Podcast: The Ride - UNLOCKED: A Freak Like Me Needs Company on The Late Show with David Letterman

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

Please enjoy this sample of The Second Gate. Available at Patreon.com/PodcastTheRide. SMRT-1 episode available now! A thorough examination of the 2011 performance from the cast of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5RgR0-EWuNY FOLLOW PODCAST: THE RIDE: https://twitter.com/PodcastTheRide https://www.instagram.com/podcasttheride BUY PODCAST: THE RIDE MERCH: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/podcast-the-ride PODCAST THE RIDE IS A FOREVER DOG PODCAST https://foreverdogpodcasts.com/podcasts/podcast-the-ride Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

FOREVER! DOG! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1! Welcome to Podcast The Ride, the second gate. And we're here today, and I'm not going to lie, we're a bunch of freaks today. Yeah, hey, call us the terrifying triad. Yeah. Mike's Mike, Scott, and Jason, my kind of guys. Oh, yeah.

A couple of freaks ready to get their freak on. Behind a paywall. Behind a paywall. That's devilishly greedy. That voice is Scott Gerner. I'm Jason Sheridan. Mike Carlson, also here. There he is.

Also doing the voice. His trademark hey. Maniac Mike. Who's also like a DJ for a local radio station but he's also in the what was it terrible triad whatever that is in the terrible triad oh yeah let's go terrible triad sure what did you say uh i think that's a terrifying but i think terrible has a nicer clip to it because sinister and terrible yeah yeah yeah i think it was kind of match so in case you don't know what we're doing uh you

didn't read the headline we are talking today about just the david letterman performance of the spider-man turn off the dark song a freak like me needs company uh from written by bono and the edge yay yeah i haven't been so excited about a topic maybe ever uh uh yes i i've i've been so excited to talk about this and i think we're we're probably all in the same area with where this thing happened in 2011 but i think i know i watch it perhaps quarterly perhaps every quarter oh for sure yeah and i can say without a doubt that mike would have sent this to me pretty quickly like day after airing quickly he would have sent it to to me and some other people saying you gotta watch this yeah um i i felt very lucky because i watched this air live

i didn't tune in specifically to see it um but i happened to put it on right before it all went down but it also made me crazy because i had no one to talk to about it like i just i felt like i hallucinated it i'm alone at night just staring at my tv on the couch and like what the hell and then it didn't really blow up immediately. But I remember I was working in the Funny or Die basement. We were with a lot of fun weirdos you heard on the show. A lot of your favorite freaks from the world of podcast. Imagine a kooky basement where both Nick Weiger and Bug Main shared cubicle space. But it was such a big hit in that basement.

Like a week or so later later it took a little delay we talked about it non-stop and i think it spread a lot through sort of our this little scene in comedy world if i'm correct uh i want to say our friend eva anderson wrote or was like largely responsible for the tribute to it on comedy bang bang oh yeah they did with tom lennon uh they they did kind of a quick little like he was the phantom but they he transmogrified essentially into the into the green goblin for one song so it's like it's a green goblin the hammiest green goblin far hammier than uh willem dafoe or uh who who would it have been in the um chris cooper I believe, was going to be the Green Goblin, but he died. They killed him off in the second round of Spider-Man movies.

Oh, okay. And then Dan Don was the Green Goblin because it was his son, Harry. Right. That's, you know... So, but the point is... All right, before we go... We're watching this, by the way, on loop in the background. Yeah.

And the lizard just came in and I totally forgot what is like the Kurt Connors like part of him looks like. The lizard looks like that inflatable T-Rex costumes that are like popular at Halloween or like I saw a marching band have a bunch of them like recently in a YouTube clip. But this is years before those inflatable halloween costumes when it was like they're everywhere but they when you see those costumes know that they were pioneered by broadway legend julie taymor yeah uh that's the the thing about this that's so crazy like the level that knowing the bud the budget is stated in the performance it's a 65 million dollar circus tragedy actually more like 75 he says because that is true it ended up alluding to the cost of 75 and for those of you who aren't broadway heads uh the average cost of a musical on broadway is 5 to 15 million really yeah that's the that's the differential i'm sure things like um uh king kong that is currently running or about

to start running with the giant king kong i'm sure that costs a little more uh but this is a a notorious uh catastrophe in the history of broadway yeah yeah uh and so if all right if you haven't seen this performance first of, we should have it in the show notes or you can just go to YouTube and I think the full, just type in Spider-Man, a freak like me needs company, David Letterman, and you will find it. Because once again, we're not talking about the full show, Spider-Man Turned Up the Dark. We're talking about this wonderful performance where the Green Goblin, due to some very lax security on the show, the Green Goblin bursts into to some very lax security on the show,

the Green Goblin bursts into the Ed Sullivan Theater and takes it over and engulfs it in his freakiness. And also, they should note, this is an exclusive version of this song. The original cast recording of this song is just the start of the song and the end of the song. He doesn't stop in the middle of the song on in the broadway play and introduce these characters right no no he does oh he does oh yes he does yes okay i've seen it for the soundtrack yeah i saw the i've seen it i saw it on broadway oh i forgot that you saw i saw it like a month after this is it that soon this aired in july 2011 oh and we were in new york together i guess

you're right 2011 yeah you're right and i saw it alone no one would go with me no one would go richie went with me my friend and he uh he all of a sudden bailed on me because i was like i'm gonna try at the last second to get spider-man tickets and i did i walked up to the box office right as i was going in there like well our 29 tickets that are a little like view obstructed is that okay and i was like of course that's the perfect way to see this uh and i just went in alone it was raining i was soaking wet and i love i was enjoyed the whole thing so much i was in the top part of the theater right by where like spider-man's would spider-man would come down and swing uh he doesn't get really up close to you yeah their footage they're way up in the third balcony and he would jump and swing down that's pretty crazy i mean there was this it does seem

like they pulled off a legitimately amazing show at times and the sets were amazing and some costumes are amazing yeah it's just something about the way it all added up on this letterman performance so here i think i mean watch the performance certainly but let me just let's just play the tiniest taste of it before we talk for much longer you know this place is surprisingly easy to break into Come on New York City, let's get your free car If you're looking for an ad on the top. He just found me. Speaking like a mean beast. Don't be funny. I'm a $65 million circus tragedy.

Speaking like a mean beast. That's about all we need. As long as you know the general tenor, he broke into the Letterman show, and he is the scariest freak of all time. Do you know why he says that at the start? No. Because there was a break-in at the Ed Sullivan Theater not long before that.

What? Some crazy guy broke into the Ed Sullivan Theater. So he comes in and like, I'll tie it into theme parks, makes a topical joke. That's why he goes, this place is surprisingly easy to break into. It was a reference to a real person that broke into the Ed Sullivan Theater. No idea. Wow.

Well, I've learned something before he's even gotten in the door. This is great. Well, the budget, yeah, the budget is a topical reference thing too. I think the one thing that's missing is that he didn't say like everyone be careful on the stairs we don't need another injury like the scariest villain of all

is the workers comp man yeah uh in total six people were injured while working on spider-man uh uh and one of the at least one of them was injured twice and like people get injured come back get injured again and then leave well so this show fraught with peril extremely expensive as the goblin himself mentions and giant story problems it was like horribly reviewed by the new york times and all the major broadway press And they shut the whole thing down. And in fact, this song, Freak Like Me Needs Company, was part of the revamped version of Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark 2.0. This is one of the big additions. So this is late in the game and an attempt at an enhancement of a troubled show also to contextualize it this was the second spider-man

turn off the dark performance on david letterman within six months wow uh the first one was the song rise above which did that get cut from the no no it was like a centerpiece i think of the show boy falls from the sky you could say i think Boy Falls from the Sky is probably the best song. I would say this is the best song by a mile. On some level, yes. Okay, yeah. I think Boy Falls from the Sky is like, sort of like by the numbers U2

and this is at least something. This is something. Well, some of the other songs, like Boy Falls from the Sky, you can feel the Bono and Edge influence in it very strongly. This, there is such a disconnect between the Bono. I disagree completely with that. I think that Bono and the Edge, if you are into the U2 Pop Mart and Zoropa and Octung Baby eras, this right in that wheelhouse it's you're right that it's

like the normal youtube you're bono that's not what this is but as a non a non-encyclopedic uh youtube uh non-fan i guess i just uh there i don't listen to them or not listen to them i don't whatever, either way. But yeah, I was not aware of that. Evil characters doing hijinks is part of the U2 mythology. Yes. General. We're talking, of course, about Bono's alter ego, Mr. McPhisto, who is a man with a white painted face and devil ears and a gold sparkly suit and fancy shoes that shows off and he yeah

he does he's not gruff like the green goblin he's kind of this lascivious he has so many feels that he just has to whine but i think that is who i think you could see mr mcphisto leading the sinister six in this is what i'm saying absolutely he he is very much in that in that uh like what this is what he first of all this is what he thinks super villains and heroes are and i think it's evidenced if you if i was doing karaoke two nights ago and this is unrelated to i wasn't thinking of this when i was doing it but i put on the song hold me thrill me kiss me kill me which is from batman forever which is U2. And it's such a, it's the first part of this song in my head.

It's a little bit more U2 sounding, but it's very much in line with his like attitude about like characters. And really when we get down to it, he's just treating these characters like they're weirdo art people from New York. That's who we're all. Not a bad guy.

I'm just a little, I'm a kook and I have kooky ideas. The collection of people they assembled to make this, Julie, Tamor, Bono, and the way they talked about it, like all of them talked about it. It's like, well, it's like rock and Broadway and a circus and wrestling. And it is very much the way regular people think, like fancy rich people talk about art. And but it's about Spider-Man. It's about the most like everyday working man superhero.

Like, well, and primarily to me with all the buildup and all the expense and all the pretension and the level of like you know bono edge julie tamar all of them beyond just like you know revered professionals that they are like gods to be in these fields and that yeah then you see it especially if you don't know nothing else about the show and then you watch just this letterman performance you're like how did all of them add up to spider-man rocks at universal studio it just is it is so similar to the dumb show which we reviewed many many episodes ago but like there's no this is it's broad theme parky bright colors no texture no uh yeah nuance and not a good like pop by you too is an album people don't like i like half of pop and it's the songs feel so much more sophisticated than this it's so like especially go on spotify and listen to the recorded version of it it is so tinny it sounds like the fakest flattest

garage band hip-hop yes and jason you're talking about personnel of this thing let me add a couple more on to this list the uh it was produced but this track was produced by steve lily white produced all of the classics the main he's youtube's primary producer he produced all the dave matthews bands like the big dave matthews man albums and songs he produced for peter gabriel psychedelic furs rolling stones the pogues xtc's song making plans for nigel and a freak like me needs company he but because he was not like a rap guy and they wanted to bring kind of a street influence to the thing they did there was additional drum programming by a guy named shay taylor shay taylor produced frank ocean's think about thinking about you think about you

beyonce's love on top great song and a lot of neo records so they had all these hit makers all of these hit makers are here. It sounds like I could make a quality recording in an afternoon on GarageBand that sounded exactly the quality of the official cast recording of that song. Yeah, it's so thin, so tinny. It's inexplicable to me. And then let me also build up the scene how I feel lucky the way I got to experience this thing. That before several commercial breaks, before the Green Goblin did his immortal burst into the Ed Sullivan theater doors, it was an entire Bono and Edge episode of David Letterman.

They were on the couch and they told stories about, you know, all of the amazing humanitarian work that Bono does. And they talked about the tradition, you know, about Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tin Pan Alley and, you know, to partake in this tradition. Insufferable. God damn it. I'm getting mad just know i know and then and then they talk about their songwriting process and they talk about building up the song that i do like the song stuck in a moment you can't get out uh-huh and yeah the edge pulls out an acoustic guitar and they perform the stirring acoustic before the lights come down uh it's this like wonderful

acoustic you know you two such a gigantic band and seeing this like intimate performance which they explain in a lengthy setup that the song was written about the death of michael hutchins the singer of in excess a tragic awful death so all of this humanitarian work the death of michael hutchins tin pan alley and julia weber and then all right we'll be right back with the cast of spider-man turn off the dark and then the other thing i mean this there's a lot of conflicting emotions because i i do like this i think on the level i'm sure you guys probably there's a level you like it dubbed like look at this spectacle what is this this expensive monstrosity as a comics fan i'm horrified oh no

that's no i couldn't disagree with that more what do you mean no this is this is nonsense this is great like 60s it's not no 60s batman 60s batman how dare you but this is this is like comics have so much trash associated with them i'm just saying like this shouldn't make you that upset there's so much great comics trash that you and i like i mean i get my thing i think is like why why does the green goblin i like the green goblin outfit best of all everything else looks like weird walk around characters from a theme park or like inflatable mini macy's table like they have the the money and they have the costuming know-how to make here's my point okay here's my point there's a version of like a much more serious spider-man musical where the green goblin

comes out and he's wearing like i don't know maybe a little bit less of a goofy outfit and he sings like a serious green goblin song and i just there's no way to pull that off there's no way that's gonna be good that would be bad in the other i just that's like i think saying like batman and robin is a movie is bad which it is bad but it's great it's fantastic but it's bad it's this is bad but it's fantastic batman forever is like closer to if if you're if you're like flipping a coin like a two-faced coin the batman forever lands i think more on the side of good bad and batman and robin's like all right oh yeah for sure i agree with that but also it's fantastic in the way that this is fantastic because it's just so bad it is a swarm a man made of mutant bees just

came out and i just realized a bee fell off his suit as it jumped out yes one of the best things and that you're hearing about the the julie taymor level of detail and artistry and then immediately a bee falls off of the bee man the first villain who comes out these are clearly inspired by like the heightened puppetry and costuming of the lion king sure but it it just looks so bizarre like k's like not k's are craven the hunter looks so odd look different. They look like they're in different universes, too. All I'm saying is this is glorious trash. Yes. And I would much rather have glorious trash than like those amazing Spider-Man movies,

those second round of Spider-Man movies that were very boring and flat. So a lot of the Steve Ditko designed original Sinister Six, there's a reason in the comics the costumes have changed very little since the 60s and the stuff that's kind of a let that like the spider man movies it's always like uh well we got to put them in a trench coat and then spider-man outfit has to have a lot of superhero outfits now always have a lot of bubble like why do they all look like scales scales yeah it drives me nuts and superhero like why didn't just give them latex or leather i don't know but they don't slip by a pool i guess

yeah i it's let me let me say what i think is i think absolutely the song itself is defendable i think the costumes are defendable i think the Green Goblin costume and performance are dependable. But here I think is really where it tilts is that you win. We should also maybe kind of go through this chronologically a little bit. But when the Green Goblin bursts in the door and there's a it's green lit, there's a bunch of green smoke. It's going to loop back around here in a minute in the video we're watching. The backup dancers. Oh, yeah. in a minute in the video we're watching the backup dancers oh yeah yeah these people who lean really close to camera with their broad broadway makeup and costumes these guys these

guys they're the original b-boys from hell all right stay away from this crew like with how what are what are all right there's like dyed green hair. There's like, you know, silver makeup smeared, like not carefully applied. They don't care about careful makeup applications. But he's wearing like a. We just splashed it on our face. They're like the dancers from the horny number in all that jazz ran headfirst into the cast of hackers. And then this came out.

Beautiful. Wow. Yeah. That is a good way to put i was just gonna say he's a guy in flannel they were like wearing flannel shirts and like cheap tank tops the women doing the scary faces like yeah making jazz hands and going ha that's that that yeah some of the costumes are just a green hat tilted to the side they don't care about traditional hat directions uh i'll put my brim where i want and then some of them are literally some of these people are just a

girl with a green scrunchie and kind of like a green and black workout outfit and that makes her evil yeah she's bad now it is yeah it makes everything feel cheap that is the thing that makes it feel cheap if they were all dressed like other, like green goblin henchmen, which I don't believe henchmen, I don't believe he ever had those in the comics. Right. Kind of like heavy.

It just kind of like heavy. Yeah. But if there were like thugs, you know, in a way, yeah, that would be better. But the,

yes, they're, they look like they ran out of money and they were like, just go to the, go to the right aid and see if there's some tank tops and hats on the shelf there somehow i i think a lot of uh again i love this as spectacle but some of my resistance is coming from the fact that it's such a hodgepodge it's not quite comics it's not quite rock and roll it's not quite even broadway i think that's theme parks it's theme park that's why we're talking about it that's all that's what it is that is looking at it from that lens it makes 100 sense

is it's maybe it's like okay we think that that aladdin show uh that was it california venture for a long time where the genie tells silly topical jokes that just that is what it is you know what you're getting when you go in there i'll have fun i'll laugh at it's silly but let's have a good time but if you found out that the score was written by loudon wainwright or leonard cohen or somebody and that like you know and that they're you know that it took them eight years to land on you know this making a making a the genie making a slap chop joke like it's i think it's the the balance of if this just was if they let it just be purely this is dumb and silly but the fact that there's that bono pretension makes you have to judge it more on the julie even more so yes it seems like tamor's pretension outweighs bono's pretension by like 20

20 i don't know 20 but 200 she bailed too she got fired yeah yeah yeah she got out of there somehow that's bailed when they made her bail yeah and there's an interview where bono says you know i think uh you know she was there the whole time and i think uh you know we were in and out because we were on tour and we'd come back and we'd see obvious problems and uh i think they were less obvious to her and that's what this whole thing feels like when you go to a super wide shot of all of the freaks grinding around and punch in the air you're like how did no anyone with an outside perspective could have said you just made spider-man rocks you all of this work and seven years of effort and playwriting got you to this yeah some of the other people involved in this uh a listener sent us that glenn berger

uh who co-wrote the the book which uh the book in a broadway musical is what the script is called he wrote a book about the musical called Song of Spider-Man, the inside story of the most controversial musical in Broadway history. Which I believe I have Scott's copy of upstairs. No, no, no. You gave it back to me. Oh, I did. Okay, good.

But I brought it back here. Oh, good. All right, leave it here then. I will, yes. I brought bookmarks of relevant passages. Have you read all of it? I did read all of it. Is it good uh i think glenn burger has a

pretty slanted view of how it played out and i think the book is entirely an effort to show that at every step he's like see i knew i knew this was gonna happen i was right i was right i tried to make this better but they wouldn't let me first like big gig right like he's written kids cartoon was this like i'm not sure let's read his author bio well he wrote the play underneath the lintel and oh lovely glow worm um and yes he wrote for arthur uh on pbs and and then the most damning thing in the author bio glenn spent six years co-writing the script of Spider-Man. Wow. Turn off the dark. Six years of your life goes to that. The guy brought in in the last few months to help fix it is Roberto, I'm going to massacre this last name, Aguirre-Sacasa,

who now is the person who makes the most sense working on this piece. He had written a bunch of Marvel comics. He was also a playwright, and's written he wrote on big love and looking and he wrote the script for the recent carrie remake he is the current uh chief creative officer for archie comics and executive producer of riverdale and chilling adventures of sabrina whoa like he oversees those things this lineup is so stacked the credits of this group are bonkers and not to mention the man who plays the green goblin patrick page is a broadway luminary i don't have the list offhand but i believe he essentially ended up in this because i think he was the grinch on broadway and and it's a similar he's green yeah he's a

green he's a green was he scar or am i mixing my thing oh i think he was maybe i think he was scar yeah yeah but i think but a very well respected actor yeah i have no complaints i think he's fun yeah he's great and he's having fun he uh i think i saw him i'm sure i probably did he uh did topical jokes also during the show man what did he do a shakeway joke yes he was like had picked up some like device and he's like oh it's like a shake weight or something and big laugh and then we had that show had to stop too because a spider-man got tangled up in a wire the one you went to yeah oh my god nobody nobody fell and broke their leg it's just like a guy like flew from

the balcony swung onto the stage and then got caught on the side and then like there was a pause and then it was like spider-man will resume in five minutes like a theme park yes and then uh he when green goblin has a thing where he's like at a piano for some reason so he's like playing like we'll have to stop the show if something goes wrong like he like he was doing he was ad-libbing whoa so it was full theme park would cover if shit happened yeah so he yeah i think at that point after that many concussions and leg injury like they were probably had yeah a million alternative plans in place i mean i gotta say the thing the interesting thing uh to me uh like all the bad reviews and stuff were because as soon as preview started

all the critics rushed to see it which is an unusual thing and usually previews are a way to smooth out issues with like scenes and stuff and it, it's not going to be the same show as when it officially opens. This was such a catastrophe. The critics were like, well, we got to see this immediately. Desperate. I'm sure.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just a side note. I was thinking about how much I would love to play the green goblin. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he's, this guy's given 110%. That's the funniest thing to me is how he comes in like a stadium is screaming his name. He is coming in hot. He's coming in ready to go.

I think, though, he's giving it. He's so confident. He's not giving it 100%. He's giving it 75%, but he's so confident. There's a couple dance steps he does that are very late. He's an older. I think he's in his 50s or something, so maybe he's not a great. But he does a couple dance steps he does that are like very late he's an older i think he's like in his 50s or something so maybe he's not a great but he does a couple dance steps later on maybe i should zoom

it where he does kind of like he's in step but you can tell he's like not a dancer yeah and maybe not trying very hard like kind of this slow little stomp yeah like um i i can't i'm not even trying to put him down i think it was the right choice to not like go. Let me see where it is here. The other, everybody else is hoofing it more. Yes. Everyone's going nuts. And he is, he's holding, he is just holding the attention of the audience. The little point he just did, what we just saw where he like points three times.

I saw footage of Julie Taymor. Here, here. Sorry, sorry. Here we go. Oh yes. That stomp backwards. I'm sure he doesn't have much as much mobility as the people in workout wear i'm just saying he's in time but he's not like he's not given the springsteen effort in the fourth encore is what i'm saying well that's my favorite i think in that part they're singing the light light and

all the freaks and they all kind of go up like that and they all like swoop with their hands like zombies it's just the most that's really these backup dancers being scary that is truly where it gets silly and yeah me uh but i was saying that point i saw julie taymor coaching him and how to point she has a glove on and she's like i make sure you're like that's footage you can watch in a 60 minutes piece wow so here now that we've looped back around okay let's say what's happening the green goblin breaks in from the back topical joke walks in struts into the ed sullivan theater owns it and he's already planted a gang of freaky freaks in french coats and then he joins them and lab coats there's scientists people too and then over here on the right you've got like a guy

in front of a laptop who looks like a modern getty lee crossed with the crow uh who's like leading the band and that's another funny thing about this that this is being played live by the david letterman band with paul schaefer let's add another luminary to this yeah and the part where uh the green goblin walks up to paul schaefer and sings next to him that's truly one of the highlights also what we're looking at right now where he sticks his tongue out and it's like the tongue is green. Do you think that he had to like eat a green sucker right before he went out? A green apple sucker?

Did he do it every night is the question on Broadway. Did they need it to be green even though for the people in the front row? Michael, I have a question. Is Norman Osborn in this musical? Yes, he is. Is it the same actor playing norman osborn i believe so really they got that costume on i think they did a costume wow that's my memory of it because every other villain has just is basically name checked in this and they're just like

dispatched easily but he's in it they're not really i yeah i had a feeling or dispatch he was the only one really fleshed out. So let's just, all right. Lyrics. I mean, I know this thing by heart. Yeah, sure. We already covered it, but I just love, it's similar to like, I don't know, like how hard I laughed at the first line of The Room

the first time I saw it. You're just like, so, hi, babe. You're so in. And that like, if there's any question of like, is this thing silly or good or bad, the way he phrases it, if you're looking for one, he's got his learn, he's got half a commit.

It just tunes you perfectly. And then the reference to how expensive it is. And then he explains that he's the new Coney Island and all the rides are open and free and he also i also like what he's what he says of um um me like he's such a freak all he needs to say is um me and you know that's the craziest thing you could be so if you were reading into this and you didn't know what the context was he's like looking to have sex tonight right like if you didn't know we i don't know yeah i think you're i think your body meter's going off again maybe i'm but he's like he's he needs company a freak like me needs company

well here's a little uh story from the making of the show that when this title was first presented as a okay apparently abana's working on a new song it's called a freak like me needs company and the director said no no no no it needs to be a freak like me needs family because his view of the song is that he's a guy he's a loner and now he's gonna form his own family by giving people poisons and chemicals and now he's got this family of freaks so there i think this is a little bit of contention maybe some people's mind it is about sex but in other people's mind it's about family well and this is interesting because in in the original uh uh the sinister six who first appeared in 1964's amazing spider-man annual number, which I looked up, the way they come together is

Doc Ock breaks out of prison and contacts everyone who has been beaten by Spider-Man. And the ones who show up and get back to him decide they want to fight Spider-Man because they've all been humiliated by him. They've all been defeated by him. But they can't get their act together to work together. So they fight spider-man one at a time in a gauntlet and sure enough he dispatches all of them and they're humiliated once again and they're and because it's steve ditko still

drawing it they're all very gross and ugly looking okay wow um so sinister sticks uh like hallmark of spider-Man for many years. Yeah, and there's been a lot of different members over the years, including in this one, Swiss Miss, a character created for the musical. She's a woman made of knives. And they bragged about it. I remember the media coverage at the time was like, there's a villain created just for the musical.

And she's called Swiss Miss. And it's like, uh-oh. And what she does is strut up, wave her knife arms twice, and then go return to the back. Yeah. Yep, and that's it. Yep, the end. So the lyrics, though, like, I've been told that what you're supposed to do

when you're writing a musical is that the character is supposed to be somewhere different by the end of the song. Character starts in a certain place. You're supposed to make, like, an actual, like, something happen in the narrative in the song. That's what the song is for. So the first verse is like he's looking for company. Then he explains in the chorus that weirdos are there. And then he has a crew in the second verse. So I guess he's looking for the people.

Maybe he wants, maybe he means sexist company. Maybe he just means literal company. Well, maybe this is a good time to play the extra verse that's not in the letter. Oh, yeah, right. Performance. I don't have to play the whole thing, but it's really all about the first line of verse two. I think I'm looking at it. I think I am also looking at it.

I got a crew, a party, animal mutants by my side. Uh-huh, that's what I was looking at. I got a crew of party animal mutants. And the rest of the verse just really lays on. It truly becomes like, a crew of freaks, because I'm a freak. Demon hairdo, evil dressers who just won't be denied is the next line of that yeah um and i have another thing to say about what i think contributes to kicking this to the lamer side okay imagine bono's guide vocals where potentially he sings this the vocals like, like me needs company.

And that's one way to sing it. But the way the singers do it is, a freak like me needs company. It's that super Broadway. Make sure you really hit each. And it's three syllables. Ba, ba, ba. Do you got that?

Ba, ba, ba. It's very much like Bob Balaban, the music director in waiting for guffman explaining like and half of you will say blay and the other half you say blaine like these bizarre pronunciation rituals you just feel that lame broadway and no matter who wrote the song as long as it's a big broadway chorus doing it it's just gonna come off silly yeah um there would be i first of all i would think that the holy grail is to find the bono and edge demo of this oh man oh if anyone for some for some reason yeah i'll take yeah because he did like temp this yeah he was like messing around in the studio with a loop and improvising lyrics

and this is a passage in the book if you don't mind me maybe i'll turn to one of my first post-it sections sure this is like because i bought the book song of spider-man with the hopes that it was a hundred percent about the letterman performance of Freak Like Me. But in fact, the Freak Like Me content is pretty small, which is disappointing. But this one part did not let me down. And let me find it. So the song, you know, they got to rush this song out because the play is up and running and they got to introduce it and rehearse it and get it in there sooner than later. So it's the middle of the night.

Bono is lying on a ratty couch in the middle of the recording room, improvising goblin lines over an endless groove. He was in character, a dissipated lounge lizard, shaking off last night's bender and warming up for some new kicks. It's like this. He was scatting, hacking up tar,

yawning, and cackling into the the mic and then in the book you get extra lyrics that are nowhere to be found in the song and uh you didn't have to cover your ears mike because he gets a tad body uh uh he you know he's not worried about he's just letting it flow they'll edit it down later but here's what comes out of bono's mouth bring out the dancing girls the crossroads of the world needs a little resurrection it used to be really rotten around here now can't even buy me an erection so it's the middle of the night bono's on the floor saying that shit hacking up apparently hacking up tar which is troubling preparing for his kicks no no he's just playing the character yeah he's not really hacking up

like he was three sheets to the wind with stain can you tell this was written by a broadway book writer it's with stained silk bathrobe bravado he's saying uh yeah yeah he loves and he's like well he's watching an artistic process in action right uh uh he he watched him improvise the line about 65 million dollar circus tragedy how did he come up with that i don't know oh he's got a spreadsheet with all the numbers on it and how much it's affecting his bottom line he's gotta sell an island it should say though uh this musical did set the record for one week broadway sales once uh during one of its uh weeks of its run at 2.9 million okay but its operating costs were estimated to be one million dollars a week so i think it did end up being profitable because it did and he also ran

for two and a half years even or something yeah so it was profitable so also our and the guy compares what bono was doing to like tom waits so there's a little bit tom waits influence in in uh which there's a lot of tom waits influence on heath ledger's joker and that's i'm just being serious that's i recently learned that too yeah if you there's a clip of like him talking tom wait's being like hey there is dean and then you like they show the clip of heath ledger and you're like oh yeah though it's the voice it's the same way he kind of like smacks his lips and shakes his head around and yeah so the little all the great supervillains have some time waits um but also in the demo when they say a freak like me needs it was it was the edge it was the edge stacked on himself multi-tracked

so this demo does exist and we have to get it yeah but here's where it gets truly insane it's march 17th as they're doing this it's the middle of the night and all in new york's most famous freaks are flooding the streets so who should walk in into the recording session of this song but elvis costello let one more luminary costello is in the building while they're doing this he's wearing a pair of devil horns like mr mcphisto like mr mcphisto uh uh so bono invites elvis to steve lily white is there they play him the track elvis listened intently hardly moving until the songs were over and after he said some very complimentary things and headed out into the night bono said yeah i heard the songs through his ears and there's some things we need to fix

then writer glenn burger goes on to say and that's what you get with a community of artists is an exchange of ears and it's all about how he's isolated but he doesn't have company of freaks like bono and costello have with each other i love costello coming in and going like this is good like they're all just like kissing each other's ass and stuff about it. This is good. I didn't end it. It requires a willingness to be self-critical. These guys,

these guys in the devil horns had it. Yeah. I'm sure these guys are real self-critics. I'm sure Bono and the edge, super self-aware, still very hard, very hard on themselves. Decent think Costello

was like, you should have like a, you should have like a knife woman. You know what would be fun is if you had like a knife lady come out. Anyway,

back to drinking, bye. He sticks his head back in. Maybe a gun, a gun woman. Guns are scary. It's up to you, it's your show.

I don't want to be prescriptive. See you at Sardis. If Costello had like written a line in this, that would be a great lore. Yeah. I don't think that fake story of Prince writing the frozen. Yeah.

Yeah. It didn't bother me anyway. Yep. This is, I, you know, Mike listening to the song a million times before recording, this really gives me a new appreciation of the city walk saga theme song what do you mean i'm saying that although apparently some people were haunted by

uh sublime hot topic in cinnabon trying to figure out a lot of mystery in the what my intention was behind writing the lyric was i talking about sublime the store or was i saying that hot topic was sublime and here i'll say this now i'm not gonna tell yeah well another artist has to be ambiguous who are you i mean you did a demo of the vocal like bono you did a demo of the song before it was you were replaced by uh the broadway caliber zacharino uh did you were you channeling anyone uh while singing that song um well i assume tom waits but besides that tom waits uh i was sort of more of like a grigore i was kind of getting in the place of like the grigorian chants that's what i was sort of thinking, like primitive music, I was sort of trying to think. The Celtic Hills, yes.

You can feel the spirits. And, you know, it's really the pre, before City Walk, there were the hills of Ireland. But, of course, all popular rock and roll goes back to Muddy Waters and Mississippi Delta. Blind Willie Jefferson. Blind Willie. Brian Eno via Mike Post, I'll say hey great yeah yeah um why didn't he know why didn't they get eno down to consult on this yeah you know it was a big you know was octung baby uh right he kind of played uh um well i guess he didn't play characters

city uh you know uh uh he could be a malevolent figure in certain songs. I'm sorry. I just have to point out. So Letterman is on stage standing in front of Swiss Miss and her knife knee pad is still spinning. It has not stopped spinning. That's great. Oh, wait.

And once you see it, you can't unsee it. Okay. So we have established in the song that all the freaks in new york city are out tonight all the weirdos are all around but we need further proof of this and so there is a roll call of each member of the sinister six perhaps we should go through them uh you've got them really oh the i don't it's hard to pick a favorite line or anything but for sure we got a man made entirely out of mutant bees he's kind of tossing it off he's getting a little half-assed and then of course he falls off yeah that would be swarm uh first appearance champions

number 14 july 1977 uh this uh character i i think the actual comics design of squirm it is just a mass of bees uh the character has been from wikipedia the character has been depicted as a former nazi sympathizer and has been mainly featured as an enemy of spider-man his entire body is composed of bees surrounding his skeleton and on top of that he has a big purple cloak so that's one of those things like oh only in comics until broadway came along until somebody put a bunch of sticks on a yellow and black uh unitard and yeah um uh wait who's who's next what's the order oh the lizard yeah uh isn't it no i think it's the lizard he comes up the aisles right right and a lid and that's legitimately impressive that an inflatable dinosaur bursts out of a scientist uh out of

his stomach uh electro is the guy with like a torch for in his hand correct he's sparking a lot yeah he has like electricity spark effects which i think they kind of use similar spark effects you know how letterman always always have those like spokes models with the metal that they would be like sparking when they would hit metal on metal does no one know what i'm talking about yeah i know what you mean yeah you would have like just mod i don't remember like they would be showcasing that's where even will it float if it many different times they would bring in these like women that had like metal and they would just like do these like sparking things that would but it looks like a similar effect that electro has going on i see that's also one of the top lines of the thing is we hey ladies how about

a human lightning bolt you want it you got it why ladies electro not to be confused with shocker spider-man's other electricity theme i love shocker fan as a kid kind of the costume kind of looks like more like it is very similar than electro's the is craven next i think i think it's craven the hunter and that's the joke he makes a joke which seems like he's implying that craven the hunter jason you have facts on craven you want to read sure uh craven uh real name sergey kravenov uh a maniacal big game hunter who seeks to defeat Spider-Man

to prove that he is the greatest hunter in the world and he favors his bare hands he does not like using guns or bow and arrows

in Kraven's Last Hunt he famously commits suicide which is one of the most famous stories right? yes because he thinks

he's killed Spider-Man right but he hasn't and won but then he tries to replace him and then it turns out he hasn't. So he commits suicide. And, uh, in the show,

in the Spider-Man show, he says like Craven, the hunter, like what he, I forget. I should have written down the line. It's like, he likes the animals,

but maybe a little too much. So that is about sex. That is for sure. Implicate implying that he's had sex with the, whatever lion or tiger he's hanging around with. He looks like the most Lion King on Broadway style puppet. Because he's like a big cartoonish looking man in his mane, his costume. Yeah, here it is.

He's got a whip and leather pants. It's a lion. He literally roars like the lion on his chest. He's my favorite of the costumes. He's very good, yeah. It's lion on his chest he's very good yeah it's really good and he factors into this other we're going to get direct you to another youtube video i recently discovered uh in which spider-man and the green goblin put their differences aside to hold a press conference about halloween costume safety there is please look this up or we'll put it in the show notes

or something that the green gob spider-man's not really talking he stands off to the side and the green goblin handles it uh different actor playing the green goblin but he says now spider-man and i we've had our differences many of which have played out on the public stage but there's one thing that we can agree on and that's halloween safety and then. And then he pans around the other villains. Like, now my friends here are dressed very outlandishly, but they make sure to have maximum visibility at night. And these sad reporters have to be there outside the theater covering this non-event. It's so funny.

Anyway, I'm a fantastic super villain but i do want to say blue lives matter you know these guys they're out on the scale every day putting their lives on the line uh and you know stopping frisk works it's a world we wouldn't have used it for so long if it had worked come on mayor de blas Mayor de Blasio. Come on. It was 2011, so. Yes, they all turned their back. I'll replace you next election. And then it goes to, like,

a very bland police officer just reading facts about, like, do not wear all black costumes, make sure you have reflective materials on your, and during that, Craven the Hunter leans in behind him and kind of like cranes his head

and smiles as these dull facts about safety are listed it's the funny these villains are truly left with like well my the only thing i can do is writhe around and look evil and so what do they do when we're talking about like kids don't uh make sure that candy's wrapped make sure you got no needles in there they're they're at a loss if you're going as cops and robbers or cowboys make sure there's an orange cap on the end of your toy costume pistol you are dead you are smote son um so that's a great video check that out uh craven the hunter the all-star of that one uh who else now we got uh i don't remember his name carnage carnage cletus cassidy jason you want to give us some the symbiote carnage is interesting to me because the the original idea

was that um uh the writer david is it micheline david michelin oh yeah i don't know he wrote a lot of spider-man comics he was going to kill off uh venom he wanted to kill off venom um and uh big mistake big mistake because he was too popular too successful and and management was like well we can't kill him off and eventually the storyline became we'll kill off craven but uh similarly they they he could not make venom they needed someone even more extreme than venom so they made carnage a similar symbiote based uh spider-man enemy but cletus cassidy is a fucking psychopath card car uh venom has a moral comp even though it's twisted he's got a moral compass but carnage is just fucking crazy man yeah that yeah he's a very 90s character i mean

venom is a 90s character but carnage is 90s baby like extreme and violent and venom created at the end of the 80s i believe oh yeah that makes sense and and ahead of them just like cable and then just became when the 90s just ran with these extreme characters you end up with carnage uh and it the way this extra the extreme nature of carnage is presented in the letterman performance is he killed his grandmother and tortured his mother's dog my kind of guy carnage shouted carnage uh that's the first time also he's talked about actually killing i think too so like oh yeah that's pretty thrown away yeah these are literal murderers don't forget it's pretty innocent up until that up until he says we got a guy on the team who killed someone and he's where does carnage has

a grandmother i honestly don't the history of carnage is a little cloudy to me i assume he killed some person in his family he was just like a he was like a really crazy hillbilly character i think the timing works out where when he would have been uh created and and starred in the comics lines up with um silence of the lambs being a big hit movie so it's kind of like oh it's like venom meets hannibal lector because like carnage all all the early carnage storylines were like this guy's so crazy he'll just straight up murder people in cold blood. Like any nuance or any like, well, he's tortured because of this reason.

Like Dr. Octopus in the second Spider-Man movie. He's tortured because he's trying to find this, prove this scientific formula. But then he's haunted by his wife dying in the process. That's gone. Carnage is just a straight-up psychopath which but there's something about it being his grandmother that just makes it feel like you know he told his teacher to suck eggs yeah that would seem like it would be more appropriate for what had come before in the song yeah yeah yeah yeah that it's

all it's no there's no reference made it's just we're gonna have a freaky party yeah anyway he killed his grandmother he was uh you know they stacked the jury so he got off it wasn't totally clean you know look i think they i think they bought that election and they had some sway with the da but uh anyway he's out on the street i've got some thoughts on partisan judges i and then you and then you got swiss miss the most tossed off of all and oh one more there you go okay there you go um there is a female also okay bye that that kind of um i forget what i forget the character's name in in the spider-man ride in florida scream are you yes one of one of the yellow vennim symbiote yeah one of the symbiote spin-offs and it

made it sound like well we gotta have a girl bad guy like in both of these it's it does feel so tossed off yeah i don't know why they didn't go black cat or like i mean she's like a tweener if you're something but she could be a bad guy you know she doesn't she could be in this in this universe a bit of an anti-hero black cat she's good sometimes sometimes she's bad we don't know black cat there you go very young has a streak and a lot of white hair i think she's like cat woman she is her biggest uh the biggest crime is being a rip-off artist uh intellectual property theft so that all is so delightful he's just the most theme parky villain he's so much like the genie he's so much like he's like bugsy he's like exactly like bugsy yes that's true he is a lot like bugsy just a devil but he's he's mean but he's also cheeky he's kind of cute i think this i am so upset this isn't still running on broadway there was a rumor

it was gonna be running and they were gonna move it to vegas which is the perfect place for it 100 vegas and they never like get the funding to move everything but um i'm gonna throw a pitch your way here's a here's a plus it up i have a pitch too but yeah go for it okay uh uh i'm i'm worried i'm saying your pitch no there's i don't think there is i think it's a different i think that here's this this is the merger i want to make happen between a couple like not not 100% successful musicals, but I think you do this pair up and it's perfect. The Jimmy Buffett musical escape from Margaritaville proceeds as it did,

whatever the hell happened in that show, but halfway through, well, well, well, what's this a little beach party? Oh, it looks like y'all are getting laid.

I make jokes. Maybe I need to rain on your little sunny parade. The Green Goblin as a threat within Escape from Margaritaville would form the greatest musical ever achieved. There's no doubt about it. I mean, there's no reason not to do that. Just have main character of the margaritaville musical tully mars need some help tully mars spider-man thank god you're here

the actor playing tully mars has broken both legs but the multiple tully mars is swinging in from the balconies tully and spider-man swing yeah Now that's a problem because those swings have to be precisely timed and choreographed and Tully Mars ain't never want to watch. He's on his own time. He's on island time. And in the end of the show, like the Green Goblin's getting threatened

and he's going to, he like talked to the mayor and he's going to cancel summer. But then he sees them all drinking margaritas and he's like, wait a minute. Drinks can be green. Toss one of those my way, brother. And then they all cheers and party together. And then they sing like a mashup of Margaritaville and Boy Falls from the Sky.

Let's do it again, Margaritaville. guy uh yeah no that's not what i was gonna pick the julie taymor lost shaker of salt that's a living creature with oh yeah that's great children all the characters crying at the appearance of the salt shaker certainly the cheeseburger is also an anthropomorphic cheeseburger in paradise. He's got a big floppy cheese tongue lapping around. The volcano would be real. Or it would be like that volcano from the Pixar short who's sad. Oh, yeah, sure. Lava.

Why did they use actual lava? Julie Taymor insisted on real lava. The cast all their feet got singed they'll never walk again oh god the safety strap wasn't fully on their harness and then they stepped in lava that's a real insult to insult to no injury to injury no insults at all man do you have another pitch my pitch was honestly not as good my pitch was just that i want to see bono on the edge it's about time i think for them to tackle another superhero property because we had batman forever then we had spider-man i think it's time for them to do another

big famous superhero and i'm open to pitches on this but i mean like i there needs to be like an iron man musical written by bono and the edge or something a big like a big superhero and get their take like what is when bono and the edge want to write a song where the mandarin is the villain what what kind of song are we gonna get i'm the freaky little mandarin i know nothing else about the mandarin but i mean for sure like harpsichord like as Asian-inspired influences, and like Bono certainly getting into a problematic character headspace

before he's doing the lyrics for the Mandarin. Yeah, I just think... With the freaky fantastic voice. Or at the very least, an original IP of all U2 characters from the tours as its own musical superhero kind of a mashup thing. Yes. Wait, who will take us through some other characters?

Well, Bono is like the pop tour. Bono is like a box. This is the boxer. And he's got like a big robe on. And Bono is usually the interesting character on the show. Well, can I pitch where it would take place? Oh, please go for it. Joshua Tree National Park?

No, that's a different era. I just mean a setting. Yeah, you could combine it into one thing. It's a jukebox musical. Wait, your U2 musical is just like three albums worth? It's not even addressing all of it? Oh yeah, that's my favorite U2 stuff is all the nonsense with the characters and stuff. Stuff people don't like.

The stuff that people, people like Octung Baby, but people get a, you got to get Dr. Robert, the character he played in Julie Taymor's film, Across the Universe. Oh, right. From the Beatles song. Uh-huh. That's why this all happened. It actually started with Bono and the Edge, not Julie Taymor. And they had one condition. The condition is Julie.

So they created this monster across the universe yeah yep wow uh-huh so you just saw how she just did not understand the beatles and they're like what if she could misunderstand spider-man too um and the and rap music in general and tom waits the other Waits. The other characters on the Pop Mart tour, other than Mr. McPhisto, were Bono's The Fly character, when he had big giant glasses, and then Mirrorball Man.

But, Barf. I was looking at some articles about Mr. McPhisto. I didn't really have time to do the full research i would have liked to and i don't know how much i believe this but according to you two songs.com joel schumacher the director of batman forever had met with bono to discuss an on-screen role initially it was thought that bono would play a villain but there were already two evil characters in the film already. So instead, Schumacher considered having Bono perform a song in costume as McFisto. McFisto is almost in the movie.

Yeah, I believe that. Yeah, I don't know why I wouldn't. It's a crazy movie. Coolio was in the second. It was in Batman and Robin, I believe. There are little weird cameos. And then there's decent, I don't know, Drew Barrymore is in like a tiny role.

Like there are people that are put in the movie as is. And he did a song on the soundtrack. So it makes sense that like he met with him. And it makes sense Joel Schumacher would have been like, I like Mr. McFisto. This feels like a good time to bring this up. So I don't know if you guys had anything like this in your middle school music classes

but uh i sure did and it it's still confusing to me to this day so we would get this the music teachers would get these magazines uh like glossy magazines that every student got a copy and uh uh for a like a a couple weeks at least uh we would analyze a popular song using things we had learned in music classes uh and the one year it was kiss from a rose kiss by rose kiss from a rose kiss from a rose and the next year it was i believe i can fly whoa so uh both of the big uh warner brothers r&b crossover yeah so maybe that magazine i mean i'm sure that magazine was funded by a record label probably warner brothers records um and i it but it only went we only did that maybe it's just the same teacher but like i never did that again like a curriculum passed out on a professional level yes like like that looked in like a magazine that looks like you know a thin floppy rolling stone kind of thing

which really maybe that gave you a thirst for like music and song and lyric analysis that led to this very podcast today like i'd like to get that booklet now and say okay so um let's move on to line three i'm a rolling baby rolling in the green but i'm unique a freak now what do you make of that i i love it i love batman forever i i hope we keep doing a lot of batman forever talk and in general um you know we're we're missing a big component to what makes this video great which is that at at the end we get to see the real-time reaction of wonderfully cantankerous David Letterman. Watching him. So, he comes out and is kind of that bemused mode.

Like, oh, boy. And he makes this very odd, lame joke. It's like a party at my mom's house. And then gets surrounded by all the freaks and that it's just priceless it's wonderful um and and and then at the very very end the youtube video cuts off in a wonderful way where with half a second to go electro lights up a flame and he's taking his mask off by that point so he's just this enthusiastic dude like hey and it's it's uh it's so wonderful he barely gets it in there yeah open flame next to

david letterman um and and what i think is that any other host this is not as funny like that it's this is a performance being done in the like in the home of the meanest man who doesn't like anything does he yeah because i feel like i don't remember what the verdict was on this usually does letterman usually like the musical performances that were on the show or not no he was usually checked out no way no way he likes the he likes the foo fighters and he likes maybe like springsteen probably springsteen like the black keys probably i think he likes maybe like Springsteen. Springsteen, like the Black Keys probably. I think he likes. Super Chunk or New Pornographers would play and be like, hey, that's great.

I think he might like some of that. Beastie Boys, I think. They seem to have fun with Letterman. He famously, I think, is an old crank and doesn't like most things. Yeah. And that's the thing that today, this performance is done for Jimmy Fallon or James Corden.

And they come out after and like, oh, my God, that was fantastic. They're there. They love it. They eat it up. They like suck up. Like it's a bit. Oh, it's a bit. I've seen. That's how it's done, baby.

That kind of. And I just I miss so much. Smokers. Yeah. Like if you're saying give it at 100 percent will give the reaction to it 100 the cast of spider-man turn off the talk everybody that's my jimmy fallon impression i always do everything he always says everybody yeah he does that there's no one but me no i know what you're saying yeah yeah uh uh the only the only funnier version of this would be if they were doing this exact

the performance on ed sullivan now ladies and gentlemen and like he had to kind of like walk around and just like not know what to make of it and like he wouldn't be able to sell that he was never an excitable man so like that would be an equivalent but yeah no newer host would like show you what he felt yeah would immediately sell out the piece and i've got one more little thing uh which is that as you said jason this there was previously a spider-man turn off the dark performance and that was the star reeve carney performing a big ballad rise above and that's my absolute favorite part of the book song of spider that i think is the most listening to a handful of songs from the musical that seems the most broadway-y of the songs i think sure yeah it's the big soaring moving yeah uh actually i was wrong the singer is um t tv carpio who plays arachne and uh and in this

this gives you a if you're interested in-Man, this is a real like window into the tone of the book. But this is like, he's this, he's at the, the, the writer is absolutely at wit's end. He owes incredible changes, like massive overhauls of this play that's falling apart and hurting people. And right at that very moment, he's alone. He's removed from his family. They literally live somewhere else. He hasn't seen his child in months because he's putting together a freak like me needs company. And he's so he's like he's alone in his New York apartment. It's cold. He's shivering and he turns on the TV and his very work. Your strength will be a vision beyond visibility and the, um, the lyrics,

your strength will be a vision beyond visibility. And the gift I've woven for you will give you new eyes to see that you can rise above yourself. Then. And I let out a scream law, loud, ragged, and long until the walls echoed in my throat hurt.

I felt like throwing up. I felt like slamming my hand against a wall until I had shattered some bones. But I didn't. I made myself some coffee. The most, and what I love about that is that for all, this is a man having a melt. He's abandoned his family.

He's having an absolute meltdown alone. Just all curled up in the ball of the floor and a woman on tv dressed as a spider lady is singing you've got to rise above and he goes he's like scream he's having a meltdown like from a movie to himself from a fucking spider-man performance of a theme it's a theme park show this is so rich these are adults acting like this and doing this and then he made himself a cup of coffee and then he tossed in like vanity fair uh celebrity profile first paragraph details of like anna kendrick walked into la mill and ordered her latte and it's like we don't these profile like stop telling us what

everyone's water actually i kind of know what i like to know how else do you get to know a character you or learn how they drink their coffee what they order for breakfast how they shave they search money for goods and services just like me it's a regular it's an average temperature day in los angeles and uh mia cabrera is uh sipping on a cup of water to soothe her voice apparently from a big performance the night before yeah you're absolutely right what are these why do articles need to pad out with this crap steve bannon ordered another cup of slop as he walked into the garbage dump that he called a home he ate directly with his mouth.

Yeah. His face in every item made of corrugated iron that had rusted. He had a 10 gallon drum of bleach to pour into a hot tub, but nothing would clean him of his sins. Oh, there he is. The green. We've got a perfect final frame.

His ways. Wonderful smile. I don't, I mean, it shows you how much i think we've all been waiting probably for years to talk about this at length and there's so much there and there's more we'll get to more yeah yeah i mean we haven't i did all mr mcpherson saw the whole show so we can do we can go through we can do an episode on both versions of the show because they were different oh yeah

the rewrites oh yeah we'll find after the previews closed yeah yeah um so you've got youtube homework to do if you have you watched them talking about halloween costumes watch everything you get you can get your hands on because this thing what i i mean i guess it all it all sounds like shit talk or something but but truly this thing makes me so happy. It's cheered me up. If I'm in a bad mood, I could put this on and I smile. I thank everyone involved for doing this wonderful piece of television. I agree.

It's made me so happy for so many years. And I thank both of you for making me re-look at this with a theme park lens where, yes, it's perfect. With a Broadway lens or a comic book lens it is a puzzle you will never be able to solve but if you think yeah it's theme park entertainment out in the world yeah a villain broke into this into the letterman show i do i love it i wish things like that happened all the time uh just hey thanks everybody it's so great um well you survived podcast the ride the second gate one of the most enthusiastic episodes you're ever gonna hear tell us more bullshit uh that you want to

hear us talk about at length by emailing us at podcast the ride at gmail.com and subscribe to our regular stuff on twitter instagram uh and facebook weird. Most of all, keep it freaky. Forever Dog. This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Bohm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts,

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