October 1, 2023 • 54 mins
Allen Strickland Williams headlines a comedy panel with Miles K & Jesse Elias to reinvent Sonic the Hedgehog for a new age.
- Follow Allen on most platforms as @TotallyAllen!
- Watch ASW late night stand-up sets on YouTube!
- Check out Miles & Allen thrifting together in this video!
- Here's a photo of Jesse on Kimmel since there's no video!
- Grant & David & Bo will have thoughts on Sonic Symphony and Frontiers DLC 3 next week — email sonicweeklypodcast@gmail.com to join our Discord!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
We fucking can't get get the jams with the records, which you
scratch. We come in, come in easy.
Sometimes we come in hot. Sometimes we just come in like,
did Austin Powers get unthought again and host a podcast?
Is that is the whole? Show baby.
(00:25):
Ladies and gentlemen, coming to the podcast stage Sonic Weekly.
That's every single week about Sonic the Hedgehog.
Hosted by me. It's Grandpa.
Hey, I'm Grant. It's starring David the Lurker.
Hi, David. Oh, hi, Grant.
It's me, the Star Co starring with Grant.
That's what I do. That's what we do.
And that, of course, was. What?
(00:47):
What's the name of that band? They're the S St. band because
they're Sonic, I guess. Yeah, I know That's enough out
of you, David. OK, so And we have a comedy
panel, a full show to talk aboutSonic with us because, you know,
Sonic hot new update, we're going to get around to playing
it. But we brought in heavy hitters
from the LA comedy scene, the California comedy scene.
(01:11):
He's been on the previous version of this show.
So dedicated listeners will recognize the voice of I should
have asked this before we started Jesse.
Can I call you Jesse? Yeah, yeah.
Okay. What's up?
Hey, Jesse. Hey.
Hey. There's no that was smooth
because you never have other aliases.
No, Never okay good. And then my name.
(01:32):
Is Jesse alias. He's here.
He's handsome. He's got a beard.
Miles K, everybody. Miles K.
I was wondering which one you were going to do.
I was like when you were like, he's handsome.
I'm like is it going to be me. He's going to be the other girl.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Thank you. Thank you.
And the headlining comedian. Are you guys ready for your
headliner? Oh my goodness.
(01:54):
You've seen him on on all sorts of screens.
Alan Strickland Williams. What a stone cold fox.
Alan Strickland Williams is here.
Thanks for having me. You know the band that was
playing earlier, They're actually the S St. band.
Oh really? That's what they called.
I heard that. I heard that so recently, yeah.
How's that? How's that comedy?
(02:16):
So that's the show. Thank you so much for listening.
Five stars. Make sure to buy everybody's
merch. Here's what inspired it so.
It's off at this point. Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, everybody's free to go. Alan, you tweeted not for the
first time about Sonic 2. And you know that Sonic is one
of my very special interests. And hey, David and I talk about
(02:39):
it every week. You were tweeting about Sonic 2
miles and I were talking about Sonic 2.
Jesse and I are frequently talking about Sonic the 90s.
You specifically were tweeting about Casino Night Zone.
I'm just wondering why you were tweeting about Sonic and.
I think somehow either a YouTubehole or someone else was just
posting like about the music. From Casino Night zone or
(03:02):
something like that. And I was probably drunk or
something and I was like, oh, that I I was corrupted by Casino
Night Zone. That's what did it when I was a
kid. I don't remember what else I've
tweeted about Sonic, but I thinkat the time it was probably
night time when I tweeted that Iwas probably feeling like in a
(03:24):
in a sort of, maybe I wish I wasat a casino kind of vibe, you
know? The bright lights Who among us
are gamblers? Are we?
Are we a gambling group of men? I'm actually not that big of a
like that. That's one vice that I always
kind of had never got away from me.
I guess you could say I love, I love a casino, though.
(03:45):
I mean, casinos are super fun. I I've heard that the gambling
addiction is like, by some accounts the the most brutal.
I am a gambling addict, but I don't have an opportunity to
indulge that vice, really. On a regular basis, so it's not
a problem, but in the rare timesI have been within driving
(04:06):
distance of a casino, I've basically done like 8 hour
shifts. They're playing roulette.
Roulette. OK, interesting.
Yeah, I picked it up. I I got addicted to roulette
playing Second Life because in Second Life there's nothing to
do. So Second Life, you you
basically can buy things from other people.
(04:27):
Using Second Life Money, which you have to pay real money for.
I'm like, fuck that. I'm not paying real money for a
video game. So I, like, filled out all
these, like, weird surveys in exchange for Second Life money.
It was really sketchy, like, youknow, because it's just this
endless loop of links that, like, puts like, weird malware
on your computer and that. So I got like $0.20 of Second
(04:47):
Life Money and I took that $0.20, took it to the Second
Life roulette table. You know, I had 200 Second Life
bucks. I turned it into 30,000 Second
Life bucks. Playing roulette.
Wow. And then I lost it all, playing
more roulette and Jesse. Did you use your real name there
or? My second life name was.
(05:07):
Let it Let it ride 69. Oh, you know what?
It was Second Life would actually, if you couldn't think
of a name, they would just pick one for you.
So I think mine was like just some silly random syllables that
they chose for me real quick. Let's just introduce ourselves
to our audience in the sense of Sonic the Hedgehog, Your
(05:30):
relationship to this media franchise that I'm not even
going to describe as nerdy because it's it's, it's
available, it's if it's been in Target for more than 30 years on
a regular. It's a mainstream product that I
enjoy in many forms and have since a child.
And then, you know, I've come and gone and here we are now.
And I'm asking you about I'm just one one guy standing in
(05:54):
front of four guys on a Zoom. Doesn't sounds a little off.
I'm just asking you about Sonic.Yeah, So were you guys I knew?
Were you Sega kids? Were you into Sonic as a kid?
And then or is it something you have no affection towards and I
just sort of asked you and you said yes?
Like, how do we know, Sonic? And how did you get here?
(06:15):
Me and Sonic away back. No, I I was a Sega kid.
I think I I think we always wanted me and my sister always
wanted Nintendo. But I think Sega might have been
cheaper or something. I don't know why, but we were we
were a Sega family and Sonic specifically loved the Sonic
games. Loved Sonic.
(06:37):
Spin ball. That was like a real mainstay,
but specifically with Sonic 2. My sort of, my sort of memory
with it. Oh, and watching the watching
the fucking, the cartoons and shit.
But my real sort of connection to it that still arises pretty
much almost every time I see my sister.
I think it was like the first time, or maybe one of the first.
(07:00):
Like, how do I say this? I was gaslighting my younger
sister. I would say that.
I would give her the controller for Tails but not have it be you
know like you know and so that that that's sort of like one of
my fondest memories that remindsme of we we talked about Sonic 2
(07:20):
at some point earlier and it wasabout I would intentionally
drown my younger brother who wasI think we both connected on
being really sadistic to our siblings on sure and I think
that's true too about the Sega being and less expensive than
the Super Nintendo. I think that's certainly why we
had it. Miles did you put you you had
(07:41):
mentioned to me the other night that you you also played Sonic.
I mean Sonic 2 like came with the Sega Genesis.
I mean it was one of several packages, but that was like the
way that we'll got that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I mean, I remember there waslike a Christmas where I got it
and somehow I got that and I gotStreet Fighter and there was
like some you know, like over that Christmas break I.
(08:05):
You could not detach me from that controller.
And I was having these really screwed up dreams where Blanca
from Street Fighter was spinningthrough the like at levels of
Blanca just like tearing, tearing things apart.
And it was like I yeah, and theywere stress dreams too.
You know what I mean? It's it was definitely a part of
(08:28):
my childhood and I thought that the universe of Sonic was
interesting and cool. And edgier and more fast-paced
than Mario. And then I got older and
realized that, you know, Mario is like Disney and Sonic is like
Ralph Bakshi and. Sonic Fox Sonic Fox dude.
(08:51):
He's really fast, but he does actually fun.
Yeah. Jesse, what about?
What about for you? I'd say I cared about Sonic for
maybe two 2 1/2 years. And that was was during the time
of Sonic 3 and Sonic Knuckles and Knuckles.
Those were the only ones I played really.
(09:13):
I played some of Sonic one and two, but like I didn't have a
Genesis, so I played it mostly through like, you know, second
hand. And then towards the end of the
that generation, that console generation, the Sega Genesis got
marked down in price. So I got one late towards the
end and I played. Three.
And then I played Knuckles and Iliked those.
(09:35):
And then, you know, I I never got another Sega console after
that. Thankfully I mean.
One guy who had a Dreamcast. I would see pictures in
magazines of Dreamcasts on it and it was weird.
He's like has green eyes and he's tall and he has this like
weird evil grin on his face and his feet are shaped like bananas
now. Very strange.
(09:56):
And let's not let's you know. This is Sega CD erasure.
Let's be very sensitive to that as well.
Do you remember that? Here's my thing though, about
the Sonic 3 and the Knuckles. Like Sonic and Knuckles was the
one with the flip top thing, right?
And so you could create this like Tower of Babel coming out
of your Genesis, which is, you know, pretty biblical, I guess.
(10:18):
But I always love that where it's like you have the Game
Genie and then you jam the otherthing and then you do the other
thing. So you could be like hypersonic
in. In like in the world or
whatever. And yeah, you really felt like
you were playing God. Like the slightest, the
slightest trimmer would like cause the screen to glitch.
And then then you're grounded because you yelled God damn it
(10:40):
again. But yeah, you know, you know how
it goes. We've all been there.
Yes, you can definitely create the the Tower with the like Game
Genie and all the every everything you just said.
But also, I feel like maybe it'sworth pointing out too, that,
Alan, you grew up in Florida andI grew up in sort of the Florida
of the North, which is Ohio. Sure.
And so I feel like there's there's something that like Bo,
(11:03):
our third cohost who's not here tonight, was bringing up the
other week of like a friend of his.
Oh, boy, this is great. So a friend of somebody you
don't know doesn't matter. A made-up story is that Sonic
was the conduit for somebody realizing that God isn't real.
They they they realized if Soniccan make me feel this sort of
(11:26):
euphoria, then what I've been feeling in church is just as
just the same as what Sonic can do.
I thought it'd be the other. I mean, I've always said God's
non existence is everywhere you look.
I thought it was more like like how?
Like how could we live in a world?
With a God that created the evilbeing of Doctor Robotnik.
(11:49):
Like how? What hath God write, you know?
Well, in certain continuities, Sonic the Hedgehog is the one
who creates Dr. Robotnik. So you know it's fine, don't
worry about it. Well, you know, if you lived in
England, which you don't, if youwere British, and you read Sonic
the comic as a kid, you would have read the story where Sonic
had to go back in time and make sure that that Cantobor who was
(12:13):
supposed to be good Robotnik. This is, this is, this is
digging into the weeds. I think I get distracted because
Grant, every time you tell that story and you're like Beau's
friend and I know you're talkingabout, I don't know how much of
A friend he is to Beau. I know he's been.
He's your friend. I'm the one who's talked to him
for the last decade, and every time I'm like, yeah, I don't
think that's. I think in the context of this
(12:35):
podcast, I think it was Beau whobrought up.
It was Beau who brought, right? Well, yeah, yes.
I don't know. They're just a screen name.
I don't know. Can I ask you guys a question
and just about something that's probably been discussed on this
podcast before, please? This is really funny, but I'm
like these guys know about Sonic.
I noticed at one point that there were two Sonic cartoons
(12:58):
running simultaneously when I was a kid, and one was very
silly and juvenile and one was like kind of edgy and adults and
had. What present in it is?
What you know, Freud, I think, would refer to as the death
drive as well as the arrows, thesex drive.
(13:20):
And that and that one, that one showed.
I mean, it felt like it did. Like it was like, hold him down.
We're turning him into a robot right now.
And you're like, whoa, this makes me feel weird.
Yeah, do you And do you guys know what I'm talking about?
Because I feel like I didn't fabricate it.
No, no, no, no. We knew about the series.
(13:41):
Yeah. It's the 30th anniversary.
They both debuted in the same month, September 1993.
David gave a wonderful tweet, thread and speech about it.
Couple episodes. Ago, right?
I did a tweet thread about both because the the short of it, the
short answer is the deke the animation studio.
You know, they wanted more money.
(14:03):
That's that's basically, it's all capitalism.
ABC wanted the Sonic show. They wanted it to be both
Saturday morning and syndicated because they had done it before.
They had done it with The Real Ghostbusters.
It had Disney had done it with Dark Queen Duck when it was
airing, you know, six days a week and a BC said no, we want
Sonic exclusive. And then they came up with a
(14:24):
compromise of, oh, what if we give you a darker version of
Sonic? We do a goofy version on the
weekdays. And it'll just compliment each
other. And ABC for some reason said
sure, and then two years later, canceled Sonic.
But that's, you know. Great A connects.
Can we talk about Pirates of Dark Water?
I. Just kidding.
(14:45):
Watch that show in 30 years. But I do remember that it had
didn't have a video game as well.
I mean, I'm pretty sure. I mean, every Saturday morning
cartoon had a video game at somepoint in the 90s.
One thing I just realized about Sonic that's pretty funny is.
You know if Mario's the model Sonic they were just like what
(15:06):
if what if he did some loop de loops like that is the that is
like a very defined like Mario never did any that's that is
actually the defining thing theywanted the creators David can be
more specific about it but the broad strokes are that.
He went on a roller coaster. The creator wanted to do a fast
(15:26):
run version of Mario and they figured out how to do slopes,
which we're able to do the unique loop de loop.
So you're exactly right, it is aMario clone that's able to do
loops. So one of the other reasons too
that I thought it would be fun to have a comedy panel too is
like I wanted to sort of simulate because you guys, you
know a little bit about Sonic, right?
But like none of you would describe yourself as Sonic
(15:46):
experts, Jesse may be to a degree.
Mostly it's from, like, just talking to you, yeah.
I'm a I'm a I'm a Sonic sex per.Oh.
OK, Yeah, right. Because you were, I think you
were alluding to Princess Sally at one point when when you were
talking about the Saturday morning show.
I remember her name. Well, that you just you just
remember her form, yes? Right.
(16:08):
Well, he. Wears nothing but boots in a
vest. If she if she didn't have any
clothing, you wouldn't think about it.
But because she's wearing boots and nothing else that, like,
emphasizes her nudity in a way, she wears a vest in Season 2.
Yes, I think as ABC said, she's a little too nude.
You need to give her something. We got to cover up her shoulders
(16:29):
and her sides and leave the restnaked.
Give her a vest. It sort of implies that there's
a nipple that could be freed if,like, the vest were removed.
There are multiple issues of of the our comic book in which
she's not wearing anything at all, not even the boots.
So. And they're pretty soft.
You're into that. Yeah, Yeah.
I can give you the issue numberslater.
(16:52):
So does she have feet or does she have paws?
She's got feet. She's got bare feet.
She's got like, sexy, like arch,like there's like a she's got
intentionally sexy feet and intentionally sexy butt right in
the panel that we could probablyfind it a second so.
She'll give you pause. She'll give you pause.
You'll be like. You'll be like, whoa.
(17:14):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, as as the comic went on, she became more
and more human looking. Yes, until they kind of pulled
back. But at one point it was
basically she's just a she's just a sexy lady.
And look at her. We're going to make you look at
her. And.
I. Don't know what's the what's the
deal with the Robotnik versus Eggman?
(17:38):
Is that just? Was that just he was Eggman in
the first one? He was Eggman in in Japan.
The original creator named the character Eggman and then, when
they were localizing it, Sake ofAmerica.
When Eggman is too silly of a name, we need to come up with
some with something else. And they basically, you know
they found the the lowest paid person to come up with a list of
(17:58):
names and one of them was was Robotnik.
There was also like Doctor Bad Vibes and Dr. X but Robotnik
went out and Robotnik is probably well it was the coolest
of the list and technically 6 for technically his last name is
still Robotnik. That the story is that Sonic
gave him the nickname Egg Man toto to make fun of him because he
(18:20):
is egg shaped. Although he's not really egg
shaped. I mean he isn't Sonic Adventure,
he's more egg shaped. Yeah, it doesn't matter.
The joke is he's fat, I think. Right, right, right.
Egg Man is his nickname, but it's his original name.
I thought he would say. I thought he got mad.
I thought he was merged with a hard boiled egg like it was a 5.
But he, like, stepped in the fucking that.
Was the old. Spilled soda on his machine and
(18:43):
while he was eating a hard boiled egg and short circuited
the whatever and turned him the egg.
DNA got into his body, right? That was the Western.
Cannon. That was never the the original
Japanese cannon. So then in 99 when they released
Sonic Adventure, they went all that stuff about Kantobo and the
hard boiled egg that that's justshit some guy made-up.
(19:03):
That's not the real Sonic. This is the real Sonic, OK, So
you know, you know that there was a story from the Japanese
team. It was changed a little bit.
So Alan, Miles, Jesse, you're creative writers, you're
comedians, you've worked in advertising.
Imagine you're the writers room for taking Sonic and Robotnik,
(19:25):
which is the game, the first game, and then creating like a
lore around it. Like, what do you do with the
character? And David can kind of help give
us, like, what did Sake of America know when they like?
Is they the way that they sort of pitch it in, like these
documentaries that are from the perspective of the American
marketing team that worked on Sonic?
Because they're like, well, you know, what they gave us was like
(19:46):
a blue circle with some triangles.
Like we really invented everything there is to like know
and love about this. And also Sonic in general kind
of has become it's, you know, it's been ongoing for a long
time and you look to Zelda, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the
Kingdom. It's like it's a reboot of
Zelda, so Sonic maybe could haveits own reboot.
(20:08):
So maybe you've kind of got two timelines here.
The original 90s Sonic and Robotic.
What do you do with this? How do you pitch it?
What do you add on to it? And then how do you reboot Sonic
now if you would? Well, rebooting, rebooting.
Sonic, I think is the sort of easy one.
Yeah, obviously you make him slow.
(20:29):
And. And he and it's some sort of
allegory for being metooed or cancelled in the public domain.
Something along those lines. How does that?
I don't track the metaphor. Well, I'm just saying market it
to like Joe Rogan fans make it all about.
I see what is it? The burden of privilege, etc.
Etc. No, no, no.
They won't let him go fast. There you go.
(20:51):
Yeah, yeah. That's the thing.
Yeah, I see. Yeah, used to used to.
You go as fast as you want, OK? It's the the sort of Trump thing
of like, oh, whatever it is now is like terrible.
And they've changed it. They've messed with it.
They've done something to it. There you go.
Yeah, yeah. No, no, it's it's that Sonic has
the ability to go fast. But that is so offensive to all
these people that want things tobe well.
(21:12):
I know you told me not to bring up my politics in this.
I'm just saying like the first idea is the right wing grift.
I think we should put Sonic in awheelchair.
Sure. You know representation.
That's why he can't. There you go.
He has to look he like he gets his legs permanently broken in
an accident. And now he has to learn how to
(21:32):
navigate these loopy loops in his new with his new physical
reality. And it's a story about adapting
and. And you can even make him like
maybe he he lost his legs and maybe he fought in Afghanistan
or something. Maybe he was really into the
whole antiterrorism thing. So you know, they they give give
us some red meat too. You know.
(21:58):
Now we're talking Marvel movie, actually, I feel like if you
can, if you can kind of cut it both ways, where anyone who
watches this movie is able to interpret it according to their
worldview. Yeah.
So wait, who owns the rights to that?
Is it you guys or us? Because I feel like we're, you
know, strike is over, baby. The other the other reboot is.
I guess it's like they're. They're both like, they haven't
(22:22):
made their bones yet and they'restill friends, Robotnic and
Sonic. Like, it's sort of like a
Salieri Mozart situation. They're both slow and like one
day Sonic is just fast. Yeah, like they're they're like,
they're like, yeah, we're peers.We're like both.
No, it's it. Sonic is naturally fast and
(22:43):
Robotnic is always like, well, I'm building this machine to go
fast. Yeah, Like, yeah.
Good for you. Keep it up.
Fucking loser. Like, you know, like, yeah.
In one continuity, they were brothers.
Really. Well, well, the idea is that
sonics and orphan and robotics and orphan and then they both
get adopted by Uncle Chuck, you know, from that Saturday morning
cartoon. Except that's.
(23:03):
Not the. Back story for that cartoon?
Yeah. And then, like when Robotics 15
and Sonics 9 or something robotic almost kills everyone by
stealing parts from a tractor and the tractor runs over
people. And then he runs away from home.
He's very sad and rude. And then he comes back.
(23:24):
And in slaves everyone. Which I mean you would I guess.
Is that it? Is that from a comic book or
something? It's from.
It's from these little tiny. It was from this little tiny
novel, like a children's book with a yellow cover.
And then they they did make one comic story where Sonic dreamt
it. He was like, oh, what a weird
dream. It's a good thing I'm not
(23:45):
related to Robotnik. But it wasn't a book.
I might have had that but I I I've that's.
A little yellow. That story definitely sounds.
Familiar. Like I picked up on every part
of that. Yeah, yeah.
I do have that book somewhere. It's it's out of reach but I
see. It but for the sort of like
going back to the 90s element and figuring it out.
(24:07):
I mean, I feel like it's basically, I feel like if
they're doing like a profile of it, like, you know, you do those
dumb things miles, it's like. He's like a low key.
He's like a cool, mischievous. He's kind of, he's kind of
tapping into like the burgeoningADD of that generation, too.
(24:27):
Like he's kind of giving it a physical, yeah, you know, what's
the word? Outlet or representation or
something? And then he goes hyper.
And then when you get all that shiny objects, he goes hyper,
you know? Or super.
Whatever. Yeah, I mean, you know, Sonic is
3233. He's a he.
Looks great. Right, 91.
(24:50):
So he's 32 now. Yeah, he's he's, he's getting
up. I mean, he's been able probably
as a mortgage in this economy, Idon't know in this.
No, I think Sonics homeless. I think that's the idea we're
supposed to to get from almost every version of Where does
Sonic Live? Miles, you know, there's zones,
maybe there's zoning laws and the.
(25:13):
If if anyone knows where Sonic lives, it should be Miles,
right? You do realize that the names?
Did you know that? Did you know that you're the
name of a Sonic character? Yes, OK, now this was pointed
out to me quite a lot. At the time, wasn't it?
Really. Yeah.
It was funny because, you know, I was sort of like, well,
Sonic's the funner character to play, I thought.
(25:33):
I thought the flying was kind oflike, what else?
But I liked the Fox more. I liked that that Disney Robin
Hood film with the Fox. That's always been my male icon.
Classic. Yeah.
You can remind me of him. I can see.
Thanks. Can see a resemblance.
Yeah. Thanks.
Yeah, no, dressed up as him whenyou're for Halloween.
(25:54):
Oh, OK Yeah, it's sad. And do you have photos?
Can we see? I got him somewhere.
They, you know, they all have. You should have them ready at
all times. They're compromised in a way
that I don't really. Jerking off your.
Own Halloween. They're all stuck together.
From all the melted candy. So this might be a good time to
(26:16):
mention this, but I kind of shipSonic entails if.
I mean, I don't really. I'm not a Sonic shipper, but if
you asked me to ship, that's what I'd kind of go with that
one. And it's all because of the
movie. In the movie, there's a scene.
I didn't watch the movie, I justsaw parts of it.
But I did see the part like where they snuggle up to each
other by the fire. They do snuggle and Tails uses
(26:37):
both of his tails. To as a blanket.
Basically as a blanket for Sonic.
And it's cute. You're right, it could be it's.
Cute, but it's like, I think it's more than cute, you know?
Yeah, Tails always had this likeandrogynous body too that I
found kind of like. Sure.
Let's say intriguing. Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah.
Hot. But I don't know if I would call
(26:57):
that. But David, tell us, tell us,
tell us about the continuity where?
No, because he's gonna tell you that.
Masonic holds both his tails like handlebars and just pulls
him back. Right down.
Well, Okay. Once Upon a time, for the
longest time on Google and miss search.
(27:17):
If you searched Sonic the Hedgehog like the second, the
second image would actually be like this very poor drawing of
Sonic entails engaged in in in an act, a sexual one.
And that's even Act one, Act 2. Even after they introduced Safe
Search, it was still there because you don't see any any
actual. You know you don't see the
(27:39):
naughty bits. It is just.
I got an embarrassing story. I told a a coworker at one point
that she looked like a cartoon, like a character from Zootopia,
Disney, Zootopia. And it was the same thing where
she was like, what character is that?
And then she searched it. And it's just like all of these.
Oh yeah, Zootopia is very, very popular in certain in certain
(28:02):
worlds, right? Well, I've never seen, right.
Well, I mean there's the regularDisney continuity that which is
the the movie, the forthcoming movie in a TV show.
And of course there's the the comic continuity where you know,
the the rat. I can't even remember their
names. The rabbit and the fox get
together. She gets pregnant and tells them
(28:24):
that she's going to have an abortion.
This this is not an official Disney comic, but many people
have read it and the until they end up breaking up.
And then that comic was later reworded so that their issues
actually involved Arby's, because the local Arby's closed
down and he was so distraught that he had to to leave her.
It's it's a quick jump from fromabortion to fast food, I think.
(28:48):
I don't. Maybe all this should be cut
out, I think. If I would have rewritten it,
hold on. Here's what I would have done.
He was like, hey, he would have been like, because I'm a fox,
when you give birth to our children, I'm going to eat them.
Oh yeah. Is that what the fox say?
Is that what the fox? Well.
She's a rabbit. Oh, oh, oh.
(29:08):
You need a foreign yeah, gotcha,gotcha.
Nature. Nature is fascinating, right?
Right. Is it hoping?
Yeah, I guess it exists. It's.
I don't. I've completely lost everything
I was about to say about it. It's OK because Sonic.
(29:29):
Yeah, take it back to Sonic. We'll take it back to Sonic.
Loop de loop. Right, we'll do a loop de loop.
Onic was cool. Sonic was just cool, man.
He had those cool shoes. He was like, you know, you just
want to jet out of there like it's a it's a no brainer.
Hey, you wanted? I don't know if you guys know
this. When Sega Genesis came out,
teenage boys would not admit to owning a Nintendo over a Sega.
(29:49):
Wait, I would, says who I didn't.
I guess I wasn't a teenage boy then, though, yeah.
Market the market research. But yeah, you guys are all a
little too young. Like, I was like these people
that, you know, I think I'm maybe the oldest person here,
but like older than me would have been teenagers at that
time. And they at the time, if they
had Nintendo in a second big. I have a second.
I don't have a Nintendo. That makes sense.
(30:10):
Oh, because Nintendo is more more childish.
Yeah, that was the feeling. Yeah.
Yeah. OK Was cool.
Yeah. OK.
Interesting. I think David has found not long
ago, even maybe even just a yearago, found the 1st post on any
Usenet board about Sonic the Hedgehog or is about somebody
owning it. Oh, that's cool.
Right. Yeah, the old Internet, which is
(30:32):
even older than what we think ofas the old Internet.
Yeah, on on Usenet, there are posts from people who are like,
oh, I'm looking forward to Sonic.
It's also people who are like, what's the point?
It's probably going to suck. Sega sucks.
Everything sucks. Like, yeah.
OK. That's so funny.
Sonic has been that polarizing right for so long.
And then, but there is this one,right?
There's one person who was like,Oh yeah, I bought Sonic the
(30:52):
Hedgehog and everyone is just, you know, came over to my
apartment and they just won't leave.
They keep on playing Sonic and I'm like, guys, I got to go to
bed. I have work in the morning, but
they just keep on playing. And I'm like, I don't know if
this is a real story. Well, I mean, I I think it's.
Well, if you have an apartment, you gotta be in your 20s at
least, like in the 90s. I guess you could get in an
(31:14):
apartment at 18. People could still afford things
at that point. Or maybe they just lived in an
apartment. Right.
They all they all crammed together.
I don't know. I lived in an apartment once.
That was fun. Do you have a wall of Sonic
stuff in front of you? In front of me.
(31:34):
Yeah. Because you were like saying
earlier, you're like, ah, there's a Sonic novel here.
Like, I can see it. It's not within reach.
Well, I have a there's a there'sa bookcase not that far from me.
So the books are on it and and one of them is, is those little
Sonic ones. I have many books.
A lot of them are Star Wars. I don't know if you're familiar
with that. It's a little known indie film.
(31:57):
Nope. No, I don't.
I love the concept of a film though, where stars go to war.
I think it's very polite. Right.
Well, that's how The Big Bang started.
It's a documentary. I was thinking about this
recently. Sonic and Bart Simpson have a
lot in common. They both had attitudes.
They both came up in the 90s. They both have triangles for
hair. They both have these little
(32:19):
shoes that are kind of look likethey're shaped like a computer
mouse with like a little stripe on it or whatever.
Yeah, yeah. They're both in color.
They're both. Anyway.
That's the end of my observation.
No, no, I think you're just getting started.
Yeah, I agree. I ran out of similarities.
Are they both kind of have like weird little squat pot belly
bodies with like noodley Hollanders arms and legs?
(32:43):
I think also the thing that thatlike Alan pointed out that like
they sort of both epitomize thisthing of like young boys are
bad. Oh yeah, totally.
I feel like before that, like most of the media was like like
the the kid with Lassie, he's like a goody good.
Yeah, I hate that kid. Yeah, there was really only that
(33:03):
one brother from or not the brother.
He was like the friend to be, leave it to be Eddie Haskell.
And he was like Eddie Eddie Haskell, the little Rascal.
Yeah he was. He was like, kind of like, and
he and the funny, the funniest part of Eddie Haskell was.
The parents liked him because hewas like, overly polite.
With the parents, yeah. Like he's like, well, Mrs.
(33:24):
Cleaver, it's so nice to see youtoday.
Like, that's like that's where you started getting to like the
good sun territory territory. Yeah.
But yeah, yeah, that like, did Sonic in the games, like, you
know how I this is where I'm blaking.
Did he have like a let to go or like was there any?
Like I remember him wagging his finger.
(33:44):
Yeah. And I remember maybe a peace
sign. Yeah that.
Yeah at the end he gives a a a point.
But his, yeah, his main thing islike he's he taps his foot and
he looks, he breaks the 4th walland he looks at the player as
though to say, why am I not going fast That so that was and
it was Jaleel White Urkel who voiced Sonic in all of the Deke
(34:08):
cartoons including Sonic Underground which had his, his
brother and his sister, new characters invented just for
that show to be in a rock band where they were searching for
their mother. But so he's got a lot of range,
and that was Sonic's voice for for a long time.
Gotcha. Cool.
Where did Gotta Go Fast come from?
(34:28):
That's like another generation of these younger Sonic fans who
are now not even the youngest Sonic fans.
But you know these Gen. Z Sonic fans who grew up with
Sonic X in the Pokémon? You know, in the arts.
So what's Sonic now? What are the game?
Are there like, what? Are there games right now?
Yeah, there today as of this recording there.
(34:49):
Oh, that's right. There's a new update to Sonic
Frontiers, which is the open world Zelda like Sonic.
And there's a new Netflix show going into its third season,
which is like a serious adventure Sonic cartoon that I
personally can't get that into. And there's a new game coming
out next month. There's a new game that's like
the old ones, but it's like 4 player coop where it's 2D side
(35:14):
scroller, Sonic, Tails, Knucklesand Amy.
So it's a it's like it's very there's a lot of Sonic.
But I feel like maybe there always sort of has been because
like you mentioned like Sonic spinball.
Like there was just always Sonicstuff.
Can we circle back on something?Yeah, I think we agree.
Like. Knuckles really felt like a
rival to Sonic, and if we agree that Miles Tales is the twink
(35:38):
boyfriend to Sonic, do we feel like that is like, really?
What Knuckles truly represents is a possibility of supplanting
Sonic. Doing God knows and what with I
mean he could like those fists can break through walls.
My There's something about Knuckles that it's not meant to
(35:59):
be sexual, but it always felt strange to me.
And that's when in Sonica. Knuckles when you play as him.
His story begins with he's just having you get to see what he
does for fun before Robotnik shows up and ruins his life.
Knuckles is just kicking back with his arms folded behind his
head and his feet up while like.Like two dozen little squirrels
(36:20):
and birds and forest creatures are just kind of bouncing
around, like practically crawling over him.
Like he's just like he's like bathing in tiny little animals.
Like, I'm just chilling with allmy forest friends and it just
felt weirdly. There's something strange about
that. You're saying you're because
the, well, because the little animals seem like they're
(36:40):
babies. So it's like sort of like the
high school dropout who's like hanging out at the playground
and he's like not doing anythinglike it's but he's just making
you think like, well, what is hedoing here?
Is that what you're saying? Or are you saying it was
something even more sinister than?
I feel like he's like the way he's laying back, like he, you
know, he's getting a suntan. And they're just kind of like
(37:01):
bouncing around, like, almost like bouncing on him.
I I'd have to go back and watch the scene.
But my memory, the little squirrels are like they're going
crossing over into his hit box, so to speak.
To me, that does evoke like, just like.
I mean, coming from San Diego, it's like.
That pro surfer guy that's got like, you know, three women
(37:24):
hanging off of him, like, he's just like, Yep, life could not
be better, right? And like, all I think about
surfing and all these girls think about is how to get in my
pants. That was knuckles life.
That. Was.
Yeah, I just pictured the squirrels just crawling on him.
Like, like the way you see birds, like perched on an
(37:44):
elephant's back. Like, he just lets them all over
his body and he's just like, Oh yeah, this is the life.
Knuckles always had a real Predator, like the act, the
movie Predator. Like, he always kind of struck
me as like someone saw that movie and was like, I this is so
funny because you asked like. The question about like the from
the marketing standpoint, I think most of it is always like
(38:06):
this. It's like someone sees something
and then they go do that. Yeah.
And I think it always looks likethat it's, it's like, so it's
all the printers, like we need to put that in Sonic and it's
like, what? OK, what?
What other weird animals are there?
Knuckles was originally a dinosaur, but yeah, there,
there's definitely like an element to it where, like, you
(38:26):
can see them chasing trends. Oh.
Yeah, yeah, they're, they're trying to Yoshi, yeah.
So wait how? What is the rating level of this
podcast? Cuz I feel like, yeah, you can
mark individual episodes explicit.
Oh. Great thing.
He's gonna make it explicit. This one has a parental
advisory. Now this is, most of the
(38:46):
audience is. Watch out parents, probably
lonely, disaffected men who are about 10 years younger than us.
Hey guys, it's it's it. It's going to be OK.
Yeah. It's going to be OK.
Seriously. It does feel like it.
There needs to be, and it gets better, campaign for just like.
I think about it a lot. Strict men like they're not
(39:08):
doing good. I I think about a lot about
being like proactively like trying to talk to these guys
because like the only ones that are, it's like.
It's Andrew Tate and it's. It's bad.
It's just like straight up like.Like bad, Yeah.
But it's like, but it's like, you know, I.
Anyway, that's like a totally that's literally like a totally
different actually. You brought it up pretty well
(39:30):
with Sonic, of like Sonic and Bart Simpson are the beginning
of the commodification of Boys are Stupid.
Princess Sally was the competentone.
Sonic was the athletic daredevil.
Lisa was smart. Lisa was smart.
Millennial Men is where men get outpaced, and Sonic was just not
(39:51):
fast enough to keep up with the educational society.
I don't know. That's me trying to, like,
connect, right? Yeah.
It's like Doc Brown. Like, I don't know what I'm
saying exactly, but I like that there's a certain logic to it
and I like it. Okay.
Okay, I was gonna say. He's anti intellectual because
his enemy is a. Scientist.
(40:13):
Yeah. Superman kind of has that going
on too, where it's like the bad guy is like smart and the good
guys just like, well, I'm physically better than you, so I
win well. He's supposed to be a
journalist, but he doesn't seem like he's much of A journalist
to me. Superman.
He's a fascist. He creates the news and then
reports it I. Remember, I remember when the
(40:33):
journalists were super men. OK, this country no one, no one
wears, wears 4 room glasses and changes in a phone booth that he
wore. People don't want to work
anymore. I think you make a good point,
though. Donald Trump is the Batman of
our era. Yeah.
(40:54):
And, David, you were going to say something.
Oh, oh, OK. Here, let's do some fact
checking. All right.
OK All right. Hey, did you know that in in the
when when Superman was created and then in for 50 years, he had
a super intellect, which means he was supposed to be just as
smart as Lex Luthor. OK, yeah.
And then in the 80s, John Byrne was like, well, let's make him
(41:15):
not super smart. We'll just make him competent
because I don't know. I think John Byrne something
something Ronald Reagan, I thinkis the answer to that one.
I don't know. Is Superman the quintessential
almost story product where you want to say that literally
started at like the peak and hasonly been going downhill since?
Oh. Right.
(41:36):
Yeah, like people, right? Isn't that the kind of sentiment
like Superman sucks? So there are a lot of people who
don't like Superman, but I thinkit's also a lot of people don't.
Maybe they they don't read enough.
Superman, he's he's hard to write for, but he's also, I
think, very easy to write for. You just have to know what to do
with them. You, the original Superman, was
just a crusader of the people heran around and he punched.
(41:59):
He was like, oh, I'm going to break into the governor's
mansion to make sure that you pardon someone who didn't commit
the crime you're about to execute them for.
Oh, you're a wife beater. Well, I'm going to beat you
because I'm stronger and you're rude.
Also did a lot of punching of Nazis.
He did, you know, like there wasthis big thing in the Superman
radio show when they did, basically, hey, the Ku Klux Klan
(42:23):
is bad. And there were a lot of people
who got upset at that, I guess because they were racist.
But what's he done lately? What's he done lately?
Well, in the 90s he died. And then there's a new show that
people there's a new show we're.Going crazy for that Lois Lane.
And by crazy, I mean, you know, in a vertical repetitive motion
(42:46):
up and down on their crutch area.
You speak of Everyone in that show is in their early 20s
though, so it's fine. Yeah, the new.
Lois Lane looks a lot like Catwoman.
Actually, they kind of just stole Catwoman's design.
What's the new? What's the new show called My
Adventures With My. Adventures, yeah.
(43:08):
My adventures my right, It's a spin, remember?
So there was the original one adventures of It's all black and
white and then and then Dean Kane showed up and.
This is a cartoon, yeah. There is a live action show on
The CW just called Superman and Lois.
Yeah, which is sort of, but not really a spin off of Supergirl
(43:28):
because it's different continu. Who cares?
Who was the first cartoon crush that you?
Have rockadoodle the girl the like lady bird for.
Rockadoodle. Yeah, she was like a Hollywood.
She was like a starlet. Rogue from X?
I was way too fast with that answer, goddamn it.
(43:49):
No, I I also Alan you you did itcorrectly and I because I'd say
Rogue is a little Rogue is a bitof a cheat Rouge.
The bat is that. I feel like maybe I maybe I
should clarify which animal or anthropomorphic?
Oh yeah, Gadget from Rescue Rangers.
Boom there. It is.
That was very fast too. That's an early one for a lot of
people. I mean, there's a reason there's
(44:11):
a Russian cult around gadget so.I I did have a very strange I
guess you could call it, I'll call it a pre sexual experience
because I didn't comprehend my my brain couldn't make sense of
it. Just like so there's an episode
in Rescue Rangers where all the characters heads get like
swapped around on their bodies. Have you seen this episode?
(44:33):
Well, now you know what it's about and.
Spoilers. I was so fascinated by it like
for like in a physically like just visceral way.
Like I think, and it's mostly just because one like I think it
was Dale's head gets put on Gadget's body.
That was some like my my little.You know, 7 year old brain just
(44:56):
I was so enthralled by this thatwhen I had to, I had to go to
the bathroom. But I didn't want to miss
anything. So I went to the kitchen and I
grabbed the pot and I pissed in that so I could keep watching.
I didn't want to miss a second of this.
Rescue Rangers like what would you call it like body swap
flake? Yeah, it's like body mod, body
(45:18):
mod stuff. There's no name for this fetish.
No, no, There's one there's a Freud stage of.
Development Rescue Rangers to Africa, what it's called, yeah.
It's like, it's like kind of scaring me, though almost.
It's like I'm like picturing Jesse and his own like Human
Centipede. Like ever since I was a child, I
wanted to buy swap. And then I went back and watched
(45:43):
it on YouTube many years later because I was curious.
Like was it where I remember it was even?
Gadget is put on Dale's body andshe's like, Oh my God, I'm not
wearing any pants. Like, I'm Naked.
And she like, makes herself a little skirt out of, you know, I
think it was one of those paper cups that you put ketchup in at
in and out burger. She uses that for a skirt, but
(46:03):
that was very like erotic, A formative moment in your
development. Yeah.
I'm, you know, I'm sorry, I I asked.
I asked the question. Yeah, you asked the question.
Right. I don't know why I did.
Yeah. David, you had an answer.
Did I? I don't.
I don't think I do. Forget about it.
Yeah, is. This just a elaborate race for
(46:28):
kompromat. I I got.
I got a quick video game relatedquestion.
Yeah, that I think these freaks might be able to get down to.
Anyone here ever rock with the old earthworm Jim.
Yeah, that guy was nuts. I like that guy, man.
I like it. Yeah.
(46:48):
But do you know about the creator?
He's got to be a total creep, right?
Yeah. Unfortunately, he's such a
bummer. I didn't know that actually, but
that makes sense, yeah. He's like a proud boy or
something. I What is it?
I don't want to get this wrong. He does.
Yeah, he does lean a little, a little too far right on certain
(47:09):
things, unfortunately. Like, just the way he.
Better than too far wrong. He's, he's transphobic.
He is transposed, right? Because.
Very like, vehemently transphobic.
Yeah, he's. There's an.
Earthworm gym. Guy.
A man who had an earthworm and it's in an astronaut, right?
(47:29):
Right. Well, because he he is so known
for it, I guess because they also recently announced an
animated series, a new one, which I still hasn't come out.
Who knows if whoever will but when they announced it somebody
had to tweet at the official accountant is like hey what what
do you think about trans rights And so they had to make sure
that Earth from Jim said that trans rights are human rights
(47:50):
just to make sure you you knew it wasn't it wasn't the creator
behind it. So you know, they they want to,
they want to keep on doing Earthfrom Jim things.
It's very important to the transcommunity that they have the
support of this giant earthworm in an astronaut.
See. Well, cuz those the.
Cartoon was great. The cartoon was good too.
(48:10):
Yeah, The thing is too is like at the time, in the 90s, Sonic
was just one. Of many hot like, I feel like
there's not new characters like there were, but there was hot
new characters all the time in the 90s.
Sonic was one, Bubsy was another.
Earthworm Jim was a was a good. Yeah, we could.
We could really use TOE. Jam and Earl more than ever.
(48:32):
Oh. Man, I love those guys.
Hey, what about the creator of that came Many Evil.
And with the the skeleton? Yes, Sir Daniel Fortescue.
Is that guy a right winger? The game.
Kind of looks like Earth from gym with this weird, yeah, kind
of asymmetrical body and face, you know?
Who you're talking about the game with the skeleton, I don't
know what. Called Medieval, Medieval oh I.
(48:55):
Know medieval? Medieval, yeah.
Yeah, OK. I know this game.
I don't know anything about the people who made it all.
Right. I'm sorry, I had to realize.
Oh, that's OK. No, I shouldn't have brought up
Earth from gym. Yeah, I feel like you guys like
the customer service department for my own childhood, like, I'm
like, we could just go through. I want to.
My own childhood. And just ask questions about it
(49:16):
and you guys have all the answers.
Yeah, let's just go through the whole list like, hey guys,
remember Booger man? Of course you do.
Yeah. Yeah.
Booger man is kind of related toEarth from Jim, right?
Because a little bit, yeah. Jim had a booger that he would
swing off of or something. Oh yeah.
Oh, I do remember Booger man. Oh my God, so it's so dumb.
(49:37):
What was his secret identity? It's something that's a little
rude. Well it's a pick and flick
adventure. I played it a lot because for
some reason my mother bought it for me.
And of course when you were a child, you have like 3 games, so
you got to play what you got does.
The Sonic community have strong feelings on the video game uni
racer. Ooh, good question.
(49:59):
Was that just was that just Nintendo?
I think it was Nintendo and I'm,I feel like, pretty certain it
was probably a they're like we got to do, we got to answer this
Sonic challenge. Quick.
I don't know, but it was just itwas nicely.
Just a racing. Game No, I I remember that
because that was a game that they would have at Target like
in the display console. Yes, it looked visually, it
(50:23):
looked good. It just was like there was
nothing to it was like a pure weekend rental, you know what I
mean? Ooh ooh, it had a profanity
filter because it would be like choose your name and I'd be
like, you know, fuck. And it would say, not cool
enough. Choose a cooler name, right?
Nobody swore in the 90. When did Miles and Allen,
(50:43):
especially when did you guys check out of playing?
Do you still play games? I mean, you play games a little
bit, but I feel like. Last time I played a lot of
video games was when I was didn't have a full time job and
I was freelancing. Yeah.
And that was about six years ago.
Yeah. My first year of college, I was
playing Halo just online like for day.
(51:05):
I had to. I literally like, was like, I
have to stop playing video games.
And that was pretty That was thelast time, like really like had
a console and like, care or whatever.
Now every once in a while, it's like the last I've LA Noire got
me real bad and I like, had to, like figure out how to play LA
Noire. Besides that, I've like I'm
pretty checked out. That game is pretty fun.
(51:26):
I played Life is Strange recently, pretty much the whole
series, and really loved it. And yeah, that was the last game
that I played, I think, yeah. What do you guys do instead?
What do you you, you like, see people or you like?
You're You're exercising, you'rereading books, you're watching
films and TV, You're communicating with loved ones.
(51:49):
You're going on walks. You're creating new things.
You're all of the above. No, I'm just jerking off to
Sonic porn. Which is my love?
Those lie by lies, my loved ones.
I actually haven't played a lot of Uno.
Who knows? Really fun.
It's classic. You should play that Uno
Nintendo game as Music by Tim Fallin.
(52:10):
Speaking of music. Hey, does this mean we're over?
I'm afraid all the comedy has ended.
There's no more comedy. There's only be the bleak
sadness of existence. Well, I gotta say, I've had a
wonderful time, right? Yeah, I didn't know what to
(52:31):
affect. But you know what?
It's very fitting that this is aSonic podcast, cuz I felt like
this thing just we blew through it.
It was so went by. Still fat.
That's right. Yeah.
Two loop, 2 loops way up. Got all the Chaos Emeralds?
That's right, you need all 7. Thanks for thanks for doing the
(52:51):
show. Links are in the description to
see more from Alan Strickland Williams and A SW David.
What? What else can listeners do for
the podcast? Oh yeah, that's right.
Hey, if you enjoyed listening tothis, or if you enjoy Sonic the
Hedgehog, you can of course subscribe to this podcast on
your pod catcher of choice. Is that Spotify?
(53:13):
Is that iTunes? I don't know, because I'm not
you. But of course, if you do
subscribe, maybe you can also give us one of those sweet five
star reviews. You could write a review to.
You know, let people know that you're enjoying whatever the
heck happens there. And of course you can contact
us. You can e-mail
us.sonicweeklypodcast@gmail.com and that is how you get into the
(53:34):
good old Discord server. That's right, there's people in
there that talk about Sonic on occasion.
If you'd never want to talk about Sonic, don't join.
Why are you listening? I don't.
I don't know. Oh man.
I think Grant thanked our guestsalready.
I could thank them again. Still not sure who any of them
are, but that's fine. Maybe one day.
(53:56):
One day I'll know. And of course we got to thank
Smoothies movies for the edit. I.
Because without him, well, this would go out raw and and and
maybe that'd be a bit too, too uncomfortable.
You want to do the opposite of raw.
That's right. You want to cook things all the
way through. You want to make sure that
chicken is at temperature, otherwise you will get
(54:18):
salmonella and it doesn't taste as good as you think.
Oh yeah, go on, let's drive through.
We fucking can't get get the jams with the records, which you
scratch. We come in, come in easy.
Sometimes we come in hot. Sometimes we just come in like,
did Austin Powers get unthought again and host a podcast?
Is that is the whole? Show baby.
(00:25):
Ladies and gentlemen, coming to the podcast stage Sonic Weekly.
That's every single week about Sonic the Hedgehog.
Hosted by me. It's Grandpa.
Hey, I'm Grant. It's starring David the Lurker.
Hi, David. Oh, hi, Grant.
It's me, the Star Co starring with Grant.
That's what I do. That's what we do.
And that, of course, was. What?
(00:47):
What's the name of that band? They're the S St. band because
they're Sonic, I guess. Yeah, I know That's enough out
of you, David. OK, so And we have a comedy
panel, a full show to talk aboutSonic with us because, you know,
Sonic hot new update, we're going to get around to playing
it. But we brought in heavy hitters
from the LA comedy scene, the California comedy scene.
(01:11):
He's been on the previous version of this show.
So dedicated listeners will recognize the voice of I should
have asked this before we started Jesse.
Can I call you Jesse? Yeah, yeah.
Okay. What's up?
Hey, Jesse. Hey.
Hey. There's no that was smooth
because you never have other aliases.
No, Never okay good. And then my name.
(01:32):
Is Jesse alias. He's here.
He's handsome. He's got a beard.
Miles K, everybody. Miles K.
I was wondering which one you were going to do.
I was like when you were like, he's handsome.
I'm like is it going to be me. He's going to be the other girl.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Thank you. Thank you.
And the headlining comedian. Are you guys ready for your
headliner? Oh my goodness.
(01:54):
You've seen him on on all sorts of screens.
Alan Strickland Williams. What a stone cold fox.
Alan Strickland Williams is here.
Thanks for having me. You know the band that was
playing earlier, They're actually the S St. band.
Oh really? That's what they called.
I heard that. I heard that so recently, yeah.
How's that? How's that comedy?
(02:16):
So that's the show. Thank you so much for listening.
Five stars. Make sure to buy everybody's
merch. Here's what inspired it so.
It's off at this point. Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, everybody's free to go. Alan, you tweeted not for the
first time about Sonic 2. And you know that Sonic is one
of my very special interests. And hey, David and I talk about
(02:39):
it every week. You were tweeting about Sonic 2
miles and I were talking about Sonic 2.
Jesse and I are frequently talking about Sonic the 90s.
You specifically were tweeting about Casino Night Zone.
I'm just wondering why you were tweeting about Sonic and.
I think somehow either a YouTubehole or someone else was just
posting like about the music. From Casino Night zone or
(03:02):
something like that. And I was probably drunk or
something and I was like, oh, that I I was corrupted by Casino
Night Zone. That's what did it when I was a
kid. I don't remember what else I've
tweeted about Sonic, but I thinkat the time it was probably
night time when I tweeted that Iwas probably feeling like in a
(03:24):
in a sort of, maybe I wish I wasat a casino kind of vibe, you
know? The bright lights Who among us
are gamblers? Are we?
Are we a gambling group of men? I'm actually not that big of a
like that. That's one vice that I always
kind of had never got away from me.
I guess you could say I love, I love a casino, though.
(03:45):
I mean, casinos are super fun. I I've heard that the gambling
addiction is like, by some accounts the the most brutal.
I am a gambling addict, but I don't have an opportunity to
indulge that vice, really. On a regular basis, so it's not
a problem, but in the rare timesI have been within driving
(04:06):
distance of a casino, I've basically done like 8 hour
shifts. They're playing roulette.
Roulette. OK, interesting.
Yeah, I picked it up. I I got addicted to roulette
playing Second Life because in Second Life there's nothing to
do. So Second Life, you you
basically can buy things from other people.
(04:27):
Using Second Life Money, which you have to pay real money for.
I'm like, fuck that. I'm not paying real money for a
video game. So I, like, filled out all
these, like, weird surveys in exchange for Second Life money.
It was really sketchy, like, youknow, because it's just this
endless loop of links that, like, puts like, weird malware
on your computer and that. So I got like $0.20 of Second
(04:47):
Life Money and I took that $0.20, took it to the Second
Life roulette table. You know, I had 200 Second Life
bucks. I turned it into 30,000 Second
Life bucks. Playing roulette.
Wow. And then I lost it all, playing
more roulette and Jesse. Did you use your real name there
or? My second life name was.
(05:07):
Let it Let it ride 69. Oh, you know what?
It was Second Life would actually, if you couldn't think
of a name, they would just pick one for you.
So I think mine was like just some silly random syllables that
they chose for me real quick. Let's just introduce ourselves
to our audience in the sense of Sonic the Hedgehog, Your
(05:30):
relationship to this media franchise that I'm not even
going to describe as nerdy because it's it's, it's
available, it's if it's been in Target for more than 30 years on
a regular. It's a mainstream product that I
enjoy in many forms and have since a child.
And then, you know, I've come and gone and here we are now.
And I'm asking you about I'm just one one guy standing in
(05:54):
front of four guys on a Zoom. Doesn't sounds a little off.
I'm just asking you about Sonic.Yeah, So were you guys I knew?
Were you Sega kids? Were you into Sonic as a kid?
And then or is it something you have no affection towards and I
just sort of asked you and you said yes?
Like, how do we know, Sonic? And how did you get here?
(06:15):
Me and Sonic away back. No, I I was a Sega kid.
I think I I think we always wanted me and my sister always
wanted Nintendo. But I think Sega might have been
cheaper or something. I don't know why, but we were we
were a Sega family and Sonic specifically loved the Sonic
games. Loved Sonic.
(06:37):
Spin ball. That was like a real mainstay,
but specifically with Sonic 2. My sort of, my sort of memory
with it. Oh, and watching the watching
the fucking, the cartoons and shit.
But my real sort of connection to it that still arises pretty
much almost every time I see my sister.
I think it was like the first time, or maybe one of the first.
(07:00):
Like, how do I say this? I was gaslighting my younger
sister. I would say that.
I would give her the controller for Tails but not have it be you
know like you know and so that that that's sort of like one of
my fondest memories that remindsme of we we talked about Sonic 2
(07:20):
at some point earlier and it wasabout I would intentionally
drown my younger brother who wasI think we both connected on
being really sadistic to our siblings on sure and I think
that's true too about the Sega being and less expensive than
the Super Nintendo. I think that's certainly why we
had it. Miles did you put you you had
(07:41):
mentioned to me the other night that you you also played Sonic.
I mean Sonic 2 like came with the Sega Genesis.
I mean it was one of several packages, but that was like the
way that we'll got that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
No, I mean, I remember there waslike a Christmas where I got it
and somehow I got that and I gotStreet Fighter and there was
like some you know, like over that Christmas break I.
(08:05):
You could not detach me from that controller.
And I was having these really screwed up dreams where Blanca
from Street Fighter was spinningthrough the like at levels of
Blanca just like tearing, tearing things apart.
And it was like I yeah, and theywere stress dreams too.
You know what I mean? It's it was definitely a part of
(08:28):
my childhood and I thought that the universe of Sonic was
interesting and cool. And edgier and more fast-paced
than Mario. And then I got older and
realized that, you know, Mario is like Disney and Sonic is like
Ralph Bakshi and. Sonic Fox Sonic Fox dude.
(08:51):
He's really fast, but he does actually fun.
Yeah. Jesse, what about?
What about for you? I'd say I cared about Sonic for
maybe two 2 1/2 years. And that was was during the time
of Sonic 3 and Sonic Knuckles and Knuckles.
Those were the only ones I played really.
(09:13):
I played some of Sonic one and two, but like I didn't have a
Genesis, so I played it mostly through like, you know, second
hand. And then towards the end of the
that generation, that console generation, the Sega Genesis got
marked down in price. So I got one late towards the
end and I played. Three.
And then I played Knuckles and Iliked those.
(09:35):
And then, you know, I I never got another Sega console after
that. Thankfully I mean.
One guy who had a Dreamcast. I would see pictures in
magazines of Dreamcasts on it and it was weird.
He's like has green eyes and he's tall and he has this like
weird evil grin on his face and his feet are shaped like bananas
now. Very strange.
(09:56):
And let's not let's you know. This is Sega CD erasure.
Let's be very sensitive to that as well.
Do you remember that? Here's my thing though, about
the Sonic 3 and the Knuckles. Like Sonic and Knuckles was the
one with the flip top thing, right?
And so you could create this like Tower of Babel coming out
of your Genesis, which is, you know, pretty biblical, I guess.
(10:18):
But I always love that where it's like you have the Game
Genie and then you jam the otherthing and then you do the other
thing. So you could be like hypersonic
in. In like in the world or
whatever. And yeah, you really felt like
you were playing God. Like the slightest, the
slightest trimmer would like cause the screen to glitch.
And then then you're grounded because you yelled God damn it
(10:40):
again. But yeah, you know, you know how
it goes. We've all been there.
Yes, you can definitely create the the Tower with the like Game
Genie and all the every everything you just said.
But also, I feel like maybe it'sworth pointing out too, that,
Alan, you grew up in Florida andI grew up in sort of the Florida
of the North, which is Ohio. Sure.
And so I feel like there's there's something that like Bo,
(11:03):
our third cohost who's not here tonight, was bringing up the
other week of like a friend of his.
Oh, boy, this is great. So a friend of somebody you
don't know doesn't matter. A made-up story is that Sonic
was the conduit for somebody realizing that God isn't real.
They they they realized if Soniccan make me feel this sort of
(11:26):
euphoria, then what I've been feeling in church is just as
just the same as what Sonic can do.
I thought it'd be the other. I mean, I've always said God's
non existence is everywhere you look.
I thought it was more like like how?
Like how could we live in a world?
With a God that created the evilbeing of Doctor Robotnik.
(11:49):
Like how? What hath God write, you know?
Well, in certain continuities, Sonic the Hedgehog is the one
who creates Dr. Robotnik. So you know it's fine, don't
worry about it. Well, you know, if you lived in
England, which you don't, if youwere British, and you read Sonic
the comic as a kid, you would have read the story where Sonic
had to go back in time and make sure that that Cantobor who was
(12:13):
supposed to be good Robotnik. This is, this is, this is
digging into the weeds. I think I get distracted because
Grant, every time you tell that story and you're like Beau's
friend and I know you're talkingabout, I don't know how much of
A friend he is to Beau. I know he's been.
He's your friend. I'm the one who's talked to him
for the last decade, and every time I'm like, yeah, I don't
think that's. I think in the context of this
(12:35):
podcast, I think it was Beau whobrought up.
It was Beau who brought, right? Well, yeah, yes.
I don't know. They're just a screen name.
I don't know. Can I ask you guys a question
and just about something that's probably been discussed on this
podcast before, please? This is really funny, but I'm
like these guys know about Sonic.
I noticed at one point that there were two Sonic cartoons
(12:58):
running simultaneously when I was a kid, and one was very
silly and juvenile and one was like kind of edgy and adults and
had. What present in it is?
What you know, Freud, I think, would refer to as the death
drive as well as the arrows, thesex drive.
(13:20):
And that and that one, that one showed.
I mean, it felt like it did. Like it was like, hold him down.
We're turning him into a robot right now.
And you're like, whoa, this makes me feel weird.
Yeah, do you And do you guys know what I'm talking about?
Because I feel like I didn't fabricate it.
No, no, no, no. We knew about the series.
(13:41):
Yeah. It's the 30th anniversary.
They both debuted in the same month, September 1993.
David gave a wonderful tweet, thread and speech about it.
Couple episodes. Ago, right?
I did a tweet thread about both because the the short of it, the
short answer is the deke the animation studio.
You know, they wanted more money.
(14:03):
That's that's basically, it's all capitalism.
ABC wanted the Sonic show. They wanted it to be both
Saturday morning and syndicated because they had done it before.
They had done it with The Real Ghostbusters.
It had Disney had done it with Dark Queen Duck when it was
airing, you know, six days a week and a BC said no, we want
Sonic exclusive. And then they came up with a
(14:24):
compromise of, oh, what if we give you a darker version of
Sonic? We do a goofy version on the
weekdays. And it'll just compliment each
other. And ABC for some reason said
sure, and then two years later, canceled Sonic.
But that's, you know. Great A connects.
Can we talk about Pirates of Dark Water?
I. Just kidding.
(14:45):
Watch that show in 30 years. But I do remember that it had
didn't have a video game as well.
I mean, I'm pretty sure. I mean, every Saturday morning
cartoon had a video game at somepoint in the 90s.
One thing I just realized about Sonic that's pretty funny is.
You know if Mario's the model Sonic they were just like what
(15:06):
if what if he did some loop de loops like that is the that is
like a very defined like Mario never did any that's that is
actually the defining thing theywanted the creators David can be
more specific about it but the broad strokes are that.
He went on a roller coaster. The creator wanted to do a fast
(15:26):
run version of Mario and they figured out how to do slopes,
which we're able to do the unique loop de loop.
So you're exactly right, it is aMario clone that's able to do
loops. So one of the other reasons too
that I thought it would be fun to have a comedy panel too is
like I wanted to sort of simulate because you guys, you
know a little bit about Sonic, right?
But like none of you would describe yourself as Sonic
(15:46):
experts, Jesse may be to a degree.
Mostly it's from, like, just talking to you, yeah.
I'm a I'm a I'm a Sonic sex per.Oh.
OK, Yeah, right. Because you were, I think you
were alluding to Princess Sally at one point when when you were
talking about the Saturday morning show.
I remember her name. Well, that you just you just
remember her form, yes? Right.
(16:08):
Well, he. Wears nothing but boots in a
vest. If she if she didn't have any
clothing, you wouldn't think about it.
But because she's wearing boots and nothing else that, like,
emphasizes her nudity in a way, she wears a vest in Season 2.
Yes, I think as ABC said, she's a little too nude.
You need to give her something. We got to cover up her shoulders
(16:29):
and her sides and leave the restnaked.
Give her a vest. It sort of implies that there's
a nipple that could be freed if,like, the vest were removed.
There are multiple issues of of the our comic book in which
she's not wearing anything at all, not even the boots.
So. And they're pretty soft.
You're into that. Yeah, Yeah.
I can give you the issue numberslater.
(16:52):
So does she have feet or does she have paws?
She's got feet. She's got bare feet.
She's got like, sexy, like arch,like there's like a she's got
intentionally sexy feet and intentionally sexy butt right in
the panel that we could probablyfind it a second so.
She'll give you pause. She'll give you pause.
You'll be like. You'll be like, whoa.
(17:14):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, as as the comic went on, she became more
and more human looking. Yes, until they kind of pulled
back. But at one point it was
basically she's just a she's just a sexy lady.
And look at her. We're going to make you look at
her. And.
I. Don't know what's the what's the
deal with the Robotnik versus Eggman?
(17:38):
Is that just? Was that just he was Eggman in
the first one? He was Eggman in in Japan.
The original creator named the character Eggman and then, when
they were localizing it, Sake ofAmerica.
When Eggman is too silly of a name, we need to come up with
some with something else. And they basically, you know
they found the the lowest paid person to come up with a list of
(17:58):
names and one of them was was Robotnik.
There was also like Doctor Bad Vibes and Dr. X but Robotnik
went out and Robotnik is probably well it was the coolest
of the list and technically 6 for technically his last name is
still Robotnik. That the story is that Sonic
gave him the nickname Egg Man toto to make fun of him because he
(18:20):
is egg shaped. Although he's not really egg
shaped. I mean he isn't Sonic Adventure,
he's more egg shaped. Yeah, it doesn't matter.
The joke is he's fat, I think. Right, right, right.
Egg Man is his nickname, but it's his original name.
I thought he would say. I thought he got mad.
I thought he was merged with a hard boiled egg like it was a 5.
But he, like, stepped in the fucking that.
Was the old. Spilled soda on his machine and
(18:43):
while he was eating a hard boiled egg and short circuited
the whatever and turned him the egg.
DNA got into his body, right? That was the Western.
Cannon. That was never the the original
Japanese cannon. So then in 99 when they released
Sonic Adventure, they went all that stuff about Kantobo and the
hard boiled egg that that's justshit some guy made-up.
(19:03):
That's not the real Sonic. This is the real Sonic, OK, So
you know, you know that there was a story from the Japanese
team. It was changed a little bit.
So Alan, Miles, Jesse, you're creative writers, you're
comedians, you've worked in advertising.
Imagine you're the writers room for taking Sonic and Robotnik,
(19:25):
which is the game, the first game, and then creating like a
lore around it. Like, what do you do with the
character? And David can kind of help give
us, like, what did Sake of America know when they like?
Is they the way that they sort of pitch it in, like these
documentaries that are from the perspective of the American
marketing team that worked on Sonic?
Because they're like, well, you know, what they gave us was like
(19:46):
a blue circle with some triangles.
Like we really invented everything there is to like know
and love about this. And also Sonic in general kind
of has become it's, you know, it's been ongoing for a long
time and you look to Zelda, Breath of the Wild, Tears of the
Kingdom. It's like it's a reboot of
Zelda, so Sonic maybe could haveits own reboot.
(20:08):
So maybe you've kind of got two timelines here.
The original 90s Sonic and Robotic.
What do you do with this? How do you pitch it?
What do you add on to it? And then how do you reboot Sonic
now if you would? Well, rebooting, rebooting.
Sonic, I think is the sort of easy one.
Yeah, obviously you make him slow.
(20:29):
And. And he and it's some sort of
allegory for being metooed or cancelled in the public domain.
Something along those lines. How does that?
I don't track the metaphor. Well, I'm just saying market it
to like Joe Rogan fans make it all about.
I see what is it? The burden of privilege, etc.
Etc. No, no, no.
They won't let him go fast. There you go.
(20:51):
Yeah, yeah. That's the thing.
Yeah, I see. Yeah, used to used to.
You go as fast as you want, OK? It's the the sort of Trump thing
of like, oh, whatever it is now is like terrible.
And they've changed it. They've messed with it.
They've done something to it. There you go.
Yeah, yeah. No, no, it's it's that Sonic has
the ability to go fast. But that is so offensive to all
these people that want things tobe well.
(21:12):
I know you told me not to bring up my politics in this.
I'm just saying like the first idea is the right wing grift.
I think we should put Sonic in awheelchair.
Sure. You know representation.
That's why he can't. There you go.
He has to look he like he gets his legs permanently broken in
an accident. And now he has to learn how to
(21:32):
navigate these loopy loops in his new with his new physical
reality. And it's a story about adapting
and. And you can even make him like
maybe he he lost his legs and maybe he fought in Afghanistan
or something. Maybe he was really into the
whole antiterrorism thing. So you know, they they give give
us some red meat too. You know.
(21:58):
Now we're talking Marvel movie, actually, I feel like if you
can, if you can kind of cut it both ways, where anyone who
watches this movie is able to interpret it according to their
worldview. Yeah.
So wait, who owns the rights to that?
Is it you guys or us? Because I feel like we're, you
know, strike is over, baby. The other the other reboot is.
I guess it's like they're. They're both like, they haven't
(22:22):
made their bones yet and they'restill friends, Robotnic and
Sonic. Like, it's sort of like a
Salieri Mozart situation. They're both slow and like one
day Sonic is just fast. Yeah, like they're they're like,
they're like, yeah, we're peers.We're like both.
No, it's it. Sonic is naturally fast and
(22:43):
Robotnic is always like, well, I'm building this machine to go
fast. Yeah, Like, yeah.
Good for you. Keep it up.
Fucking loser. Like, you know, like, yeah.
In one continuity, they were brothers.
Really. Well, well, the idea is that
sonics and orphan and robotics and orphan and then they both
get adopted by Uncle Chuck, you know, from that Saturday morning
cartoon. Except that's.
(23:03):
Not the. Back story for that cartoon?
Yeah. And then, like when Robotics 15
and Sonics 9 or something robotic almost kills everyone by
stealing parts from a tractor and the tractor runs over
people. And then he runs away from home.
He's very sad and rude. And then he comes back.
(23:24):
And in slaves everyone. Which I mean you would I guess.
Is that it? Is that from a comic book or
something? It's from.
It's from these little tiny. It was from this little tiny
novel, like a children's book with a yellow cover.
And then they they did make one comic story where Sonic dreamt
it. He was like, oh, what a weird
dream. It's a good thing I'm not
(23:45):
related to Robotnik. But it wasn't a book.
I might have had that but I I I've that's.
A little yellow. That story definitely sounds.
Familiar. Like I picked up on every part
of that. Yeah, yeah.
I do have that book somewhere. It's it's out of reach but I
see. It but for the sort of like
going back to the 90s element and figuring it out.
(24:07):
I mean, I feel like it's basically, I feel like if
they're doing like a profile of it, like, you know, you do those
dumb things miles, it's like. He's like a low key.
He's like a cool, mischievous. He's kind of, he's kind of
tapping into like the burgeoningADD of that generation, too.
(24:27):
Like he's kind of giving it a physical, yeah, you know, what's
the word? Outlet or representation or
something? And then he goes hyper.
And then when you get all that shiny objects, he goes hyper,
you know? Or super.
Whatever. Yeah, I mean, you know, Sonic is
3233. He's a he.
Looks great. Right, 91.
(24:50):
So he's 32 now. Yeah, he's he's, he's getting
up. I mean, he's been able probably
as a mortgage in this economy, Idon't know in this.
No, I think Sonics homeless. I think that's the idea we're
supposed to to get from almost every version of Where does
Sonic Live? Miles, you know, there's zones,
maybe there's zoning laws and the.
(25:13):
If if anyone knows where Sonic lives, it should be Miles,
right? You do realize that the names?
Did you know that? Did you know that you're the
name of a Sonic character? Yes, OK, now this was pointed
out to me quite a lot. At the time, wasn't it?
Really. Yeah.
It was funny because, you know, I was sort of like, well,
Sonic's the funner character to play, I thought.
(25:33):
I thought the flying was kind oflike, what else?
But I liked the Fox more. I liked that that Disney Robin
Hood film with the Fox. That's always been my male icon.
Classic. Yeah.
You can remind me of him. I can see.
Thanks. Can see a resemblance.
Yeah. Thanks.
Yeah, no, dressed up as him whenyou're for Halloween.
(25:54):
Oh, OK Yeah, it's sad. And do you have photos?
Can we see? I got him somewhere.
They, you know, they all have. You should have them ready at
all times. They're compromised in a way
that I don't really. Jerking off your.
Own Halloween. They're all stuck together.
From all the melted candy. So this might be a good time to
(26:16):
mention this, but I kind of shipSonic entails if.
I mean, I don't really. I'm not a Sonic shipper, but if
you asked me to ship, that's what I'd kind of go with that
one. And it's all because of the
movie. In the movie, there's a scene.
I didn't watch the movie, I justsaw parts of it.
But I did see the part like where they snuggle up to each
other by the fire. They do snuggle and Tails uses
(26:37):
both of his tails. To as a blanket.
Basically as a blanket for Sonic.
And it's cute. You're right, it could be it's.
Cute, but it's like, I think it's more than cute, you know?
Yeah, Tails always had this likeandrogynous body too that I
found kind of like. Sure.
Let's say intriguing. Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah.
Hot. But I don't know if I would call
(26:57):
that. But David, tell us, tell us,
tell us about the continuity where?
No, because he's gonna tell you that.
Masonic holds both his tails like handlebars and just pulls
him back. Right down.
Well, Okay. Once Upon a time, for the
longest time on Google and miss search.
(27:17):
If you searched Sonic the Hedgehog like the second, the
second image would actually be like this very poor drawing of
Sonic entails engaged in in in an act, a sexual one.
And that's even Act one, Act 2. Even after they introduced Safe
Search, it was still there because you don't see any any
actual. You know you don't see the
(27:39):
naughty bits. It is just.
I got an embarrassing story. I told a a coworker at one point
that she looked like a cartoon, like a character from Zootopia,
Disney, Zootopia. And it was the same thing where
she was like, what character is that?
And then she searched it. And it's just like all of these.
Oh yeah, Zootopia is very, very popular in certain in certain
(28:02):
worlds, right? Well, I've never seen, right.
Well, I mean there's the regularDisney continuity that which is
the the movie, the forthcoming movie in a TV show.
And of course there's the the comic continuity where you know,
the the rat. I can't even remember their
names. The rabbit and the fox get
together. She gets pregnant and tells them
(28:24):
that she's going to have an abortion.
This this is not an official Disney comic, but many people
have read it and the until they end up breaking up.
And then that comic was later reworded so that their issues
actually involved Arby's, because the local Arby's closed
down and he was so distraught that he had to to leave her.
It's it's a quick jump from fromabortion to fast food, I think.
(28:48):
I don't. Maybe all this should be cut
out, I think. If I would have rewritten it,
hold on. Here's what I would have done.
He was like, hey, he would have been like, because I'm a fox,
when you give birth to our children, I'm going to eat them.
Oh yeah. Is that what the fox say?
Is that what the fox? Well.
She's a rabbit. Oh, oh, oh.
(29:08):
You need a foreign yeah, gotcha,gotcha.
Nature. Nature is fascinating, right?
Right. Is it hoping?
Yeah, I guess it exists. It's.
I don't. I've completely lost everything
I was about to say about it. It's OK because Sonic.
(29:29):
Yeah, take it back to Sonic. We'll take it back to Sonic.
Loop de loop. Right, we'll do a loop de loop.
Onic was cool. Sonic was just cool, man.
He had those cool shoes. He was like, you know, you just
want to jet out of there like it's a it's a no brainer.
Hey, you wanted? I don't know if you guys know
this. When Sega Genesis came out,
teenage boys would not admit to owning a Nintendo over a Sega.
(29:49):
Wait, I would, says who I didn't.
I guess I wasn't a teenage boy then, though, yeah.
Market the market research. But yeah, you guys are all a
little too young. Like, I was like these people
that, you know, I think I'm maybe the oldest person here,
but like older than me would have been teenagers at that
time. And they at the time, if they
had Nintendo in a second big. I have a second.
I don't have a Nintendo. That makes sense.
(30:10):
Oh, because Nintendo is more more childish.
Yeah, that was the feeling. Yeah.
Yeah. OK Was cool.
Yeah. OK.
Interesting. I think David has found not long
ago, even maybe even just a yearago, found the 1st post on any
Usenet board about Sonic the Hedgehog or is about somebody
owning it. Oh, that's cool.
Right. Yeah, the old Internet, which is
(30:32):
even older than what we think ofas the old Internet.
Yeah, on on Usenet, there are posts from people who are like,
oh, I'm looking forward to Sonic.
It's also people who are like, what's the point?
It's probably going to suck. Sega sucks.
Everything sucks. Like, yeah.
OK. That's so funny.
Sonic has been that polarizing right for so long.
And then, but there is this one,right?
There's one person who was like,Oh yeah, I bought Sonic the
(30:52):
Hedgehog and everyone is just, you know, came over to my
apartment and they just won't leave.
They keep on playing Sonic and I'm like, guys, I got to go to
bed. I have work in the morning, but
they just keep on playing. And I'm like, I don't know if
this is a real story. Well, I mean, I I think it's.
Well, if you have an apartment, you gotta be in your 20s at
least, like in the 90s. I guess you could get in an
(31:14):
apartment at 18. People could still afford things
at that point. Or maybe they just lived in an
apartment. Right.
They all they all crammed together.
I don't know. I lived in an apartment once.
That was fun. Do you have a wall of Sonic
stuff in front of you? In front of me.
(31:34):
Yeah. Because you were like saying
earlier, you're like, ah, there's a Sonic novel here.
Like, I can see it. It's not within reach.
Well, I have a there's a there'sa bookcase not that far from me.
So the books are on it and and one of them is, is those little
Sonic ones. I have many books.
A lot of them are Star Wars. I don't know if you're familiar
with that. It's a little known indie film.
(31:57):
Nope. No, I don't.
I love the concept of a film though, where stars go to war.
I think it's very polite. Right.
Well, that's how The Big Bang started.
It's a documentary. I was thinking about this
recently. Sonic and Bart Simpson have a
lot in common. They both had attitudes.
They both came up in the 90s. They both have triangles for
hair. They both have these little
(32:19):
shoes that are kind of look likethey're shaped like a computer
mouse with like a little stripe on it or whatever.
Yeah, yeah. They're both in color.
They're both. Anyway.
That's the end of my observation.
No, no, I think you're just getting started.
Yeah, I agree. I ran out of similarities.
Are they both kind of have like weird little squat pot belly
bodies with like noodley Hollanders arms and legs?
(32:43):
I think also the thing that thatlike Alan pointed out that like
they sort of both epitomize thisthing of like young boys are
bad. Oh yeah, totally.
I feel like before that, like most of the media was like like
the the kid with Lassie, he's like a goody good.
Yeah, I hate that kid. Yeah, there was really only that
(33:03):
one brother from or not the brother.
He was like the friend to be, leave it to be Eddie Haskell.
And he was like Eddie Eddie Haskell, the little Rascal.
Yeah he was. He was like, kind of like, and
he and the funny, the funniest part of Eddie Haskell was.
The parents liked him because hewas like, overly polite.
With the parents, yeah. Like he's like, well, Mrs.
(33:24):
Cleaver, it's so nice to see youtoday.
Like, that's like that's where you started getting to like the
good sun territory territory. Yeah.
But yeah, yeah, that like, did Sonic in the games, like, you
know how I this is where I'm blaking.
Did he have like a let to go or like was there any?
Like I remember him wagging his finger.
(33:44):
Yeah. And I remember maybe a peace
sign. Yeah that.
Yeah at the end he gives a a a point.
But his, yeah, his main thing islike he's he taps his foot and
he looks, he breaks the 4th walland he looks at the player as
though to say, why am I not going fast That so that was and
it was Jaleel White Urkel who voiced Sonic in all of the Deke
(34:08):
cartoons including Sonic Underground which had his, his
brother and his sister, new characters invented just for
that show to be in a rock band where they were searching for
their mother. But so he's got a lot of range,
and that was Sonic's voice for for a long time.
Gotcha. Cool.
Where did Gotta Go Fast come from?
(34:28):
That's like another generation of these younger Sonic fans who
are now not even the youngest Sonic fans.
But you know these Gen. Z Sonic fans who grew up with
Sonic X in the Pokémon? You know, in the arts.
So what's Sonic now? What are the game?
Are there like, what? Are there games right now?
Yeah, there today as of this recording there.
(34:49):
Oh, that's right. There's a new update to Sonic
Frontiers, which is the open world Zelda like Sonic.
And there's a new Netflix show going into its third season,
which is like a serious adventure Sonic cartoon that I
personally can't get that into. And there's a new game coming
out next month. There's a new game that's like
the old ones, but it's like 4 player coop where it's 2D side
(35:14):
scroller, Sonic, Tails, Knucklesand Amy.
So it's a it's like it's very there's a lot of Sonic.
But I feel like maybe there always sort of has been because
like you mentioned like Sonic spinball.
Like there was just always Sonicstuff.
Can we circle back on something?Yeah, I think we agree.
Like. Knuckles really felt like a
rival to Sonic, and if we agree that Miles Tales is the twink
(35:38):
boyfriend to Sonic, do we feel like that is like, really?
What Knuckles truly represents is a possibility of supplanting
Sonic. Doing God knows and what with I
mean he could like those fists can break through walls.
My There's something about Knuckles that it's not meant to
(35:59):
be sexual, but it always felt strange to me.
And that's when in Sonica. Knuckles when you play as him.
His story begins with he's just having you get to see what he
does for fun before Robotnik shows up and ruins his life.
Knuckles is just kicking back with his arms folded behind his
head and his feet up while like.Like two dozen little squirrels
(36:20):
and birds and forest creatures are just kind of bouncing
around, like practically crawling over him.
Like he's just like he's like bathing in tiny little animals.
Like, I'm just chilling with allmy forest friends and it just
felt weirdly. There's something strange about
that. You're saying you're because
the, well, because the little animals seem like they're
(36:40):
babies. So it's like sort of like the
high school dropout who's like hanging out at the playground
and he's like not doing anythinglike it's but he's just making
you think like, well, what is hedoing here?
Is that what you're saying? Or are you saying it was
something even more sinister than?
I feel like he's like the way he's laying back, like he, you
know, he's getting a suntan. And they're just kind of like
(37:01):
bouncing around, like, almost like bouncing on him.
I I'd have to go back and watch the scene.
But my memory, the little squirrels are like they're going
crossing over into his hit box, so to speak.
To me, that does evoke like, just like.
I mean, coming from San Diego, it's like.
That pro surfer guy that's got like, you know, three women
(37:24):
hanging off of him, like, he's just like, Yep, life could not
be better, right? And like, all I think about
surfing and all these girls think about is how to get in my
pants. That was knuckles life.
That. Was.
Yeah, I just pictured the squirrels just crawling on him.
Like, like the way you see birds, like perched on an
(37:44):
elephant's back. Like, he just lets them all over
his body and he's just like, Oh yeah, this is the life.
Knuckles always had a real Predator, like the act, the
movie Predator. Like, he always kind of struck
me as like someone saw that movie and was like, I this is so
funny because you asked like. The question about like the from
the marketing standpoint, I think most of it is always like
(38:06):
this. It's like someone sees something
and then they go do that. Yeah.
And I think it always looks likethat it's, it's like, so it's
all the printers, like we need to put that in Sonic and it's
like, what? OK, what?
What other weird animals are there?
Knuckles was originally a dinosaur, but yeah, there,
there's definitely like an element to it where, like, you
(38:26):
can see them chasing trends. Oh.
Yeah, yeah, they're, they're trying to Yoshi, yeah.
So wait how? What is the rating level of this
podcast? Cuz I feel like, yeah, you can
mark individual episodes explicit.
Oh. Great thing.
He's gonna make it explicit. This one has a parental
advisory. Now this is, most of the
(38:46):
audience is. Watch out parents, probably
lonely, disaffected men who are about 10 years younger than us.
Hey guys, it's it's it. It's going to be OK.
Yeah. It's going to be OK.
Seriously. It does feel like it.
There needs to be, and it gets better, campaign for just like.
I think about it a lot. Strict men like they're not
(39:08):
doing good. I I think about a lot about
being like proactively like trying to talk to these guys
because like the only ones that are, it's like.
It's Andrew Tate and it's. It's bad.
It's just like straight up like.Like bad, Yeah.
But it's like, but it's like, you know, I.
Anyway, that's like a totally that's literally like a totally
different actually. You brought it up pretty well
(39:30):
with Sonic, of like Sonic and Bart Simpson are the beginning
of the commodification of Boys are Stupid.
Princess Sally was the competentone.
Sonic was the athletic daredevil.
Lisa was smart. Lisa was smart.
Millennial Men is where men get outpaced, and Sonic was just not
(39:51):
fast enough to keep up with the educational society.
I don't know. That's me trying to, like,
connect, right? Yeah.
It's like Doc Brown. Like, I don't know what I'm
saying exactly, but I like that there's a certain logic to it
and I like it. Okay.
Okay, I was gonna say. He's anti intellectual because
his enemy is a. Scientist.
(40:13):
Yeah. Superman kind of has that going
on too, where it's like the bad guy is like smart and the good
guys just like, well, I'm physically better than you, so I
win well. He's supposed to be a
journalist, but he doesn't seem like he's much of A journalist
to me. Superman.
He's a fascist. He creates the news and then
reports it I. Remember, I remember when the
(40:33):
journalists were super men. OK, this country no one, no one
wears, wears 4 room glasses and changes in a phone booth that he
wore. People don't want to work
anymore. I think you make a good point,
though. Donald Trump is the Batman of
our era. Yeah.
(40:54):
And, David, you were going to say something.
Oh, oh, OK. Here, let's do some fact
checking. All right.
OK All right. Hey, did you know that in in the
when when Superman was created and then in for 50 years, he had
a super intellect, which means he was supposed to be just as
smart as Lex Luthor. OK, yeah.
And then in the 80s, John Byrne was like, well, let's make him
(41:15):
not super smart. We'll just make him competent
because I don't know. I think John Byrne something
something Ronald Reagan, I thinkis the answer to that one.
I don't know. Is Superman the quintessential
almost story product where you want to say that literally
started at like the peak and hasonly been going downhill since?
Oh. Right.
(41:36):
Yeah, like people, right? Isn't that the kind of sentiment
like Superman sucks? So there are a lot of people who
don't like Superman, but I thinkit's also a lot of people don't.
Maybe they they don't read enough.
Superman, he's he's hard to write for, but he's also, I
think, very easy to write for. You just have to know what to do
with them. You, the original Superman, was
just a crusader of the people heran around and he punched.
(41:59):
He was like, oh, I'm going to break into the governor's
mansion to make sure that you pardon someone who didn't commit
the crime you're about to execute them for.
Oh, you're a wife beater. Well, I'm going to beat you
because I'm stronger and you're rude.
Also did a lot of punching of Nazis.
He did, you know, like there wasthis big thing in the Superman
radio show when they did, basically, hey, the Ku Klux Klan
(42:23):
is bad. And there were a lot of people
who got upset at that, I guess because they were racist.
But what's he done lately? What's he done lately?
Well, in the 90s he died. And then there's a new show that
people there's a new show we're.Going crazy for that Lois Lane.
And by crazy, I mean, you know, in a vertical repetitive motion
(42:46):
up and down on their crutch area.
You speak of Everyone in that show is in their early 20s
though, so it's fine. Yeah, the new.
Lois Lane looks a lot like Catwoman.
Actually, they kind of just stole Catwoman's design.
What's the new? What's the new show called My
Adventures With My. Adventures, yeah.
(43:08):
My adventures my right, It's a spin, remember?
So there was the original one adventures of It's all black and
white and then and then Dean Kane showed up and.
This is a cartoon, yeah. There is a live action show on
The CW just called Superman and Lois.
Yeah, which is sort of, but not really a spin off of Supergirl
(43:28):
because it's different continu. Who cares?
Who was the first cartoon crush that you?
Have rockadoodle the girl the like lady bird for.
Rockadoodle. Yeah, she was like a Hollywood.
She was like a starlet. Rogue from X?
I was way too fast with that answer, goddamn it.
(43:49):
No, I I also Alan you you did itcorrectly and I because I'd say
Rogue is a little Rogue is a bitof a cheat Rouge.
The bat is that. I feel like maybe I maybe I
should clarify which animal or anthropomorphic?
Oh yeah, Gadget from Rescue Rangers.
Boom there. It is.
That was very fast too. That's an early one for a lot of
people. I mean, there's a reason there's
(44:11):
a Russian cult around gadget so.I I did have a very strange I
guess you could call it, I'll call it a pre sexual experience
because I didn't comprehend my my brain couldn't make sense of
it. Just like so there's an episode
in Rescue Rangers where all the characters heads get like
swapped around on their bodies. Have you seen this episode?
(44:33):
Well, now you know what it's about and.
Spoilers. I was so fascinated by it like
for like in a physically like just visceral way.
Like I think, and it's mostly just because one like I think it
was Dale's head gets put on Gadget's body.
That was some like my my little.You know, 7 year old brain just
(44:56):
I was so enthralled by this thatwhen I had to, I had to go to
the bathroom. But I didn't want to miss
anything. So I went to the kitchen and I
grabbed the pot and I pissed in that so I could keep watching.
I didn't want to miss a second of this.
Rescue Rangers like what would you call it like body swap
flake? Yeah, it's like body mod, body
(45:18):
mod stuff. There's no name for this fetish.
No, no, There's one there's a Freud stage of.
Development Rescue Rangers to Africa, what it's called, yeah.
It's like, it's like kind of scaring me, though almost.
It's like I'm like picturing Jesse and his own like Human
Centipede. Like ever since I was a child, I
wanted to buy swap. And then I went back and watched
(45:43):
it on YouTube many years later because I was curious.
Like was it where I remember it was even?
Gadget is put on Dale's body andshe's like, Oh my God, I'm not
wearing any pants. Like, I'm Naked.
And she like, makes herself a little skirt out of, you know, I
think it was one of those paper cups that you put ketchup in at
in and out burger. She uses that for a skirt, but
(46:03):
that was very like erotic, A formative moment in your
development. Yeah.
I'm, you know, I'm sorry, I I asked.
I asked the question. Yeah, you asked the question.
Right. I don't know why I did.
Yeah. David, you had an answer.
Did I? I don't.
I don't think I do. Forget about it.
Yeah, is. This just a elaborate race for
(46:28):
kompromat. I I got.
I got a quick video game relatedquestion.
Yeah, that I think these freaks might be able to get down to.
Anyone here ever rock with the old earthworm Jim.
Yeah, that guy was nuts. I like that guy, man.
I like it. Yeah.
(46:48):
But do you know about the creator?
He's got to be a total creep, right?
Yeah. Unfortunately, he's such a
bummer. I didn't know that actually, but
that makes sense, yeah. He's like a proud boy or
something. I What is it?
I don't want to get this wrong. He does.
Yeah, he does lean a little, a little too far right on certain
(47:09):
things, unfortunately. Like, just the way he.
Better than too far wrong. He's, he's transphobic.
He is transposed, right? Because.
Very like, vehemently transphobic.
Yeah, he's. There's an.
Earthworm gym. Guy.
A man who had an earthworm and it's in an astronaut, right?
(47:29):
Right. Well, because he he is so known
for it, I guess because they also recently announced an
animated series, a new one, which I still hasn't come out.
Who knows if whoever will but when they announced it somebody
had to tweet at the official accountant is like hey what what
do you think about trans rights And so they had to make sure
that Earth from Jim said that trans rights are human rights
(47:50):
just to make sure you you knew it wasn't it wasn't the creator
behind it. So you know, they they want to,
they want to keep on doing Earthfrom Jim things.
It's very important to the transcommunity that they have the
support of this giant earthworm in an astronaut.
See. Well, cuz those the.
Cartoon was great. The cartoon was good too.
(48:10):
Yeah, The thing is too is like at the time, in the 90s, Sonic
was just one. Of many hot like, I feel like
there's not new characters like there were, but there was hot
new characters all the time in the 90s.
Sonic was one, Bubsy was another.
Earthworm Jim was a was a good. Yeah, we could.
We could really use TOE. Jam and Earl more than ever.
(48:32):
Oh. Man, I love those guys.
Hey, what about the creator of that came Many Evil.
And with the the skeleton? Yes, Sir Daniel Fortescue.
Is that guy a right winger? The game.
Kind of looks like Earth from gym with this weird, yeah, kind
of asymmetrical body and face, you know?
Who you're talking about the game with the skeleton, I don't
know what. Called Medieval, Medieval oh I.
(48:55):
Know medieval? Medieval, yeah.
Yeah, OK. I know this game.
I don't know anything about the people who made it all.
Right. I'm sorry, I had to realize.
Oh, that's OK. No, I shouldn't have brought up
Earth from gym. Yeah, I feel like you guys like
the customer service department for my own childhood, like, I'm
like, we could just go through. I want to.
My own childhood. And just ask questions about it
(49:16):
and you guys have all the answers.
Yeah, let's just go through the whole list like, hey guys,
remember Booger man? Of course you do.
Yeah. Yeah.
Booger man is kind of related toEarth from Jim, right?
Because a little bit, yeah. Jim had a booger that he would
swing off of or something. Oh yeah.
Oh, I do remember Booger man. Oh my God, so it's so dumb.
(49:37):
What was his secret identity? It's something that's a little
rude. Well it's a pick and flick
adventure. I played it a lot because for
some reason my mother bought it for me.
And of course when you were a child, you have like 3 games, so
you got to play what you got does.
The Sonic community have strong feelings on the video game uni
racer. Ooh, good question.
(49:59):
Was that just was that just Nintendo?
I think it was Nintendo and I'm,I feel like, pretty certain it
was probably a they're like we got to do, we got to answer this
Sonic challenge. Quick.
I don't know, but it was just itwas nicely.
Just a racing. Game No, I I remember that
because that was a game that they would have at Target like
in the display console. Yes, it looked visually, it
(50:23):
looked good. It just was like there was
nothing to it was like a pure weekend rental, you know what I
mean? Ooh ooh, it had a profanity
filter because it would be like choose your name and I'd be
like, you know, fuck. And it would say, not cool
enough. Choose a cooler name, right?
Nobody swore in the 90. When did Miles and Allen,
(50:43):
especially when did you guys check out of playing?
Do you still play games? I mean, you play games a little
bit, but I feel like. Last time I played a lot of
video games was when I was didn't have a full time job and
I was freelancing. Yeah.
And that was about six years ago.
Yeah. My first year of college, I was
playing Halo just online like for day.
(51:05):
I had to. I literally like, was like, I
have to stop playing video games.
And that was pretty That was thelast time, like really like had
a console and like, care or whatever.
Now every once in a while, it's like the last I've LA Noire got
me real bad and I like, had to, like figure out how to play LA
Noire. Besides that, I've like I'm
pretty checked out. That game is pretty fun.
(51:26):
I played Life is Strange recently, pretty much the whole
series, and really loved it. And yeah, that was the last game
that I played, I think, yeah. What do you guys do instead?
What do you you, you like, see people or you like?
You're You're exercising, you'rereading books, you're watching
films and TV, You're communicating with loved ones.
(51:49):
You're going on walks. You're creating new things.
You're all of the above. No, I'm just jerking off to
Sonic porn. Which is my love?
Those lie by lies, my loved ones.
I actually haven't played a lot of Uno.
Who knows? Really fun.
It's classic. You should play that Uno
Nintendo game as Music by Tim Fallin.
(52:10):
Speaking of music. Hey, does this mean we're over?
I'm afraid all the comedy has ended.
There's no more comedy. There's only be the bleak
sadness of existence. Well, I gotta say, I've had a
wonderful time, right? Yeah, I didn't know what to
(52:31):
affect. But you know what?
It's very fitting that this is aSonic podcast, cuz I felt like
this thing just we blew through it.
It was so went by. Still fat.
That's right. Yeah.
Two loop, 2 loops way up. Got all the Chaos Emeralds?
That's right, you need all 7. Thanks for thanks for doing the
(52:51):
show. Links are in the description to
see more from Alan Strickland Williams and A SW David.
What? What else can listeners do for
the podcast? Oh yeah, that's right.
Hey, if you enjoyed listening tothis, or if you enjoy Sonic the
Hedgehog, you can of course subscribe to this podcast on
your pod catcher of choice. Is that Spotify?
(53:13):
Is that iTunes? I don't know, because I'm not
you. But of course, if you do
subscribe, maybe you can also give us one of those sweet five
star reviews. You could write a review to.
You know, let people know that you're enjoying whatever the
heck happens there. And of course you can contact
us. You can e-mail
us.sonicweeklypodcast@gmail.com and that is how you get into the
(53:34):
good old Discord server. That's right, there's people in
there that talk about Sonic on occasion.
If you'd never want to talk about Sonic, don't join.
Why are you listening? I don't.
I don't know. Oh man.
I think Grant thanked our guestsalready.
I could thank them again. Still not sure who any of them
are, but that's fine. Maybe one day.
(53:56):
One day I'll know. And of course we got to thank
Smoothies movies for the edit. I.
Because without him, well, this would go out raw and and and
maybe that'd be a bit too, too uncomfortable.
You want to do the opposite of raw.
That's right. You want to cook things all the
way through. You want to make sure that
chicken is at temperature, otherwise you will get
(54:18):
salmonella and it doesn't taste as good as you think.
Oh yeah, go on, let's drive through.
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If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
New Heights with Jason & Travis Kelce
Football’s funniest family duo — Jason Kelce of the Philadelphia Eagles and Travis Kelce of the Kansas City Chiefs — team up to provide next-level access to life in the league as it unfolds. The two brothers and Super Bowl champions drop weekly insights about the weekly slate of games and share their INSIDE perspectives on trending NFL news and sports headlines. They also endlessly rag on each other as brothers do, chat the latest in pop culture and welcome some very popular and well-known friends to chat with them. Check out new episodes every Wednesday. Follow New Heights on the Wondery App, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to new episodes early and ad-free, and get exclusive content on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And join our new membership for a unique fan experience by going to the New Heights YouTube channel now!
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.