January 20, 2022 • 54 mins
MoonKnight, you can't just ask if Disney is going gritty! Actually, you can, and we do! We take a look at MoonKnight and what it means for the MCU and D+. We also share our love for Weird Al, and write a Spice-y Sondheim mashup.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
The Large Nerd Drunk Collider Podcast is a production of
I Heart Radio. Hey everybody, welcome to The Large Nerd
Drunk Collider. At the podcast that's all about the geeky
things happening in the world around us and how very
excited we are about them. I'm arial casting and with
(00:29):
me as always, is the Dulcet Lee toned Jonathan Strickland. Hello, Ariel, Well, Hello, Ariel.
It feels just like we did this just a moment ago,
because we did. Because we did. Yeah. So, so here's
a little peek behind the curtain, y'all. Sometimes when you're recording,
(00:49):
you look over and you notice that in the levels
on your screen that one of the two people talking,
in this case me starts to hit a little red colors,
which are bad because it means that I'm blowing out
the mic. So we had to screen seven minutes and
eleven seconds of content and start all over again, and
(01:11):
we had barely even gotten into anything we wanted to
talk about. But listen, Jonathan, don't don't be too hard
on yourself. It's not your fault if you go to eleven.
That's true, that's true. But I am now ready to
ask you a question. Bet you can't guess what it is,
(01:32):
all right, Ariel, Because one of our topics we're gonna
talk about today is about a certain uh famous musician,
someone who's had a very long career and even received
a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in two
thousand and eighteen. We're gonna have this question be do
you have any favorite weird Al Yankovic songs? I do
(01:55):
Harvey the Wonder Hamster, which is a thirty seconds on
about a hamster. Listen, you didn't give me a lengthy specification, sir.
It's an amazing song. I sing it to my cat, Harvey.
Sometimes I change it to Harvey the Wonder Kitty, but
(02:16):
usually I call him Harvey the Wonder Hamster. Anyhow, Um
you know he had Harvey the Wonder Hamster on his
old old TV show. That's not what I named my
cat after. I name my cat after for Escape. I
think you all know that. But um, I like it.
But okay, if that one doesn't count, then um, let's see,
uh if you if you go back to like when
(02:38):
I was first introduced to weird Al, I think it
was don't go making phony calls, because I like, don't
go Chasing Waterfalls by tlc uh. But like it's hard
because all of those songs I liked because I was
young and impressionable, and then he made a parody of it.
And I also like comedy, so then I liked that,
you know, like pretty Fly for a Rabbi and um
(03:01):
Amish Paradise. Oh, I really liked Johnish Paradise. Of his
more modern stuff, I like word Crimes because it's um.
I like that fast wordplay. It's almost nerd core. It's
like nerd polka core. But really my favorite of all
weird al are his polka mashups. And polka mashups. I mean,
(03:24):
I do them in every aspect of my life. I
do them in this podcast. My band, like our Bread
and Butter is mashing up songs. Uh. But I the
last time we recorded this, I said I didn't have
a favorite, and then I said my favorite was like
Polka Your Eyes Out because it was like a cradle
of love and interest stand Man and Doctor feel Good
(03:45):
and Ice Ice Baby. But then I wok looked through
all of his other polka mashups and I love all
of those two. So it's kind of like it's like
picking a favorite child. Yeah, and I've I've rattled on
now like I've cheated at this question because I've named
fifty two of his songs that I like, and I
could just keep going until I've named his almost entire catalog.
(04:06):
I didn't even touch like his originals. Yeah that's what about.
I'm going to be touching his originals, which is why
he has a restraining order against me. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah,
I I like his parodies. But the problem I have
with parodies in general, it's not it's nothing to do
with his parodies, which I think are brilliant. For one thing,
he's really good at recreating the sound that made the
(04:28):
original song special. He's really good at that. The problem
I have with parodies is that often you can have
a song that just falls out of favor to the
point where the thing the parody, like, you forget that
it's even a parody of a song because the song
that it's parodying isn't really in the zeitgeist anymore. Uh.
And I like the originals because they are more evergreen. Um.
(04:51):
And I even told you this before we started recording
this is that you know, when I first heard the
song Yoda, I didn't even realize it was a parody
because I was a geeky kid. I hadn't even heard
of the Kinks, didn't know there was a song called Lola,
which is awesome. But then I finally put two and
two together when I did hear Lolo, and Oh, this
(05:12):
is why Yoda is a parody of I think goodness,
I didn't make the mistake of saying, oh, Lola must
be a parody of Yoda. Um. But the the more
recent song that I I think speaks to me on
a deep level is called Skipper Dan, and it's a
song about an actor who has dreams of being on
the stage and was on like on the path to
(05:35):
becoming something big in theater when you know, opportunities dried
up and he took a job as a guide a
skipper on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland, and that
that's where he stuck now. And it's it's a cheerful
sounding song with kind of tragic story elements to it
(05:57):
because it's about someone whose dream is dying before were
his eyes. And I love that juxtaposition. And you know,
there are a lot of other artists out there who
have created music in that same sort of feel like
Jonathan Colton has done a lot of songs that you
listen to it and if you're not paying attengital lyrics,
you're like, this is a this is a bopper, this
(06:18):
is poppy, and then you listen to the lyrics like, whoa,
this is dark. They might be giants does it too?
You know, there's a few different bands out there that
are really good at it. Only recently did I actually
go and listen to what they might be giant songs
are about. And yeah that like some of their albums
are pretty darned with pressing. Uh, it is funny. I'll
(06:38):
share this. Paullen Storm is another geek band that we
both like. And yeah, you say Skipper Dan, and my
brain just automatically goes to the ballad of Eddie Prager,
which is, uh, a sea shanty with bad penny whistle
about a urinal cake. Yeah, not the same thing. So
I don't know why I don't. Maybe it's just the
oceanic title tie ins and names like you have like
(07:02):
a title in the name in the case of Skipper Dan.
But yeah, so we're gonna talk. We're gonna talk about
weird affect. We're going to do it right now, because Ariel,
you found a story that I gotta tell you. When
I saw the headline, I had to check the date
on that story to make sure it wasn't an April
fool's joke. Because I was sure it wasn't true, I
(07:25):
had to do the same thing I had to and
I had to check my sources. So Roku is making
Roku along with Funnier Die Funnier Diean Tango is making
a biopic on weird Al Yankovic along with weird Al Yankovic.
Yankovic is working on this with them. He's he's writing it,
(07:46):
and Daniel Radcliffe is playing weird Al. And at first
I was like, what weird alls an actor? Why? Why
would why would they cast anybody else's him? But I
guess if he needs to be young, weird awl, weird Alice,
you know, not old, but he's older than a kid.
But but yeah, Daniel Radcliffe, if he's going to be
(08:09):
playing like the weird Al who first got to start
getting his tapes played on the Dr Demento radio show,
you know that makes more sense. But yeah, Daniel Radcliffe,
it's such a wild choice. Not a bad choice, mind you,
because Daniel Radcliffe is. I think he's proven himself with
a lot of really interesting role choices over the last
(08:31):
five years that in my mind completely separate him from
being Harry Potter. I know that everyone thinks of him
that way, because of course, obviously he was central to
that franchise for eight movies, but um, you know, having
him play this it feels so far out of field,
and at the same time I really want to see it.
(08:54):
I kind of agree, I kind of don't. So recently
I watched Miracle Workers, which is a bit raunchy and
a bit there's a lot of base humors, so if
that's not your thing, I'm not recommending it for you.
But Daniel Radcliffe is one of the main characters in it.
Um it's kind of Comedia dell arte and that it's
the same actors playing similar um characters across the different scenarios.
(09:15):
They're all different characters, but they all have a similar
like m o UM and in that he plays kind
of like the nice guy and weird as a really
nice guy from everything I know about him, and I
don't know him personally. And Daniel Radcliffe can sing and
he can dance, and he's really good at comedy and
he's really good at drama. So yeah, I think he's
a great choice. His nose is not quite right. What
(09:38):
do you think is I love that that's what you
bring up. But what I think is that the the
news article and deadline about this obviously has things that
are clearly being played up for laughs, like the idea
of weird all having all these hot and heavy like
illicit love affairs and stuff that maybe he did maybe
(09:58):
with nasal spray. And if you get that reference, it
means you watched a nineteen eighties era weird O Yankovic
comedy special that I think me and maybe two other
people have seen, but it's before u HF. He did
this goofy comedy special before u HF. And it was
it was kind of a a reason to group together
(10:21):
a bunch of music videos of his songs. But it
was supposed to be a biopic of weird Out, but
it was a joke like it was. It was inventing
lots of stuff that supposedly happened, like him doing a
Jimmy Hendrix and lighting his accordion on fire on stage,
that kind of thing, very tongue in cheek, so I'm
I'm I'm eager to see this. I'm a big weird
(10:44):
al fan. Um. You know, he's done some amazing stuff,
not just not just his music, but you know, he's
directed music videos of notable and he's done tons of
like collaborations, like sometimes he shows up as a surprise
collaborator in someone else's in certain it's just crazy, like
he came out for Weezer and played Africa Total's Africa
(11:05):
with Weezer on stage one time, and bunk or stuff
like that. So he really is one of my favorite
artists that i've met, never met, and don't know, I've
never met him either. I've seen I've been to several
of his shows, but I've never done like a meet
and greet, And I'm fine with that. I'm like the dude,
like give him his space, because i know I would
(11:26):
be that annoying geeky fan if I were to ever
actually chat with him. And I'm happy just you know,
just just being a fan. I'm good with that. Yeah,
I am. I know I've been really laxed for the
people who actually check our website on updating it recently,
but I will update it with this show. Notes for
this episode, because yeah, you should read list Deadline article
(11:47):
even if you don't go to our website, because it
really does read like in April one article. Um, even
like with even the head of Roku and the head
of Funnier Die being in on it. Yeah point where again, like,
I'm not a convinced this is a real thing. One
other thing that I am a hundred percent convinced of
(12:07):
is that Microsoft and has made a big move. And
chances are, if you're a video game enthusiasts, you know
this news already. It has. The company has announced that
it is acquiring Activision Blizzard for more than sixty billion dollars. Yeah. Yeah,
my friends have been chatting about this today and uh
(12:27):
they're concerned about how Blizzard properties will play with Apple
products once this finally goes through, which you know it's
gonna take a while. Yeah, I mean so. Phil Spencer,
who's head of he's the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, has
said that they remain committed for Activision Blizzard titles to
play on the platforms upon which it's known for. Like
(12:52):
it's it's a very loose, vague language, but the meaning
seems to be. My interpretation of the meaning is that
he's saying, Okay, PlayStation owners, Mac owners, don't worry. We're
not We're not gonna tell Activision Blizzard to stop making
stuff for your platforms. That's not going to happen. That
seems to be the message, but it will remain to
(13:13):
be seen now. Activision Blizzard has been in the news
a lot since the middle of as a lot of
allegations made the light of day about a very toxic
work culture, one that is plagued with lots of serious problems,
including sexual harassment claims, and the company has been trying
to clean up quite a bit since then, or at
(13:36):
least that's been the messaging. So one takeaway I have
for this is that it gives me hope that serious
positive changes are on the way, because I'm always worried
that a company that has kind of those deep issues,
it's really hard for that company to change on its own,
(13:57):
like it's hard for internal change to come if the
foundation is rotten. And my hope is that Microsoft can
help make those changes. Hopefully everyone manages to to keep
their jobs, but they also end up in a more
positive and supportive work environment. It sounds like that is
Microsoft's plan. The article on Polygon that uh we're using
(14:19):
as reference. One of the many articles on it quotes
uh Microsoft as as saying that they value studio culture
and employee and inclusiveness and are going to try to
improve all that again in very big terms. But that's
that's great news, uh, you know, in in the short term.
I think it's going to be great news for gamers.
(14:41):
Long term, obviously, consolidation is always kind of scary because
you worry about stuff getting kind of all boiled down
so it all fields and plays and looks the same,
and you don't want that. But in the short term,
if you're someone like who has Xbox Game Pass, you're
gonna see some crazy titles popping up. Been that, And
(15:01):
in the short term, for the employees, could mean an
improvement in their work conditions, which to me is the
most important thing. But you know, also, I mean, I
understand how gamers can feel really uh stressed out about this.
Um ariel. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna call an
audible and the audible is Let's take our third news
(15:22):
item for the segment and put it in the next
segment because it kind of fits there anyway. Let's take
a break. I'm actually happy you did that, Jonathan, because
(15:43):
I'm going in my head, I don't know whether i
want to say, go into this using toxic workplaces or
something that is good news, because it's kind of both.
And that's that real Steel. The two thousand and eleven
film that is basically rock'em sock'em Robots with Wolverine in it,
it's not it's whatever, and it's the music man. Yeah. Okay,
(16:04):
so Hugh Jackman's in the two thousand eleven movie about
people who have build boxing robots and he's kind of
a delinquent dad um is apparently getting a Disney Plus show.
The only reason I said toxic workplace is because the
boxing robots scene is not the most up and up. Yeah. Yeah,
it was a surprisingly good movie. Wasn't like I have
(16:27):
want to see it. It's not that I didn't want
to see it. It's just one of those things that
it's like literally one of those many titles that kind
of slipped past me and I never got a chance
to really watch it. Um, not that I didn't like it,
definitely wasn't going to be the kind of film that
I was gonna go seek out in the theaters when
it came out, but it would have been the kind
of thing I might watch on a evening on like
a streaming service. I would say that you should. Yeah,
(16:49):
it's kind of um. It's kind of like Rocky meets
I mean literally rock and Sock and Robots meets Over
the Top. The way you were described that, I was thinking, like,
for the people who don't know what Over the Top is,
do you care to kind of give a quick synopsis?
Because it was crazy? Yeah, it's um. Sylvester Stallone plays
(17:11):
a delinquent dad and there's like arm wrestling. Yes, he's
a truck driver and a professional arm wrestler and he's
competing in an arm wrestling tournament. And he also has
an estranged son with whom he's trying to reconnect. And
that movie is equal parts terrible and awesome. And I
(17:34):
love it and it's terrible. Then, I mean, I would
definitely say you should watch Real Steel. It's I thought
it was good, mind you. I also enjoyed Van helsing.
But your standards and my standards are different, That's all
they are. But what I'll say is, if you liked
Over the Top, it's not quite as cheesy. It has
like a better plot, it has I feel better acting everything.
(17:58):
Does I have a point where the guy says, I
like to turn my head around because it's like a switch,
like like on a truck. You know, I don't. I
don't know it has. I will say it has been
a while since I've watched Real Steel. I own it now.
I'm going to have to go back and watch it again.
But I really like, I really really I'm excited for
the show. I quite enjoyed it. I didn't know what
(18:19):
to expect. I expected it to be a dumb movie,
but it was. It was just a lot of fun.
Do you think it was because you have seen it
and I haven't. Do you think there's enough juice there
to support a series? I mean, there's enough juice to
support a whole bunch of robots. Well, but yes I do.
(18:40):
I do. But it'll be like it'll be a little
bit gritty, you know, like it's it's robots punching the
snookers out of each other, Like what's the I get
that the story is what's important, right, Because if I
were just a series about teenagers kicking the snot out
of each other, it wouldn't be compelling. You wouldn't watch
(19:02):
more than an episode of it. There's more going on
in Cobra Kai than that, My My. What I'm wondering
is what will be the underlying story that will fuel
a real Steel series, because otherwise it's just it's just
a fantasy version of Robot Wars. I mean, I like
(19:22):
Robot Wars. I'd watch a fantasy version of that. I mean,
I think it will be family. You can draw out
family conflict in a million different ways, generation by generation.
You can ultimately yes, yes, uh, but even with even
with Cobra Kai, which I love and it's one of
(19:43):
my goals to be on Cobra Kai. UM like, I
love it, but it's largely the same conflict every season
with a few added or changed factors you haven't watched
and almost sent me on another rabbit hole. But we
have more things we have to talk about, so I'm
not going to do it, but I am going to
do it after we Yes, you will have to, you
(20:05):
will have to. Um. But this really leads into another
another thing that Disney just unveiled to us, which is
a New Moon Night trailer um, and that's gonna be
pretty dark. But they aren't putting it on Hulu, They're
putting it on Disney Plus. Uh, what was your reaction
to the trailer? Why do you think? Did you like
(20:27):
it not like it to do the was it nothing?
It wasn't what I expected that Yeah, yeah, so it focused.
I thought it was really cool and that it didn't
it revealed I think just enough for the fans and
just enough for if you don't know what the what
Moon Night is about to go? Huh, I need to
(20:48):
watch and figure out what's going on without revealing necessarily
too much of the plot or too many of the
cool things for people who are new, who coming in
new to this to the property. Um but I expected
a lot more, a lot more of the other aspects
of the character to come into the trailer than yea
(21:09):
for those who don't know, because I mean, this is
just part of the character. The character has, uh like
a multiple personality disorder kind of thing, and in many
ways this trailer gave me uh flashbacks to Legion, another
Marvel character. And it's also a Marvel character who has
(21:30):
numerous multiple personalities. Um but in the comics they change
it up. Yeah, yeah, no, they changed while they changed
quite a bit in Legion. The television series versus Legion,
the comic book character, but like who Legion's dad is?
But but the the Moon Night trailer I thought was
(21:52):
very moody and effective. Oscar Isaac I love him, Um,
I will forgive his accent. Some people comparing it. I
heard some people comparing it to Dick Vandyke. Yeah, yeah,
which I love Dick Vandyke's so but his shows accident
Mary Poppins is frequently a thing of ridicule. But we
wanted to use this kind of to have a brief
(22:14):
discussion at least about because Moon Night does loot like
it's going to be a little more intense. Um, I mean,
I don't know. It's kind of hard to see what
moon So there is a sequence in the trailer w
Moon Night is is pounding something with his fists. It
looks like a person. It might be a person. If
it's a person, that definitely raises up this question. Legitimately,
(22:37):
if it's like a monster kind of thing, then this
question ends up almost being moot. But the question is
do we think Disney Plus is testing out the possibility
of more gritty, violent Marvel content and could that potentially
mean that we might see a return, not of specific characters,
(23:01):
but of series that we got on Netflix that we're
far more violent and dark than anything we've seen in
the Marvel movies. I mean Daredevil and um, Jessica Jones
and Luke Cage and uh and like, you know, all
the appearances of the Punisher, like the Punisher very over
(23:23):
the top violent. I don't think we're gonna get anything
close to that level with Midnight, but I do wonder
if this means that we can see characters like the
Punisher re emerge. So I think, I think so. I
don't have any insight on this. Um, I will say,
like I follow the casting directors for Marvel stuff because
(23:43):
I'm an actor, of course I do. I don't have
any insight on this. You know, they're all very tight lipped.
Even if I had insight, I wouldn't say, um, but
but I would have to imagine. So are we past
the spoiler window for Hawkeye? I think so? Okay, So
we already know that King Pen from Daredevil was in Hawkeye. UM.
(24:04):
I hope that was enough of a spoiler warning for
anybody who hasn't watched material had him. And then there's
been tons of coverage since then. With Vincent talking about it. Yeah.
He he was very excited about it and was not
great at keeping his lips sealed, to the point where
Disney had to be like no, no, no, but then yes,
yes yes, um. And in Daredevil he is super violent. Um,
(24:29):
Hawkeye he wasn't as violent though there the stuff surrounding
him definitely was more violent than other aspects of the show.
He was far more damage resistant in Hawkeye than he
was in Daredevil. However, Yeah, yeah, more more similar to
like how he was in although it wasn't an offer
playing him in uh, Spider Man and the Multiverse. Um,
(24:50):
how he was portrayed in that cartoon movie. Um. So yeah.
I feel like this is definitely them trying to open
the waters to bring back I would love to see
Daredevil and Luke Cage. I feel like to put it
on Disney. Plus, they would need to put in some
parental like some extra parental controls onto the system, because
that's definitely stuff I would not want, like my six
(25:11):
year old stumbling across. I'm really surprised they aren't putting
it on Hulu because like hit Monkey and Modoc and
things like that are all on Hulu, which is still
owned by Disney. But yeah, I don't know. Maybe there's
like some rights issues tied up when Netflix. I don't know,
like maybe there was like an option or whatever, and
until that expires, they can't really do anything with it.
I am not aware of anything like that, but it's
(25:32):
a possibility. Um. It's more like I'm wondering if we'll
see stuff along the same vein, and it may be
a while before we see those characters get a series again,
apart from like little appearances and other stuff, but I'm
hopeful it's it's I really liked the first season of
(25:52):
Daredevil a lot. I like the second season less, but
I still liked it. I really like Jessica Jones, but
Jessica Jones, like Jessica Jones, deals with stuff that's that
goes beyond just violence. I mean, there should be trigger
warnings a plenty in Jessica Jones. I feel like Jessica
Jones as much as I think they did a good
(26:13):
job with the first season of it on Netflix, I
think the character can certainly cross over into d Plus
stuff no problem, especially looking at her later seasons. Um,
but I don't I don't think that series fits Disney
Plus I don't. I don't think there's enough parental controls
to make it fit that platform. Um, you know, I
liked Luke Cage. Again, all of these things were very
(26:35):
much made for adults, and they were all very very gritty.
Um the one like Iron Fist. As much as I
liked how season two ended, they don't need to. They
don't need to well, and then see, the interesting thing
to me as well is that the Netflix series they
went to a level of intensity that goes not just
beyond Disney Plus, but well beyond anything you see in
(26:58):
any of the films. Right. The movies all take a
pretty p g PG thirteen approach, which makes sense. I mean,
they're marketing these two beat for everybody, not just adults.
And so time and again, when you watch a Marvel film,
the violence tends to be pretty downplayed. There's a lot
(27:18):
of action. But if there's anything where someone like Hawkeye
is shooting someone with an arrow and the arrow actually
you actually see the arrow hit that's something. It's usually
a c G I alien like, it's not a person like.
I mean he hit people in the in the TV show, yes,
but there wasn't a lot of blood. It goes back
to that, like that rating system of like what makes
(27:41):
something PG versus PG thirteen Is it how much blood
and guts you show or is it the act of
the violence? You know, it's we could do a whole
episode just about how bizarre and contradictory. Yeah, we have
talked about in the past about how the rating systems
are messed up, um like, like they don't necessarily do
(28:04):
a good job of protecting people if that's what they're
meant to do. They also do do a good job
of really indicating what, you know, whether a film is
going to be upsetting or not, Like it's there's a
whole thing. And also the whole process of just submitting
to get the rating is ridiculous. Star Wars is pretty violent,
Mandalorian is pretty violent. Home Alone is pretty fine. I
(28:25):
will say this, the Book of Boba Fett is not
nearly violent enough. I'm I am still behind on it.
It feels like it's trying to be three different this
this segment is not supposed to be about book fee
but we can definitely Bunny Trail there. It feels like
it's trying to be three different movies, and I like, like,
(28:46):
I like the documentary on the on Tuscan Raider culture. Yeah,
like like the fact that you get them, you get
an episode. Let's say it's fifty minutes long. You can
be pretty sure that about forty minutes of that fifty
minutes is going to be set as a flashback to
Tuscan Raiders, and the other ten minutes is a little
bit of continuation of whatever the storyline is playing out
(29:08):
in the quote unquote modern day of the show. I
mean like, yeah, so the other part of it feels
like like Good Feathers, but like good best cars and
good Feathers, not Good Fellas. You get it with the
cartoon parody of Good Fellas. I mean, you're not wrong. Okay, Well,
(29:29):
we're gonna wrap this up, but I I definitely am
curious to see if we're gonna get any more gritty
type of series on Disney Plus because I really feel
like there are a lot of stories that Marvel would
like to tell that they just can't tell in the
format they've kind of found themselves locked into right now.
I mean, we know they're supposed to be bringing Blade
(29:51):
and Blade. If you don't, if you don't, if you
don't go are with Blade or at least flirt with it.
What's the point. I mean, I think they can. But
Blade is also kind of tangential. Tangential, you know, I
would have said moodon Night was tangential since he's kind
of a more disturbed Batman. Yeah, Batman already has cut
(30:12):
issues out the wazoo. Yeah yeah, yeah, but um but
I am looking forward to it. I they Marvel and
Dizzy plus with Marvel has done really well at keeping
my trust for their shows. Even the ones that I
haven't been as fond of, I've still enjoyed um And
I you know, I look forward to maybe this revised
(30:33):
version of The Defenders because honestly, as much as I
love the Netflix stuff, some of it was a little
too gritty for me. Um And I think you could
still tell the same sort of story and dial it back.
I mean, I'm popular, I don't feel like I never
felt that it was too gritty, but I definitely felt
that sometimes the violence went to like true gratuitous um levels,
(30:55):
where like it wasn't so it wasn't that it was gritty,
it was that the violence was so over the top
gratuitous that I was taken out of the experience and
I was just focusing on how gratuitous it was, and
that to me, that was upsetting to me. I mean,
it's the same reason I don't watch SAW. Well, well,
we have something that's going to disturb all of you
listeners in just a minute after we take a quick break. Okay,
(31:39):
let's let's do another peak behind the current real quick areal. Okay,
So what a brainstorming? What two properties were going to
match together? And part of the problem was that some
of the things that were in the news were properties
that we had recently mashed up with other stuff, and
we don't we don't take properties off the list once
we use them, but we don't want to re use
(32:00):
them too frequently, right or too close together. So do
you know why I picked the two properties that I picked?
I don't. Okay, So, first of all, the two properties
we picked were West Side Story and Dune. I said,
I picked because I pitched it. But he he did pick.
He pitched it, he came up with it. It's all
(32:21):
his faults. Um. So the reason why I picked that
is because the Set Decorator Society of America nominated Dune
and West Side Story for awards, So they're technically in
the news right now. I mean West Side Stories also
in the news because the woman who played Anito one
(32:42):
was it a golden Globe? Oh did she? That's fantastic.
I'm I have stopped paying attention to awards for the
most part. This was just one of those headlines that
I happened to see. So I don't know if that's
a correct award, but I do know it's the same
award that Rita Moreno won for playing that role. Fantastic,
and so it was that kind of made new because
it was kind of a historical sort of historic sort
(33:02):
of happening. Um, I haven't watched it. Turns out, I'm
listening to the music for West Side Story, but I've
never watched. So I've seen the original film adaptation of
West Side Story. I've never seen a theatrical like a
stage theater production. I've never seen the production. Uh, and
I haven't seen the new Steven Spielberg produced movie. However,
we do need to explain what West Side Story is
(33:24):
for people who aren't familiar. It is it is that
Romeo and Juliet. I mean it's it's not even essentially
it is Romeo and Juliet, but it's set in New
York and you have some New Yorkers, some like Native
New Yorkers, and some uh, immigrants from Puerto Rico. And
those are your two like those are your capulets. And
(33:46):
Montague is right, it's not those Sharks and Jets. Yeah, Sharks,
the Sharks and the Jets, the Jets being the native
New Yorker gang and the Sharks being the Puerto Rican gang.
And uh, and you have the story of U Maria
and Tolony and they and they're and they're they're forbidden
love and you know, it's a it's a musical. They
(34:08):
have big musical numbers, and but it tells the story.
Some of them were great. Uh. Stephen Sondheim worked on them,
although he was he was not super happy with that
assignment because he felt that he was really, uh, it
wasn't it wasn't his project. He was working on someone
else's project and he didn't have full freedom of it.
And he felt that the push was to make the
(34:31):
language in the songs too poetic, and he felt that
that was not realistic considering the characters that were singing
these songs. He's like, these, these shouldn't be poetic songs.
But he lost the battle on that one. Um. Anyway, Uh,
some of the songs are fantastic, apparently, some of them
are just okay, and some of them, I guess Aeriel
thinks are bad. I don't know about the modern versions
(34:53):
because I haven't listened to them, but I'm thinking about
like the classic stage version and the original film. And
then obviously we've got to talk about Dune, Frank Herbert novel,
which is just basically Robio and Juliet but with a
lot more gangs and sandworms, um and what and sand ms? Yes, no,
(35:13):
so so Dunes A Dune is a big adventure science
fiction tale. Do you want to take a stab at
giving kind of an explanation of what Dune is? Yes, So,
the the universe, the galaxy is ruled by like an emperor,
and they are all of these different like ruling houses
like the Harconansia treatise things like that and they all
(35:33):
trade out power. Um. And there's one like really important planet.
I'm sure there are other important plants, but like the
main important planet when you jump into doing Arakis, which
is um really the home to a group of people
called the Fremen. And as Jonathan said earlier, sandworms. Uh,
and they produce a thing called spice which has a
(35:57):
whole bunch of like crazy properties and think a Naples
enables space tracks. Yes, they feed it to their navigators,
which allows the navigators to essentially allows them to see
into the future so that they can avoid stars and stuff.
And it's what allows interstellar navigation without worrying about colliding
with something at like light speed. Yeah, and so the
(36:18):
the like the main character is Paula Trades, the first
main character i'd say, and his family takes control of Aracus,
this this main important planet from the previous rulers, the Harkonens,
and then it's like this big subterfuge battle. They get
like ambushed and most of them get killed and uh, Paula,
(36:39):
Paula Trades and his mother get sent into the desert
and get kind of rescued, taking him by Fremen. And
then it's just like this huge galactic political intrigue thing
that happens. So for the span of many, many books,
there's a lot of really cool concepts and and type
of like character classes I would say in the books
that don't necessarily get covered in the main or explained
(37:03):
or shown a whole lot in like the main the
new movie, like mentats, which are have like these incredible
mathematical powers. They're supposed to be super logical and great tacticians.
Yeah yeah, so like worth reading the books even if
you watched the movie and you didn't necessarily like it
because it was slow and you didn't understand much. So
(37:23):
those are two properties, aerial, do you want to go first?
I understand yours right to the point. Mine is real,
real small, real real short, and real real dumb. And
it's called West Side Spicy and it's not because it's
a spicy story. So but anyhow, New York was in
a drought and a street gang known as the Shark
(37:46):
Conan's controlled the water supply, and the Iraq Jets Arrival
street gang who dealt in spices didn't like that. You see,
the spices were in fact spicy, and with the Sharkonan's
boat guarding all the water, their spice sales were down,
just how the Sharkonans planned it. This is like super
loosely based on anything. Uh. The two sides were constantly
(38:09):
on each other's turf and starting street skirmishes. Then one
day a new family moved to town right around the
time of the high school spring Fling and took over
the Sharkonan's. The new family had a son named paul
Tony like you know, like you do uh and his
He went to the spring fling because his parents told
(38:29):
him it would be good for him, and that's where
he met a girl named Chania, girl named Only problem
is the girl was a part of the eracchets. Being teenagers,
so they didn't care and they fell in love. Chania
would step sneak paul Tony spice and paul Tony would
sneak Chania water and they would sneak around to see
(38:53):
each other. Only one other person knew, and that was
Banita jess It, but she promised to keep it a
secret because you know, young love. Then one day the
families caught wind of what paul Tony and Chania were doing.
They tracked them down to find them all spicing and
hydrating around together and the turf floor was escalated. Both
sides pulled out weapons and immediately realized they had escalated
(39:15):
things too hide, but they couldn't back down, so they
started puffing and stomping and snapping and dancing around trying
to intimidate the other side away instead of the bloodshed
that was about to happen, while still saving face. It
was a huge rugas while shook, streets echoed and spice
and water flowed into the New York sewer system. And
that's when they felt it an earthquake, or so they thought.
(39:36):
And then the ground split open and a giant mutant
snake worm who had been hiding and growing in the
sewer subway system emerged from the ground, called by the
spice that had just entered its domain. As it rose
up out of the ground, it devoured everything above it,
including all of the sharkonans and the Iraq shetions, before
disappearing once more into the underground tunnels. When the dust cleared,
(39:57):
Paul Tony and Chania were the only ones left. The
high tailed it away from the scene of the crime
before the cops arrived, and then high tailed it away
from the city to start a new life in Nevada,
where they got married. Jania was partial to deserts, and
so they lived happily ever after. Yes, you gave Romeo
and Juliette a happy ending where everybody except Romeo and
(40:19):
Juliette dies. I I wanted to be kind of original
and also like if you look at Romeo and Juliet
and then you look at West Side Story, the ends
are like slightly different. Um, yeah, you can tell that
we don't share these with each other before we record,
because Sharkonan took me by such surprise, and my first
(40:41):
reaction was that's brilliant, and my second reaction was, I
can't believe I missed that joke. It was real hard
because like, the Harconans are like the super creepy family,
and the love story is between Paula Trades and Johnny
from but I don't even know that's our last name.
(41:01):
So it was real hard to make it. But I couldn't.
I couldn't pass. We'll see when we get to mine.
I had a similar issue because who do you make
the antagonist when you're trying to force the story. However,
before we get to that, this episode is gonna run long,
so we're gonna take a quick break. I thought for
(41:30):
sure we are going to make it. Jathan, I thought
so before the episodes started. You told me your mashup
was two paragraphs, and that felt like if that was
two paragraphs, those were long paragraphs. It was they were.
They're like this big. They're like a podcast big. They're
like two inches long each in like eleven point five
(41:53):
aerial on Google Docs. Yes, that's where I read all
my mashups currently. I felt there was some extemporaneous addition
in there too. It's not many. It was fifty eight.
It's fifty It's fifty eight pages with mashups. People. Wow,
So just keep adding him to the same document. Yes, Oh,
I make a new document for every single one. And
this one, my friends, is called West Spice Story. Uh.
(42:18):
And before I jump into it, um, there's gonna be
references to stuff in Dune that's gonna make no sense
if you don't know what Dune is, like Benny jests
and things like that. But you're just gonna have to
roll with it because I'm not gonna explain. They're intrigued nuns. Yes,
they are intrigued magical intrigue. Magical intrigue nuns. Imagine a
(42:41):
little Finger from Game of Thrones if he were a nun. Okay, okay,
here we go. Paula Trades has a problem. His father,
the Duke, expects Paul to handle the responsibilities of being
a duke. His mother, Jessica, has secretly trained Paul in
the ways of the been a Jesuit, and both of
(43:01):
them don't like his new girlfriend, Johnny, one of the
fremen of the desert world of Araucus. And then there's
that dang baron Harkconan to deal with. Paul spends his
days with a few other young men, originally from Caladan,
that's where his father ruled before their lives were overturned
and they got sent to Araucus. And this gang, including
(43:22):
Paul's close friend Duncan Idaho, which for the purposes of
this mashup, is more like Paul's age, like to go
around snapping their fingers, dancing and singing, and Paul starts
it off. When you're red duke, you're bound to go
far from your first dose of spice to your last
comb jabbar. When you're red duke gets a job that's
(43:45):
long term. As you dodge in ms and sometimes a sandworm,
you'r who's in charge, no matter how it's fair. In
elite a Rakis and leave Kaladin to the baron and
we ain't caring. Here comes the Duke, like a man
who's on fire. He's bound to become the Benny jest Messiah.
(44:06):
Here comes the Duke and his girlfriend is fine. She'd
make a great wife, or at least conkubine. The Duke
is in charge of our entire nation, fears the little
death that brings the blitteration. I need a vacation, and
then the song ends because I can't. I seriously, I
just can't go any longer than that. Anyway, after the introduction,
(44:29):
we see that Paul really wants to sneak off to
see his girlfriend Chahnny. But the Fremen object to house
of trainees, and house of traintees objects to the freemen,
and the ben a jeserit sure as heck fire object
to the Fremen, but then they also object to Paul
because he was never supposed to happen. But Paul's mom, Jessica,
she totally let the cat out of the bag years ago,
and now we're all stuck here, I guess. Anyway, just
(44:52):
as Paul is about to sneak off to see Chahnny,
he runs into someone who has other plans, and that
someone is, of course, the Fear Howatt, the Master Assassin,
who wants to train Paul and tactics. So the fear
tells Paul he ain't going nowhere, which just prompts another
song the fair How what I'm really upset? I never
(45:14):
get the free time that I do gotta get. I
ain't no tactician. I'm just a young teen, and I'm
tired of you being mean, being mean, being mean, being mean,
being so darned mean. I am tired of you being mean.
I study every weapon that you put in my hand.
I know the pointy bits supposed to go and the
(45:36):
other man. I know the really fast bullets will bounce
right off my shield. How can I see the girlfriend
that I've concealed. I've concealed. I've concealed, I've completely sealed. Yes,
I have a girlfriend I've concealed. And then he realizes
he's just confessed in song, which is a rookie mistake.
(45:56):
That evening, it's another night with the pain box. That's
what his father, Ledo calls television. Paul is able to
withstand it, but only barely, and late at night, when
the house is quiet, he stealthily makes his way out
of the house, using all the tricks he has learned
from his various mentors to sneak out into the waists
of a racus. There After traveling for more than an hour,
(46:20):
he makes his way to a secret spot, the spot
where Channie meets with him, so that the two might
make google eyes at each other. And he sees Channi
approach and she smiles at him, and then of course
they sing tonight tonight. The sand worms all take flight,
(46:40):
but only as metathors in our song tonight tonight, because
the worms aren't very light. No, they're big, and they're
mean and they're long. Those worms they'll eat you in
a minute if you are standing near them, and don't
(47:02):
dodge to the right. But here we are, and our
fear of sandworm seems so far tonight in anyway. That's
when Baron Harconan attacks. And the Baron, well, you know,
he's played by one of those stage actors who always
gets cast in musicals, but in a non musical role,
you know, the actor who usually plays a supporting part,
(47:25):
or maybe they're the villain. And it's not that they
can't sing or dance, it's just that they never get
the chance to and maybe that eats on them, you know,
maybe that's the kind of thing that drives a person
to become a villain when that person gets cast in
every musical in high school but never gets a singing part, right,
Mrs Thompson, Maybe that's the kind of thing that drives
(47:48):
a person to, I don't know, become a professional podcaster
and record ads about Casper Mattresses. Ever think about that,
Mrs Thompson, Of course not, you're too busy casting me
as Captain Racket, who doesn't even show up in any
ensemble musical numbers in South Pacific. Thanks a lot. Anyway,
the baron attacks and it's like awful, and it turns
(48:11):
out the Tradees doctor Toats sold them out even though
he was supposed to be mentally conditioned to not be
able to do that. Whoop see, And so Paul's entire
family gets wiped out. So this sets up naturally a
big dance where Paul, the few surviving members of House
of Tradees, the Fremen, and the Arconans are all going
to be at the same dance for different reasons. And
that's when we get the mambo of death, which goes
(48:33):
like this, dunt dunt duntu dunt dunt dunt dunt dunt
dunt dunt dune mambo pe pue lasers, and then there's
this quiet bit after some of the fighting where we
get Paul and Shanny and they sing, there's much laungche
for us somewhere, Launch for us, Spice for me and
(48:59):
spice for you. We're tripping hard from this spicy goo
mi lunch. And then the fighting looks like it's gonna
start again, but our movie has been pretty long so far,
so it kind of just ends, and they are going
to be another one, probably, but you're gonna have to
wait a couple of years. The end. I loved it.
(49:21):
Also apparently so did Walter, my other cat, because he
was rubbing up against the microphone and all that. Uh.
That one was very fun for me to do. I
have never been in Westside stories, so that's the closest
I'm ever gonna get listen. I I also have been
cast in many musical roles that had less singing than
(49:44):
I cared for. That was that was that? Okay? So
I sometimes put in some autobiographical rants in my mashups,
I admit, But to be fair, first of all, I
didn't have a Mrs Thompson as a drama teacher. I
was about to say, way to put her. I did
not I did not do at and second of all,
Um actually was in several musicals where I had at
(50:04):
least a small singing role, like I was the rabbi
and fiddler on the roof, and he sings a little
bit mostly where the Pirate captain and Romeo and Ethel
the Pirates. That's not a high school play. Yes, as
the rabbi. I played the dad uh at McAfee in
Um Bye Bye Birdie, and he has two songs so um,
(50:24):
which just shows you that my high school was really
hard up to get male students to audition, because if
they have to cast me in a singing role, things
have gone south pretty pretty quickly. I think you're you
are perfectly fine singer. I'm very hoarse today because this
is the third show I've recorded, so even when I'm
(50:44):
in good voice, it's not great. And I'm not in
good voice tonight. I really feel like at some point
we should next time there's like musical news, we should
write some parodies like that should be our thing, okay,
instead of a mash up, we should just write I'm
clearly not above it. So but yes, that was that
(51:05):
was my goofy attempt at creating a doone west Side
story mash up and arial. I loved yours and uh
and we invite you the audience if you have ideas
for mashups. Either you want to submit one of your own,
like you wanted to show us what you can do
mashing up a couple of properties, let us know, or
if you have suggestions for different ones that we should
(51:27):
mash up together. Because some weeks are like this where
the there aren't obvious candidates, right like if we had
mashed up Moon Night with something, first of all, I
would have had to do a ton of research on
Moonnight because I don't really know that much about them.
So yeah, um, but yes, feel free to reach out,
and you can do that in numerous ways. One way
(51:49):
is to send us an email. We've received a couple recently,
which is great. Keep them coming, and all of your
suggestions we have on our spreadsheet to do. That's true,
we do and we will gladly add to it. Keep
in mind again, just as a reminder, if you're going
to suggest a mash up pairing, make sure they're not
too similar already, because the more similar they are, the
(52:10):
less there is to do. Right, There's there's not as
many do do fee choices to make, but yes, you
can write us. The address for the show is l
n C at I heart media dot com. Yes, you
can also contact us on social media just just say
hi or to give us your thoughts. On Instagram and
(52:31):
Facebook we are large Eno Drunk Collider, and on Twitter
we are l n C Underscore Podcast. I check those
make sure they like tig us because if you just
put something and you don't, I may not see it,
but then I will share it with Jonathan and we
will both be very happy. Yes, yes, I like to
be reminded that there is a world outside my well,
it's not my apartment. I was gonna make another musical
(52:52):
reference because that's an avenue queue song. But I like
to be reminded that there's a world outside of my
own little existence because I don't do social old media
anymore except occasionally Twitter. That's about it. Of your own
little corner in your own little room. Yeah, that's pretty
much where I stay all the time now. So whatever
you want to be. But this was a lot of fun.
(53:13):
As always, I greatly appreciate my wonderful co host Ariel.
Thank you. I greatly appreciate you too. Jonathan thank you,
and until next time. I have been Jonathan trade Ees
Strickland and I have been Ariel. I feel pretty cast
(53:55):
The Large New John Collider is production of I Heart
Radio and was created by A. L. Kasten. Jonathan Strickland
is the executive producer. This show is produced, edited, and
published by Torri Harrison. For more podcasts on my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
The Large Nerd Drunk Collider Podcast is a production of
I Heart Radio. Hey everybody, welcome to The Large Nerd
Drunk Collider. At the podcast that's all about the geeky
things happening in the world around us and how very
excited we are about them. I'm arial casting and with
(00:29):
me as always, is the Dulcet Lee toned Jonathan Strickland. Hello, Ariel, Well, Hello, Ariel.
It feels just like we did this just a moment ago,
because we did. Because we did. Yeah. So, so here's
a little peek behind the curtain, y'all. Sometimes when you're recording,
(00:49):
you look over and you notice that in the levels
on your screen that one of the two people talking,
in this case me starts to hit a little red colors,
which are bad because it means that I'm blowing out
the mic. So we had to screen seven minutes and
eleven seconds of content and start all over again, and
(01:11):
we had barely even gotten into anything we wanted to
talk about. But listen, Jonathan, don't don't be too hard
on yourself. It's not your fault if you go to eleven.
That's true, that's true. But I am now ready to
ask you a question. Bet you can't guess what it is,
(01:32):
all right, Ariel, Because one of our topics we're gonna
talk about today is about a certain uh famous musician,
someone who's had a very long career and even received
a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in two
thousand and eighteen. We're gonna have this question be do
you have any favorite weird Al Yankovic songs? I do
(01:55):
Harvey the Wonder Hamster, which is a thirty seconds on
about a hamster. Listen, you didn't give me a lengthy specification, sir.
It's an amazing song. I sing it to my cat, Harvey.
Sometimes I change it to Harvey the Wonder Kitty, but
(02:16):
usually I call him Harvey the Wonder Hamster. Anyhow, Um
you know he had Harvey the Wonder Hamster on his
old old TV show. That's not what I named my
cat after. I name my cat after for Escape. I
think you all know that. But um, I like it.
But okay, if that one doesn't count, then um, let's see,
uh if you if you go back to like when
(02:38):
I was first introduced to weird Al, I think it
was don't go making phony calls, because I like, don't
go Chasing Waterfalls by tlc uh. But like it's hard
because all of those songs I liked because I was
young and impressionable, and then he made a parody of it.
And I also like comedy, so then I liked that,
you know, like pretty Fly for a Rabbi and um
(03:01):
Amish Paradise. Oh, I really liked Johnish Paradise. Of his
more modern stuff, I like word Crimes because it's um.
I like that fast wordplay. It's almost nerd core. It's
like nerd polka core. But really my favorite of all
weird al are his polka mashups. And polka mashups. I mean,
(03:24):
I do them in every aspect of my life. I
do them in this podcast. My band, like our Bread
and Butter is mashing up songs. Uh. But I the
last time we recorded this, I said I didn't have
a favorite, and then I said my favorite was like
Polka Your Eyes Out because it was like a cradle
of love and interest stand Man and Doctor feel Good
(03:45):
and Ice Ice Baby. But then I wok looked through
all of his other polka mashups and I love all
of those two. So it's kind of like it's like
picking a favorite child. Yeah, and I've I've rattled on
now like I've cheated at this question because I've named
fifty two of his songs that I like, and I
could just keep going until I've named his almost entire catalog.
(04:06):
I didn't even touch like his originals. Yeah that's what about.
I'm going to be touching his originals, which is why
he has a restraining order against me. Yeah. Yeah, so yeah,
I I like his parodies. But the problem I have
with parodies in general, it's not it's nothing to do
with his parodies, which I think are brilliant. For one thing,
he's really good at recreating the sound that made the
(04:28):
original song special. He's really good at that. The problem
I have with parodies is that often you can have
a song that just falls out of favor to the
point where the thing the parody, like, you forget that
it's even a parody of a song because the song
that it's parodying isn't really in the zeitgeist anymore. Uh.
And I like the originals because they are more evergreen. Um.
(04:51):
And I even told you this before we started recording
this is that you know, when I first heard the
song Yoda, I didn't even realize it was a parody
because I was a geeky kid. I hadn't even heard
of the Kinks, didn't know there was a song called Lola,
which is awesome. But then I finally put two and
two together when I did hear Lolo, and Oh, this
(05:12):
is why Yoda is a parody of I think goodness,
I didn't make the mistake of saying, oh, Lola must
be a parody of Yoda. Um. But the the more
recent song that I I think speaks to me on
a deep level is called Skipper Dan, and it's a
song about an actor who has dreams of being on
the stage and was on like on the path to
(05:35):
becoming something big in theater when you know, opportunities dried
up and he took a job as a guide a
skipper on the Jungle Cruise ride at Disneyland, and that
that's where he stuck now. And it's it's a cheerful
sounding song with kind of tragic story elements to it
(05:57):
because it's about someone whose dream is dying before were
his eyes. And I love that juxtaposition. And you know,
there are a lot of other artists out there who
have created music in that same sort of feel like
Jonathan Colton has done a lot of songs that you
listen to it and if you're not paying attengital lyrics,
you're like, this is a this is a bopper, this
(06:18):
is poppy, and then you listen to the lyrics like, whoa,
this is dark. They might be giants does it too?
You know, there's a few different bands out there that
are really good at it. Only recently did I actually
go and listen to what they might be giant songs
are about. And yeah that like some of their albums
are pretty darned with pressing. Uh, it is funny. I'll
(06:38):
share this. Paullen Storm is another geek band that we
both like. And yeah, you say Skipper Dan, and my
brain just automatically goes to the ballad of Eddie Prager,
which is, uh, a sea shanty with bad penny whistle
about a urinal cake. Yeah, not the same thing. So
I don't know why I don't. Maybe it's just the
oceanic title tie ins and names like you have like
(07:02):
a title in the name in the case of Skipper Dan.
But yeah, so we're gonna talk. We're gonna talk about
weird affect. We're going to do it right now, because Ariel,
you found a story that I gotta tell you. When
I saw the headline, I had to check the date
on that story to make sure it wasn't an April
fool's joke. Because I was sure it wasn't true, I
(07:25):
had to do the same thing I had to and
I had to check my sources. So Roku is making
Roku along with Funnier Die Funnier Diean Tango is making
a biopic on weird Al Yankovic along with weird Al Yankovic.
Yankovic is working on this with them. He's he's writing it,
(07:46):
and Daniel Radcliffe is playing weird Al. And at first
I was like, what weird alls an actor? Why? Why
would why would they cast anybody else's him? But I
guess if he needs to be young, weird awl, weird Alice,
you know, not old, but he's older than a kid.
But but yeah, Daniel Radcliffe, if he's going to be
(08:09):
playing like the weird Al who first got to start
getting his tapes played on the Dr Demento radio show,
you know that makes more sense. But yeah, Daniel Radcliffe,
it's such a wild choice. Not a bad choice, mind you,
because Daniel Radcliffe is. I think he's proven himself with
a lot of really interesting role choices over the last
(08:31):
five years that in my mind completely separate him from
being Harry Potter. I know that everyone thinks of him
that way, because of course, obviously he was central to
that franchise for eight movies, but um, you know, having
him play this it feels so far out of field,
and at the same time I really want to see it.
(08:54):
I kind of agree, I kind of don't. So recently
I watched Miracle Workers, which is a bit raunchy and
a bit there's a lot of base humors, so if
that's not your thing, I'm not recommending it for you.
But Daniel Radcliffe is one of the main characters in it.
Um it's kind of Comedia dell arte and that it's
the same actors playing similar um characters across the different scenarios.
(09:15):
They're all different characters, but they all have a similar
like m o UM and in that he plays kind
of like the nice guy and weird as a really
nice guy from everything I know about him, and I
don't know him personally. And Daniel Radcliffe can sing and
he can dance, and he's really good at comedy and
he's really good at drama. So yeah, I think he's
a great choice. His nose is not quite right. What
(09:38):
do you think is I love that that's what you
bring up. But what I think is that the the
news article and deadline about this obviously has things that
are clearly being played up for laughs, like the idea
of weird all having all these hot and heavy like
illicit love affairs and stuff that maybe he did maybe
(09:58):
with nasal spray. And if you get that reference, it
means you watched a nineteen eighties era weird O Yankovic
comedy special that I think me and maybe two other
people have seen, but it's before u HF. He did
this goofy comedy special before u HF. And it was
it was kind of a a reason to group together
(10:21):
a bunch of music videos of his songs. But it
was supposed to be a biopic of weird Out, but
it was a joke like it was. It was inventing
lots of stuff that supposedly happened, like him doing a
Jimmy Hendrix and lighting his accordion on fire on stage,
that kind of thing, very tongue in cheek, so I'm
I'm I'm eager to see this. I'm a big weird
(10:44):
al fan. Um. You know, he's done some amazing stuff,
not just not just his music, but you know, he's
directed music videos of notable and he's done tons of
like collaborations, like sometimes he shows up as a surprise
collaborator in someone else's in certain it's just crazy, like
he came out for Weezer and played Africa Total's Africa
(11:05):
with Weezer on stage one time, and bunk or stuff
like that. So he really is one of my favorite
artists that i've met, never met, and don't know, I've
never met him either. I've seen I've been to several
of his shows, but I've never done like a meet
and greet, And I'm fine with that. I'm like the dude,
like give him his space, because i know I would
(11:26):
be that annoying geeky fan if I were to ever
actually chat with him. And I'm happy just you know,
just just being a fan. I'm good with that. Yeah,
I am. I know I've been really laxed for the
people who actually check our website on updating it recently,
but I will update it with this show. Notes for
this episode, because yeah, you should read list Deadline article
(11:47):
even if you don't go to our website, because it
really does read like in April one article. Um, even
like with even the head of Roku and the head
of Funnier Die being in on it. Yeah point where again, like,
I'm not a convinced this is a real thing. One
other thing that I am a hundred percent convinced of
(12:07):
is that Microsoft and has made a big move. And
chances are, if you're a video game enthusiasts, you know
this news already. It has. The company has announced that
it is acquiring Activision Blizzard for more than sixty billion dollars. Yeah. Yeah,
my friends have been chatting about this today and uh
(12:27):
they're concerned about how Blizzard properties will play with Apple
products once this finally goes through, which you know it's
gonna take a while. Yeah, I mean so. Phil Spencer,
who's head of he's the CEO of Microsoft Gaming, has
said that they remain committed for Activision Blizzard titles to
play on the platforms upon which it's known for. Like
(12:52):
it's it's a very loose, vague language, but the meaning
seems to be. My interpretation of the meaning is that
he's saying, Okay, PlayStation owners, Mac owners, don't worry. We're
not We're not gonna tell Activision Blizzard to stop making
stuff for your platforms. That's not going to happen. That
seems to be the message, but it will remain to
(13:13):
be seen now. Activision Blizzard has been in the news
a lot since the middle of as a lot of
allegations made the light of day about a very toxic
work culture, one that is plagued with lots of serious problems,
including sexual harassment claims, and the company has been trying
to clean up quite a bit since then, or at
(13:36):
least that's been the messaging. So one takeaway I have
for this is that it gives me hope that serious
positive changes are on the way, because I'm always worried
that a company that has kind of those deep issues,
it's really hard for that company to change on its own,
(13:57):
like it's hard for internal change to come if the
foundation is rotten. And my hope is that Microsoft can
help make those changes. Hopefully everyone manages to to keep
their jobs, but they also end up in a more
positive and supportive work environment. It sounds like that is
Microsoft's plan. The article on Polygon that uh we're using
(14:19):
as reference. One of the many articles on it quotes
uh Microsoft as as saying that they value studio culture
and employee and inclusiveness and are going to try to
improve all that again in very big terms. But that's
that's great news, uh, you know, in in the short term.
I think it's going to be great news for gamers.
(14:41):
Long term, obviously, consolidation is always kind of scary because
you worry about stuff getting kind of all boiled down
so it all fields and plays and looks the same,
and you don't want that. But in the short term,
if you're someone like who has Xbox Game Pass, you're
gonna see some crazy titles popping up. Been that, And
(15:01):
in the short term, for the employees, could mean an
improvement in their work conditions, which to me is the
most important thing. But you know, also, I mean, I
understand how gamers can feel really uh stressed out about this.
Um ariel. I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna call an
audible and the audible is Let's take our third news
(15:22):
item for the segment and put it in the next
segment because it kind of fits there anyway. Let's take
a break. I'm actually happy you did that, Jonathan, because
(15:43):
I'm going in my head, I don't know whether i
want to say, go into this using toxic workplaces or
something that is good news, because it's kind of both.
And that's that real Steel. The two thousand and eleven
film that is basically rock'em sock'em Robots with Wolverine in it,
it's not it's whatever, and it's the music man. Yeah. Okay,
(16:04):
so Hugh Jackman's in the two thousand eleven movie about
people who have build boxing robots and he's kind of
a delinquent dad um is apparently getting a Disney Plus show.
The only reason I said toxic workplace is because the
boxing robots scene is not the most up and up. Yeah. Yeah,
it was a surprisingly good movie. Wasn't like I have
(16:27):
want to see it. It's not that I didn't want
to see it. It's just one of those things that
it's like literally one of those many titles that kind
of slipped past me and I never got a chance
to really watch it. Um, not that I didn't like it,
definitely wasn't going to be the kind of film that
I was gonna go seek out in the theaters when
it came out, but it would have been the kind
of thing I might watch on a evening on like
a streaming service. I would say that you should. Yeah,
(16:49):
it's kind of um. It's kind of like Rocky meets
I mean literally rock and Sock and Robots meets Over
the Top. The way you were described that, I was thinking, like,
for the people who don't know what Over the Top is,
do you care to kind of give a quick synopsis?
Because it was crazy? Yeah, it's um. Sylvester Stallone plays
(17:11):
a delinquent dad and there's like arm wrestling. Yes, he's
a truck driver and a professional arm wrestler and he's
competing in an arm wrestling tournament. And he also has
an estranged son with whom he's trying to reconnect. And
that movie is equal parts terrible and awesome. And I
(17:34):
love it and it's terrible. Then, I mean, I would
definitely say you should watch Real Steel. It's I thought
it was good, mind you. I also enjoyed Van helsing.
But your standards and my standards are different, That's all
they are. But what I'll say is, if you liked
Over the Top, it's not quite as cheesy. It has
like a better plot, it has I feel better acting everything.
(17:58):
Does I have a point where the guy says, I
like to turn my head around because it's like a switch,
like like on a truck. You know, I don't. I
don't know it has. I will say it has been
a while since I've watched Real Steel. I own it now.
I'm going to have to go back and watch it again.
But I really like, I really really I'm excited for
the show. I quite enjoyed it. I didn't know what
(18:19):
to expect. I expected it to be a dumb movie,
but it was. It was just a lot of fun.
Do you think it was because you have seen it
and I haven't. Do you think there's enough juice there
to support a series? I mean, there's enough juice to
support a whole bunch of robots. Well, but yes I do.
(18:40):
I do. But it'll be like it'll be a little
bit gritty, you know, like it's it's robots punching the
snookers out of each other, Like what's the I get
that the story is what's important, right, Because if I
were just a series about teenagers kicking the snot out
of each other, it wouldn't be compelling. You wouldn't watch
(19:02):
more than an episode of it. There's more going on
in Cobra Kai than that, My My. What I'm wondering
is what will be the underlying story that will fuel
a real Steel series, because otherwise it's just it's just
a fantasy version of Robot Wars. I mean, I like
(19:22):
Robot Wars. I'd watch a fantasy version of that. I mean,
I think it will be family. You can draw out
family conflict in a million different ways, generation by generation.
You can ultimately yes, yes, uh, but even with even
with Cobra Kai, which I love and it's one of
(19:43):
my goals to be on Cobra Kai. UM like, I
love it, but it's largely the same conflict every season
with a few added or changed factors you haven't watched
and almost sent me on another rabbit hole. But we
have more things we have to talk about, so I'm
not going to do it, but I am going to
do it after we Yes, you will have to, you
(20:05):
will have to. Um. But this really leads into another
another thing that Disney just unveiled to us, which is
a New Moon Night trailer um, and that's gonna be
pretty dark. But they aren't putting it on Hulu, They're
putting it on Disney Plus. Uh, what was your reaction
to the trailer? Why do you think? Did you like
(20:27):
it not like it to do the was it nothing?
It wasn't what I expected that Yeah, yeah, so it focused.
I thought it was really cool and that it didn't
it revealed I think just enough for the fans and
just enough for if you don't know what the what
Moon Night is about to go? Huh, I need to
(20:48):
watch and figure out what's going on without revealing necessarily
too much of the plot or too many of the
cool things for people who are new, who coming in
new to this to the property. Um but I expected
a lot more, a lot more of the other aspects
of the character to come into the trailer than yea
(21:09):
for those who don't know, because I mean, this is
just part of the character. The character has, uh like
a multiple personality disorder kind of thing, and in many
ways this trailer gave me uh flashbacks to Legion, another
Marvel character. And it's also a Marvel character who has
(21:30):
numerous multiple personalities. Um but in the comics they change
it up. Yeah, yeah, no, they changed while they changed
quite a bit in Legion. The television series versus Legion,
the comic book character, but like who Legion's dad is?
But but the the Moon Night trailer I thought was
(21:52):
very moody and effective. Oscar Isaac I love him, Um,
I will forgive his accent. Some people comparing it. I
heard some people comparing it to Dick Vandyke. Yeah, yeah,
which I love Dick Vandyke's so but his shows accident
Mary Poppins is frequently a thing of ridicule. But we
wanted to use this kind of to have a brief
(22:14):
discussion at least about because Moon Night does loot like
it's going to be a little more intense. Um, I mean,
I don't know. It's kind of hard to see what
moon So there is a sequence in the trailer w
Moon Night is is pounding something with his fists. It
looks like a person. It might be a person. If
it's a person, that definitely raises up this question. Legitimately,
(22:37):
if it's like a monster kind of thing, then this
question ends up almost being moot. But the question is
do we think Disney Plus is testing out the possibility
of more gritty, violent Marvel content and could that potentially
mean that we might see a return, not of specific characters,
(23:01):
but of series that we got on Netflix that we're
far more violent and dark than anything we've seen in
the Marvel movies. I mean Daredevil and um, Jessica Jones
and Luke Cage and uh and like, you know, all
the appearances of the Punisher, like the Punisher very over
(23:23):
the top violent. I don't think we're gonna get anything
close to that level with Midnight, but I do wonder
if this means that we can see characters like the
Punisher re emerge. So I think, I think so. I
don't have any insight on this. Um, I will say,
like I follow the casting directors for Marvel stuff because
(23:43):
I'm an actor, of course I do. I don't have
any insight on this. You know, they're all very tight lipped.
Even if I had insight, I wouldn't say, um, but
but I would have to imagine. So are we past
the spoiler window for Hawkeye? I think so? Okay, So
we already know that King Pen from Daredevil was in Hawkeye. UM.
(24:04):
I hope that was enough of a spoiler warning for
anybody who hasn't watched material had him. And then there's
been tons of coverage since then. With Vincent talking about it. Yeah.
He he was very excited about it and was not
great at keeping his lips sealed, to the point where
Disney had to be like no, no, no, but then yes,
yes yes, um. And in Daredevil he is super violent. Um,
(24:29):
Hawkeye he wasn't as violent though there the stuff surrounding
him definitely was more violent than other aspects of the show.
He was far more damage resistant in Hawkeye than he
was in Daredevil. However, Yeah, yeah, more more similar to
like how he was in although it wasn't an offer
playing him in uh, Spider Man and the Multiverse. Um,
(24:50):
how he was portrayed in that cartoon movie. Um. So yeah.
I feel like this is definitely them trying to open
the waters to bring back I would love to see
Daredevil and Luke Cage. I feel like to put it
on Disney. Plus, they would need to put in some
parental like some extra parental controls onto the system, because
that's definitely stuff I would not want, like my six
(25:11):
year old stumbling across. I'm really surprised they aren't putting
it on Hulu because like hit Monkey and Modoc and
things like that are all on Hulu, which is still
owned by Disney. But yeah, I don't know. Maybe there's
like some rights issues tied up when Netflix. I don't know,
like maybe there was like an option or whatever, and
until that expires, they can't really do anything with it.
I am not aware of anything like that, but it's
(25:32):
a possibility. Um. It's more like I'm wondering if we'll
see stuff along the same vein, and it may be
a while before we see those characters get a series again,
apart from like little appearances and other stuff, but I'm
hopeful it's it's I really liked the first season of
(25:52):
Daredevil a lot. I like the second season less, but
I still liked it. I really like Jessica Jones, but
Jessica Jones, like Jessica Jones, deals with stuff that's that
goes beyond just violence. I mean, there should be trigger
warnings a plenty in Jessica Jones. I feel like Jessica
Jones as much as I think they did a good
(26:13):
job with the first season of it on Netflix, I
think the character can certainly cross over into d Plus
stuff no problem, especially looking at her later seasons. Um,
but I don't I don't think that series fits Disney
Plus I don't. I don't think there's enough parental controls
to make it fit that platform. Um, you know, I
liked Luke Cage. Again, all of these things were very
(26:35):
much made for adults, and they were all very very gritty.
Um the one like Iron Fist. As much as I
liked how season two ended, they don't need to. They
don't need to well, and then see, the interesting thing
to me as well is that the Netflix series they
went to a level of intensity that goes not just
beyond Disney Plus, but well beyond anything you see in
(26:58):
any of the films. Right. The movies all take a
pretty p g PG thirteen approach, which makes sense. I mean,
they're marketing these two beat for everybody, not just adults.
And so time and again, when you watch a Marvel film,
the violence tends to be pretty downplayed. There's a lot
(27:18):
of action. But if there's anything where someone like Hawkeye
is shooting someone with an arrow and the arrow actually
you actually see the arrow hit that's something. It's usually
a c G I alien like, it's not a person like.
I mean he hit people in the in the TV show, yes,
but there wasn't a lot of blood. It goes back
to that, like that rating system of like what makes
(27:41):
something PG versus PG thirteen Is it how much blood
and guts you show or is it the act of
the violence? You know, it's we could do a whole
episode just about how bizarre and contradictory. Yeah, we have
talked about in the past about how the rating systems
are messed up, um like, like they don't necessarily do
(28:04):
a good job of protecting people if that's what they're
meant to do. They also do do a good job
of really indicating what, you know, whether a film is
going to be upsetting or not, Like it's there's a
whole thing. And also the whole process of just submitting
to get the rating is ridiculous. Star Wars is pretty violent,
Mandalorian is pretty violent. Home Alone is pretty fine. I
(28:25):
will say this, the Book of Boba Fett is not
nearly violent enough. I'm I am still behind on it.
It feels like it's trying to be three different this
this segment is not supposed to be about book fee
but we can definitely Bunny Trail there. It feels like
it's trying to be three different movies, and I like, like,
(28:46):
I like the documentary on the on Tuscan Raider culture. Yeah,
like like the fact that you get them, you get
an episode. Let's say it's fifty minutes long. You can
be pretty sure that about forty minutes of that fifty
minutes is going to be set as a flashback to
Tuscan Raiders, and the other ten minutes is a little
bit of continuation of whatever the storyline is playing out
(29:08):
in the quote unquote modern day of the show. I
mean like, yeah, so the other part of it feels
like like Good Feathers, but like good best cars and
good Feathers, not Good Fellas. You get it with the
cartoon parody of Good Fellas. I mean, you're not wrong. Okay, Well,
(29:29):
we're gonna wrap this up, but I I definitely am
curious to see if we're gonna get any more gritty
type of series on Disney Plus because I really feel
like there are a lot of stories that Marvel would
like to tell that they just can't tell in the
format they've kind of found themselves locked into right now.
I mean, we know they're supposed to be bringing Blade
(29:51):
and Blade. If you don't, if you don't, if you
don't go are with Blade or at least flirt with it.
What's the point. I mean, I think they can. But
Blade is also kind of tangential. Tangential, you know, I
would have said moodon Night was tangential since he's kind
of a more disturbed Batman. Yeah, Batman already has cut
(30:12):
issues out the wazoo. Yeah yeah, yeah, but um but
I am looking forward to it. I they Marvel and
Dizzy plus with Marvel has done really well at keeping
my trust for their shows. Even the ones that I
haven't been as fond of, I've still enjoyed um And
I you know, I look forward to maybe this revised
(30:33):
version of The Defenders because honestly, as much as I
love the Netflix stuff, some of it was a little
too gritty for me. Um And I think you could
still tell the same sort of story and dial it back.
I mean, I'm popular, I don't feel like I never
felt that it was too gritty, but I definitely felt
that sometimes the violence went to like true gratuitous um levels,
(30:55):
where like it wasn't so it wasn't that it was gritty,
it was that the violence was so over the top
gratuitous that I was taken out of the experience and
I was just focusing on how gratuitous it was, and
that to me, that was upsetting to me. I mean,
it's the same reason I don't watch SAW. Well, well,
we have something that's going to disturb all of you
listeners in just a minute after we take a quick break. Okay,
(31:39):
let's let's do another peak behind the current real quick areal. Okay,
So what a brainstorming? What two properties were going to
match together? And part of the problem was that some
of the things that were in the news were properties
that we had recently mashed up with other stuff, and
we don't we don't take properties off the list once
we use them, but we don't want to re use
(32:00):
them too frequently, right or too close together. So do
you know why I picked the two properties that I picked?
I don't. Okay, So, first of all, the two properties
we picked were West Side Story and Dune. I said,
I picked because I pitched it. But he he did pick.
He pitched it, he came up with it. It's all
(32:21):
his faults. Um. So the reason why I picked that
is because the Set Decorator Society of America nominated Dune
and West Side Story for awards, So they're technically in
the news right now. I mean West Side Stories also
in the news because the woman who played Anito one
(32:42):
was it a golden Globe? Oh did she? That's fantastic.
I'm I have stopped paying attention to awards for the
most part. This was just one of those headlines that
I happened to see. So I don't know if that's
a correct award, but I do know it's the same
award that Rita Moreno won for playing that role. Fantastic,
and so it was that kind of made new because
it was kind of a historical sort of historic sort
(33:02):
of happening. Um, I haven't watched it. Turns out, I'm
listening to the music for West Side Story, but I've
never watched. So I've seen the original film adaptation of
West Side Story. I've never seen a theatrical like a
stage theater production. I've never seen the production. Uh, and
I haven't seen the new Steven Spielberg produced movie. However,
we do need to explain what West Side Story is
(33:24):
for people who aren't familiar. It is it is that
Romeo and Juliet. I mean it's it's not even essentially
it is Romeo and Juliet, but it's set in New
York and you have some New Yorkers, some like Native
New Yorkers, and some uh, immigrants from Puerto Rico. And
those are your two like those are your capulets. And
(33:46):
Montague is right, it's not those Sharks and Jets. Yeah, Sharks,
the Sharks and the Jets, the Jets being the native
New Yorker gang and the Sharks being the Puerto Rican gang.
And uh, and you have the story of U Maria
and Tolony and they and they're and they're they're forbidden
love and you know, it's a it's a musical. They
(34:08):
have big musical numbers, and but it tells the story.
Some of them were great. Uh. Stephen Sondheim worked on them,
although he was he was not super happy with that
assignment because he felt that he was really, uh, it
wasn't it wasn't his project. He was working on someone
else's project and he didn't have full freedom of it.
And he felt that the push was to make the
(34:31):
language in the songs too poetic, and he felt that
that was not realistic considering the characters that were singing
these songs. He's like, these, these shouldn't be poetic songs.
But he lost the battle on that one. Um. Anyway, Uh,
some of the songs are fantastic, apparently, some of them
are just okay, and some of them, I guess Aeriel
thinks are bad. I don't know about the modern versions
(34:53):
because I haven't listened to them, but I'm thinking about
like the classic stage version and the original film. And
then obviously we've got to talk about Dune, Frank Herbert novel,
which is just basically Robio and Juliet but with a
lot more gangs and sandworms, um and what and sand ms? Yes, no,
(35:13):
so so Dunes A Dune is a big adventure science
fiction tale. Do you want to take a stab at
giving kind of an explanation of what Dune is? Yes, So,
the the universe, the galaxy is ruled by like an emperor,
and they are all of these different like ruling houses
like the Harconansia treatise things like that and they all
(35:33):
trade out power. Um. And there's one like really important planet.
I'm sure there are other important plants, but like the
main important planet when you jump into doing Arakis, which
is um really the home to a group of people
called the Fremen. And as Jonathan said earlier, sandworms. Uh,
and they produce a thing called spice which has a
(35:57):
whole bunch of like crazy properties and think a Naples
enables space tracks. Yes, they feed it to their navigators,
which allows the navigators to essentially allows them to see
into the future so that they can avoid stars and stuff.
And it's what allows interstellar navigation without worrying about colliding
with something at like light speed. Yeah, and so the
(36:18):
the like the main character is Paula Trades, the first
main character i'd say, and his family takes control of Aracus,
this this main important planet from the previous rulers, the Harkonens,
and then it's like this big subterfuge battle. They get
like ambushed and most of them get killed and uh, Paula,
(36:39):
Paula Trades and his mother get sent into the desert
and get kind of rescued, taking him by Fremen. And
then it's just like this huge galactic political intrigue thing
that happens. So for the span of many, many books,
there's a lot of really cool concepts and and type
of like character classes I would say in the books
that don't necessarily get covered in the main or explained
(37:03):
or shown a whole lot in like the main the
new movie, like mentats, which are have like these incredible
mathematical powers. They're supposed to be super logical and great tacticians.
Yeah yeah, so like worth reading the books even if
you watched the movie and you didn't necessarily like it
because it was slow and you didn't understand much. So
(37:23):
those are two properties, aerial, do you want to go first?
I understand yours right to the point. Mine is real,
real small, real real short, and real real dumb. And
it's called West Side Spicy and it's not because it's
a spicy story. So but anyhow, New York was in
a drought and a street gang known as the Shark
(37:46):
Conan's controlled the water supply, and the Iraq Jets Arrival
street gang who dealt in spices didn't like that. You see,
the spices were in fact spicy, and with the Sharkonan's
boat guarding all the water, their spice sales were down,
just how the Sharkonans planned it. This is like super
loosely based on anything. Uh. The two sides were constantly
(38:09):
on each other's turf and starting street skirmishes. Then one
day a new family moved to town right around the
time of the high school spring Fling and took over
the Sharkonan's. The new family had a son named paul
Tony like you know, like you do uh and his
He went to the spring fling because his parents told
(38:29):
him it would be good for him, and that's where
he met a girl named Chania, girl named Only problem
is the girl was a part of the eracchets. Being teenagers,
so they didn't care and they fell in love. Chania
would step sneak paul Tony spice and paul Tony would
sneak Chania water and they would sneak around to see
(38:53):
each other. Only one other person knew, and that was
Banita jess It, but she promised to keep it a
secret because you know, young love. Then one day the
families caught wind of what paul Tony and Chania were doing.
They tracked them down to find them all spicing and
hydrating around together and the turf floor was escalated. Both
sides pulled out weapons and immediately realized they had escalated
(39:15):
things too hide, but they couldn't back down, so they
started puffing and stomping and snapping and dancing around trying
to intimidate the other side away instead of the bloodshed
that was about to happen, while still saving face. It
was a huge rugas while shook, streets echoed and spice
and water flowed into the New York sewer system. And
that's when they felt it an earthquake, or so they thought.
(39:36):
And then the ground split open and a giant mutant
snake worm who had been hiding and growing in the
sewer subway system emerged from the ground, called by the
spice that had just entered its domain. As it rose
up out of the ground, it devoured everything above it,
including all of the sharkonans and the Iraq shetions, before
disappearing once more into the underground tunnels. When the dust cleared,
(39:57):
Paul Tony and Chania were the only ones left. The
high tailed it away from the scene of the crime
before the cops arrived, and then high tailed it away
from the city to start a new life in Nevada,
where they got married. Jania was partial to deserts, and
so they lived happily ever after. Yes, you gave Romeo
and Juliette a happy ending where everybody except Romeo and
(40:19):
Juliette dies. I I wanted to be kind of original
and also like if you look at Romeo and Juliet
and then you look at West Side Story, the ends
are like slightly different. Um, yeah, you can tell that
we don't share these with each other before we record,
because Sharkonan took me by such surprise, and my first
(40:41):
reaction was that's brilliant, and my second reaction was, I
can't believe I missed that joke. It was real hard
because like, the Harconans are like the super creepy family,
and the love story is between Paula Trades and Johnny
from but I don't even know that's our last name.
(41:01):
So it was real hard to make it. But I couldn't.
I couldn't pass. We'll see when we get to mine.
I had a similar issue because who do you make
the antagonist when you're trying to force the story. However,
before we get to that, this episode is gonna run long,
so we're gonna take a quick break. I thought for
(41:30):
sure we are going to make it. Jathan, I thought
so before the episodes started. You told me your mashup
was two paragraphs, and that felt like if that was
two paragraphs, those were long paragraphs. It was they were.
They're like this big. They're like a podcast big. They're
like two inches long each in like eleven point five
(41:53):
aerial on Google Docs. Yes, that's where I read all
my mashups currently. I felt there was some extemporaneous addition
in there too. It's not many. It was fifty eight.
It's fifty It's fifty eight pages with mashups. People. Wow,
So just keep adding him to the same document. Yes, Oh,
I make a new document for every single one. And
this one, my friends, is called West Spice Story. Uh.
(42:18):
And before I jump into it, um, there's gonna be
references to stuff in Dune that's gonna make no sense
if you don't know what Dune is, like Benny jests
and things like that. But you're just gonna have to
roll with it because I'm not gonna explain. They're intrigued nuns. Yes,
they are intrigued magical intrigue. Magical intrigue nuns. Imagine a
(42:41):
little Finger from Game of Thrones if he were a nun. Okay, okay,
here we go. Paula Trades has a problem. His father,
the Duke, expects Paul to handle the responsibilities of being
a duke. His mother, Jessica, has secretly trained Paul in
the ways of the been a Jesuit, and both of
(43:01):
them don't like his new girlfriend, Johnny, one of the
fremen of the desert world of Araucus. And then there's
that dang baron Harkconan to deal with. Paul spends his
days with a few other young men, originally from Caladan,
that's where his father ruled before their lives were overturned
and they got sent to Araucus. And this gang, including
(43:22):
Paul's close friend Duncan Idaho, which for the purposes of
this mashup, is more like Paul's age, like to go
around snapping their fingers, dancing and singing, and Paul starts
it off. When you're red duke, you're bound to go
far from your first dose of spice to your last
comb jabbar. When you're red duke gets a job that's
(43:45):
long term. As you dodge in ms and sometimes a sandworm,
you'r who's in charge, no matter how it's fair. In
elite a Rakis and leave Kaladin to the baron and
we ain't caring. Here comes the Duke, like a man
who's on fire. He's bound to become the Benny jest Messiah.
(44:06):
Here comes the Duke and his girlfriend is fine. She'd
make a great wife, or at least conkubine. The Duke
is in charge of our entire nation, fears the little
death that brings the blitteration. I need a vacation, and
then the song ends because I can't. I seriously, I
just can't go any longer than that. Anyway, after the introduction,
(44:29):
we see that Paul really wants to sneak off to
see his girlfriend Chahnny. But the Fremen object to house
of trainees, and house of traintees objects to the freemen,
and the ben a jeserit sure as heck fire object
to the Fremen, but then they also object to Paul
because he was never supposed to happen. But Paul's mom, Jessica,
she totally let the cat out of the bag years ago,
and now we're all stuck here, I guess. Anyway, just
(44:52):
as Paul is about to sneak off to see Chahnny,
he runs into someone who has other plans, and that
someone is, of course, the Fear Howatt, the Master Assassin,
who wants to train Paul and tactics. So the fear
tells Paul he ain't going nowhere, which just prompts another
song the fair How what I'm really upset? I never
(45:14):
get the free time that I do gotta get. I
ain't no tactician. I'm just a young teen, and I'm
tired of you being mean, being mean, being mean, being mean,
being so darned mean. I am tired of you being mean.
I study every weapon that you put in my hand.
I know the pointy bits supposed to go and the
(45:36):
other man. I know the really fast bullets will bounce
right off my shield. How can I see the girlfriend
that I've concealed. I've concealed. I've concealed, I've completely sealed. Yes,
I have a girlfriend I've concealed. And then he realizes
he's just confessed in song, which is a rookie mistake.
(45:56):
That evening, it's another night with the pain box. That's
what his father, Ledo calls television. Paul is able to
withstand it, but only barely, and late at night, when
the house is quiet, he stealthily makes his way out
of the house, using all the tricks he has learned
from his various mentors to sneak out into the waists
of a racus. There After traveling for more than an hour,
(46:20):
he makes his way to a secret spot, the spot
where Channie meets with him, so that the two might
make google eyes at each other. And he sees Channi
approach and she smiles at him, and then of course
they sing tonight tonight. The sand worms all take flight,
(46:40):
but only as metathors in our song tonight tonight, because
the worms aren't very light. No, they're big, and they're
mean and they're long. Those worms they'll eat you in
a minute if you are standing near them, and don't
(47:02):
dodge to the right. But here we are, and our
fear of sandworm seems so far tonight in anyway. That's
when Baron Harconan attacks. And the Baron, well, you know,
he's played by one of those stage actors who always
gets cast in musicals, but in a non musical role,
you know, the actor who usually plays a supporting part,
(47:25):
or maybe they're the villain. And it's not that they
can't sing or dance, it's just that they never get
the chance to and maybe that eats on them, you know,
maybe that's the kind of thing that drives a person
to become a villain when that person gets cast in
every musical in high school but never gets a singing part, right,
Mrs Thompson, Maybe that's the kind of thing that drives
(47:48):
a person to, I don't know, become a professional podcaster
and record ads about Casper Mattresses. Ever think about that,
Mrs Thompson, Of course not, you're too busy casting me
as Captain Racket, who doesn't even show up in any
ensemble musical numbers in South Pacific. Thanks a lot. Anyway,
the baron attacks and it's like awful, and it turns
(48:11):
out the Tradees doctor Toats sold them out even though
he was supposed to be mentally conditioned to not be
able to do that. Whoop see, And so Paul's entire
family gets wiped out. So this sets up naturally a
big dance where Paul, the few surviving members of House
of Tradees, the Fremen, and the Arconans are all going
to be at the same dance for different reasons. And
that's when we get the mambo of death, which goes
(48:33):
like this, dunt dunt duntu dunt dunt dunt dunt dunt
dunt dunt dune mambo pe pue lasers, and then there's
this quiet bit after some of the fighting where we
get Paul and Shanny and they sing, there's much laungche
for us somewhere, Launch for us, Spice for me and
(48:59):
spice for you. We're tripping hard from this spicy goo
mi lunch. And then the fighting looks like it's gonna
start again, but our movie has been pretty long so far,
so it kind of just ends, and they are going
to be another one, probably, but you're gonna have to
wait a couple of years. The end. I loved it.
(49:21):
Also apparently so did Walter, my other cat, because he
was rubbing up against the microphone and all that. Uh.
That one was very fun for me to do. I
have never been in Westside stories, so that's the closest
I'm ever gonna get listen. I I also have been
cast in many musical roles that had less singing than
(49:44):
I cared for. That was that was that? Okay? So
I sometimes put in some autobiographical rants in my mashups,
I admit, But to be fair, first of all, I
didn't have a Mrs Thompson as a drama teacher. I
was about to say, way to put her. I did
not I did not do at and second of all,
Um actually was in several musicals where I had at
(50:04):
least a small singing role, like I was the rabbi
and fiddler on the roof, and he sings a little
bit mostly where the Pirate captain and Romeo and Ethel
the Pirates. That's not a high school play. Yes, as
the rabbi. I played the dad uh at McAfee in
Um Bye Bye Birdie, and he has two songs so um,
(50:24):
which just shows you that my high school was really
hard up to get male students to audition, because if
they have to cast me in a singing role, things
have gone south pretty pretty quickly. I think you're you
are perfectly fine singer. I'm very hoarse today because this
is the third show I've recorded, so even when I'm
(50:44):
in good voice, it's not great. And I'm not in
good voice tonight. I really feel like at some point
we should next time there's like musical news, we should
write some parodies like that should be our thing, okay,
instead of a mash up, we should just write I'm
clearly not above it. So but yes, that was that
(51:05):
was my goofy attempt at creating a doone west Side
story mash up and arial. I loved yours and uh
and we invite you the audience if you have ideas
for mashups. Either you want to submit one of your own,
like you wanted to show us what you can do
mashing up a couple of properties, let us know, or
if you have suggestions for different ones that we should
(51:27):
mash up together. Because some weeks are like this where
the there aren't obvious candidates, right like if we had
mashed up Moon Night with something, first of all, I
would have had to do a ton of research on
Moonnight because I don't really know that much about them.
So yeah, um, but yes, feel free to reach out,
and you can do that in numerous ways. One way
(51:49):
is to send us an email. We've received a couple recently,
which is great. Keep them coming, and all of your
suggestions we have on our spreadsheet to do. That's true,
we do and we will gladly add to it. Keep
in mind again, just as a reminder, if you're going
to suggest a mash up pairing, make sure they're not
too similar already, because the more similar they are, the
(52:10):
less there is to do. Right, There's there's not as
many do do fee choices to make, but yes, you
can write us. The address for the show is l
n C at I heart media dot com. Yes, you
can also contact us on social media just just say
hi or to give us your thoughts. On Instagram and
(52:31):
Facebook we are large Eno Drunk Collider, and on Twitter
we are l n C Underscore Podcast. I check those
make sure they like tig us because if you just
put something and you don't, I may not see it,
but then I will share it with Jonathan and we
will both be very happy. Yes, yes, I like to
be reminded that there is a world outside my well,
it's not my apartment. I was gonna make another musical
(52:52):
reference because that's an avenue queue song. But I like
to be reminded that there's a world outside of my
own little existence because I don't do social old media
anymore except occasionally Twitter. That's about it. Of your own
little corner in your own little room. Yeah, that's pretty
much where I stay all the time now. So whatever
you want to be. But this was a lot of fun.
(53:13):
As always, I greatly appreciate my wonderful co host Ariel.
Thank you. I greatly appreciate you too. Jonathan thank you,
and until next time. I have been Jonathan trade Ees
Strickland and I have been Ariel. I feel pretty cast
(53:55):
The Large New John Collider is production of I Heart
Radio and was created by A. L. Kasten. Jonathan Strickland
is the executive producer. This show is produced, edited, and
published by Torri Harrison. For more podcasts on my heart Radio,
visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
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