307: Sesame Street

In this episode, Professor Mouse and the Cosmologist discuss Sesame Street and consuming children's media as an adult. Munchie references galore. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time.

Speaker 2 (00:00):
It's like a clown.

Speaker 3 (00:01):
No, don't this little page's bagging boarding Batman and the
gut are like a maze story tellers me some fellas,
we some felons. Isn't amazing, It's like Appella bearver sell
it because this shit is so contagious.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Mouths on the.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Summer Reason Pilot got the show while the cycle spinning
knowledge on the getty like a pro beat the babo
be the rabbit. Don't step to the squad, we get
activic and hate. It's like a stepla parts. You don't
like fish talk?

Speaker 4 (00:20):
Do you hate it?

Speaker 3 (00:20):
To matl We the cuttle fish killers tendepools on the
taping Greatest five of Stars. If you cherish your life,
fucky barneshit squad spraying leg and your pipe.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey, everybody, we'll go to do another edition of Is
This Just Bad? Is This Just Bad?

Speaker 5 (00:40):
The best podcast you never heard of? Your host, Professor
Mouse joined as always buy The CV Cosmologist.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
Hello, Hello, Hello, we.

Speaker 5 (00:50):
Fucking did it man, We got out of October. We
defeated all the spooks and goblins.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Or did we Now it's always monster. It's always monster
time year round here. But yes, the had an interesting
managed to cobble together a Frankenstein month. And I'm curious
now that we've gone through these like big picture, big

(01:23):
scary monsters, you know, some of the serial monsters, even
apropos of our our gym Jim Henson crossover, you have
introduced some domesticated monsters into your own home. How is
that experience for you and Munchie?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Uh?

Speaker 5 (01:42):
Yeah, so uh, Sesame Street is not something I've ever seen.
I've never seen. Is not something I've never seen. It
doesn't make any sense. I have never seen Sesame Street.
I have seen, and I sat down with Prince B
to confirm this taxonomy. One of ten Disney Renaissance films,

(02:10):
the one being The Lion King, and a lot of
other sort of like cartoon shows that are associated very
heavily with our generation.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Generation and inspire a lot of nostalgia for our generation.
This is interesting because you and Maul are in a
similar boat of having alternative childhoods I guess, and not
having a particular attachment to some of these things, which

(02:47):
I always really appreciate because that coming with that fresh perspective,
you're able to have a really objective view of like
is this just bad or not, Like you know, is
this entirely based on nostalgia. And it's been interesting introducing
them all to some of this stuff because occasionally there'll
be things that I like take for granted that she'll

(03:09):
see something of she have like a really interesting perspective on,
or see something of value in that I didn't notice
because I've just watched as a kid. Or we'll come
in hot and be like this sucks, bro Let put
it away. Let it go, dude, it's not worth it.
So it's all I'm fascinating when you experience, you know,

(03:31):
a Disney renaissance or a cartoon or something that we
have the rose colored classes for.

Speaker 5 (03:37):
Yeah, I mean there's something to be said when like
there is I mean, it's like always that George Lucas
thing of like the prequels were for kids.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
And that adults.

Speaker 5 (03:51):
Had to have an adult opinion about Star Wars is
almost inappropriate.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
And yet and yet, and.

Speaker 5 (04:01):
I think in his case that's a lot of like
deflecting some of the poor quality of his of his
of his art.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
But there is there is.

Speaker 5 (04:09):
A way that I do have to that I do
have to recognize that I'm engaging with all of this
material as a mid thirties millennial, and that it is
something that has a nostalgic significance to a lot of
people I know, and that is valid, but sometimes.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
It it leads to a lot of bad opinions. The
one in particular that.

Speaker 5 (04:43):
I'm thinking of is that, you know, we have a
you know, a friend who is who is sort of
like just eternally latched onto us in a way that
is inescapable, and he is obsessed with the teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles. And I started to watch that show, which

(05:06):
I had never seen, and I thought it was which
one the one that was popular in on the WB
when we were growing up. Sure, uh, and it fucking
sucks ass. It's really bad and stupid and boring. And
I I and I even when I was talking with him,

(05:26):
I was like, and I know that I would have
loved this shit if I was ten years old, but
that show sucks. Like they're not funny, they're annoying, and
the art is kind of bad. And so it's this
like bizarre thing where you have to have like I'm

(05:48):
not going to invoke double consciousness to talk about this.

Speaker 2 (05:53):
If you have to have this.

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Now you can.

Speaker 5 (05:57):
That makes sense I just don't want to disrespect do
boys in that way. It's it's it you have to
like dissociate in a lot of ways from this stuff.

Speaker 1 (06:08):
And so that's interesting though because I agree. But I
also what I really appreciate about that perspective on something
you haven't seen is you go through the crucible of
not dissociating and then being able to identify which of
these things are worth holding on to. And so like
there's some of the Disney Renaissance stuff where like, oh wait,

(06:31):
like the art style in Mulan is gorgeous, and they
spend a lot of time and attention on making sure
the animated frames are taking cues from Chinese calligraphy and
like stuff that they don't spend time on anymore on
like that. So there's pieces there that are really good.
And then there's stuff like turtles are interesting because we

(06:51):
have friends who are within a couple of years of us,
older and younger, and I like mut I like ninjas,
I love turtles. But the sum is less than the
the whole is less than some of its parts. In
that case, and especially coming up with mal who we

(07:17):
both have an affection for Renaissance artists, I was just
having a conversation with one of our friends recently about how, hey,
isn't it so weird that Leonardo is not the inventor
of the group. They've got Dona Tello doing the invention,
the inventing of all of their gadgets, and he just
like never thought about it because it's so ingrained in

(07:39):
his head of like, that's just what the turtles are called.
And I'm coming from a space of like that pisces
me off that you use these names and you haven't
aligned them to like, you know, Michelangelo is the one
who gets into fights all the time, and Leonardo is
the one that's inventing them, Like that's just not how

(08:01):
it's set up, which just has eternally kind of turned
me off on the turtles. But that's that kind of
like if you grew up with them, that's like not
even something you never think about. So yeah, that's interesting, and.

Speaker 5 (08:14):
It's also weird too, because like the because then if
you go a generation sort of removed from that, like
older nerds will be like what's interesting about the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles is that they are a send up
of like comics in the eighties and so black and

(08:35):
white original Turtles of being, you know, like.

Speaker 1 (08:38):
In the same way that Lobo and Judge Dread are
meant to be parodies that get taken too seriously and
rolled over into a life of their own. Yeah, and
then to go from the like indie send up, they're
basically like the tick to them have become completely mainstreamed.

(08:59):
Is this like Eastman and Lord set their names Eastman,
the other guy whatever, the guys who created the Turtles
created this you know, empire that they accidentally kind of that, Yeah.

Speaker 5 (09:15):
And it was it was something that was supposed to
be appreciated with a detached irony. That then and this
is all like Alan Moore's critique of comic book consumers
is that they take seriously and make it a crucial
part of their identity. Stories that are for children, And
so it leads to this kind of arrested development or

(09:39):
this like intellectual.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Like constriction.

Speaker 5 (09:47):
And it is it is, it is the George Lucas
thing of Like. Adults should not be fans of the
teenage mutant Naja Turtles. Adults should not have opinions about
Star Wars. Adults should not feel very strongly about Sesame
Street but they do.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
So a couple of thoughts on that, and then I
do absolutely want to hear about Sesame Street. It's interesting
we're talking about this now because uh, Wizards of the
Coast is continuing. It's as we've talked about before, and
a couple of like Magic the Gathering YouTubers have pulled
in have like gone deep on Hasbro's financial records and

(10:26):
confirmed what we were thinking, which is that Hasbro does
not make money. Only Wizards of the Coast makes money
for Hasbro. Hasbro is like dying and has to milk
the Wizards for wizard milk wonderful for all their worth.
And so Magic the Gathering specifically has become like a
fun co model of we'll just license a bunch of

(10:49):
bullshit fun co pop style. So they just announced teenage
muting Ninja Turtles set and they had done this like
few touristic Japanese inspired in Universe world of their own
that had ninjas and turtle mutants, and it was like this, like,
you know, haha, kind of a reference, but we're not

(11:10):
actually doing it to now full on the land each
like each Land card is a really gross looking piece
of pizza with you know, like a mushroom shaped like
the swamp skull logo, like that kind of thing, and like,
it's fine if you're really into teenage Ninja turtles, I

(11:31):
bet that would be really exciting for you. I've had
the opportunity, and again it was the same kind of
like nostalgia versus critical engagement versus having is having even
having opinions on this stupid I've been able to use
this as an opportunity to stop playing Magic for a while. Yeah,
take a break, break, which is great. And part of

(11:52):
this was the Spider Man set wasn't online. The Marvel
sets they got like, you know, dicked over to not
be able to have the digital licenses. So I'm like, cool,
I can just like dip out and do something else.
But at the same time, they're gonna do a set
based on the Hobbit next summer that will be available
online that I know it's gonna drag me back in.

(12:12):
And then November of next of twenty twenty six there's
gonna be a Star Trek set, And I'm like, well, okay,
so I have like nine months to go play my
backlog of other video games, or read or do literally
anything else before I get sucked back in, which is
a great opportunity, but it is that same like it's

(12:33):
entirely nostalgia bait, and trying to engage with it objectively
it's extremely difficult if you have that history.

Speaker 5 (12:44):
Yeah, it's like the fucking It's like when when when
people get upset about reboot culture, like they're rebooting everything,
and then.

Speaker 1 (12:55):
It I don't want to engage anything new.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Yeah, yeah, but I won't engage anything new.

Speaker 5 (13:00):
But it's also just like translating into like the world's
most famous card game, like trading card game. It's just
it is, it's this weird thing where like the monoculture
is dead, long lived the monoculture because like now everything
is the same thing still as it is being so
diffused across like platforms and and niches and and marketing

(13:26):
that is like specifically algorithmically tied. Yet we all somehow
have the same cultural touchstones. And this shit is just
like like new D and D systems or like third
party like role playing systems are like let's do Star
Trek magic the gatherings, like let's do Star Trek Paramount

(13:47):
is like, let's make Star Trek movies. And it's like
I guess it's all it's all just gonna be the
same shit forever.

Speaker 1 (13:55):
Yeah, yeah, and and the only time. And we're now
old in enough that they're mining our childhood specifically as
opposed to stuff that we got into, because they were
already being mined from the previous, like TMNT is gen
X bullshit, and by the time we were kids, it

(14:18):
was already kind of retro or being rebooted again. Avatar
the Last Airbender is getting a magic Gathering set and
a video like and I just and this is a
good example of I didn't watch that growing up. I
watched it recently and it's fine.

Speaker 2 (14:37):
Like it.

Speaker 1 (14:40):
We've got some friends who are swear by it, and
it's a good kids show, and it is very much,
to your point, constricted by its nature of being a
kids show. And so there's a stuff in there, and

(15:01):
they're gesturing towards themes to a certain point that they
simply cannot you know, there's no HBO Max version of
Avatar with like, you know, full frontal and you know,
not yet but perhaps right exactly. But that kind of

(15:24):
limitation is built into the system. And it's the same
way it's the limitation of the superhero genre, and you know,
there's things that I'm going back and watching the occasional
episode of Batman the Animated series, meaning like the art
style here is gorgeous that you know, the dark deco
thing was truly revolutionary. There's real value here. But I
remember these episodes being longer and more complex and more

(15:47):
interesting than they actually are. And that's like, you know,
you go back to your childhood room and like everything
seems smaller somehow.

Speaker 5 (15:55):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Like it's the same thing of like, uh,
travels seems shorter also when you get older, where it's
like an hour and a half trip when you're a
kid could not be.

Speaker 2 (16:08):
Longer and more boring.

Speaker 5 (16:10):
Then now it's like, oh thank god, like my cousins
only live an hour and a half way otherwise I'd
never see that. It's it's just like, yeah, it's it's you.
You watched Batman the Animated Series and they're just speed
running comic book arcs that you've read, and you're like,
oh wow, this is like a like the cliff Notes

(16:32):
version of you know, whatever the whatever the story is
of that of that of that arc.

Speaker 1 (16:38):
And especially this is mostly a monster podcast, there are
things that you know, gesturing towards gothic horror. There were
there are themes that I didn't know that I needed,
and that Batman and m series touches on in a
very you know, tangential way, but it's you know, babies

(17:02):
first trauma basically, and it was it meant a lot
to me, but it was the only access I had
to those kinds of stories the way I was growing up,
where like, yeah, I could have been reading Interview with
a Vampire, but I didn't have access to that, and
that would have like rewired my brain probably more constructively.

(17:26):
But it's what I had at the time, and so
there's things that I really pinned on it and going
back and rewatching be like that's not there. But I
projected what I was looking for into that because it
was the closest thing I had to what I was
when now like you know, discovering supernatural and horror movies
and sort of building up my tolerance to to explore
those things. So it's interesting, So speaking of building up

(17:49):
monster tolerance, how is going back and watching Sesame Street.

Speaker 2 (17:54):
You know, it's weird, like the the so I was.

Speaker 5 (18:02):
Basically everything for kids is on YouTube now you can
you can watch uh, you can watch anything on on
streaming services and and everybody kind of but everybody's kind
of okay with children's television being pirated on YouTube, including

(18:23):
networks I don't think really care or care to take
them down. Like if you go on YouTube now, you'll
probably find several UH live stream just like continuous streams
of Bluey and of Sesame Street, even though all of
that ship's on HBO Max or UH in the case
of Sesame Street, or in Bluey's case, it's on Disney Plus,

(18:47):
which was useful when when everybody was canceling Disney Plus
over the Jimmy Kimmel shit, it was like, it doesn't
matter because I only have this for Bluey, and this
ship's free anyway.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Like I think this.

Speaker 5 (18:59):
Was less a pro test on free speech and a
realization that I don't have to pay for this anymore.
The uh yeah, so we don't have any of that
shit to begin with, Like my dad paid. My dad
is our window to HBO Max, and I canceled Disney

(19:19):
Plus a long time ago when I realized that I
wasn't going to be engaging with the extended Star Wars
universe or the extended Marvel Universe anymore.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
So we you know, started going into YouTube.

Speaker 5 (19:35):
And I mean, the interesting part about watching these like
streams that people have going is that you're kind of
just watching whatever they put on or whatever is running
on their computer or wherever this shit is coming from.
This is probably coming from like like NBC itself, Like

(19:56):
they're just like putting this out on YouTube to maintain
the relevance. There are a couple of things that we watched.
We watched a Tiny Desk concert with the Muppets and
so they did that that they did a bunch of
like famous like uh, Sesame Straw, Sesame Street songs, Welcome

(20:16):
to Sesame Street and shit like that. And what was
interesting in October is that what they were doing was
they were just mainlining like Halloween themed shit because all
the muppets are fucking monsters. They are all like ghoulish creatures,
like who the fuck knows what Elmo or Oscar the

(20:41):
Grouch is. They're not people, They're not like they're cuddling
in some ways, but they are.

Speaker 2 (20:47):
If you were going to describe.

Speaker 5 (20:48):
The monsters, I mean, uh, the Count is literally a vampire,
and cookie Monster is a monster whose monsters uh whose
monstrous tendency is gluttony, specifically like cookie based gluttony.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, you could do a whole like Dante's Inferno with muppets.
It's the sins embody for sure, which is.

Speaker 5 (21:17):
Something that I that probably exists and if not, that
it's gonna exist soon. Because like I was watching these
like songs that they were doing, and they were doing
all these parodies of like the Monster Mash and like
classic Halloween songs.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
They were doing original songs, and.

Speaker 5 (21:37):
So I was watching them with Munchie, and Munchie is
just obsessed with dancing, and so we'll put this shit
on and then you know, the way that a one
year old dances is that they kind of just like
move around, uh their shoulders like nothing else is really happening,
but the shoulders are going and they're smiling a lot,

(22:00):
and because they don't really have a lot of good balance,
they're also like falling on their butt and standing back
up so they can continue dancing. And so I'm watching this,
watching Sesame Street, and I'm like, this shit is fucking
funny as hell. Like Cookie Monster can't like cannot stop eating.

(22:21):
It is this one thing that you see a lot
with like long form improvisation where there's a commitment to
the game of whatever the bit is. And what often
happens is that initially it's funny, they continue to do it,

(22:44):
and it stops being funny, they continue to do it.
They commit, and they could just continue to affirm and
and say yes and add information and oh my god,
this motherfucker can't stop eating.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
He can't eating. And it's not just cookies.

Speaker 5 (23:01):
He likes brownies too, but also it's always back to cookies.
And he is so uncontrollable that he accidentally ate his
own Halloween costume on Halloween and I lost my mind.

Speaker 2 (23:17):
I couldn't stop a little lappy.

Speaker 5 (23:20):
And it is just that whatever that thing is of,
just like continuous heightening and continuous commitment to the central
premise over and over and over through repetition, just makes
it funnier and funnier and funnier until it's not, and
then the commitment brings you right back.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
And it's that's what Sesame Street is.

Speaker 5 (23:42):
They all have one game. Yeah, the count just counts,
it's all he fucking does. This motherfucker can't stop counting.
And I'm like, there's something hypnotizing about it that is
you you understand why it's been on the air for
like seventy years or whatever the fuck. It's because they

(24:03):
have committed to these characters and to see them in
different settings is always interesting, and they have like strong game,
and children are obsessed with them, and it's this weird
thing where it's like man, kids there. Their imagination is

(24:24):
so rooted in like the grotesque, and that is so
appealing to them, and it is it just activates a
part of their brain that brings like instant joy. And
kids also love repetition. I think most people do love repetition,

(24:47):
love predictability, but also love the kind of like curveball,
when you know something goes off the rails, but you
feel comforted in the fact that you know it's gonna
come back around and he's gonna eat a bunch of cookies.

Speaker 2 (25:01):
It's it's just it's just.

Speaker 5 (25:03):
Very, very wholesome shit, and you know, I like watching it.
There are some things that I don't like that she
enjoys and I and I have to just kind of
like be like, hey, listen, I can only take so much.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
We're not watching Coco Mela, not in this house.

Speaker 5 (25:24):
That's fucking boring and bad and why is his head
so big? But Sesame Street, we can watch it all day, Bluie,
we can watch it all day.

Speaker 2 (25:35):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (25:36):
Another one that she likes is Miss Rachel. Miss Rachel
is great. Miss Rachel is low ki a thief. She
stole the Sesame Street format, but that's fine because she
improves upon it by injecting her own personality.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
But a lot of it is.

Speaker 5 (25:55):
Yeah, it's educational, it's repetitive, and it's and there's real
talent behind all of it. Because the other thing about
the Sesame Street characters and about Miss Rachel is that
they're actually like really good fucking singers and voice actors
and performers. A lot of people who like perform with

(26:15):
Miss Rachel are like Broadway or like drama school trained,
like Broadway level talent, and this is something that they're
doing either as a gig or because like they support
the mission. And Miss Rachel in herself has become like
beyond the like the whole like do you really care

(26:39):
about kids things? She has really tested that with a
lot of adults in the United States, and Sesame Street
is also within that tradition as well, of like teaching
acceptance and stuff like that. It was weird because we
were watching an episode of Sesame Street and there they were.

Speaker 2 (26:59):
Like the invitation to come be.

Speaker 5 (27:05):
A neighbor and live on Sesame Street in this like
inclusiveness and and this this welcoming and all all of
this language. I'm like, is Sesame Street like woke now
in contemporary political culture? Because what it does is it
really boils down like a very fundamental and basic understanding

(27:30):
of what it means to be a communist. And it
does so it does so in a way that is
fun and that is light, but that stresses, like, you know,
my friend is sad, and I have to attend to that.
And not only do I have to attend to that,

(27:52):
everybody in this community has to attend to that. And
we have to meet our friend where our friend is,
and we have to identify what's making them sad and
we have to fix that. And if it's something that
one of us did, we have to take accountability for that,
Like there can be no no, no one's off the
hook here. But also you know who, We're not gonna

(28:14):
call the police, you know what we're what we're not
gonna do is chastise these our friends. We are gonna
work together, and we're gonna do so in the spirit
of like communalism and towards the ends of collective joy.

Speaker 2 (28:31):
Mm hmm. And that's god. That is like a radical message.

Speaker 5 (28:37):
Unfortunately, because we were watching this ship and we're like, man,
the anti DII people must fucking hate Sesame Street, dude,
because it's like and it isn't like it changed.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
That was the message from the beginning.

Speaker 5 (28:50):
One of the benefits of having hbos Max is that
you can watch an episode of Sesame Street from like
the sixties, and a lot of this shit is like,
that's like the the flag ship message of that show.

Speaker 1 (29:02):
Yeah, it's born of the politics of the late sixties
and early seventies, and it never changed. The world changed
around it, and it changed the world by being such
a big influence on generations. But as contemporary culture is
so conservative and so puritan and so alienating, that very

(29:22):
basic message of cooperation feels sadly anachronistic and also really refreshing.
And I'm like, I'm watching mash and it's the same
thing of like just very casual anti war, anti racist.
You know, they've got a buffoonish character who spouts McCarthyist

(29:46):
bullshit and he gets he's the butt of every joke,
and like it's clearly you know, he's set up to
be knocked down because his opinions are stupid. And you've
got all these doctors being like, war as hell, this
is terrible, Why are we doing it of this? Every
life is of value. It doesn't matter you know what
country you're from or what side of the warrior on.

(30:06):
We will treat you and we'll try to help. And
it feels and just like as a there's a show
that was on everywhere that everybody watched and just the
very taken as a given that patriotism is meant to
be looked at askance at the very least, militarism is bad.

(30:31):
You know, every episode somebody makes fun of police action.
It's like, now this is a war is a stupid
and that was modern Star Trek Strange, New World's Discovery
whatever is more conservative than that, and that sucks.

Speaker 5 (30:54):
Yeah, yeah, especially during that period where it was like
there was the delude usion that the United States was
morally justified in it's in all of the wars that
it had participated in, and was like hesitant to enter
World War One, hesitant to enter World War Two. By
the time Vietnam happens, it's like, yeah, no, we're we're invading.

Speaker 2 (31:20):
We're advancing.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
So this throwback show of like we're going to goof
on the fifties, but it's not about that, it's about
contemporary culture. So yeah, the fact that you're watching something
that has stuck to its lack of guns this whole
time is really admirable. But you're absolutely right, it feels

(31:42):
weirdly counter cultural.

Speaker 2 (31:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (31:46):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (31:46):
And that's also something that you sort of start to
realize as apparent, is that you do need to kind
of curate your children's media diet. There's a a a
wing of parenting where it's like no screens, no TV,

(32:08):
don't don't let them do it. And we don't fall
into that because we find there to be value in media,
both of us do. But at the same time, like
my wife grew up as a as a sort of

(32:30):
latchkey kid with parents not around, watching just watching TV
mindlessly for hours on end, and that's one of the
things also that she is like, we we can't do
that to a munchie. And so the other part of
it is being president and like sitting down and being

(32:51):
like we're gonna watch a TV show instead of like here,
I'm just gonna turn this on, you know.

Speaker 2 (32:57):
Don't you do it?

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Yeah, yeah, which we'll have to happen.

Speaker 5 (33:01):
Like sometimes she's screaming at an airport and it's like, okay,
you know how you're never allowed to touch my phone,
here's blue. Stop screaming just out of desperation. Please just
just watch this and stop screaming at all the flight attendants.
But for the most part, it is like, Okay, let's

(33:22):
sit down, let's watch Hasab Street together. And then I'm
sitting there laughing. She's sitting there laughing at me, laughing
because she doesn't understand what's going on.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
And now she.

Speaker 5 (33:33):
Laughs like I laugh, which is like a huge concern
something we kind of knew was gonna happen. But like
when I think something is funny, I laugh, like my
dad laughs, like my grandfather laughed.

Speaker 2 (33:43):
We just too like scream.

Speaker 5 (33:46):
As she walks around just screaming at stuff, she doesn't
associate it with like laughter as an impulse quite yet.
She just associates it with like, this is what my
dad does when we're having fun kind of thing, which
is is so cute to see like, uh, our our

(34:07):
daycare provider has said on numerous occasions.

Speaker 2 (34:12):
Wow, she talks a lot.

Speaker 5 (34:15):
Where did she learn that from? Because because when when
when Munchi entered daycare, it's sort of like the balance
of power, the balance of power at the day care.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Shift because.

Speaker 6 (34:34):
Into the care okay, because so she she gravitated towards
the kid who was closest to her age, so her
her best friend, let's call let's call him Crunchy.

Speaker 5 (34:48):
So crunching munch now are like devious schemers who make
each other lab who just like walk around the daycare screaming,
who try to get into the places they're not allowed
to be in.

Speaker 2 (35:07):
To dig.

Speaker 5 (35:07):
Her provider was telling us today that they were quiet
for like fifteen minutes while she was off dealing with
something else, and then when she came in to find them,
they had gotten into the diaper room where they keep
a bunch of different sized diapers, And what they had
done is they had taken all of the diapers out
of the boxes and they were organizing them on the ground.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
This should appens all the time when you're a parent.
You walk in on that, you just go why why
did you do this?

Speaker 5 (35:47):
And then they're like, uh oh, and they walk out
of the room.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah, what is going on in that little head to
like which neurons are firing, what's the logic that has
gotten them to that place? Is fascinating. We'll never fully know,
but that's delightful. Yeah, that's really literally great that you
maybe maybe yeah, maybe that's just like one perhaps, No,

(36:17):
that's I think that's really admirable to like be intentional
about media consumption as a shared, intentional experience as opposed
to a like negative space. And that's that's tricky and
it's important. And I mean, yeah, media literacy especially of
like trying to be careful about what you consume, why

(36:42):
you're consuming it. And it's fine to like, you know,
this is this is downtime, this is my chill out show,
like whatever you can. But as long as you're being
intentional about that as opposed to just like it's just
on to numb the mind or whatever. And yeah, I
mean we are purveyors and and critiquers of media, so
obviously it is important to us. It's just a matter

(37:04):
of seeing. Yeah, it's cool. I'm really curious to see
you know what munch. She gravitates towards so stre it's
a great start.

Speaker 5 (37:14):
It is weird too, because like we have our shows
that like if we're ever watching anything independently, now that
has to be like a private activity where it's on
a tablet in bed after we put her to sleep
or you know, yeah, or she needs to be asleep.
If we're gonna do if we're gonna just kind of

(37:37):
zone out on you know, our phones or something like that.
She can't see us doing that. Eventually she will because
it's gonna happen because you know, life is is exhausting.

Speaker 2 (37:49):
And sometimes you need to do that.

Speaker 5 (37:52):
But if we are uh watching anything, it's we're watching
it together and also modeling that it is also a
social thing, like the like the family is sitting down
and having dinner. The family is sitting down and watching, uh,
the Real Housewives of Potomac. And it's so funny because

(38:17):
like we're watching like it runs the gamut from like, oh,
we're watching the Gilded Age, We're watching like this historical
period drama, uh, or we're watching like trashy reality television,
which hey, look there's a straight line.

Speaker 1 (38:33):
Between those are not actually that different.

Speaker 5 (38:39):
The but it's so interesting the stuff that she like
gravitates starts like we were watching the Studio the like
the Seth Rogan Show, and she wasn't into it. It
was like it we thought that she might be because
a lot of it is like one ers. It's very chaotic,
it's very frenetic. There's a lot of colors, and there's
a lot of talking, and she just kind of wasn't

(39:01):
into it, so that you just like to walk around
and it was. It was a little troubling that when
we were watching the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City,
they're like sitting around, like a storyline is that, like
this one of the housewives is getting sued for four
hundred fifty thousand dollars or something like that. And so
she hosts this party where she printed out a bunch

(39:22):
of poster board that said uh with like screenshots of
legal documents and the word dismissed across it, which weren't
like issued from a court.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
They were made at Kinko's.

Speaker 5 (39:34):
And so they all sat around in housewives fashion at
dinner and then just started screaming at each other. And
I can't stress enough how locked in when she was
watching that, we were like, oh, okay, hold on, wait
a second, maybe let's maybe let's watch this one when
she goes head.

Speaker 1 (39:56):
Yeah, that's I imagine, something very elemental about the appeal
of well produced and cut together reality TV.

Speaker 5 (40:09):
Dangerous and like social conflict is also something that yeah,
she's chasing, she's like actively seeking it out.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
It makes sense that as a small human, our brains
are wired specifically for thinking about social situations, and that
social intelligence is, you know, what helps you survive your
youngest years, you know, So that makes sense that that
would be like very like there's just an evolutionary advantage

(40:43):
to paying attention to that.

Speaker 5 (40:46):
And we're also wondering too there and this almost cannot
be the case, but I am I I'm wondering if
there's something to the esthetic difference between because the studio,
everyone's arguing all the time. It's clearly scripted, and it

(41:07):
looks so much better aesthetically than any reality TV show,
which is shot in a way that it does kind
of resemble reality. There's like she she could not give
a fart about scripted television. There's no scripted television yet.

Speaker 2 (41:32):
No.

Speaker 5 (41:32):
We watched all of Severance and she couldn't care less.
She was just like werew playing with her toys. She
never looked up at the TV. If she did, it
was just a check to see if it was still
on so that she could take that cue to keep
playing with her toys. But for some reason, reality television
is appealing in a way where she like, she does look,
she does watch.

Speaker 2 (41:51):
Sometimes she sits next to us and.

Speaker 5 (41:53):
Watches reality TV and we're like, this is crazy, Like
she couldn't give a fuck about any movie that we watch.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
I watch like all of Eddington.

Speaker 5 (42:02):
We watched all of Eddington and she was just kind
of like, you know, they're walking around, play with toys,
hitting on her drum and stuff like that. We're checking
in giving her food, We're like, is this too violent
for her? And then looking at her she's not, hasn't
paid attention at all to the thing. But then you
put on any Bravo show and she's just like, what's
going on here?

Speaker 1 (42:23):
Hmm yeah. I mean the very similitude of it feels
real or more immediate. It could be. I mean, kids
are clever, they might it's tapping into something and I
think just like the emotional charge of but it's not
like insane circumstances, but something that would feel like raise

(42:48):
a certain kind of social anxiety. Perhaps, Yeah, that's fascinating.

Speaker 5 (42:54):
I mean, we'll see. I mean she she also instantly knows.
I know that she has an aesthetic. I said, accused,
because as soon as the cartoons come on, than she
instantly knows this is for her, this is this is
absolutely for her. So there's like some in between space there,
maybe that reality TV occupies and accues her into like

(43:17):
this is not for me, but I'm interested, but.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
Maybe it could be. Yeah, they're basically cartoon characters. That's
a fair point. Fascinating. Okay, huh, she's enjoying Sesame Street.
That's cool.

Speaker 5 (43:31):
You're good, I was gonna say, speaking of cartoon characters,
uh anime?

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So I had a really interesting experience.
Went to a very small convention. You know, the entire
thing could have fit inside the dealer's room at Odacon,
and it was good. It was much more chill. Uh
had the I was able to They're not super lined

(43:59):
up for everything, so you could actually play some of
the video games that I'm gonna wait, there's a great
the new Japanese video games that arcade culture, although it
is less prevalent than it once was. There are the
purveyors of like weird machines, like lots of gimmick machines,
rhythm games so great, Tycho drumming series of arcade games,

(44:21):
like they got the big plastic drum and the sticks
and you hit it to various pop songs and that
was delightful. We did some pinball, really weird. There was
a shooter and you know, you think of like your
usual like time Dino Crisis, Time crisis, House of the
Dead type of thing, and got two guns. Must be
a two player game. You team up. We try to

(44:43):
play this game not working, like one of the guns
must be broken. What's going on? I go back to
play it later. It's it's a single player game with
two guns. But you're not like John wooing it the
entire time. You can. But then the guns are magnetized
and fit together. And the two pistols, if you fit
them on one on top of the other, it's a

(45:03):
rocket launcher. And if you fit it like side by side,
it becomes an assault rifle. And your character changes which
gun their load out and it was bizarre. Yeah, it
was kind of cool, not great for like we want
to do like team up games when we're like playing
in the arcade together and so not great for that,

(45:26):
but as a single player experience, kind of neat.

Speaker 5 (45:29):
Weird single player like Arcade Cabinet doesn't make sense to
me fundamentally, Like the idea of going to an arcade
and playing shame by yourself, it's so straight, but a
lot of people do it right, like Donkey Kong and
like the original Super Smash or Super Smash, Super Mario
Brothers was like one of these, but.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
It's so bizarre.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah, the height of arcade culture was multiplayer Japan specifically,
their big innovation was like the battleship model of instead
of being a side by side, like you have your
own cabinet, there's somebody across from you playing against you,

(46:12):
but it's still one player versus player, and so there's
some of that. Uh. And then of course like all
the dance games and stuff. But but yeah, it is odd,
but there's some experiences you can't you know, some of
the rhythm games, like the the tech of it having
those kind of peripherals on your home console wouldn't be

(46:32):
possible or practical, so it was cool. We uh did
a a watched a traditional Japanese tea ceremony, which was fascinating,
and the you know, the absolute uh technique of all
of the various steps and the you know, the very

(46:53):
precise protocol of how to move your label to get
into the boiling water. It looks like a martial art
and it's very much built around it takes influences from
Buddhism and Shintoism of like these very it's meant to
be a meditative experience, but it's also about very specific
cultural politeness and that's cool. Do you have an opinion

(47:20):
on macha. It's become very trendy.

Speaker 5 (47:24):
Yeah, I mean I think it's gross. I agree, but yeah.
But my so, my wife is trying to figure out
I mean, this is a lifelong picture's all sort of colitis.
So she's always trying to figure out the her relationship

(47:46):
to caffeine.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
Hmm. And one of the.

Speaker 5 (47:50):
Things that's that's that's tough about coffee is that coffee
is like extremely acidic and it bothers your stomach.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
It's also a diuretic, so it just tears through your system.

Speaker 5 (48:00):
Yeah, and for the longest time, she just kind of
dealt with it because you know, she just needed that
early boost in the morning, but then progressively it just
kept getting worse, and so it's like, definitely can't do espresso.
That's like the most concentrated version of this, and the

(48:20):
only way to dilute it is with milk, which is
also upsetting, so that's off the table.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
Cold brew less acidic.

Speaker 5 (48:28):
For a little while, it worked when it was like
actual cold brew and not just like coffee pored over
ice it it there's less acid in it. Did that
for a little bit, wasn't working, and then Machia became
this like huge thing where everybody is.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
Like trying macha, drinking mancha, and.

Speaker 5 (48:46):
So she did that for a really long time and
it just recently became too much.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
Yeah, but it for for like years, for like the
last couple.

Speaker 5 (48:58):
Of years she's been drinking. She had been drinking macha
pretty religiously, and she loves the taste of it. That's
the thing that I don't like. I think it tastes
kind of bitter and almost flavorless.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Yeah, that's interesting because mal has a similar experience of
the way the caffeine releases in your body with macha
is much more like consistent. There's not the same kind
of like peak and crash, whereas like it, and so
Mal swears by it because it has that like a
kind of long term release which helps have with like

(49:35):
a consistent energy level. And I just think it tastes
like grass. Yeah, I'm not into it. So we bought
a bunch of One of the great things about these
cons is like imported Japanese snacks. So we got like
five different like Macha flavored cookie rolls and cakes and pocky.
And it just so happened that at work, which is

(49:58):
remote for me, everybody was like really into Macha and
so somebody was doing like a Macha demo and like
get your Macha samples and like let's all like get
on zoom and you know, mix drinks together and talk
about it. I'm like, well, I just wanted this convention.
Here's all these like tea ceremony facts, here's these snacks
small bought, and I just hate it. I can't do this.

(50:20):
I don't like the way it tastes.

Speaker 5 (50:23):
That's like, yeah, that that is a very that is
an interesting story, and it does it dovestale.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
It doves tale dovetails with a little Tokyo.

Speaker 5 (50:34):
Experience that we had in Los Angeles because we went
to U. I had to look it up because uh,
it's called Fugetsudo, which is a family owned bakery in
Little Tokyo that's been around since nineteen oh three and
they're famous for making like these incredible.

Speaker 2 (50:59):
Tradition Japanese baked goods.

Speaker 5 (51:02):
And when we got there, the line was fucking enormous
and it was like a random part of the day
during a weekday in Little Tokyo, and so we stood
in a line.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
We got all the way up to the front.

Speaker 5 (51:17):
And uh, it was like it was it was a
harrowing experience because they're like, go, go, go pick pic
pic pic pic, but you don't know what anything is,
right and everything is is in Japanese, and so we're
and so uh like macha, macha, macha, and they're like, oh, one, macha,
what's this uh coca cocoa and they just say it

(51:38):
really fastens. You're just like you're picking solely based on
what it looks like, and so you're like that one.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
That one, that one, that one, that one, that one.

Speaker 5 (51:44):
And so we had this like like this like macha
mochi ball thing and it was the exact same thing
where I had half of it. Half of it. My
wife had half of it. At the same time. She
said yum, I said, yuck. This fucking nasty. Dude, We've

(52:07):
waited thirty minutes for this ship.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Well, I'm glad she enjoyed yourself. Yeah. We opened up
like this fancy like kind of Swiss roll Macha Macha cake,
Mancha flavored cream, and mal dives into it and loves it.
I was like, offers me a bit and like you're
not gonna like it, Like, well, I'll try it. I
have it. I'm like, yep, I don't know what I expected.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
It sucks. Did they have these? This is a This
is like a trend in a little tokyo right now.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
Oh those are adorable. Yeah, Like ice cream looks like
a koala.

Speaker 5 (52:43):
Well so it's not ice cream. Uh, well it is
ice cream, but it's not a cone. It's a crate.

Speaker 1 (52:50):
Mmm. That's cool.

Speaker 2 (52:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (52:52):
So basically, they fill a crepe up with a custard
and they wrap it around so it's like it's shaped
in a cone shape, and then within the folds of
the crape so it's like it's like a few crapes.
They put the custard and corn flakes so that it

(53:13):
crunches when you and then in the cone they put
different types of ice cream. And then the big Kicker,
the one that we went to, is very famous because
they do like they do ice cream art. So like
I got a little bear and.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
And she got a little pig, and.

Speaker 5 (53:36):
We gave and this is one of the one of
Munchie's favorite parts of traveling is that basically she just
eats what we eat for the entire day. And so
she's she's eating bites of everything that we have because
we don't have time to stop and get her like
the healthy sweet potato thing that we made for her.
So she's just eating off of like plates of essentially

(53:59):
junk food for four or five days.

Speaker 2 (54:03):
And essentially in Los Angeles, that is all there is
to do.

Speaker 1 (54:10):
Yep. Yeah, it's a you know, fancy food town and
a whole lot else anymore. That's a really good point.
I remember like there was there's a whole like sort
of lucha sub section of you know, Latino art and
culture there if you're interested in, which I thought was
really cool. But yeah, I'm so glad you've you got
a chance of it was a little tokyo that's awesome,

(54:34):
very cool. Yeah, the conum was nice.

Speaker 2 (54:36):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (54:36):
The kimona we did a koto concert. Koto is this
like enormous vertical or horizontal stringed instrument that is traditional
Japanese music and really beautiful. Uh. And then had an experience.
Are you familiar with host club culture? No, A host

(55:01):
clubs are it's you go to a bar there the
it's they're sort of waiters, they're sort of escorts. They
are you pay them to be nice to you. It
becomes this like the closest it's like a strip club,

(55:26):
but not to that, so it's you. It's it's sort
of like a modern geisha style experience, and it's cute
and it's fun, and it is weird because so we
met somebody earlier in the day. We were wearing kimono.

(55:47):
This person big into kimono fashion. We strap up, straight
up a conversation, having a great time. You know, follow
on Instagram, probably see them of the next con we
go to, and they're like, hey, I'm also one of
the hosts the host club. You should come check it out.
So we do and they're you know, full of full
on in work mode. And it really it occurred to
me like, yeah, this is very much and this is

(56:08):
very much endemic to Japanese culture and sort of a
culture of loneliness. Host clubs are perfect for that kind
of paid experience. It's a good way to have a
social inter a guaranteed social interaction, and that is really
important for nerds and not something that and this is

(56:31):
we happened to strike up just a authentic conversation with
this same person. Part of the reason we do cosplayer
any kind of fashion is to create those opportunities. And
then this person was busy, and even if we had
wanted to spend a bunch of time and money, wouldn't
have had time to like chat with us anyway in

(56:52):
work mode. So it was it was odd and I'm
glad we had the experience, and it's very much a
it's a very authentic Japanese experience of like being lonely
and paying somebody to talk to you. But it's uh.
It turns out one of one of the hosts there
was also a local pro wrestler that I.

Speaker 4 (57:14):
Recognized, and so we were, oh yeah, like like wait
a second, I saw you get a concussion like a
month ago.

Speaker 1 (57:21):
You do you okay?

Speaker 4 (57:22):
Like yeah, dude, take a picture of me because I'm
too drunk and will not remember that I met you.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Like, all right, cool, I'll see at the next show.
So that was fun.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
That's cool.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
Again.

Speaker 4 (57:33):
The community here is is small, and there's a lot
of crossover. And of course the pro wrestlers are huge
anime nerds and you know watch and you know that's
part of their their sculpting their bodies and their characters
to be shown in protagonists anyway. So like the Venn
diagram is a flat circle. So yeah, good, interesting varied experiences.

Speaker 5 (57:54):
Yeah, all those do like like uh, like that whole
Cogan generation like big into like the mister Olympias and
now like the millennial wrestlers.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
Wrestlers all want to be Goku.

Speaker 1 (58:07):
Yep, it's exactly right, and the older wrestlers are so
like so pissed off that like, oh, these new wrestlers
are busy playing video games in the locker room and
they're not doing enough cocaine.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
They're too busy.

Speaker 5 (58:21):
They're too busy playing video games and eating vegetables. They're
all Keto diets.

Speaker 1 (58:26):
Exactly like yeah, I dude, and they'll all live past forty.

Speaker 5 (58:31):
Yeah whatever, whatever happened to eating a t bone steak
and then shooting Trent up your asshole and then exercising
into the wee hours of the night and then doing
a house show and breaking your leg.

Speaker 1 (58:42):
Yeah exactly, That's how dam did it. That's how America does.
It worked out okay so far.

Speaker 5 (58:50):
But by the by the way, the rock you see
this like big pr thing that he's on right now
about the weight loss. No, so the whole, like the
whole like fitness tube community is which which shows up
with my algorithm because I like to look for for

(59:11):
like recipes.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Uh. This is so this is such a.

Speaker 5 (59:16):
Weird connection that I made where for myself, I wanted
to look like get like like high protein recipes and
stuff like that, uh, for like recovery and stuff. And
then I wanted recipes that used sweet potatoes because Munchie
fucking loves sweet potatoes and bodybuilders use sweet potatoes as

(59:39):
the base for everything. Like that's like it's because it's
a complex carbohydrate.

Speaker 2 (59:46):
It's a huge Uh, it's a it's a very very good.

Speaker 5 (59:54):
And a nutrient dense carbohydrate which bodybuilders. No, there's no
keto bodybuilders because carbs are what you use like a
burn that to lift heavy shit. So like oatmeal is
like a huge thing. Sweet potato is a huge thing,
and so like I got a billion different recipes for

(01:00:16):
like this, sweet potato pancakes, sweet potato muffins, sweet potato
uh any confection, sweet potato cupcakes, sweet potato carrot cake,
like just all this like sweet potato really good. Yeah,
and it has a lot to do with like that
autumnal also like the inherent sweetness of the sweet potato,

(01:00:39):
but also how well it goes with like nutmeg and
all spice and cinnamon and shit like that, and also
how well it binds. And so it's a lot of
like sweet potato egg which you can imagine. It's like
they're the protein saurce carbohydrate sauce, and it's so it
bodybuilders and munchie love this shit, but so so like

(01:01:02):
now they're like also like drama pops up onto my feet.
So and there's a whole bunch of drama in the
fitness industry and one of them is there. They analyzed
The Rock, who did a podcast after he lost all
of this weight talking about a a a health scare

(01:01:23):
that he had, which was he claims a deficiency on
an X ray or some kind of scan. It was
like a like a as they put it, this like
weird thing that signals that he could have like a
heart problem, and then they redid it and it wasn't there.
And so but it got the Rock thinking of like,

(01:01:46):
you know, what could.

Speaker 1 (01:01:48):
I'm sorry because I am hearing that in his voice
as though he is speaking about you know, got the
Rock thinking, but it's.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Such curated pr son.

Speaker 5 (01:02:01):
He probably had some kind of bad like ekg. He
probably had some and and it's so weird that he
would even lie about it, because I think it would
be very powerful for him to come out because like
we know Eddie Guerrero and like all these guys that
passed away before the age of fifty, it was because

(01:02:27):
they were on steroids. It was because they were abusing
their bodies, and it was because it was you can't
be taking human growth hormone into your fucking sixties, like
you're going to perish.

Speaker 2 (01:02:38):
And you know, he came out and was like.

Speaker 5 (01:02:43):
Basically half cop to it, and so like all like
the fitness people are like, you.

Speaker 2 (01:02:49):
Know, this is really sad to see.

Speaker 5 (01:02:51):
It would have been a much more powerful thing if
he had just come out and said, I was on
anabolic steroids my entire career and I got some troubling
health news and I decided to cycle out, and I'm
losing weight and this is signaling a different, you know,
part of my life.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
And it's also signaling a different part of my career.

Speaker 5 (01:03:14):
And uh, I want to like break the cycle for
wrestlers right now.

Speaker 1 (01:03:18):
And feel like usluential. And you know, I figured the
health scare was they did an x ray and they
couldn't find his spine because he will never stand up
for anything of real integrity.

Speaker 5 (01:03:33):
Yeah, yeah, and it probably also had to do with
because he's always in that shape. But then when he
did The Smashing Machine, he had to play Mark Kerr,
who was like famously on steroids, and so he had
to naturally get into shape to play a steroid user.

Speaker 2 (01:03:50):
So he had to get bigger than what he was.
And like that, that was like.

Speaker 5 (01:03:54):
The the the legend surrounding that movie of like the
Rock's gonna get and uh, the Rock's gonna use natural
means to achieve the physique that Mark Curve achieved or whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
The fuck.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
Yeah, that's such bullshit. Now he's gonna do the ad
the same actor thing than any actor does. He's just
had way more experience doing that his whole life.

Speaker 5 (01:04:15):
Yeah, but apparently, uh yeah, after that movie finished wrapping,
he lost a bunch of weight. Now he's on red
carpets looking much slimmer, much like he did earlier in
his career. He looked fucking great. That's the other thing, too,
is like you look incredible even without steroids.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
Like yeah, and that's like he's got you know, he's
it's the football athlete. He's got the genetics for it already.
But you think about like early Rock before he became
this likes taking baine venom or now, and it just
he looks like a different person. But dude's always been
incredibly self conscious about his body. You know, got breast

(01:04:55):
production surgery and didn't want to talk about it, and
you know, spend this whole crew with his shirt off.
Is very self kind of just understandably, but doesn't come
out to help anybody, and like, here's my experience, here's
my authentic like, here's what's going on, Here's how I
can Because he's so influenceiently, he could change the culture

(01:05:15):
and chooses not to. Yeah, but yeah, potatoes.

Speaker 7 (01:05:20):
All the time, probably I mean, uh yeah, it's weird too,
like the the Yeah, the rock is just fascinated.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
There's like a.

Speaker 5 (01:05:37):
Well, let's get wrecked because I want to wreck something
that is that is related to this.

Speaker 1 (01:05:43):
I can't imagine you're recommending anything that's rock related. So
I'm so curious.

Speaker 5 (01:05:48):
It's it's it's kind of rock related. I want to
recommend to you the entire press tour that Vin Diesel
is currently doing to forest un Versus's hands to make
another Fast and Furious movie, because it is it is

(01:06:08):
like document, it's like anthropological almost to see what he
is up to.

Speaker 1 (01:06:15):
Does he have a current project to promote or is
it just a fast pitch? No?

Speaker 2 (01:06:21):
So basically so, Fast ten was supposed to be a two.

Speaker 5 (01:06:26):
Part film that was gonna end the Fast saga. They
got Justin Linn on board. It was, you know, the
person who got them there, the director of Fast five.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
He revived a franchise.

Speaker 5 (01:06:39):
Yeah yeah, Yeah, did a huge solid by coming back
for f nine, came on for Fast ten. Fast ten
was a calamity in so many ways for Universal and
for a franchise that's made billions and billions of dollars
for them, For them to be like hesitate to increase

(01:07:01):
the budget. For Vin is that means that something is
breaking down, whether it be like his personality behind.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
The scenes, his his his.

Speaker 5 (01:07:13):
Ego mania, or maybe the movies are losing money, which
is also probably more so the case because they will
deal with, as we know, a lot of shitty behavior
when the movies.

Speaker 2 (01:07:25):
Are making money.

Speaker 5 (01:07:27):
There's the same thing that happened with Tom Cruise on
the Mission Impossible movies. Dead Reckoning was also supposed to
be a two parter and the first movie underperformed at
the box office, and so they had to like scramble
to make a cheaper movie. And by the way, the
final Reckoning is the cheaper movie. Then it was like
three hundred and fifty million dollars. Yeah, so Vin Diesel is,

(01:07:54):
by the sound of it, universal, is in no hurry
to make this film. Vin Diesel doesn't have any projects
in the works, doesn't seem like he's in high demand
right now, and fast ten flopped. So he does this
like event and it's weird because it doesn't seem like
it's planned. It popped up on my Instagram algorithm because

(01:08:18):
that's something I am searching for. Is fastened the furior
shit on Instagram.

Speaker 1 (01:08:23):
Uh.

Speaker 5 (01:08:24):
And so Vin Diesel comes out and he says, I
can promise you three things once Universal green lights this picture. One,
We're coming home. The movie will be set in Los Angeles.
And we were like, oh, okay, fans, that's that's cool.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
Yeah, let's return to your roots.

Speaker 5 (01:08:46):
Sure, come back home. We don't need to be an Antarctica.
We don't need to be in space, we don't need
to be there. And then he's like, two, we're going
back to the streets. We're gonna do a street racing movie.
Excellent that we kind of been Loki asking for that

(01:09:07):
for a really long time. And justin Lynn's like genius
way of like doing the space things like Kevin, I
know you want to go to space, but like let's
try to make it like harr related somehow, Like let's
not lose the whole plot here. Let's not put you
on a fucking Apollo space ship. Uh would say, will

(01:09:27):
send a car to space, which is totally normal. And
then the third thing he said, and Paul Walker's brother
was behind him, which was significant, is that Brian O'Connor
will return in the final film. Oh and the crowd

(01:09:48):
is kind of like mixed reaction to that.

Speaker 4 (01:09:55):
Maybe the people alone, and that's kind of it's kind
of messed up.

Speaker 2 (01:09:59):
It's sound.

Speaker 5 (01:10:00):
It's so it's so distressing on so many levels because
there's the base level of, like Paul Walker has passed away,
he's dead, like stop it. The way that they've been
dealing with that in the Fast series is I think admirable.

Speaker 1 (01:10:19):
Yeah, he's busy, he's out. We're leaving him out. He's
got a family, he doesn't need to be involved. I
really like that about the franchise.

Speaker 5 (01:10:27):
Yeah, like he's he's it's just like it's this very
interesting and sweet parallel like he's watching over the kids
and he's he's doing that like he's in the afterlife,
like looking down on his children in the movies. He's
like he's watching over the It's like a very subtle,
sweet thing that they did too.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
So it's disturbing on that level.

Speaker 5 (01:10:50):
It's also disturbing on the level of, like it is
totally based on the fact that this dude can't get
this movie greenlit, and so he's like resorting to something
that is like my understanding is that this was his
Like all of this is his creative contribution, so like

(01:11:10):
he was part of the decision to be like, I mean,
we have to honor the dead. And now he's like, listen,
I need a new I need a new like pool
or whatever the fuck I need a new kitchen for
my seventh house in Malibu or whatever. Like, we have
to make this happen by hook or by crook. Let's
bring Paul Walker back. The fans will go crazy. And

(01:11:32):
it also speaks to like artificial intelligence being like the
only way really to make this that a reality.

Speaker 1 (01:11:41):
Yeah, you're gonna see Gi Deep fake his face onto
his brother's body to exhume this man from the afterlife
to make your stupid car movie. Yeah, I mean that
is a kind of a perfect return to the beginning
of our conversation today of my nostalgia bait uh. And

(01:12:03):
you know, the franchise is dead. Long live the franchise
Zombiefide culture continues to sort of shamble forward.

Speaker 5 (01:12:13):
Yeah, but I hope that movie doesn't get made and
it just continues to be like a Hollywood story that
continues to develop because like all the various pivots that he's.

Speaker 2 (01:12:25):
Done are are bananas.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
It would make for like a who killed don Quixote
style documentary that would be fascinating in another ten years
for sure.

Speaker 5 (01:12:35):
Yeah, once they release, once they released the Vin files,
and then you really because like the stories about have
I told you the the real quick the Ritic story?

Speaker 1 (01:12:47):
Oh tell me because I love Ridick.

Speaker 5 (01:12:49):
So Vin Diesel is part of like the exclusive uh
D and D club in Los.

Speaker 1 (01:12:59):
Angeles Alliam and the guy who played death Stroke and yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:13:03):
Joe Joe whatever, Yeah, Joe Manchinello.

Speaker 2 (01:13:11):
I think, yes, that's right.

Speaker 5 (01:13:12):
Ethan Suppley is a part of it, like like a
bunch of Hollywood dudes and they they get together all
the time. And Vin is this like he is this
kind of he's a blurred like he's trapped in a
kind of affect that he he feels constricted by like

(01:13:34):
the idea, by the fact that he's like this hot
dude and.

Speaker 1 (01:13:39):
And a showman protagonist. I mean very much. The Fast
Fast series is an anime like it's built with that
kind of escalation. It's built with those plot tropes. It's
it is Naruto mm hmm.

Speaker 5 (01:13:51):
And but but it isn't exactly that though, And this
is cool also because it has to be cool and
he has to be like wearing tank tops.

Speaker 1 (01:14:03):
And get a very specific kind of early two thousand's
Western cool.

Speaker 2 (01:14:11):
But Vin wants to live in D and D.

Speaker 5 (01:14:13):
Vin wants to make that happen, and so Riddick for him,
was his way to make that a reality.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
And then I love Ridick for it, Like it's so
clearly a dude's like space D and D campaign idea,
and it's ridiculous, but it's so it gave him the
opportunity to be really imaginative and inventive. And some of
it is like, you know, my immortal level OC nonsense,
but it's fun. Yeah he doesn't. He's not restricted to like,

(01:14:42):
but we got to be street racers and also go
to space. Like no, just be in space, bro, It's fine.

Speaker 5 (01:14:48):
So so the story that I heard, I heard this
on the on the on the podcast High and Mighty.
Uh So the story that I heard, so, these are
these are people who are tapped into like Hollywood back
channels and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:15:06):
Is that then.

Speaker 5 (01:15:09):
After he made the like the Chronicles of Ritick that
sort of bombs, But then he made a bunch of
fast and Furious movies and so he was like given
this like kind of Ursat's blank check and he he
revitalized the Triple X franchise. So he made a third
installment of that movie, which made a bunch of money,

(01:15:32):
and he wanted to go and make a He wanted
to go make a series of Riddic films that would
be sequels to the chronicles of Ritick. And so he
goes to Universal and he brings like a huge the chest,
a massive chest with like a very ornamental like D

(01:15:53):
and D lock, and he like lays it down in
front of.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
The studio executive and he goes.

Speaker 5 (01:16:06):
And they're like, what's that, And he goes, this is
the rest of the franchise for Riddick, and this lock
will be unlocked if and only lived if you green light.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
All of these films.

Speaker 5 (01:16:30):
And there's like four movies in there, and they give
him a hard pass.

Speaker 1 (01:16:38):
Bro. You have if you bring your pitch binder to
the meeting, you have to open it.

Speaker 2 (01:16:43):
He thought.

Speaker 5 (01:16:46):
He thought he had achieved a level of box office
success where they would green light its sight unseen, Yeah,
and that he had that kind of pull. But it
also is kind of like this endearing part of his personality.
He has written like a massive Riddic saga space fantasy

(01:17:07):
like nerd bullshit.

Speaker 1 (01:17:09):
I bet it's it's doune for guys who really like
fifty cent.

Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
Oh man. But he just he so badly wants to
do fantasy.

Speaker 5 (01:17:23):
That was like the last witch Hunter thing, and and
it's it's weird because he does have he does have
a body that doesn't really lend itself to being This
is like the highly sort of like fucked up and
racialized part of like fantasy.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
It's fucked up that he can't just be the Witcher.

Speaker 5 (01:17:40):
Yeah yeah, yeah, well she would die. He would like
he would be over the moon to be the Witch.

Speaker 1 (01:17:45):
And he crushed it. He'd be great as the Witcher.

Speaker 5 (01:17:47):
Yeah, But there is also something about him that is
so modern too, where it's like, man, I don't really
believe that you could exist centuries ago.

Speaker 1 (01:18:00):
And yet that kind of that specific kind of machismo
is just exactly Viking, you know, or you know, like it.

Speaker 4 (01:18:09):
Is dudes have always been like that, Like that kind
of dude has always existed.

Speaker 1 (01:18:16):
Vin Diesel should be playing bio Wolf. You know. It's
it's fine, and it's it's eternal in some ways, and
so I wish that he had that opportunity because and
you know, I imagine that probably he's running much of his riddic.
He's just run through his D and D campaign with
his friends, and you know, good for him, and that's
as much as most of us can aspire to. But

(01:18:38):
the fact that he, uh, yeah, got he puffed up
enough to think that he could just lay down this
chest and expect them to unlock it with money is
you're right, endearing and also absurd. Mm so I'll give
you a wreck. Yeah is thinking about counterculture and all

(01:19:02):
of this. I'm gonna recommend him made for TV. Movie
the BBC did in nineteen seventy four called Penda's Fenn.
Pendus Fen is folk horror sort of. It is very
much a movie that A twenty four wishes it could make.
It's sort of deliberative, slow, very clever. It's about a

(01:19:28):
pastor's son in middle class British boarding school, religious boarding school,
who is wrestling with his sexuality and with the nature
of religion and with conservative politics in England and like
coming to terms with the fact that like he's like
hyper conservative and then realizes that that he's gay and

(01:19:53):
like it kind of breaks his mind and he is
visited by ghosts and demas and it's really interesting and
it is. The guy who wrote it ended up doing
an adaptation of Sir Gowin and the Green Knight as well.
I mean, it's very much steeped in this kind of

(01:20:14):
duality of British culture, which is, you know, they're an
empire and they are they have no culture of their
own because it was destroyed when they themselves were colonized
in like the twelve hundreds, and so they're like Christianity
is at odds with the underlying folk culture that they've

(01:20:35):
tried really hard to erase, which is also very much
like Mexican culture, you know, any of those places of
like you had an indigenous mythology that got stamped out,
but did it and like what does that look like?
And so he's wrestling with that and it feels kind
of like the same thing that Tolkien was wrestling with.

(01:20:56):
And the kind of highly restrictive boys club culture that
he's immersed in. You watch him like, oh, this is
why V for Vendetta is the way it is, Like
this is the kind of hyper conservative nonsense that Alan
Moore was raging against. Also, so it's cool it's available
on YouTube. The quality is low because it was a

(01:21:17):
BBC made for TV movie in the seventies, but definitely
worth it. And yeah, any kind of folk trendy folk
horror that you're used to now is like a jump
skier version of this, more like contemplative story, but it
is it owes a lot to that, so very cool.

(01:21:38):
I highly recommend.

Speaker 5 (01:21:40):
Yeah, No, that is cool and I I've never heard
of it sounds cool. The director Alan Clark, I was like,
this rings a bell? Why does this ring a bell?
One of his movies made the long list for Nosfaktu
and we didn't end up doing it. But it's called
Bill the Kid and the Green Bays Vampire and Wikipedia

(01:22:06):
describes it as a British independent musical fantasy, horror, comma,
dramedy sports film.

Speaker 1 (01:22:13):
Wow, that sounds like Vin Diesel's D and D campaign exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:22:19):
I think I may have pitched this the week that
we ended up doing.

Speaker 2 (01:22:24):
Oh god, what was that movie Jesus Christ Vampire?

Speaker 1 (01:22:27):
Oh yeah right, Vampire Hunter?

Speaker 2 (01:22:30):
Yep, yeah, we'll movie for campy ship.

Speaker 7 (01:22:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:22:34):
We also, I think Abraham Lincoln Responsiber.

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):
Yeah, but that's.

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):
Well, I'll tell you that. Like immediately after watching pandas
fan like, this is the guy I want to be
doing a Sir Gallon adaptation because he's so clearly invested
in like trippy kind of psychedelic British folk mythology. So

(01:23:01):
I'm gonna check that out.

Speaker 5 (01:23:04):
Awesome, Yeah, well check all that stuff out. Uh yeah,
really good contemplative horror movie. And then just a bunch
of Vin Diesel clips on Instagram that don't make sense,
uh it for this episode of is this just bad?
We'll see you on the next one by.

Speaker 4 (01:23:24):
It's just.

Speaker 1 (01:23:30):
It's like, oh, pirates port your brain, Robin Nalis, no
choking opened in your mind with the probots as you woken,
hitting Hydra halen Hares and for a time for a
head of reasons for more than with the soldiers with
them for all seasons.

Speaker 2 (01:23:40):
Listen closely while.

Speaker 1 (01:23:41):
We share our ex for teason customic comments called Sardine
streetuition to the multiversity, also psycho teaching perfect balance when
we snap in vine jemps into your ears, does the
shoulders when we speak purple men versusive feet for Randy
Savage randals with the Immortal technique