So... Alright - Old Haunts and the Three-for

Episode Date: January 27, 2026

Geoff stumbles into his past, updates on the present, and reviews a slew of shit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So today is January 20th. It's a Tuesday I'm recording this. And I'm happy to report New Year's, I hate the word resolution. But the New Year's resolution stuff is going pretty well. I'm 20. And I have, until today, at least, exercised every single day with a walk or a bike ride of substance. I Oh, I think it's probably a little too cold to ride a bike, so I will hop on my feet here as soon as I'm done recording this podcast to ensure I keep the streak alive. Also been spending the weekends with Emily trying to explore new places in Austin, go to new restaurants, new coffee shops, et cetera. That's been a lot of fun. We've discovered some new fun stuff. And it feels good just to dig out of a rut, you know? Not that we were in a rut, but, you know, you end up with your usuals and then, it can become rut-like after a while. The important thing is we're getting out and we're trying new things and doing different

stuff and that's been awesome. And to that end, I decided to mix up routine a bit today, had some errands that took me kind of all over town this morning. So I figured, why not check in on an old coffee shop that I don't go to anymore? Right before I moved to my new house in a different side of town, I had started going to this coffee shop on North Loop called Double Trouble. It had kind of become my go-to coffee shop over the last four or five months. months I lived over on that side of town. I would go a couple times a week. It's where I did all of

my Saw Right and my Fuckface work way back then. I was thinking about that today as I was driving over there. I used to spend a lot more time at coffee shops doing this work. I don't, I do it once a week now. I do it just for Tuesday mornings. And then I don't really know. It's not like I'm not doing that work. I guess it's just absorbed into the week in different ways. I don't know. It's weird. I have to sit down and think about why I used to go to coffee shops two to three times a week to work. Now I go once a week and sometimes not at all. Man, that's weird. Maybe that time is just a luxury I don't have anymore because I'm doing, I don't know.

What's it matter? Anyway, I went over to double trouble today because I was up on that side of town and I was excited. I thought, fuck, this will be some good energy, revisit an old place that I was really into and kind of sad to leave and I would still go there. but it's like an inconvenient amount of time to drive. And when you have to drive past like, you know, 15 really fucking good coffee shops to get to that one, feels kind of silly, you know? But I get there and it's very busy out front.

So I have to park in the neighborhood and hide park as you do sometimes and then, you know, hoof it on over to the coffee shop. And so I do that and have a nice little walk and roll right up to. Coffee shop closed for renovations. For three days they are closed. and this is one of those three days. I don't know why, but I was really bummed out, but I took it as the universe telling me no.

I took it as the universe saying, no, I don't want you here right now. I don't think this is where you need to be. Go be somewhere else. And so without much choice, I took the universe's advice, and I just kind of drove around aimlessly. In that part of town, there's a million coffee shops,

and you could go, like, do I want to go further west or further north? I could go up to Barrett. I could go somewhere over like E-Poc, over there on North Loop, I go E. Anyway, there's like, there's one billion coffee shops around there, and I got kind of paralyzed by options. And so I just started driving. I was listening to the Howard Stern show. By the way, Howard said something today that isn't profound or anything, and it's not

something that I haven't heard before, but it resonated with me today, and I've been thinking about it since I heard him say it. He was talking about his passion for learning guitar and not giving up on it, even at such a, you late stage in his life. He picked up guitar a year ago maybe and has really committed himself to learning it. And he was just intimating that there is an old adage that learning keeps you young. And like I said, I've heard that before. I'm sure you have too, but just really stuck with me today for some reason. Curiosity keeps you young. Learning things and being curious about the world or your place in it and your abilities, I think really does keep the mind young.

and if the mind is young, the body tends to follow suit. But as I was whittling around town, like I said, kind of aimlessly, not really, I was honestly paying more attention to the Howard Stern Show than what I was doing. And, I mean, I was driving responsibly, don't get me wrong, I just wasn't paying attention to where I was going. I ended up driving by a place that I used to go to all the fucking time. Cherrywood Coffee House. I have been going to Cherrywood Coffee House since it was quacking bushes back in, like in

like, I don't know, 98 or something. And I used to love that place. It's just a coffee shop, but they have a full menu. You can get a burger. They have great breakfast tacos. Older Austin-style breakfast tacos, I should say, like big old Austin breakfast tacos, not like really good chefy breakfast tacos you can get today in Austin. There's so much, there's so much nuance to breakfast tacos and to tacos in general in Austin. They are great at a very specific kind of breakfast tacos. They are great at a very specific kind of breakfast taco, but if you're looking for a different breakfast taco, you're probably going to be disappointed. I don't know how else to explain it than that. Anyway, tons of booze, which used to be a thing for me, big patio on the side so I could take a dog

or I could just hang out in the sun and drink beer with friends. They have a really good brunch on the weekends. My cousin used to like to go there a lot because he liked their shrimp and grits. They would have comedy or music shows at night on the little stage outside, show movies, it was an awesome place, and I spent so much time there, even if I didn't talk about it much, it's probably my primary third place, or at least in the top two or three primary third places I had over a pretty extensive period of my life. As a matter of fact, we filmed there a few times, came up with a bunch of Minecraft ideas there, I'd say probably the spot outside of work, at least, that gait next to yellow jacket, which is a bar over on the east side, probably the

spot that Gavin and I came up with the most ideas for Minecraft. I remember when we made our first RVB hoodie, zip up hoodie, and I was really excited about it. And I was wearing it one day at Cherrywood Coffee House, and the guy recognized it. And he asked if I liked Red versus Blue. And I said, yeah. And he said, yeah, me too. It's pretty cool. And I said, I agree. I've been going there since RVB made its first hoodie. And I hadn't been there. Oh. I realized today when I drove by it, I hadn't been there in maybe once in the past six years. I went there once with Jordan Levin in like maybe 2021. Before that, I probably hadn't been there since like 2018.

And that was actually a funny day. Why am I telling you these fucking old man stories? I went there with Jordan Levin once to get coffee and hang out. And the thing that was funny about it is I was remarking to him, I don't think I've been here in like four years. Fucking Millie was there on a date with her boyfriend in just on the, I was sitting there with Jordan. drinking coffee and I just look over and I'm like, oh shit, that's my daughter. And I went over and

said hi. It was a week she was with her moms and so she had made her way there at some point. But I thought that was so funny. It was one of the first times I've ever run into my kid around town as she was doing her own thing and I was doing my own thing. And then I kind of forgot about it and didn't go back. And I forgot about it just because I don't frequent that part of town as much anymore. I moved away from it and it's not convenient to, like I said, there's a million other coffee shops between where I live in that place. But it just, it's one of those things where if you don't go to a place long enough, you just forget that it's an option. You don't forget it's there. I've recommended it to people pretty consistently over the last six years. I drive by it

every once in a while. But if you stop going to a place long enough, I don't know why. You just stop considering it as a place you can go, even if it's a place you like. It was so weird. I had that realization when I drove by it today and I thought, well, this is where I'm going to sit down and do my so I'll write work. So I pulled in, I walked in, and I got to say, it was the warmest, most welcoming feeling I've had in quite a while. I got hit with the best kind of nostalgia. The place hasn't changed. The tables are in a different configuration, but that's nothing new because they moved around from time to time anyway. The same bad art is on the walls, the same disheveled employees working, the same mix of hippies and weirdos and stuffy business

people and parents all frequenting the tables. And it just had the most 2008 to 2012 vibe. And I couldn't believe it. I walked in and I thought, why haven't I been here in this long? What have I been waiting for? Why did I forget that this place was an option? I went up, I got a nice coffee. I'd never had an ice coffee there before because I didn't drink ice coffee back when I went there.

It was great. And then I had a sole taco, which was my favorite breakfast taco to get back in the day. Had it today. It's, you know, it's eggs and bacon and cheese and shoestring potatoes, basically skinny little french fries and refried beans and salsa, et cetera, and this big monster of a taco that you really basically have to eat with a fork. And it was exactly the way I remembered it. And I'd forgotten that it existed until I saw it on the menu. I went, oh, fucking sole taco.

And anyway, I sat down and I did my soul all right work, and I just absorbed the vibes. It felt like it was 2010. Nothing had changed in all the right ways. And I'm so, so happy that the other coffee shop was closed. And that's way too much time in this podcast to give a coffee shop. I haven't been to in four years. But it is what it is. I've been continuing to read the Warhammer book

that Mark the Frog recommended to me. Horace heresy, I believe it's called, or Horace Rising or whatever. Regardless, I gotta say, I'm catching the rhythm of the writing and the story and I'm starting to really enjoy it. I'm not too terribly far into it, maybe 100 pages or so,

but I am taking my time with it, but I'm really enjoying it, and I'm consistently reading it every couple days. I wish I had a little bit more time to read. But you know what? I do. That's one of those things. You got to fucking make the time and stop making excuses.

I need to get out of my own head or out of my own ass and make myself sit down and read more. But when I do read, I enjoy it very much. Also, some regulation business, the break show, which is a show that comes out every Monday on the regulation Twitch channel, has changed schedule slightly. We used to film Mondays at 3 p.m. from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. Central Time. we are now going to film on Mondays from 4 p.m. to 501 p.m. So we're pushing it back one hour and adding one minute. So that's cool, I guess. Happy to be stream until 501.

I think it makes more sense and it makes everybody's day a little bit easier in terms of scheduling. So that takes place starting next Monday, which will be, I don't know, January 20 something. I can't look it up. Also, really, I got to say, I feel like there's some momentum happening in the Twitch streams lately. I just, I feel like the rhythm of the community in the fake Jeff Twitch streams has been just awesome lately. It's just been really positive, and it feels kind of like it's growing,

and it feels uplifting, and it really is, you know, I stream Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 8 am to 10 a.m. And it was a good way to drink coffee and kind of wake up. And it's really turned into, I think I've mentioned this before,

like something I really look forward to, but I gotta say something about, maybe it's just the gas station simulator of it all, but something lately has really, it just feels like it's kicked into another gear, and it's just been, just feeling, really great. It's been hard to quit in the mornings. No one, I got to do other stuff. I just,

I don't want to stop the stream. And then Emily and I continue to stream Fallout 4 at night as she immerses herself in the world of Fallout because she's such a fan of the television show. She wants to see how the games unfold. So playing Fallout 4 together. And that's been going incredibly well, really, really, really invested in finding her son. It's a big deal to her. I get it. Speaking of gas station simulator, I know I mentioned it last week, but holy shit, I'm another, oh man, I don't know, I'm another something, another four or five streams into it. And that game has its hooks in me in such a way. And it's weird because it is a janky fucking game.

I was thinking about this the other day. The game itself, my overall impression of the game, the idea of the simulator, the tag, the variety, the way it's laid out, the story behind it, A plus to me. The gameplay mechanics, like a C, 75, like a middle C, if they would come in and do just like, just like 5% more tweaking to some of the gameplay mechanics to make them a little less repetitive or to add a little bit of variety in some way. I really think that game could be, could go from really good to something kind of special because it is so much fun. I got such a setup right now. I now have three employees. It's, I have Andrew, no relation to regulation, Andrew. I have Nina who works nights with me.

And then I have a Maciac who I'm proud to say, I don't know if I mentioned this in the podcast last week or not, but the game forced me to fire an employee who I didn't want to fire because it was glitched, and then it told me I'd never be able to rehire him again. And then lo and behold, he applied and I hired him. And he's a fantastic employee. So the days Andrew and Messiaq are basically running the show. They covered the gas pumps of which we have three now, which is making things a little hectic, the mechanic shop, which, you know, we were just fixing broken windows and buffing out scratches and changing tires, but now we're replacing oil and we're replacing batteries. So things are getting a little bit more complicated over there. They handle most

of that. And then, you know, also the cash register and the convenience store aspect of the gas station, which has blossomed quite a bit, if I do say so myself. We got a hat stand. We got a sunglass stand. We have two snack stands now. We have two ice cream freezers. And we have a big taxidermied bear for people to look at and enjoy as a, you know, a little bit of flare for the gas station. Also, I painted the roof. What I do in the daytimes, because it's a 24 hour a day job for me, as you know, I go in the back where I have set up a washing station. That's right. I'm doing car washes now.

We have a functioning level three car wash. I run the whole thing by myself. I tend to go from about 8 a.m. to 6 or 7 p.m. Then I knock off right around then because that's when 8 o'clock, I believe, is when Andrew and Messia could call it a day. I like to get in for about an hour to look at, you know, stock and inventory and see what orders and stuff I got to place with the distribuble. before they take off because once they leave nina comes in then it's just the two of us i shut the

car wash down and then i handle the mechanic shop and then we split the duties on a pump and gas and she basically handles inside the gas station and i i put out any fires that arise you know occasionally the alligator has to be fed which is not a joke there is a there's an alligator that for some reason lives in the sewers under my gas station and from time to time i have to throw bags of trash in its mouth, which I don't know how to make the other employees do. So it seems to fall solely on me, which is fine, which is fine. Anyway, it's going very well. And I'm very excited to say we are level five and headed towards making level six when we get to level six. That's when the gas station is maxed out. There's really nothing more that we can do at that point. I'll be interested to see

what happens to the game. Is there, I have a lot more achievements to get. I think I have like 50 out of 80. So I would assume, and I would hope, that there's a lot more gameplay beyond maxing my level, or at least maxing my gas station level. But I guess we'll find out together on the stream. And if there's not a lot more, I don't know what I'm going to do with my life because I really like that game. I really need that game right now. I'm not saying I'm addicted to it. I could quit any time if I wanted to. Obviously, I just don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to ever quit. I want more employees, pop a couple more trailers down, maybe get another nighttime employee,

so it's not so hard on need and I. Hell, maybe someday I'll get an employee just to run the car wash. What about that? And then I can just focus on the macro of it all, the ordering, the receiving, the managing, the keeping the books, you know, the behind-the-scenes, thankless stuff that nobody else gets to do. And maybe I could do some repairs around the place, spruce it up a little bit, new coat of paint, etc, et cetera, et cetera. I'm really happy to say that I've been spending a lot more time in the office lately.

Maybe that's why I'm going to coffee shops less. Mondays I'm in the office for the break show. I've been swinging by either on Tuesday or Wednesday just to spend a little bit of time there. I actually went there today to drop some mail off and spend a few minutes there, maybe do an occasional midweek recording. And then Friday, we're basically there all day. It's like an office day. And so I think it's been really good for us.

I think it's been really good for the content. And it's been really good for the camaraderie. The more time we can identify and find to spend in that office, the better, you know. And I'm just really excited that it's become a priority for everybody. And I think there were going to see a lot of benefit from it. I was going to talk today about a couple of movies that I watched. Not like a full review, as I've done in the past, think Bingo the movie. But just like a little synopsis because none of these movies were good enough to warrant an entire review.

but I did watch them with the intent of talking about them. And I do want to watch more movies and talk about more movies. Somebody said we should have a film club. And I kind of like that idea. I don't know what that looks like or what that would be. But maybe we'll discuss it as soon as I'm done talking about. The first second and third movie that I saw. The first one being The Rip.

It's a Netflix film. It's Ben Affleck and Matt Damon cop action thriller. Who done it kind of thing. It's very intense. Just came out. I had seen a lot of press about it actually, read some interesting reviews that were pretty ultimately negative. And I thought, surely, it's got to be, I don't know, the trailer looked good. So I watched it the other night and didn't agree with some of the stuff I read. Some of the

reviews complained that it was too dark and that you couldn't see anything. I fucking loved that. This whole movie basically takes place at night during one night. And it's meant to be spooky and dark, and I loved it. There's actual contrast in the film. Everything's not perfectly exposed and then flattened out so that the world has no contrast. I actually thought it looked great and was very atmospheric. I completely disagreed with those comments that I'd read in other reviews. However, the big complaint of the film seems to be that the movie falls apart at the end,

and boy, they aren't kidding. For the first three-core, over the first six, eight, of this film, it is awesome. I'm not going to spoil it because it's a twisty cop film. It's actually based on a true story. Obviously, because Matt Damon and Ben Affleck are in it, it's Boston Cops. But down in Miami, and the whole thing takes place at a drug house where they get a tip, they show up thinking there's going to be a couple of hundred thousand dollars in drug money there, and there is a woman and a lot more money there than that. And then it becomes a case of what do we do? This is too much money. Can we trust each other? Can we trust other cops? Do we follow protocol?

Who's coming for this money? They have to know by now that we have the money. How do we protect ourselves? What are the next steps? And can I trust the guy to the left of me and the guy to the right of me because this is a tremendous amount of money? I thought it was very well acted. I thought that the reveals were all done extremely well. I will tell you that if you stop watching the film when it's almost over, or so you think it's almost over, they will be in the back of an armored truck. Someone will get shot and the doors will open

and you think, movies wrapping up, this makes sense. Just stop watching the film there if you want to, and you will end on a really gripping, thrilling film. If you continue from that point on, the movie then becomes a mishmash of they live where dudes are doing wrestling moves in fights, and then the end of Lord of the Rings,

where the movie just ends for what feels like an eternity. Every character has a scene with every other character wrapping up loose ends and giving us the emotional climactic end to a film. But the problem is they don't set up any of the emotion in the film. This whole thing is about Matt Damon and Ben Affleck trying to figure out who killed this woman Jackie, who they worked with. And then also, may or not both have been lovers of at different points or the same. I don't know.

I couldn't tell you because you see Jackie for the first, like, I don't know, three minutes of the film. You really don't get a sense of who she is. And then she is only shown in montage, but it's not a real montage. You get like three or four scenes when somebody says her name or they remember her. and you get like that 15 second hazy shot of two people in bed together and like she's laying on her stomach and he's like one of them's like rubbing his hand on her back and it looks like it's shot through curtains and everything's kind of red and glowy and hazy and there's no dialogue it's just like some wispy music and you're like oh okay

I guess they were in love you know and that's how that's what you learn about that's all of the Jackie you get so this whole time there's this intense desire to find Jackie's killer and avenge Jackie's death. And I really didn't give two shits about Jackie, and I don't know why they didn't give us just one or two scenes to give us some sort of an emotional connection to this character. I think it would have... I think they tried to put it in at the end of the film,

which makes no sense to me. I get that a lot of the point of the film is the tension between the characters, and you can't tell who you can trust and who you can't trust, and you can't tell who's lying and who's telling the truth, and you know people are lying. And they don't want to take away from that. But I think if they gave us some sort of an emotional connection or attachment to Jackie, that would have only heightened all of those emotions and made the stakes feel even higher.

Instead, they gave us the most ridiculous fucking Shawshank Redemption ass ending. And they gave it to us eight times. Really surprised and confused by the last 15 minutes of that film or so. I then watched the 1977 film house, and I preface it by saying the 1977 film house, because there are a lot of movies named house. There was an early 80s horror movie named house that I saw when I was a kid that I was very scared of

that I'm going to go back and watch again now. I thought about even doing like a house three ways kind of thing where we do an episode of just three movie reviews of three different movies called house. But I watched the 1977 Japanese horror film house, and it took the wind out of those sales. Let me just tell you. This is a weird fucking movie.

I watched it because I was told it was a weird fucking movie. It is. I will say it has a very, it's a really good intro. It has a very, like, you can't do that on television feel to it in terms of editing and style. Like it is very of its time. It feels like late 70s.

None of these kids in this film, except for maybe the dude, like chaperone dude, are hippies or present hippie, but the film has a very 70s hippie aesthetic, a lot of sunshine, a lot of primary colors, a lot of haze and dream,

a lot of, you just have to see it. You just have to see it, and I'm not recommending that you see it, but you would have to see it to understand. I think if you saw it, it would click with you. I'm having a difficult time putting into words,

but it feels of its time in a very Muppet movie kind of way, almost. But it's a horror movie, although it's not scary at any point. But there are one or two moments that are a little creepy. It's about a Japanese girl in school and her friends. It's about to be summer break, and they are going to go stay at a house to do, I don't know, some kind of training, like dance classes, I can't remember, but they're maybe music or something related to sports or whatever it is.

They're all supposed to go to this camp together for the summer, but it falls through for some reason. And one of the other girls says, well, I have an aunt who owns a house out in the middle of nowhere who I have never, I haven't seen since I was a small child, my mom's sister. And I'd like to go see her because I just found out that my dad's getting remarried and I am not cool with this. And I need to escape. And so they all go together with some sort of a dude chaperone who's kind of like a goofy fuck up who's likable. He drives a dune buggy, which is really cool. Like legit speed racer dune buggy,

which really makes me want a dune buggy now. Like really, really want a 70s dune buggy, want to figure out how to make that happen. They go to this house. It's in the middle of nowhere. The aunt is very excited to see them. She is in a wheelchair. It's seven girls.

They show up. The aunt has a weird cat. I won't spoil too much of it, but the aunt is a witch and trying to eat them. So maybe I am spoiling too much of it. But I'm probably doing you a favor. They consistently do this thing, especially at the first 20 minutes of the film, where they will create these hyper-saturated skyline backgrounds with really goofy, cartoony clouds.

And they'll frame the kids in front of it. And then you'll think, is that a, it looks like a, honestly, it looks like a cheap theater set. And you're like, is that, is that, am I supposed to believe that that's the sky? And then you back away and you realize it's a mural at like a bus stop or whatever. But then the sky looks the same. And they do that effect over and over and over again. Well, they will show you a really like overly saturated, perfect bucolic sky.

as a background in a train depot or grocery store or against a wall of a building. And then when they back out, the real sky is a large version of that sky. It sounds cool. It's not. It doesn't work and I don't like it. And it's not cool. And it bugged the shit out of me. And I wish they, I get what they were going for, at least I think.

Maybe it worked back then. Maybe it's one of those things that can't work now but did work then. Or maybe I'm just a dickhead who doesn't get it. but the film is then the girls disappearing and then the rest of the girls trying to find them and then suddenly the aunt can walk and they're like, Auntie, you can walk and she's like, you children have bolstered my strength.

And then it just, it's just a really silly cartoonish horror movie. It almost feels like a made-for-TV Disney horror film from the 70s, if that makes any sense. It's about as spooky as, oh, fuck, what is that? Hold on a second.

It kind of reminded me of the Disney kids movie, well, all Disney movies are kids' movies, but it kind of reminded me of the Disney movie Child of Glass that I watched when I was a kid, that I came out of, honestly, I think it came out around the same time in the late 70s. And I'm not saying that there's any similarity to the films other than I just, that's the vibe I got from watching House, just very similar. Maybe it's just because they're of the same time and about as scary as each other. even though one is definitely supposed to be scarier than the other. There is an actual creepy scene in the movie at about 45 minutes

when the aunt is in the kitchen with one of the girls and she walks into the fridge and disappears and the girl freaks out, the other girl's running. And they're like, what happened? And she's like, the auntie went in the fridge and everybody's like, you're crazy. And they look and she's not in there. And then suddenly she is in the rafters looking down on them in that moment

and she just spikes the lens and kind of smiles. And that actually got me. That gave me hope. I thought, oh, maybe things are going to turn around now and things are going to ratchet up a little bit and get a little scarier. And they don't. Also, the soundtrack is basically

if you opened up your mom or your grandma's music box that she kept her rings and necklaces in when you were a little kid, it's basically that song for two fucking hours. So strap in for that if you watch it. There is one cool room in the entire film the ants, I think it's her bedroom. I think it's the aunt's bedroom.

Anyway, it is a room that is full of vines, what appeared to be like, you know, fake vines you would get to decorate with at Michaels or whatnot craft store. And they're painted gray and the entire room is painted gray and it creates this effect where it almost,

I don't know if it's meant to look marble or concrete, but it kind of has that vibe, but you can tell it isn't. I don't know. I think it works really well for that room specific. and in that scene outside of that, not a fan of most of the decisions in the film.

Makes me wonder, though, two questions. Was there a big hippie movement in Japan? And what was the first Japanese horror movie? Also, it makes me want to read about dune buggies. I'm not going to do any of that right now. That's not what we're supposed to be doing. So I'm going to clip that and put it in the notes for next week. And I guess that's where I'll leave it.

I don't really know what else to say about the 1977 Japanese horror film house, other than it made me want to do research into other Japanese horror films. And I guess if Japan had hippies in the 70s or 60s, which I assume there must have been some sort of a... I'm looking into it. I'm going to look into it. I also watched a film called Cutter's Way that I had heard about my entire life. And I honestly don't remember what made me sit down and watch it

because I know I watched it with the idea that it would do. be for this podcast. I don't know if one of you guys recommended it to me or I read about it somewhere, but it's a really I wouldn't say I enjoyed the ending, but most of it is a really great film starring Jeff. Young and sexy Jeff Bridges, man.

I know that we all know Jeff Bridges as the dude, but when he was younger, was he in body heat? Two? Was that him as well? No, I think that was William Hurt. Regardless, Jeff Bridges is sexy as shit. He's shirtless. The dude is ripped for the 80s. It also stars John Hurd, who

I had just watched him in Home Alone, because I watched this right after Christmas. And he's such a fucking dad in Home Alone. And I identify John Hurd as the Dad in Home Alone above all else. And in this movie, he plays a horrible drunken Vietnam that who has severe PTSD, has, I think he lost an arm in the war and is kind of out of control. It's about the friendship between them and his marriage. And essentially, Jeff Bridges sees a murder, or at least he sees a body be dumped. He doesn't realize it at first. And then eventually, as he's telling the story, they start to realize they think they know who did it.

It's a powerful, influential person potentially. and they decide to blackmail this person. And it's just about that. I remember why I watched it now because I'm looking up the Wikipedia of it, and it's described as a neo-noir thriller. And I just was really looking to watch a solid neo-noir thriller. This is a film from 1981. Like I said, Jeff Bridges, John Hurd.

Lisa Eichorn plays John Hurd's wife. It also has Stefan Elliott in it. It's got a bunch of people you will recognize throughout the film. I will say, I think it's, worth watching. It's a good film. I'm not crazy about the ending. I wonder if I would have liked it more at the time. Like maybe it's an ending that made sense in 1981 that maybe seems a little over the top and cliche in in 2026, but could just be personal preference too. Who knows? Regardless, those are the three films I watched recently with the intent of talking about here

with you. The brand new film The Rip, which falls apart at the end. The Japanese horror film house, not any other film house you're thinking of, which doesn't fall apart because it was never put together. And then Cutter's Way, which is a pretty solid film with some great performances by two amazing actors, but falls apart in the last four or five minutes, honestly. Ah, what are you going to do? If I had to watch one of those films, I'd probably watch Cutter's Way, although really, honestly, you're not going to do it. I tell you to stop watching the rip at that scene in the armored car. You're not gonna, you're gonna keep watching the film and then you're gonna go, why'd they make that choice? And then you're gonna go, well, surely it's over now. Oh my God, are there? Is this another scene?

Is this another setup? Are we going into a whole? Oh my God. Is this more? Oh, how is it not over? You're gonna do that. So just save yourself the hassle. That's all the moves I have to talk about, wanted to talk about. And I got to be honest, I kind of enjoyed talking about. The next films that I'm going to be watching, and I doubt that I will be able to watch them before I record again next week. But I will watch them as soon as possible. I have one, two, three, four here. I'm letting you know in advance. So if you want to watch them in advance, then when I talk about them, you can listen to the podcast and then yell at me and disagree with me and tell me I'm an idiot or that I misinterpreted something or that I

completely missed the boat on the whole thing and that I have dumb ideas and opinions. Those films are The Hit, which is a 1984 crime film starring John Hurt, Terrence Stamp, and a very young Tim Roth. Then, along those same lines, I keep hearing about how great a 2002 Korean thriller called Sympathy for Mr. Vengeances, so I'm going to watch that. Then I'm going to watch a film that I have actually seen before, but when I was a kid and before I knew who Charles Bikowsky was, I'm going to watch the 1987 film Barfly, which left no impression on me as a child, but as a huge Charles Bikowski fan. It's silly that I haven't watched the film again as an adult, so I'm going to rectify that.

Supposedly a tremendous performance by Fay Dunaway in that film, and I hear Mickey Works not too bad either. And finally, the last film I'm going to watch is a 1970. 71 psychological horror film called Let's Scare Jessica to Death. I don't exactly remember why I'm watching it, but I do remember, I wrote down, watch this movie ASAP, and then I didn't. So it must be a film I really want to see.

So that's it. So if you've seen some of those or are so inclined to watch them yourself, this is fair warning. And with that, I think I will give you guys a song of the episode, and then we can all be along our merry ways. Today's song of the episode is going to be from an often overlooked early and important punk band, at least I think so. I really enjoyed their work.

A band called Articles of Faith. It's a song called In This Life. They were a Chicago band that was around from 1981 to 1985. I had some pretty good songwriting, and I don't know why, but just seemed to be overlooked. look, you never hear them talked about when people talk about influential bands from that era. And I think that they were. So hopefully you'll check them out and enjoy them. And then I'll see you back here next week for another episode of So All Right.

All right. This is the end of the show.