speaker 9: Bye, Where is that fellow's friend? He probably owes your money. Huh, well,
Speaker 9: I'll ask you.
Speaker 1: Esthetic can't talk.
Speaker 9: Look who knows so much? Well, it just so happens
Speaker 9: that your friend here is only mostly dead. There's a
Speaker 9: big difference between mostly dead and all that. Please open
Speaker 9: his mouth.