Talking Simpsons - Talk to the Audience?!? - February 2024

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

We've reached the end of the month, which means it's once again time for another installment of our community podcast! Join us as we discuss new episodes, WGA nominations, Yeardley Smith's thoughts on acting with Dustin Hoffman, and more. And, as always, we read and respond to your questions and comments from the most recent round of episodes. It's all happening on Talk to the Audience?!?, where roaming gangs aren't a big problem anymore!

I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talk to the Audience, where this is always death. I'm one of your hosts, Bob Mackie, and Dustin Hoffman made me cry. Who is here with me today, as always? Seven-time nominee for best wga animated program henry gilbert and yes welcome once again to talk to the audience this is our community podcast it launches at the end of the month on patreon at the beginning of the month on the free feed and in this podcast we go over what's happening in the world of the simpsons what's happening in

our world and then we respond to your questions and comments from the last month's worth of episodes. And because we are in February, or February as some people say, it's kind of been a slow month. We're going to have fun this week, though, but not a whole lot of Simpsons-related news. Even with one extra day in the month of February this year, we still, yeah, it was light on Simpsons news, though. Not as light on new episodes as last month, which had no new episodes to talk about last month. Yeah. February is truly tenant's revenge, where finally you can get one extra day out of your landlord, although they may prorate the rent to make it a little more this month. So I assume some landlords would do that. Not mine. Mine's about the same. But then you never notice because you're still getting used to the new slight increase they're allowed every year in most regions of the U.S. Right. But on the 29th, you can tell your landlord to shove it. Just make sure your lease is airtight or else they will evict you. ago i was seeing the uh the chapo trap house live podcast the same night as uh biden won south carolina and was pretty much sealing the deal for the nomination i believe i was in vancouver

and i was seeing uh tim and eric live on the 29th no yes not knowing there would not be fun after that for a very long time you you spent double leap days in uh in vancouver now this will be your second one it's worth it it's a good place to spend a leap day let's talk about simpsons news two new episodes this month uh once again i've been a bad boy i didn't do my homework i've got a very good reason uh and it's one word dune i'll talk more about that later but there were two new episodes like i said the first one well henry of course has seen these the first one was frankenstein's monster uh written by joel cohen directed by stephen dean moore it's an al jean run episode and amanda seyfried as guest star

on that episode and apparently it's about frank helping homer get a new power plant job that he's unqualified for and for whatever reason lisa sings a song parodying a james taylor hits yes yeah it's uh it's kind of all over the place episode but basically it it's one of those classic simpsons it and it's parodying it in a way well uh that where homer new job plus two characters become friends who weren't friends ever before. And this time it is Frank and Homer become new buddies. And Frank helps Homer first land a new job at a Shelbyville power plant that's run by the Finnish. Like there's no Aristotle Amidopolis in this episode.

And Homer gets the job. He beats out for the position a much more qualified woman played by Amanda Seyfried. And then she goes for revenge as Frank helps him maintain his job. But the Finnish boss is so understanding and friendly to Homer. And it is like a new office kind of style. I was like, this really is like the Frank Hank Scorpio episode what so what is up with this Lisa singing a song of a parody of a 50 year old song what's going on there well I mean it's just it's Al Jean being old but it's like basically

basically it wasn't like strong-armed wait I want to ask you a question are you sure this wasn't strong-armed onto the show by Dave merkin who is definitely like a consulting producer and a huge james taylor fan maybe it was actually i i would think if they had the idea without him the way they get the rights to do the song is with dave merkin making a phone call that that's for sure i have to assume so but yeah in the middle of the episode l Lisa gets sad about Homer taking a job from a more qualified woman and writes a song about how she's sad to the tune of this James Taylor song. I had honestly I don't think I'd ever heard before. And I mean, Yardley Smith sings it very well. But they play it so long.

Like, they play, I'd say, a good in two different scenes if you stitched them together. They did a two-minute version of this song. Like, it's a really long song. That is merely less episode to write for you. So the next episode, which aired just right before this recording, is Lisa Gets an F1. Apparently, it's a parody of a Netflix reality show that I'm just hearing about, but this show is five years old now.

It is called Formula One Drive to Survive, and it's in its sixth season on Netflix. What's going on here? Yeah, so this one, written by Ryan Coe, directed by Timothy Bailey, it's a Matt Selman app. And yeah, Bob, you'll never believe this, but I've only heard of this F1 show in relation to pro wrestling. Um, uh, consider me shocked.

Uh, but basically this F1 show, I had heard about it because it is long been rumored like, uh, that Netflix is getting into live sports and it might get a wrestling show. And then actually in the last month, right around the time new horrifying allegations about Vince McMahon came out, Netflix signed a deal for WWE. But the reason people said, oh, they'll get a pro wrestling show is because they got this F1 show, which was a shocking hit for them. It basically is profiling F1 drivers who are interesting people and then i had heard at least from the american viewpoint on it no one in america has ever cared

about f1 racing unless they're crazy but this show made it actually a popular sport or a more popular sport in america well i only care about f, so the show already lost me. Well, Bob, F-Zero's cousin Mario Kart also gets a huge shout-out in this episode. I don't know if you've seen any of the clips. I know. Actually, I saw a promotional image because I follow the Simpsons Twitter account, and it's like Homer is Wario in the promotional image. Is that going on in the show as well? Dan Castellaneta does a good Wario.

He does. image is that going on in the show as well dan castaneda does a good is wario he does it's uh so so the the plot is lisa they bring back rachel bloom who i didn't realize she'd done this this is her third appearance uh lisa's psychiatrist which are therapists which again i'm just like boy this is like it should be the joke is the simpsons could never afford therapy but no lisa just has a regular therapist now. But she says that a way for Lisa to deal with her generalized anxiety is about Homer's bad driving is to become a get used to doing go-kart racing. And she becomes very good at it. And then it's kid go-kart racing equals F1. That's the joke.

Yeah, I assumed it was a go-kart story yes well and then homer gets worried about lisa while marge is not worried at all and that's some of the funniest stuff in the episode but uh part of homer's worry manifests itself in about a minute long uh mario kart parody where they're on rainbow road l Lisa is Mario, Yoshi is Milhouse, and Homer's Wario. Boy, that's so weird. I guess that's for the, well, I mean, everyone loves Mario Kart. It's the highest selling game on every Nintendo platform at this point. So, you know, good parody, I guess.

Good choice for a parody. There was a lengthy Mario Kart scene in the second biggest movie last year. What was that? The Mario Brothers movie, remember? Oh, yeah. There's a whole Mario Kart race. Sorry. I was like, I didn't want to believe it was the second biggest movie of the year.

What was number one? Barbie? It was Barbie. Your new favorite movie, right, Bob? No, both movies I don't like that much. Although, I was not... I don't know. We'll talk about Barbie later. I got some issues with that movie. Oh, my last thought on elisa gets an f1 though is the uh

they brought matt barry in who i love him he's a very funny actor uh in everything you see him in but he the funny thing is he's the announcer slash host of the f1 show which is like totally fits a cold british guy uh hosting it and that's the style of the f1 show except i'm like oh he he's just kind of doing the jokes they did when dan was the fancy british guy on the uh soapbox derby racer okay so same kind of character like giving too much prestige to a kid's competition making these these highfalutin comparisons. And also a lot of jokes about the Italians in the episode as well.

Well, it's still safe to make fun of them for now. For now. Until we get our first Italian president, which I don't think will happen. Hope not. No. Not as long as I'm alive. Moving on, we're going to talk about

the Writing Guild Awards because The Simpsons once again got way too many nominations now we respect the work of these writers but they're really crowding up this category aren't they because i'm looking at the uh the list of nominees and there are what uh four simpsons episodes nominated or wait? Oh yeah, there are four. There are five total nominations. Oh, five. Wow. Okay, yeah. Boy.

Well, it's five total nominations for anything. Four of them are Simpsons and the other one is Futurama from the new season of Futurama. Yes. And not even the one I like the most from that season. It's still an okay one. So the nominees for the Simpsons were A Mid-childhood night's dream carl carlson rides again uh homer's adventure through the windshield glass and thirst trap a corporate love story and i think the issue with this is well yes uh they've been nominated too many times for this category

but also so few other animated shows are in the wga that the the pickings are slim i think that they are i i did a little tweet about this which gave me some insight because i have some very helpful uh i have more animation writers than i thought i did following me on twitter and that's i've always learned a lot when i tweet about these things but yeah i so i looked into this and the the writers guild of america awards they've had an animated category since 2003 which isn't surprising because like it wasn't it wasn't until i believe 99 that simpsons family guy and king of the hill became wga shows like there basically was no wga animation at all uh but since 2003 if you look at the list of nominees and winners, 70% of the nominees have been The Simpsons.

Like, of all nominees. I'm looking at it right now. Well, it got off to a good start with Futurama winning for Godfellas. Then 2003, The Simpsons. 2004, The Simpsons. 2005, The Simpsons. 2006, The Simpsons. 2007, The Simpsons.

I'm not going to keep going on. And then, hey, 10 years into it, Futurama wins again. And then, back to The Simpsons 2007 the simpsons i'm not going to keep going on but uh and then hey uh 10 years into it a futurama wins again and then back to the simpsons and and also that like if you look at the nominees for the years the simpsons won it was competing against itself mainly and it's like and i and i i yes there's very few wga shows i don't know if this was not clarified to me as if it was a rule that only a wGA show can be nominated in these things. I would think so. But even so, Bob's Burgers, Rick and Morty, Family Guy, American Dad, these would be able to be nominated.

Yeah, it seems a little silly. Okay, yes. At most, maybe there's two really good episodes you could nominate that year but five in one category for the entire year there's got to be at least one American Dad episode that's as good as one of the five Simpsons or like a Rick and Morty that's as good as one of the five nominated yeah and I I don't want Simpsons writers to not feel like they should be proud like be proud of your nominations but uh this was an insight given to me by previous sims uh interviewer we interview we had eric rogers uh who was a writer for

futurama and is a big time animation writer and very into the labor side of things uh that he has said this has been a problem for a very long time at WGA. He agreed to me. I believe his feelings were that it is the voters who nominate things have only heard of the Simpsons. Yeah, I totally would believe that. I feel like American Dad is due for something. It's been on the air. It'll be 20 years next year. I feel like give it something i there's too much snobbery about seth mcfarlane i've come around on seth mcfarlane i i don't i don't love him

but i feel like we were too hard on him for a while and uh now that his movie career has fizzled out it's okay to be on his side again yeah yeah he's there's worse ways to be a billionaire. I wish billionaires were more or 100 millionaires in entertainment that their worst vice was singing show tunes all of the time on stage. Yeah. I mean, he's done some good stuff for, you know, unions. Speaking of the Writers Guild. Yeah. He's been repping the guild so well and they can't give any of his shows a fucking nomination like uh it's just yeah so that that was crazy to me to

see it i didn't realize that this was has been a problem for 20 years now uh on these nominations which again the simpsons had a good year but it's also like when i see say in 2009 or no i think it was 2007 where every nominee was simpsons i was like that season 20 or season 16 of simpsons is not the year only it should be nominated in the wga i don't think absolutely yeah absolutely so i i have no faith in this but maybe next year it'll be more varied. But like you said, like we've been saying through this conversation, it is the Simpsons Award. It's like, oh, the Simpsons Awards goes to the Simpsons. But which one, which writer for the Simpsons is really just an internal battle among Simpsons writers about who gets to be.

Just give them all. They're all winners. Al Jean has joked before that he thinks that it counts against them in the Emmys, when Emmys are like, well, if The Simpsons wins again, we've got to make like 40 trophies to give to every writing producer on this show. Yeah, the Emmys, they're weighing the cost of giving out 60 trophies to all the producers. Although we talked about this on recent episodes uh disney seemingly made a lot of the producers consulting producers uh in recent years and i still wonder if those uh how i we talked about this with how they had some writers who were like now mini showrunners of like oh well this is a matt selman one but then he um you know rightly credits on twitter when talking

about the show well actually carol and i mean a run that ran this one or tim long did but that seems good but then i wonder like wait is this how they get away with a mini room and how they like just have a showrunner for a mini room for like three episodes and they just divide it yeah i i don't know what the conditions are like or what the pay is like but it does feel like a lot of jobs where you'll get the responsibilities of this higher role but you won't get the the title or the pay and i really hope it doesn't come to that but disney's so cheap now yep yeah it's uh i i say it every year but they've been renewed for two more so the simpsons are safe for now with whatever their current staffing is so there's a great new vulture article out it's called when lisa cried i recommend you

read it and i assume henry does as well uh and this is all about yardley smith's experience working with dustin hoffman on lisa's substitute and uh there is a great account of her response to seeing the line you are lisa simpson and i'll actually read a bit of this uh interview excerpt So this is Yardley when she's talking about getting to the line and how she felt when she recorded that scene. To quote Yardley, I thought, that's all you're going to give her? How dare you? Not at all realizing at the time that what they were saying was, you are enough. Honestly, that speaks to the tremendous deficit I felt inside and sort of have grappled with

my entire life. It certainly has evolved now, but back then I was really, really working hard to fill up the inside from the outside. So if you'd handed me a note that says you are Yardley Smith, I would have been like, what the fuck is that? What are you talking about? So fucking what? I really didn't get it. And I think part of the gulping sobs was feeling as though it wasn't enough. So, wow. So I guess when you when you go back to that episode now, you can think, Yardley Smith, she's sad because she felt short-chained. She thought the character was being sold short in that moment,

and only later she realized what a powerful line it was. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like she was being very honest and open. And another thing I love in most Yardley Smith interviews she has given lately about her process or history on the character, she openly swears and like is just I just love her looseness of how she's like, what the fuck is that? Like, it's just so funny to me. Well, she is she is a true crime podcaster. And hey, maybe if they included the exclamation point, as was James L. Brooks original intention, she might have understood it better yeah I and

also hearing about how she like found emotional space with in the room with Dustin Hoffman like to know that uh you know to read about how Brooks her account of it we knew this but uh her account of you know how Brooks flew her out to act in person with Dustin Hoffman and James L. Brooks directed it. And also the way Lisa, at least Yardley, talks about how Lisa tells off Homer and says, you are a baboon. And she starts to cry. And she says how real that was for her. It's just, yeah, that was, that is something, too, you get of acting in the same room kind of thing that they really, you know, they haven't had that in a very long time in the show. Yeah, it's, they all become way too famous to, you know, join together in a dirty little room to pretend to be cartoon characters. But yeah, check that out. It's called When Lisa Cried, I believe.

And in our last bit of news here, you don't want to miss this if it's coming to your town, the 25 years of Mission Hill live show with our podcasting pals, Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein. It recently, as of this recording, was just in San Francisco, but it'll be coming to other cities

throughout April, March, and in later summer dates. So it'll be coming to other cities throughout April, March, and in later summer dates. So it'll be coming to Portland, New York City, Philadelphia, Boston, Providence, San Diego, and Orlando. And just check out Bill Oakley's Twitter, ThatBillOakley, for updates on the live show. I believe, Henry, you went to two of these shows? Yeah, they did a double show in Seattle. I don't know if they normally or if any of these dates are a four-episode night, but it was really, really great to see it with them.

I mean, Bill and Josh even told stories that I didn't know, or they also had trivia questions that stumped me that I don't want to even say what the questions were because they might give people a tip-off on how to win, and I want it to be a fair competition there but uh and and also if you're crazy like me you might even be able to buy for several hundred dollars a cell of mission hill that they might be selling there as well i'm looking at henry behind henry uh i see the grandpa cell when are you going to build your wall of cells behind you for uh for podcasting purposes i'm almost done with building my ikea furniture so

i'll be putting it up soon but the one i got was uh kevin freaking out at his uh losing the uh his computer game uh in the show and like holding his face and freaking out i think that would be perfect to have near my computer as well uh at this point henry you have so many cells i think you just need a gallery a room that's a gallery that people could pay to enter a third i need a third apartment uh but open it up to the public yeah no it's um but no uh yes their show is great it's totally worth your time to to check it out i hope uh our pals in san francisco tell people go to see it even after they did their show at the the roxy and sf then the next day they had like a private engagement at uh the pixar campus and did basically their show my understanding is they did the same

presentation of episodes at pixar campus for pixar employees and then i'd be like hey pixar what about a mission hill movie think about it it's you don't need to make finding nemo 3 we all know how that's going to go down uh you know bill and uh bill also had a very funny tweet about this thing too because they are showing um upscaled 4k with the original um music and all that episodes it's not always the nicest to warner at this uh things which is always fun and he talks about how like yeah warner and i wish they believed in this and i was just seeing bill talking about it again because everybody uh was dunking on this terrible dumb tweet uh over the weekend about animation where basically a a guy was smugly saying oh you said the show got canceled well you bet you didn't pirate it right you supported it by buying the merchandise

and everybody ian jones cordy also had a great tweet of saying like yeah all this merchandise look at all the merchandise they made for okko and every show like and yeah it's uh it was such a dumb thing to like piraters are the only one keeping delisted shows around in some cases like it's uh it's so stupid absolutely uh yeah there is no merch for shows there are no dvds or blu-rays for a lot of animated shows i would say most at this point that aren't prime time ones and even those they don't really get blu-rays anymore or any any merch anyway so it's just the big shows that have been around for a very long time that still get the merch shows shows like futurama and family guy that were saved by dvd sales would never happen now like there have been multiple shows that got

canceled like infinity train ok ko and all these types of shows that if they had a chance to sell dvds they actually could perhaps sell enough to justify their continued existence. Probably not as physical medias, but at the very least they would sell. People would buy them and could support them. There is literally no way to support a show, whether you pirate it or not. It also is like,

I guess your metrics would commit to like prime video or Netflix that would say, well, this, this got watched by these people. That's the only thing you can contribute, though. You can't buy merch and you can't buy DVDs. They don't exist for so many shows. Yeah, even with shows

that have been around for 25 years, like Futurama, you'd think there'd be new merch to ring in the new season. But, you know, just going to random stores, I barely see Simpsons stuff to begin with so i feel like disney does not care about this that kind of merchandising despite all the crap they want to sell you they're like well we don't need new bender toys or like uh lila key chains or anything

like that the the showrunners of these shows beg to make merchandise beg and they don't do it because the the pr teams and i saw bill oakley say how example with with mission hill it doesn't stream anywhere the people keeping it alive are the creators who also kind of have to pirate their own shows and i i am going to beat this dead horse again on our podcast uh they won't even bother to sell you simpsons dvds which is just uh a printing money license to use a hackneyed phrase i mean they they won't even bother to sell you simpsons dvds which is just uh a printing money license to use a hackneyed phrase i mean they they don't want to have the meeting to create the money printing license that that's how little this matters to them it's so i i mean too i i was thinking of this this weekend as well because i that well that tweet was made to like piss people

off because it's like by it's by somebody who does work in the animation industry. But the person's peers and seniors were like, no, this is wrong. You're totally wrong. But the smugness of it, too, just kind of set me off. But in general, my biggest annoyance was that I was also seeing this weekend how Discotech, the the anime distributor they were announcing all these new things and they keep putting out all this stuff they and they have a i'm assuming because they continue to exist a profitable business probably selling a limited amount of physical media to a niche audience but it makes money but the simpsons dvds will never sell enough to be the level of profit that somebody gives a shit about in a boardroom.

Like, profit doesn't even matter anymore. Yeah, that's a real shame. I know there are some commentaries I haven't heard. Like, I actually have not watched my season 19 Blu-rays. Or is it 18? Well, I think it's 19 is the last set. The one with Homer on the cover? Yeah, yes. That's 19, yes. I was just grabbing. So is it 18? Well, I think it's 19 is the last set. The one with Homer on the cover? Yeah, yes.

That's 19, yes. I was just grabbing. I bought an 18th. You had an 18th. I bought a Canadian 18th, which are much cheaper than the out-of-print American 18ths. Yeah, and you know what? Maybe I haven't heard the season 18 commentaries either. I know I opened it and watched some of the episodes.

I don't know, but I know there will be an end to the commentaries at some point, and I'll miss those. And hey, they might not even have new Futurama commentaries. I'm guessing they won't. I don't think we're going to see this new season of Futurama on DVD or Blu-ray. So, end of an era, and I'm upset about it. Okay, shut up and take my money. That's all I'm going to say. That's the Futurama line, and they won't let us.

They won't. Yeah, this last month, Sony is apparently taking over Disney's physical media machine. So maybe that's getting smaller. Yeah. OK, well, this is all very sad. So that's it for Simpsons News. Let's talk about happy stuff. Our news, because lots of great podcasts are coming at you in March. Let's talk about what a cartoon first our what a cartoon episode for march will be uh about the series invincible the amazon prime series and the episode number one it's about time so finally we're digging into the uh robert kirkman takedown slash exploration of the superhero mythology and it's very well animated very very violent and uh it's it's brought to us by one of our patrons so uh i've been waiting to watch this one for a long time, and I'm happy it didn't disappoint. Yeah, it was really good.

We just recorded it last weekend, so it's one of the quickest turnarounds you'll see on a What a Cartoon as well. So I'm looking forward to people hearing us chat about it in this modern era of super animation. We even chat a little about, yeah why does every like uh superhero american show sort of look like this why why is this the standard look there's a good reason so yes starting off the month with invincible and then for our patrons at the five dollar and up level at patreon.com slash talking simpsons we have our normal mini series episodes so we are starting with talking futurama the episode spanish fry the second to last episode to air and the horniest episode to air as it's all about fry's nose and

then later his penis his wing dang doodle as bender puts it uh yes many euphemisms many uh many instances of better going woo And also just friend spooning is defined in this episode too. We had a lot of fun and as always like the series is so hilarious and crazy in the final Fox episode. They're having a lot of fun. So yeah, Talking Futurama

Spanish Fry and then Talking of the Hill just in time for spring break presumably recovering Escape from Party Island where Hank accompanies his mother and four other old women to Port Aransas, where they're going to a miniature museum. But what they're going to find is nothing but trouble. It's a great mom episode. And also, you know, not horny as well, just like Spanish Fry, because it's a lot of MTV spring break horniness everybody but the characters you like are horny

in that episode and then in the wet t-shirt contest and Hank is unhappy about that yeah possibly the only wet t-shirt contest depicted on King of the Hill and our what a cartoon movie for this month we regret to inform you is Disney's Chicken Little the

2005 movie that really kicked off the CGI era for Disney, because I'm not going to count dinosaur and you shouldn't either. This is something I've just always been morbidly curious about. And you know, it's been a while since we covered a mediocre to bad movie. So I'm looking forward to covering this. It's also directed by Mark Dindle who directed emperor's new groove so there you have it i want to see like what he did in this uh form of expression in the world of cgi so it's gonna be fun uh it's gonna be weird and we're gonna be talking a lot about zach braff and i'm not excited about that but it's gonna be a good episode is this our first chat about

the braffster about our fellow podcaster, Zach Braff? You know, he's no Superman. That's what I've heard. He literally does a Talking Simpsons for his own show for Scrubs. Of course. Of course he does. And we forgive him all for Garden State, but not for the movie he kickstarted. That's apparently worse.

He did like three directorial follow-ups to Garden State, I think. And they all sound way worse than it yes yeah but i think he's not dating florence pew anymore so that's good okay well uh she made it out of the the brafosphere that's that's why i'm saying it was bad she deserves much better than zach brown last year i believe in march we covered chicken run and now we're covering chicken little so this is this is a theme i'm working. There's lots of bird movies. I assume a lot are better, but this is such a weird and ugly movie. I can't wait to talk about it and finally sit down to watch it and see if it was worth all of my sneering.

We've had too much prestige these days on our podcast. It's time for some negativity. When you really care about someone, you shout it from the mountaintops. So on behalf of Desjardins Insurance, I'm standing 20,000 feet above sea level to tell our clients that we really care about you! Home and auto insurance personalized to your needs. Weird, I don't remember saying that part. Visit Desjardins.com slash care and get insurance that's really big on care did i mention that we care uh and yeah that is our schedule for uh march on the talking simpsons network so yes here is the time when we talk about what we've been playing and watching unrelated to podcasting and like

immediately after recording talk to the audience, after a bunch of trips, I started going back to the gym. And after my first day back to the gym, I came down with a horrible flu that wasn't COVID. So I was basically not really productive for about two weeks. So I played a lot of video games and did a lot of podcast prep. I'm feeling fine now and I'm back to the gym and it did not infect me a second time, so I'm happy about that. But in terms of playing stuff, some of these things Henry has played, so I'm not going to talk too much about them. I did finish Like a Dragon, The Man Who Erased His Name.

That is a Guy Den style game. You know, a very short game. 35 hours. It'll just go by in a blink. To be fair, I did everything I could until having to get past a certain point in certain areas got too tedious or annoying, but I got the most out of it, had a really good time.

I am really pushing, I'm kicking that Infinite Wealth can down the road because I'm having a lot of fun just finishing a ton of games, and I know I will be playing Infinite Wealth for two months straight when I start it so i want to like clear my plate from with a lot of little games first but i did want to play this and i had a lot of fun with it i would say it's not to be ignored they really worked hard on making this like a full game experience it rules yeah it's a really really great it's a real game it it's short by like a dragon yakuza stand uh standpoint but is a real real game and if you are a long-time player of the series uh you will love it like it is a uh kiryu you get some real good stuff with

kiryu in it oh yeah definitely and it goes right into infinite wealth it bridges the gap so you figure out like where he's going how he's going to end up in the next game, and so on. Also, I'm playing some of the Acclaim games from previous years that I didn't get around to. One of them is Inscription. It's a very cool deck-building roguelike that has a weird creepypasta metagame surrounding it, where basically the gist of the game is you're playing as a guy who kind of finds an abandoned computer game in the woods and you playing the game is the guy, the protagonist, playing

the game within his world and it gets a lot weirder from there. There's a lot of cool narrative ties and like a very complex ARG that you need to play if you want to figure out what's actually happening in the story. Thankfully, a bunch of freaks have done that on Reddit already so I don't have to do anything. But the core card game is very very fun and i had a great time with

inscription and it's on like every platform including switch i really recommend it it's a great time and also i played the re4 dlc it's great that's all i gotta say about it just oh i want an excuse to play re4 again well yes here it is in your ada and she's great and she's got a grappling hook and that's all i gotta say about that i and i wouldn't mind playing that because i i was a gamecube uh stan who would not touch it when it came out on the playstation 2 so i never played uh the the ada wong side stuff in the original version it wasn't very good in the original version they they did a really good job of rehabilitating it and making it into uh on par with the the core game uh on on i never finished the other separate ways it just felt like a lesser experience and it it was too

it was too like tedious and too difficult but here they found like the perfect way to make ada a playable character and a perfect way to reuse environments without it making making it seem like a you know too similar experience and i've also been playing all of the big brain games. My head is swollen. It barely fits in this Zencaster window. It's so big because I've been playing all the smarty pants games like Disco Elysium and Citizen Sleeper and Norco. And I just finished Pentament,

a game that at times feels like an installation at a history museum where you're pushing buttons to learn about things. But it's an extremely slow burn but it is a very accurate i assume portrayal of life and faith in the 16th century in europe and there are some murder mysteries some like salacious stuff going on in the story but a lot of it i would say the brunt of the game is you just learning what life is like on the ground floor for most people at this time period. And it's fascinating. And now it's on the Switch as well, right?

Yeah, I started playing it just as it went to every other platform. But hey, you must have played it in a way that got you Xbox achievements, right? No, I logged into Steam to play it. And I haven't earned an Xbox achievement in like over a decade. But it's like, do you want to log in with Xbox too? And I was like, sure. So every time I got a Steam achievement, I got the blink. And I got Xbox points on my abandoned Xbox account.

So there you have it. I don't even know if we're Xbox friends now that I think about it. You know what? I mean, I think I just abandoned that platform right before i met you so uh oh man i really don't think we were microsoft is abandoning it seemingly right now so you you were ahead of them on that we're gonna find out what's going on microsoft and sony very soon why did they choose not to did they forget they'd have to put out games three years ago or they're like well you don't have to make games for three years from now like it's like yeah we made a sony made the one game for the ps5 and

they're like okay we're moving on to ps6 yeah yeah it's who cares about this platform the switch is actually like dead this year like this is the last year of the switch and they are putting out way more first party games on it than xbox or playstation is getting. I honestly feel like the Switch has such a huge install base, we're going to be seeing new releases for the Switch for at least the next three years. Even if there is a new Switch 2 or whatever next year. Yeah, I don't think it's going to be, I mean, I don't know what the status of the Switch 2 is in terms of backwards compatibility. I assume you'll be able to play your old games.

I really hope so. But I don't think it's going to be like, okay, the Wii is out. You will never hear us mention the GameCube again. There will never be a GameCube release. It's like, oh no, 200 million people have this thing. And a lot of the, I would say most of them aren't going to immediately buy the new one.

Let's make almost everything available for this. Sort of like the PS5, how until recently, everything was also a PS4 game, and it still is kind of that way. Spider-Man was like the first time it really felt like they made people have to buy a PS5. And I will say the last thing I'm playing, it just came out,

maybe a lot of you have put this game down because it is about 18 months old, but the Splatoon 3 DLC is very, very good. They basically turn the single player game into a roguelike where you're going up a tower taking on these different challenges upgrading your character and then you get to carry certain things over once you die you know what a roguelike is but they apply that to splatoon and i am such a sucker like if you take a good game and apply the roguelike thing to it i will like it And that's as simple as the equation is for Splatoon 3 side order.

It's very, very good. That's cool. Now, I am a recent... I never really got into roguelikes until Hades. That was the first one that really, really got me. And hearing that for a Splatoon, and that it's single player, that sounds like a good time. Yes, it's a lot of fun and just good Splatoon gameplay with a fun little gimmick wrapped around it. So I really recommend that because I assume most people are simply not playing Splatoon anymore.

And I understand. So, yeah, also I'm on like I give myself homework for everything I do now because I'm on Goodreads. I'm on Letterboxd and I'm on Backlogged, the game Letterboxd. And I'm on all letterbox and now i'm on backlogged the game letterbox and i'm on all those as bob servo so please follow me there if you want to see what i'm up to and what i'm reading and watching and playing um so i've been watching a lot of movies uh and some worth mentioning i'll go over right now uh i for the first time i saw eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It came out when I was like a year off of a disastrously failed relationship. So I was like, I'm not watching this. And then 20 years later, I watched it and I thought it was delightful.

No, I'm so glad you finally watched that movie, Bob. It's one of my favorites. I got into it. I actually didn't see it in theaters. I saw it on DVD the next year when it came out on DVD. I was a big fan into it. I actually didn't see it in theaters. I saw it DVD like the next year when it came out on DVD. I was a big fan of it also because, you know, it is a great Valentine's Day movie. Whether you're single and hate Valentine's Day or you love Valentine's Day and this reaffirms your love of Valentine's Day. It could be both.

Yeah. And I mean, Michel Gondry is the director. And I think the unpleasant weirdness of Charlie coffin really cuts down on his twee qualities. And, uh, I think it's a good match. So, uh,

I'm not saying anything that's surprising to anyone, but this is a great movie, even though I, I kind of fundamentally disagree with the thesis, which is like, Oh, love is so strong. It doesn't matter if your brain is erased,

you'll find your soulmate. And it's just like, well, these people are very wrong for each other, and they should be dating other people. That's my thesis. Move on, Jim Carrey. Man, the set design

is so amazing in it that it, like, everything looks so real, and then it all falls apart in these dreamlike states. It's, like, so amazing. Yeah. Yeah, I want to believe the message, which I love these romantic ideals, but I feel like they should be they should find better people for each other. But moving on, I have seen this movie before, but Drew Mackey and Glenn Lakin for the gayest episode ever. They released an episode about a Simpsons episode that parodied this.

So I had to pirate to watch this. Heavenly Creatures, the Peter Jackson movie from 1994. There was no way for me to watch this legally. And then when I went on to Amazon, it's like, we have two copies left on DVD. So I don't know what's up with the rights to this movie, but it's insane to me that in 2024, you need to pirate a Peter Jackson movie. Yes. Starring two very popular actresses as well. So it's one of the most famous you expect in terms of directing. But the source material is not something I really expect from him. But he has a great time with it. Now, I did really enjoy Drew and Glenn's gayest episode ever on The Simpsons episode that took inspiration from it.

I especially liked Drew did some email exchange with the writer of that episode and i really liked hearing uh drew quote um tim long i believe it was who said like that he personally does not like episodes of barda and lisa date like he does not like those and he tries to prevent them from happening so yes uh find heavenly creatures it's great And the story it's based on is very interesting. Also rewatched Election the first time in about 15 years. And now that I've watched it, I am now older than Matthew Broderick's character. So it was a fun, you know, when I watched it for the first time, I was kind of like kind of fresh out of high school. And now I'm older than he is in the movie so it's like i can get a better perspective of what how certain feelings you have in middle age and certain uh failures you might have faced and how you deal with those and also

as an older person i now have a lot more empathy for reese witherspoon's character tracy flick uh she is a villain in the movie but i feel like i have a lot more emotional intelligence than when i watched this movie when i was like 24 or whatever and I felt like I can see what informs this character and I find her unpleasant but I also feel really sorry for her yeah I know she she is a real victim in all that I mean the way that I I love how much that Matthew Broderick's character like you you get to live in his head but also his deep denial and and same with Flick's also in deep denial, too. But him just saying, like, and I don't even blame her for what happened to my best friend. And you know what?

I love my wife. I'm just good friends with his, like, I just love the rejection he feels from the woman. Look, if you haven't seen the movie, this would spoil everything. But yeah, it's so great i mean this is the beginning of the movie but i i understand why people don't like tracy flick i mean that's why they like the movie because she's so perfectly depicted as this like super striver but this time i walked away thinking oh she was groomed by a pedophile uh and she's extremely wounded from the experience I kind of get why she acts like this. And she's carrying this thing that she can't tell anyone.

And I feel like a lesser movie just would have made her a quote unquote bitch, you know. But there's like a much lighter touch, which is for whatever reason, there are balloons now rising in my Zencaster window. I don't know why. I don't know. Very strange. Is it my birthday? Sorry, that was very strange. But I feel like this was an MTV movie, weirdly enough. And I put this in my Letterboxd review. I didn't see this in theaters. I saw Dead Man on Campus in theaters instead of this. Not that they were in theaters at the same time. It's like, why did I watch that? Was it the Zack Morris connection? I don't know, but election rules. Yeah, no, love that movie.

And I think you were on a pain kick as well. You were getting your pain medicine. Yes, I needed my pain medicine. Alexander Payne movies after the holdovers. And then I'll talk about a few more things. I saw Barbie, and I feel like the movie corner is Bob Mackie hates popular things. I just talked about a bunch of things I like that are popular. Didn't care for Barbie. It felt at its best.

It felt like, well, this is just PR for Barbie. At its worst, it felt like, oh, this is a white corporate feminism that is kind of base level. And, you know, at its worst, meaningless when applied to the context of a world full of toys. And I don't get it, folks. I really don't understand it. And this is not a CinemaSins thing. But after I watched the movie with my wife, we spent the entire next day just like yelling questions at each other. Like, why did this happen?

Why did that happen? How? Like, because the logic of the world makes no sense it doesn't make a goddamn lick of sense and that's why i couldn't buy into it because if you're making a movie about toys let's say toy story let's throw that out as an example there are rules which lead to these dangerous stakes for all of the characters here it's like well i guess they can come and go to the real world if they please and uh what does will ferrell's character want i don't know i don't know what his goals are oh uh barbie can affect things in the real world but the real

world can also affect things in barbie land it's it's very strange and uh super super super messy no i mean i i i think uh i saw uh mina did a great tweet using the it's she's just got a new hat she still represents all the horrible things Barbie represented before with from the Lisa Lionheart episode yes yeah and I mean it got off to a bad start because it starts with a 2001 a space odyssey parody and I'm like what is this a 31 year old episode of the Simpsons and the point of the parody is barbie changed the world barbie is important it's like i'm sitting i'm sitting down to watch a barbie movie that made one billion dollars that stars margot robbie i know people know about barbie okay let's let's get that out of the way i remember when that parody debuted uh as a trailer

and everybody was very defensive of it i'm just like uh no it's great it's like i don't know yes i didn't feel particularly great about that thing and that there were parts of the movie i liked i did but i also felt it was yeah i i mean it's it also has left my appreciation i did like seeing how much people loved barbie it was fun to see like when you go to the theater you'd see a bunch of people having a good time like mostly women i'm happy people were excited about it i just wish it wasn't trying to say things because it has to pull its punches because it is a commercial for barbie and this is not a spoiler i assume most people have seen the movie by now because it made a billion dollars

but like the third act is basically uh after to the real world, Ken brings patriarchy back to Barbie land. And they basically have to undo all of the changes Ken made to Barbie land. And to apply the patriarchy to Barbie land is very weird. And it doesn't work because there is no capitalism there. That is where all the sexism can be dangerous when capitalism is involved because it's like, here are things that are not available to women because the men on top are paying them less, are keeping them out of certain roles. You can't apply that to a world in which nobody is homeless and you don't need to eat or drink. And the thing it's saying about men at worst, it's like, what's the worst thing about men in the patriarchy?

Oh, they're kind of annoying and they play Matchbox 20 songs they have to explain movies to you that's the worst part about patriarchy not like they won't let you get an abortion or they uh sexually harass you at work they can't talk about these things they're like aren't men kind of annoying yeah no it actually it reminds me a little of when a Marvel movie thinks they want to get political. Like even in the Black Panther movie, it's the closest to it. But as they get up to an edge, then everybody who makes toys and money off of it says, you can't actually say that. Like I know in the Black Panther movie, Ryan Coogler, he gets up to the point of saying, you know, the CIA actually destabilized most radical black movements in the in the world. And that's pretty evil. But he can't literally say that, even though he knows it's the truth, because you got to sell toys. And you also need to work with the CIA to get your, you know, free tanks and Jeeps and shit in your movie yeah yeah i just i mean if you can't say what you want

to say just make a movie about something else and it just also my last thing i'll say and again you can enjoy this movie it's fine um it was very weirdly like gender essentialist the way that felt really out of touch with 2023 where it was the men do this and women do this thing and it's just like well uh some women i assume like acoustic guitar some women i assume like the godfather also are you making fun of 60 year old men by saying they want to explain the godfather to women no they want to explain tenant to women they want to explain newer move no one's explaining the godfather to women in 2023 anyways uh and then like it felt very gender essentialist was like here's what women do and here's what men do and then in the movie ends with the ghost of barbie's creator giving her a vagina that's what happens and i was just like yes because this is

what you need to be a woman is what the what the movie uh i'm not i'm not sure if it knows what it's saying but that's the statement it's putting out there and that's very thoughtless especially in this world to say like well now barbie's a woman because she's assigned female at birth hooray yeah yeah okay let's i mean yeah that ending i have been thinking about that again i felt ups and downs with it also i uh you know i wish movies got to have just a good musical dance sequence in it that's not a joke or that's not like hey here's this is a joke that it's a musical it's like can it just be a good musical yeah i totally agree uh but putting words into a dead woman's mouth horrible awful they should not be allowed to do that and did too uh yes i feel like that that ending of barbie goes to the gyneccologist was written in like 1982.

Like it is not for now. And I'll also give the movie credit. Like a trans actress plays one of the Barbies. Like it is more diverse in its casting than a lot of people would have given it credit for. I don't know how many trans actors have appeared in a Marvel movie. That said, though, though yes it also felt like something a gender essentialist would have at the ending of like because they in the middle of the movie have a joke of Barbie says I don't have a vagina he doesn't have a penis about her and Ken which is the closest thing and I was like oh are you gonna do more jokes about how the toys don't

have genitals as everybody jokes about Barbie but the only other time they do it is like, yeah, she's a woman out because she does have a vagina to see a gynecologist. But I was like, boy, I don't like, yeah. Yeah. I don't think Greta Gerwig and Noah Baumbach are transphobic or whatever, but they are, she's 40, he's 54. They wrote this together, which is why so much of it feels like from a dated perspective,

that's they're not checking their assumptions, which is why all the references are like weirdly out of date. Like, oh, men love playing a song from 1996. Okay. Was that the song you were allowed to make fun of? That's what it feels like. And that's another thing where they're making the joke that not even Toy Story made where it's like, ha ha, they don't have genitals. But in 2023, your genitals don't equal your gender. And it's as simple as that. And when you start making jokes about that now, you're saying a lot of stuff you might not think you're saying.

Yeah, no, I absolutely, and again, like, you know, cultural conservatives hated this movie, like, very performatively. But those are the types of people who say women only have vaginas or whatever that kind of gender essentialism that's exactly what ben shapiro says and it it or for one example of a but it's like sort of the move that's one reading of the ending of the movie you could come to which i i don't like yeah and it had again i don't want to go over this in such excruciating detail. We'll move on. But I was like, why did she need this? What does this signify? I mean, I don't know. It just was confusing and I don't get it. And for some reason, I thought it wasn't nominated for Best Picture and that's why the fans are going insane. And then I found out it was and I thought this movie does not deserve a Best Picture nomination get out of here it's that it's uh well i mean it made enough money that's why but i well but it's also like the thing people were mad about was despite the fact they got um a large number of nominations is that america ferreira and

mamargo robbie did not get acting nominations uh though i think most of the most people feel the women nominated in those categories did get it but then you know the optics of them not being nominated but ryan gosling being nominated for ken is people saying did you even watch the movie and it gets hillary clinton even tweeting about it but it's just like how much do you i don't know it's just you got all this stuff like and also how about we talk about lily gladstone being one of the first i believe the first indigenous american actress nominated for an acting award like yeah can we talk about that instead of margot robbie margot robbie great of course i thought uh the movie had you know more ken content ken had more of an arc.

And Ken had the whole musical sequence. So I'm not surprised he was identified as like, okay, if we're picking one actor from this movie, it's going to be Ryan Gosling. Yeah, he's very easy to pay attention to. But okay, I guess, welcome to our Barbie thoughts. Yes. Hey, you waited, I don't know, 10 months to hear this. Or maybe you didn't want to hear this.

But whatever the case is, you heard it. And we apologize or we're grateful you liked it. And then I finally saw West Side Story, the 1961 version, just because I'd never seen it. I believe Nina wanted to see this one. So, yes, you know, it's very long and there are some racial issues with the casting, which I think if I watch this maybe 20 years earlier, even years earlier i just would say oh i can ignore this but i kind of can't now um but if you watch a lot of movies from this era you realize like oh when i watch this the camera doesn't move this much in movies from 1961 there are not this many cuts or shot setups they really tried very hard to make this dynamic and then then I remember we watched The Music Man

for the monorail episode live show. And The Music Man was basically like, we're going to sit the camera down. Everyone's going to do their stuff. And then we'll pick the camera up and move to the next scene. That camera's not moving in The Music Man. There aren't all these setups.

Here, it's like night and day. And The Music Man was a year after West Side Story. No, West Side Story is a gorgeous gorgeous movie yeah i mean uh the the spielberg updated it much better for for his version and the only guy who gets to make a real musical like this uh these days is steven spielberg with all of his power i'll eventually get around to watching it but again this was very long and i'm not completely into the story because just reading letterbox reviews made me understand why i didn't connect because it's the romeo and juliet thing is just so broad where uh ultimately the movie's about two characters who fall in love immediately and then spend all of their time together talking

about how in love they are and And that's just not that interesting. So it's hard to get on board with that. But the visuals and the songs are distracting enough to get me through the movie. Well, just like Romeo and Juliet, it's the side characters who are more interesting than Romeo and Juliet in it. Absolutely, yes. Like Rita Moreno as Anita. Very good. And then other stuff.

I've been talking for a while uh i've been very busy up to my neck in sand because i've been reading dune uh to prepare for the uh second movie that's coming out at the end of this week as of this recording and uh yeah i really like it actually i am literally halfway through the book which is literally where the first movie ends they chose the exact halfway point to end it. And I was afraid of Dune because I thought, oh, is this going to be a tedious sci-fi novel

that's just full of all of this lingo I have to keep in mind and a lot of characters having boring conversations? No. It is a very easy read. It's 800 pages, so you're going to be reading it for a while. But I found it to be a very fast read. I 800 pages so you're gonna be reading it for a while but i i found it to be like a very uh fast read like i'm just kind of plowing through it and you know not being confused

by anything and what i like about uh frank herbert's work this is my first book i read from him he doesn't care about like i'm gonna spend a page telling you what the sky looks like or i'm gonna spend two pages telling you what the room looks like and where all the furniture is that is such a tiny part of his writing most of the book is characters inner monologues and then having conversations with other characters the set dressing is very minimal to the point where he barely describes the giant worms outside of the fact that they're big that leaves it open to interpretation it's funny too that i finally i read all of one piece and now you're finally uh attacking dune as you'd always wanted as well yeah yeah and uh it's made me appreciate both versions of the adaptation uh that have been made in the past and having watched

those it does while i'm reading it let me uh cast the movie in my mind while like i oh you know my gurney hallock is going to be patrick stewart I'm like my Gurney Halleck is going to be Patrick Stewart like the David Lynch movie it's not going to be Josh Brolin that's my Gurney Halleck now I'm looking forward to seeing that movie I got my IMAX tickets for Saturday this coming Saturday or if you're listening

on the free feed I saw it three days ago on Saturday check Henry's Letterbox because I have been Henry and I think after watching Madam Web you just stop watching movies. You're like there's nothing else to this medium. I'm done with it. I look I saw real movies before

Madam Web this month but yes Madam Web kind of killed my movie watching for the rest of the month. I hate this format now. I mean I'm sure you'll talk about it. Yeah. And then one last thing is I saw the Nier concert N that's a video game series uh they're doing a tour in north america i think it might be a worldwide tour actually but yeah i saw the vancouver performance and it was great and if it's coming to your town even if you don't know what near is uh i mean i say play near

automata it's great but the music is sublime and it was so great to hear all the songs I love in concert with the original singers from the video game. So just a great night of music in Vancouver. So, yeah, fantastic experience. It went to Los Angeles and then flew over San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, all that, straight to Vancouver. It did not do any of the Pacific Northwest. They knew you didn't play near Automata, Henry, so they skipped your town. I watched my husband play most of it. Most of it?

They were like, did his husband beat it? No, we're skipping Seattle. Let's move on. No, just in case my husband listened to this, he did beat it. I just didn't watch him play all of it. Did he get every ending? He did get every ending. Oh, wow. He got the achievement. He got ending? He did get every ending. Oh, wow.

He got the achievement. He got that one achievement at the very end. Oh, okay. Hey, just like me. So they should have stopped in Seattle, I think. Yeah, I agree. They did you a disservice. But yeah, that sounds really cool.

I wish you did come here. It was great. But that's it for me. All right. So for my gaming this month, uh, my big one has been like a dragon, infinite wealth, which should be called infinite game.

I, so I'm at 70 hours in, I have a feeling the campaign is nearly over. And, uh, at 70 hours, that is with not doing any of the animal crossing after the first little bit they give you because i knew i'd be still in the animal crossing section that's like a 20-hour game there's also a

10-hour pokemon game in the game too that you could play oh yeah i've heard very little about that mostly about the animal crossing uh style game yeah the animal crossing is more fun than the pokemon game i think but it's it's still uh it's really good but yeah the the story of infinite wealth is very interesting uh i like it a whole lot i think they improved uh the gameplay mechanics and i also i love to get the honk honk in the game which is their version of the puff puff oh uh does that involve but dragon quest games does that involve butt cheeks? Does that involve butt cheeks? You know, it's very, they don't give you enough details on the honking,

but you can hire men or women around the stage to honk you. So it's very open in that way too. I see. And then when you open your eyes, it's not a man holding two slimes in your face? No, they don't do a joke about it. They actually just say, oh, you want me to honk you? Well, it'll be $1,000. Then the screen turns pink, and then when it comes back, it's like, hope you liked your honk, buddy. That's how they do it in Hawaii, everyone.

And yeah, it's full of very funny stuff in it, too. I played the FF7 Rebirth demo, which was really cool. It's about an hour or so of the flashback involving Cloud, Tifa, and Sephiroth in the big flashback. You know it if you played any of the old games. It's very interesting. I look forward to finally, once I complete Infinite Wealth to the point I can by Leap Day, I'm going to start up Rebirth. And also, I finally got into Helldivers 2 and played a few hours of that this weekend. You're lucky you got into it as people are now able to play it because it's been out for about two weeks and the servers have just been clogged. I made a gaming session with my friends like a Sunday morning we're going to play and then we just couldn't get in.

And we finally did play this past sunday and had a lot of fun but yeah i believe i think hell divers one might have been like a ps plus game or something that's why i played the original one but uh this this one is is a lot of fun and uh a great co-op experience no i love doing a couch co-op with my husband on it it was really fun we would it was a lot of no don't don't shoot at me wait i'm here i've got this covered give me refund uh re uh send in send in for resupply all that stuff and i love how the you know resupplying commands and stuff are basically like a combo input for a fighting game of like down down upright left down okay it came like that that's so fun they feel like cheat codes that are just part of the game.

And and also I do like the the style of it is extremely Starship Troopers. It's just the people made it watched the Verhoeven film Starship Troopers, which led to a lot of Internet talk in the last month as well. It's doing a Starship Troopers thing to the point where it feels actionable to me. Legally actionable. Universal should be getting him on this. I agree. Bob, I know you're less of a Starship Troopers fan than me, the world's biggest Starship Troopers fan. No, but I really love that movie as a parody of fascism. And it really sucked to see people on Twitter say, yeah, the beautiful people kill the bugs.

Everybody should kill the bugs. You sound like, the beautiful people kill the bugs. Everybody should kill the bugs. You sound like a bug if you like the bugs. And I was like, boy, this fucking sucks, man. I hate this. To me, I saw a lot of that. To me, it felt like shit posting where people are like, I'll say the thing I don't actually believe

because it makes you mad. And it's just like, oh, this brings me back to old something awful forums days. I know there was that days i know there was that i know there was that in the people i tried to not engage with and not uh and just mute which i did do but i do believe like especially based on their follower count there were actual like race realists i don't call people nazis online lightly i know that is the stupidest thing but when people actually reply to me with and their accounts are like hitler stuff or about the white race prevailing i'm like i feel safe

saying a nazi replied to me here i'm sure there were actual factual nazis but but uh but aside from that helldivers 2 is a lot of fun and uh my husband started up uh persona 3 reloaded uh on game pass and i watched uh like first five, six hours of that. I mean, it's a really good remake that Sega fucked themselves over. Releasing it in the same week is infinite wealth. Why would you ever do that? Here's the thing. You can play a video game later.

It's this new thing they invented. But then you're not talking about it when other people are. I'm also going to tell you, Henry, how many games have you bought on day one that you didn't play until much later or never? People are still buying Persona 3. They're just not playing it. And it doesn't matter at that point. Well, Game Pass has stopped me from buying as many of those. I'm saying that because I am guilty.

I buy most games at launch just to support certain developers. And a lot of them I play months later or I don't play because I just never get around to them. And I feel like the people who bought Persona 3, they all bought it, and they're just playing either that or Infinite Wealth. No, I would have bought Persona 3 if I didn't have Game Pass. Yes, I am guilty of it too.

Next month, I've already done the game voucher preorder for that Princess Peach game, which looks fun. But I wonder just how much I'm going to actually play it next month. Yeah, I hope it's good. I hope that one's good. Okay, but as for movies, well, let's start with the first thing you mentioned. Yes, I saw Madam Web. Now look. Okay.

Henry is now in court, and I am the judge. I'm going to put in a gavel banging sound. Henry, say your piece. Now look, it's fun to watch a dumb thing on a date night, on Valentine's date night with your husband. That is my biggest defense for Madam Webb. And it's funny to talk about Madam Web on podcasts or on Twitter. And so, you know.

How much money did you spend on having a take on Madam Web? Well, if we're counting the day, it was a dine-in movie theater, too. So I guess it would be in the $60 range. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. But it's, you know, of course it's awful. It's terrible. It obviously was bad, and it was bad but it was like it's not as some people say morbius is worse i or some say morbius

is better than madame webb i say it's worse madame webb is absolutely bad but uh morbius is is much worse but it's just such such a bad movie i could go scene by scene and be like, boy, this sucks. But here's the funniest thing in watching it is that you could tell how it was edited, that they were told by the Marvel brass how much they could say a baby is Peter Parker and how much they can't. And it's just like they clearly filmed the movie where the character is officially Peter Parker, but then they're like, no, you can't. Marvel must have told him at some point.

You can't say that. Yeah, I heard it. Maybe you can confirm this. I heard about a lot of rewrites, a lot of reshoots. I heard the movie was supposed to take place in the 90s at a certain point, but then they moved it forward to take place in the same timeline as the Raimi movies. But there are still remnants of the 90s elements in the movie. Yes, I have heard. It absolutely makes sense to me that it was originally,

it was filmed to be set in the 90s, and then they digitally added things to make it 2003, or they refilmed a scene where a guy is playing a PSP or something. I'm stealing a joke from the We Hate Movies guys, but it is insane to set a movie in 2003 and have your main characters um be uh you know paramedics who live in manhattan and it's like nobody talks about 9-11 that just happened like two years ago like it how could they not they're paramedics in manhattan they put it behind

them yeah it's uh also the uh if you that it's some of the biggest lies Sony's ever told in a trailer that I've ever seen. I knew I was being lied to, but in the trailers they're like, here's all the girls who become Spider-Girl or a version of Spider-Girl. And when you see the movie, it's like, well, that was a dream. They never are Spider-Girl in this movie. Somebody had a dream for about a minute in the movie you know knowing nothing about this character like i assume most film goers are like me i i i thought like well yeah what is madam webb is she basically like girl spider-man i'm sure whatever no not like that at all you wish you wish it was like that yeah no they, they basically took the Professor X of Spider-Man. No, not even that.

Like, she's, okay, about the Madam Web character for the longest time, she has never mattered in Spider-Man comics. Like, one of the best runs on Spider-Man in the 80s was Roger Stern, in my opinion. And when he got on the book, he killed Madam Web, or basically killed her, because he's like, this is dumb, I don't want Madam Web in my comic. Kills he got on the book, he killed Madam Web or basically killed her because he's like, this is dumb. I don't want Madam Web in my comic kills her off and stops it. Like,

cause Spider-Man doesn't need a mystic lady who tells him, Oh, I think in the future, this will happen. Like that sucks. Like Spider-Man doesn't need that shit. And basically the tease at the end of the movie for a trailer that are for a sequel that will never happen is that she's going to basically be the,

like, uh, the professor x to these three girls as he trains them to be spider women that they will not be in this movie i think dakota uh what's her name sorry dakota fan no no not dakota dakota johnson thank you i think she's going to sue sony for destroying her career but that's the next appearance of dakota johnson she's she uh look i don't want to be too mean but she's not a good maybe she hated being in this movie and didn't do a good job but she is a bad actress in this like she sucks and yeah i'll be mean i heard she was awful in this movie truly terrible yes yeah she's she's so bad though honestly the guy who plays the main

villain who i hear is very good in other movies he is horrendous in this movie he is awful like the whole movie sucks it's uh it sucks but so but his penance for for watching this movie that i knew i would be doing later in the month i watched two very good movies i'd never seen before yeah uh it's like the opposite of madam webb so i saw zodiac which i'd never seen which i wish i like the opposite of Madam Web so I saw Zodiac which I'd never seen which I wish I'd seen in theaters when I lived in San Francisco I just I missed out on it I watched it because I finally want to catch up with the blank check about it and yeah I mean it's great it's about obsessive it's but the thing that sucks for it is that I kept having

to remind myself like this is before the true crime podcast boom or maybe even invented it with its popularity yeah i mean people always love true crime but uh we weren't uh they weren't these huge podcasts quite yet and but it was it was great especially it adds uh when we saw charles fleischer at the cast Theater for Roger Rabbit, I was like, hey, wait a minute. He played a Castro Theater employee in Zodiac. That's so crazy. He was a lot of fun that night. I can see why people don't like working with him, though. Nope. I wonder how good he was, how well behaved, or if he was having a little wowie sauce on the set of Zodiac as well, I wonder. But yeah, then I saw The Seventh Seal. Guess what, Bob?

It's one of the greatest movies ever made. I had seen all these parodies my whole life, never actually watched it, and I was like, wow, this is good. And apparently normal movie length. It's 90 minutes. It was partially why basically I have a list of um important movies that my husband and i neither of us have seen and when we were saying what's the next movie we should see part of the reason he voted for it was when he saw it was 90 minutes as opposed to say

two and a half hours for some other stuff on the list but no it rules to see to see a young max van seidel uh in a movie it was also confusing to me you can finally understand uh bill and ted's bogus journey uh certain animaniac shorts uh the critic the list goes on and on after decades of parody of it i was like well the the style of this will be still boring to me i was like no it's actually an incredible like you know discussion of death and life and you know war and all this stuff is like wow this is uh yeah an incredible movie and uh and as for uh for tv shows i still was watching more delicious in dungeon that shows a lot of fun uh and and i love watching the cooking in it and i'm finally watching chainsaw man i'm nine episodes into the the first season or the

only season so far oh yeah gorgeous show uh super ultra violent in a very fun classic anime way and there's always at least one sequence that makes me feel bad for all the animators oh god yes yeah i and i really love to know that it was a shonen jump or is a shonen jump series and that the lead in it is such an anti-shonen hero who's just like such a gross weirdo. I just love that. Although I believe it is a web only Shonen Jump thing because they're like, we're not putting this filth in our magazine. That makes sense. In friend of the show cartoon corner, I finally watched the new season of the He-Man show, Masters of the Universe Revolution, which our pal Griffin Newman is Orko in, still doing great. And my review of it is pretty good.

Now, did the Kevin Smith written episode involve a character having a heart attack by surprise? Yes. Yes, it did. Because he can only write that uh is in every script it was the i mean honestly this was the first new life experience for kevin smith in uh 30 years so he's got to incorporate it into everything but but the animators were animating like they love he-man and wanted to draw cool shit and it had the voice cast i would want i i really had a good time with it but it also felt

like a 10 episode season storyline that they had only five episodes to tell it in so it also feels a little right a five episode season eh yes yeah and uh and then also jelly stone and the new season's out and uh i would have just watched it in order, but later in the season is an episode I had to watch as soon as possible. The Space Ghost episode, it rules. Andy Merrill is in it as Brack. George Lowe is in it as Space Ghost. And it is written by Jordan Morris and storyboarded slash written by Toby Jones. Two Talking Simpsons guests.

Yeah, I saw the clips. I don't know actually how to watch Jellystone legally in Canada, so I didn't see the episodes. But yeah, it's been a long time coming to see Brack and our version of Space Ghosts again. It was also really great to see Andy Merrill on Twitter say how happy he was to see all the online compliments. It seemed like it really meant a lot to him, which is great

because he's had some rough days online of just, you know, ups and downs. Mental health wise, I think of just happiness, unhappiness. So it was nice to see him feeling the love on Twitter. And he's so funny. And I venture to guess it's the first time while playing Brack he is ever going to get residuals as well. Oh, yes. Yeah. Clearly, that was never in the cards when working for Cartoon Network. No. And I guess last thing about my month, I'll say, is that my husband really started getting into the One Piece card game, and I've been playing a little of that, too.

It's been fun to just be up to date with One Piece and also watching the new season as it unfolds. Whenever a new chapter comes out, we read it and look forward to hearing me this month on the One Piece podcast. I'm going to be a guest on it. So for the card game, are you playing against each other? Do you have other people you play with? We have played against each other a little bit. He mainly plays with coworkers or also there is an an unofficial online app for playing the game, too. So so he's done a little of that, too. But he's he it's it's a fun deck builder.

I'm only starting to get used to it, but it's it was a good time. So now we're moving on to questions and comments left on the Patreon, Patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. And the first comments are from Marge versus the monorail our live show with Chris Wade thanks to all of you who made it out and first off all the trophy says while airplane does borrow heavily from elements of the airport series of films its primary inspiration is the 1957 Dana

Andrews movie zero hour the plot characters some direct lines of dialogue and even the exclamation point the title are all directly ripped from this Paramount feature. And apparently it was chosen because the Abrahams and the Zuckers would tape late night TV for comedy material, ended up with a recording of the Zero Hour film, and according to Jerry Zucker,

they thought it was a perfectly classically structured film, so they lifted it wholesale. So yeah, thank you all the trophies. I think that's something I've heard at some point in my lifetime, but I don't think I've ever seen Airplane as an adult. So I just don't think about that movie very much or the inspiration. You know, I haven't. I definitely watched it a few times as a teen and all the time. I think I rented and watched it once, like all the way through.

But it was on Comedy Central, I feel like half of our lifetimes in our youth. So I watched scene after scene of it over and over, and then I think I've seen five minutes of Airplane 2. Hey, that was the first role that Al Jean and Mike Reese had in Hollywood, was doing rewrites in a trailer on the set of Airplane 2, apparently. I loved hearing how miserable they were on that. And you know what, the Zucker Zucker Brothers they're as funny as ever These days skewering skewering the people Who deserve it yeah take that Michael Moore 15 years ago

He actually gets a long time ago Also On our monorail live episode Joe Hodgson says I used to Know a couple who lived in Pittsburgh New Hampshire This was in 2012 So fairly recent if you've never Looked that who lived in Pittsburgh, New Hampshire. This was in 2012, so fairly recent. If you've never looked that closely at the state of New Hampshire on a map, Pittsburgh is the northernmost town in the state and borders Canada.

They lived on a private dirt road, and to get to work in the winter, they did indeed need to use chains on their wheels. Even though the road was plowed, it wasn't always plowed in a timely fashion the chains were pretty annoying because once you get to the end of the dirt road you need to get out of your car unfasten the chains and drive forward off of the chains then get out and put them away jeez those car this is because chris wade asked like has anybody ever driven with with tire chains yeah i don't think i'd ever seen them. And I grew up in Northeast Ohio, very snowy territory. But I say move to one of the other 30 Pittsburghs in America.

There are too many Pittsburghs, but there are nicer ones. There's one in Northern California where we used to live. Because the end of one of the train lines used to stop in Pittsburgh. So it was the Pittsburgh train line for the longest time when i lived in berkeley that that confused that was the first second pittsburgh i'd ever heard of beyond the uh the the pennsylvania one the pennsylvania one has an h to be fair but when i see the burg without an h i'm like well you messed up yeah terrible writing there bart system yeah come on uh but moving on to Mr. Spritz goes to Washington. Elliot

says, I did my undergraduate thesis on Mondale as vice president, a role which he actually completely redefined into the close advisory role as it is today. So the political operative stuff does track to an extent. It's funny because to a certain extent he made the White House and executive function

far more efficiently, but also sort of laid the ground for Cheney being this overly powerful puppeteering figure in the Bush White House. So I guess it was the best of times and the worst of times for Walter Mondale. You know, some some vice presidents, they take the opportunity to, you know, be more hands on. Some are just given a shovel and pointed towards a pile of shit. Yes. And told told get to work it feels like for the last four years that it's been kamala harris being given every like bad speech opportunity possible like especially the the famous don't come speech she had uh when told to address the border crisis. And then Mike Pence gets to be, you know, threatened to be murdered.

That's his job as president. With Mike Pence and Donald Trump, I think the only times they were ever in a room together is when we saw them on TV in the same room. Otherwise, they never spoke. And even then, that could have been blue-screened in. Yeah. It could have been AI screened in yeah yeah it could have been ai a hologram but yeah i wonder uh this mondale stuff i'd be interested to read that undergraduate thesis on

mondale because yes all i know about walter mondale are jokes on the simpsons i really never looked much more into him i know uh that and we're watching 90210 and because they're from minnesota uh the the teen characters the brendan and Brendan and Brenda Walsh, their car is named Mondale. They nicknamed it Mondale. Oh. Wow. I still don't know enough about that show. You should not be expected to know anything about a 30-year-old teen dramedy. uh duron also said on the episode i can't help but bring up where's springfield discourse but

i like how crusty's election is for springfield's 24th district i know it's the writers just shorthanding but i like the idea of springfield's state simply being named springfield it neatly explains away stuff like springfield state prison, characters, driver's license, and license plates. I also thought David Silverman's coinage of North Tacoma was fun too, but I digress. Also, even if 24 was all the congresspeople their state had, they'd be the fifth largest state by population at the time. So we didn't dig enough into him being the 24th and what that means in districting wise also we didn't even blink when no state was mentioned and we're talking about congress because i guess we're just so used to them not being in any state we could ever recognize

we never questioned like wait a minute he is a representative of representing springfield and this is what's going on here that's true yeah We have gotten so used To the Springfield stuff Like as the person mentioned like The discourse of where's Springfield That is so in our past now that Like there have been 8000 Jokes about it on the show that it wouldn't

We know it's not a question to answer And so we never even notice it Anymore in the show So moving on to Selma's Choice and we can springboard from this comment into a discussion of the origins of JubJub. And by the way, Rebecca Sugar, we did a little interview with her on the Patreon.

We cut out some content from the main episode, a lot of interview content, offloaded it onto a little fun interview episode. So you can find that at patreon.com slash TalkingSimpsons and I believe on the free feed. Is that correct, Henry? Yeah, it'll be on the free feed as well or it was on the free feed as well this month.

Yeah, we had a great time with Rebecca. It would have been our longest episode ever of TalkingSimpsons, I think, if both were together. But yeah, we had some bigger conversations about just like her work on Steven Universe that that i i think uh it worked good as a separate podcast also keep the rebecca fun going all month and to to also promote her album once more spiral bound it's a really great album folks should be listening to it and it was so awesome having rebecca to talk to that was so absolutely uh let's move on to what board is saying so board says jub jub comes from star wars i heard conan talking about it can't remember what interview it was but he said it was the original song ewoks sing at the end of the jedi it was

probably in one of his podcast episodes because i think goarly matt goarly sang it later henry you crack the books on this what's going on with jub jub yub nub and all the fun languages out there uh so yes yeah there was there was definitely some talk of where jub jub came yub, nub, and all the fun languages out there. Uh, so yes, yeah, there was, there was definitely some talk of where job job came from, which I do not believe there is a definitive answer to it. I appreciate Bort,

uh, with their reply. And, uh, I then replied to it after trying to look into it some myself. So one funny side thing about this is that hurt my search for it was, is that in the promotion of Force Awakens back in 2013 to 2015, Conan had on J.J. Abrams and said, I always say Jub Jub.

I love the sound Jub Jub. Could you have a space alien in your Star Wars movie? Say it. And then J.J. said, you know what? I will. I will. and he shook hands on it and apparently in the movie after the scene where Daisy Ridley uh oh I'm sorry Rey Skywalker when she meets uh when she meets BB-8 for the first time there's some like desert animal uh that they pass by and he goes jump jump or something that you could say sounds

like so he actually made good on his word uh yeah and and then though in that interview he did not say conan did not say and i came up with jump jump by watching star wars does not say that so then i pull up that uh that episode the person is mentioning which i had not seen before and uh it is conan tells this funny story about he is showing his kid his son the star wars trilogy for the first time and conan said i can't wait for to get to the end of return of the jedi because i remember this dumb ass song at the end of the movie that the ewoks sing called like glib glub or jub jub so he says he he's joking that he remembers it as jub jub but he what he doesn't say is I thought of the word jub jub after seeing this uh this Ewok celebration yeah my speculation is

yup nub put silly syllables in his head that he later regurgitated without realizing the origin or he just always loved those kind of sounds and Jub Jub exists independently from Yub Nub. They just happen to land on the same kind of weird sounds. But the scene from the podcast is very funny because Conan doesn't know this information because basically he watches it with his kid, but they don't have Yub Nub at the end. And he is very confused. And Matt Gourley, being a man after my own heart, knows exactly what happened. And he explains the entire background of how when they got re-released in 97, George Lucas thought those songs weren't good anymore and replaced them with worse songs. That and Lopty Neck got replaced as well in jabba's palace it's funny

because you know you think you get used to how certain things are terrible like the cgi scene they added in jedi uh in jabba's palace that that musical performance i saw pop up on twitter and i just could not turn away it was so disgusting and just awful and poorly done and i to the point where uh my wife nina was like why are you watching that and i couldn and poorly done and i to the point where uh my wife nina was like why are you watching that and i couldn't turn away and i think we immediately had to go like and say okay what was the original like it has to be better and it was it was just like goofy puppets but this thing with it's like jamming its weird lips in your face i can't do it i can't do it no yes nice noodles is much better as a a puppet, a giant puppet who's singing.

Yeah. Yeah. Lopty neck. But also, Gorley knew the exact final lyric of Yub Nub that plays into the credits and sang the movie, but you can spend a good amount of money at Disneyland to have a Yub Nub tiki drink and keep the glass, as I have done. Just to spit in George Lucas' eye. We acknowledge Yub Nub. I love Yub Nub. I had the CD collection of the original soundtrack, and I listened to yub nub over and over again the original yeah if they

didn't have to sign something i'm sure they disney would gladly sell you the every version of star wars that ever existed i'm sure they would i agree but like i bet i bet lucas prevented that lucas made them show the mcclunky version which is even worse the mcclunky cuts uh you're up next henry with this next comment for still on Selma's choice yes John Halsky says listening to this discussion now decades after I remember watching this episode it really strikes me now that I have flipped from child to parent of children how subversive this episode is on two counts one this episode confronts an unspoken assumption a lot of non-parents have about kids. That is that parenting is basically easy

and if your kids are acting up, then you're just negligent. Parenting is hard and this episode nails it. Second, and not unrelated to the first point, parenting is not some kind of self-help cure-all for people who need a purpose in life. It's a job that isn't for everyone and that's okay it's totally

okay that patty and selma find meaning in their lives in other ways that's true and until like 10 years later when she adopts but you know yes for the time being i i appreciate this uh child haver uh it's saying that it's okay to be child freefree in life. I appreciate that. It's my choice, and actually, I've lived every moment of my life preventing the birth of a child, my child. So it's not really a choice as it is. It's a way of life for me. But it was funny to hear, yes,

how this episode that's sort of about what is it like to be, you know, a single person who confronts, like, babysitting as a test for parenting and then to see that going from a child to a parent like that that is uh that is interesting perspective and i appreciate uh john halsky for sharing that with us you know i moved away when my nephew was born unrelated if he's listening it was not the reason so i missed all of the like potential like here's how you interact with a with a baby and a small child and a larger child. So I didn't have that experience and I still don't. So I just feel kind of weird around kids. Like, what, what do we talk about? What, what's appropriate, what's inappropriate and so on. So I just, I just feel weird around kids no i've it has never ever been my uh i've never been a babysitter it has never been my

responsibility to be like even a parent for like an afternoon to a kid like and i'm not an uncle yet maybe someday i don't know i uh yes i but i am uncle bobby but uncle bobby lives 2 000 miles away so he's not gonna be watching you or taking you to movies. Again, if you're listening, I apologize. You can get him a movie gift card, though. No, my goal is I'm going to live in a faraway, cool place to encourage you to move. I'm like the MC Hammer of uncles. They can look down from Vancouver and be inspired. Yes, yes. Look up to my condo and just imagine if i if i start podcasting

maybe i can be there in 15 years it happened to me it can happen to you moving on we have what a cartoon movie bambi uh davis says you mentioned on the show about how modern kids would react to bambi i watched it with my kids and they both seem to enjoy it to a point i won't state their ages but they are both early generation alpha my eldest latched onto the lion king similarities right away and that's mainly what kept him engaged pointing out whenever he noticed a parallel my daughter has really enjoyed the initial disney movies that you covered with dumbo being her favorite she was into bambi from the beginning to end and wanted to watch bambi too when she saw it recommended by disney plus after the movie

the only thing neither of them like was the songs, as they seemed to have difficulty with the chorus style of songs. And yeah, and Davis, I'm not sure if this was the issue, but with those songs, it was really hard to make out any lyrics. Because, you know, it's 1942. The sound recording quality is not what we expect today. And then it's like a bunch of voices layered over each other with often like sound effects and the orchestra in the background. It just becomes like a kind of a muddy mess. And I have to look at the lyrics and say, oh, that's that's what they're saying. Although I did recognize when they were like, let's sing a gay little song.

I did recognize when they said that in the lyrics. That's also two of the kids are raised on Lion King or maybe comparing it to it. Lion King is mostly songs sung by characters on screen so when it's just an oral arrangement you hear over it then and nobody's actually singing it who's a character that can be confusing if you don't know the like to what a child understands as the rules of movies yeah it's just a interesting perspective i i don't know with with how like meandering and plotless it is i just wonder what kids expect i mean that's that was the intent of the movie and it was made for a different audience so it's cool that uh it seems like 50 of the child audience is into this movie

and uh silky pj says about bambi i would also like to point out that while Bambi hurt the boomers and Lion King is the big millennial phenomenon, the third big animal death story that defined Generation X has to be Charlotte's Web. It was written in 1952 and it's one of the earliest books that was required reading for elementary school or at least to be read by the teacher a la Mr. Bergstrom. I think more kids also connect to the slow aging death of Charlotte,

which more kids could probably connect to, versus the very sudden deaths of The Lion King and Bambi. It might be worth covering the 1973 movie for the show as a movie production of Hanna-Barbera, the impact it had on children's media, and how it introduced a generation to Paul Lynn. Oh, great. I'm just a weird little rat i i uh i've only watched that movie on television with commercials and stuff in it i've never seen

the full thing it's it i also never think about the hannah barbara movie productions of the 70s or 60s or 80s because i we I read the biography or autobiography of Iwawa Takamoto who worked on those I never even think of like oh yeah Hanna-Barbera actually produced a number of films they did like a Heidi is it was it Heidi or something some sort of I think

I think so okay but I just think I think of their Yogi and Flintstones movies first like their actual theatrical movies. P.U. is what I have to say about those. Maybe that first Flintstones movie is pretty cool. I've never watched it. It's weird that they kept it from us for so long.

But but but Charlotte's Web was a great movie. I like that. Yeah. And then now the the newer version is 20 years old. The I think I think that is Dakota Fanning. Oh, the live action. Yeah. Yeah.

2004, I think the year was on that one. But no, totally right. I think we were maybe like slightly too old for lying Mufasa's death to really warp us. Because, I mean, I was 12. You're almost 12, Henry. And I'm sure we both found it sad. But we, I assume, same for you, I was read, somebody read Charlotte's Web to me in school in second grade. I remember it was like a daily thing where the teacher would read a little more of it every day.

And like, yes, by the end, the whole class was crying. Yeah, yeah. No, it did get me more than those two, too. I think that the Silky PJ has a good point on the suddenness versus the not because, yeah, like Charlotte. Charlotte is your mom who does everything for you and then uh after she does it all and you kind of don't even think about how good you had it like she just goes like well i'll see you later and then she dies while you're not even there and you find out she's dead later they need to make a uh a newer version where charlotte updates the thing she puts in her web like everyone wakes up and they see the word based over uh wilbur's pen hashtag it should just be hashtag pig yes hashtag pig uh moving on to uh

what a cartoon we covered avatar the last airbender episode was the blind bandit and blake says i do not buy into any revisionism on the last airbender movie that may be oncoming in the wake of another adaptation but i will say listening to the blank check on the movie recontextualize how i felt about it yes it's bad but shy malone did really go into it from a place of love after his kids being into it made him a fan by proxy while as director he's not entirely faultless it was a major case of studio interference and a lot of demands being made to change the tone during production to attempt to ape off the then recent success of The Dark Knight. Interviews about the movie before its release show him offering a lot of adoration and respect for the show, which at least shines in comparison to the stories I've been seeing on the Netflix show where the creatives seem to talk about the series scornfully. Almost as if to say, quote, we're not doing it this way because that was for kids and that was bad.

We're going to get it right and in live action. Ugh. I can't imagine what made Mike and Brian walk away, but best of luck to them on their endeavors with Avatar Studios. I truly hope those movies do make it to the big screen, as anything traditionally animated in a theater is already few and far between.

Plus, it would be nice to see something in a community with fans of the show that actually turns out to be good yeah yeah i uh i have not watched a second of that netflix new show but uh i've seen stuff of it clipped out online but definitely the stuff you're gonna see on twitter or other social media is usually gonna be this 30 seconds is stupid or this cut this one and a special effect looks dumb so i i don't feel that gives the totality of of uh an actual like the experience of watching the show but what i did see didn't really um make me want to watch the live action uh new series yeah it's what's like i could easily watch the cartoon again i don't know what this is offering and then

i saw i don't know how many cast members suffered the same fate but i saw a news story about how one guy in the cast thought he was auditioning for the the next james cameron film and i wonder how many people on the staff on the uh show were like yeah i thought i thought i thought the last airbender is like yeah the way of water the last airbender i thought it was the next movie that's so funny it's also uh because they mentioned how uh that shamalan was doing it for like his kids were fans that reminded me i just learned i saw this trailer before madam webb did you know that m night shamalan's daughter ishana shamalan is directing a film he's producing oh what are the odds? You know, it's because of his kids that we have Lady in the Water.

That's like based on a bedtime story he made up for his kids. So, you know what? Let's throw his kids under the bus. They're at fault here, too. Well, hey, we'll have to judge how good or not The Watchers is when it comes out in theaters. We shall see. Meanwhile, on that same podcast harry says regarding bending and the uk the show is indeed renamed avatar the legend of ang in that

country and others for that very reason while i never watched the show as a kid i didn't know it by that name here in new zealand and was very confused when the 2010 movie came out everywhere as The Last Airbender. And that's where I found out about the original title. The Legend of Aang actually fits the title for the sequel series, The Legend of Korra, better than The Last Airbender. And I wonder if the post-Korra series is going to carry the Legend of X naming scheme. Interesting. Yeah, I wasn't aware of the re the renamings although they do keep the avatar

thing in there but uh i guess the legend of feels more uh generic although i guess the is the title is the legend of korra correct yeah they they did go with that too i mean because she's well because she's not the last anything she's just the next she's just the next avatar so i think the light the legend of blank that has a better long-term plan but when you're selling the show as this is the story of the last airbender like the you know the only jedi left alive i was gonna say the last jedi but it's not like the movie the last jedi the last starfighter any of those yeah yeah it it fits the tale more but i like hearing uh i i would bet the next movie or the whatever they do is the next series that takes place forward in time i bet they will call it the legend of character name i can see that happening so yeah that was uh comments for the

last airbender now we're moving on to our mini series episodes the first one was talking futurama the episode uh 300 big boys by the way again talking futurama on our patreon at patreon.com slash talking simpsons and brian says i take the quote more closely related to elephants unquote line to be a reference to how the names of some animals are inaccurate from a classification standpoint honey badgers for example are closer to weasels than they are other badgers red pandas are also closer to weasels and skunks than they are to panda bears. To address Henry's complaint about how hard it is to depict super fast characters in movies, one film that does this well is Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.

It's by no means a perfect movie, but Eric Idle's running sequences still hold up pretty well nearly 40 years later. This is Bob speaking. I have not seen that movie, and it's leaving the Criterion channel very soon, so I think I might watch it. But have you seen this one, Henry? I watched it a long time ago as a kid before I knew, one, what a Terry Gilliam film is or really even could appreciate Robin Williams being in it.

But I remember liking it as a kid. And yes, also, the child actress in the movie, Sarah Pauly, talked about how it was a very bad time for her on the set. Like she was not taken care of in stunts and stuff. But she also has said she doesn't want to tell people not to watch the movie because it does feel pride in her performance. She's not saying never watch the movie. So I would say you should still check it out just to see it. I mean, it's not in my top five of Gilead.

Okay, it's in my top five of Gilead, but it's low five. It's like number five. I like Brazil and the Time Bandits, and there's definitely one more ahead of it. Oh, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Those three I like more. Twelve Monkeys. How about that? Oh, yeah. There you go. Okay. Those three I like more. Twelve Monkeys. How about that? Oh, yeah.

There you go. Okay. Those are the four I had. Brazil. Brazil. No, that's number one. I said that one. That's the fourth.

You know, back to the panda thing, how, you know, red pandas are more related to like skunks and raccoons and stuff. My wife and I are big fans of red pandas. Most of our interactions during the day are sending each other photos of our favorite pandas that mostly are in japan and we are both disgruntled by the fact that red pandas were discovered in big quotes first uh but they are now known as lesser pandas or red pandas and before uh giant pandas were discovered in quotes they red pandas were just pandas oh so the the the thing we call pandas they stole the classification of

panda from the red panda well when when people discovered the big pandas were like well those are the real thing these guys are the lesser pandas but uh red pandas i prefer them if we're going to rank animals i'm going to rank my animals uh number one red pandas number two pandas i uh in the last year i went to two different zoos and i i went to the red panda area and i died i learned tips later from you but it didn't help me then of like i didn't plan out my time going when i got there it's like i can see half of one sleeping red panda both times i went to his we uh we i mean this could be uh reiterating a thing i said earlier a few months ago but you have to get there in the morning and you have to find out when feeding time is because otherwise you're not going to see pandas doing anything cute.

They're going to be in a little hutch with like a foot hanging out of it. And that's basically it. I like the videos you shared, both you and your wife, of the bratty panda who didn't like certain apples. Yes, that was rare behavior from Jazz, one of our favorite pandas at the kobe zoo also on that few drama eric says new theory for a 20 plus year old episode roseanne barr was absent from the spotlight for a few years in the early 2000s because she was recording her guide to the world of facts after all she's depicted in this episode as having a body rather than having a head in a jar hey that's completely true

i mean we don't want to check in with her on what she thinks facts are now but early 2000s maybe right yeah i this was a good time to record uh hopefully in the future where we have her instead of wikipedia it was recorded with her back then and she just recorded every syllable she ever needed to say so AI can just make her say all of the new facts she learned since then. So moving on, our final comments are from the Talking in the Hill episode all about John Vitti Presents Return to La Grunta. And Dan says, and by the way, people were correcting me on this, and I was incorrect, but I still think that was the intent of the show, and I feel like the show was also wrong as I was. So let's keep going here. I'm defending myself before I even read the comments, so you know I'm anxious about this. Dan says, Peggy isn't exactly wrong about using a flash in broad daylight.

The sun is a powerful light source, but one problem with it is shadows. The dynamic range of a sunlit subject may produce some harsh shadows that plug up or might look distracting. A pop flash can act as a bit of a fill lights to lift those shadows up and make them less obnoxious, especially in a portrait situation like Peggy taking a photo of Bobby with the flamingos. Other solutions are large reflectors or even larger off-camera flashes to help control the dynamic range. That's not to say Peggy is a skilled photographer. She's kind of repeating something without thinking about why she should use the flash in this scenario which is very peggy like behavior but still it's not unheard of to use a flash in broad daylight and yeah a few people waited on this and they seem to know a lot about photography and i

trust them uh so you are correct but i also think the show is saying Peggy is just following conventional wisdom without understanding the purpose yeah I uh I was also learned a whole lot about photography from that reply and a couple others but yeah I think it is the intention of the joke is Peggy uh knows what you're supposed to do indoors uh with like and one with a flash just to be safe and he's doing it outdoors in bright daylight which uh but then again the joke's on us and the writers that they thought they made peggy look less intelligent when actually she's doing what professional photographers would do yes thank you for uh filling us on on that it's something i don't know a lot about i just was told my entire life a flash doesn't matter outside although you know when I see wedding photography happening outside they do have you know the big

the big white uh reflectors and we've been filmed for things in the past Henry they've used those white reflectors before right when you were filmed for certain things yeah back when websites spent money on uh on that kind of thing yes I'm now still like okay we use the program Zencaster and earlier uh balloons went up and I and I raised my hand and it gave like a thumbs up symbol so this is like is it does it respond to us doing things i'm very whoa see look at that hey it's not doing stuff for me if only you can see this emojis sorry you're not seeing this listeners at a certain point during the uh the podcast recording i like moved my hand in a certain way and balloons started filling the screen so you know this is just to entertain as podcasters we need enrichment in our pens and this is just helping us get through the day

and our final comment roll will highlight for the episode uh is riley says if the new age dolphin fan was still alive in 2024 he'd be making making TikTok videos about Pizzagate. Oh, and also a real estate agent. Yeah. Most of the people who love that, I definitely learned that from listening to our pals on the QAnon Anonymous podcast because they really highlight the connection of new age weirdos who also believe most of the craziest conspiracy yeah it's like i mean they're not all like that but there's a crazy pipeline from like seemingly harmless people who are into like crystals and meditation to going full q anon rabbit hole believing everything online and eventually be potentially becoming dangerous i mean the crystal people who believe

in those crystals they were already predisposed to not want to get vaccinations already. And then a new vaccination appears. You can see Hill, not a lot of updates have been happening about the production of the new show. But I follow Wes Archer on Instagram. And he has been taking pictures of himself in Korea with a King of the Hill backpack. So I assume he is there to do some supervising overseas. So I feel like things are in the pipeline. That's cool. I hope that also means there's lots of studios in korea but i hope this means they're still working with rough draft korea then uh working on it as well because they were a great part yeah me too so we will be the first to report on any king of the

hill news but that that's the most i can tell you and it's pure speculation but he is he's leaving a lot of smoking guns on his instagram account to let you know what's going on no that's good i'm glad i'm glad it's still going. And maybe when the new season comes out, we check back in with our old pal Wes. Yes, I'd love to. He's a great interview. But that is it for this month's episode

of Talk to the Audience. We have a great March coming at you with lots of great episodes, lots of great guests. I believe some new guests are around the corner, Henry? Oh, yes. Yeah, we've had great guests this year so far already. But I mean, and Rebecca Sugar was a real honor to have on after all that time. But yeah, we have, we've already lined up several of our next couple months of guests

and some returning folks and at least a couple new folks that I think we're both very excited to have on and for listeners to hear talk about the Simpsons. Yes, yes. Great new guests, returning old guests who are also great. Our miniseries episodes, and of course, we apologize, but we also are going to have a lot of fun by covering Chicken Little at the end of the month.

Face it, you're morbidly curious about that too. And who better to guide you through that 80 minutes than your friends bob and henry for sure yes oh and also you know uh listeners if you like hearing us on other podcasts i'm going to be on the uh the one piece podcast in in march and as well we just did a guest appearance on the really fun podcast quora tours yes you can hear us answering uh disgusting questions posted on quora uh we get a little blue, let's say. Yeah.

What are our thoughts on circumcision? You'll hear. Yeah, what about gluing your penis hole shut? Should you? Well, we're going to tell you what happens if it happens to you. It was so much fun. So yes, there's tons. It's been a really fun month and we've got a lot of great stuff planned for the next coming months too.

Yeah, so that's been this episode of Talk to the Audience. We'll see you again at the end of next month for another episode of our community podcast, and we'll see you then. Wow. Infotainment.