SI #140 – We Are So Very Ill-equipped For This Moment - Subtle Interference

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:19):
[Bob] I don't
[Erica] even know where to start this week. Oh, I know where to start. Oh, where do we start?
[Alex] There's a landscape. In L.A., that's just gone. I mean, it's crazy, Erica. I looked at some pictures and it was like an atom bomb went off. Yeah. It's just gone. It's gone. It's just there. You could see like frames of houses. Otherwise, they're gone. Right. Everything's gone. Maybe, like, a couple palm trees survived for whatever reason.

(00:58):
[Erica] Because, fuck you, right?
[Alex] Because some things are just making it through the apocalypse. Oh, is that your
[Erica] house with a bunch of precious family heirlooms that you weren't able to grab as you were fleeing for your life? This palm tree survived. Those didn't. It's so, like... I was watching, I'm trying not to like sit and doom scroll, right? Because it's so easy to just get sucked into it. And it's like half the stuff you see isn't even true. Like I saw that thing about like the firefighters budget getting cut and it's like, well, that didn't actually happen. it's it's there's so much misinformation out there and then you're seeing like we always talk about ai you're seeing some like fakes of like the fire like taking over like the hollywood sign and it's like that's not real that's not what happened we are so what what this the last couple days have shown is the challenges of this century. Your climate change, your AI, your massive misinformation campaign about everything. We are so ill-equipped for the moment we are so fucked alex

(02:14):
[Alex] oh yeah
[Erica] that it's not even like you kind of have to laugh about it
[Alex] oh you do yeah because if you don't because if
[Erica] you stop and you think about it for more than a few minutes it's depressing you're going to start to weep openly and like it's been people are like oh well just a bunch of rich people live there who cares of their houses it's not all rich people sure Like, sure, like the Palisades, whatever, Malibu.

(02:39):
[Alex] Yeah, I don't care about Paris Hilton's house burning.
[Erica] No, I don't give a fuck about that. But that Altadena neighborhood, that was like... that's normal people's houses like normal people live in la like there's pockets of rich people everywhere right there's rich fucks that live around in chicago there's certain areas and in the suburbs and shit there's rich pockets in la it's not all celebrities and rich fucks right well and

(03:04):
[Alex] you have all the insurance companies coming along and just canceling the insurance
[Erica] Well, I did see that I think Newsom said that's not allowed for like the next year. They can't do that. They made it illegal. They'll try. And then there's been like the rate hiking on like rentals and like Airbnbs and shit. And it's just like,
[Alex] yeah, take advantage.

(03:25):
[Erica] What the fuck, guys? Like. Money is not going to save you. You're never going to make enough for it to make a difference. Like, the only thing you can do in times like these is be kind. Not that there isn't kindness happening, but how are you out here like, yeah, you know, I've got a rental property. No one's in it right now. If somebody could really use it, I'm going to jack the rent by like $5,000. You're a monster.

(03:58):
[Alex] Yeah. There's not really another way to see that, but it is easy money. I mean, someone's going to pay that.
[Erica] I guess. i i need people to start getting like dragged into the street like the guy who was like posting about like oh where are the private firefighters that i can hire to save my my million bajillion dollar property i want that guy ripped out of his home and like shoved into the fire that's what i that's what i need to start seeing

(04:27):
[Alex] well there's there's a lot of stuff um I mean, I do think I hadn't heard about them trying to fight back against the insurance companies just coming along and being like, oh, you had fire insurance? Just kidding. Because in my mind, the justification for an insurance company being like, we're not going to honor your fire insurance is if you set the fire. Sure, an

(04:53):
[Erica] arson type situation.
[Alex] Right, that or maybe you accidentally, you leave a burner on, start a fire, you burn your damn house down. Maybe they come up with some sort of justification to not pay. This is a straight up act of God, right? Yeah, this is like, I mean, like literally. And so what are you as a person supposed to do? Stand outside your house with the fire hose?

(05:17):
[Erica] That's what people
[Alex] are doing. Yeah.
[Erica] It's it's insane. Well, and then you read they ran out of water, Alex.
[Alex] What are you supposed to do? Well, that's one of the things I read is, you know, people are talking about there was that stuff out there about the budget. And the truth is, the fire department's budget actually went up quite a bit year over year. And of course, just like any other budget. division of the government they always think they don't have enough budget and right now the la county fire chief is out there she's kind of trying to save her own ass and being like well we needed more people and you wouldn't approve a bigger budget so no one else no one first off you have the element of the politics where they're all playing the blame game right well and if i was

(06:01):
[Erica] her though i would be pissed off because you see all these right-wing assholes being like see she's a dei hire that's the problem
[Alex] you put that stupid yeah i mean that's like stupid shit but You know, I think... That's been
[Erica] Fox. Like, there was one person who was like, I think, speaking against it. But that's the line. Because we got to get into that too later with everybody bending the fucking knee.

(06:25):
[Alex] Well, so you have that element. You have the ridiculous, like, act of God element where not only the fires start, but they start on a day where there's 100 mile per hour winds. So they can't deploy the planes and the helicopters to help snuff out these fires right away. Can we talk about

(06:48):
[Erica] for a second how fucking cool those airplanes and those... those oh i mean
[Alex] whoever see i'm of the opinion i don't know who's flying those airplanes but those are like i bet you i wouldn't be shocked if those are air force pilots or something because they're dropping stuff like with pinpoint accuracy you see some of the maneuvers

(07:09):
[Erica] they're doing
[Alex] and how do you how hard must it be to do that well the winds are blowing and everything to be like like We've seen like episodes of The Challenge, right? Where they're hanging out of a helicopter and they have to drop a thing into a giant tube in the water and they're missing like 10 feet off the ground they're missing because the helicopter is shaking and moving. And there's wind and there's that. Right, there's wind. There's gravity to deal with. Exactly. You have all these elements and these dudes are out here like, here's my, you know, the red stuff, whatever it is, like that fire. The fire

(07:45):
[Erica] retardant.
[Alex] Right. Um... they're dropping it like they're hitting like the entire fire and you're like damn that's crazy it's so cool i'd fuck that up in a video game
[Erica] easily
[Alex] let alone real life
[Erica] crash dead yeah but then see if they do it and then they like juke back in such a way that they're like okay now i'm facing the way that i need to go and i'm gonna go get some more or watching the planes come down and scoop up the water that's so cool

(08:11):
[Alex] it's yeah i mean there's a lot of So I don't know who's doing all that, but I imagine they're either Air Force pilots or ex-Air Force or something. Well, and
[Erica] they've got, you've got folks from, I think they've sent from Canada. They've sent from Mexico. Yeah. You know. Well, they
[Alex] don't want it to spread to them either.
[Erica] No, but that's what you do though. You help your neighbors, right? Sure. You don't, you know, sit on the other coast and like. For another few weeks anyway. Bitch about everything. No, no, no. Alex, we, this is the thing. The way we're going to get through this is through kindness and through ridiculing this asshole with his tiny little hands and his little baby orange dick. That's how we're going to get through it. You got to ignore all that. We're going to annex Greenland and we're going to take back the Panama Canal because that's all madness. You can't pay attention to that shit. it's the what was the bill that they're trying to get through where it's like oh well you know if we just arrest somebody who might be here illegally we can just deport them without due process

(09:13):
[Alex] that's pretty sweet
[Erica] that's the bill they're trying to get through which a bunch of democratic senators voted for because for some reason we're all like yeah we're all in on becoming the republicans now because that's going to help you in the next fucking election
[Alex] yeah So you have those elements. I'm trying to think what else you have. I mean, the winds were crazy. I was watching video. It was like a literal fire tornado.

(09:42):
[Erica] Yeah, I've seen
[Alex] that. Outside of McDonald's or something. Yeah, I've seen
[Erica] that video. And you're just like, what do you do? What do you fucking do? Also, first off,
[Alex] whatever idiot was sitting there filming that, thank you, but also you're a moron.
[Erica] There's some where you're just like, my dude, get the fuck out of there. What are you doing?
[Alex] yeah and
[Erica] obviously somehow we got the video got out so

(10:03):
[Alex] the other thing the politicians are blaming the lack of manpower on is the fact that there's been prison reforms in california so they've let out a bunch of the people who could have been used as slave firefighters don't even
[Erica] fucking get me started on the slave firefighters like what the fuck that's how fucked up this country is

(10:27):
[Alex] And again, this is just like this is like anything else. If if airlines can only operate with bailouts and one bad day kills the whole industry, then, you know, you shouldn't just you shouldn't be allowed to operate.
[Erica] Right.
[Alex] And if let's say, you know, if you want to say we don't have enough budget and we can't hire enough people. Well, then the argument you should be out there making is, is we can't function without slave firefighters. So we need more people like these dudes are literally making a dollar an hour to go out there and fight. Risk

(11:02):
[Erica] their fucking lives.
[Alex] Fuck that.
[Erica] Yeah, absolutely not.
[Alex] They call, I'm in the prison and they're like, hey, anyone want to fight some fires for a dollar an hour? That's a pass. No,
[Erica] I'm good. Thank you.
[Alex] I'll work in the kitchen.
[Erica] Thanks. Right. Well, maybe, you know, the fucking police department doesn't need, you know, military grade equipment and we can actually, you know, put that budget where it needs to go to actually help people.

(11:27):
[Alex] Yeah, and unlike the police who have just their ranks filled with assholes, I think most firefighters are generally good people. At least in my experience.
[Erica] From what I've... I'm sure we've talked about it on here before. My dad is a firefighter. Our two uncles are firefighters. And best seat at a party. You

(11:49):
[Alex] get some great stories. Well, and I've met a lot of, you know, I've done work with my uncle's side business, and I've met a lot of firefighters through that, and they were always really nice guys. For
[Erica] the
[Alex] most part? They're flawed like all other humans. Of course,
[Erica] but they're not getting into it because I want to be able to, like, wield a gun and rough up black people, right?

(12:10):
[Alex] sure
[Erica] you don't have the the poison of white supremacy that's and it's there of course it's there because it's every facet of our society but that's not the major motivating reason why you're a firefighter you're a crazy person first of all because you're like yeah i'll run into a burning building well yeah you have to
[Alex] be sick it's like it's like a hockey goalie You have to be out of your mind to wake up, especially as a child, because that's when it starts, right? Right. You have to be completely out of your mind to say, yeah, I like it when people shoot the big hard rubber puck 50 miles an hour at me when I'm a kid, let alone when you're an adult. I want to wear 60 pounds of

(12:45):
[Erica] gear.
[Alex] Now it's flying like 100 miles per hour at you. Yeah, what a great time.
[Erica] But firefighter is also one of those only jobs anymore that still has a pension. You get paid pretty well as a firefighter. Yeah. you you risk a lot so you're paid accordingly but you know but they actually is a it's a value add to society in my view

(13:09):
[Alex] yeah i agree and you know you'll want them there when a fire starts absolutely but the problem is is when the fire is so ridiculous that yeah you literally don't have enough water to deal with it and i mean at the end of the day I was reading about this. There was some professor from UCLA that was commenting for some article and he was like, there's no fire repellent system in the world that could have dealt with what's happened here. There's nothing. It doesn't matter how much water you have. It doesn't matter what's in place. There's nothing that could possibly prepare you for this level of fires breaking out. And it's not like they broke out in like one place. They broke out in like five different, there's like five different major fires. And I don't know, I didn't read about it today, so I don't know what's changed. But I know as of yesterday, they were talking about the fires are only like 8% contained. Which is wild to think about, that they're still raging that much. Because they were talking about, like, football fields burning in, like, minutes. Like, football field-sized tracks of rain. Because it

(14:13):
[Erica] hasn't rained in months.
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] There's no water.
[Alex] Maybe you know the answer. Why can't they just, like, pull water out of the ocean? I'm an idiot. I haven't looked this up.
[Erica] Well, I mean, they are for when they're doing, like, the drops, right? Yeah.
[Alex] I guess.
[Erica] But, I mean, how do you do that? Right? Because the ocean is only right here. Our hoses only go so far.

(14:41):
[Alex] Right, you still have to push the water there.
[Erica] Right, there has to be pressure in some way. Yeah.
[Alex] So I don't know. I'm too... I need to look that up because I am curious. Right. Because I'm so stupid. But...
[Erica] Well, and the impulse is because I have a couple friends out there. You want to, like, keep checking in, but it's... You know, they're just getting inundated. So it's just like... And they get enough to fucking worry about it. They don't need to be constantly... And then also,

(15:03):
[Alex] like, what can you really do? I mean, if you... That's what I said. If you live out there, you know, you just have to have stuff ready to go. Mm-hmm. And I guess you wait until it's kind of like, hey... It's coming. You know, like what else can you do? Right. Because it's beyond just like where the fires are burning because infrastructure is getting beat up too, right? So you have a lot of people whose power is out and things like that. Well, and then those

(15:33):
[Erica] places that are evacuating, traffic's bad. There was that one video out of the Pacific Palisades, I think, where they showed there was like a bulldozer like moving the cars out of the street because people had to get out of their cars because the fire was coming.
[Alex] Right. It was like you just got to
[Erica] run. Yeah.
[Alex] That's an actual hellscape. It's crazy.
[Erica] Well, and it's not going to get better. Unless we start to do something. And we're not going to do anything the next four years. Because it's a hoax.

(16:02):
[Alex] We're going to blame people.
[Erica] Right. But it's all a big hoax. And, oh, there's nothing we can do. And, oh, the Green New Deal is too expensive. But let's give billions and billions of dollars of tax cuts to these rich motherfuckers. Alex, I need people to start being like, yeah, it doesn't have to be this bad.
[Alex] Well, I was saying last night when, you know, I had read about the insurance companies like just canceling the insurance on like hundreds of thousands of people or something. I was like, you know, do it because what's going to happen is, is you're going to create the next Luigi. because just you just keep doing stuff like this to people and you know when when the when politics fail i love that this is our

(16:46):
[Erica] shorthand now oh yeah luigi i love it i love it because i'm thinking the same thing right it's my guy
[Alex] but
[Erica] we are a pro luigi podcast
[Alex] absolutely i will hang that jury get me on that jury oh i would never under any circumstances vote guilty for that class traitor if you show me the video with his clear face of him blowing that guy in the bat and not blowing him in the back but shooting him in the back

(17:12):
[Erica] that's an ai deep fake how can you prove that's real
[Alex] yeah that that looks i've seen stuff like that online that
[Erica] looks fake that's fake that's not real
[Alex] but um I think you keep doing stuff like this and you're going to create the next Luigi because we've learned, you know, it doesn't matter who you vote for. They're not going to help you. No. You know, I mean, Trump's already in there. He's talking about he's not even in there yet. And he's already talking about, well, there's nothing I can do about the grocery prices. and i can't i can't end the war in ukraine uh and i can't do anything about the general cost of goods rising and i have no plans to do anything to increase your wages so basically i have no plans to do anything other than oh i'm gonna you know cut taxes on my buddies

(17:57):
[Erica] so i'm gonna cut taxes and i'm gonna make sure that i don't have any there's no consequences to my actions
[Alex] Well, and this is why he's talking about the Panama Canal stuff and the Greenland stuff, because he wants to pull attention onto those. I mean, we could say whatever we want about Trump, but there is a method to the madness. Oh, sure. And they know they can't do any of the things they said they were going to do. So now they're going to try to, like, start up wars in other places and all this crazy shit to pull attention away. But...

(18:26):
[Erica] You know what, though, Alex? I would hope. I would hope. And I know it's not because, like... the news is is is garbage now and nobody listens they have like they let's get from joe rogan and it's like no one cares but it's like you would think if in the next two years nothing changes and everything just stays the same as it was can we start like and but the shitty thing is is it's like we're gonna vote for the democrats

(18:55):
[Alex] Well, what we need at this point is we need someone who's really popular to come along and start a third party. And yeah, that third party isn't... And not like the bullshit scams with like... No, not what's her name. What's her name? That's
[Erica] the Russian plant. None of that fucking
[Alex] garbage. None of that shit. But, you know... Stein. Jill Stein. Yeah, yeah. That's just a blatant scam. But... What you need is you need honestly, you need someone who's ultra popular, like a celebrity, like The Rock or something to come along and be like, fuck this party. Fuck that party. We need to do something new because this isn't working for the American people. And that's the only way it's going to work. I mean, if Trump would have came along with all his popularity 10 years ago and everything he was saying, because he was telling people what they wanted to hear. Maybe he doesn't, you know, beat the Democrats or the Republicans if he runs as a third party. But especially this time. Could you imagine this time if he had decided to run as a third party? I mean, he could have maybe taken 30, 40 percent of the vote just as a third party. So... I think someone needs to come along who's really popular and you have to run on the populist messaging. You have to say all the things that people want to hear. We're going to do Medicaid for all. You could even start in with the UBI stuff if you want to try that. I don't know if that's as universally popular as Medicaid for all is. But you

(20:32):
[Erica] got to start somewhere.
[Alex] You got to start messaging onto the things that actually help people. And the thing is of the third party, because you have no ties to anything, you can just say whatever you want, really. And then worry later about what you'll do if you actually get in there. But someone's got to try to do something from a third party perspective, because it's clear at this point, you've got the Republicans and they're just going to keep moving right and right and right. And then the Democrats plan to also move right to keep like the distance between them and the Republicans about the same where it always is. And there's just no one representing the

(21:09):
[Erica] left,
[Alex] the left at all. No. In the country. So
[Erica] I've told this because I keep hearing from older folks that we know who are just like, well, the reason they lost is this is all these progressives. And it's like one, the race was not as big of a blowout. It was scary. Trump did not win by as much as people perceive him to have won. No, because they only know

(21:33):
[Alex] what happened like in the first day or
[Erica] two. Right. A lot of people stayed home because they didn't like the messaging from the Democrats. Because you can't get out there and be campaigning with Liz Cheney. You can't be Republican light. I don't want Republican light. I don't want that. Right. And if you're going to abandon the very few progressive policies that you do hold, if we're going to be like, well, it's the trans people lost us the election. So fuck them now. We don't care about them anymore. Right. I don't want to be part of that coalition. Yeah. I don't want to be part of the coalition that leaves anybody behind.

(22:11):
[Alex] Yeah. So. I agree with you. And yeah, I think I think you said it. I mean, the issue is there's no one that really represents, I think, a large majority, not majority, I won't say, but a large percentage of the country doesn't feel represented at all in elections.
[Erica] Well, I need somebody who's going to start being like. Climate change is here, and if we don't do something, at least try it. We're fucked like you realize like

(22:41):
[Alex] and even here in a plain state we're fucked in a different way right because I don't know if you I don't know what statistically it looked like but it sure felt like we were getting a lot of tornado sirens this year.
[Erica] Yeah.
[Alex] And, you know, with the thing with the fun thing with the tornado is you just kind of chill out in your home and you just kind of like
[Erica] hope for the best.
[Alex] Right. Well, I hope it doesn't touch down directly on my house. And, you know, one of these days you could just be unlucky. It could drop down right on your home. And that's that. You're done because you ain't living through the tornado. um unless it decides to just bless you you know but right it's like we've got it bad here too in a different way you know if you live on the coast you have to deal with hurricanes if you live in certain parts of california you're on fault lines and you're just waiting for the big one you know if you're

(23:35):
[Erica] There's nothing you can do about that, though. Right. Like, climate change is something that we can affect and help and change. Even as bad as it's gotten, they've said, like, there's still, you can still do stuff to help.
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] Earthquake just gonna earthquake, unless you're fracking nearby. That's a different story.

(23:55):
[Alex] But all these companies are doing stuff that are just, you know, helping make things worse. Well, this
[Erica] is the thing. And then they're like,
[Alex] but you need to recycle. That's gonna do it.
[Erica] Yeah. It's the plastic straws, Alex. That's the problem.
[Alex] It makes me angry every time I'm watching an NFL game and there's like the latest tragedy and they're going, oh, you know, you can donate to the Red Cross here or whatever. You donate, bitch. Right. You donate. Yeah,

(24:24):
[Erica] you donate.
[Alex] You do it. You guys have so much money. You're
[Erica] billionaires.
[Alex] That you could never spend it even if you wanted to. And your income from owning NFL teams is so crazy that you can't outspend what's coming in. So you go take $100 million, you go throw it over there. You go take $100 million, you throw it over there. Because that's the other thing. All these guys, right? It's not only their NFL team that's like making shit loads of money.

(24:54):
[Erica] They're all over the place. There's a
[Alex] reason they had shit loads of money to buy the NFL team. Right,
[Erica] exactly. Well, and it's like I'm sitting here and I'm looking at these because like there's a few people in the critical role sphere who lost their houses or are displaced right now. There's a few from Dropout, the other thing I watch, that they've lost their houses. And I'm like, I'm looking at these GoFundMes and I'm like, I can't give to everything.

(25:19):
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] And it's like you want to because you want to help. You want to do something, but you can't. Right. And it's like, why should it be on us? You shouldn't have to be like because these people might get fucked out of like whatever insurance that they might have had because did they have time to go through their house and document everything that they have before they ran out?

(25:42):
[Alex] It's very frustrating to just look at the world because you have your Bezoses and your Zuckerbergs and your Musks and they have so much money. And they could solve so many problems if they wanted to. Even all of
[Erica] them.
[Alex] Even a Gates and a Warren Buffett. Like, have they done good with their charity work? Yeah. But they could even be doing a lot more if they chose to.

(26:10):
[Erica] Why do you need one? No one needs a billion dollars. You don't need that much money.
[Alex] You just don't. The moment you hit, in my mind, the moment you hit a billion dollars in income, it's just the tax rate should be 100%. And really, when you get above like $10 million of income in a year, the tax rate should be like 90% already. Yep, I agree with

(26:34):
[Erica] you. You have
[Alex] no need. This is the thing, okay? It's like, I know we already agree on this, so I'm just preaching to the choir. Oh, this is Subtle Interference, a
[Erica] podcast of the proletariat, by the way.
[Alex] When you're taxing, you know, someone goes and they make $50,000 a year. But then after taxes, they bring home $35,000. That $15,000 is like such a big deal. But when you're making... $20 million a year, and let's say your take home then was $12 million off the 20 you just made, you're still filthy rich. Like, yeah, if I was making $20 million a year, would I be happy that $8 million went to taxes? Of course I wouldn't. But you know what? You still have $12 million. I still have $12 million, and I'm going to swim in my vault of gold coins just the same as I was going to either way. Mm-hmm. And the bigger problem would be, and this is where you would actually like to see someone who actually did want to help to make things better in some ways. Because, see, like, we already know what the deal is with Musk. He just wants to infiltrate the government to make himself more money. He doesn't want to do it to save the fucking world. If I were if I had Elon Musk money and I was like, damn, I don't want to pay all these fucking taxes on what I'm making. Not because, you know, I'm greedy or something, because I just figure you guys are all corrupt. And if I give you five hundred million dollars, you're just going to line your own pockets and throw it out the window. And that is what happens, of course. But that would be my frustration. And that's when I would band together with the other billionaires. I'd be like, hey. We could like do something with this money rather than just fucking do it, just throwing it right out the window, which is where it happens to it now. But instead, they all just want to like get together and like buy land in Hawaii or buy land in Finland or something and build like... bomb shelters and like utopia bunkers for when the whole world finally comes for them

(28:47):
[Erica] but also like you realize that when the world like ends and you're in the bunker okay How long is your power going to last? How long is your food going to last?
[Alex] Well, I would assume in theory they've built them in such a way to be self-sustaining.
[Erica] Sure, but also, like, do you have people, like, who work for you in those bunkers? Well,

(29:09):
[Alex] you're going to have to take care of those people.
[Erica] How long are they going to tolerate that shit?
[Alex] Better be nice to those people.
[Erica] Right?
[Alex] Oh,
[Erica] I need you to run out into the apocalypse hellscape to grab something for me.
[Alex] How about no? But it's even like, you know, the owner of Valve, Gabe Newell. It's like, I have no problem with him. When he talks, he seems like a nice enough guy. He didn't need like eight yachts. You could have done something with that money. And is he out there like, you know, negatively affecting outcomes in the world? No, not as far as I'm aware. But that's still like, to me, I wouldn't want eight cars. let alone eight yachts. No. I don't want a boat. To wake up and go to the fucking dock and there's like your eight yachts and be like, hmm, I think I want that one today. I just feel like it's like some horrible. It's just that pure hellscape. I don't know what to even say about it. I just can't even imagine being in that mindset. Like my idea of

(30:16):
[Erica] one yacht. You've got a yacht. What do you need another yacht for? You
[Alex] know what? You made steam. You made half life. You made shit loads of money. You should reward yourself. Let's have one yacht.
[Erica] Well, that's not even to say, like, no one's saying, like, oh, no, these people should be, like, living in poverty. No, you have enough money where you could give a significant amount back and help people and still be very comfortable. You

(30:39):
[Alex] could do both.
[Erica] And who knows? Maybe he does donate money. I have no idea.
[Alex] Right. But
[Erica] you ate? Eight yachts. Seven wasn't enough?
[Alex] I think the thing is, I mean, he's not out there publicly, you know, making himself look like an asshole. So who knows what he's up to. But when you have your, you know, you have your Bezos's building like their clocks into mountains and they're building their dick rockets and everything. Oh, get on the

(31:07):
[Erica] dick rocket and just go to space and die, please. These are not
[Alex] people you can tell just from their public facing persona. These are not people who have set out to help anyone.
[Erica] No, not at all. It's these guys who were part of that initial like web boom who think that they're all smarter than everybody else, but just happened to get lucky.
[Alex] Yeah.

(31:27):
[Erica] Had some, you know, mommy and daddy money that helped them to get started.
[Alex] Right.
[Erica] Right place, right time. And okay, here we go. You're not special.
[Alex] Well, and we've already seen it with Musk. He can just eat, you know, ridiculous amounts of losses on Twitter because it doesn't matter. He's already got unlimited money. So he can turn that machine and use it for his evil purposes, and it doesn't matter. It has no effect on him, and really in many ways. I mean, we have to see, like, kind of what he gets out of Trump because I still think Trump is going to get tired of him eventually. Wouldn't

(32:07):
[Erica] he? you
[Alex] but you wouldn't want to be around that I would have been tired of him day one but
[Erica] well didn't he have like a he was on like playing a video game the other day or some shit oh I can tell you about that yeah please let's finish our thoughts here
[Alex] but well so we're to go all the way back because I'm just on a rambles fest here Not that I ever do that on this podcast. No,
[Erica] we're very focused and clear, and we don't jump around on this podcast.

(32:29):
[Alex] To go all the way back, you have voting, and what we've learned is voting doesn't matter. Maybe at a local level it would, but in terms of at a national level, we've learned these people aren't going to help you. Your vote is essentially meaningless. And then, you know, you have your other aspect, which is the justice system. And when all these businesses come in and they do a bunch of terrible shit and they do a bunch of illegal shit, you know, at least in like South Korea, when the Samsung executives go and do a bunch of shit that's against the law, they throw their asses in jail. Now, is it probably the sweetest jail you've ever been to? I have no idea.

(33:08):
[Erica] There's still a punishment.
[Alex] At least there's some sort of public facing punishment and some sort of accountability here. Evil rich guys and corporations do a bunch of terrible shit. And it's like, oh, we find you five million dollars on your two hundred million dollars of profits that were ill gotten. It's like.

(33:29):
[Erica] Okay.
[Alex] What?
[Erica] That's just cost of doing business at that point. Yeah.
[Alex] That's like a tax.
[Erica] I saw something about like the Walt Disney Corporation had withheld like a ton of money from like wages and shit. And I saw somebody post and it was like, yeah, they had to pay it all back, whatever. But somebody was like, if someone stole five, five hundred, a hundred dollars from like their job at like a Disney park, that person would go to jail.

(33:59):
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] Like, it's just so, it's become so apparent. And it always has been apparent, but just more so in the last couple months. Just the two tiers of it all, right? Where it's like, oh, well, we can do whatever we want because we have money and we're rich and it doesn't matter what we do because, you know, we're the important ones. And then there's all you little peons down here and no one gives a shit about you.

(34:23):
[Alex] Right, you have, I mean, we could boil it down real simple. My guy, Luigi, our guy, Luigi, goes and shoots one piece of shit in the back, and they're going to try to throw the book at him and lock him up and throw away the key. That perp walk, man. And meanwhile, oh, that was just, when he's sitting in the courtroom and there's like four cops on top of him. Like

(34:45):
[Erica] standing like right, it's like, where do you think this guy is going?
[Alex] This must be the scariest man to ever exist. It really is like they caught Batman.
[Erica] No, it's like they caught the Joker. It's how they're acting. And it's like you're only making him seem more rad. You realize this, right?
[Alex] But on the other hand, they're going to try to throw the book at him and lock him up for life. But we're not going to do anything about the health insurance company that's indirectly or directly, depending on how you want to look at it. Oh, it's directly. They didn't grab the gun and shoot you in the back, but they made decisions that have led to God knows how many people dying. That's why whenever anybody

(35:23):
[Erica] is like, well, I don't condone death. I'm like, oh, great. So then you don't condone what the health care industry does on a daily basis.
[Alex] Right. This is
[Erica] one rich fuck who died. I don't give a shit about him.
[Alex] Yeah. And nothing's going to change unless you really. So this is what I'm getting to is we're at the point now as a society. And this is late stage capitalism. And this is why the whole thing is starting to fall apart at the seams where now we've learned politics don't work. And we've learned the justice system doesn't work. And not that we didn't know these things already, but it's becoming more and more and more apparent. When the

(35:57):
[Erica] guy who gets to be president gets like, okay, well, you have a criminal record now, but you don't face any consequences. You
[Alex] were convicted on 38 felonies, but there's literally nothing. No consequences. Not a fine.
[Erica] No, and you still get to be president.
[Alex] Yeah, not a jail sentence, not a fine, not a slap on the wrist, literally nothing.
[Erica] There are felons in this country who cannot vote, but you can be a felon and be the president.

(36:21):
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] That's great.
[Alex] Oh, and he can still vote.
[Erica] Oh, of course he can.
[Alex] Well, he's the
[Erica] president, Alex. We can't have the president not vote.
[Alex] So we really are at the point that it really does feel like all that's left is vigilante justice. And, you know, instead of what we need, what we honestly do need is instead of, you know, the fantasy at this point would be instead of a Zuckerberg going and buying up like half of an island in Hawaii to build some evil complex, you need him to take all that money and actually become Batman, right? or iron man or something because they could do it oh yeah they just choose not to choose not to right so that's basically what you have to hope for at this point because all that's left now is and it has to get to like a boiling point right you really do i was joking last night but also not joking because some countries they don't put up with this shit as like we do

(37:21):
[Erica] france we needed to get
[Alex] real bad in a place like france where they start dragging them out in the street and beheading because that's what we should be doing here that's what we should have been doing here like a decade ago
[Erica] during the 2008 recession you should have been dragging those people out who caused that and yeah they should have been murdered in the streets

(37:42):
[Alex] And we're really at a point where all the systems are failing, so all that is left is you have to start killing until the message gets through. Which
[Erica] is kind of what happened at the start of labor unions and shit. It used to be, okay, here are our demands. You're not going to meet it. Okay, well, we're going to drag you out of your house and beat the shit out of you until you feel unsafe enough that you agree with us. If that's what needs to happen again, I'm all for it. Because fuck these people. Why am I supposed to have empathy for these people who have no empathy for anybody else?

(38:23):
[Alex] You really are at the point where, as a society, we need, like, the mob to reappear and just take over a city.
[Erica] Oh, you mean, like, the mafia? Yeah. Not just the mob. No, no, the mafia. The mafia needs to show up. I'd be into that. Let's go. Just take
[Alex] over a city. Be like, you guys have failed completely.
[Erica] Yeah, this is us now. You don't get to come here. And we weren't even at Inauguration Day yet, Alex. But that's a symptom, and it's not the cause. Yeah.

(38:52):
[Alex] so when it comes to musk what was what's been going on the past couple months or so is first he had claimed he was like the number one diablo 4 player like whatever this end game mode is you have to clear like it's basically in diablo 4 it's like it's a certain dungeon if you can clear it the higher difficulty you can clear it in the time you clear it at would be you're standing on a leader

(39:20):
[Erica] can we say one thing before you get into this if you are the acting ceo of multiple companies you do not have the time to be playing video games well
[Alex] you do you do because well i'm gonna get it you're gonna enjoy this but
[Erica] go ahead
[Alex] um i
[Erica] just because i've been trying to like

(39:41):
[Alex] but it actually just shows how little these guys actually do
[Erica] no right exactly
[Alex] But no. So the moment he started making this claim, I think anyone who has two brain cells to rub together is like he ain't playing on that fucking account. You know, he found some dude. He paid him, hopefully, a lot of money to spend 24 hours a day or probably multiple people. Spend 24 hours a day grinding the shit out of that account. Because believe me, I know how long this shit takes. And trust me, it's like literally 20 hours a day. So...

(40:19):
[Erica] I hope he at least gives them health insurance or pays them enough that they can get good health insurance. I hope they're at
[Alex] least getting paid decently. Although if I had to guess, the answer is no. Probably not, knowing that douchebag. So I don't think anyone had ever really watched him play Diablo 4. I think he streams sometimes, but I think Diablo just being a simpler game by nature. Could you

(40:41):
[Erica] imagine? Like, oh, I'm going to put on a stream and watch Elon Musk play video games. I would rather have each of my fingers chopped
[Alex] off. But there's a cult of personality. I
[Erica] know that there is. I don't get it. And I get most things.
[Alex] A lot of people out there have convinced themselves that he's a genius and they don't know all the nonsense he's up to or all the stupid shit he does. I

(41:06):
[Erica] understand that we're like terminally online. Like online entirely too much and really shouldn't be online as much as I'm online. So I know more and I'm aware of more of this useless nonsense that does nothing good for me. It just makes me mad all the time.
[Alex] Sure.
[Erica] And so when other people are like... I think one of my friends today, I had a happy Operation Pitfall Day, Alex. Very important date in Pacific Rim history. This was the day that they closed the breach. Like the actual day, year. We watched the movie earlier with some friends. Delightful. Because you have to find your little motes of light in the darkness, Alex. And that stupid movie makes me very happy. They didn't know that Elon Musk was not actually the founder of Tesla. They only found out recently that he bought that name or bought the title of founder and the two dudes who actually did found it cannot call themselves the founders. Right. Because that's all that he does. He doesn't make anything. You know what he makes? He makes the Cybertruck.

(42:11):
[Alex] Oh, by the way, I read they've stopped the production lines for the Cybertruck because they can't sell the stock they have.
[Erica] Because why? Alex, one, it's the ugliest car I've ever seen in my life. It is
[Alex] very ugly, and it's built like shit.
[Erica] It's not well built. And
[Alex] it's ridiculously expensive.
[Erica] You can get...
[Alex] It's the perfect representation of America as it stands.

(42:33):
[Erica] It is, yes. Literally any time I see one, I point and laugh. It's probably going to get me shot one day, but you know what? I'll go out doing something I love, laughing at idiots. I can't wait to see them after the winter, after the salt has ravaged the bodies. What?
[Alex] So, this was one of his claims, okay? And I, you know, like I said, I think everyone knew he was full of shit, but whatever. It's like, have your stupidity, who cares? Well, the new one was recently, you know, Path of Exile 2 came out. Not really came out a month or so ago, but it's in early access. Mm-hmm. And so now he's claiming he's one of the top Path of Exile 2 players. But he made a mistake, Erica. He put up a stream. And it was very clear that on his end, he had no idea what the fuck was going on. Even though he had this ridiculously incredible account. The type of account that you would know. You would know exactly... All the intricate details of how Path of Exile works to have an account like this. You don't trip and fall your way into like, basically the way Path of Exile works has always worked is you have levels, which is like your character level, right? And some gear has like required levels on it. right like you need to be level 45 to equip this piece or something sure games

(43:57):
[Erica] do that yeah
[Alex] right but um there's also the item level and that's actually the reality of how good the piece could potentially be is the item level and so he had some pieces that were incredibly well rolled like God to your god to your crazy ass You would never even dream of being able to replace this piece pieces of gear and he was on the stream He was looking at the gear and he's like, oh the piece this piece is only level 52 I'm gonna need to replace that and it's like No, you dumb bitch that gears incredible. You can never replace it,

(44:35):
[Erica] right?
[Alex] So and then it was there was other stuff like he's playing and it was clear. There was no loot filter so on path of exile When you're playing, a ton of bullshit is popping out of monsters, but there's really only certain things you're actually looking for. So everyone, especially at the top end, like when you're in end game, you play with loot filters on. So your screen isn't literally filled with bullshit. Okay. So you can actually see what matters. Sure. And he was walking by like all these valuable currencies that had dropped and he didn't have any idea what his gear was or how his character worked. And he went into his stash at one point and there was a stash tab literally called Elon's maps. Like levels for Elon to go play on that he could play on. And it's like, Erica, when you've played any sort of game, do you ever rename a tab? No. In any game, in any game's bank, do you ever go into it and do you name it Erica's blank?

(45:41):
[Erica] No.
[Alex] No. No one would ever do that.
[Erica] No.
[Alex] Not even a maniac.
[Erica] And it's just like, dude, who fucking cares if you're good at Path of Exile 2?
[Alex] Nobody.
[Erica] Who fucking cares? Some
[Alex] nerds. Nobody cares.
[Erica] What do you care? So like
[Alex] good. Well, at some point someone like whispered the account trying to like sell something or whatever. And the accounts like default replies were in Chinese, which would make you think that basically whoever normally plays on the account speaks Chinese is more comfortable playing in Chinese. so there was like a bunch of stuff like that i don't need to sit here and break the whole thing down but it was basically a bunch of stuff that made it very obvious he has no idea how to play the game he certainly has no idea how to play well enough to have like an insanely powerful account like he does he just paid some dudes or a group of dudes to make the account great yeah and like look if i you know If I were ridiculously rich and I didn't have the time to actually, you know, do all this grinding, maybe I would pay somebody to grind out my account and make it crazy. But I wouldn't go around saying I did it.

(46:58):
[Erica] Right.
[Alex] You know.
[Erica] it's it's such it's a level of pathetic that's just like dude it's just sad you own the
[Alex] universe who fucking cares well it's like something where he's worried about what other people think of him and like i i just don't
[Erica] like isn't the point of having that much money not

(47:20):
[Alex] not give a 50 million dollars there was nothing you could say to me that would hurt my feelings at that point i would also let alone if i had 50 billion dollars
[Erica] it would just be like okay i'm gonna go to that like private like you know fucking manse that i own that no one knows where it is except for the people that i know and care about you need like a special aircraft to get there i'm gonna go live there and you're never gonna hear about me ever again And I'm going to be happy and alone. And I'm going to make sure everybody that I care about is taken care of. And then try and do some good in the world. But I'm not going to be out here like, oh, and I'm good at video games. Please like me. It's pathetic.

(48:08):
[Alex] Yeah, exactly. To what you're saying. If I, for some reason, sold something to Microsoft and they gave me a billion dollars for it. No one would ever hear from me again. Never again. I would vanish into the ether. I'd take care of my friends. I'd hang out with my friends. But there'd be, like, random Joe Schmoe who I didn't want anything to do with before would never hear from me. Yeah, no, not at all. And I certainly wouldn't be out there trying to, like, negatively impact the world for everyone else.

(48:40):
[Erica] Right. Like, oh, hey, by the way, I'm super pro-Nazi. Hey!
[Alex] i don't know it's just it really is like you're just watching this society crumble around us
[Erica] well and then like fucking zuckerberg like being like
[Alex] oh man he hung out with those mma dudes too much he got it's so it really is so funny he must have got hit in the head a few times got a few concussions while he was rolling and hung out with the mma bros and all of a sudden him and dana white are best pals and he's hanging out with rogan and he's all in on the trump train yep it's so crazy how it's funny how easily people are influenced by the ones around them

(49:32):
[Erica] Yeah, especially these people who are supposed to be like titans of industry and I'm so influential and it's like you are all pathetic incels who like, you know what Facebook was originally started for was to like rank the hotness of women at Harvard.
[Alex] I mean, that's important.

(49:53):
[Erica] Oh,
[Alex] obviously.
[Erica] Very important. But, like, these are not... These are just idiots who got lucky. Like, you're never going to convince me that these are, like, the most brilliant... No, they're not. No. Say what you want about Bill Gates, and there's lots to say there. He actually made something.
[Alex] Well, he kind of stole the

(50:14):
[Erica] boss. He stole it, too. Sure.
[Alex] Sure.
[Erica] I don't know. I'm just... Yuck. Yeah, I don't know.
[Alex] Who stole the idea for the mouse from like From, like, Kodak. It was either Gates or Steve Jobs. One of them just straight up stole the idea for the mouse.

(50:35):
[Erica] But even that goes back to, like, fucking Nikolai Tesla, the actual dude who would be appalled if this asshole was naming cars after him. And Edison. Edison was just stealing shit wholesale from Tesla and being like, look at how smart I am. But then we all buy into the myth, and it's just like...

(50:55):
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] The great man, Alex. I did it all myself with no help from anybody.
[Alex] No, and I certainly didn't step on anybody.
[Erica] No, because I'm the specialist little boy and you should all love me so much because my dad didn't. Should I have rewatched because you watched it? I've watched Deadpool and Wolverine.

(51:17):
[Alex] Okay, let me tell you, what was the line near the start of the movie? It was so good. One of them, it's when he's at his party, the birthday party, and he's talking to someone. It might have been like, who's the big guy all covered in steel? Colossus. Colossus, yeah. I'm so bad with names.
[Erica] oh was it when they were talking about great british baking show and he's like it's kept me from killing myself for like a year

(51:40):
[Alex] he's like that staved off my suicide that staved off my suicide for a decade alex i was
[Erica] like i was laughing so i like was crying in the theater at that line because i'm like that hits a little too close to home What you had texted me, you were like, oh, hey, I finally watched this. And I think I forget exactly what you said. You were like, it was brilliant. And I'm like, I don't know if that's sarcasm, but then you're like, no, no, I actually did really like it, which made me happy.

(52:06):
[Alex] I mean, there was so much good stuff. Whoever the intro... I mean, so obviously if you haven't seen Deadpool versus Wolverine, you know...
[Erica] It's been out for months. We're going to talk about it. We're not going to
[Alex] do timestamps because we don't make any money. Yeah, we don't do that. So if you want to skip forward and try to figure out when we're not talking about this again, you can try to do that. There's also the reality that, you know, the nature of this podcast is we only talk about it for three minutes and then come back to it and talk about it for another three minutes. So you'll have the fun time of trying to skip it again. Enjoy. So...

(52:36):
[Erica] for people trying to like skip through stuff are we looking for like what's what's the deal
[Alex] no no no
[Erica] no one's complaining
[Alex] now that i'm aware
[Erica] of okay and
[Alex] if there were complaints i wouldn't
[Erica] listen no one's making you listen guys by
[Alex] the way did this did the last podcast ever get posted
[Erica] yes it did i was sitting around the other day and i was like
[Alex] wait a
[Erica] minute And then I went on the computer and I was like, oh, fuck. So, yes, it did get posted.

(53:00):
[Alex] Okay. So, I don't know who was in the Deadpool outfit for that opening with Bye Bye Bye, but they were killing it. Yes,
[Erica] they were.
[Alex] I mean, I know that wasn't Ryan Reynolds dancing like that. No, Ryan Reynolds isn't dancing
[Erica] like that.
[Alex] Whoever was in that Deadpool outfit has some moves.
[Erica] Yes. That was... The one... As I watched it again, the one thing that I was like... criticism is they get a little too like hey it's song here's other song you know what i mean not as bad as like that first suicide squad movie got where it was just like here's a song you know and then we're just gonna do that 15 million times i don't know if you felt that way

(53:43):
[Alex] no i didn't feel that on my second
[Erica] watch i was a little like okay we're getting a little too like with the musical cues but it's songs i like so i'm not gonna be hot about
[Alex] time and stuff out with the beats though i think that's cute
[Erica] Oh, I mean, I have no complaints about that whole intro. That whole, like, sequence to Bye Bye Bye. I was like, I am here for this, and I'm glad we're doing the entire song.

(54:04):
[Alex] I know what you mean. Like, when they're fighting in the van, and, like, they're hitting the controls on the dashboard, and it's going to different music. Oh, Alex. Okay.
[Erica] That Honda Odyssey scene. Oh, so many fanfic pens just started scribbling when that happened.
[Alex] when um no he's right before they started fighting there uh wolverine's whole speech there and everything he says to him like hugh jackman just was like i'm gonna spend this whole movie fucking around but for these like two minutes i'm gonna show you why i'm one of the I don't know how many takes that took, but it was an incredible scene. And he just, he, he finishes it off with like, you know, the, what's he say? Like you thought, you know, you're going to save the goddamn world. What a joke. You couldn't even save a relationship with a stripper.

(55:01):
[Erica] Yep.
[Bob] Like
[Erica] that
[Alex] cuts deep right there.
[Erica] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm going to fight you now. Or what was it? Say one more word. Gubernatorial. You know what was also like nice was we hadn't had a Deadpool movie for like six years or something. I think the last one was like... Yeah, it's not like

(55:24):
[Alex] they're pumping them out every two years. So it was like, oh, that's right. And there was a pretty good gap between the first one and the second one as well.
[Erica] Yeah. Yeah, there was like, I want to say three, three, four years, something like that. I watched that first movie again a couple months ago and I was like, this is still delightful. I'm having a lovely time.

(55:45):
[Alex] I mean, I thought it was great. I mean, if you were like going to sit here and be like, was the, you know, was the plot like anything special? No. No.
[Erica] I liked the way that they kind of paid homage to the Fox of it all.
[Alex] Yeah. Yeah.
[Erica] And brought in, bringing in the Wesley Snipes, or Wesley Snipes and having their little sniping back and forth was hysterical because they were in that Blade Trinity movie together. And yeah, Wesley Snipes did not like Ryan Reynolds. So the fact that they got him to come back, I mean, you know, money, sure. Yeah,

(56:22):
[Alex] sure.
[Erica] But that was funny. Yeah.
[Alex] Well, you've got Jennifer Garner randomly showing up. That was
[Erica] great.
[Alex] And then I got to tell you, I thought, I mean, it was funny the way he was hamming it up so bad so you could barely understand what he was saying. But I think Channing Tatum might have been actually born to play Gambit. Oh,

(56:43):
[Erica] give me that Channing Tatum Gambit movie, man. He was so happy.
[Alex] It was actually great. He's like, they've been stringing me along about this forever. And that was like literally the outfit. And they didn't, it was like the cheesiest version of the comic book outfit. And it somehow worked.
[Erica] But they had Wolverine in the cheesiest version of his outfit too. But it's like, it's a comic book movie. That's what I'm here for. We didn't even talk about the fucking like going through all the different universes and trying to find.

(57:14):
[Alex] Oh, my God. Your boy Cavill pops. I did
[Erica] laugh at that because apparently idiot was like, no, I'm going to actually smoke a real cigar like all day while we're like shooting this. And it's like, buddy, bud, dude, don't don't do that. You don't have to do that.
[Alex] He was getting in character, Erica. He was

(57:35):
[Erica] jacked as shit, too, man.
[Alex] Yeah, Ted was like, ooh, now I found the real Wolverine. Oh! I like the first one he finds. It's like a midget Wolverine, because Wolverine actually is very short.
[Erica] Comically accurate, short, whatever the hell. That whole sequence was great. Yeah, just... I enjoyed the... It was very good at, like, again, paying homage to Fox, like, getting that kind of levity and, like, yes, comic books are ridiculous, so we're going to be ridiculous.

(58:09):
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] And that's fine. Yeah,
[Alex] and kind of, like, paying... Yeah, like, sending Fox off, but also at the same time ripping on them.
[Erica] Yeah. Yeah, even the MCU. Yeah, the welcome to the MCU. You're joining at a bit of a low point.
[Alex] Yeah, I mean, I'm... Those two had so much chemistry. And I think, aren't they actually, like, friends in real life? I think

(58:34):
[Erica] they're buds. Yeah. Because I've seen, like, I don't follow, like, tabloid shit because who could possibly fucking care? And the people that I enjoy never show up in that shit. So I feel like they're, like, buddies. Like, they're hanging out. And you can tell. They clearly enjoy, like, they're having a good time.
[Alex] I like, what was it? Like hot pool, whatever. It was just Ryan Reynolds in the outfit. Oh, what's his name? Nice pool. Nice pool.

(58:59):
[Erica] Yeah. That was funny. He's just like, where's your mask? And he's like, come on.
[Alex] The dog.
[Erica] Oh, the dog. Mary Puppins. Yes.
[Alex] Dog pool.
[Erica] Dog pool.
[Alex] I like, I knew like the moment the one there's like lady pool shows up at the end. I was like, that must be.
[Erica] There's no way it's not Blake Lively, right? Yeah. No, we all got it. She's not in the suit. She's doing the voice.

(59:25):
[Alex] um but yeah i just i thought they i thought they hit out of the park and i think the like it keeps it feels like it keeps moving and a lot of the jokes land and so you're like is this the greatest story of all time or something no but i don't think it matters it
[Erica] doesn't matter at all i've always said it if i'm having fun

(59:45):
[Alex] yeah
[Erica] i don't i like those fast and the furious movies
[Alex] you want to talk good ones
[Erica] right you want to talk plot holes i don't care you
[Alex] could drive all the cars right i don't
[Erica] give a shit are we doing dumb shit with cars and we're like exploding shit i'm having a good time

(01:00:06):
[Alex] when when the rock is like curling concrete benches in prison. I don't give a fuck.
[Erica] That is the best five minutes of cinema ever.
[Alex] Those two
[Erica] breaking out of that prison where he's shrugging off the rubber bullets like he's the fucking Hulk. This is the dumbest movie of all time. I don't care. I'm having a blast.

(01:00:30):
[Alex] That's what made people want a spinoff with them, and then they did the spinoff, and it's like, oh, it's not good. Well,
[Erica] because neither one can, like, lose a
[Alex] fight. Yeah, no one can lose.
[Erica] Which is also the dumbest fucking thing in the history of the universe. Like,
[Alex] Ryan Reynolds does a movie in Deadpool where he gets his ass beat the whole time every movie. I mean, that's the movie.

(01:00:52):
[Erica] Right.
[Alex] so i mean there was so much good stuff like when uh at the end they're doing the whole thing with the machine and uh saving the
[Erica] universe with the power of madonna yeah that was fucking great
[Alex] um and the whole time like they've been acting like hugh jackman hasn't taken his shirt off because he didn't get in shape for the role or something oh and the shirt quite literally

(01:01:18):
[Erica] explodes off of his
[Alex] body six pack and then you get the lean
[Erica] back and he's just like
[Alex] nice
[Erica] glorious Because here's the thing, which is also hysterical, like, Deadpool is canonically Pan. Like, he's fucking anybody, guys. It doesn't matter. I enjoyed the pegging jokes at the beginning as well. Like, this is new for Disney, but it's not new for me.

(01:01:40):
[Alex] So, I'm looking forward to seeing what they do. I mean, now that they've kind of, like, integrated Deadpool into everything. Damn. i mean i just uh i hope they don't ruin when those two eventually get like just appear through a doctor strange portal i hope they don't fuck it up because it could be like a great moment when those two have to show up to save the day or something

(01:02:05):
[Erica] indeed indeed it could like let's not fumble that i don't know what the i know there's like a new captain america or some shit i'm
[Alex] not really paying attention i don't
[Erica] really care
[Alex] so harrison ford they must have backed up the jump truck of money for that one right because he's playing red hulk and yeah um the what's his name is captain america now anthony mackie's character um falcon And he's

(01:02:35):
[Erica] good. I like him as an actor, but you're in a bad position. You know
[Alex] what? I think, to me, when I see Anthony Mackie, some people just have the aura, right? Yeah. And when I see Mackie, it's like you're a TV star slash like side guy, like supporting actor. I don't know.

(01:03:01):
[Erica] I think you get it. It was a good movie. There's no way that movie is going to be good is the problem. I mean, it could
[Alex] be. I don't know.
[Erica] I'm not. I just I don't have any desire to watch it. Oh,
[Alex] I don't care. You know,
[Erica] I could care less about any of this shit anymore.
[Alex] When, I mean, when Chris Evans popped up in this movie, and you knew the moment you saw him, you're like, he's not Captain America. Like, you know he's not, but it still was funny.

(01:03:29):
[Erica] Oh, no. Bringing, like, what was it? They had Sabretooth come back from that, like, first X-Men movie? That's insane.
[Alex] I wonder if that was actually, um...
[Erica] I think it was the guy. Okay.
[Alex] Yeah, what's his name who does like the NFL stuff and he did Ray Romano. What's his, not Ray Romano, Ray Donovan. The Ray Donovan show.

(01:03:52):
[Erica] Oh, Liv Shriver? Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. I'm talking about from the original first like 2000, year 2000 X-Men. There was that shitty X-Men Origins Wolverine, whatever. Liev played him in that. Noted cousin to Halo Star... Whatever the hell his name was. Pablo? Yeah, there you go.

(01:04:17):
[Alex] Weird how people are related. Right. Also apparently all jacked and huge, but...
[Erica] I do love, though, that Ryan Reynolds was like, Okay, this can't be the only opportunity I get to play Deadpool in this shit-ass movie. I'm gonna pursue this, because I need to give this character his day. And, like, we can make a good movie and not whatever the fuck that was.

(01:04:40):
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] Because I don't think I've ever sat through that whole thing. But what I did was just, like, guys. Guys.
[Alex] I like when, you know, they go and they see whatever female.
[Erica] Cassandra Nova.
[Alex] yeah yeah yeah i can't remember i couldn't xavier's like sister twin or whatever yeah and deadpool starts like listing off all the shit that um

(01:05:11):
[Erica] the shit talking
[Alex] yeah what's his name johnny blaze or
[Erica] something oh it's not johnny storm is it i think it's johnny storm yeah because it's sue storm
[Alex] okay yeah i think that sounds right fire guy
[Erica] fire guy
[Alex] He starts listing off all the things she said about him until, or he said about her until she like rips his fucking skin off. But, um, and then they good. Then the end of the movie and the end credit scene, it's actually like Chris Evans saying all this nasty shit. Oh, you know,

(01:05:41):
[Erica] he had such a good time doing that. Cause like you have like Captain America doesn't swear. He doesn't get to swear. No. Probably did that all. He's like, no, let me take it again. Let me take it again. I can do it better. I can do it better.
[Alex] I bet you he was like, no, I have to do this in this movie. I'm not showing up if I don't get to do this. yeah i think i think all the various cameos were fun um and none of it felt like ridiculous or out of place i mean it was ridiculous but the whole movie is ridiculous

(01:06:15):
[Erica] well they started from a premise of ridiculous where they're like hey you know this really nice beautiful movie that we sent off uh the wolverine character with yeah no fuck that we're gonna desecrate the shit out of it because i want to make the movie with you right and it
[Alex] didn't hurt that movie
[Erica] no not at all not at all enough time has passed and it's like we're doing timeline shenanigans it doesn't matter

(01:06:39):
[Bob] yeah
[Erica] let's go crazy what's his nuts from uh succession was good too as uh was it paradox
[Alex] oh yeah yeah yeah i
[Erica] forget the actor's name it's like or something but he's having a good time
[Alex] um i like at the end when they're like fighting all the deadpools and like they're gonna end up getting their ass beat and like peter shows up and all the deadpools are like

(01:07:03):
[Erica] peter which could segue nicely if you're gonna end up bringing uh uh spider-man in because there's definitely like those two are friends in the comics too which is fun him in the the van doing the little spider-man flip noises was fun it's like i see what you're doing ryan

(01:07:25):
[Alex] Speaking of Marvel, did you see Marvel Rivals came out a few weeks ago? Do you know what this game is?
[Erica] We briefly talked about it the last episode we did. I think you had said you had played it a little bit.
[Alex] Oh, did I? Yeah.
[Erica] Because I don't think Deadpool was in it as of our last talking about it. No,
[Alex] no, no. Deadpool's not in that game. Yeah. But I mean, like Spider-Man is. A lot of the characters you would expect to are. But...

(01:07:53):
[Erica] Because it's the kind of thing, it's like a...
[Alex] It's kind of like an Overwatch-style game, a hero shooter, 6v6. Free-to-play, I'm assuming. Right, right.
[Bob] You said it
[Alex] was just kind of fine. It's fine. So I've played a little bit more since then. And the main problem is it controls really bad, like on a controller anyway.

(01:08:15):
[Erica] Is it supposed to be on PC?
[Alex] Well, it's on everything. Okay. So you could play it on mouse and keyboard or controller. But on controller, it just doesn't play well. And I think it's actually... I was thinking about it and... I think it's actually a perfect representation of the modern competitive multiplayer game that comes out today versus when Overwatch came out like seven or eight years ago. Because if you just stop and think about it for a moment... Overwatch runs on like a custom made engine made for Overwatch, right? And what that kind of led to is the game has an incredible feel. It runs really well. It plays really great. It has it just does all these things really, really well. And it's also had the downsides too, which is the engine wasn't designed for certain things. Sure. So when they decide they want to suddenly do like PVE stuff, they realize like, oh shit, this is going to be a massive uplift. And now we need to redesign parts of the engine to fit in stuff that was never meant to happen in this game. Right, right. Right. Whereas... rivals runs on unreal engine 5 which is an engine a lot of games use right so um it doesn't play that great it's a little clunky it's a little floaty the art style is really good i think they hit it i think they basically hit it out of the park on the art style like kind of making them all look like like the comic book characters and everything um

(01:09:50):
[Erica] it's called marvel rivals
[Alex] yeah and um You know, whether or not you prefer the art style in Overwatch or Rivals is very subjective. I mean, I like Overwatch just because that's what I've been used to. Sure. But I think in basically every other facet of the game, it's just kind of worse Overwatch. Yeah. Like the gameplay, the map design, the hero designs, everything. And some of these characters, I mean, they've kind of nailed, like, you know, the feeling of Spider-Man kind of swinging through the sky and jumping in and punching and, you know, flying back out and shooting his webs and all that. I mean, like, there's a lot of characters where it's like, okay, they kind of do what you would think they would do. Yeah,

(01:10:38):
[Erica] the character designs are pretty cool.
[Alex] Yeah. Um, but there are other issues. Like one of the important things about a hero shooter is knowing what you're fighting against. So like not only knowing what character you're fighting against, um, but also knowing what their abilities are doing and like what abilities they're using and what they're doing to you and everything. And, you know, for example, in overwatch, um, You know, when you're fighting Tracer, Tracer always kind of has like Tracer's body shape. Sure. Okay. So even if she's wearing some wacky outfit, it still looks like Tracer.

(01:11:21):
[Erica] Because it should.
[Alex] Right.
[Erica] Right.
[Alex] Well, Rivals is a problem where there's a number of characters that kind of have the same silhouette. So like Sue Storm, Mantis, Luna Snow, and Cloak all have like the exact same body shape. And especially Sue Storm and Cloak look almost identical and you don't even know who you're fighting.

(01:11:50):
[Erica] So a bit of laziness in the character. I don't know
[Alex] if it's even like... laziness i just don't know if they really thought i don't know if they thought it through in a certain way i'm not sure what it is maybe it is laziness but because you get that
[Erica] in like just for example like that uh uh fucking it's top of mind because we saw the play not too long ago frozen the two sisters have the exact same face And it's not even like, like, no, no, no. You just very clearly copy pasted. And then we got different eyes and different hair. Sure. Like this is the same character. You just like, you could have

(01:12:27):
[Alex] done a little bit,
[Erica] a little something to give them some
[Alex] similar, but not identical, not
[Erica] identical. Right. They're not twins. And even then that's just kind of boring, you know? So
[Alex] it's just kind of like that. And then, you know, like Captain America and Thor are both in the game. And Captain America has an outfit where the outfit almost makes him look like Thor. Like his helmet has like the wings. And the only way you can really tell them apart is that one of them holds a shield and the other one holds a hammer. But in the... Like when you're...

(01:13:03):
[Erica] in the heat of battle when
[Alex] you're like in a battle trying to figure out what's going on that like one second of knowing what you're fighting against so you can react appropriately could be the difference of your team like winning or losing a battle
[Erica] well it isn't that like the sign of a well-designed game is where yeah i can look over and be like okay i don't need to like stare at this i know i know that's tracer

(01:13:26):
[Alex] yeah
[Erica] right like okay got it i know
[Alex] Right, and you can just play. Yeah. And that's one of my issues is the controls are pretty bad. Like, I would say they're, just in terms of, like, game feel. Like, I know you don't play a lot of competitive multiplayer games. I don't play any competitive multiplayer games. But Overwatch, in my mind, is, like, the undisputed king. And there's other games that feel good when you play them. You know, like if you play like Fortnite or you play almost any Call of Duty, they all kind of feel good. I mean, Call of Duty doesn't feel as good as it used to because they just don't have that quality of developer on it anymore or whatever is going on. But it's still like is one of the better feeling games to just move your character around and shoot at things. Sure. You know, other games like Apex doesn't feel the greatest. It's OK. It's still better than Rivals. You know, Fortnite feels great. Like I said, it's just I don't like BRs. Sure, sure. It could be the greatest playing game of all time. That's just not your jam. I just still don't like the game mode. But Overwatch is like everything. There's a lot of little things you take for granted, okay? Like stuff like when you're moving along and you're doing things, not getting caught on like the lip of a staircase or the edge of a door frame or something. And a lot of games struggle with stuff like that. Mm-hmm. and overwatch your character kind of always does what you expect them to do and there isn't any sort of weird shenanigans the game plays very smoothly it runs great you you never feel like you're really fighting against the controller whereas on rivals i very much feel like i'm fighting against the controller more than so that i'm fighting against the other team

(01:15:18):
[Erica] that's annoying yeah
[Alex] And you can see it when you're playing that I'm not the only one who feels this way. And most of these lobbies I go into, it's like I'm one of the better players normally. But you can tell people are struggling to hit certain characters because Spider-Man just is flying all over the fucking place. And you just can't hit him on a controller. So, you know, I've, I've, my understanding is Spider-Man on PC is actually quite bad because, because they just like shoot him out of the sky and he's dead. Sure. Because they can actually aim. Right. But on controller, I'll see people like do the right thing. Like three or four people will stop and turn and try to all fight the Spider-Man. And he's just kind of like wrecking everybody. And this happens with kind of like with all the melee characters, like, Black Panther or Iron Fist. They all kind of end up in a very good position no matter how bad they play because people just can't hit them. Whereas these characters all are actually considered quite bad on the PC. And there's characters that are the opposite as well, like Hela or Hawkeye are very aim-dependent. So on PC, they're, like, god tier. They're incredible. But on console, they're not very good. Yeah. You only, like, get kills when you get lucky, basically.

(01:16:35):
[Erica] Well, and that kind of, like, sucks, right? Yeah. Because it should kind of be the same across everything.
[Alex] Well, you'd like it to at least be closer. You know, like, a character like Widowmaker, who's a sniper in Overwatch... She's better on PC when you have the precision of mousing the keyboard. Sure, sure. But she still plays really well on console. She's playable. She doesn't feel bad to play. You

(01:16:59):
[Erica] don't feel like you're nerfed by playing on console.
[Alex] Right. So... So anyways I just think there's a lot of stuff like that where I think again I think the art style stuff is very subjective and that's just however you feel about it but objectively I think every other part of Rivals is just worse than Overwatch. but i'm i'm happy it's out because one here's a game that's new and it's drawing a lot of attention and it's you're kind of in the honeymoon phase still sure sure and i'm hoping um i hope it stays successful i think it will be just because of the ip but i hope it stays successful just because then hopefully it'll put more pressure on the executives to get behind overwatch more because i still feel like overwatch has just been a horribly mismanaged ip and For as good of a job as the developers have done with the resources that they've been given, I think the executives above them making the decisions on where they get to put money and what they get to do with the game and the total lack of any sort of usage of the IP outside of the game is criminal.

(01:18:12):
[Erica] The fact that there isn't even, maybe it isn't developmentally, I just don't know about it, that they don't have some sort of arcane-like
[Alex] It's actually criminal.
[Erica] That's insane.
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] Because those little vignettes, I think I've seen all of them just because whenever a new one comes out, you've shown them to me. They're excellent.
[Alex] Yeah, they're great.

(01:18:33):
[Erica] Like, I'd watch an Overwatch show.
[Alex] You could make, like, anybody sit down. You probably don't even remember it by now, but you could make anyone sit down and watch the little short they did with Reinhardt, and they will cry. Anybody. Reinhardt's the big dude
[Erica] with the shield, right? No, I vaguely remember that. Yeah.
[Alex] um anybody you get to watch that they will there will be a tier

(01:18:56):
[Erica] 10 episode miniseries let's go overwatch why not
[Alex] So, yeah, it's wild that it hasn't been done up until this point. And there's so many great examples of it working. I mean, Cyberpunk was absolutely dead in the water until that anime came out. I
[Erica] need to watch that anime. You've mentioned that a couple times. That's solid. I
[Alex] mean, that saved that game, I think, in certain ways. Because it had been patched a lot up until that point, but people just weren't willing to give it another chance.

(01:19:23):
[Bob] Mm-hmm.
[Alex] And look, when the Witcher TV show was running, the Witcher, you know, numbers on Steam went up quite a bit. Oh, they
[Erica] always do, right? Like the books, they start selling again. They get on like the bestseller lists. And it's just, if you do it properly, it's a boon for the entire franchise. Right. Which we should be getting a trailer for that animated Witcher movie this week. Dying over here, Alex.

(01:19:50):
[Alex] So yeah, but I think, again, I think it's very much a representation of what Overwatch would be if it came out today versus what it was when it came out seven years ago. Interesting. So it is very much representative of the current video game industry.
[Erica] I mean, I would hope that they stick with it because just from what I've seen of the character list, you have... One, it's Marvel. They have every character. Right. You could go... so there's so many places you can go right to pull characters from that it seems like it'd be crazy to not you know incorporate folks in oh

(01:20:29):
[Alex] yeah i mean they've gotten a lot they've gotten really a lot of the major ones oh sure there's still like a shitload of other characters that you could pull from
[Erica] it felt like there were a couple that i was like just scrolling through that list like oh where's where's x you know
[Alex] yeah So, I mean, like I said, the game's fine. Like, I think it's like a solid six out of 10, but it could be, it could easily be an eight or a nine out of 10 if they just like tweaked some stuff. Zhoosh it up a little

(01:21:01):
[Erica] bit.
[Alex] Yeah, I made a little made some little changes. I mean, for example, like this, you know, you've never played Overwatch, but so you wouldn't know, but there's almost no dead ends in Overwatch. And the maps are all designed in a way as such to like funnel people into battles, like to lead you into a battle in one place. But if you, like, walk into side areas, there's always, like, two ways out of a room, you know? Like, there's always a loop or something. Well,

(01:21:32):
[Erica] that's just good game. That's just good design, right?
[Alex] Whereas in Rivals, like, there's all these random dead ends, and you're trying to, like, find your way back to your team, and you're like, oh, my team's over there, and then you walk into that room, and then you realize, like...
[Erica] That room doesn't
[Alex] lead anywhere and there's no purpose. Like, why is this here?
[Erica] Yeah.
[Alex] And there's stuff like that all over the maps. And I think those are very like solvable problems. It's just whether or not they want to do it, I guess.

(01:21:59):
[Erica] Well, do they want to do it? Where are we putting the development budget? What kind of timelines are we giving these people? I mean, it always comes back to money, doesn't it?
[Alex] Oh, yeah. They're going to make a lot of money.
[Erica] And you would think it's a Marvel property, you know. I mean, I don't know how well the movies do anymore.

(01:22:20):
[Alex] Yeah, I don't know. I mean, what's even the next one? I just feel like I've totally lost interest. Let me see.
[Erica] I think it's that Brave... Is it Brave in the World? Is that what it's called?
[Alex] Oh, is that the Captain America one? I think so. Yeah, that might be what's next. You're right. Marvel... Brave... i mean i feel like so is it is it confirmed that chris evans is coming back for the one with robert downey jr playing doom and all that oh

(01:22:49):
[Erica] i have no idea
[Alex] did you not know about any of this
[Erica] i knew robert downey jr because i remember being annoyed about it because like i get it but i'm also kind of like i think it's a fun idea going
[Alex] back to the well huh well sure they want to get people back in the theater i think it's a fun idea But I thought I also had heard... This is going
[Erica] to be the 35th film of these Marvel movies. That's insane.

(01:23:11):
[Alex] I thought I had also heard that they'd rolled the dump truck of money up to Chris Evans' house and he was coming back for that, too. Oh,
[Erica] did they?
[Alex] But maybe I'm wrong. I don't know, man. I can't say I know that for certain.
[Erica] That's still a few years out, though, isn't it?
[Alex] Oh, yeah. That's a while away. I don't think that's even started filming. The multiverse saga. They could pump that out real quick if they wanted

(01:23:32):
[Erica] to, though. Oh, yeah. They don't give a fuck about those movies anymore. I'm very... Oh, is that Fantastic Four movie coming out this year?
[Alex] Is it? I don't even know who's playing those
[Erica] characters. Scheduled for release July 2025. Cousin Richie is the thing.
[Alex] Oh, that's interesting.
[Erica] Which I'm kind of about because he's just a delight. Joseph Quinn, I want to say, is Johnny Storm. The guy who was... Did you watch Stranger Things?

(01:24:01):
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] He was Eddie in season four. The metalhead.
[Alex] hmm okay uh weird cast
[Erica] what's his name
[Alex] this is not like a star studded cast
[Erica] the mandalorian who plays the mandalorian pablo what's his name
[Alex] escobar no yeah
[Erica] escobar yes
[Alex] oh my god alex this is your fault

(01:24:23):
[Erica] i know who
[Alex] is you've done this to me
[Erica] a second pedro pascal there we go excuse me
[Alex] you said i
[Erica] did i'm like all over oh john malkovich gonna be up in that biz uh he's mr fantastic and vanessa kirby is uh sue storm i believe and I think they're doing that it's like set in the 60s I want to say which I'm kind of into but we've done a lot of fumbling with the Fantastic Four so there's not a lot of like no I wouldn't say I mean that doesn't I mean like and I don't know that I'm going to the theater you know what I

(01:25:06):
[Alex] mean no that doesn't sound like get me to the theater
[Erica] because what's in this this is what phase six just give me the list of the fucking movies dude
[Alex] I mean, it really did hurt them when they killed off, like, you know, Iron Man. Then they sent... But it's the end! They sent, like, Captain America to the other... A story

(01:25:28):
[Erica] has to end! To be
[Alex] happy with his hot wife. How dare
[Erica] you go be happy? Let's see.
[Alex] What do you think? To get him back, does Doom, like, travel through time to kill his wife?
[Erica] We got to fridge that girlfriend. That's very important. Thunderbolts.

(01:25:49):
[Alex] I just, yeah, who could possibly get that? I
[Erica] know I'm going to end up watching that one because what's his nuts is in that. Sebastian Stan and one of my friends is very about him. So we'll end up doing it as like a movie night. But you're not getting me in the theater for any of these movies.
[Alex] What's his name's clone? Who plays Luke? Oh my God. Who plays Luke Skywalker? Sebastian Stan. He's this fucking clone.

(01:26:12):
[Erica] He does look a little bit like young Mark Hamill.
[Alex] They look almost identical.
[Erica] Sure. Get him over there, then. He's already in the fucking Disney pipeline. Though he likes to make real movies, too, though. Let's see. avengers doomsday avengers secret war i don't know i just don't i don't really care anymore just kind of got burned out

(01:26:37):
[Alex] well i think some of these characters i think the reality is is some of these characters are just kind of b characters And then on top of that... But they
[Erica] made you care about the Guardians of the Galaxy. And those were like C-tier characters.
[Alex] Yeah, but that was because it was a great movie and those characters are really well written. And that's what I was kind of getting to. Is you have a character like Captain Marvel who's not... I would not regard Captain Marvel on the same tier as... Captain America or something.

(01:27:08):
[Erica] I think if you got a decent writer in there, you could make a good movie. That's my point. I know what you mean. I know what you're saying. I
[Alex] think that Captain Marvel movie just didn't hit. I just don't think it was that good. It was fine. It was fine. But if you're going to be like the star of the movies going forward, you need to be better than fine.
[Erica] Did we talk about the Superman teaser? Did you watch that? I don't

(01:27:31):
[Alex] know if we did. I watched it. I mean... I don't know what to take away from it. At this point, I would say I implicitly trust James Gunn to get things right.
[Erica] That's kind of where I'm at.
[Alex] So from that teaser, was I like, oh, I can't wait? No, I don't feel that way. I don't know
[Erica] that I'm like that about most things anymore, though.

(01:27:51):
[Alex] Right. I
[Erica] walked away from it being like, you know what? I would go see that in the theater. I could get into that.
[Alex] I don't know that I care enough to see it in the theater. I mean, I'm probably not
[Erica] going opening night. Like, I'll give it a couple weekends, then I'll go on, like, a Sunday afternoon with my friends. You know, that kind of a deal. Or if Bob wants to go, though I know he doesn't really like to do those things anymore. What does Bob like to

(01:28:14):
[Alex] do? Run.
[Erica] That's not true. There's other stuff that Bob likes to do. No, it's just like... He
[Alex] also likes to lay down.
[Erica] I mean, Lying Down is great, though, Alex. But we went and we saw... We took Izzy to see the Wild Robot movie, which I did not realize what that was about. I
[Alex] don't even know what that's about.

(01:28:35):
[Erica] Alex. It's one of these surrogate family movies where the robot ends up adopting this little duckling because she accidentally killed the duckling's parents. I'm sitting here, this happens, and I look at Bob and I'm like... I was not prepared to be weeping in public today. Thanks. Thanks, dude. Did Bob

(01:28:57):
[Alex] know?
[Erica] No, I don't think he knew either. But yeah, Izzy's sitting there enchanted by this movie, and I'm just like, 50% of it, I'm weeping openly. It was very, very, very
[Alex] good. Right, because Izzy's just like, oh, cool things moving around on the screen. Right, she's just like,
[Erica] oh, this is just a sweet movie, and I'm just sitting there like... Oh my God. The emotional damage. But I'm kind of where you're at. I think James Gunn is, if you're going to have somebody write the DC ship, that's your guy. Right. I think he seems to understand Superman as a character, which I think a lot of people don't. I kind of liked that it was very clearly shifting away from grimdark nonsense.

(01:29:41):
[Alex] right which there was more of an element of like hope
[Erica] i appreciate not even just that even in like the color palette it's like it's just no he's in the bright colors because he's fucking superman dude right this is what we're doing if you don't like that then don't this isn't the guy for you superman ain't grimdark that's just not the way this works you want that you gotta go by batman Which I'll be interested to see how they kind of, I think they might be like taking a rest on that for a while. Because I haven't heard anything about any Batman. Excuse me.

(01:30:15):
[Alex] I don't know. I mean, that movie was fine. The Batman. It was fine. That was a Pattinson, right? I don't think
[Erica] I ever
[Alex] ended up watching it. It was fine. I might even go as high as to say it was, like, good. But it wasn't great. And I thought all three of the Nolan Batman movies were great.
[Erica] Well, we've well established that on this podcast. Because they are.

(01:30:37):
[Alex] Yeah, I think they're all great. And I thought Pattinson was fine. I just think he's very, like, he's just too broody for me. And I know Bruce Wayne as a character just doesn't tend to be the happiest character.
[Erica] No, he's a broody bastard. For sure. But
[Alex] it's too broody even for me.
[Erica] Okay. No, I never saw it. I had heard good things and then I was just kind of like, I'm kind of superhero movied out. So maybe someday I'll sit down and I'll watch it. I heard that

(01:31:04):
[Alex] miniseries The Penguin was good.
[Erica] I had heard good things about that as well. But it was another, like... Doesn't
[Alex] Harley Quinn come back soon? Does it? I thought it did.
[Erica] I feel like I'm a couple seasons behind on that.
[Alex] You're slacking. I am. How's the free rent slacking going?
[Erica] Oh, exceptionally well.
[Alex] Ultra slack?
[Erica] It's been brutal because it's been the holidays. So now that we're getting back into a normal sort of, like, you know, gear here, I can, like, start watching stuff again. Yeah. Because, yeah, we've got that easily accessible up on the media server so I can mere click away. And Critical Role might be, like, down for the foreseeable future, so... Because they're in Cali and they've been really affected by the wildfires, so... I need something to watch.

(01:31:54):
[Alex] Yeah, you know it's bad when the NFL moves a game. Because the NFL, you know they don't want to do anything like that.
[Erica] Yeah, no. No, man, it's just, like... yeah yeah well and then i think before we started recording i was like people were bitching about it and it's just like guys there's you can literally watch anything else you could even go back and like watch more of their content you know how much fuck like hours wise how much critical role content there is we're talking like tens of thousands of hours go watch something else While their world burns around them, you can watch something else for a few weeks. There's

(01:32:33):
[Alex] so much of everything. Go play one of the 10 million video games. Go read one of the 10 billion books. Right. Go watch one of the 10 trillion YouTube videos. Do any of that.
[Erica] There is anything else that you can watch, my man. Why are we
[Alex] complaining? That made me think of Age of Empires.
[Erica] Oh, yeah?

(01:32:53):
[Alex] I had, and this is for, I'm calling him out on the
[Erica] podcast. Oh, okay.
[Alex] One of the two patrons, Dong. This is a couple weeks ago.
[Erica] Okay.
[Alex] We're playing Age of Empires 4. Me and Dong, Dong and I, if I could speak properly.
[Erica] I like me and Dong. Sounds more informal.

(01:33:16):
[Alex] Me and Dong versus two other people. I will not name and shame what I did to them, but they know.
[Erica] They know, and that's all that matters.
[Alex] We're playing. Now, Dong doesn't play Age of Empires very much. He's played it a lot traditionally, like over the years, but he hasn't played a lot recently, especially this one.

(01:33:36):
[Erica] More of an Age of Empires 2 kind of person? That's where my sweet spot was. I think he
[Alex] was. I think four plays. I enjoy four more than I enjoyed two, but they're both great games.
[Erica] Is this on Game Pass?
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] Okay. Because I loved Age of Empires.
[Alex] There's a huge campaign or whatever. You could play all that. So we're playing two versus two. and dong was getting harassed by someone and

(01:34:04):
[Erica] you're on dong's team
[Alex] right
[Erica] okay
[Alex] he's getting harassed by someone and i'm trying to give him what help i can but i'm also under attack and i'm trying to fight with the person who's closest to me and you know as you push out you need to like get control of gold and stuff so you can have resources so you're trying to control parts of the map and everything so you can get resources sure and And Dong is getting frustrated because he's constantly under attack from the other person. His base is kind of getting slowly beat up. And he ends up getting frustrated because he was tired as well. So he gets frustrated and he ends up quitting. And which is fine. You know, he was like, OK, I think I fucked. I think I'm fucked. I think we're going to lose. I'm quitting. And I'm like, I'm sitting there and I didn't I didn't really say anything because I don't want to get on him. You know, but I'm like, we're going to win this game. Like, if you could just like just like literally just like keep yourself in it. Just just hold on for me. We're going to win this.

(01:35:03):
[Erica] Hold on for me.
[Alex] So. There's a 200-person population cap, right? There's always some sort of population cap. I think
[Erica] that's always been, yeah.
[Alex] Right. And so, Dong gets eliminated. And now I'm kind of getting attacked from two sides. But what Dong didn't know is at the same time that he's getting eliminated, I have... absolutely destroyed one of the bases um and what i what i had done was i had sent like a bunch of people deep into a base to kill like villagers and stuff and i didn't even realize because i was focused on what was going on in his base and i was focused on where i was directly attacking i didn't realize that the like the 10 army i sent into a back of a base just like killed 90 villagers So, they had killed a bunch of people. And in the meantime, one of the ways to win in AoE 4 is to kill the other, to kill the landmarks. Just kill all their landmarks. You don't have to, like, wipe out every building. Just, like, kill the

(01:36:04):
[Erica] landmarks. The important stuff, yeah. You don't have to go through each house and kill each house.
[Alex] Right. So, in this one civ, they only have two landmarks. This civ, their town center, and then, like, the main building. Mm-hmm. So I had killed their two landmarks, but what I didn't know at the time, the context I didn't have, was that I had also killed all their villagers accidentally. So they were basically, like, semi-eliminated. And then Dawn quits. Right,

(01:36:31):
[Erica] because if you can't create more villagers...
[Alex] Right, so they've got, like, what they told me later is they had literally one villager trying to repair their town center. So, to make more villagers. So, um... Dong now gets fucked. And what happened is at the same time that I'm in the one base destroying everything, I'm now getting attacked by the person who had eliminated Dong in my base. So what I did to keep my base up is I killed like 70 of my 100 villagers to instantly fill all that population space with army to repel that attack. And then I said, well, fuck, now I got to try to do something to win this game. Like

(01:37:18):
[Erica] now. Yeah.
[Alex] And so I killed like basically all of my remaining villagers. And so now I have like a 200 population army, including like 10 siege rams.
[Erica] and i
[Alex] rolled this giant death ball right into the middle of the the person's base who was still had their base so their landmarks alive and you've never seen four buildings that have a lot of health explode so fast like like literally there's this one landmark called the red palace and it's like a really powerful keep and this thing it was like i dropped an atom It was hilarious. And I just rolled in. And one of them is, like, telling the other, like, your base is under attack. And the other one's like, what? You have to do, like, what? Oh, no. Like, you got to do something. Like, stop him. And he's like, I can't stop him. Your bases are getting, like, they're just exploding. So I just, like, rolled in. smashed all their landmarks right win the game one versus two it was it was one of those like you could hang it in the loo you know

(01:38:30):
[Erica] he's just so proud
[Alex] In the moment, I was just like, this is an all-time victory right here. And you could have been there, Dong, but you quit on me.
[Erica] I used to love making this vast army of death and just marching across the map and just laying waste. That was one of my favorite things to do.

(01:38:55):
[Alex] Yeah, that's what this was. The making the big dumb army and throwing them at things and watching the thing explode. Yeah, it was great.
[Erica] Oh, they used to, the trebuchets from back in the day. You still have trebuchets. And just like have them like at their highest tier, you roll up with like five or six and it's just like, you don't stand a chance. Let's go.
[Alex] Yeah, I'm not a trebuchet fan, because it's a very slow-moving thing, and it's hard to keep alive. But if you need to, like, break a position, like, if you need to kill keeps, and you want to do a range without having to, like, sacrifice units, hey, trebuchets are great for that.

(01:39:28):
[Erica] I think they had a pretty decent, like, AoE as well, if memory is served. It wasn't just the one thing it would...
[Alex] They're really only good for hitting like one thing.
[Erica] I think it was something different.
[Alex] I think the English might have some sort of upgrade where like, then they like splinter when they hit the ground and do some AOE damage, but they're generally just good at hitting one thing.
[Erica] It's been a very long time since I've played Age of Empires, but it was always a fave. It was like a free disc when we got one of our computers from back in the day, and it was just like, oh,

(01:39:59):
[Alex] okay. Well, one of the things that turned me off on Age of Empires 2 is for whatever reason... especially the more players you had it just couldn't like on console anyway which is where i play it um
[Erica] couldn't handle it
[Alex] couldn't handle the massive battles like if like if if you were playing like 2v2 or 3v3 or 4v4 and everyone had like a bunch of buildings up and everyone had a the frame rate would crater and i mean like unplayable crater like it's a slide show it's a slide show yeah and and you're and because you're giving inputs like when the frames are dropping the input isn't going through so things aren't happening and that's what really made me stop playing that game was it was like i want to play this game but every time we get to like an end game part of the fight right it's just terrible yeah And I have seen the framerate drop on AoE 4, but not like this. Not where it's unplayable. Like, I could feel the slowdown, but you could still play the game. And it usually happens with certain civs, like there's the... There's the Ayyubids and the Abbasid dynasty. They get bonuses based on how many buildings they have up. So like with the Abbasid, for example, I think it's something like if you can get 75 of like any building type built, like total, not one building, but... If you just have 75 buildings created, all your villagers gather like 15% more resources or something. So you want to get that bonus. But when you do it, and then you have a bunch of army up, and then the other guy has a bunch of army up, instead of the game running at like 60 FPS... It's probably running at like 45 FPS. Okay. So it's still playable.

(01:41:49):
[Erica] But there's a noticeable dip. What I'm
[Alex] talking about on AoE 2 was like it was literally like 5 or 10 FPS. It was completely unplayable. The
[Erica] only time I can ever like remember that happening in a game for me, and I've probably talked about this on here before, was Odin Sphere for the PlayStation 2. It's a gorgeous game. Really had a lot of fun with it, but I was fighting this one boss. And it just went slideshow on me. And I was like, this is unplayable. Like, I can't beat this. So I was just like, okay, I guess I'm just done playing.

(01:42:23):
[Alex] And I don't know anything about it. I haven't looked into it. But I suspect what's going on with AoE 2 is, you know, it's just like a remaster of an old game, right? So I think the engine was probably designed to be run on, like, You know, like, processors now, it's not just one part of the processor and they turn the speed up to a million and everything runs through that one part. Processors now are multi-threaded, right? So a processor might have, like, 16 cores. And each core gets, like, assigned parts of the job to spread out the workload.

(01:43:05):
[Erica] Okay. And it probably wasn't built for that, right?
[Alex] Right. So, like, exactly. So, like, an AOE-2, when it came out, maybe. Maybe, like, that one part of that one processor had more power than the one part of a processor does now. But the 16 parts working together have way more power, like, dramatically more power. Right, right, right. But the engine just wasn't designed to spread out the workload. Sure. Right? That's my suspicion, but... Speaking of other geeky stuff, NVIDIA announced their new graphics cards. Yeah. And they're going to be ridiculously expensive.

(01:43:44):
[Erica] I mean, that's not surprising. Were they at, what was that thing that just happened? CES. CES. Indeed. Bob was talking to me a little bit about CES. I was trying to find it. The only thing I cared about, and I had heard about it a little bit online, was VLC player was there dressed as wizards because they just don't take it seriously. Yeah. and uh somebody went up to them and was like oh hey i've been using your your software to pirate stuff for like 15 years or something and they were like you keep doing what you're doing friend

(01:44:14):
[Alex] well and in the vlc kind of has a famous story in that whoever owns it has been approached many times to sell it and he's like no
[Erica] good for him good
[Alex] not doing it
[Erica] absolutely not
[Alex] And that's been the best media player basically ever.
[Erica] Well, and that's why it remains the best media player. Right. Because you're going to sell that.

(01:44:35):
[Alex] There's no ads. There's no bullshit. It just works. And it can run everything. Well,
[Erica] and this is the thing. You remember
[Alex] using like RealPlayer or QuickTime?
[Erica] Yes, I do.
[Alex] They were shit.
[Erica] Winamp. We get that little light.
[Alex] Winamp was actually good.
[Erica] Visualizer. Yeah.
[Alex] Winamp was actually good. Now it's shit.
[Erica] It was funny. Yeah. The last episode of Critical Role, they had a bunch of, like, they were talking about, like, Winamp came up and they made a reference to, like, the chipmunks. And they just looked at the camera and Mercer goes, we're so fucking old. Like, no one knows what we're talking about. And I'm like, I do. I'm old, too. But, no, Bob said CES was just a sad capitalist hellscape.

(01:45:17):
[Alex] Pretty much. I mean, I know he was upset because the new LG TVs, their remote sucks now. It has like there's no input button anymore.
[Erica] That's insane, Alex.
[Alex] Well, and I read about it more after he had told me that. And basically all it is is like there is a button that does something. And if you double tap it, it's an input button. So it's like, is that really a big deal? No. Like, how often are you switching inputs? You have to press a button twice instead of once. It really doesn't make a difference.

(01:45:50):
[Erica] It's still annoying, though.
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] I was more annoyed by, like... Oh, like, when the... Because our TV now, if you let it sit, it'll just pull up... Because I think we've got the Apple TV upstairs. It'll just pull up, like... Here's us going over a city or here's like some fish or something like a screensaver, right? My understanding is we want to make those ads now. And I'm just like...

(01:46:20):
[Alex] Of course. Everything must be.
[Erica] Why like... You know what the best part of our vacation to Vermont last summer was?
[Alex] No TV.
[Erica] Driving down the highway and there not being any bulletin boards. In Vermont, it's illegal to have bulletin boards on the highway. And you can just like...
[Alex] You just drive. You're driving. In the countryside. And you're just

(01:46:43):
[Erica] enjoying the mountains. And it was like... bonkers because then you come home and you're just inundated oh
[Alex] yeah with everything yeah they're all over the place
[Erica] and it's just like what are you what are you advertising to me on this right like what what are you showing me i don't i don't care Like, do we have to fill up every single space with ads? Every, like, free space that there is has to be ads.

(01:47:14):
[Alex] You know what? There's some marketing guy out there and he thought to himself, damn, look at all the space that we could build new billboards now in where all these fires happen. This is awesome. No,
[Erica] you know what's going to happen is a bunch of venture capitalists are going to come in and buy up all of that land.
[Alex] It's going to be like apartment buildings. Shit-ass
[Erica] housing. Townhouses or something. And it's going to be astronomically expensive to live there. Yeah. You're going to price out all of the people who used to live in those blue-collar neighborhoods. Because that's the fucking garbage society that we live in now. What was the other thing? He had another thing he was all hot about. I think it was like the random TV will just have its own modem so that it can like... you know,

(01:47:56):
[Alex] pull down ads. Yeah. Get your shit. And it's like, I don't want you actually having to plug into it. I don't
[Erica] want a fucking rogue modem in my television. Absolutely not. Yeah.
[Alex] That sounds terrible.
[Erica] Get the fuck out of here with that.
[Alex] I was thinking about it the other day, though, and it's interesting because we have a lot of things that are kind of just getting worse all the time, you know? I'm laughing because it's fucking true. And getting more expensive. Right. And I don't know exactly, you know, like, I'm not out of any good examples off the top of my head, but if you think about most things, they generally are worse than they used to be and more expensive. Mm-hmm. TVs are weirdly the opposite. In the last five or so years, TVs are actually at the top end, which aren't really that expensive if you think about it, for something that you should keep for a minimum of 10 years, really.

(01:48:49):
[Erica] I would agree with that, because as I mentioned earlier, we did do a screening of Pacific Rim before you came over, and I had a couple friends who were like, You know, I'll go by somebody's house and they'll show me a movie on their TV and be like, oh yeah, we got to watch it on my TV. And they're like, okay. But this one, they were like, no, no, no, no, no. This looks like fucking gorgeous on here.

(01:49:10):
[Alex] You're welcome, Bob and Erica. You're welcome. um but yeah i mean it's like it's like you can get and these tvs are on sale all the time too you could easily get like a 55 inch lg c3 c4 whatever like the newest model for like a thousand dollars on sale well and right around now

(01:49:34):
[Erica] is when your sales your tv like right around uh uh fucking super bowl is when those tvs usually go on sale
[Alex] And that TV should easily last you 10 plus years. And it's an incredible TV. It's like... The speakers are fine. They're nothing special. They're TV speakers. But the screen is excellent. It has every feature you could ever really want. And you know what? I don't know what's going on with ads or whatever. But you could probably find a way to turn that shit off. But...

(01:50:05):
[Erica] I just don't like the idea of like... Sometimes... I don't need to be advertised to constantly. You know? Sometimes I just want to sit and just be in my head and just, like... Not have to worry about that. Right. Like, not have to be constantly assailed with capitalism. Yeah. Right? Because you are in every aspect of your life. You're tracked and you're collated and it's like... Why? Why?

(01:50:35):
[Alex] Yeah, so, I mean, I just... But it is interesting to think about like TVs are really for the most part. I mean, I'm singling out LG, but for the most part at the top end, TVs are excellent and they're not really that expensive for what you're getting. And they should last you a very long time. um in my theory at least in my understanding is lg is one of the few companies that actually you know is still pretty good as as far as i know i don't know if anything's changed recently but they're pretty good about not only honoring their warranty but even taking care of you out of warranty oh yeah one of my friends his tv had some issues with the screen and it was out of warranty and they were like if you buy the panel like if you buy the panel from us um or no it was either it was one way or the other like either you pay for the labor

(01:51:32):
[Erica] and we'll send the panel or whatever
[Alex] right like either you buy the panel and we'll pay for the labor or vice versa and it ended up costing him like it was like less than a hundred dollars to basically get like a new screen put in his tv
[Erica] that's pretty sweet i'm not gonna complain about that
[Alex] Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know. I think TVs are one of the rare things, though. You think about most things. I mean, it does seem like a lot of cars are kind of getting generally worse all the time. And a lot of various like household appliances kind of seem like they're just always getting worse. I mean, you'll see people they have like. You know, you'll see some people, they got furnaces that are like 30 years old and that bitch is somehow still kicking. And they've got dishwashers that are 20, 30 years old and it still works just as good as the day they got it. Refrigerators, same thing. You buy a dishwasher now, you're like, please last 10 years, please.

(01:52:28):
[Erica] 10 years is like wow
[Alex] yeah
[Erica] like what you diamond in the rough there man how the hell did you get that no because it's the inshitification of everything right it's just everything is dog shit now because we're trying to like squeeze every little last bit of money we can get out of
[Alex] everything repeat business
[Erica] exactly so you've got that planned obsolescence you're making stuff that like just isn't going to last because well how will we how will we make money and line must go up alex

(01:52:57):
[Alex] We've done such a negative podcast today. We've just bitched about everything. No, we talked about Deadpool and Wolverine. This is more bitching than normal, I feel. We talked about Deadpool and Wolverine. Someone's going to be listening to this. They're going to be like, holy shit, this is fucking negative.
[Erica] I mean, I'm sorry. I came in like this week. I was like so much. I almost started writing stuff down because I was like, I'm going to bitch about so much stuff on this fucking podcast because it's just been like it's been a week. You know, it's just been a fucking week. And when you're staring down the barrel of like, oh, look, the consequences of

(01:53:33):
[Alex] everyone else's, everyone
[Erica] else's action, these rich fucks actions, because it's us who are going to bear the brunt of it all.
[Alex] I saw the stupid-ass Kardashians were trying to bitch about, like, Newsom or something, and people were like, you motherfuckers, when there was a drought in L.A. a few years ago, you used, like, a hundred million gallons of water or something. Shut up. It's like, shut the fuck up. No one cares what

(01:53:59):
[Erica] you have to say. Move away if you don't like it. Go away. Yeah, just, yeah. I mean, we don't need to be super negative, but I think we were pretty positive about Deadpool and Wolverine. It was a fun movie.
[Alex] Some fun
[Erica] fic has come out of that that I've enjoyed.

(01:54:21):
[Alex] Oh, the latest season of The Challenge finally ended 20 episodes later.
[Erica] Yeah, you had said it was going to be a long season, yeah? And it
[Alex] was fine. This was a 40... yeah it was 40 i think you'd enjoy it if you watched it especially now that you could just binge it right but i wasn't a big fan of the format because one when they were doing like for a while they were doing dual eliminations every week so like a man and a woman are getting eliminated every week And I wish they would have stuck with that because I think it would have maybe kept the season to like 15 episodes.

(01:54:59):
[Erica] The last one I watched, I really like... It was the stars, right? And they were like fucking with that. Like somebody had a star and then you had to like get their star.
[Alex] Right.
[Erica] And that I thought was good because you like... I like it when they make you go down and like you have to do something. You have to earn
[Alex] it somehow.
[Erica] And winning mattered, right? Right. And losing mattered because if you lost, you were automatically like...

(01:55:23):
[Alex] So they did do, if you lose, you automatically go into elimination. And then there's like the vote,
[Erica] right, for whoever wins.
[Alex] And basically the base format of this season was if you lose, you go directly into elimination. And if you win, you... It was always like a man and a woman would win. And if they would win, they get to pick from like a set of people to decide who goes down. So like basically the format of the show, the way it started was whoever went into that first elimination, when they won, I think they each got to pick like... See, at one point, the season was teams, then it turned into a solo game. So I'm trying to remember exactly how it was formatted. And this season literally started four months or five months ago. So I can't say I remember every last thing. But basically, whoever won the elimination would then get to pick either a team or a certain number of people to make targets. And then if any of those people didn't win the next elimination... Whoever, or next, no, the next daily, whoever didn't win, if they didn't win the next daily, sorry, then the people who did win the daily, we get to pick from those set of targets and say, okay, you two are going down into elimination. Along with the other two that lost the daily. So that was all fine. Yeah. I was fine with all that. I think like they punished losing in the daily. They gave the winners some power. There was still some manipulation within the game on who you name targets and everything. So I was fine with all of that. But what I didn't like that ended up actually impacting the season is they did this thing called the karma vote. And basically what it is is when someone got eliminated, they had to, for every person still in the game, they had to give them a rating of one to five, one being the worst, five being the best. Sure. And in the final, what ended up happening is, so, like, and I won't spoil anything in case you go and watch it, but in the final, what we find out at the end was that um the final had like seven checkpoints and for each checkpoint people were getting points okay and then they tallied up those points from the seven checkpoints and that's who won for like the men and the women however well they did on the given checkpoints but They also then had the karma vote. And the karma vote, if you won it, was basically worth like two checkpoints. Oh, I don't like

(01:58:06):
[Erica] that.
[Alex] So basically at the end, if people like you, You had like a big potential advantage and it did end up affecting the outcome of the final.
[Erica] I don't like that. And
[Alex] I was also sitting there like, and they didn't say it before the final, which makes me think they sat there at the end and they tallied up the numbers. And then they said, well, if we make it worth one checkpoint, it might not affect the outcome. But if we make it worth two, now we change the outcome of the final and we can act like how this all, you know, affects the game and everything.

(01:58:42):
[Erica] That's dumb. I don't like that. And I just
[Alex] didn't. I didn't like it. And I didn't like what ended up happening. Because the thing is, I feel like. It's like, for example, if I'm just thinking of people, if someone like Wes was there. Well, you know, Wes is fucked on the karma vote. Right. Because he's screwing people over left and right. Right. But that's the game, though. And even if he doesn't, he's talking about how great he is all the time. So he's pissing everybody off. but that is the game like the game is to stick it to people and also you forced people to stick it to others because if you keep getting sent into elimination and this did happen in this season if you keep getting sent into elimination and you keep winning but you win your way all the way to the final well guess what all these people that you eliminated and all the people you made targets are now mad at you because you got sent into elimination and beat them.

(01:59:40):
[Erica] Well, and it's also just kind of like, no, you lost. You shouldn't get to affect the game anymore. I don't like that. That's annoying. I didn't
[Alex] like the karma vote aspect of it, and it did end up affecting the outcome. No, see, now I need you
[Erica] because I'm like, that just sounds annoying, so I don't think I'm going to watch. And even if you did, I don't mind spoilers. Because what was it? It was separated into, like, eras, right?

(02:00:03):
[Alex] Right. There was four teams for each, like, the first, like, ten seasons. You know, like, however it was formatted. Like, one to ten, eleven to twenty. You know, whatever. Whatever the fuck. Right.
[Erica] So who was in the
[Alex] final? There were four men and four women in the final. Spoilers for the fucking challenge, if you care. I don't know. I don't think anyone listens to this that gives a shit. No. The final ended up being, for the men, it was Jordan, Bananas, Derek.

(02:00:36):
[Erica] Bananas still getting into the fucking final, man. Because you can't keep that man down.
[Alex] bananas played a pretty good game this season i mean you can tell you can tell now that he doesn't have all the physical tools that he used to sure because he's like 40 yeah he's older than we
[Erica] are isn't he
[Alex] i might be he's right around our age yeah um but he's still better than most of these dudes like most of these dudes that show up and they're like 20 25 years old he's still better than them athletically like he's 42

(02:01:09):
[Erica] for some reason i thought he was older
[Alex] I mean, for 42, the guy is still a good athlete. Sure. The problem is, is Jordan's a fucking maniac.
[Erica] Jordan's a freak of nature. And I
[Alex] think Jordan's like fairly younger than him. I think Jordan might be like 35. So he's still like in his prime. I don't know how old Jordan is.
[Erica] I don't
[Alex] know his last name. Wisely, wisely, something like that. We're

(02:01:30):
[Erica] just doing Jordan the challenge.
[Alex] 34. 34. So that's the problem is Jordan is still in his prime. And Johnny's kind of falling out of his prime. But
[Erica] this is a man who won a tug of war with one fucking hand.
[Alex] Yeah. um and so it's jordan bananas one of the newer guys who's named kylan and uh and then it's that name yeah i don't think you've seen him and then derrick uh who you've seen on the show yeah And then the women was Jenny. I don't know if you remember her, but she was on... She's only been on, like, two or three seasons. And she's, like, one of those, like, fitness model girls. She's just huge and jacked.

(02:02:09):
[Erica] Okay. Vaguely. Sounds familiar. She
[Alex] won, like, one of the seasons she was on. I can't remember what it was called. But it was Jenny, Rachel. You know, Rachel, like, from way back. Yeah. She was on a
[Erica] season recently, wasn't she?
[Alex] I think she might have been on one of the all-stars. Yeah. But I don't think she's been on the main show in a long time. But she

(02:02:31):
[Erica] does fitness videos. Right. She's in great shape. She's queer, right? Yeah, yeah. I know who Rachel is.
[Alex] So Jenny, Rachel, Tori, and Michelle, who's one of the new Big Brother people, right? I mean, at this point, she's been on for quite a few seasons. I think you would know her if you saw her.
[Erica] If I saw her face, I would. The name isn't ringing a bell.
[Alex] I mean, do you want me to spoil the outcome for you? Yeah,

(02:02:52):
[Erica] no, go ahead. I don't care. I'm not going to
[Alex] watch it. Let's be real. Basically, what happened was...
[Erica] you're not selling it as like a great season no it was
[Alex] it was fine i mean there was some fun stuff like it was watchable i wasn't i wasn't sitting there like bored but they also did the thing where like every episode's a full hour so just they were long episodes it was a lot i mean it's like literally 20 hours of the challenge yeah that's a lot so that's a lot of challenge but basically what ended up happening is the finals was very swimming heavy like it was a lot of they start on a boat like this rickety piece of shit where they're spending their nights and the finals was a lot of like swimming out to some sort of checkpoint doing a thing or doing a puzzle or whatever and then having to swim back and whoever did that first wins the leg right So, Jordan was dominating because, I mean, the guy is like a triathlete. He's a fucking freak. You know, he runs marathons for fun. He's like if Bob was like 120 pounds or something, you know. so nice little shot at the ghost bob all right we gotta get those side swipes you know he doesn't listen anyway it's very important i know

(02:04:10):
[Erica] he doesn't listen so it's fine i made a comment about it he was like yeah no i don't listen it's like oh fuck you too buddy
[Alex] very supportive of your wife's endeavors i mean to be
[Erica] fair i don't listen to his running podcast so i can't get too hot about it erica come on
[Alex] come on who could
[Erica] well
[Alex] exactly but i mean jordan was just swimming like a madman he was dominating and i thought bananas was doing well and honestly the derrick was great i mean he had his best performance ever on this season overall there was a daily he straight up beat jordan in a daily i mean derrick was like i've never seen derrick be so good on the show before because normally he is kind of like a pushover

(02:04:56):
[Erica] yeah he came to play
[Alex] so and then this other guy kylan he's just a bad swimmer well yeah and that did that did him in i mean he was torched um but he's like why am i even here he kept a good mood about it and he was helping the women sometimes when they asked him for some help like he wasn't like an asshole or anything but um he just got destroyed so what happens is for the men at the end jordan won like every leg except for one or two or something like he was just like just just demolishing everyone and what ended up happening is jordan of the four people i think actually did the worst on the karma vote actually worse than bananas which is kind of crazy um Bananas did the second worst, I believe. And I think Kylan did the second best. I think Derek did the best. So what happened was, I can't remember where they all were originally, but... Jordan, because he got the worst on the karma vote and Derek did the best. Derek ended up like only losing to Jordan by like two or three points overall. So basically what happened was the karma vote didn't change the standing for the men. Like Jordan was in first. Derek was in second. Banana was in third. And Kyla was in fourth. And that's the way it all stayed. That

(02:06:13):
[Erica] shook out. Okay.
[Alex] Nothing changed on the karma vote. But what happened was. jenny also absolutely dominated and she said she hadn't swam since the last time she was on the challenge and i was like and i also think and i also think I think Jenny might have been sandbagging a little bit sometimes in the season to make herself not look like so much of a threat.

(02:06:41):
[Erica] Oh, yeah.
[Alex] Because she has asthma, but I think she played it up because they were doing a lot of endurance stuff where she was like dying, like literally dying. And I was like, what's the deal? Are you carrying around too much weight? Like what's happening that you're gassing out so bad? Because I know you won a final. I know you can run.

(02:07:02):
[Erica] Yeah.
[Alex] So I think she might have been sandbagging a little bit to try to like kind of divert a little attention away. I
[Erica] mean, it's not a terrible idea. Because
[Alex] she was swimming. She was like right there with Jordan on everything. And you know Jordan's a fucking freak. Yes. So there was a
[Erica] men's woman and a winner and a woman's winner.
[Alex] Right, exactly. So what ended up happening was Jenny kind of dominated the whole way. And Michelle did really well. actually and she was in second at the end and i think rachel was in third and tori was in fourth and the reason one i think the reason tori did so bad is she got kind of fucked so tori did really bad on the last daily so she went right into elimination and cara maria was there and she got voted into elimination and and um by jordan because the problem was even though they get along it was it was either car or rachel one of them had to go in and jordan had the power because the way it worked is like the men would vote in the women and the women vote in the men um And Jordan, the problem was is Jordan had already shaken Rachel's hand like weeks ago and told her like, you're my number two. You know, like obviously Tori's my number one, but you're my number two. Right. Are

(02:08:25):
[Erica] they still, they're not together. They're not together
[Alex] anymore. But you know what? You got to give it to Jordan. something's going on that guy is giving out some good dick because all the women he's fucked they all love him even though he doesn't he doesn't fuck any of them anymore and they're not together anymore but they all love him i mean

(02:08:47):
[Erica] he's like you know what we had some nice time together but i just don't think it's gonna work out and you don't cheat and you don't be a douchebag
[Alex] someone was like someone was i saw someone post like um laurel would cut johnny's head off for another seven minutes in heaven with jordan or something like that it's like but um no

(02:09:10):
[Erica] laurel's like fucking her life up with what's her face isn't she
[Alex] No, no, they're not together. I don't think. Good. Jesus. So what it came down to was car gets voted in and they had to do they went to like it was actually there was a location change. They went to some new place. They take them to this shithouse boat in the middle of the fucking nowhere. And where

(02:09:32):
[Erica] was the season at?
[Alex] i don't remember i don't remember it's not important but um what the what the elimination was it was a tough elimination they had to like basically they had like these like barrels set up and they had to stay within the barrels and they had to tread water and it was whoever either it was between cara and tori and whoever either goes under or quits first loses so they start off and they're just getting this

(02:10:03):
[Erica] one of those where we're sitting here for like five hours treading water
[Alex] so they're sitting there and they're floating and they're treading water and cara's even like tori has an unfair advantage she has flotation devices and i don't this is ridiculous but she's joking around but um uh they're treading water forever and they're floating forever and eventually it was like they had to keep their arms above the water like their their hands had to be above the water and not being used so then they made it harder sure and then they were still doing that forever so then it was your elbows have to stay above the water and you have to keep treading and i think after something like two and a half or three hours cara finally loses and Tori had to be destroyed off that because the final literally started the next day. Oh, so you're wrecked. They slept on that shitty boat. And then the final started the next day. And then the whole thing is swimming like it's hours and hours and hours and hours of swimming. She had to be absolutely destroyed. So she just did terrible in the final. And I saw Kara said later, she was like, Tori must have been wrecked because I was in the hotel room the next day and I was puking. And like, I couldn't, my legs were like paralyzed. So like, she was like, Tori must have been just, it's crazy Tori even like finished the final.

(02:11:27):
[Erica] It's crazy. But so this karma vote fucked up the women.
[Alex] so yeah so it gets down to it and the order would have been jenny michelle rachel and then tori but what happens is jenny does the worst on the karma vote and rachel does the best so now rachel gets credit for winning two legs of the final that never happened And she jumps all the way from third into tying for first with Jenny. So they end up like splitting first and second places combined money instead of Jenny just getting first. So it wasn't like... It wasn't like Jenny got totally fucked and you still technically won the final, but she did kind of get fucked because first place was 400,000 for the, for the men and the women. And second place was 75. So instead of Jenny getting 400, she had to split for 75.

(02:12:29):
[Erica] Yeah, I'd be a little annoyed about
[Alex] that. And even worse, Michelle in second, instead of winning 75 and really having a really great final, instead of winning 75, she ends up getting third place, which is like 25 or something. So Michelle kind of got really fucked.
[Erica] Yeah, that's pretty weak. I just don't like that, like, to me. it was the same with those like second chance like houses or whatever yeah

(02:12:55):
[Alex] it's like
[Erica] no you're ass lost
[Alex] you should go home
[Erica] you go home you're done you know unless like something weird happens with somebody and they need to bring somebody back but if you lost you don't get to affect the game anymore like just come back next time and affect the game
[Alex] they did do um one of the funnier psychological torture overnight things that i think they've ever done which was they're on this ship boat And they give them a giant bag of coins and a chest. And you had to count the coins. And there were like something like 6,000 coins, Erica.

(02:13:32):
[Erica] So you had to count it before you could go to bed.
[Alex] So you had to count it all before you go to bed, but you only get to count in half hour segments. And then you have to spend another half hour singing the song they had on a board. They had like lyrics to some stupid shanty on a board.
[Erica] Oh, see that? I'd be like, no, I'm good. I'm done. Thanks. It's been real, guys. But

(02:13:56):
[Alex] you had, you couldn't, if you quit, I think you were out. You had to put the coins in the chest.
[Erica] That's what I'm saying. Yeah, no, I'm good. I don't need the money. I'm
[Alex] solid. So what happens is, Is like at one point, for example, Bananas was like eight coins away from finishing his putting all the coins in the chest. And they were like half an hour. That's it. And he's like, guys, I've got like eight coins. Can I just put the eight coins in the chest? They're like, nope, you got to go sing for half an hour. So it's like the psychological torture element combined with the counting and then having to remember your number while you're so tired. That's no

(02:14:34):
[Erica] good.
[Alex] So
[Erica] that's no good.
[Alex] What happens is this is actually the funniest but also saddest thing is Tori took the longest account by far. And they showed like when the next day started and they all went to after they all went to bed and everything and they all gave their counts. Everyone was off. Right. But not like that off considering. I mean, like most people were kind of like within 100 maybe. And the people who won, I think they were like plus or minus like 30 or something. So they were pretty close, all things considered. Tori was, like, 980 over. Like, not even in the vicinity. So I think on one of the singing things, she just, like, added 1,000 or something. I don't know. And then she took forever. Like, she was still counting well past everyone else sleeping. So she took forever and was way off. And when he announced that all, Tori was like, she started crying. She's like, I'm just done, dude. Like, I'm done. Yeah. Because she knew she was fucked.

(02:15:41):
[Erica] Well, at that point, right, you're just like.
[Alex] She didn't quit. She kept going. Sure. But you could tell, like, it was like. You're so tired,
[Erica] too, that it's just like, fuck this forever. Yeah.
[Alex] And this ship they were on was such a shithole. I can't even believe this thing floats. Like, it was crazy that it even floats. Oh, the challenge. So, I mean, it was fine. Like, it was fine. I wasn't upset I watched the season. I just think the twist at the end with the karma stuff. Because, like, you're getting punished for, like, things that you didn't have to. Like, things you had to do. Right. For playing the game. Like, why are you being punished? Yeah.

(02:16:20):
[Erica] Well, and when they, like, leave it up to stuff that, like, isn't, like, the physical challenge stuff. Or, like, you said, you're getting punished for playing the game the way the game is supposed to be played. Yeah. That's stupid.
[Alex] And, like, what it came down to is if Derek would have won, like, one or two more checkpoints or placed better than Jordan anyway. It would have. It could have swung that. And all of a sudden, like, Jordan would have probably just jumped off the boat.

(02:16:46):
[Erica] I mean, I would have been pretty pissed off, right?
[Alex] I mean, when they announced the karma thing at the final, because they weren't telling them that throughout the season. That's
[Erica] annoying, too, though, because it's like, okay, now I don't know that there's this aspect of the game that you just got here that's going to fuck me later. That's annoying, too.
[Alex] But it's like bad TV too because you know what you want as a production staff? You want people to be fucking each other over and be scheming and being doing things to each other. That's the whole point

(02:17:13):
[Erica] of the game.
[Alex] You don't want to like create a situation where they're being nice to each other.
[Erica] Right. That's bad. Why am I watching that? That's not what I'm watching this for.
[Alex] So, yeah. So the I mean, when they announced the Carmen thing at the final bananas, you could see him in the background. He was like, oh, I'm fucked. You know, it's like, oh, I'm screwed.
[Erica] But it's just like Bob was rewatching Rivals a couple of weeks ago, I want to say. And it's just like that is a simple season. that's executed so well and there's not a lot of the first rivals like from god only fucking knows how long ago that is it's just it's simple it's good and it's like we don't need i feel like as longer they go on they're like oh we gotta do like we gotta get different shit it's like no you don't just keep it simple So eliminations, if you lose the daily, there should be a punishment for that. You should be rewarded if you won. And it's just, just keep it simple. And if you lose, you're gone. You don't get to affect the game.

(02:18:17):
[Alex] yeah so i was i did see a clip from um it was like uh you know zach has one of the millions of podcasts right and he had jordan on and uh they were talking about how who's
[Erica] listening to zach's podcast
[Alex] The clips I've seen are actually pretty good. I don't like him at all. For a guy who just comes off as a huge asshole on the show, the clips I've seen, he actually does give some good insight.

(02:18:45):
[Erica] He comes off as such a misogynistic asshole. I know. He
[Alex] comes off real bad on the show. And that's probably as Stewie still is, if I had to guess. But, um... Anyways, in this one clip I just saw, he was talking about that I didn't even know this. It was around the time of Rivals 2 or something. He said they changed the contracts because the game used to be a game show. It was set up in the contracts as a game show. So before the season started... They had to submit the rules of the game to like some sort of board or something

(02:19:21):
[Erica] to like judge that it's it's fair. Right. Right.
[Alex] Sure. And stick to those rules. And now ever since then, the show has been. in written out in the contracts as a reality show so they don't have to do that and then they can do whatever they want so much fuckery right and they can do whatever they want with in terms of like manipulating the footage and everything so it's like but that is interesting because i didn't know i mean like obviously we know they're kind of like flying by the seat of their pants to a certain

(02:19:50):
[Erica] sure sure sure sure And you're editing to create a story, right? Because it's these maniacs in a house that's 24 hours together. How much stuff are you actually getting?
[Alex] Right. And I get it. And my one friend thinks the show is fixed. And I don't think the show is fixed or predetermined. But I do think they generally are trying to massage out certain outcomes, right? There's a

(02:20:18):
[Erica] finger on the scale.
[Alex] But I also think sometimes they get into situations that I know they definitely don't want. Like, for example, this final is the perfect example. I mean, there's a reason the last time Jenny won a final, she didn't get invited back the next season because she's not all that great TV and she's a really good athlete. And that's a bad combination for the challenge because you don't want the boring people winning all the time.

(02:20:47):
[Erica] But you need the women. We've talked about this before. The women need to at least be like competitive or else it's just boring to watch.
[Alex] Well, right. And I think one of the reasons they probably felt comfortable bringing her back for this one is you had like Laurel there and Kara.
[Erica] How did that all go?
[Alex] um laurel set out from like the beginning of the season to try to fuck car over at every possible turn and then laurel just at some point was like just like pretty much gave up and quit like it was some sort of it was some sort of like mid-season elimination thing where whoever finishes last on this daily for like the men and the women gets eliminated And Laurel was doing bad in the daily and just kind of like gave up and quit. So I just don't think she had like she had it in her for this season or something. But yeah, she was kind of gunning for Kara from the start. Of course. I mean, it makes sense to try to get out like one of the people you view as your main competition.

(02:21:48):
[Erica] Sure.
[Alex] I think people should have been targeting Jordan a lot harder. They targeted band bananas a little bit, which makes sense of course, but I don't think Jordan ever saw an elimination. That's
[Bob] kind of crazy.
[Alex] But Jordan is like, Jordan's a pretty smooth political operator because like I said, he goes around the house and he's like fucked half the women that are there, but they all love them. So they all got his back in the votes and like, He never gets voted in. He never gets targeted, even though he's like the best dude by a mile. Eh? It's crazy.

(02:22:22):
[Erica] But if it's the women voting for him and it's his...
[Alex] This is the old CT strategy.
[Erica] Right. He doesn't have much of an influence on... Because there's a women's pot. He doesn't fuck with that pot. Right. So it's like, what do we care if Jordan gets to the final?
[Alex] Right. It actually even benefits us in case there's parts where we need to work together. Right.

(02:22:43):
[Erica] That doesn't fuck us over. So yeah, who cares? Let's get Jordan to the final.
[Alex] Yeah. So he just kind of like kicked... And he won a lot of dailies. Like, don't get me wrong. He probably won like four or five dailies. But he also kind of like... a little bit of a coast yeah um but yeah i mean kara was you know no one i mean jenny did have to go into eliminations like she got targeted a little bit i think she had to go into like three eliminations or something and won them but you know kara got targeted quite a bit um

(02:23:16):
[Erica] Kara always gets targeted quite a bit.
[Alex] Tori somehow is like also finangled her way into every alliance. So she doesn't really get targeted all that much, but she definitely went into at least one elimination that I remember. Um, but yeah, I think Laurel just didn't just seem like she didn't want to be there or something or like, or just checked out. I don't know.

(02:23:37):
[Erica] Well, I don't know how long ago all that shit with Nicole happened. I think that
[Alex] was, like, years ago. Yeah. Because remember, that season got filmed a long time ago. Yeah, that's true. That's true. And they didn't air it for a really long time for whatever reason. But yeah, I mean, like I said, I think the season was good. It wasn't bad. Like, remember there was that string of, like, two or three, maybe, like, eight years ago or something that were really bad? That was when Kara was in her full-blown, like, villain arc and just was... unbearable to watch

(02:24:07):
[Erica] it was that one season oh like war of the worlds where it was just like
[Alex] she was so aggravating
[Erica] well and everybody on the opposite team
[Alex] oh they were all voting to fuck it was like you guys
[Erica] are just fucking yourselves over every single vote what are you doing And yeah, she had way too much power. It was the one that they ultimately ended up losing. And then there was the shot of her crying at the end. That was just like the tastiest thing in the history of the

(02:24:36):
[Alex] universe. I could have licked those tears. They were so good.
[Erica] Because it was just like, CT ended up saving that season from oblivion when he switched teams.
[Alex] Yeah, when he switched it on him. But,
[Erica] oof, God, was that bad. That was just bad TV.
[Alex] Yeah, there were a few seasons that were like that that were just objectively bad TV. But this was like good TV. It just wasn't great TV. I think the final was fun. It was very physically demanding.

(02:25:06):
[Erica] I like that. I like when the finals are a little like you get the puzzles and stuff, but when it is like hard still.
[Alex] And Johnny, I think Johnny is kind of taken on more of like. I think he's kind of taken on that Mark Long role in a way, but but like he's much better. Like Mark Long was never even at his peak. He wasn't as good as Johnny ever was. Right. But I think he's kind of almost taken on like that grandfather role where he's like he really did set out this season to protect like the women he was rolling with. Like he was rolling with Jenny and Rachel. Yeah. And another two people whose names I'm totally blanking on right now. But whoever he was rolling with, like, he did actually, like, do what he said he was going to do. And he set out to protect them. And he didn't really do any of his normal, like, Johnny, like, backdoor shenanigans. I

(02:26:03):
[Erica] feel like the last couple seasons I've seen him on, he's been a little bit more...
[Alex] And he still kind of carries the seasons and the confessionals and stuff like that. Oh, well,
[Erica] yeah. Because that's just kind of where he shines, right? Yeah. Especially in these later years for Mr. Bananas.
[Alex] Yeah. I just think, you know, again, I'd love to be in Johnny's physical condition at 42 years old. The guy still can do quite a bit. And he was doing, I mean, you know, he did pretty well in the finals, all things considered. It's just Jordan's a monster. Yeah.

(02:26:35):
[Erica] Well, yeah, you gotta be looking at that like, well, there's no chance. Unless, like, he gets hit by lightning or something. Yeah, you need a
[Alex] shark to pop up. And even
[Erica] then, you know? A
[Alex] shark pops up, rips off one of Jordan's legs, and he still wins. He just becomes more aerodynamic without the leg. Oh, yeah, I can work with this.

(02:26:55):
[Erica] Okay. Cool.
[Alex] I've been working without a hand for my whole life. This is nothing. I saw he's over, and he's somewhere in California. His power's out. Yeah. So, yeah, they're having good times over there. Fucked over there, man. Fucked up. And I think I heard, you know, I'd have to look into this and see if there was any updates. But, you know, you remember in WWE, Melina? Yeah. People are saying they can't reach her. So I hope nothing bad happened to her. Yeesh. I did see, I don't know if you want to watch it at some point, but there was like Wrestle Kingdom and then whatever show is the next day.

(02:27:40):
[Erica] Oh, yeah. Kenny wrestled, yeah?
[Alex] Yeah, Kenny. I heard the Omega match. I can't remember who he wrestled, but I heard the Omega match was awesome.
[Erica] I mean, dude doesn't have bad
[Alex] matches. There was some other fun stuff. It was like Takeshita versus Shingo Takagi. I mean, I'm sure that had to be fucking great. Big meaty men slapping meat.

(02:28:04):
[Erica] Yeah, that's a favorite.
[Alex] I think I heard Tanahashi's last match is going to be against Takeshita. I think Takeshita has signed a New Japan contract, so now he has like a three-way deal going between like AEW, New Japan, and like DDT or something like that. Good for him, man. So he's just pulling in all the money. That guy's awesome, dude.

(02:28:27):
[Erica] Oh, he's a beast. He's fun to watch wrestle.
[Alex] I saw this is unrelated. I mean, there was other good stuff from what I heard. I
[Erica] mean, Wrestle Kingdom is always like a good time. Right.
[Alex] I heard Mercedes and Mina had a good match. And then there was another match with the Stardom women that I heard was really good.
[Erica] I just want to see a good Mercedes match. I haven't seen one since she's been back.

(02:28:48):
[Alex] Yeah, I know. It's been
[Erica] upsetting.
[Alex] um but it was i'm sure i don't know what the match was or whatever but uh do you know this character in aw called harley cameron
[Erica] I don't think that name rings a bell.
[Alex] So her basic character is she's like, she's Australian. And I think she, uh, was like one of these former like model types, you know, but apparently I've heard that her wrestling has actually gotten quite good. Like she's trained a lot. Um, but she, her character is like really wacky, you know, like she's really over the top and it cuts a good promo, but the promos are very like comedic and over the top. Um, um so uh what's her name mariah may is cutting one of her like evil heel promos

(02:29:36):
[Erica] as one does
[Alex] and harley just like rolls in like literally rolls in on like a freaking chair and just starts cutting like some maniac promo about how they should wrestle or whatever and she says now this is what got me you know we have the we have the meat matches between the men harley goes let's do hot girl graps I was like, that's a great line. I'm

(02:30:00):
[Erica] into that. Okay, hot girl grabs. Hot girl grabs. I can get into that.
[Alex] Did you see that clip I sent you of Toni Storm doing all the backstage shenanigans?
[Erica] I think I watched it, yes. She's a delight.
[Alex] I love the whole thing she's doing now where she's acting like she's a rookie and she's going around asking for advice and stuff. It's so good. like she asks like uh who was it it was like Christopher Daniels or something like hey could you watch my match tonight he's just looking at her like

(02:30:38):
[Erica] Amazing. Amazing. I need to see if I can't get some... Max.
[Alex] Oh, yeah. AEW's on Max now. Dude. Oh. I meant to... Okay. Let's talk about... Go ahead. Oh,
[Erica] no. I meant to check out Raw, but I was just kind of like...
[Alex] Okay. So... I put it on in the background. Get there. Get the
[Erica] segue. I got you.

(02:30:59):
[Alex] Thank you. I put it on in the background because I just wanted to see what the video quality would be. Because
[Erica] we talked about this, I feel like. Yeah.
[Alex] Something is definitely going on. And I know I'm not the only one out there because I'm hearing a lot of complaints. but the Netflix app on some devices is terrible for live streaming, like unusably bad. Yeah. So, and I've only tried it on my TV. I haven't tried it on the Xbox. I haven't pulled it up on the desktop or anything, but on my TV, if I go and watch anything that isn't live on Netflix, it's in 4k. It looks great. It looks great. Sure. Whatever. Loads up quick, runs great, yada, yada, the whole shebang.

(02:31:44):
[Erica] the stream i'm assuming did not
[Alex] if i load up i loaded up the nfl stream when that was happening on like christmas or something awful and this netflix stream on for raw awful so there's a lot of netflix apps out there i don't know if they need to roll out some sort of update or something but i bet you there's millions of people out there who load up these shows and they're like this looks like ass And then they don't want to watch it. Like, it looks really bad. I could show it to you sometime. It looks really bad.

(02:32:15):
[Erica] Well, because if you can't follow it, right? If it's that bad.
[Alex] And then when you pull up the stream of the show after it's aired, it's still that same shitty video.
[Erica] This was on your TV?
[Alex] Yeah. It's weird. You know, I'm curious. um you have netflix on your phone i
[Erica] do have netflix on my phone

(02:32:36):
[Alex] so yeah look for raw and it's probably fine i bet you it's probably fine on your phone but um the show itself i wasn't really watching it that closely but i did have it on while i was doing other stuff and the show itself from what i saw was terrible i mean like really bad i think they did the thing Where they were like, we're so popular. And, you know, they had, like, celebrities there and stuff. Like, they had, like, Vanessa, what do you say her name, Hudgens. She was there. And I think, to her credit, I think she actually might be, like, a huge wrestling fan. I

(02:33:14):
[Erica] feel like she might be. I feel like she's
[Alex] been at stuff before. Yeah, she had, like, a jacket with a bunch of, like, wrestling, like, patches on it. And she looked really, like, excited and happy to be there. Right.
[Erica] i'm getting an error trying to play it so that that doesn't that doesn't bode well
[Alex] no
[Erica] okay we'll have to check again later alex
[Alex] um but and they had a lot of celebrities there you know like whatever i

(02:33:35):
[Erica] know uh the hulkster was there and got booed
[Alex] yeah the hulkster i did unmute the audio for that part just to see what the reaction would be because i was interested because i thought it's the hulkster he's in la and he's been very vocal about his support of trump right and And it's interesting because it's kind of like you had the comparison on the same show because Taker came out for like two seconds and did the biker Taker thing and like posed with Rhea Ripley. And he didn't get booed. And Taker has also been in support of Trump.

(02:34:10):
[Erica] But do people like
[Alex] know? I don't think he's been nearly as vocal about it. He's
[Erica] not speaking at the Republican National Convention. Exactly.
[Alex] Hulkster has been very vocal about it and very out there. So they roll him out there in front of L.A. And I'm not going to say it was like. It wasn't booed out of the building. But noticeable. But it was like 60% of the crowd was booing everything. Just the whole time just booing. And I think the rest of the crowd was kind of like, hmm, this ain't going over too hot. But I also think

(02:34:43):
[Erica] it's like he's also just the Trump stuff beyond that. He's a titanic piece of shit beyond
[Alex] that. That's true. And I was also talking about this the other night. But this is what I was trying to think about. What has changed other than that? Because... Everyone knows Hulk's a piece of shit. And this isn't anything new. He's been a piece of shit for decades. And they still never booed him like this. The only thing I can think of that's changed recently to trigger the booing is the Trump stuff. It's entirely

(02:35:14):
[Erica] possible that that's the case.
[Alex] Because I think, for example... when all the stuff with the sex tape and he was calling his daughter's boyfriend the n-word and all that came out i mean yeah wwe fired him but whenever he next reappeared i don't know how long it was or whatever whenever he next reappeared he still got cheered and everything it wasn't like people were holding it against him

(02:35:36):
[Erica] well it's racism that's right we don't care but i'm just
[Alex] saying i mean people don't really care about supporting trump either but i'm just saying like
[Erica] I don't know. I don't know. I
[Alex] can't think of anything else that changed that would trigger the booing. So he came out there and he tried to cut his whole Hulkster promo. And a lot of the show was like blowing the Netflix executives. And there were only like four matches on a three-hour show. Like... And they weren't that long either. Like, everything was very drawn out. Like, Jey Uso came out for a match with Drew McIntyre. And then they cut to the back and they're like, there's commercials. They're doing promos and everything or whatever else. And then they come back and it's like 10 minutes later and Jey Uso's music is still playing. Yeah. This shit had to be brutal if you were there live. And it was brutal on

(02:36:26):
[Erica] TV. It's your first show. It should be very wrestling heavy, I would think. Because that's what this is, isn't it?
[Alex] I think what they thought they were doing was trying to present like, oh, look how popular we are. And we know we're going to get a mainstream curious audience. So let's try to do things that appeal to the mainstream or something. But I just don't... I don't think you need to do, like, all wrestling, but there has to be some sort of... Oh, don't do, like,

(02:36:54):
[Erica] wall-to-wall wrestling, but it should be more than four matches on a three-hour show.
[Alex] And none of the matches were any good, by the way.
[Erica] Oh, well, that's the other, like...
[Alex] Punk versus Rollins was probably the best one, and even that was just okay.
[Erica] Not great.
[Alex] And, yeah, everything. I mean, there was not a good match on that show. So... yeah i don't i don't know i just think it was a weird show and they didn't even do as much viewership as i thought they would like they did five million i think i heard they did five million viewers worldwide which is like okay double what they were doing on usa but that's also only in the u.s and this is your first show so this might be the peak

(02:37:38):
[Erica] right and if it was bad and
[Alex] it was bad
[Erica] well we'll see how much it slides i'm very
[Alex] interested to see if like more ratings leave more not ratings but more viewership numbers leak out in the future because yeah i don't know it wasn't a great it wasn't good it wasn't good
[Erica] I mean, I don't know how the, because I think it was simulcast, the AEW show. It's still on. Yeah, it's

(02:38:02):
[Alex] still on TBS, but it's also on Max. But it's also streaming. I should pull that up and see what the quality is. It's probably fine, though. I mean, I don't know. I don't know. I've never watched anything live on Max. I don't know if they even have Max.
[Erica] I
[Alex] don't know.
[Erica] But, yeah, I don't know. I just, you're a wrestling show. Be the wrestling show.

(02:38:23):
[Alex] Yeah, it was just a bad show. It was really bad and everything was so drawn out. I mean, that's the thing to me is like, it was just so boring.
[Erica] and that's the greatest sin i don't know
[Alex] who you're even appealing to with the way the show was structured that's my thing is i don't know who i don't know who was watching this and they were like fuck yeah this is awesome and they like never watched wrestling before and now they're into it i just don't think you hooked anybody with that show but maybe i'm wrong maybe next week they'll do six million viewers

(02:38:53):
[Erica] yeah we'll see i like i think you said when we were talking about it uh when we watched what did we watch what aw show did we watch
[Alex] uh was that world's end or something or is that the next one what
[Erica] actually
[Alex] was that all in or all out or something was it one of those
[Erica] no i don't remember the name
[Alex] of
[Erica] it
[Alex] i can't remember what the pay-per-view is called it was a pay-per-view

(02:39:13):
[Erica] it was a pay-per-view yeah yeah i don't remember i don't remember the name of it but we watched it after christmas ish somewhere a couple weeks
[Alex] ago
[Erica] yeah i don't remember a ton about it but those pay-per-views are always fun
[Alex] yeah i
[Erica] don't know Bad Mercedes match. And I think didn't... No. Oh, no. That

(02:39:36):
[Alex] match was okay. It
[Erica] was
[Alex] okay. It wasn't great.
[Erica] Well, that's the thing. I want a great match
[Alex] from
[Erica] her. Matches used to be great.
[Alex] Yeah, I know. Because,
[Erica] yeah, I remember we were sitting there and we were trying to come up with, like, what's the mixtape of matches to show? Because I've got some friends who were like... Oh, yeah. Oh, if you want to watch, we'll watch with you. And I was like, well, okay.

(02:39:57):
[Alex] Interesting. Now you have my attention. Yeah.
[Erica] so
[Alex] yeah i need i need a list of like it's hard it's hard to try to come up to matches that you come up with matches that you think would appeal to like people who don't watch wrestling
[Erica] well i think the one that i always go back to is uh that wyatt's v the shield that first three way they did i

(02:40:21):
[Alex] remember a long time ago i think it was like Brock Lesnar, Seth Rollins, and Roman Reigns or something like that had a triple threat. And it was, like, unbelievable. Yeah. Because, you know, that's the thing about Lesnar, man. Like, Lesnar never has a bad match.

(02:40:41):
[Erica] No.
[Alex] Like, Lesnar is a freak athlete.
[Erica] I'm trying to... I think we said, like, that first Omega V... Oh, the first
[Alex] Omega Okada is an all-timer. And I don't even think you need to know, like, any context surrounding it. Just be like, look at these two incredible athletes and the crazy shit they're doing.
[Erica] Well, and I think, like...

(02:41:01):
[Alex] And the storytelling within the match.
[Erica] The storytelling within the match was always good with...
[Alex] Both of them, really. But Kenny especially.
[Erica] Yeah. And then you get the commentary with New Japan was always good at, like... bringing you up to speed with what, what was going on like WWE for a while there. And I don't know if they've gotten better, but at least it seemed like they had when we watched WrestleMania last year.

(02:41:26):
[Alex] Yeah.
[Erica] It was like, Oh, okay. The commentary is actually serving the match now. And for a very long time, it didn't.
[Alex] That's the thing that kind of sucks is that that Raw was so bad. And everything I've seen... I mean, I don't watch Raw or SmackDown every week, but the clips I see or just the general vibe I get from reading about what people are saying is that WWE as a whole has been really good for the past year or two or something.

(02:41:55):
[Erica] WrestleMania was fun. We haven't watched WrestleMania in ages.
[Alex] So...
[Erica] The commentary was good. I mean, the video packages were always good with them. The only bad thing is the stupid, like, 3D effects that they do in the...
[Alex] The arena. Yeah, and the entrances. Pretending like they're projected on there or something. It's
[Erica] like, this is wicked stupid. Why are

(02:42:16):
[Alex] we doing
[Erica] this? Well,
[Alex] it just looks so low-rent. Yeah. It looks like something out of, like, the original Mortal Kombat movie, except that was, like, 30 years ago. And
[Erica] not in a good way. Like, a bad way. No, like, it looks
[Alex] as bad as that, and it looked bad back then. Yeah. I love that fucking movie. That's a great movie. The song alone. Oh, they hit you with that
[Erica] song and you're just like, yep, we're in for a good time.

(02:42:40):
[Alex] Is that another thing Bob hasn't seen? No,
[Erica] he's seen that movie. Like, I have watched that with him. I know he has seen that. No, we gotta do...
[Alex] RoboCop and Street Fighter.
[Erica] Yeah, that's gotta be the combo evening. I heard
[Alex] the RoboCop game is great, the newest one.

(02:43:00):
[Erica] Oh, I didn't realize there was a game.
[Alex] Oh, yeah, yeah. There's, like, a first-person shooter or, like, it's, like, not a multiplayer game. It's all just, like, a story. But,
[Erica] like, honestly, that's, like, yeah. But, yeah,
[Alex] guys. I heard it's really good. It
[Erica] shouldn't be a difficult thing, right? Like, RoboCop first-person shooter? Yeah.
[Alex] Gun target

(02:43:20):
[Erica] baddies? This shouldn't be difficult. Dead or
[Alex] alive, you're coming with me.
[Erica] Oh, my goodness. All right. All right. You got anything else? Hmm. Hmm.
[Alex] Hmm. I got nothing. All right. Well, on that note, hug me. Hold me tight.

(02:44:20):
[Bob] This has been a Puma Knife Production.

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SI #140 – We Are So Very Ill-equipped For This Moment

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}SI #140 – We Are So Very Ill-equipped For This Moment