Talking Simpsons - Talk To The Audience December 2025

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

We've reached the end of the month, which means it's time for another episode of our community podcast! This time around, we discuss the most recent Simpsons episodes, participate in the Ella McCay challenge, and bemoan the first major delay to hit The Simpsons Movie 2. And, as always, we read and respond to your comments and questions from the last round of episodes. It's all happening on Talk to the Audience: the podcast that promises to give you the most traumatic hose-soaking of your life!

I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoi, ho, everybody, and welcome to talk to the audience where this is always death. I am one of your host, Canada's number one, LMAK Challenge record holder, Bob Mackie, and who is here with me today, as always. I also want to move to Palm Springfield, Henry Gilbert. And yes, this is Talk to the audience. It's our community podcast. It launches at the end of the month on Patreon, the beginning of the month on the free feed. And in this podcast, we talk about Simpsons News, what's happening in our world,

And then we also talk about your questions and comments that were left on the last round of episodes on the Patreon at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. So we're closing out the year this month. There are a few news items, but notably there were a lot of new episodes, four, to be exact, that we need to speak about today. Yeah, just weekly ones and not even a Christmas episode. This wasn't like last year where they had a Christmas two-parter that had to become a Disney Plus original because of Fox scheduling stuff. Like no Christmas episode this year. Maybe that's an Al Jean thing that's now over. I don't know.

Yeah, he seemed to really like going back to the Christmas specials. And if you didn't see that Christmas one last year, it's very well hidden on Disney Plus. So it could be a new episode for you this year. Actually, I don't know how to find it now. Carolyn O'Meena was doing a watch-through in the first tweet or the first post about it was instructions on how to actually reach that episode. I think it's in like season negative. Like you have to do the season drop-down menu on Disney Plus and then go above of season one to exclusives.

That's how I remember getting it last year. It could have changed. Disney Plus is doing a lot of things. Maybe you have to talk with ChatGTP now to get Disney to do it with their official partner. Yeah, I don't know why they are hiding this, but think of it as a fun game that you're playing. I did watch The Family Guy has an original, which is just like, it's the Christmas episode they did this year. It was fine. It was fine. Not that great.

Normally, I actually am more complimentary of Family Guy, but it was basically Family Guy. but it was basically family guy doing a Hallmark Christmas movie recasting the characters and stuff, but it was a lot of lame jokes, honestly. I'm a little tired of that premise. I think we need to move on. I think so, too. Well, also now everybody does the Hallmark movies.

Like, I only know about Netflix's version of the Hallmark Christmas movies because I watched the Trixing Katie video is about them watching like a dozen of them. And the only key difference I can see in the Netflix ones is that they discover the gay people watch them. So they always put like one or two, token gays in their Christmas specials, which you would never see in a Hallmark one. And that's why Candice Cameron fled that network. It's right. She would never take

that deal. It would be in front to her religion. We need a respect it now more than ever. Absolutely. So let's talk about these new episodes. I normally, these are hit or miss with me, but I mostly enjoyed all of these this month. The first one was the Day of the Jackup. So in this episode, Mr. Burns built his own version of the Las Vegas sphere, known in the episode as the Circulus. And Lisa learns about the realities of modern concert ticket sales when she wants to see a K-pop group perform there. So we get a little bit of burns up front.

We get a little bit of Lisa being a K-pop fan. A lot of it does seem like 50 and 60-year-old writers are like, K-pop, what is this? One of them had to take their granddaughter to a K-pop show and was confused by it, not even daughter. But it's nice to see The Simpsons tackling what is becoming very popular in the West. Although I will say, I mostly enjoy this episode. This episode does feature extremely heinously bad motion capture CGIi that I really hope does not become the norm.

It is some of the worst-looking things I've ever seen on this show. And when it first popped up, I was like, oh, God, this is awful. I hope it's just an experiment. And then when you watch over the credits, they're like, here's how we made this. And I feel like some producer must be very, very proud of the abomination they put on the screen. I cannot possibly convey how bad it is via my English language here. You just need to watch the clips because it looks like essentially Simpsons hit and run character models dancing around on the screen.

I wonder if it was them working with any of the stuff they got out of epic to make all the Fortnite things they did with the characters. Like was it running on Unreal 5? I guess they're up to now. I just was wondering, I mean, I understand some of these are shortcuts and it's hard to make a television show like this that airs every week for the most part. But cartoons started by making characters dance.

Have we forgotten how to draw characters dancing? I mean, money-wise, probably their director or the animation team was like, you want us to do three original songs at the sphere, like at his parody of the sphere. So they took a shortcut, a big shortcut that was, yes, incredibly like, it's also why like even in Fortnite, when they're working at the top of their game to make a Simpsons body in three-dimensional polygonal space, there's just something like Marge and Homer's neck just doesn't look right

and this wasn't as nice as the Fortnite stuff. It looks shockingly bad and something tells me we have not seen the end of this and I'm kind of scared of a future in which The Simpsons is just the mocap show. Oh, yeah, this will be remembered like how Radioactive Man was the first digital episode and then six seasons later, seven seasons later,

they go all digital. Will this be the same? I don't want to be all doom and gloom. If I had produced this episode and I saw what came out of it, I would say, okay, that was a experiment. It was a failure. Let's move on and not do this again. But clearly somebody, like I said, thought like, wow, look at what we can do.

Let's show everybody how we made it. And it's just like they made it exactly how you think they made it. They put mocap stuff on a few dancers. And then they translated that into CGI characters. It just, it looks really bad. There's a bad CGI audience, too. Oh, yeah. I feel like The Simpsons is looking more and more like Bob's Burgers.

And I don't like where this is going. Well, and this is the first of production season 37. so it also just feels like they're trying out new things at the start of the season. It was interesting to see them. Well, first, I think all four, or at least three of the four, their titles are like the fifth time they've done a parody title of this. Like Day of the Jack and Hapes, it already comes to mind of Day of the Jack Up for this one. Yeah. I did notice, even though Al Jean is gone, maybe he's still pitching episode titles because these are all things from like the 30s and the 60s and the 70s.

Because up next we have Ant Misbehavin, I guess a parody of Ain't Misbehaven. I guess a parody of 8 misbehaving. Which already was the Octoplets episode title was 8 misbehaving. Oh, okay, yes. I feel like we should outlaw episode parody titles once they've already been hit. But, I mean, when you have 800, you got to go back to some familiar ones. So in this one, Selma becomes the supervisor of the DMV. Patty goes over her head to have Homer declared dead.

And what follows is a rift between the twins that sees Patty heading to Palm Springfield and Selma hooking up with a lame new boyfriend played by Stephen Tobolowski. And in this episode, Patty gets a new haircut, which persists to the next episode. So I would say it's a modern lesbian haircut. That's the best way to describe it. I liked this episode as a good, like, modern-ish gay episode because I have visited Palm Springs. I have a couple. We have some friends in Palm Springs.

And I've said before, the fun thing in Palm Springs is that me and my 40s is a gay bear, I feel young. It's many older people move there. And it's like 90% in my experience, white, older gay men. but there's a smattering of lesbians there, too, who also are like older retiring lesbians like Patty, and now Patty gets a modern lesbian-like side cut, I guess you'd call it,

given her by Julio. I refuse to believe that Palm Springs is real because Henry did not post one picture of his week there. I know I posted the pick of me posing under the Marilyn Monroe thing. I didn't go this year. I only went last year. It's well-observed the Palm Springs in this, though. It also is so hot.

Patty is right. Why are people who get hot flashes moving to Palm Springs? It's a fucking day. It's so hot. They have to have their pride parade in November because it is too hot to be outside that long for parade in the summer. I think it's perfect because it encourages shirtlessness. Oh, sure, yes. And, hey, I appreciate that, isn't it?

It's also like not only does Patty separate herself more from Selma, but also at the end of the episode, they now live in separate apartments across the street from each other, but they don't live together anymore. Yeah, it's like next door in the same building, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, they are still, they're basically going to be the same. But it wasn't interesting like, no, we wanted to slightly change Patty and Selma once giving them an episode where Julie Kavner had to do a lot of voice work in it as well. And even though Julie's Marge has her ups and downs, she's aging, I feel like she has just naturally settled into Patty and Selma with her regular speaking voice.

So they don't seem off to me. And I love seeing these characters feature. They still got it. In 2026, we'll be, I think. That's when we'll be covering the Patty coming out episode, which hasn't each great. So it's nice to see that this feels like a modern queer story for Patty that actually like feels, I think, legitimately queer for her. I think so. And up next we have the third episode.

Guess who's coming to Skinner? Obviously it features Principal Skinner. This is really the 800th episode, by the way. Don't listen to Fox's Lies or Disney's Lies. This is the 800th episode produced, period. They're going to celebrate the 800th one in February. but that is not the 800th episode. Wow, that's an even bigger.

It was three episode difference for the 300th episode when we covered that one. Like the Tony Hawk one, they make the joke in the episode that is 303, not 300. But this one, that sounds like it's going to be like a 10 episode

or at least five to 10 episode difference between 800 and real 800. Yes, I'm not sure what the story is there, why they want to celebrate another episode, perhaps whatever one they're celebrating as the 800th has a lot more guests than just Kieran Culkin. an Oscar winner, Kieran Kalkin.

I loved that recent movie he was in. Yeah, the Holocaust, the tour thing, right? Is it called a real pain? That sounds right. I didn't see it. You logged it on a letterbox. I have not seen it. Yes. Sorry, it's called a real pain, and it is very good. And Kier Kalkin does a good job. He's a child actor who was like Lisa's age when the show debuted as well, or even maybe younger.

We all remember him drinking the Pepsi in Home Alone. Peeing off screen in the bed. Actually, I did want to say that in the day. of the jackups. I did also like the Padgette Brewster was in it, I think playing, I've never watched Criminal Minds, but I think it's a play on her criminal minds character as the profiler

she plays in that episode. Yeah, we're about to get a succession parody coming up here soon. I think that's the parody that's coming up around the corner and I have not seen a frame of that show. But they already did that succession parody, the one with John Lithgow and Paul F. Topkins were in that too. Like they also did, they're

going to do a second one? That's crazy. No, sorry, I'm thinking of something else because these are two shows I always confuse because they begin with the letter S and a lot of people watch them and they're on Apple TV. What's the other S show? Severance. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, you could all yell at me. I know the shows have nothing in common, but

I always get them confused. It's because my brain is dying. But it was nice to see a Skinner focused episode where Harry Shearer was trying, I'd say. I think he was trying. Yes, I like this one because it's hard to find new stories for these characters, right? And this one is essentially asking, what if Skinner became a dad? and what if his son was a bad boy like Bart? And I feel like a lot of new things came out of this, even though it had kind of like a funky resolution.

I just like seeing a spotlight for Skinner and him out of his comfort zone in this new situation that they really have not done in 40 years. And they had to like move Agnes out of the house for the episode two with some excuse, right? Because otherwise this story couldn't have happened with Skinner. Yes, I forget why, but Agnes was out of the picture. So I did like that one.

Yeah. The next one I was kind of iffy about because they do a change, but then there's not a whole lot of pop and circumstance behind this change. So it's called parahormonal activity, a title that's hard to say. And it ages everybody up around five or so years, five to seven or eight years, just to tell a tale of Marge's paramenopause, Homer's erectile dysfunction, and Bart's internet porn addiction. So I guess it signals the aging up of the characters with a couch gag, but then you're just kind of in that world. We're not exploring, oh, what is the world like in five to seven years?

The show is acting as if, okay, this is just a normal Simpsons, but everyone's a little bit older because we can't tell these stories about the characters unless we do this to their age. Yeah, it feels almost like a pitch of, could this, like, be multiple episodes? Could we just, like, live in these stories with these characters? And you see Marge age from, we've talked many times about, like, what is canonical age of them? but in the couch gag, you see March Celebrator 38th birthday up to her 43rd, which, you know, is our age.

And I am assuming it makes, because they're both called teenagers, it would make Bart 15 and Lisa 13, I think. So they would both be teenagers two years apart. And yeah, I mean, I love the idea that like, well, Bart's like all teenagers, is constantly looking at pornography and you just have to pretend you're not seeing it. And there might be some weird Japanese stuff in there. They will really confuse you. Yeah, although they know it's weird to just say Bart watches porn, so they have a very funny euphemism. I think they call it adult online romance content or something like that. Yes, yeah.

Yeah. And Lindsay Lohan is in this episode. Guestar for the first time on The Simpsons playing Maggie. But again, not a lot of ceremony behind Maggie can talk. But here she's just saying four or five lines. And she doesn't not really have a story outside of being like an excitable little kid. I really noticed that, though, that when this has always been in the flash forwards that like, Maggie will, for example, in Lisa's wedding,

she'll almost talk and then be silenced by something and won't talk. They refuse to ever talk. In Lisa's president, Future One, Maggie is in outer space as an astronaut and can't talk there either. And in this one, and this is in so many of them, Maggie is about to talk at Marge's like, ooh, no, Maggie, shush, you're a laryngitis, you need to rest your voice. And I think you are supposed to think, oh, well, that's why Maggie's not going to talk this episode. And she talks. So I think it felt like a statement to me of, no, forget that old rule.

Maggie will talk in flash forwards now. Yeah, I think that joke didn't get me because for some reason I did see that Lindsay Lohan was going to play Maggie on this one. I thought, oh, Maggie talks now? Okay, sure. I did take it as a like, I maybe am forgetting in another future one where Maggie talks, but I feel like they had avoided it up until now for 37 seasons. And with this flash forward having Maggie talk, like a rule has been broken. It also does feel like a, my Matt Selman, and I'm in charge now,

and Al Jean can't stop me from having. Maggie talk kind of thing. I wonder if it's that. Yeah. And I think it's also a case of the writers aging, their children aging, but Homer and Marge, they stay in their late 30s forever. Bart and Lisa stay 10 and 8 forever. So this is a chance to talk about their life experiences as they age in real time, which the Simpsons are not doing. So my kids have grown up. Here's what they're into. I've experienced menopause or my wife has. My penis has stopped working. I know someone's penis. I know the owner of a penis that stopped working. I had not heard about all these specifics with Perry Benaport. pause. I did like the gag that Marge has very little support for it, but the second Homer's dick stop working, there's a million medical treatments that are ready to save him and get his dick going again. Homer then also takes, well, not estrogen like he does in a classic season four episode. He overdoses on the male drugs and has to take some of March's female drugs to even things out. Yes. As also, Ned is showing off his buff body and has a new wife who, I can't even remember if they name her in the episode. I forget on that one, but yes. Could this be,

oh, and right, you put in there, there was another returning character I totally forgot. Oh, right, completely missed that. Artie Ziff, just to sexually harassed Marge, or actually not sexually harassed Marge, because she's worried about aging, and Artie Ziff no longer really finds her attractive anymore. That gets my award of the month of overly animated scene of the month that I'm going to start naming on these. Like, he, yeah, he moves so much. A lot of head bobs. Sorry, go ahead, Henry. No, he's moving so much. It's like he's made out of Mercury Artie Ziff. Too much, too much.

That's not the kind of animation I want to see on the show. But it's nice to hear John Levitt's screaming, as he does every day waiting for that critic reboot. One of these days, he'll get that small amount of money that you get for streaming shows these days. I mean, he'll probably be the highest paid actor on it, I'm sure, but still. He's getting a big old pay cut from the ABC days. It's not broadcast TV anymore.

So those are the new episodes. We also have mentions of other new content to talk about. So Disney Plus released an hour-long Simpsons Yule Log in the new tradition of IP-based eulogs, which aren't very good. There's some very, very minor animations that happen throughout, but honestly, I found this very disappointing. And the DVD menus are like a studio jibbley movie

compared to what you see in this. At a certain point, the stockings fall down, and it feels like someone just clicked and dragged them off the screen. It's very, very cheap looking. So cheap, yes, Scott. The animation for just one of the deleted scene packages on a Simpson season 11 DVD has more of a budget than this hour-long Yule log. It doesn't even have music.

Like, it's just crackling fire, probably free sound effect they got. It's like Matt Grainning and his team, Matt Selman, they could have come up with something really funny to do with this, but this just feels like somebody rubber-stamped like you can make a Yulog, who cares? Yeah, I feel like this was not made by an animation department. This is sent off to like a promotional department to put together or something like that. It is really cheap. We've seen many a Yulog released.

basically every streaming site, but this is on the cheaper side, I have to say. I will say, though, even though it's an hour long, I did watch some of the Fallout TV show Goulog. It includes an intro with Walton Goggins, and it has a bit of dialogue from the Radio New Vegas DJ played by Wayne Newton, just like in the video game. So that is a series that is out.

I really need to start watching, and Henry, if you want to support weekly rollouts, you've got to start watching Fallout. It's a weekly rollout. It's everything you wanted. No, I have. Oh, good. I watched the new fallout. I forgot to actually log it in the notes here, but yes, I watched the season two premiere fallout.

And if a second episode is out, I haven't watched that yet. But I am staying weekly and current with Fallout. You got to support these small-time shows on little places like Prime Video or else I'll never make it. Yeah, I support the weekly rollout. Right now, my wife and I are catching up with Squid Game at the season that launched in the summer. So once that's over, I think we'll get to fallout. It seems reasonable to just watch one a week. So, yes, I don't like these corporate eulogs. If you go on YouTube, you can find any number of eulogs. Ones that even aired on TV like in the 70s and 80s, custom ones with your favorite music, there is no shortage of eulogs, and they are all very, very long.

Some are just 24-hour eulog stream. So I appreciate that IP is getting in on this, although I wish they would make it a little more special. Yeah, I would rather watch the Beavis and Butthead one put so much more effort into their eulog than the Simpsons one did. Agreed. So in other news, we have the Simpsons. The Simpsons movie, too, is being delayed from July 23, 2027 to September 3rd, 27. That is the Friday before Labor, don't, I mean, excuse me, Labor Day. And also, how foolish.

Three days before my birthday. Yeah, they moved it out of summer. I definitely saw a few people mention to me that, like, this seems to indicate Disney has lower their expectations for it by getting it out of summer and putting it into September. Will this ruin Henry's 45th birthday? Yeah, will it be hanging over me the whole time? hope not. It'll never match my boy, 38th, no, 37th birthday, way in 2019, when Spider-Man for the PlayStation and Dragon Quest 11 were both released. And I was like playing them back-to-back all month. That was one of the best releasing things on my birthdays that I can recall.

Well, this is the movie that will accompany you to the wrong side of your 40s, so I hope it's good. I'll already be there, so I'll have no choice. You'll let me know how it goes. And I want a credit on Blue Sky, a reply from the account Slime Siren, who I think figured out a reason it was moved, maybe the main reason. July 23rd of 27 is just got announced as the release date for a Minecraft movie 2. So it could just be they like, you know, realize that's too stiff a competition and they want to get away from Minecraft. Yeah, no amount of spider pigs can compete with chicken jockey. We've learned this the hard way. Will movie theaters survive a second chicken jockey wave of mania?

I want to know. The theaters are dying, but they also want the kids to come in to destroy it with chicken jockey. So it's like it's a double-sided blade there for them. Yeah, we're going to tear this place down anyway, so just go nuts. As long as you're buying the expensive chicken jockey popcorn bucket, you can throw the popcorn inside of it wherever you want. And yes, so we're looking forward to that. And no other news. There's been no reporting as to why there was delay.

We can speculate, but as more news happens, we will report on it. But one movie that wasn't delayed and did come in. out is Ella McKay. And while audiences don't seem to like it very much, two people do. Marge Simpson and her daughter, Lisa, because they were just seen in a promo beaming about the new James L. Brooks

movie that Julie Kavaner just happens to be in. And that promo features no jokes. It's just two people who love Ella McKay, and even though they are a Simpsons character in a Simpsons world, the actual photograph poster of Ella McKay is behind them, even though they made a

Simpsonized version of that poster for promotion, they thought you were too stupid to realize what Margin Lisa were seeing. It's one of the worst promotional things the Simpsons has ever created. It's so bad. I mean, I don't even want to play it for the list. Maybe we could. I don't know. Some might even not realize this happened, because nobody paid attention to anything with Elamakee, I think. Yeah, it doesn't live anywhere. You have to search it out, and it's not like on YouTube or anything, but essentially it's just Marginleasa, they're leaving L.M. McKay. Lisa's like, it's my favorite movie ever. And Marge is telling her,

now, calm down, Lisa. It was fairly good. And then by the end of the conversation, Marge is like, yes, let's see it again. And they go back in. They say the last line of the movie, which, yeah. Well, and so Bob, I'm going to surprise you here. I did go see Ella McKay. I didn't log it in Letterbox. You son of a bitch.

I didn't log it in Letterbox to surprise you on the podcast. I don't know what was a bigger waste of time, Avatar or that, but you saw this for the podcast, so I respect that decision. Well, you know, so here's what happened. I listen to the blank check about it. And the blank check review was also my kind of review of like, I now will log in the letterbox now that my surprise on Bob is done is it's a two and a half

star at best, but it is like this type of movie never happens anymore. And it was only in theaters really for like a week before it swept away. I kind of wanted to see it just to be like, well, this is the end of something. And I want to be there for it. I respect that. I mean, while I thought it was a much better movie than I assume Ella McKay is, I'm going to be an ignorant fool and just assume it's not as good. I did really like juror number two for the same reason. They don't make this kind of movie anymore. This is Clint Eastwood at the end of his career.

I want to go and support this. And then it ended up being very good. Yeah, Ella McKay feels like five movies that got cut down into one movie. And it is so weird. The flashbacks, it does something that like mystery science theater does or made fun of. I think it was Future War or Laser Blast. They would like have a flashback. And then they'd say like the present, but then they'd flash back again.

Like this is like, well, that's right. It's 2008. But then things really happened when she was 16. I was like, wait, I'm already getting used to this being said in 2008. Now it's eight years before, 16 years before that. It's so confusing. Yeah, I did hear the blank check podcast about it. It sounds like a movie I would not really enjoy.

Although I got the gist of what it was trying to do, what it was trying to say. It does feel like James O. Brooks is in touch, but also wildly out of touch in many different ways, which if you're an 85 man, you can ever be in touch in any small way, that is a victory. And I also say this to say, I say, I slightly forgive that promotional short because Ella McKay is who James L. Brooks thinks Lisa would grow up to be. Like she is a 2008 Lisa. I like in the Selman years that I think Lisa has written more to the left,

but the Ella McKay is pre-Obama liberal processes austerity Lisa, who would be like there's a bit where Ella McKay complains like that one, she did not want to legalize pot in 2008. she ran heavily against it. She wants to only create programs that businesses can buy into so it doesn't create things for stack payers. She gets mad at a police officer only because he illegally uses his overtime, which will waste taxpayer dollars in a recession. Like, she's a bummer. She is bummer, Lisa, is kind of her thing.

Yeah, that's what I heard. It sounds like that was, I'm not sure if it was in his intent, but the direction he naturally went running a character like that. He's very much what I think Brooks thinks of Lisa. And again, I'll say the dad stuff in it, shitty dad stuff in it, and her getting used to shitty dad and childhood trauma stuff with that, it still didn't kind of get me. Like the last scene she has with Woody Harrelson, I really liked. And I was like, why wasn't this the movie?

Why do this have to be about like a governor in an unnamed state? Why couldn't it just be a family drama with none of this governor bullshit? It does sound very much like Springfield and that you don't know where LMAK is. Yes, yeah. Also, oh, and one other I think, Simpsons related, Julie Kavner is in, and she is very limitedly used. She's the narrator for no reason. But what's really strange is,

I think these were filmed like three years apart, at least two years apart. She looks in bad shape in the older footage, like she's a little heavier than she normally is. She's moving slow. And then in the stuff that seemingly was filmed in the last six months for a new ending, she looks much better.

And like she's lost weight and seems to be like doing better health-wise. So it was interesting, too. I remember from the Blank Check podcast Griffin said he got a script of L.A. McKay years before came out. It was shot a long time ago. And I guess the Julie Kabbner narrator stuff, those were reshoots. Yeah. Where she came in later to appear in person as the narrator. Yes, you can really tell that, like, I can't say which definitely was filmed before the other.

But they are Julie Kavana at two very different times in her life. Like she looks quite different when she is the office assistant for her as governor versus there's a slight time. skip for the epilogue and Julie Kavanaugh looks very different in the epilogue and my assumption is that the epilogue was filmed most recently. Yeah. Well, I mean, I guess that Julie Kavanaugh recently lost her husband of like 40 years. So I feel like maybe she was going through some stuff that affected her mental health, physical appearance and maybe with the reshoot, she's better shape. Yeah, it made me happy that she seems to be doing better, you know, and that it at least makes her and Jim Brooks happy to be doing stuff together. So I'm happy for them in that way.

I have yet to see How do you know is the only Brooks film I haven't seen at this point now And I'm scared to But apparently it's definitely better than how do you know I've heard That's what I've heard That's what I've heard

So that was a real element K jump scare from Henry Was not expecting that Sorry, yes I was like you know it'll be fun As I was about to log it I was like you know It'll be fun to surprise Bob with this

On the podcast So Also James L Brooks News He got a star on the Walk of Fame I apparently know Simpsons people were there are Simpsons producers or voice actors or writers. And to promote the movie, Brooks that had read at AMA,

and by the way, I thought this was fake. I was seeing screen captures from this because James L. Brooks writes in all caps. I assume because he's 85 years old and can't see. So he's like, here come the big letters. I have heard he lies about his age, too, and he's older than what the public knows about him. His AMA, the only Simpsons-related questions,

seemingly it shows that the last Simpsons he remembers was season two or season three. I think of his. He's asked, like, what's your favorite episode? He names Lisa's Substitute, and the only specific he has on it is his experience of recording Yardley Smith with Dustin Hoffman in person in New York, which he did direct. So that's no wonder he remembers it. And he also said he loves all the characters, but Lisa is his favorite.

And not surprising because Ella McKay is Lisa, like she's very similar. Yeah, I was looking over this AMA, and it's clear that at some point, James L. Brooks is writing things, but another point, it sounds like an assistant might be. taking his dictation because with the James L. Brooks' response is it's like your grandpa is emailing you. Yes. And then an assistant took over and pressed cap lock off and started replying from dictation. Very cute. But yes, you know what? Even though L. M. McKay is not for me. And I don't like how they're using The Simpsons as a promotional tool, which is why Disney bought the damn characters. Good for James L. Brooks. He deserves a win. Yeah. I mean, it was a huge flop. It didn't do good in

theaters. But who cares? Like, these movies never come out in theaters anymore. It's sad they don't. Like, I think Brooks also like the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Not one Simpsons person I saw there. It was mainly taxi cast members there. The surviving cast of taxi. Well, actually, I guess when I say taxi cast members, I think I just mean Danny DeVito and the woman who never forgets things. And I forget. Mary Lou Hennar. Yes. Yeah. She'll never forget that day. Where was Tony Danza? The country wants to know. I don't know. Woody Harrelson and Jamie Lee Curtis were there. Oh, yeah. And in an A.m. Somebody asked him like, why did you cast Emma Mackey is Ella McKay and he's like I got attached to the name and when we cast her I didn't want

to change it. That's all. Listen, yeah, when you're old, you can only remember so many names, right? Yes. His Conan O'Brien interview I was listening to, it's kind of fun. Brooks is very sharp for a man in his late 80s, I would say. And his only memories of Conan are of like Conan pitching. We get to hear the Conan and Brooks experience of the story Al Jean and Conan related of. Conan pitches three episodes in the same day and all get bought by James O'Brooks, which apparently never happened again at the pitch meetings. And then he immediately leaves. Yeah, he goes, my job is done.

Time to work on. I'll do anything. My sure-to-be-hit follow-up to broadcast news. And Conan is off to be on a talk show for 30 years. Yes, yeah. Meanwhile, Al Jean, they can't get rid of him. Nope. He's still, you know, he's asking if he can sweep up after a writer's room session.

He's bringing donuts every morning. He had wrapped up on the critic, but they still can't get him out of there. So let's move on to our news. And I know everyone's been looking forward to this. We're proud to announce that we're kicking off January with listener catch-up week. So that means we are taking the first full week of January off on the Patreon and the second full week of January off on the free feed because of the way our content is staggered.

So it's not the first week you'll see on the calendar. It's the first full week on Patreon. Second full week on the free feed. And that is the week of the fourth on Patreon, the week of the fourth on Patreon, the week of the 11th on the free feed. And as usual, we are posting bonuses to both the Patreon and the free feeds. If you're in the free feeds, you will get some things you've never heard before that are behind the paywall. And if you're a $5 patron, you will get something that is behind the $10 paywall. If you're on the $10 paywall, we just say thank you. We'll do a little dance for you if you call us up

on Zoom. This has become a tradition for us. Our listeners are used to it now. We take the start of the year off after a long December. I wasn't trying to make a reference there. And it's easy to believe that we are taking the time off after that long December. I think people are going to enjoy hearing the, what a cartoon movie and the mini series that were posted on that week. And as you call it, Coim Bob, listener catchup week, it's often because when we take those weeks off, we've seen comments from people saying, good, I can finally listen to the last two movies.

I haven't had time for you. Thank God you guys shut up for once. I can finally hear you guys talk about Totoro and Peewee this month. Yeah, I mean, behind the curtain, we had some major catching up to do because of sicknesses and travel and injuries. So December was really, really, really packed. And it's great to have that week of no content to get ahead of things even more. So we appreciate your patience. And please catch up. We implore you. There's no way you're ahead on everything. It's impossible. And we're going to take a nice little week to ourselves of not recording things into the new year

after today. Today is our own little personal break that is not related to travel, injury, or illness. Yes. Thank God. So there will be, you know, what a cartoon in January. We'll be back. in February covering a new show more about that later. Let's talk about our mini-series that are available if you're a Patreon at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. We have the Talking Future on episode, Nutopia, which is an early 2010's look at gender. No, don't go anywhere. Wait. Wait, I can explain. It's perfectly fine. Actually, I know a lot of people hate this episode. We found it dated in an okay way, but also still very funny. So I'm looking forward to chat about that and seeing what people think about Newtopia as we're a lot more informed about topics when it comes to gender.

Yeah, yeah, for a 2011 episode, I think pretty all right on that topic. Can I say that as a cis man, of course? Yes, we have to say that when we disclose any information. Yes, yeah. I like Pee-E-Hurman, and I say that as a cis man. My favorite RPG is Earthbound, a cis man opinion, I know. Editors have to cut it out at a certain point, but I try to ask them to keep it in it. So, yes, Nutopia is our discussion for Talking Futurama that week, and then that month, rather, and then we're moving on the Talking of the Hill, the episode, Hanky-panky. If you don't know what that is, it is, it is the...

the first part of a two-part murder mystery on King of the Hill, one of the best two-parters they've ever done. I'm really looking forward to getting to this as someone who really enjoys mysteries and really loves this particular selection of episodes. So look forward to that in January. Yeah, it's a great two-parter and their first two-parter that wasn't a cliffhanger for the season. It's like a mid-season two-parter. It's an interesting like wrap up of a long running storyline since like season one of King of the Hill. And for What a Cartoon movie for our $10 and up patrons, we are covering Sleeping Beauty because January is always the time when we cover a classic Disney film. We've covered things like Pinocchio and Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and Dumbo.

This is another classic that, frankly, I have never seen because another sleeping princess, what? I got Snow White here, buddy. Write a new story, why don't you? I'm going to find out what this movie's about. I know Maleficent's floating around. There's a dragon. There's some fairies. It's going to be a blast.

And it's really pretty. Oh, gorgeous Mary Blair looking movie. I think full of classical music that once I later heard it, I was like, oh, I thought this song was, I thought, I know you. I thought that song was original for Sleeping Beauty, not like an ancient opera. No, I love Chikovsky. I just saw The Nutcracker. I'll talk about that later, but this movie is full of Chikovsky. I'm looking forward to learning about it, too.

It's been a good while since I've watched it in full. And that song you were singing, Henry, that is the Sleeping Beauty Waltz. He was a big Sleeping Beauty fan himself. That's nice. Okay, thank you for telling me it was Chekowski. I was like, man, it was one of those old guys. I don't know. Bach.

Listen, Bob Mackey is a guy who loves waltzes. That's a secret about me. I love waltzes. I don't know how to waltz, but they're just so pretty. And I've got a big collection of them on the old hard drive. So if you want to talk waltzes, I can keep up a conversation for about five minutes. Waltz's and polka. It's a month of murder mysteries and waltzes.

If only a Nutopia had, if you were into the Star Trek episode is parodying, then you would cover all of the Bob bases. That's true. that's true. It's going to be a good month regardless. So let's talk about what we've been playing and watching that's not necessarily related to what we're covering on the shows. And just a few games for me as I close out the year. I finally started Death Stranding, the first one, not the second one that came out this year. I had a rough time with it initially because I was playing it on a PS4 Pro.

And every time I loaded up the game, it sounded like my PS4 Pro was about to launch off into outer space. So that was very distracting. It was also at a time I was traveling a lot to see my then-fiancee now. wife. So it was not a really great time to play an open world game. But now I've been able to sit with it for 25 hours. I'm having a really great time. And to be fair, the first three to four hours of the game are extremely rough. They make you think like the game will be this adversarial the entire time. But if you play just a little more beyond that, you get access to a number of tools and vehicles and other items that will really help you trudge around with a bunch of crap strap to you. And I'm having a lot of fun with this. I feel like I'm going to spend a very

long time with that because I'm very obsessed with leveling up all of the delivery bases and getting all the special gifts they give you and working on my delivery rating and all that stuff. But yeah, I will get around to playing the second one when it comes out for PC. For now, I'm having a great time and the director's cut looks really gorgeous on my gaming PC. It's a spectacular looking game as well. I could see in 2019 a story about being distant from people and having no physical contact with them and only talking through screens. It's hard for you in a long distance relationship. Yes. But then 2020 happened. I had time for Death Stranding, but then

it's like, well, Death Stranding is just going to remind me of me going to Trader Joe's every three days and hauling home 80 pounds of garbage. Man, that feeling I became a Death Stranding fan this year, like big, big fan. I also finished director's cut and then three months later just plowed through

Death Stranding too. So I love Death Stranding this year. And it was this crazy feeling of like that adversarial gameplay of the first few hours. I was so close to bouncing, and then it felt like how when you get to the peak of a mountain in the game, but also in real life when you're hiking and you're like, whew, I made it. Oh, this is wonderful. I feel awesome. I was like, Kojima, you did it. But you crazy bastard, you did it.

Never count them out. Yeah, I feel as a Kojima fan for the most part, I felt bad that I missed this, or at least I gave it a try and I bounced off. And then this year, you probably heard it on talk to the audience. I played through Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, and 3 again. And I thought, man, I should get around playing dust training. I love his, game so much. And I love this one too. So looking forward to the director's cut of two, whatever form it takes when they re-release it for other platforms. I also replayed Super Mario Galaxy, the first one, because Nintendo remade it again this time in a good way. It's in 4K. It's in 60 frames per second. I was playing it on my Switch 2. And Henry and I were on a podcast about

Mario Galaxy on Retronauts probably like five to seven years ago. So we talked a lot about it on there. But yes, a fantastic game, well worth revisiting. It does not feel like an 18-year-old game and frankly I would love to see Nintendo make a Mario Galaxy 3 because I love Odyssey. Got a lot of fun out of Odyssey, but when I go back to Odyssey, playing it is kind of tedious because you have to like check a map and you have to like search for the objectives and search for the content. I like the very, very direct approach of Mario Galaxy. It's sort of like the anti-open world Mario, but in a 3D environment. So maybe we're getting a Mario Galaxy movie next year that could inspire the production of another game in that style. Who knows?

but I had so much fun with it, playing it over again. I think this is the third time maybe I played through. I love that game. I skipped this one because I was kind of underwhelmed by the 3D All-Stars remake and didn't give this a chance. Your endorsement makes me want to pull it back out. I love Galaxy and Galaxy 2. Galaxy 2 is one of my favorite gaming review experiences back when I was a game reviewer.

It was every second was fun, and I also felt like I was fighting upstream in my office because everybody, and these are really, also great games. Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect 2. I think Mass Effect 2 is amazing, but I still felt like I was fighting upstream to be like, guys, Mario Galaxy 2 is like the best game to play. Like it is the gamiest game this year.

Everybody should be talking about it. Yeah, I also grab that one and I'm looking forward to playing that again because I've only played it once and it was at a very bad time in my life. So now that I'm much happier and more comfortable and willing to go back to these games that I barely remember, I'm looking forward to going back to that.

So that's just it. And I don't know, Henry, you brought this up earlier. We could talk about notable games we played this year. For the record, I'm very proud of myself for spending this much time on games. I have now finished 62

video games this year. Now, before you judge me, keep in mind, I also host a video game podcast. It's very important. But also, I made it my goal to play more games

this year, many different kinds of games, especially shorter games. So I would say a good, like, 25 of the games on my games I finish list are three hours and under.

Some are like 90 minutes. And I love those experiences. too. So you can easily play that many games if you also seek out shorter ones. And I feel like I did not play any big 100-hour games this year. So that's why I had time so many other games, a lot of DLC and things like that. And also catching up with like older things I haven't gotten around to playing yet. So even though I played 62 games in 2025, I feel like 10 of those were from the year 2025. You had mentioned that to me before we recorded. And yeah, when I was trying to think of my own, I made a list of the games that I rolled credits on this year that were released in the year

2025. And for me, it's only 11 games. But, like, half of them are games I played for over 50 hours or close to it. Like Patees to Death Stranding to the Assassin's Creed Shadows. I completely forgot about Assassin's Creed Shadows. But then a couple were pretty short, like, to a T. I was like, oh, right, I beat that game, didn't I? That. Well, you're saying this is a good game to mention? It's one of ten games. It certainly is one of ten games. Two a T, stinkeruni. I got to say, I'm really sad.

It didn't work out for Kato Takahashi, but I'm also very sad that game came out so poorly because people I really like are involved in it. And it just was broken in a mess. And I feel people that played it and liked it played like a chapter. We're like, well, this is great. So imaginative. But I dare you to play through the entire thing. That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, I loved hearing Rebecca Sugar's song over and over again. That was great. But, yeah, I kept waiting for the game. game to kick into gear. I was like, so this, and then when it ends, I'm like, wait, no, I thought you were just the beginning. It's over? Like, it also just feels like a guy running away from like a

half-finished project. He's like, oh yeah, I wash the dishes, runs away. Dishes are half clean, like, yeah. No, there's still pizza stuck on this two at T. Get back here. For me, my top three were, it was Death Stranding 2, and I think I'm going to say Death Stranding 2 is my number 1. And then probably Hades 2

is second, but I'd put it between those two kind of flip-flop for me. I'd love. loved both of them so much. And then Donkey Kong Bonanza right behind them. Like those are my top three for the year. Yeah, I wrote down five, and I guess I have no real order. These are just like non-obvious ones I wanted to call out. While I enjoyed things like Donkey Kong Bonanza,

I wanted to call out some ones that people might have missed. Although that would be like in my top three if I were to include it. So I would call out the 100-line Last Defense Academy as a really great game I played this year. I'm glad it was a success. The creators have said this is probably going to be the largest video game project that did not use AI. the last one that never used AI. That's their stance on it.

It's like, please enjoy this while it lasts, because this is the last game with this much human involvement you'll ever play in terms of sheer writing. Oh, that's a depressing thought. Oh, boy. Also, something people might have missed is the Star Cross World DLC

for Kirby and the Forgotten Land. My favorite Kirby game of, I guess, 21st century was Kirby in the forgotten land. And the Star Cross DLC was so good. It's just a reworking of a bunch of existing levels, but the gameplay is so great. They add enough twists. they add enough new geometry.

It's like three to five hours. Some people thought it was a little too brief. I really just love going back to that world and also getting the Switch 2 upgrade and seeing everything shine in 4K and 60 FPS. That game is so good, looking forward to whatever the next Kirby game is going to be because we're coming up on the fourth year.

This has been out. This is a 2022 game. Well, Bob, we must have both played Kirby Airwriters to death, right? Like, no. No, no, no. I tried the demo, and I thought, well, God be with you, Sakurai. Yeah. You know, I downloaded that but I haven't played. I loved forgotten land as well when it came out. It is also, I think it is my favorite modern Kirby game. Like it's like The Last of Us, but also he bores a car. Like it's perfect. Mike Mitchell, who I hooked up with a Nintendo Switch 2, he was mentioning to me in a text like, man, there's nothing to play after I'd be Donkey Kong. And I keep telling him, get this game. Like, you will love this game. He loves Mario Odyssey and other Nintendo platforms. I'm like, this is awesome. You should play.

this. Did you hear back from him? I still don't think he has got it yet, unfortunately. I'm going to have to send him more text. Somebody set it to the set into the set of twisted metal. I think I'm going to have to just gift it to him and be like, look, here's the code. All right? Play it, please. And one more game I'll mention. It's a big game. Again, I love Bonanza. I love some of the bigger games from this year. This is also a big game, but I feel like maybe not getting enough attention. That's Indiana Jones in the Great Circle. And it recently got DLC. I've heard news of sequels coming or a sequel coming, but it is the best Indiana Jones game. Troy Baker is. is a madman for being able to emulate Harrison Ford's voice so perfectly. This is a real-ass video game. This is an immersive sim. You are not just shooting everybody with a gun. You are Indiana Jones in environments. You have to figure out a way around people, solve puzzles. And it is like a 25 to 30-hour game.

It's very intense and very dense in terms of all the things you can do in every level. I really had a great time with it. And it came out super late last year, which is why I think it got snubbed at the Keyleses. Yes. It got really sizable DLC this year, right? Just one extra level, which actually I hear is not that great, but I eventually want to get around to playing it. But yeah, like I love Indiana Jones,

and this is like the perfect game for that kind of character and the kind of adventures he usually goes in for. So, yeah, I know probably sold a lot, but maybe you missed it because it came out so late last year. I think it released December 9th or something like that. Oh, yeah, it was very late, and it was also like a Game Pass game, which I think made it. be less known because people

like stop, don't pay attention to those as much. That game pass is the devil. Yes, it is. I look forward to a day I won't have it anymore. You can just stop using it now. I barely do use it. Tear up your game pass, Henry. Do it on camera. Well, actually, you know what? I take that back. The one game I beat this month was a game

Pace game. Hypocry on Talking Simpsons. I know. Well, hey, cops do it immediately, guys. You know, another, fuck, that was a Game Pass game too, wasn't it? Claire Obscure. Well, I did really like that, but I wanted to say that it got me to play Final Fantasy 10 for the first time because my husband was like, oh, you know, it's thematically very similar. I did really enjoy playing. I did it on Steam so I could, you know, go at triple speed during some long sequences of it.

Okay. I thought they included that in all the remastered versions of FF. Not on Switcher. It's only in Steam or other PC versions. Do they have those shortcuts of triple speed? Believe me, I, well, my husband looked into this and he told me, like, because I said, can I play this on Switch or Xbox? He's like, well, not if you want to do it at like triple speed to run through

long dungeons. So it was great. I liked it. Claire obscure was perfectly fine. I did really like it. But Final Fantasy 2. I liked more. Cool.

I forgot you finished that game. So I guess that's our 2025 games chat. So please check out those games. If you haven't, they're really good. And as far as watching stuff, I can name a few holiday things. One movie completely new to me because I've kind of seen every Christmas movie I want to see. So I was just typing in, oh, weird Christmas movie. I found a French movie called the Dial Code Santa Claus.

It came out one year before Home Alone. It is essentially like an R-rated, die-hard version of Home Alone, but seemingly still for kids. And the premise is a kid and his elderly grandfather live in a mansion, and essentially an escape mental patient tries to enter the house as Santa Claus. And the violence that happens is more than just a swinging paint can. Let's just say that. It gets pretty gruesome, but in a very, very fun way. this movie will shock and surprise you. But again, seemingly still made for little French children to enjoy.

But it is called Dial Code Santa Claus. I don't want to give anything away. But I've been spreading the word about this movie since I saw it. And then as soon as I logged it on Letterbox, Andrew Juppin from We Hate Movies was like, oh, glad you found this. It's such a great movie. Oh, nice. Man, well, if it comes to the We Hate Movies approval, that's as strong as a Bob approval. I'd never heard of this movie before.

You need it, I don't think. Yes. If you are having a holiday get together and like, oh, we've seen Elf. we've seen a Christmas story. Throw on dial code Santa Claus, find a copy of it, throw it on, and people will be shocked, they'll be rolling on the floor laughing. It really surprised the hell out of me

as someone who enjoys movies like this, but I feel like I've kind of seen it all. It will really shock you. And I also went back to some old favorites like the Muppet special, The Christmas Toy. Now, Henry, I think you're familiar with this one, aren't you? Oh, yes. It traumatized me as a kid.

For sure. It made me think about death. Essentially, it's nowhere near as popular is Emmett Otter's Jug Band Christmas, and I understand why it's creepy. It tells you that there is no afterlife. It lets you know that toys die and it's your fault. But there's only like 700 reviews of this on Letterbox, which surprised me.

But it really feels like, and I think this is just lateral thinking, I don't think there's any foul play here. This feels like the prototype for toy story. Like, what do toys do when we're not around? And lots of things have done this. But here it's more like we're going to build some lore or some mythology. And the big thing in this that adds a lot of attention is, if a.

toy is spotted where it shouldn't be, if a toy is spotted moving, it essentially dies. We see toy death. And then when we hear a toy that comes back from the other side, we learn that toy death, whatever waits for you at the other end, it's just darkness and coldness. There is no toy heaven. There is no toy hell. You are just in toy limbo for the rest of your life. It's spooky.

Well, and also the toy story connection too is like Rigby, right, that's the main character. He thinks he is about to be. replaced as the favorite toy by a space toy, you know, like a fancy new space toy too. Yeah, and the new toy, which is kind of like a Shira kind of character, thinks that she is the character. So there's a lot of lateral thinking here, but it's only 48 minutes. There's some pretty fun songs. It's way darker than you would expect it to be. And it has essentially Dave Goals and Steve Whitmire playing a duo. And I think that was the beginning of their like, let's be Gonzo and Rizzo together kind of partnership. And so they really play off each other well. Yeah, as a kid,

It definitely spooked me of like, you know, occasionally people have these things like, oh, no, what if toy story is real? I have to become a hoarder thoughts. But I even have one of those more thoughts of just like, as a little kid, did I kill this toy by walking in the room and seeing them where they're not supposed to be? Was I an unknowing toy murderer? You sent your toys to limbo and we're all guilty. There's blood on all of our hands. So Christmas toy. Oh, the song, the song too.

I love old friends, new friends. Love that song. It's used in like a bunch of Muppet things. Well, I bet it's because Jim Hinson was like, that song was great and nobody watched the Christmas toy, so I'll just reuse it and other stuff. Kermik can start singing it now. I don't blame him. And other movies I've seen, well, they're kind of obscure. You might have to Torent these, but they're called Star Wars.

Yes, I am revisiting the original trilogy, but not in the way you would expect. So that's why I want to talk about this, because recently I learned all about the Star Wars Project 4K77. and Star Wars Project 4K80. And what these are, I believe they're original film prints of Star Wars. People found like these first one prints. They fully restored them. They cleaned them up. A ton of work went into these.

But these are the best way to see the movies in their original forms, which I heartily recommend. I don't even consider myself a Star Wars fan. I rate these movies highly. But it's great to see them as they were meant to be seen. They seem like movies released in the year they were released in. There was no CGI. And then you forget about all of the things.

that were added and cut when it comes to these movies. And honestly, I had only seen Star Wars on VHS before the special editions. I had never seen non-special Empire Strikes Back or non-special Jedi. I'm getting to non-special Jedi soon, but so far I've watched 4K77 and 4K80. If you want to watch Star Wars again, look for these. Fuck Disney Plus. Screw the special editions. This is where you need to go.

And it's a real damn shame that fans have to do this. And we cannot have these versions of the films. Well, you know, it started with George Lucas not wanting you to see it, and then Disney didn't want you to see it, though Disney says they're going to put out their own Star Wars unaltered in 2027 for the 50th anniversary. I really wonder if it will be truly as unaltered, but you don't need them to do that thanks to the dedicated fans who did 4K77 and 4K80. I was not aware of 4K80. I had heard of 4K77, because Empire is my favorite. Star Wars is a perfect film too, but Empire is my favorite of the all Star Wars movies.

I would love to see how that looks in its unaltered form. Oh, it's great. Yeah, I love Empire, but I still I rate the original movie, just a hair above Empire, because it's a complete story. I kind of like, it's like why I like Fellowship of the Ring the most, because it's everybody is together, and we're all team

together, and then Empire's like, no, we're splitting apart, and we're cutting back and forth. I love when they're all together. But Darth Vader is the best in Empire. He's so sassy. He's so, I would love if you would join us for dinner. Like, he's such a dick. Like, pray I don't change it further. It's my favorite lightsaber duel.

It's daddy issues on display. I love every part of it. Yeah, I do really respect that movie. Now I'm going to finally see Return of the Jedi with Yubnub, with all the funky puppets. I've never seen that version of the film before. So I'm really looking forward to the way it was meant to be seen. So seek these out. They are not hard to find.

If you're online, you can download a podcast. You can find these movies. They're not hard to find. upset me all over again thinking about the erasure of yubnub and how I was feeling in the movie theaters in 1997 hearing the sound go away on yubnub and a new song coming in. I was like, what the fuck? Where's yubb? I was fucking six when I heard yubnub and I loved that song. It was made for kids and I was a kid. I just know they're going to erase that disgusting Muppet C.G. I think that like licks the screen. Don't like that. You'll get the proper crummy Syneudles

puppet singing Lopty Neck. You'll hear the real. song you're supposed to hear. In terms of TV, I did want to mention a new anime I've been watching. It is on Amazon Prime. It was recommended to me by a few people. It is called Sanda. And essentially, it is by the creator of the anime B-stars. So it features her very, what I feel are very expressive, very unique character designs. But the premise of this one is, it is a boy in school, and his secret is that he is Santa Claus. He can transform into Santa Claus. And the entire series is exploring the powers of Santa Claus, how they manifest in him. And of course, because this is an anime, there are people out to kill Santa Claus.

And we have to find out why this is happening. So, Sanda, very, very good. The animation is great. Yeah. And it's a premise that I've never, ever seen before in an anime series. I just like seeing the Santa Claus mythology explored through, like, a regular school-slash-fighting anime series. I did see a trailer for this now I'm remembering of, like, the action in it looked incredible. I'm giving this watch.

This is on my watch list now. And something Henry knows about One Piece because I like to watch One Piece at the gym because I can get through three episodes in an hour and then I want to say I'm done with an article, go and read the manga. And I do chip away at One Piece. I was not the binger that Henry was

because I eventually get kind of bored with it and have to return to it every once in a while. So I take like 18 months off between One Piece visitations. But currently I just got through the Amazon Lilly arc, which I really enjoyed. I didn't think I would really get a lot out of it, but I kind of underestimate new arcs when they start

and end up loving them by the time they're done. And we're all heading towards the possible execution of his brother. So I'm looking forward to seeing that happen and the time skip and everything. So I'm back on the One Piece. That's a long road, or it felt like a long road then. Now I realize that's just the typical, like, five-year arc that most major arcs are in the One Piece world.

Yeah. I wasn't even thinking that. That is right the name of that arc, but I always think of it as like just one part of a bigger arc. So when you said the name, it was like, wait, which arc was that? Now I know where you're at. Yeah, I think it's like a sub-arc of a major arc, depending on how you break them down.

But yeah, I like watching the anime. I know it has problems, but when you're on an elliptical machine and you're sweating and panting up the resistance, you want something that doesn't move fast and just keeps you in place. You want to get to be as strong as Zorro when you watch it. That's my plan.

So, yes, I just want to let everyone know. I'm still watching One Piece. very, very slowly. Now a rare instance of book corner. Okay, so folks, I'm not a dumb dumb. I have played 62 video games this year. I'm well on my way to reading 50 books. That is my good reads goal. And I did want to call this one out because it's a very long book that kind of threw me off my reading progress, but it's very good. It's called the seven and a half deaths of Evelyn Hartcastle. It is a newish mystery novel with a very interesting premise. And whether or not you like this premise is we'll determine whether or not you'll read the book. The premise is somebody has to

solve a murder and every day they wake up in a different person's body to play out the same day. And they have eight days and eight different bodies to go through in order to solve this murder. And that is the premise. But there are more rules stacked on top of that. These rules are rolled up progressively. And like this keeps your attention for over 500 pages. And I will say, despite all of the people, all of the different personas and all the different bodies the main character jumps into, The author never makes you get lost in any way. They're always like holding your hand in a non-patronizing way. And I found this like extremely readable.

I was intimidated to read this because it's very big. And it seems like, well, if I step away for a day, will I forget things that are happening? Or well, the mystery not be as good because I'll forget like, oh, on day three, he was this character and he did this. No, it is extremely, extremely readable. I really recommend it. Premise-wise to me, it sounds a little like the Nonari games that you enjoy so much,

like about different perspectives of a mystery kind of thing or reliving and stuff. It does kind of feel like a Japanese adventure game, but I was reading interviews with the author, Stuart Turton, and he was inspired by a quantum leap of all things. Oh, yeah, that totally makes sense. That sounds interesting. I'm not going to pretend that I'll read it. I might be it. But when it gets adapted into something, I'll probably give it a watch.

Yes, this would make a great, like, Netflix show with every episode being a new person that he jumps into, eight episodes, eight different people. But yeah, it's called the seven and a half deaths of Evelyn Hardcast. Check it out if you like mysteries or just want a book with a really wild premise that it completely sticks the landing. Like I was very, very impressed

by this book. So a rare book corner. And if you want to know more about what I'm reading, I don't like to bore anyone here with that stuff, except if it's a standout book like this. Check out my Goodreads account.

I am Bob Servo on Goodreads. And I can see what I'm up to there. Mostly really old mystery novels. So whenever I mention those on Blue Sky, I get no response. So I know nobody cares. But hey, if you get murdered, I'm going to be on the case.

And you'll be happy while your family will be happy that Bob knows so much. You personally won't care. And other stuff, I saw the Nutcracker Ballet for the first time. I love the music, of course. It's great Christmas music. Never actually saw a ballet or really understood what it was about. So I've had that experience, and I say it's worth doing at least once. It's a two-hour ballet with an intermission, but it's all wall-to-wall,

Chikovsky music, although the first act has a story, which I found to be fairly interesting. But the second act is just like a series of performances. and that was less engaging, although all of the Chikovsky Christmas bangers come from that second act, so I can see why it keeps people's attention. Me, I was like, I want more about the Rat King. In Nutcracker season,

my husband has shown me on TikTok, he's a big TikTok guy, he was showing me that it's now a thing every year that the performers, the ballerinas who are in their, like, rat army outfits, they then, like, do sexy dances while in their rat outfits as like fun little

TikTok. It's a fun. Check it out on TikTok for yourself to see the Pratt performers twerking, I guess, among other things. But yes, there was no bear in a little car, but there was a bear. So he did not have a little car. Well, someday you'll finally get to see a true ballet then. I've already seen ballet. This is my second ballet, and it's fine. Last year, I watched a drag show with Jinks Monson and Della doing a parody of the Nutcracker. That's the closest

I've seen to seeing the Nutcracker. It's mainly them doing a long musical review. that parodies the Nutcracker beat for beat. So I learned the plot of the Nutcracker via that. That's good. I mean, it wasn't blowing my mind. It was a very pleasant night of seeing the Nutcracker and sipping on some wine while I was doing so. But I feel like it's such an essential part of Christmas mythology.

You should at least experience it once to understand, like, well, here's what this means and that's what that signifies and so on and so on. And that is it for me. So, yes, a very successful year, recording a thousand podcasts, playing 62 video games and reading 50 books. and I only took two non-work trips. So that's why I had so much time to sit around and play video games. That's why we were the inverse. I was playing fewer games, but too many trips. You were playing a thousand hours of Bellatro on a plane.

Yes, airplane Bellatro. And of games I played this month, yes, I did play Marvel Cosmic Invasion. It was, I'm still on the despicable game pass, and it was a game pass game. And I would say you should not pay $30 for it, but if you can play it for free and liked Marvel comics in the 90s, or. old school beatem-ups. It's a good few hours. It's a good few hours. It's over in a few hours, and I wouldn't call it having much for playability either. But it's full of references that I got from reading tons of Marvel comic books, and it played like old beat-em-ups I like. So it gets

a mid-approval for me. Would you say it's better or worse than the previous release by this developer, the Ninja Turtles, Feed-em-Up? Oh, yeah, Shreda's Revenge is better than this, I'd say. It's a better game, but Marvel Cosmic Invasion is full of more Marvel-specific fan service that pleased me. So as a fan service provider, I'd say Cosmic Invasion is better. Even to my husband, I was pointing out like, oh, that's a reference to Mary Jane Watson's Secret Hospital soap opera she was on in the 90s. This achievement is because Nova defeats a nihilus in this comic, and that's why they made it an achievement. Stuff like that. You know, the game is an all right beat-em-up with gorgeous throwback graphics.

really do love how it looks and a nice soundtrack and yes this was a year for magic the gathering for me i was playing even some of the avatar the last airbender magic the gathering stuff especially in the app i prefer playing it in the app instead of having to be in person in front of somebody and get a rule wrong and feel stupid but i'm getting more used to that feeling does this mean you have stopped buying the cards are you continuing with the card purchases for the future of you playing in person i have not bought any of the avatar cards my husband he's bought a few avatar cards cards but i'm in like in general like buying the final fantasy and spider man are going to continue doing that i've seen you bought the like the big boxes of them yes yeah for spider man i did it and

for ff i did it i will likely still go to pre-release events where buying cards is part of playing it for the next set which is the ninja turtles gets a set in like march so i'll be doing that but no i'm not going to be buying like two hundred dollar boxes of boosters and stuff at this point now i have very specific cards i would want to play it's still bit nice, but no. I'm going lighter on the cards next year. Okay. Yeah, because I'm just curious about the app. So these exclusive cards exist within the app too?

Some do. It depends on who makes the deal with magic because the Marvel cards do not exist in there because the magic app is a competitor to Marvel Snap, so Marvel games, Marvel characters can't be in it. And the funniest thing was for the Spider-Man

cards, they just made up cards that are the Spider-Man cards in function and all of these things. but they're like outer space spiders, like magical outer space spiders who have all of the abilities. It's really weird. So you also have to pay for these on the app too. They come included. It's a giving app, I'll say. You can't pay for cosmetics, but with all the freebies, I have never paid for a card yet in it. I've earned it. I'm just curious because magic seems like I remember buying it in the 90s, but now it seems like, boy, you need a magic budget for your household.

Yes, you do. And I often have told my husband like, boy, That's a lot of magic cards. But with the app, I swear it does not. Marvel Snap is asking for money way more than Magic the Gathering app does for me. But maybe if I was more into Magic the Gathering, and for me it is once I have like four decks that I enjoy, which I was able to buy with just their free money things and I don't want to buy cosmetics, then those four card decks are enough for me.

And I haven't hit the level of engagement with it where I would spend money to have more cards in Magic the Gathering app. So that's been nice as opposed to Marvel. app where I do still spend the occasional dollar to buy the new fantastic four cards, for instance. Well, that's not bad. If you're getting some things in there. And as for movies, other than L&K, I'll just name a couple movies I saw in the theaters. Though after watching Alibke, I did watch Terms of Endearment and Defending Your Life just so I could remind myself of like, oh yeah, this is them, they're like peak. Both Albert Brooks, Albert Brooks is fine in LLBK, but defending your life is like, I still love that

movie. Like, it really, the older you get, the better it is for you to. I think that movie. Yeah, I still need to get around to watching the James L. Brooks classics because I miss them outside of like I saw as good as it gets because it was a big movie in the 90s, but I missed the bigger 80s ones. In terms of endearment, I don't think I'd seen it in full or without commercials on TV ever.

So watching it on the 4K disc I have was, it's a PG movie where they say fuck over and overkin in it. But I always remembered it as it's a cancer movie. But it's like the last 20% is a cancer movie. It's just a life movie about, in general, dysfunctional people in their lives, kind of hurting each, hurting their loved ones in funny ways. It's a great movie. And I also watched The Princess Bride, the Rob Reiner movie I watched the most in my life.

And hadn't seen it in full and forever. It does feel like, oh, yeah, I'm the little kid getting the story told to again. And also, I kept point when watching him with my husband, I was like, oh, I had that toy that's in the background of Fred Savage's room. I had that toy. I had Stink Orr from me, man. Yeah, I guess this bedroom is a toy museum from like 1987 or whatever. I was like, oh, wait a minute, his room has Christmas decorations in the Princess Bride. That's the only indication it's a Christmas movie.

He could just be a weird kid who has like Santa decorations up in his room all year long. I don't know. Yeah, I think it is like Secret Holiday Film. And as for in theaters, I watch Kill Bill the Whole Bloody Affair, which is both volumes together with minor edits. Mainly, the biggest edition is there's about 10 minutes. of new animation in the anime section. You get to see O'Ranii kill the one guy she doesn't kill,

frustratingly in the original one. You finally get to see how she killed that guy. So I want to ask, is part two disappointing to you after immediately seeing part one? Because it was to me, without the weight? Boy, watched together, I still do like it. I actually did like Part two a lot with the weight. And I watched it so many times after the weight that I think,

it being so talky, like, I will say in full viewing with Justin intermission. I love all the speeches. I love that Bill gives so many speeches, and the actor portraying him is so good at giving speeches, David Caradine. But there's so many fucking speeches. He goes like, well, this reminds me of like,

oh, my God, another speech by this guy. Yeah, I mean, I did enjoy the first film, but then when I saw the double feature and I saw the second film, I thought, well, this is probably better if you had to wait to see it. If your Kill Bill content was very low, and not if you just saw the first movie for the first time and immediately rolled into the second movie.

It's a way different experience. Well, here's another positive I will give on it too, though, for its edit. If you plan on ever seeing Kill Bill and haven't yet, just skip ahead about 30 seconds to a minute here. They take out the tease at the end of Act 1 of the first half that her daughter is alive. You don't know that BB is alive until the bride learns it busting into the room.

And I do think without that, knowledge as a viewer, it makes that moment in volume two hit much harder if you don't know. Let's say you didn't know, and it was the first time he saw Kill Bill. And the Fortnite short, how was that? Ooh, rough, rough, rough, not very good. Worst of all is that Tarantino, he says lines in it for Bill to say, because David Carradine's dad, of course. So he does the Bill lines? I'm like, oh, this sucks.

This sucks. You know, I feel like if he wants people to still see his final. movie. Should shut up. Yes. Yes. Somebody on Letterbox, I read out of the great point of like, he says he doesn't want to be one of those old directors who make shitty movies.

And then he puts out that fucking Fortnite short. It's like, dude, you're already there, man. Yes. I mean, I'm sure the dump truck full of money was enormous. Certainly it was that. And it got Uma Thurman paid as well, like who, you know, their friends again as well. After he, like, kind of almost killed her and definitely gave her major neck trauma that I think probably still hurts to this day.

Like, their buddies again, you know, it's crazy. It's still crazy also in Kill Bill that, like, that shot is in the movie. Like, the thing they filmed of the car crash, it's in the movie. It cuts seconds before what you learn later in life is the car crash that injured her. And then he makes deathproof as his next movie, which is about injuring her on a stunt. He's kind of rubbing it in. Yeah. Also in theaters, Bob, I saw the event of the year.

Avatar, Fire and Flash. Now, Henry, this film, three hours and what, 400 minutes? Three hours and 18 minutes. Did you take a bathroom break and were you hospitalized afterwards? I'm telling you I'm good at holding it. I didn't even go until we got home. I didn't come out of the theater like, yeah, I got to go. I'm not holding it to like feel pain or like that I get off on holding it.

I really just didn't need to use the bathroom. Now it sounds like you're dehydrated. No, no. I drink a whole Topo Chico in a cup of water. What's a Topo Chico? Back up, please. You know, it's a seltzer. Topo chico.

No, I've never heard of that. Oh, it's a long-time brand of Seltzer Water. It's, I believe, from Mexico, I want to say. Okay, I'm seeing this now. I've never heard of this before. Oh, yeah, Topo Chico's great. I'm surprised you haven't heard. It's, they're really, classically, it's sold in like a glass bottle,

but now they have them in the aluminum cans to sell to the youngsters who, you know, want their sparkling water. It's really good. I had a blueberry Topo Chico with it. But now, look, this movie, I am sick of James Cameron making amazing action sequences, starring blue people who suck and are boring. This is not as good as the way of water, I'll say that. I don't think I can watch a movie this long that's not Schindler's list.

At times, it doesn't feel that long. Other times it does feel that long, but sometimes there's great action or like a really cool chase. And I'm like, oh, this is cool. But then other times, too, I completely... So here's my experience in the theaters. I was also waiting for the Avengers teaser to come before it. I was like, oh, and they're supposed to be an Avengers teaser.

But for some reason, our theater didn't play it. It's a shitty teaser anyway. Who cares? Stephen Rogers is back. Who cares? But when the movie begins, I keep thinking, no, maybe the movie hasn't started yet and the Avengers trailer is still to come. Because the first scene

of the movie is like, it's two blue people flying around on their dragons and it's in 48 frames a second. And I was sure of like, well, this must be like a trailer for the video game they're making, right? And like, no, I had forgotten that in the movie, action sequences often are done in 48 frames

per second because that's how James Cameron likes it. And it looks to me like a cheap video. game. Yeah, I guess that aesthetic is associated with a video game cutscene. Regardless of how good it looks, regardless of how well it's directed, it has the grammar of a video game that you're playing in terms of the visual grammar. When you see something moving at that frame rate in the movie theater, it looks like you're just watching a video game on the big screen. It makes the most expensive movie ever look like a video game. It's very distracting. But also it's funny that the hateful military space marine guy, Miles Corridge,

is the funniest and most interesting guy in the movie. And I'm like, boy, I want to see more of this guy instead of Jake Sully and his dumb family. And Spider, ugh, Spider. Hate that kid. I hear a lot of bad things about Spider these days. They build the whole movie around Spider and this kid sucks. He's a terrible actor.

He's so lame. How many more of these things do we have to see? So this was the other secret. didn't know. Technically, there's two more coming. What I learned from the blank check was, and it totally makes sense after seeing Fire and Ash, he wrote a second movie and then realized it was so long it had to be two movies. So two and three are technically two halves of one movie he originally envisioned, which isn't surprising because the ending of this movie is seriously a retread of the second movie's ending. I was looking at my husband, and we both

were like, this is the, wait, we saw this before. This is, it's the same set piece, the same actors. It felt like DLC reusing assets. That's a common criticism I'm hearing, is that he kind of just made the same movie again. Yes, yeah, it's so strange. Also, Cameron did interviews saying, well, this might be the last one. I don't know.

And that made me think there'd be some finality to it. I'm not going to spoil the ending in the movie, but it lacks that finality. I'll tell you that. It just feels like another episode in the world of the Sully's. And lastly, things I saw this month, I want to say, I watched Better Call Saul season one.

I'm always 10 years behind on these. I'll be watching Pluribis in 2034, I think. I was slightly behind on this. I watched all of it 20, 23 right before I moved. And yeah, stick with it. It's great. I don't know if it's better than Breaking Bad, but it goes to some breaking bad places, I will say.

I really love season one. It's full of great actors. I think I was, I don't know, I can relate more to Jimmy than I can to Walter White, I think, watching it too. Like, I don't know. He's a more relatable guy. Maybe it's just because he loves movies and he's constantly referencing movies.

And I was surprised how many times, at least in season one, there were the like to talk in in Twitter parlance, the surfing vampire looks at the surfboard. Like, there's moments he's like, huh, I'm not much of a ring guy. Or he looks at like a big orange button up shirt. And he's like, nah, I'm not going to wear that. I was like, oh, okay, I get it. I get it. I feel like that does drop out. It's just there to like initially get Breaking Bad fans on board.

Those kind of teases. Okay, that's good to know. And I watched the first chunk of the new Stranger Things. It's fine. It's more Stranger Things. It's not bad. Some people were too negative on it, though it's just, I mean, I'm watching adults play children. It's very distracting.

That's the weirdest part of it. Those kids grew up too fast. They really did. But it's fine. I'll see it through to the end. We'll see how it goes. There's a really, speaking of Hideo Kojima, like we were, I watched an interview with the Duffer brothers talking to Kojima at the, you know, his studio, he gave him the scan, and Kojima really likes stranger things.

It makes sense. It's 80s, carpenter stuff. You know, it's what he loves to. And he likes everything. If you want to follow him on Twitter, he likes every movie and every TV show. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. Just quickly, we did spend Thanksgiving in New York City. It was a great start to Christmas. Christmas in New York does feel magical. Oh, fuck, I haven't even posted it. I took pictures at four different filming locations at Ghostbusters and didn't even post it yet. I got to post that. Henry, your Instagram, there are tumbleweeds blown through it. I know.

I forget. Here's a thing. This is not a dig, by the way. But when I saw this and talked to the audience, I was thinking, what, Henry didn't talk about New York yet. But then I realized that since you've been back, you've had at least like two New York anecdotes on every podcast we've recorded because you did so much. Yes, yeah.

I feel like I'm not bringing him up out of turn. I'm just like, no. Well, well, well, it's Mr. New York. I know. I did just come from there. It was really fun. I won't list every. thing I did and see, but I'll say

that the Jim Henson exhibition that's in the Museum of the Moving Image really is great. It's full of stuff that wasn't even at the one we saw in San Francisco, the Frank Oz collection. It was really great, and I did, thanks to a friend of the show, Mike Drucker, I got to see the Jimmy Fallon Tonight Show,

and thankfully it was one of the weeks. He wasn't platforming somebody evil, so thank you. Oh, how nice. I know you explored Jersey, Henry. Are all the jokes true? Okay, a tiny bit. Everybody each other jokes about Jersey, to each other like, oh, you're from Bayonne. You never leave Bayonne.

That's what they say, like stuff like that. I did have a little bit of, I went to a wedding, a very nice wedding, a friend of Daryans, he'd known since childhood. It was such a great wedding here, great food everywhere. But I get, you know, it's a wedding. You get seated with people you don't know, including like the bridemaid's mother. And she was talking to me with like a Jersey Italian accent, straight out of Sopranos. And I was feeling very almost in a condescending way.

like, isn't that cute? Wow, you have people actually talk like that. Whoa. Was a snooky there? I didn't see a snooky there. No. Okay. You were safe then. And I also did the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade and I will never do it again. Five a.m. Well, you have to explain what you mean by doing it. Were you in the parade? Oh, no. I was able to get tickets for reserved seats at the start of the parade. So I wasn't having to stand the whole time. If I had to stand, I wouldn't have done it. So reserved Macy's seats got hooked up by somebody and me and my My husband sat there, but it still meant we woke up at 5 a.m., got in line at 6 a.m. And thank goodness it wasn't raining.

The sun was out, but we were freezing. Like I was shivering and going, there's Spider-Man. Well, well, well, this Florida boy can't handle a New York November, boys. Let's get him. They were tossing me out of New York City. I wasn't right. My husband multiple times was like, hey, this is New York. Like, he grew up there.

He knows it. But in the New Jersey area, he was like, we have to. to jaywalk. It's New York City. We have to what are you waiting for? Come on, let's go. We have to mug this guy. Look, he's not looking. Look at his phone. Just grab his wallet. It was nice after the parade

to then just, we then had a relaxed like little stroll for an hour or two through Central Park. That was very nice. And I also then, I was like, oh, hey, look, that's a tavern on the green where Rick Moranis gets attacked by the dog. And there's the fountain where Bill

Murray and Sigourney Weaver meet each other. Like, yes, it was... I was surprised there was no Ghostbusters headquarters shots. Unless you had done that before in the past. There is a photo of that. I just haven't posted it. Where are these photos? You'll... You're just like Jay Jonah Jameson asking for photos of my trivia.

People are demanding these photos, Henry. It's been six weeks. Keep an eye out. I'll post it. You know what, year-end wrap-up kind of posting. That's a good time for these photos. But so, yes, I talk too much about... Oh, and messy white gaze, the Drew Drogy one-act play that if you can see it, that one's not getting all of the ads and promotion that it should.

I saw other famous ones that don't mean me promoting it, like Waiting for Gato. But messy white gays by Drew Drogy, who's friend of a friend of Drew Mackey. It was really good. It starred one of the actors from Dix the musical. It was a great one-act play about being a annoying millennial gay white man in New York City. About five different of them. Well, now we can move on to questions and comments from the last round of episodes. And we'll start with Talking Simpsons, the episode,

Bart of Darkness and Maverick says, I've seen all of Hardball, the sitcom created by Jeff Martin, and I still have the episodes on my hard drive. For a baseball sitcom from the early 90s, it is okay. Slightly worse than coach, I think the biggest issue is that the cast is way too big to try to fit in every player. Nine players and at least two coaches

with however many minor parts. That's a lot to write and show run, while coach didn't focus on the team, really. Sometimes a QB or similar will get a few storylines or one-offs, but it's mostly just the five. main characters. The first season of coach holds up pretty well, I think, but when you compare it to Hardball, Hardball

strikes out. So, thank you Maverick for your information about Hardball, which I believe premiered on the same night as Bart of Darkness. Yeah, if it wasn't the right after it was within the hour of it, yeah, to think about, I'm glad Maverick keeps Hardball on his hard drive. You know, if you make a sitcom about

sports team, I guess if it's nine, well, it should be even more than nine players. Like, it's not just the nine players who play their positions, but also like the backup. right? Like, whatever the term is in baseball, I don't know. The backup. The losers, the bench warmers. Yes, right? Well, Andrew O also says about part of darkness. I hated when shows looped back around episode one, but it was worse when it had continuity and wasn't finished yet.

Nothing was more painful as a kid than going from mid-battle with the Giniu Force on NAMIC to back on Earth with Raddits, especially when you know Goku was close to going Super Satan. Yeah, that's crazy. I think those episodes were dubbed initially in like 1995 or something, and it wasn't until the year 2000 that they moved on past that point in the West. Yeah, that, you know, we did regular Dragon Ball. We still haven't done Dragon Ball Z. Maybe that's a 2026er I would like to do. But I remember that so well, Andrew, just like he does, of they go only so far in the Namik arc because that's how far I think the Ocean Group did it. And then it got popular on Tunaomi, but it took forever for a new deal.

to be made to dub more episodes. And it was treated as an event of, oh, Goku is finally going to get out of his ealing chamber and fight the Giniu Force. Finally. It's taken so long. Meanwhile, the show had been over in Japan for like at least five years. At least.

You can see all of the merchandise with Super Say and Goku, but you're waiting forever to meet him. I will say, going back to the coach, underrated show, and I think innovated in the dumb guy space by having two dumb characters that were dumb in different ways. Right. Dauber and, well, and Jerry Mayn Dyke, whatever his name was.

Dauber and Luther. Dumber and different ways. They complemented each other's dumbness, I think. You know, Fagerbecky has been doing interviews lately to promote the new SpongeBob movie that just came out. I wonder if anybody's asked him coach questions. I did see somebody ask him Gargoyles questions, and he instantly recalled like, oh, man, I'd love to play Broadway again. Greg Weissman is the best.

Would he have that same recollection for coach, I wonder? I wonder. I think he enjoyed being on coach. There's a lot of coach. And he's not as concussed as his many dumb characters would have you believe on favor back. That is true. I believe he's a brilliant man. Moving on to All's Fair in Oven War and Covee M says, I'm glad you brought up the Iron Chef episode of Futurama because I have a completely useless fact relating to it. There's an episode of Kirby right back at you where Chef Kawasaki's old mentor comes to visit.

They have a cooking competition and it's revealed his mentor was spiking his dishes with hallucinogen mushrooms to make the judges more susceptible to enjoying them, though I believe it was rewritten for the English version for censorship reasons. Obviously, that seems oddly familiar to the plot of Futurama, where the twist is that they were spiking the food with LSD to make it more delicious. And I will add Bob Mackie here, check out Kobe's comment for more shocking similarities between Kirby right back at you and other maccaraining projects. Wow, man.

Thank you, Kobe. I watched two episodes tops of right back at you because I watched the first one when they debuted and learned that Kirby is like a secondary character in his own show and it made me not want to watch it. Like the kids are the stars of it. The issue is he couldn't talk, so they needed to invent characters who talked around him. Now speaking of Japanese media and their love of hallucinogenic mushrooms,

there is no real drug culture in Japan, but they love the iconography and they're very playful about it. And I was just watching One Piece. And when Luffy lands on this Amazon island, he's hungry. So he sees these mushrooms growing. He's like, oh, I heard these mushrooms make you laugh. So he eats, he gets high on mushrooms, essentially. Right.

And then he eats some other mushrooms. They end up being parasitic. And he passes out, mushrooms grow on him. The Amazon ladies find him, and they remove the mushrooms in the bath. They give him a bath. Now, at the gym, when I'm watching anime, I'm always worried if something pervy will happen. People will think I'm watching pornography. Well, this is a show for children.

There is an extended scene that is, you know, a lot of things are disguised by soap bubbles where the Amazon's, they're cleaning Luffy and they're like, wow, this one mushroom won't come off of his body and let me try tugging on it. Now you tug on it. It's like everyone's yanking on his penis. Thankfully, again, nothing is shown. I'm like sweating on the elliptible machine, looking around, making sure no one else is on the floor as a bunch of Amazon ladies are yanking on the main character's dick. I guess it's also playing on that classic mythical fantasy of the aisle of women who have never seen a penis before and don't know what it is kind of dealy. Sure. Luffy as well is like some people have said Luffy is asexual, but he has no real.

sexual response to this when it happens to him, right? He's just like, hey. The leader of the Amazon, Hancock, I believe her name is she can turn men into stone who fall in love with her. And it does not work on him because I think he's too stupid to be horny. You know that right back at you thing too, we should send that over to the real gyms because this is Futurama, not Simpsons, but he just did a new one of his series of like, is this the Simpsons did it or the Simpsons ripping them off of the Skinner's sense of snow and a similar episode of Hey Arnold. So I wonder like he could also rate how similar this story is to the Futurama episode.

Ian Stratton also says on that episode, Mickey Mantle's Feet of Clay, which I'll just say that Marge referred to that in the episode and it confused me. Mickey Mantle's feet of clay would be his severe alcoholism. He believed he was cursed to die young due to the untimely deaths of his father, grandfather, and uncles to cancer. This, along with sexual abuse by adults as young, boy led Mantle into a self-destructive lifestyle of hard drinking and partying during his playing days. The press often downplayed his alcoholism back then since he was an athletic idol to so many

kids. It wasn't until the mid-90s when Mantle, now with a liver cirrhosis, began to be candid about his alcohol abuse, addressing fans that looked up to him as a role model, he said, Don't be like me. Yeah, and Marge's line was, well, Lisa sets it up by saying, you know, I'm worried you're going to win by cheating. And she goes, I'll be a hero with you. of clay like Mickey Mantle. That's where it all goes back to. I know he was a drunk, but I did not know what inspired the drinking. Sadder part of that. I remember when he died just because my parents were certainly affected by it. He gave an interview about it like to the Today show. My mom was like really moved by because she's like, oh, he knew he was going to die

when giving this interview and he drank so much. It was shocking to them of like, now we've lived long enough to see some childhood heroes also be revealed to have problems. But as a kid, I experienced it that threw my mom and dad when Mickey Mantle died. So up next we have Lisa's rival and Andrew Giacetti says, Bex is hand down, one of the funniest characters on Duncanville. And I was totally thrown when I heard the voice without looking at the guest. That was Betsy Sadaro, by the way. She has this oddly specific devout Catholicism that makes her character feel so real. Honestly, there's a ton of oddly specific Catholicism on the show that's really funny, including the introduction for some reason, of a turn-of-the-century Italian street kid

who lives in a tenement and avoids a ghost because he regularly takes communion. It's honestly worth checking out if you're a Simpsons fan because the Simpsons DNA is very present. And thank you, Andrew. I assume this is probably on Disney Plus, I'm guessing. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

It was a Hulu show that's now on Disney Plus. I believe its last four episodes debuted on Hulu, ignominiously. I watched a couple episodes ahead of having Betsy on and who was great, loved having her on, and that I was like, you know, I should have given this show more of a chance.

I watched some episodes in the first season, then it fell off. It is a good family sitcom from one of the top Simpsons guys teaming up with Amy Poehler, and Amy Poehler's playing two of the lead characters in it. Yeah, it's very easy to watch now. It's unfortunately was kind of screwed by the network, so I guess there's at least three seasons of Duncanville now. Yeah, yeah. I believe it's 30. I believe they got up to 36 Eps, I think.

And Betsy Sedaro plays a character who looks and sounds just like her. It's so cool that they're like, oh, you're so fun. funny, Betsy, the character of Bex will just be you as a kid. She could easily be on The Simpsons just color that character yellow and send it on over to that production team. She would be Jimbo's new best friend. She could be competing with Darla

for his attention. And Mr. Snubb also says on that episode, upon this latest viewing, I wondered if Henry was as horrified as I was that Ralph tripped and damaged some vintage action figures still in their original packaging. Well, to answer your question, Mr.

Strub, while I appreciate the niceness of keeping all of the boxes in place, I am more likely to take things out of their original packaging to display them properly in fun poses rather than appreciate them on the card. I also wonder if those, I'm sure collectors would want the figures Ralph had, but I wonder if the resale market was as ravenous as it is today when it came to Star Wars in that time period.

Oh, no, I bet it was just like how you could get a lot of NES games for like a dollar. at stores back then, right? I feel like more of a joke would be made about Ralph damaging the figures if the writers assumed that they were worth money. Yeah, yeah. It would, I mean,

just comic book guy, a few, like, a couple years later they'd have jokes about him crying at somebody taking something out of their original packaging. But I think they weren't aware of it yet. When I look around my room of toys, the few I've kept in the original packaging

are the ones that I think wouldn't look as good outside of it like the, the McBain and Troy McClure figures that Super 7 put out, which have amazing Bill Morrison art on them. Meanwhile, if they were out of the box, they wouldn't look as cool to me. So I think staying in the plastic wrap is part of the fun for me.

Yeah, sometimes the packaging is part of the presentation, and I can respect that. Moving on to Sleeping with the Enemy, and Citizen Me says, I think the whole going out for cigarettes thing originates from Stephen King, whose father abandoned the family allegedly with that excuse. Now, I think that could have popularized

that Citizen May, but I think dads were going out for cigarettes before cigarettes before it was cigarettes, what, it would have been a hot toddy, perhaps. They would have said cigarettes and the mother would have been like, what is a cigarette? And the dad's like, see ya. I don't know if I knew that was what happened with Stephen King growing up as well. I also forgot to mention that episode. The extra funny bit with it going out for cigarettes was he was going out for cigarettes for Nelson. He was buying him cigarettes, not for himself. I think dads eventually learned like, I don't need an excuse. If I leave late enough, I'll just ghost my family. And that just came around the same time. We were just talking about how, like, how did the actor who played Frosty the Snowman have all these secret families? How can even, it's hard enough having one family, I would think. He needed a hobby. He needed a smartphone.

Also on sleeping with the enemy, Kay Hagueberg says, it's heartwarming to know Henry was also a cut-up hot dog kid. Sorry, weird way to say that. I was, am, quite picky, so my mom would cut up tofu dogs, vegetarian family, and put little toothpicks in them like Sam

at the grocery store so that I would eat them slash anything. Just now realizing that was the origin story of my girl dinner, in quotes. That's true. I didn't know both of you were invented girl dinner in the late 80s. I mean, it was really just, you know, being picky, and as I learned later, undiagnosed autism spectrum probably, but just that I was like, well, no, a hot dog is, I was just thinking about this recently. I didn't eat cheeseburgers for the longest time because I was like, oh, but they have to have pickles on him, right? And that tastes gross. to me. I didn't know you could ask for less things on a cheeseburger. Once I knew you could, then I started enjoying cheeseburgers because I wanted them plainer. I guess, yeah, we have talked

about this. You could not envision the idea of like removing items or asking for the items to be not put on the sandwich. I mean, I thought I'd be called weird for not eating them correctly. I mean, kids famously hate pickles, which is why kids are stupid. Picles are delicious. I mean, I do think it comes, these are things I'm talking through these days, but yes, it comes down to Like, if a thing was put in my plate and my dad said, this is the way it's supposed to be made, you're not allowed to change it because it's the wrong way to eat it. I was just like, well, I guess I won't eat it at all and didn't think it could be changed. Well, the solution, Henry, I'm not a therapist. You need to go to where your dad lives and push him down the stairs.

He's an old frail man. We can cover it up. I've read lots of true crime stuff. We can figure it out. Off the podcast, of course. This is parody now, if you hear it, my dad's condo. There was an accident. Yeah, in Minecraft.

Sure. I'm winking. I'm doing that via therapy these days in a metaphorical sense, pushing him down the stairs. In your mind, it's an endless staircase. It keeps rolling and rolling. Also, while I don't have a super varied diet, I am much more open in the foods that are safe foods to me now. I have worked on that. Cool.

And we're going to move on to what a cartoon for December. It was the Tom Goes to the Mayor episode about rats off to you. And Dylan Sludge says, this was my show I watched at 3 a.m. one night and couldn't ever remember what it was. I was at a friend's house sleeping over at like 12 and I was the only one awake to see the episode Base Fest where Tom refuses to call the town damn anything but the darn language. So for years it was just that weird white and blue people show with the guy who wouldn't say damn in my head. And yes, thank you, Dylan. I think that was the effect they wanted to have on you because we're not really channel surfing anymore. But if you stop, if you flip past Tom goes to the

mayor, you would go back and say, okay, what is this? And that would stick with you. Having just watched the whole first season of Better Call Saul. It is so funny. Remember, like, just a few years before he became Saul Goodman. He is the man who, the executive producer and like co-star, co-writer of Tom Goes to the Mayor doing silly things like Bass Fest where he's the Whiz going boom, bab bam, boom, boom. Tyler M also says about Tom Goes to the Mayor, I have lived such a blessed or pointless life that I have visited both Henry and Bob's current and hometown malls respectively. The latter was a go-to when my best friend got his license. When we would get bored, we'd often trek to Ohio. Boardman was just far enough to feel like we really were traveling somewhere.

Speaking of short-lived kiosks, I remember mine having one that sold only pogs during the height of the craze. I'm sure a few of those are still hiding somewhere at my parents' house. Well, thank you for the Boardman Report. You know, some people don't believe me when I talk about my hometown. A Boardman is a suburb of Youngstown, by the way. So I'm glad we have these outside reports that really let people know what I'm saying is true. When I was just reading it, they were like, Bordman, wait, Bob's from Youngtown, I forgot that that is the childhood mall for you. Yes, yes. When I lived with my grandma, we lived in Bordman. And we were just talking about, my wife and I were talking about Arby's for some reason. And I pointed out the fact that like, I lived right by the first Arbys and it's no longer around.

Arby's, despite the giant cowboy hat, Northeast Ohio, that's where it started. Now, this year was when the famous Arby's in Hollywood. closed. It stayed open for so long and it closed it. Probably he's just going to be condos or something, I'd guess. Nobody wants the meats anymore. And hey, I'm fine with that. Moving on to What a Cartoon movie. The episode was all about Peewee's

Playhouse Christmas special. And Blake R says, I was one of the lucky few who was able to see the touring 35th anniversary screening of Big Adventure that featured a live appearance from Paul Rubin's in early March of 2020. You can imagine what quickly came next that would cancel

the remainder of this tour. He came to Dallas what would be one of the final shows and was a special moment seeing the crowd respond with enthusiasm as Peewe made a long journey to our state, even clapping along during the deep in the heart of Texas moment. Rubens came out after the movie and sat down on a stool with a briefcase full of memorabilia and photos from the production going through everything piece by piece. It was a deeply intimate conversation as everyone sat quietly in in awe as if watching their favorite teacher doing a show and tell. In hindsight, it was very apparent that he was ill and he spoke quietly and seemed tired. but he lit up sharing his memories of making the movie with all of us. Before he left, he even pretended that Mr. T was in the audience and asked the house lights to be brought up, bowing out with a major look in the peewee voice.

So one last prank from Paul Rubens before leaving that night. That sounds like a magical evening. Yeah, to get to see Rubens in person right before COVID lockdown, and you don't realize he'll never tour again, I would assume he never made public appearances after that or if he did very limited ones like when he passed away he was certainly very busy on his instagram and everything but he was not you know i don't think he was making many public appearances but then yeah i really appreciate this very nice memory of pee we and i'm also happy to see that people were not confused by the peewee's playhouse christmas special they weren't saying

well what is this who is peewee because i feel like peewee is like the muppets and you have to be 40 to understand what it is and nobody younger than that is really on board but i think like even if you weren't on board with the special initially, we were able to like gently lower you into the pee-wee water. I just saw that Yorma Tocone, who of the Lonely Island, who he played pee-wee briefly in the Weird Al movie. He also, Weird Al did some concerts and Jorma was there, or Yorma, he was there on stage dressed as pee-wee again.

My husband was asking like, so is he just pee-wee now, or is this something he's doing regularly? Did he take the character over with Rubens' his blood? He's absorbed part of Paul Ruhman's soul. At that performance, this was why I first heard about it. People were saying, Weird Al just did a straight cover of Rage Against the Machines, Bulls on Parade. And they were saying, like, because it's just reality now. It's not a parody anymore.

That's what people said. It was strange. You were surprised by that. I actually have not heard the cover quite yet. To see Weird Al singing about how the people who burn crosses are the ones who, like, are also cops, as that was surprising to see. So Sean Ryan also says about Pee-wee in a comment about Bozo the Clown.

Sometimes we'd get cheaper public domain cartoons like what Peewee's King of Cartoons would play. But there was a time when Bozo would play five-minute chunks of Transformers episodes. And this was when that show was already currently airing. The most awkward part was when Bozo had to either set up or make some kind of commentary on the clip that had just played.

Who boy, Optimus Prime, sure looks like he is in trouble. You think Megatron was going to win this fight, huh, kids? I guess you'll have to wait until tomorrow for the next part to find out. Meanwhile, in his mind, his true reaction was undoubtedly akin to Krusties. What the hell was that? That poor man, that poor old clown. You're the one who introduced me to that video of the early 80s Bob Bellbozo talking about like an Atari game through his emphysema voice. Trying to breathe while explaining a video game. He does not have any context for what it is, what it does.

It was funny to see that. Just have general memories. I never saw a bozo. The only cartoons I remember Chicago Bozo that I got to grow up watching play were either the terrible TV pop-eye cartoons where he faced Brutus and the Seahag or Rocky and Bullwinkles,

which were much more welcome. Never had a bozo. That clown never got into my TV. Thank God. And up next we have Talking Futurama, Ghost in the Machines. And Tyler Rampley says, I'll second Bob's discontal.

gust of Cadbury eggs. Around Easter this year, I tried one for the first time in around 20 years, and the goo inside was so sickeningly sweet, one bite made my teeth hurt. So sweet, I couldn't even tell you what flavor it was supposed to have because it was just sugar slop. I had to throw the rest out and brush my teeth immediately. Well, thank you, Tyler. I thought that was a controversial statement, but no one clapped back at me. So maybe I'm on the right side of history. Bob, you're being a gatekeeper about Cadbury eggs. Do whatever you want with those foul little sugar bombs. Keep them away from me. What a year is about what I'm good with these

days. And Tyler, compliments on a sentence having two different Simpsonisms in there. The goo inside and my teeth hurt. Feast on the goo inside, correct. One of my favorite commenter names, Mara the demon, named after my favorite SMT demon.

A big dick on wheels. Yes, a big dick on wheels. They never make cheap toys of him. I don't own any Mara the demons because like a three inch recreation of Mara the man, ha-ha, but a three-inch version of him, those are like $200 fucking dollars on eBay. Like, I can't justify it as much as I love that green, slimy dick. You need to buy a little toy chariot and then buy like a very realistic dildo to place in it.

Well, sure, I guess for scale-wise, it's going to need the balls, though, too. And then what I draw the mouth on it? I don't want to get into it, but some of them do come with balls. You're right. So, okay, it's got to be, well, then, man, what size of a dick is Mara? He looks like a three-incher to me, I'd say. Sound off in the comments. Okay, but anyway, Mara the Demon says,

I am dubious at MacReyn's origins of the suicide booth as it pretty cleanly meshes with the suicide booths in Robert Chambers' weird horror masterpiece, The King in Yellow. Yes, he's the one referenced in Dark Souls and True Detective. The King in Yellow is a collection of short stories without much in common except Vives and the titular, The King in Yellow.

One of the stories describes an 1890s vision of a future city with subways and suicide boots. I figure someone on the Futurama staff has got to be pretty familiar with the work as it's pretty well-known collection and Futurama borrows heavily from Pulp Fiction. Maybe the slug story contributed as well, but the King and Yellow has got to be there somewhere.

It can be two things. This year I read the Alfred Bester book, The Demolished Man, the 1959 sci-fi novel. And literally, when the character wakes up in future New York City, the first thing he sees are suicide booths. So I feel like these guys were all on the same page or perhaps MacRaining was secretly inspired, but I don't know what 12-year-old MacRaining was thinking.

I mean, that book would have come out when he was a kid, right? Like, at the perfect time, he's... Sure, sure. But I guess the important note is that in the story about the slug planet, the suicide booth did not actually kill you. You slid down a tunnel and you became a slave,

a slug slave. Right, right, which to me, I think I said on episode two, Sounds like Matt Graney was also like reinterpreting what he had seen in the Pinocchio film of the boys turned into donkeys who are then turned into slaves. Oh sure, that gave a lot of

boomers, weird nightmares. So it could be that too. But thank you for more suicide booth chat, Mara the demon. Now I know the King and Yellow came from like a specific book. And I've only heard of the reference in things like Dark Souls and True Detective. I believe he's like a Demon Souls boss or something, but

it's been a while. Anyways, moving on to Talking of the Hill, the episode was Rodeo And Ian Stratton is here to let us know more about Barry Switzer. We had some questions like, what does this Hank joke mean? It's very fixed in that time period and it's about football. So we're like somebody else step in and Ian Stratton, he stepped up. And he says, Barry Switzer was a controversial coach because while he did win a Super Bowl with the Cowboys, many fans felt he inherited an already successful championship winning team that only got worse the longer he

coached. Unlike his predecessor, Jimmy Johnson, he was less of a strict disciplinarian with several key players getting arrested and facing legal issues throughout the season. Barry Switzer himself got arrested for bringing a loaded gun to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. This rubbed many veteran cowboys like Troy Aikman the wrong way, who felt the team underachieved under Switzer's leadership. Thank you, Ian. You have unlocked one joke from King of the Hill. I would not have any idea what Hank meant, if not for you. So my hat is off to you. Yeah, when we did that episode, we were able to look up enough that like Barry Switzer was the Cowboys coach at the time.

but both of us were like, but wait, but he won a Super Bowl, why would Hank hate him? So this is important context from Ian, so thank you very much there. Last comment on the episode is from a fries jacket saying, Hearing the mention of Roy Rogers gave me flashbacks to the early aughts. We had one of them in my town and my older brother, aunt, and two cousins worked there. A lot of memories going to pick him up and sitting in the car playing Pokemon Gold version, waiting for him to be done with his shift. I do remember they had something on the menu called the Gold Rush.

It was roast beef with cheese, maybe some kind of sauce. Sounds simple, yes, but man, it was so good. Other things on the menu, I do remember being good. It was almost like a buffet style in some ways, but I was only 11 and I haven't been to one since. So my memory is foggy. That Roy Rogers is now a Dunkin. And thank you, Fry's Jack.

I look this up. Apparently, at least now, the gold. Rush is a chicken sandwich with bacon and cheese. 750 calories. That's a lot for a chicken sandwich, but I imagine it is delicious. I mean, it's bacon on top of the chicken. Sounds pretty good. I was thinking of there's the Elvis favorite, the Fool's Gold, which is even more.

It's like a jar of peanut butter and jelly and bacon baked inside of a, I think an entire loaf of bread. Is it deep fried? I believe it is deep fried. Baking sounds too healthy for that. Yes, you know what? Yes. Why would I think? I have to think that Elvis never ate something.

something that wasn't fried at that time in his life. He had the power to have everything fried. But, yeah, that Roy Rogers thing, I remember too in the, Roy Rogers comes up in the Paris's Burning documentary as a place a lot of the performers in it go to in New York City because it was easy to swipe food when you're a poor, homeless gay person. Oh, I see. Yes. In that buffet style, he was describing. So that life hack no longer exists because I think there's like 40 Roy Rogers left.

Yeah. Those gay drag performers are going to have. have to look elsewhere. Also, I'm saying that it's now a Dunkin walking around. I don't think there's any Dunkin' Donuts in my general area. This is the land of Starbucks. That's the coffee. But going to New York City, Dunkin everywhere. And there's even some that were old enough that they were still being called Dunkin' Donuts, not just Duncan. Yeah, I grew up with Duncan Donuts, and it's one of those things where I moved to California and then we got a Dunkin' Donuts and everyone was like freaking out and I didn't understand like, well, it's just Dunkin' Donuts.

Same thing with like Chick-fil-A. I grew up with that in my area. And those started moving out West. And I was like, it's fine and they're hateful. So you don't have to eat there. It was the last great moment in fast food for me when Popeye's began the thing of like, oh, wait, we can just do the Chick-fil-A sandwich and people can eat it a normally evil fast food restaurant instead of like a specifically evil Chick-fil-A. Yes.

This is a dangerous comment to read because we started at 11. It's now 120. And we're awaiting lunch. Yes. At least I am. No, yeah. It's lunchtime for me as well as soon as we're done. with this. I don't think I'll make myself a gold rush. We'll see. Probably a frozen pizza. I got

a nice California Pizza Kitchen branded frozen pizza in there. Well, you're in Seattle now, Henry. You got to get the Seattle Pizza Kitchen. You take the boy out of California, but you can't take the pizza out of him. I say that. Best pizza on earth. Yes, everybody, man, that New York pizza, pretty good. Pretty good New York pizza. I'm jealous. So I went to Prince Street pizza. That was one of my favorites there, which New Yorkers fairly don't like because it's square pizza. It's not a floppy folder. like most New York pizza. You're against the flop. I like the flop fine. My husband, though, does make fun of me. He's like, you're supposed to fold it. I was like, I don't like the fold. I don't know. I'm weird like that. But Prince Street,

big squares. And not in the New York locations, but it's in Chicago and L.A., they have as part of a promotion of the 30th anniversary of Home Alone, they became the, I believe it's called Little Niro's, the pizza chain that Kevin calls in Home Alone. They are rebranding as that, for the Christmas season, and they're selling you the plain cheese pizza that Kevin orders from the movie. Oh, nice. Well, I think we have to stop talking about food because I feel like I'm going to be swallowing mouthfuls of drool as I think about what awaits me after this podcast. But yeah, that is it for talk to the audience.

We're ending on talk about drool. I just wanted to go over the year. I mean, I don't have any stats or anything or like our financial reports or anything like that. That's boring. But I wanted to say, like, thank you to everybody for supporting us. We are now, I guess, currently in our ninth year of being on. on Patreon and Patreon supported. Of course, this is the 11th year of Talking Simpsons and we're glad

that you stuck with us for so long. And yeah, like support is not going anywhere. People are still on board with the podcast. We still have a lot of great ideas, things to cover. I'm super optimistic about the next 11 years of the show. And I hope you are too. Just I'm feeling like we're in a really good place. It is kind of like Survivors Guild and I know the year was tough for a lot of people. I don't look at the news anymore to be fair more than like five minutes at a time. So I do feel like, wow, things are great for the podcast. But outside of that, I understand that things can be a little rough and we hope you're doing well out there and you're surviving. Yeah, this was a great year, I think, for both of us and for the show. And in the middle of the year, getting to look back

on our 10 years as a podcast was, I really did put it all in respect of like how this is, you know, I think for both of us feel that this is like the best job we've ever had and we still love doing it and we love interacting with you listeners out there. And we've had so many great guests new and old this season two. Like it was going through The Simpsons. It's now starting up season six. It's been great to get back to season six. I'm really looking forward to what we're going to be doing next year and covering

the same with topics on one of cartoon. It's been a great year too. I took care of a tooth problem I had for a long time optionally and also broke a bone and had that fixed. That wasn't planned. But this was a lot of working on myself kind of year too. It feels

good. I feel like I'm in a better place mentally and physically, then I was at the start of the year. It was a good year for that, I think. Your aging hosts are all about maintaining their rapidly decaying bodies right now. Yes, yeah. Soon you'll be hearing more stories about physical therapy. I'll be relating every story like, you know, Homer eating this sandwich here reminds me of physical therapy for my wrist.

Oh, so that's still around the corner. Yes, yeah. My first real meeting is on January 2nd for it's just been slowly, let's hope it only takes a couple months of that. It's not going to be like, you know, even weekly visits. It's more just like she's going to tell me like things to do during the week. And I'll listen to her. I promise.

I'll be listening. Well, you know, the good news is once we hit 10 years of self-employment, we can challenge any boss to a fight to the death. We will have that authority. I know. It's like, as we've said many times, we have become unemployable elsewhere because we're too good. We know how to be treated and how to be paid. After 10 years, I have gained all the powers of a manager. It has really been a great year.

And a big thank you to the people who have helped us this year, too. like our editors, including Jesse and Momika, thank you very much. And our brand new theme song for Talking Simpsons this year by Miles Morcree. It's been great to have all this new music and all their experience helping us this year to make this podcast. The best it's ever been, I want to say. I think we've been doing great and I look forward to the next year. Yeah, yeah, the new theme song. I know some people took a little get used to that.

Essentially they have at this point. But that, I love it and it stuck in my head. And it makes us feel like an even realer show. We're not just like stealing music. and using music that people have never heard before from an arcade game that can be kind of shrill. We now have our official own proprietary theme song. And I think it's like, wow, I don't know why we didn't do this earlier, but now it feels like this is an official show.

It took 10 years. It did feel like we were finally bridging from, it was Bob's suggestion first. I thank you for suggesting it, Bob, because it felt like our old theme song, I mean, I love that song from The Simpsons Arcade, but that music was like, it was the way of making a video game podcast in 2007, of just like, I'll just use a video game music. Nobody will notice. Meanwhile, this feels like, no, we're a real podcast.

And real podcasts pay people to write music for them to be their theme song. And that's what we did. It's so happy that we're finally real boys in 2025. Real podcasting boys. But Bob, I want to say thank you for another great year. Oh, thanks to you, Henry, too. And everybody out there, thank you so much for supporting us and listening. And we will see you again next year for another episode of Talking Simpsons.

And next month for another talk to the audience. And take care. We'll see you then.