Talking Simpsons - Talk to the Audience?!? - August 2021

Episode Date: September 8, 2021

It's the beginning of the month, which means it's time once again for the Talking Simpsons Network's community podcast. Listen in and learn all about new Simpsons toys and shoes, the fan-made Hit & Run remake obliterated by lawyers, the Simpsons saying goodbye to Sky One, our pal Kat's interview with Matt Selman, and much more! Plus, as always, we respond to your questions and comments from our recent batch of episodes. So sit back, grab your coldest can of generic imported beer, and get ready for another great podcast! Support this podcast and get over 100 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the new official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

I heartily endorse this event or product. and Bob Mackey, who is here with me today. It's Henry Gilbert, pre-orderer of a baby axe. And of course, this is our monthly community podcast. If you're on the Patreon, it launches at the end of the month. If you're on the free feed, it launches at the beginning of the month. And what we do on this podcast is go over Simpsons news and what's going on in our neck of the woods. And also, we respond to your questions and comments from the last round of episodes. And it's the end of the summer.

Ooh, boy. And 2021 is surprisingly almost over. It's another year that, frankly, didn't happen. Didn't happen. And, yeah, it also, you know, it's supposed to be the fun summer. They told us, you know, no more masks if you're vaccinated. And now masks are coming back on indoors and pretty much everywhere in California. It was planned to be a fun summer until things were quickly rolled back.

Also, I guess, too to be a fun summer until uh things are quickly rolled back uh also i guess too for california summer here it could be the last one of gavin newsom it's uh those polls ain't looking uh they're pretty tight those polls in the recall election and if we get a recall i want to be somebody fun like arnold schwarzenegger it's some like insane man yeah it's everybody great i mean yeah me and me and bob i don't i got no love for Gavin Newsom. He's lame. Yeah, I we voted no just because it's like, man, this guy fucking sucks. But that the person who replaces him would be a Republican with 18 percent of the vote. Yeah, but it's boring to admit those things like that's not fun. We just got a message from Bernie Sanders saying like during a recording, a personal message. This is what happens if you are a lefty person who gave money to Bernie. You just get emails from the Democratic Party all the time now. But enough California news. Yes, yeah. Let's talk about what's happening in the Simpsons world.

And yes, I think it's like month three of news about this. But finally, the pre-orders for the Simpsons Arcade, with Simpsons Bowling, of course, they happened. They happened, and were they sold out immediately? What happened there? I think they are relatively available, but the ones that came with the stool included might not be as available now, which that is the one I pre-ordered. I pre-ordered it. I watched a video. You know, it's not as it's as easy to put together as an Ikea bookshelf, you know, and it's, it looks fun.

It looks fun. I think, you know, people have built their TMNT four player ones in the wild and they're bigger than the two player ones. They actually look a little meatier. Not, I don't know. It also, it was a ridiculous sum of money and i shouldn't have bought it but i i probably won't put it together until i live in a different apartment but but you'll have it i'll have it you'll have another box to move into another place but i will play it when you assemble it i must play it yeah no me and you will do a full run i call homer homer's

for me i call him i'll be i'll be marge like the vacuum cleaner. So there's more good news in that there are some new action figures on the market. I can't remember when the last time this happened was when there was a new line of just traditional action figures. Not like little blind box things. Not like. Funko adjacent items. Yeah. Ooh, Funko. Yeah.

These are full on action figures lovingly crafted. They're Super 7 seven and it's a five in all you've got robot itchy robot scratchy poochie the rocking dog homer from deep space homer and just mo and let's say mo and that's our last one that's great yes they're all great and i i can't buy any of these because i just i don't know what to do with them or where to put them but i i i heartily endorse them they're very good mel comes with a box a panda in a box yeah a jar of pickled eggs uh a flaming mo of course uh his missing tooth is part of one of his heads that's great i i love the deep space homer one comes with his

bag of chips and the ant farm and also a replaceable like three different heads one of them being his open mouth head for the spin around in three dimensions around the chip uh thing that's great and and yes the uh robot scratchy i believe is the one that comes with the bort license plate and robot itchy comes with the axe and the little baby axe that comes with the Bort license plate and Robot Itchy comes with the axe and the little baby axe that comes along too. Yeah, it's actually Scratchy is the baby axe and the Bort plates. Ah, okay. And Itchy has the drum

because I believe he's beating the drum in the robot parade. And you can take off his head and see that's why Homer's robot didn't work. Amazing accuracy in these. And yeah, you know, Poochie the Rocket Dog comes with a lot of different facial expressions and a fanny pack for his side too and, of course, his guitar.

I think Poochie, if I were to get one, Poochie is the pick for me. Oh, boy. They're $55 each. Hey, you're paying for quality there. And Super 7 does not skimp on quality. They've made some really good toys in the past. You know what? I normally don't buy toys, but I saw one recently I really wanted.

Not Simpsons related, but it looked really good and they're still in stock. NECA, they make really good toys too. And I have not really bought an action figure in a long time, but the Doc Brown one they recently released. It's so eerily realistic. The different Doc Brown heads that are on that, I really wanted and I might buy it. It's in my Amazon cart. I'm so tempted, but again, i don't know where to put it or what to do with it it's probably going to go in a box for when i eventually move to another place just like you yeah that that the neca toys in their boxes still usually look pretty great like that's right it comes in a nice

box right the well the only neca one i own is the robocop one but it's robocop colored like how he appears in the nes game and the box kind of looks like it's an nes like rental uh case for but it's robocop colored like how he appears in the nes game and the box kind of looks like it's an nes like rental uh case for it it's really cool yeah and the i mean the tmnt characters when they're colored like their arcade konami arcade game guys their boxes are excellent as well did they do a jason one where he's purple and blue yeah and they did a bright orange uh freddy that looks like the the nes freddy as well you need to just knock funko out of business you know what i complaining about funko is so trade i feel like i was one of the pioneers in that industry but that was i wrote my big

anti-funko screed now like six years ago it feels like wow yeah i mean look it if you love funko is more power to you but i i prefer the posability and movement of it and just the design sense of Funko. It's not for me. As cute as Homer in his I Dream of Jeannie outfit from Treehouse 8 is as a Funko, I just can't display a Funko. They make me recoil in horror and will never win me over. It's okay if you like them, though. So more in merch news. We have a new Simpsons shoes.

They are Ned Flanders shoes from Adidas. They look like the character's outfit. They're not actually Ned's shoes. Yes, yeah. And they're not assassins either. They're not assassins, yeah. They are shoes that evoke the feel of Ned Flanders. This reminds me of Disney bounding,

where you go to Disney World or Disneyland because they won't let you wear a costume. You go in like themed clothing to, you know, evoke the character. So this we're looking at the first Simpsons bounding. I think it's funny to see the Adidas versus the Vans approach to these things that the I think I still like the Vans line more than the Adidas line. Just because it's like even the very simple bart ones that we got for free like just it's like it's blue like bart's pants orange on the side like bart's shirt and they sort of feel like bart shoes as well but these this one that evokes nad they're they're not they're they're

good look and they're also just like a brown shoe yes wow brown i like the pink interior too on those to symbolize like the little dress shirt he's wearing underneath his green sweater it gets a little spicy yeah it has a little extra flavor to it with the pink i like that but also no one is going to point those out and say hey ned flanders when you're walking down the streets and again we're sitting on a bunch of shoes to debut at some point when we have a live show of this like i someday the you listeners are going to really appreciate seeing me in my mr plow vans shoes i have never worn the simpson shoes that they sent us back in last august it was last august i have facebook memories reminded me they are still in pristine condition in their boxes in

my closet i still walk i walk around in the bart shoes and if i go downstairs to get like a delivery i will wear my pink donut van slippers. But other than that, I've kept the others in the box for special occasions. I'm saving one pair for our first live show and one pair for Nina and I when we actually have our ceremony that we already paid for. Right. As soon as things lighten up around the border. You're going to walk down the aisle in some Homer shoes. Those will look great. And many exotic birds will be looking on so yes uh there's some sad news if

you're in the uk uh is that no more sky one it's going bye-bye after 20 years 20 plus years sky one yeah it was uh the whole sorry 40 years oh wow i was wrong about that 1982 i believe uh yes sky one was the home of uh discerning simpsons viewers in the uk as we've learned of like that i believe the timeline was you know we got it in in really the end of 89 but 90 and then i believe by the end of 90 or 91 if you had these uh fancy satellite service sky one uh you could watch the Simpsons on there and other American programming. And then it was, I believe, 95 or 96 that then BBC started getting Simpsons reruns themselves. So the hoi polloi in the UK could watch it and not just the satellite dish owners. I see.

And yeah, Metro.co.uk, they had a fun little retrospective thing on like how people remember watching Sky 1 for the Simpsons and how I watched a little clip of it like the Sky 1 Simpsons brought to you by Domino's and you get

a little commercial for British Domino's now that I have British people on podcasts more often I feel uncomfortable making fun of them. At least I need to have a better British accent. I think I've got an okay one. Here. Hey, let's watch Simpsons on Sky One. I often lapse into Australian because it's more fun.

I actually just listened to Libby Watson on Doughboys, and I felt secondhand embarrassment hearing Mike Mitchell do a British accent joke to her. I can't believe they got rid of Sky One. I like me mushy peas in me Sky One. Where am I going to watch EastEnders? But I was thinking about how some of our old buddies, Matthew of Botchamania, who's a British man who got into Simpsons. There is a lot of crossover with UK wrestling fans who also love the Simpsons.

And from reading about Sky 1, it's like, oh, WWF, then WWE programming, was home on Sky 1. So if you were a kid who had access to Sky 1, you're watching the Simpsons on there. You're watching WWF Raw. All the bad influences. And you're watching Pokemon. You're watching that too on Sky One. But yeah, Sky One is rebranding. I guess it's not as special as it used to be.

You can watch Simpsons wherever. UK has access to Simpsons on Disney Plus whenever they feel like it now. And they have that extra thing on Disney Plus in the UK where you can watch like family guy because they don't have hulu so yeah they the hulu things they they have that on just disney plus for the for the brittos so another cool fan creation news uh the withra on twitter built a 3d printed simpsons tv in the style of the old simpsons sd tv there's a raspberry Raspberry Pi little computer inside that plays random apps from the Simpsons from the first 11 episodes. I love how that much storage can fit in that little compartment.

It's amazing. Yeah. And that just flipping it on. It's so great. Like I, you can tell that we're Simpsons influencers because many nice listeners shared this with me on Twitter of just many people sharing like, oh,

a guy on Reddit, a guy on Reddit. I got to say our pal on Twitter of just many people sharing like, Oh, a guy on Reddit, a guy on Reddit. I, I gotta say our pal on Twitter, Bart of darkness. Uh, he found the guy though with raw and he was the one who spread it around of like,

I found the actual guy and talk to him and he made his own instructions on how he can make it himself. And even he's auctioning some off for charity. Yeah. Like through barter of darkness, I saw that he made 10 more of them and he's auctioning some off for charity yeah like through barter of darkness i saw that he made 10 more of them and he's selling them off for charity so we're auctioning them yeah now i uh i was glad to see the part of darkness went to the trouble of crediting this guy and it is a really cool uh device i mean you know we buy all these nes

classics or whatever if fox if disney built one of these things like it mass produced it it would be the hit of the christmas season yeah everybody would buy it for their for their dumb kids like us it's basically like a keychain that has uh i don't know 500 hours worth of simpsons on it yeah i guess though they disney wouldn't sell that or they sold it they'd sell for like 300 because they'd be like otherwise it cuts into our DVD or our Disney plus business but speaking of Disney being jerks we could talk about this fan-made remake of Simpsons Hit and Run in the Unreal Engine apparently this guy put out a demo of the Homer areas of the game and he did it in about a week I believe his name is Joe McGinn oh sorry Joe McGinn is the name of the designer on the game who was impressed by it.

But Ruben Ward was an Unreal developer. His latest project was doing this remake of Hit and Run, the classic 2003 GTA clone of the Simpsons. He put out this demo of the Homer areas. He did a ton of tweaks in just a week. An amazing job. Yes. This guy could have just remade the game if he was allowed to but of course it was cease and desist out of existence they made him take down the free

demo but all reports tell me this was so well done i know all the videos of it looked amazing i was like wow this is what games could like this is what they could do with it this is what one guy could do ea could do so much more with it but uh I mean, I don't want to be, you know, obviously EA sucks and Disney sucks. But those cease and desist things don't just come from like a mean guy in an office saying, shut it down. No fun. Yeah. They often do come from just a lawyer saying, if you don't stop this, then it will be used

in a trial later to prove you didn't defend your copyright. And so they act extra aggressive about it but yeah i guess the guy too he wasn't selling it for profit but he had like a patreon of like pay me to keep making this kind of thing so yeah hey that's a provable profit even so they it's their game they have the right to take it down and like uh i believe uh matt selman commented on the idea of this being remade it's like like a rights octopus, like all these different arms. Because I'm looking at it. Radical Entertainment developed it.

The Vendy Universal Games published it. So there are different rights involved with those two. But now EA has the rights to Simpsons games and Disney has the rights to the Simpsons license. So there's just like these four parties that need to work together probably don't have time well and there's a lot of bad feelings about like vivendi you know there were the stories that they were working radical was working on a hit and run sequel and then ea outbid vivendi for the continued simpsons right so they had to cancel it and you know radical like they i think they don't exist anymore anyway and it's like who has the original files those could also just be lost to time i but yeah i guess that does fold into the the next news story just that our pal kat bailey

uh previous guest on the show uh she interviewed matt selman it published like a day after our last community podcast but but folks should look it up her interview on ign with him but she asked about hit and run and that's where he said, like, hey, look, I like Hit and Run, too, and I worked on it, but it's incredibly complicated who could have the rights to remake it. You know, I'm sure Kat was very professional, but she should have found a way to talk about us. Yes.

Like, remember Henry and Bob? They were the two aggressive nerds who recognized you at a table read and confused you with that fact. Like, Matt Selman. He was just like, I guess I'll sign your scripts. How do you know who I am? When I saw she was doing fact. Like Matt Selman. He was just like, I guess I'll sign your scripts. How do you know who I am? When I saw she was doing an interview with Matt Selman, I sent her a picture from Frankie Yak of Gil saying, put in a good word for old Gil, don't you?

We'll get him on the show. I feel like Matt Selman has probably been told about us like five times from different people. I think he's not called us back for a reason yet. I don't know why i want him to make fun of me on a podcast be be mean yes tell us tell us we're jerks tell us well in that interview he also talks about how like people care too much about continuity no continuity of the simpsons is real it changes every episode who stopped caring about it so much

like yeah and uh i got angry at a viral post that was going around recently earlier in the month but you you were you had a much better anger about it yes uh my anger was directed at people who aren't as insane as us in terms of nerdiness about the simpsons in which we know where every image is from yes in that uh someone posted an image of las vegas odds for the simpsons and they're like can you believe las vegas is taking bets on this and i was like no that is an image from the america's most wanted theme special that aired before who shot mr burns in which it was a mock-up of odds in vegas because they are just being playful there was not actually official betting in vegas

yeah on a scripted television show in in the springfields most wanted they get they found some bookmaker in vegas who then had his screen and they're like can you just change it so the screen says which characters are which and you can bet on it but it was never an official thing you could bet on it was just it was so yeah that when that spread around it was just like the i get mad when the original person who makes it viral uh doesn't make clear where it was from and then just the lie spreads of like now i felt like there were people telling themselves like wow i could have bet on it being maggie and one big yeah no no and it makes me feel like a jerk because there's no reason i should know this and i shouldn't get mad

at you for not knowing it but for some reason both things true. I feel like a jerk and I'm also mad. Yeah, that's true. I mean, we've been on the other end of just like, oh, that guy plays, that famous guy played basketball, right? He's like, no, he played golf. It's like, oh, well, I don't know. Give me a break. I know important things like cartoons and video games.

But yes, I guess that was the big viral Simpsons post of August august that other than the uh the 3d printed tv was probably the spreading around of the original of odds not from that special and one thing i forgot to mention i want to go back to that hit and run thing uh friend of the show gary butterfield and his pal cole ross has been on retronauts they did an episode of about simpsons hit and run for their podcast watch out for fireballs so they revisited it like 18 years later and they, you know, I'm not going to spoil the podcast, but it's a very cromulent game, but there are really only five different kinds of missions and you do them over and over and over again.

But it is really like the most authentic Simpsons experience of that era. Oh yeah. I, well, I remember it as being good as just like, Oh, it finally has like jokes that are for fans of the show. Not about park fan boys.

Yeah. I'll give, I'll give that a listen. So one thing i forgot to mention is that like three days before our next talk to the audience there will be the season premiere of season 33 of the simpsons technically it's production episode 17 of season 32 i see yes we know that but it's broadcast episode 1 of season 33 and it's an episode starring kristin bell as marge's singing voice which i think we reported on earlier yes that was announced at comic-con is their musical episode like it's an episode starring Kristen Bell as Marge's singing voice, which I think we reported on earlier. Yes, that was announced at Comic-Con as their musical episode. Like it's all singing, a full music episode,

full musical episode. So yeah, I guess we'll have our reactions on the next one. And it's written by a woman. Oh, wow. And not Carolyn Omine. No, it's Elizabeth Kiernan Averick. Interesting. So I don't know who that is but we should look

into a new a new writer well i'll definitely we'll definitely know who she is by the time we come to the next community podcast and talk about that yeah and in our final news a big r.i.p no wait before that let's go with happier news someone actually built the hammer from the homer is in love with thomas edison episode there's a whole youtube video about it and it's just as dangerous as it is in the show yeah it was pretty funny to watch the guy use it he's like uh you have to hold the board in place with like clamps clamps you got to give it clamps and then it it will shake the shit out of you like it's the moving a hammer like that the the motion has to go somewhere

into your body and so you're just going to be jarred around and it's so unwieldy that you can't like even get a hammer to go down in it anyway uh the yeah but he did show that just as homer learned it is really good at destroying drywall like if you put it on your wall it'll smash a hole real good but it won't carry you across the room like it did with homer and yeah the youtube channel is called diy builds and the episode the uh the video is from august 28th of this year so it's easy to find yeah just post it it's uh it's a it's a good one i got i always appreciate when people actually go to the trouble of building or cooking or going to a thing from the simpsons now make the makeup gun but don't fire it at anybody's face no no no just a mannequin uh so

up next we have some sad news in that ed asner passed away uh very recently as of this recording yeah the day before we recorded this and he you know he's a legend a million times over uh and he did appear on one episode of simpsons that we have covered the uh homer becomes a food critic episode where he's his editor there the unnamed editor yeah no name on this guy essentially lou grant yeah just like well why don't we just make him lou grant like yeah it's i mean uh an incredible career, decades and decades of amazing work. I wish these things didn't have to happen when somebody passes away. But seeing all this stuff shared about him of like, not just, oh, great clips from him or people saying, oh, and this thing, he was great. And this one off appearance, he was great. But also all the cool things he did for like, you know, as a left wing activist type dude who would, you know, make alienating statements, as some called it.

And I like I like that he was a pissed off old guy. Like, that was great. This made me realize, like, that the triforce of old men who have always been old is now gone because we lost Abe Vigoda. We lost Ernest Borgnine and now Ed Asner. They were like the three old, old guys that were old since I was a kid you're right since before we were born he was old I'm Mary he was a cranky old man I'm Mary Tyler Moore and and we came to the you know the sad idea it's why she was trending yesterday you know Betty White still with us uh but if you look at people were sharing at the you know the big final hug everybody does in mary tyler moore

and i believe every actor in that hug except for betty white is is no longer with us yeah mary tyler moore left us a few years ago i think yeah a few years ago and this year we lost chloris liegeman gavin mcleod and ed asner within like a six month span. It always happens in threes, except when it doesn't. Except when it doesn't. But no, I mean, in Ed Asner, he was like, he was the first J. Jonah Jameson of my childhood

because he was J. Jonah Jameson basically just doing Lou Grant as well in the 94 Spider-Man animated series. He was doing lots of voices in the 90s. He was in also Freakazoid playing Cosgrove, who they loved so much they just made him my main character in season two.

He was like Freakazoid's longtime friend. drawn to be at asner oh for sure yeah no and also i've been uh i'm really you know what i should have checked this uh but i'll uh just say that like the the gargoyles they he was so great as bronx in that show bronx right broadway no he was whatever whoever he was new york name new. No, he was, whatever. Whoever he was. New York name. New York name. He was great, and I kept worrying, like, oh, man, if they were ever to do a throwback, they got to do it now

because he's still with us. Like, and now finally a member of the cast is gone, and he, yeah. Actually, Greg Wiseman, the creator of Gargoyles, he just posted a farewell to Ed Asner. And just, yeah, it's very sad. Oh, wow. Oh, man. Actually, he, oh, wow.

His father, Greg Wiseman's father, went through a health issue on the same day Ed Asner passed away. Oh, wow. It sounds like really hard stuff for him. He was the voice of Hudson, by the way. Hudson, thank you. And another thing that made me mad that shouldn't have is that people were sharing that Teen Titans Go clip with Cosgrove and saying, wow, Ed Asner could still do this in 91.

I can't believe it. He's dead now. That wasn't him. Yeah, it wasn't. That wasn't him. Sorry to make you sad. But yeah, I mean mean he was great and up i watched a scene of him appearing on like that uh alice and jannie sitcom mom and i was like wow

he's really great in this thing i'd never watch but and i like i was seeing everyone share clips of things i'd never seen like wow he played mark maron's dad on that really short-lived mark maron show right oh man and also the that story michael moore shared about him did you see that one that was so great that he just sent a message to a celebrity about uh he's playing for roger and me and ed asner replied to him like i never heard of you before kid but here's 500 bucks like good luck he's like my dad was not a worker or something like that yeah i i that's again, Ed Asner felt like a real guy. I see all of these lame-o rich libs now who became TV stars who make, you know, some good news or whatever.

Ed Asner, he's the real deal. Like he'd never, it felt like he never lost his working class bona fides. he was true to himself. Sorry, P. Ed Asner.

What a long storied life. 91. Yeah. 91. That we could live a tenth of the life he lived it'd be it'd be quite a life so coming up next news about us it's all happy news

thankfully because Batman the animated series is the winner of our fall 2021 miniseries poll what was that oh Batman I like the Batman and Robin theme more okay that's that's my favorite but so we'll announce the episodes

we've chosen soon but until then look forward to its launch on October 29th and I just got the art back from one of our artists Maddie cop for the cover art for the series it looks great oh I'll put some of it on Twitter very very soon yeah I can't wait we were picking our 10 favorite episodes we're not gonna do chronological because it's you know almost a hundred I'll put some of it on Twitter very, very soon. Yeah, I can't wait. We're picking our 10 favorite episodes.

We're not going to do chronological because it's almost 100 episodes of the series. So let's pick and choose. Any random episode of Batman is worth talking about, but you want to hear the ones me and Bob love the most. Yes, and I will say just to quiet any fears, yes, we will not do episodes that you personally love a lot but we will not stop talking about batman as long as we're alive so there's a chance we'll talk about more but the ones that we have chosen i think there are some obvious great ones but i think we've also chosen some ones that are secretly good that you don't remember yeah yeah and not

underdwellers don't worry we didn't like joke pick one of the worst ones yeah uh so yes please look forward to that it's starting on october 29th for patrons of the five dollar level and higher at patreon.com slash talking simpsons sign up there to hear that and the rest of our mini series we've done for the past four plus years there's a lot waiting for you there if you're not a patron yet and we cannot wait to dig into this series it's our first like non-sitcom mini series we've done yeah yeah and we've had so much fun you know if you haven't listened before to our what a cartoons where we covered batman's uh the the heart of ice episode and the almost got him episodes those were both such a good time and same with our uh what a cartoon movie our very

first one was batman mask of the phantasm almost three years ago now yeah uh so yes that's batman it's coming on october 29th and it'll run until the end of the year, 10 episodes for patrons. So let's talk about our What a Cartoon September schedule. It is all crap, except for the movie, but we have a lot of fun with this crap, including something I'd only learned about through this podcast.

The first episode this coming month in September is Mortal Kombat The Journey Begins, this basically commercial for the world of Mortal Kombat. It's half bad 2D animation, half bad CGI and Matt McMuscles is joining us on that podcast. We couldn't imagine talking about a horrific video game

cartoon without Matt. He was so excited to come on and talk about it. It is a commercial they sold you for $15 and it's hideous. And there's a really, I dug deep in the research to try to find out about it. And I think you guys will really love hearing Matt had a lot of fun with us, too. And finally, we finally reached it.

Our one patron was threatening to do this to us for a while, but finally we have gotten to Laverne and Shirley in the Army, and it is trash. It is is trash. It's total trash. But we have so much fun with one of the worst cartoons we've ever done on the show. Is it the worst one we've ever done? Well, Mortal Kombat Journey Begins is worse than it. I guess it is less entertaining. Yeah, it's less entertaining.

It's worse, lower budget. And at the very least, we got legitimate laughs from hearing Penny Marshall just go like, we're in a rocket ship! And her being man-hungry. Yes, yeah. But yes, Devin, you finally got your wish. You talk about Laverne and Shirley in the Army with us. And I think it was a really fun episode, too.

And you guys will learn a lot about the Happy Days-iverse, which this show is part of. One of nine spinoffs, I think. Yes, yeah, at least nine. It's got to be even more than that and if you like ron palillo look out horse shack he's in this episode r.i.p horse shack i checked it's not horse shack and also coming up at the end of the month it is a road to el dorado for our what a cartoon movie patrons of course if you're on the five dollar feed or the free feed you'll hear our

extended free preview of that episode if you want to hear the whole thing our entire look at the rote el dorado dreamworks 2d movie from 2000 you'll have to be at the 10 dollar level or higher at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and it's kind of a flavor uh two previous movies combined in flavor because you got elton john in a jungly setting uh for the soundtrack tim rice as well and with tim rice yes and then also you've got a beard wearing kevin klein cartoon character with an uh with a humanistic horse who's his friend it's a secret sequel to hunchback and lion king in many ways i guess really it's like katzenberg's like these were the things i wanted to do in lion king i i mean i'm also ready to dig into it too because uh you know a co-director or i think maybe in credit he's not a full director but david silverman was hired to work on it and did for a

time but uh then bounced off the project it sounds i have a feeling him and dreamworks were not a good fit did he go to dreamworks and then pixar it was pixar right after yeah i think okay and then back to the simpsons yeah i believe believe his thing was DreamWorks probably paid a big bounty to get him. Then it didn't work out on Road to El Dorado. He leaves to become a co-director on Monsters, Inc. to help them fashion that into the movie. Because Monsters, Inc. came out in 2001, a year after Road to El Dorado. So I would guess he probably just hopped over to Pixar and flew up to our neck of the woods. David Silverman was living here when I wasn't, unfortunately.

We should ask him what his favorite places around Berkeley were. Or Emeryville. So yes, that is it for the schedule for September. Mortal Kombat The Journey begins, then Laverne and Shirley in the Army, and then the movie will be Road to El Dorado. And as for next month's movie in October, we are having another yes-no vote to go online with our new Batman series. By the way, it's named Blabbing About Batman, the Animated Series or Blabbing About BTS.

I wanted to make it alliterative. And the logo that we have that Manny put together is amazing. But to go along with this new miniseries, we're going to have a poll that will be a movie related to it. And the poll will be a yes, no vote for Batman Beyond Return of the Joker for October. So should we do it? Should we not do it? It'll be a yes, to it and the poll will be a yes no vote for batman beyond return of the joker for october so should we do it should we not do it it'll be a yes no vote coming up uh in the beginning of september you'll be able to vote on next month's movie if you're a five dollar and up patron after we covered original batman beyond i was like god everybody's favorite thing that batman beyond ever was was return of the joker everybody wants to to hear us talk about that and it's such a gorgeous film that

also has like it was tms it there at the peak tms of the late 90s like the same great guys who are working on cyber six uh then they work on this at with a movie uh with a direct-to-video movie budget and then on top of that it has this crazy story of after columbine they slash so much of the of the violence from it and then and then due to popular demand they then re-release the pg-13 more violent cut i only saw it once and it was on a train on an ipod classic so i want to see it on my 4k tv yeah on hbo max you can finally check it out there so yes but if you guys don't want to do that one and no wins then we'll do a traditional regular poll and that we'll figure out later but i have a feeling you listeners want to hear us talk about return of the joker i think so it's

we're gonna go batman crazy in october you know it's kind of spooky it was a kind of spooky movie joker is a scary guy and he has uh you know a bunch of sidekicks who dress up so yeah that's it for news about us now we could talk about what we've been watching and playing that we're shockingly not podcasting about so um i actually i played about one hour of video game total on my entire month in canada i feel like a sellout i just i was spending time with my wife oh boo who would have been perfectly fine if i played video games but you're just never home yeah yeah well once like vancouver is opening up more so uh you the last time you were there you spent quite a lot of time just at home.

So I can see why you're like, let's go to a movie. Let's go eat at a restaurant. It was kind of the opposite of our last time together in which we were never home. We came home at night and just would watch a movie or something and then go to bed and then leave immediately in the morning. It's like you're on vacation, but at home. A staycation, if you will. The only kind of vacation you can take now if you want to stay safe.

So when I came back home, I started gaming again because, again, I'm lonely and my wife is 2,000 miles away. So I wrapped up the second Famicom Detective Club game. I finished both of them. They're both totally worth playing, even though they're a bit dated. They're a gap in Nintendo's history we're only getting now. But they're great.

I really enjoyed my time with them. They're like 10're like 10 hour adventure games so just a nice digestible 10 hours i like that some adventure games they overstay their welcome you know and i'm playing now i started it up about a week ago uh the first great ace attorney game in the new great ace attorney collection i'm already like bowled over by it it's already going to be a very long game because normally with ace attorney games the first trial is like an hour or 90 minutes to get you into the idea of like here's what you do here's what the mechanics are this one was like four hours long whoa and uh lots of fun twists that i did not see coming like i thought i knew how these games went and i really don't at this point so a lot of fun surprises and i really recommend that it's only

40 bucks on every platform it's so great it's finally out in America. I saw the funny tweet you retweeted of people showing off like five characters on screen at once. What the? And like a camera moving behind a character walking in the courtroom. Because if you played past Ace Attorney games, they rarely broke from the format of like you see one person on one side, the camera moves, one person's on the other side, and the witness is in the middle. Or the person giving testimony is in the middle now there are different angles in the courts oh crazy things can happen the camera can move with three-dimensional characters in a three-dimensional space crazy i mean the other games were in 3d the last two but

this one is really taking advantage of the format like they really figured out what they could do yeah that's right the the crossover with layton was that was yeah and five and six yes so they've done it before but this is the best looking one it's scaled up really nice on the switch because they're like cel-shaded graphics so and then hey herlock sholmes who he sounds like a cool character different guy than the guy you're thinking of but he's not sherlock holmes by the way yes but uh herlock sholmes he's a fun character and uh i just met him in the game so interested in seeing like what happens with him that is a slow burn that's interesting and i'm also playing uh it's a game that came out as soon as i left everyone was talking about it like the second i left america

for canada but death's door so before i left for canada i played hyper light drifter it took me a while to get around to it i played it and i was like it was okay i don't see what the big deal was it was fine people People really liked it, but it just kind of left me cold. Death's Door is the version of that game I wanted to play. It's also a Zelda-like, but I think it's much better made.

It's like a much more well-crafted Zelda-like and it's, again, a tidy 15 hours long. That sounds like, I haven't heard anything about Death's Door. It's all about birds. You start as a crow with a sword. Oh, wow, there we go. Okay. Yes, it's a very

fun little zelda like game and uh just came out like in july so i'm only getting around to it now i'm towards the end like about 12 hours in it's fun to play games when they're fresh though too and everyone's talking about it i feel like if i weigh in on it now people will just be like yeah that was the summer it's it's early september what are you talking about we're moving on to uh madden now talk about that in terms of watching stuff uh i so i spent after our last talk to the audience i spent another two weeks in canada and now i'm two weeks into america the bad country i'm back but i still have a few things i need to talk about in canada in that i saw a lot of movies in theaters movies are back old movies in my case because i saw a lot of classics in 4k i saw rear

window raiders of the lost ark uh the castle of cogliostro in uh 4k wow yes and terminator before that in 4k seeing all those in four i mean you know the the the ultimate is to see it in like the original like 35 millimeter prints or whatever but those aren't getting shared around all that much these 4k restorations are as close as you can get in the digital form these days they look i mean i've just seen those 4k like dvds i have watched a 4k restoration of not uh not uh the lupin film but of other miyazaki stuff uh from like fathom events and stuff and it does really look good but that i was said i the it was a theater all the way in the city to see lupin and i was the roxy the roxy yeah and i'm like i've seen caliostro so many times it almost felt like

not not worth the the the link the how far i'd have to go it wasn't that far for me so it was definitely worth it that's nice man and rear window and raiders oh man to see raiders with a crowd like and you all react to it naturally that sounds awesome i think it was my fourth time seeing rear window in a theater but it was nina's first time so it was fun to watch it with her that's cool i i was just reminded of rear window because of another thing i was watching but i'll talk about that later and one last thing is that normally uh nina and i watch a lot of movies in canada but on this trip she got me into game center cx this japanese show.

It's been running for like 18 years now, in which this comedian, most of the show is him playing through a game with help from his assistants and usually finishing a very hard like Famicom game by the end of the show. So like we did a Retronauts about it in 2014 because Ray Barnholt was one of the first American fans.

He built a website that is an episode guide for the show. Yeah, our pal Ray is like, one of the first American fans, he built a website that is an episode guide for the show. Yeah, our pal Ray is like, he's been proselytizing the Bible of Arino for decades now. Definitely. And I feel like a Philistine because I watched one for that podcast. I was like, yeah, this is all right. I like it. But I never went back to it. I think it's because at that point I'd been running for almost 10 years. And I was like, there's just so much to catch up on. But now Nina finally got me into it because in case you didn't know Nina was one of the early translators of it when it was being brought over for the first time and she knows all the people who work on the show she's done official artwork for them and like after we were watching the show she was like oh here's a

picture of me with Ari no here's a picture of me with this person that person cool so I was happy to learn about that part of my wife's life but also I was just addicted to the show so. So every time we had downtime, I was like, can we watch Game Center CX again? And she was totally fine with it, even though she had seen them all up to a point. That's that's funny. That's like after you guys binged all of the U.S. office together at the end of it. She's like, so here's my picture with Steve Carell. I call him Steve. You know, I got his phone number. But that's yeah, I was surprised it took you this long to really I mean I I've only watched like a few scant episodes here and there but

I mean what the Arno his his series is so like uh influential like now every YouTube channel is just like watch a guy play a thing and yeah live with him in the playing of it. People have called him the first Let's Player and that's partially true. I mean, it was the first like popularized Let's Player, not in America. But I did on my finale, before I left for America,

we watched the Arino Comes to America special, the two hour special. And I love, so I was in America when Arino was and I was aware of him. He came to San Francisco. He went to the Musée Mécanique in one arcade. He could musee mechanique in one arcade he could have went to game spot he could have went to game pro he could have went to ig and he could have went to one up he did not go to any website he went to

two places in my life i was like that is kind of awesome that's great that's the one where he there's the picture of him meeting ray yeah he went to la and that's where ray barnholt in the in the blue jumpsuit met arino uh i i see i remember a clip from the usa one of him like i think he's up in marin and behind him is the golden gate bridge and he's just like this bridge sucks it's lame it's not we got a cool rainbow bridge in tokyo this bridge is just what red rainbow bridge is better um but yeah he went to an arcade that's now shut down he went to museum mechanic which is still open and i was like i played the same game already no dude oh that's great yeah i was so i gotta watch that usa one again it's great yeah it's uh that's that's so cool that you could experience it too with you know a person who

worked on the series yeah nina's done a lot of work for them she's done like uh cover art for dvds she did a version of the love letter card game uh featuring all the staff of the game so there's a version of love letter you can buy in japan that's about game senior cx that she did the art for that's awesome so yes it was fun learning that part of her life because that i already kind of knew about but not enough and the game the show is very entertaining too so uh well for me this month it's, it's been a lot of playing one game. It's because Hades, which I already played 120 hours of last year and was my game of the year for last year. I then got it on Xbox. It's on Xbox Game Pass.

So you don't even have to be like, should I buy it again? We have Game Pass. So my husband and I have both been playing it so much. Like, I have it on the big TV, and then he'll have it on the, like, we have a computer monitor next to it. Or he'll play it in the Steam version, too. He Platinum'd it on the PS5. I'm working my way through Platinum. You're the reason why I haven't really started getting into it, because I'm afraid. Because, like, my new thing is, like, I want to beat a ton of games games every year but I feel like I'll just be stuck on Hades if I pick it up

if it if it clicks for you then yes it will be what you play for a while and I I think I've put another 40 or 50 hours on it just well because it is really relaxing for me to listen to a podcast while just going through familiar stages and like okay can i do this better this time boom boom fight this fight this maybe i'll play a little more while i listen while i did this podcast it's a perfect thing like the podcast is on the top level and at the bottom level is you playing a game so they both can interact with each other it's not a game it actually does have a really great story and you can pause to read stuff but once you get past the story which i like i'm just flying through the story because i already experienced it i can just like just in veg out for like three hours easy

and just like oh where where did my sunday afternoon go uh and i did play a few hours of psychonauts 2 which is also on game pass it is really great it is the sequel to psychonauts you always wanted i have been so disappointed by spiritual sequels that were crowdfunded for the last 10 years yeah uh this one actually pays off and is really good i forgot it was crowdfunded through like fig or something one of those weirdo ones well because while it was that then microsoft bought them and so it's a microsoft game too so it's kind of it's complicated yeah i'm actually i'm so glad it's a good game because uh i understand nostalgia makes you like things a lot i don't quite get the nostalgia for the first game but in a way i do because i bought that first game

new i bought the bad version of it for playstation 2 Oh, God. It was such a difficult game to play. It's not like a hard game, but it's just a very ugly game with bad controls and wonky platforming. But the story that you're fighting to get through was worth it. So I'm glad that this game actually has good gameplay. Yes.

Because it's not 2003. We know how characters move in 3D. We're not making an Xbox original game anymore. Though it does feel like a throwback to old 3D platformers, which is kind of what I wanted. And on top of that, it adds the thing that happens to me

in every Double Fine game of like, well, I have to talk to these people until they repeat a line because every line of dialogue is funny. I have to hear each one. And someone had to work hard to write that. Yeah. And then I still am playing bloodborne

deep into it and i think it's my favorite of the three souls games i played it's now my new favorite i i've played the demon souls remake for ps5 uh dark souls one on xbox and now bloodborne and i think bloodborne is my favorite i just love the speed speed of it. I stopped being a timid baby with my shield up all the time. They say no more shields. Shields are for cowards. Yeah, it's got the best lore and the best tone, I think. I might like Dark Souls 1 the best just because it hit me at the right time and the right place, but Bloodborne, I think, is my favorite of the sequels.

Give it a PC port. Give it a PS5 upgrade. Give it something. I know. 60 frames per second. It needs to happen. There were rumors of a PS5 upgrade. i know 60 frames per second it needs to happen there were rumors of a ps5 upgrade it still hasn't happened yet but i mean i guess they they don't want to the souls folks wouldn't want to distract from elden ring i suppose also which is just a ps4 game it's

not actually an x-gen game i know what a lie we're not making those yet uh as for watching i could go on and on about this but i did did watch Evangelion, Frights Upon a Time. I actually did a really crazy thing, which was the day it came out, I watched all three previous films with the new English dub, and then I watched the fourth film with the dub, and then after that, a week later, I re-watched it subtitled, and yeah, it's amazing. I won't spoil anything it really is great how how is the new english dub with the actors who are now like 25 years older than they were before you know the sadly the one who sounds the oldest to me is

misato's voice i think her uh allison keith sounds a little little old to me. Uh, Spike Spencer, maybe, maybe they're pitching it up, but he still sounds pretty good as old Shinji and same with, uh, Oscar, Tiffany Grant. Uh, you know, she sounds really good in the role and I think their directions to though it's, so I had expected it to be the Netflix cast. Uh, but so basically it is essentially the funimation and adv cast or like you know the five big ones but they are more hewing to the spirit of the subtitles than they did in funimation there's not as much coloring outside of the lines but i still feel like the actors own their choices a lot more and there's and you know it's there's no secret that this film is the ano has said all the production said like this is the last one and all that and

part of the the power of the film and this extends to the japanese dialogue as well is if you grew up with it for decades you hear the voices you grew up with still saying these still saying new lines as these characters scenes affect you even heavier yeah i'm thinking of once i'm done with my current one piece arc at the gym i might download these to my tablet via amazon prime and watch them there just to go through them all um yeah i i didn't like the first one and that's why i've never watched the rest but i know the first one is like the anomaly when i re-watched the first one i was like man it's again it's just like the first six episodes right yeah i feel like it was ano made it boring on purpose as a statement of like if you wanted a remake this

is why it would be boring and i have to do crazier stuff in the next ones but and it is accompanied by an nhk documentary two hours long about the making of the film over four years with with ano and it's very funny that there are many scenes of ano saying that he wants to delegate and then choosing not to delegate and saying like oh this all sucks i have to do it all over myself and i just really hope uh kazuya surimaki is now free he's like the director of all those movies he's the fully cooley guy of course he's got a long history before that but i want him to make something else in that documentary suramaki is one of the many tired men going like well this is i knew it coming in this is what he does every time but it's even there's hilarious stuff in the doc of ano talking to the documentary filmmaker telling them how to make the documentary

of like he keeps saying like stop filming me i'm not interesting talk to those people that's that's where your story is in this doc like he can't he can't not give director notes to others when they're filming him and man nine years between uh the third movie and the fourth movie yep actually i was like at one up when the third movie came out and people went to japan to see it oh man and who'd have yeah and also they talk about how the the pandemic impacted it as well it's that's uh so yes if you watch thrice upon a time but haven't watched the ano documentaries yet give those a watch too they are great but only watch them after you've seen the movie you got to see the movie first don't watch them beforehand obviously uh also been doing a re-watch of sopranos uh almost

done with season two that show is the greatest turn you into a drinker i've heard i i i have a sip of whiskey every time tony sips whiskey i've been looking for the gabagool uh field i did i did make some uh capellini pasta recently which is angel hair pasta uh and me and bob and my husband we watched riff tracks his hobgoblins in theaters that's right it was great uh so uh as soon as connor our buddy connor listoka uh was doing the intro, I was like, that's Connor. Yeah, I loved it. I knew we all know. And he wrote, him and his pals wrote a really funny new set of riffs on Hobgoblins. And it was extra funny to see the like five minutes or so that were cut out of the Sci-Fi Channel original airing of it. Lots of unfunny phone sex jokes yeah yeah they in 99 they were right to cut those jokes but now it was they they had good jokes for it in the more in the dirtier

world of riff tracks maybe our buddy connor could tell us more about this but my speculation is like the director for hobgoblins was there and in the first place he submitted the movie to mystery science theater because i think he wanted to like give make himself a name like make himself like a celebrity of bad movies and i bet he thought he'd have more to do with the show because he was not like brought on stage he was not like introduced he didn't do any like bits with them so i feel like maybe he thought this was like another chance it was or he could have just been a nice guy who knows he brought a real hobgoblin with him like one of the classic original hobgoblins. I watched all the show Jellystone. It's better than I expected it would be, though obviously if you don't like chowder, Spongebob-style cartoons, well, this is more of it.

You probably won't like this one, but I liked Jellystone. And finally, I went on a big trip to Chicago to see pro wrestling. CM Punk, my favorite pro wrestler who retired for seven years. His absence was almost as long as Evangelion's. What was he doing for seven years? Wasting his time. Basically, so he was so fed up with wrestling and burned out, he just stopped. Then he said, I want to try being an MMA star.

And he really was not good at doing MMA fighting and lost poorly in two fights. Then after that, he's like, I'm going to try to be an actor. And he's kind of, he's appeared in some stuff. But really, it's like wrestling is what he should be. But he just, I can totally feel for CM Punk. We got so burnt out on the games press that you're like, no, I'd never come back to that. That's kind of how he felt about wrestling but being in the united center where they do the bulls games and where they play to see cm punk enter and he rekindle his love of wrestling live in front of

us and everybody's crying it was beautiful man i'm not tapped into wrestling but i knew it was a big deal based on like the twitter response every wrestling fan was coming out of the woodwork. Because it was amazing. It was a thing you never thought would happen for seven years. And if you did think it would happen, you figure you'd go back to WWE, not go to the new hot brand, AEW. And also, I went to Chicago, which was very nice. I had Lou Malnati's deep dish pizza. Everybody was saying, now that's a great one to

have now people are telling me i should have gone to piquads or you should have gone to giordano's or whatever i purposely just post food tweets to annoy people now because i know they'll correct me or say you're eating that well i'm scared to say this on twitter but you listeners can hear it uh-oh uh-oh i know where you're going with this too i like loom all naughty's good it's a really good deep dish pizza but chicago transplant zachary's that is based in the bay area and is local here i like that deep dish pizza more than zachary i've not been there in almost two years thanks to the pandemic but now i'm craving it uh well if you buy one if you buy a small it'll last you for the rest of the month yes uh it is a gigantic pizza and you're

going back to chicago soon yes going to chicago for birthday week to see even more pro wrestling you know we're vaccinated it's masked indoors at that there's stuff going around but i feel like this is our last trip we're going to get to do and wrestling is so hot right now i want to see it and you're being tested when you come back so you will not infect me yes and i'm protected too yeah hopefully uh obviously we're we'll get a negative when we're back i think we'll get we'll take i trust this vaccine i i just i'm used to being over tested for going to canada because it's like i have to uh get a test before i leave and then i'm tested when i land and then i have to get tested before i leave again or they

won't let me on the plane so it's just like i need three tests meanwhile if you want to fly to just a different state they're like get on whatever spit in our face how high is your fever oh come on it's fine though they still are pretty strict on like seriously unless you are actively eating or drinking on this plane you keep that mask up you don't though now they're serving alcohol again on the flights which i'm like this is a recipe for disaster guys i don't know it could be a calm i mean i guess if you limit the alcohol because uh when i flew to ohio at the end of june i think it was i was surprised to see alcohol was back okay yeah i guess it can have a calming effect on most people but i also feel like half the people you see in the viral videos of guy punching someone on an airplane yeah somebody's drunk i think he was those people

are drunk before they get on the plane because they know they can't drink on the plane so they get like yeah way loaded at the bar or they can't get an alcohol fast enough on the plane to get drunk so it's just like i'm having five beers at the uh for 22 dollars each at the airport bar yeah yeah but midway midway is a nice airport i like o'hare is the fancier one but i kind of like midway more because i'm out of that way faster it's way smaller than o'hare i love the vancouver airport ybr i look forward to seeing that uh some bill you'll fly in there someday uh yes let's move on to questions and comments for talking simpsons up first we have the way we was and joe hodgson says this episode is one that just gets too brooksy for me in the last act

homer's sad sack routine outside the auditorium and closing moments in the car is too much i can't decide if his whole i got a problem speech at the end is too clever for his character or appropriately sappy in the sense that he may have heard a similar line on television or in a movie and he's regurgitating it here i just find myself disappointed in marge and that she falls for just a corny line and it's the foundation for their relationship but I suppose it's part of her character and we're supposed to think she's too good for Homer this one ends up being probably my least favorite of the

flashback stories as a result and that is from Joe Hodgson and yeah I mean it's not as punchy and jokey as the other ones because they hadn't fully discovered the the rhythm of it yet but also yeah i think they they played too hard that like oh yeah marge is slumming it to be with homer yeah i guess like

joe says though it does support what is said later that like uh homer's utter dependence on her is what is the foundation of their marriage that's a more realistic homer speech i feel like and we just covered old money so spoilers for, I don't know, November or whenever that episode comes up in our timeline. Right. That is another case of these 25-year-old writers going to 50-year-old Jim Brooks and saying, we don't know.

We don't know sentimentality. You're the terms of endearment guy. Help us out. He's like, here's what a James L. Brooks character would say, but that's not what Homer would say. I know, yeah, they don't, but they just let it go and stay in his mouth of like nah just have a james o brooks line in there i think it works better in way we was than an old money yeah but i think it is homer sincerely saying that i don't think it's

him imitating something else that that would be the joke i think they played up more i i think it is very intentional phrase by homer but uh as in his character was saying it but also on that episode kaiser beam says as a lover of old music i need to point out that van mccoy's the hustle being played in this episode is actually an anachronism this episode specifically takes place in 1974 the hustle was released as a single on april 18th 1975 where it would be the song of the summer and help other usher disco in as a mainstream force another less egregious musical anachronism is in the scene where homer is in his bedroom listening to average

white band's funk classic pick up the pieces while that song did come out in 1974 it wouldn't come out until july of that year this episode is implied to take place in spring which yeah that's true i mean it's the prom the prom happens in spring so uh thank you kaiser beam for that yeah kaiser beam knows a lot of stuff i did not know he knew this much about 70s music you know what the hustle that fact was in my notes but in the moment i was like this is not important that just proves that every fact is important and i should say everyone we should stop every time and make make guys like jeff dutton here every fact we know but uh but pick up the pieces i did not know that fact so some anachronisms there i didn't even clock that song

as uh a famous song in homer's bedroom either i felt like i caught every song that man the song licensing rights for this episode they spent so much money yeah there's no special like hulu version of this with uh you know music yeah i'm glad on disney plus it has every song preserved they'll pay that for the simpsons for a lot of stuff they won't pay it but for simpsons i'll pay it actually when i was in uh vancouver we've been watching a few like melrose places and i know two and o's because our friends that we hate movies they have their melrose two and o podcast that covers both shows and yeah there is some like really funky bad music they put in

in place of licensed music also that doesn't fit the time period at all oh that's terrible so there'll be like a rap rock song on like a 1991 episode because they took out like the color me bad or the guns and roses song that's terrible i've heard the same thing happens to all the old baywatches and that the baywatch super fans are like well take the HD cut of it that's out there now and then we personally will match it up with the original soundtrack taped off of TV people have done that with Daria too yeah as they should it's it doesn't the fact that the reason you watch them is for the nostalgia of the songs you heard as a kid so if you don't hear those then what's the point yeah I don't want to hear this library music so moving on to Tennis the Menacee hodgson is back to say and be our nipple expert actually so he's talking about

nipple gate the janet jackson justin timberlake scandal that rocked the world of 2004 joe hodgson says when nipple gate occurred i was as into sports as i probably ever would be or will be so i frequented many sports mentions boards at the time and was exposed to the janet jackson nipple pick quite frequently it was actually not a pasty but an elaborate nipple piercing that was shaped like a sun or flames or something i could look it up for confirmation but i'm all set with that uh it did indeed leave the center of the nipple exposed the most offensive part of the nipple i don't know how our nation endured yes and again what uh what we just invaded afghanistan at this point in time like and we're like a nipple blowing on broadcast television everywhere yeah i i you know i should always i'm

gonna remember that fact from now on i've said pasty so many times but it's much more exciting that it is like an extravagant gold nipple piercing that was revealed to the world and i think you only saw because there were photographers there on your SDTV in 2004 for like the 1.3 seconds her top was off. And again, but it was, it still bugs me. It was so intentional. Like they did that on purpose, the wardrobe malfunction. What a dumb thing to say.

How many bad jokes did that spawn? That's what makes me the most mad about it. Yeah, that actually is. It's aside from the censoring of butts on simpsons that's its most horrible legacy uh so harry thornton also said on that episode notes on disney's restoration process their whole philosophy seems to be trying to replicate what the cells and background look like when you see them in real life the problem there of course is that that never was the artist's or animator's intention and has led to infamous errors like the lines and details in cinderella's dress getting removed or colors in

pinocchio not looking right i think it was either frank thomas or ollie johnson who saw one of these restorations and said paraphrasing that looks nice but it's not what we were going for originally and yeah that's you know uh that's the danger of a lot of those restorations if you don't involve at least an expert on the film because filmed flaws, things that look like flaws can often be intentional. And I often miss just the graininess of film, especially, I mean, all the 4K restorations I saw were good.

They did not ruin, they didn't compromise the integrity of the image at all. But it's like, if I see Rear Window, I would love to see an old print of it even if it would the colors were washed out and even if the sound wasn't as good it'd be cool just to see the age and the grain and the hairs and the dust i don't i don't want to feel like an old man it's just like now you can feel the physical presence on screen but you really can and it's just so sad to me with the disney restorations that mess muck up all that stuff because the those are the parts that live forever and these are like it's crazy that disney

both wants to talk up the timelessness of their library of films but also wants to smooth them out as much as possible they'll just forget when they came out but they're timeless yes yeah they've been around forever so up next we have uh homer versus lisa in the eighth commandment and kat hegberg says just realized that all this time i thought i knew who troy donahue was but i actually only knew the lyric as for you troy donahue i know what you want to do from greece and that's it that's the extent of my knowledge anyone else and bob mackie speaking i've never actually seen greece i think in form. I think that's from the Beauty School Dropout song, I believe. Hey, you know, it's a classic film, and once you watch it,

you'll be like, oh, that's all the songs I've heard my whole life. Because everyone in Grease is 30 years old. I think it was not until I was a teenager that I realized, oh, these are high school students in this movie? Yes, there's some very old high school students in it. Yeah, I think it's a good film. I mean, there's some, of high school students in it yeah i i think it's it's a good film i i mean there's some of course parts that don't age well that's like everything but yeah troy donahue now more known in the greece musical than for any film of his that no nobody

watches now unfortunately eddie deason got canceled so you can't even enjoy him anymore shit yeah yeah that sucks i didn't know that he uh would go to like local cafes with his brother to like look at waitresses and then like he wrote a really long screen about how a waitress wouldn't laugh at his like sexual harassment oh dear imagine being sexually harassed by eddie deason that's a nightmare oh eddie de oh that's sad that's that's uh bad boy did it hurt when you fell from heaven? That's what it would sound like. You hear the Mandark voice saying that stuff. Come on, Eddie. Get it together. Shaxsburg says about that same episode, there totally was a last channel

button on the remote in 1991, and it saved my bacon several times. The folks knew the boobies were on the channel 53 after 10 p.m., so if they walked in and saw C-SPAN on channel 54 or Home Shopping on channel 52, they'd know something was up immediately. And wow, this is more Skinamax strategies we're hearing about here. I guess it would vary upon the model and make and who your cable company was. But mine, not 91. By the mid-90s, yeah. Yeah, for me. Yeah, i'd say by mid 90s

we got a last channel button but it was well that's also in the mid 90s when scrambled porn was even available to me in the 90s it was not well then again i guess uh before i was 13 i wasn't even looking for it anyway but uh that i i was wondering how many other people had their own special strategies in that era, which now, you know, don't got to think about that. Clear history. That's all you got to do. Reflecting upon it, I was really never being watched.

So I was never like riding that last channel button. And what were your parents going to do anyway? It'd be awkward for all involved and you wouldn't talk about it. Yeah, yeah. They just wanted to stay out of it. And I agree with them. Always knock. So moving on to Day of of it and i agree with them always knock uh so moving on to day of

the jack and apes batman boy 11 says while this episode is frustrating for straight up ignoring bob's last appearance and character development and it feels like retreading in many ways i was actually pleasantly surprised with the fact that the first act actually does relate to the plot overall in the episode as well the opening millionaire parody is borderline unnecessary but the fact that it sets up crusty ratings issues and hatred of executives, which are the ideas

the episode sees through to the end. It is incredible to see in season 12 where most opening acts have absolutely nothing to do with where the episode ends. Yes.

Yeah. As Matt Salmon says, there is a deus ex machina that ends the plot, but it is an entire story with an ending. It's not a shrug. It's not a you expected an ending. Well, fuck you kind of move. Yeah. entire story with an ending it's not a shrug it's not a you expected an ending

well fuck you kind of move yeah it is actually an ending that is set up in the beginning of the episode it it is uh i'd never considered it that way but with how many we've done in a row that the first act is entirely homer going bet you didn't see that coming it really is impressive that to think about how i no this starts with crusty getting notes and getting canceled or quitting and then it ends with his last show and exploding the same execs who ran him off i think it's because it's a sideshow bob episode and those are typically mysteries or thrillers right and they need to be one long story with an ending yeah it's true by the end of act one you set up why bob is coming to town and then bob comes to

town and the and things begin yeah i that uh yeah you know this gives me more appreciation for an episode that i used to really really hate uh shy ranger also says about that episode if we're going to mention millionaire i would be hard-pressed to not mention a question that I'm sure many fans of this podcast would appreciate. Which of these characters was not an opponent in Nintendo's popular boxing video game Mike Tyson's Punch-Out? A. Von Kaiser. B. Super Macho Man. C. Soda Popinski. D. Max Payne.

That question was for $50,000 and the contestant got it wrong. Oh, that's where we would have shown. Man, I'd have flipped off the TV. I smashed it. I've been like, I said, the show ain't no good. But like, man, Max Payne, like that should just click. I guess, you know, not everybody's a gamer, but at the very least, if you don't remember every character in Punch-Out, you should remember that there was a Mark Wahlberg movie called Max Payne, and that's not related to Punch-Out!.

But you know what? That was a clever choice by the writer of the show, writer of the trivia, in that Max Payne does sound like one of those other names. That's true. That's true. And if you're not, I guess, yeah, for us, me and you both know very well a through c as characters we see them in our head when we say when we see that so it's easier just from elimination of like well i know those three are definitely characters so it's not like they said gabby j or no no okay listen i have a bone to pick with uh a bar in san francisco this reminded me i want to bring it up on this podcast

there's a bar called soda poppinskis in san francisco obviously named after the punch out character in mike tyson's punch out a friend wanted to take me there i'm like wow an nes theme bar cool i go in there the extent of the nes theming is there's like a power glove on the wall and you can play like an nes classic and that's it there is no other theming i was so disappointed that boy. There's better arcades in the city. I thought they'd upped their game if they're going to call themselves Soda Pop. They're still open. I'll go in and yell at them when COVID is over. This reminds me, there's a bar I really love in Vancouver called Fuggles and Warlock.

All of their beer is like video game themed and nerd themed. But the bar is just a regular bar and there's like five tv all with sports on them i'm like there should be like speed runs and like video game footage and all kinds of nerdy stuff like you gotta you gotta play up your theme at least if you're gonna go with one part of it it's gotta be the whole thing at least have a couple games on the wall yeah yeah boy that that's uh kind of disappointing at least at least it sounds like the the beers are good though with fun with funny names i guess they get homer saying what funny names uh there was no alligator with a cowboy hat on the wall so so you haven't seen everything yet but if you're the proprietor of soda popinski's i'm disappointed in you more video game shit please buy one of those arcade

one-up machines like i bought and just put it in there like there now we got uh more video games i'm looking at the more footage of this or more pics of this online there's like a tiny donkey kong machine on the counter so just like barely just barely anyways this is local issues i have not actually been to san francisco in like two years uh this is a real local issues episode yeah podcast we're talking very local uh moving on to what a cartoon comments for the hunchback of notre dame this is bob speaking i am happy you guys are happy with that podcast i poured my heart into it right before i left for canada and it is still our longest podcast to date the lion king came very close it came close but yeah we know bob bob's passion came uh roaring through the audio there i think

the listeners felt it too let's talk more about these comments and questions on this episode so miles dx says if you ever get the chance to see it there is a live musical of disney's hunchback that is just amazing it actually skews closer to the book the offensive terminology is mostly fixed esmeralda is killed at the end and dies while being embraced by quasimodo while in the catacombs soon after the play flashes forward to see their bony remains found in the future only for them to turn to dust though what i love most is Quasimodo is shown as being deaf and during his musical numbers, which is mostly sung off key, the

gargoyles interpret for him via sign language. The entire play is also sung with little to no spoken dialogue. And yeah, I think this is the musical I mentioned in the podcast that was made for Germany but then was localized for America. And if it ever comes around again, I will pay like your

crappy Hamilton prices to see it I don't care about that I do want to see this you want to see Esmeralda die I don't want to see schoolhouse rock rap I want to see Disney movies on stage Bob who will tell your story huh who will the podcast historians

of the future also said about Hback of notre dame coincidentally just yesterday a friend was telling me that his family went to disney world during gay days of the 1990s once and his non-gay dad wore a red shirt and then made the whole family go back to the hotel so he could change i asked didn't your dad think the fact that he was already there with his actual and probably presumed wife signal his heterosexuality enough already and he just said no my dad is from scranton it sounds like one of those made-up stories but i don't know this person to be someone who would make things up so probably did go down like that that he should have held

the sign that said i'm not gay i have sex with my wife this is her wife i'm wife i have sex with her in the most hetero way possible look here's kids i had him with her missionary only uh that's yeah this it i do like the comedy of a regular ass dad just like well nice my nice red shirt can walk around kids at Disney. And then also wasting probably 30 minutes to go back to the hotel just to change your shirt. Hold your wife's hand the entire time. Save some time and buy a new shirt. Buy a white shirt at Disney World and throw away your red one. And say, see, I'm not gay. They want 30 what?

30 bucks. This reminded me of a story i love my stepdad but uh i went to see the south park movie with him and we did not see a movie together since like aladdin like seven years had elapsed i had grown into a 17 year old and we went to the movies and i was like okay sit next to my stepdad he's like no we sit a seat apart and i was like oh so people don't think you're here with your young boyfriend so i made him sit next to me hey you know it's the guy codes of another generation i think we've grown out of that i always sat next to my male friends there was never a seat between us but i was like you're supposed to talk to them yeah i'm supposed to elbow them when spider-man

shows up exactly yeah no i uh but that's such a funny like uh stepdad thing of like no no no you're too old now you don't sit next to me what if the other teenagers think i'm gay uh so yeah moving on to muppet show the stars of star wars and ron sterling says i appreciate that henson didn't want to make a show for kids especially as a parent now as he made adults uh something adults could enjoy too don piano's existential ennui guy smiley's manic energy grover the waiter tormenting a hapless patron and harvey knee slappers pranking remain personal favorites likewise the music was always fantastic whether it was their original doo-wop earworms or they had a guest on to perform a prop hit i'm still known to bust out in rubber

ducky and will gladly pop a sesame playlist on youtube a lot of that spirit was carried on to nick jr's yo gaba gaba a product of aquabats frontman christian jacobs in a show i enjoyed with my son when he was young in that retrospect i think it shares a lot of the muppet shows more family-oriented dna and uh ron goes on to share what i was talking about about trauma being traumatized by a sketch on sesame street so uh ron says i was also a victim of the egyptian tomb sketch one of my earliest memories is of an old church pew that evidently my psychotic parents had in lieu of a couch in the living room so uncomfortable when that sketch would come on i would duck behind the pew and only watch it with my head just peering over the back enough for me to see great up as always guys and thanks for the nostalgia trip yes an entire

generation warped by the idea that ernie the mummy will kill you uh it is scary you know you you're not ready for nightmare scenes of that that's that's part of the the fun but also the danger of the muppety creations in sesame street they're not they're not always careful about giving weird imagery to kids i have been watching these youtube videos about retired Sesame street characters. And they're not like the PC police censored them. It's like, here's who they are. Here's why they're not on the show anymore.

And I know that Don piano is not on the show anymore because he was a guy like the classic, like sixties or fifties idea of like the frustrated songwriter. Yes. Like from that MST three K short, he's like just slamming his hands on the keys. Like, God,

I can't think of a tune, but he would like slam his head on the piano and they found out that kids were imitating him oh okay i i had heard that snuffleupagus changed too or not he's not gone but that the whole thing of him like big bird saying he exists and no one believing him was like that's a screwy thing to put on kids as well actually was that on podcast the ride you heard that uh i had heard it okay i heard it on podcast right for the first time our friends at podcast right did do a big sesame episode yeah and that the idea of like well don't tell adults things because they won't believe you is a bad thing to put in kids heads so in one episode they had to have all the adults see snuffle up i guess yes that's right that's uh and well also this uh

you know this muppet talk is coming the day that uh frank oz interview and the guardian came out that's like uh really well it's both wistful and has some sad parts to it but frank oz has this funny bit of like people just talking to him and crying and he says like well yeah i i kind of am just this signpost that people project their childhoods onto sometimes. But I'm proud of that. But when they talk about Jim Henson's passing, he doesn't mince words. He's like, the Disney deal killed him. That Michael Eisner was pushing him too hard and it exhausted him.

And he wasn't a businessman. And working on that while making stuff killed him. He's just direct about that. Is it the one time where Eisner's hands were dirtier than katzenberg's i think so wow and well he says it was like eisner really wanted sesame street like this is frank uh it's confirming things we've read before elsewhere but and then also him saying like yeah i've been done with the muppets and so seven but it's not because i don't want to do it anymore like what disney wants from the muppets is not me like they they don't like how i play with the muppets i don't follow their rules and so it's uh it's a it's if you're a if you like

the muppet show what a cartoon i think you will uh really like uh or be angered by that uh that interview in the guardian uh also on that episode graham robinson says i for one don't think you need any justification to cover a puppet show. Maybe I'm biased because I'm a puppeteer myself. I used to tour the U.S. and Canada with blacklight puppetry productions of The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Goodnight Moon, among others. But puppetry is animation. It's just live animation. And yes, it is a terrible strain on the animator's wrists.

Good puppetry is essentially keyframe animation the stereotype of the muppets may be kermit maniacally waving his arms but watch closely and you'll notice there's a lot of posing punctuating those big moments early animation owes a lot to puppetry so it's nice to see you guys cover arguably the most influential puppets of all time i mean yeah i i'm glad a real puppeteer appreciated this episode and and i wouldn't say there's any argument about i mean what what puppet is more famous than the any than one created by the muppets like related to the muppets is baby shark a puppet uh well i think there have been baby shark puppets okay well i guess what is a digital puppet? I suppose if Waldo C. Graphic is still technically a puppet,

then a CGI thing that moves to match a hand movement. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like, yeah, CGI characters are puppets. So, like, puppets can be animation in a way, if you think about that. So, yeah, good point, Graham. Yeah, thank you. Up next, oh, yeah, speaking of Muppets,

a great episode of Gayest Episode ever recently about Frogger Rock and you were on it too henry we forgot to mention that right yes i uh guys listen to my gayest episode ever on he-man uh that i did with them about the the gayest episode of original he-man ever and we we talk about the recent masters of the universe netflix show on there too it was it was fun gaying out with my bros, my gay bros on that show. You can hear Henry Unchained without my straight influence. I felt bad we slightly joked around about Bob at the start of it and I felt bad. I heard it, Henry.

But yes, also the one they did about the Fraggle Rock episode about AIDS. I listened to the song from that episode probably like 100 times over that week when I listened to that podcast. Oh man probably like 100 times over that week and when i listened to that podcast like yeah oh man uh those songs are so corny but they still get to me yep yeah it's uh muppets is allowed to be corny you know we there's some shows that if they're corny it's like i miss the cruelty or the satire but like the muppets can be as corny as they want to be

those soft gentle 70s ballads about love and loss. All from like these, you know, stoned out hippies telling you about it. Yeah. Up next, we have C-Lab 2021 Bizarro. Bizarro! We're going to Bizarro

answer this question or reply to this comment. So Robert Denby says, I remember hearing a different version of the Dino footage story on a podcast. Maybe Aisha Tyler's?

Adam Reed was asked to watch Flintstones and flag footage whenever any dinosaur was on screen he asked the supervisor why and was told there'd be a presentation of turner or cartoon network material to a christian group and they wanted to know what episodes had uh the least or no amount of dinosaurs so as not to offend their creationist sensibilities so there you have it yeah that was a story i was recalling where adam reed uh one of the c-lab 2021 guys he was a production assistant just asked to watch like lots of footage and flag things that was one of his jobs like watch every flintstones flag every dinosaur that is great and and all for i mean too you know

uh turner is based in uh georgia so it's it's very believable to me they met with some hardcore christian group or even a a company owned by a strongly Christian person who does not want to see dinosaurs with man on screen. I guess it depends on what kind of creationist you are, right? I suppose so, yeah. But I thought, yeah, I guess, you know, I've seen it mocked a ton. Who knows how much it's really believed. But there was that creationist theme park that's like, you know, humans hanging out with dinosaurs

because that's what the Bible would have said. And they't let you in there ironically yeah yes yeah you better mean this hey that t-shirt's too funny you're not allowed here too clever get out uh and our final comment uh is from alec whitney also about that episode saying i work in an electronics testing lab in seattle so naturally internally it's called the C-Lab. I came in on the ground floor, so I got put in charge of naming all the devices. So of course, they are named things like Murphy, Marco, and Stormy, to more obscure stuff like Peachmo, Stimutac, and Tigerbot. It makes me happy to see the stuff on a regular basis and even internal documentation where these devices' names are on them. Thanks for the great pod, guys, and keep up the awesome work.

I'm so glad that a C-Lab superfan got put in charge of such a powerful and important position by chance at the C-Lab. Yeah, thanks for abusing your power. I only name my hard drives weird things. I need to get back to that. I used to name all my hard drives or files weird things but now it's just i either go with the factory setting or i write like a two-word portmanteau that like i know the name of it but not for other even files weird things still do you do that and entertain yourself i still do that now whenever i name files it really is just like

the audio file where i'm going to play on a simpsons or a what a cartoon so i'll write like homer responds to lisa about this and so that way i know while i'm reading through my notes and can then look at the uh at the vlc that i'm playing the sound out out of like ah that's the right mine are all boring their numbers and in my notes i have play clip one play clip two man that's even better oh and, and by the way, this is Monday. Tuesday's the 31st. Wednesday's the 1st. Thursday's the 2nd.

That's the first day of Adult Swim 20 years ago. How do you like that? September 2nd, that's the 20th anniversary of Adult Swim. The most important 20th anniversary of this year, of 2021. And we'll be retweeting every Adult Swim podcast we've ever made on that day. Yes, and I know there's one left that we haven't covered, but don't worry. It's on the schedule. It's coming.

Don't worry. We might have missed the very start of September, but you, don't worry, guys. It's a coming. But yeah, that's been another episode of Talk to the Audience. To go over everything really quick, once again, Batman, the animated series podcast, Blab and Bout, BTtas happening at the end of october towards the end of the year the end of this month we're having our road to eldorado podcast for ten dollar and up patrons and then the poll for october will be should we do batman uh

revenge of the joker return of the joker there you go uh i was thinking about the revenge of the jedi and return of the jedi the batman beyond movie that's going to be a yes no poll for october well should that be our movie? Let us know if you're a $5 or not patron. But anything else, Henry? No, I mean, and look forward to Mortal Kombat The Journey Begins. Oh yeah, you already said that. Yes. So we're good, yes.

All the good stuff is coming. It's going to be a busy September, so please look forward to everything we've got on the agenda, and we'll see you next time for another episode of Talk to the Audience, and we'll see you next time for another episode of talk to the audience and we'll see you then wow infotainment