Talking Simpsons - Talk to the Audience?!? - November 2023

Episode Date: December 6, 2023

The end of 2023 is almost here, and Talking Simpsons Network has a huge November to reflect on. First off, we chat about Simpsons news like a delayed Halloween and clickbait about Homer maybe stopping his strangling. Then we chat about our respective trips to Japan and Los Angeles ahead of Thanksgiving and wrap things up with some of our favorite comments from Patreon with previews of what new podcasts we've got coming your way. Some make a plate of leftovers as we start the holidays right! Support this podcast and get over 150 bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod!

I heartily endorse this event or product. Ahoy, hoy, everybody, and welcome to Talk to the Audience, where this is always death. I am one of your hosts, the freshly returned from Japan, Bob Mackie, and who is here with me today, as always... Henry Gilbert, and I promise I am no longer strangling 10-year-olds. And in case you didn't know, this is our community podcast. On this podcast, we talk about what's happening in the Simpsons world and in our world, and then we read and respond to your comments from the last round of episodes. And this podcast goes up for patrons on the last week of the month

and for people on the free feed on the first week of the month. So welcome to the holiday season, and we have much to discuss. Oh yes. Yeah. And we started off the holiday season already. If you're on the Patreon, you've been hearing our Muppet Christmas carol. So you are ready for a jing jing tingling ring ting ting ting time of year. Yes.

And if you're not on the Patreon, there's got to be somebody on your Christmas list that you can easily remove and give us that $10 or perhaps bump the five up to 10. I mean, it's totally worth it. And that person, they might learn a lesson, say, maybe I should be nicer to, well, let's say, Jeff next year. Exactly. I mean, or just give your company's, you know, white elephant and just be like, I'm sick that day. Don't show up. Or, hey, steal from an elderly parent.

They're going to give their money to a telemarketer anyways. They might as well get it to you. Or one of those like cash for gold scams that are on Fox News. We have many ideas for how you can give us money, but we'll let you figure out how to execute that. But season 35 of The Simpsons is rolling on. There's been a bunch of new episodes. I, once again, have not done my homework for this part of the podcast i have a very good excuse i was in another country for uh 18 days and then

as soon as i got back i was trying to catch up with everything i missed uh work-wise so henry what is happening in the world of simpson season 35 there was a belated halloween show there was a thanksgiving show we're hitting all the holidays oh yes yeah they they for some reason did the halloween uh treehouse of horror 34 that aired on november 5th makes no sense to me uh but it wasn't as good as last year's it was it had some all right stuff in it my favorite was the middle one so the three segments were bart becomes an nft and then Marge has to free him from it. And the NFT price amounts are a parody of a snowpiercer. Like every train car is the, the further you go, the more the NFTs are worth money or whatever.

And I mean, it's anti NFT. It wasn't like saying an NFTs are good. Like the last one is an okay one where everybody becomes homer but i mean we just watched the one of the homer clones that i'm like boy this is not unsimilar hey uh i guess i guess 20 years have passed you can kind of revisit that it's only fair and uh but the middle one is the best it was if you remember we talked about how in the trailer it seemed like they were returning to Cape Fear this season. And that's in the middle part. Basically, it's a parody of Seven where Sideshow Bob in this universe killed Bart at the end of Cape Fear and then went to jail.

And Lisa was traumatized by that and became an investigator. And then it's a lengthy... Sideshow Bob has Hannibal Lecter in it, but it's also Seven. But it's a lengthy sideshow bob is hannibal lecter in it but it's also seven so but it's called eight that that is uh i mean interesting that they're doing the seven parody in 2023 and not like 1997 but hey they finally got around to it uh but i i give it a thumbs in the middle it's all right it doesn't have anything as bad as that the trees kill everybody treehouse from a few years ago. That one sucked.

Didn't care for that one. So there was the Halloween special and also an episode about one of my dear loves, African gray parrots. I have one of my own people in case you don't know Louie. I've had him for 21 years now.

But as expected, this episode featured parrot slander. Yes, it was. the by the way there have been there's been a wonderful uptick in cute louis content uh since you've moved in with your wife and she can also take pictures of him it's it's very adorable yes all the louis cuteness is new to her so she's documenting it pretty carefully uh but yeah so mike scully wrote it and it's sort of a sequel to marge be not proud because it's because it's even based on an event that happened in his own life at the same store where he shoplifted from. But basically, Bart and Lisa don't buy Marge a good birthday gift, and they try to make it up to her.

And spoilers for the end of the episode, but they learn that Marge grew up with a african gray parrot uh they find it it's still alive they bring it home and marge says no i was sad in that picture because i was hurt by the bird he loved me too much and he bites her and pukes on her and destroys everything it's uh he is a menace this african gray parrot yeah it is interesting that they landed on african gray but i was reading uh carolyn omine's tweets about the episode as it was uh airing and she said that she had a cockatoo and mike scully had an african gray at one point so it came from some place of uh realism i guess like some observational place but yeah great grays and parrots in general they're

all like very devoted to one person they get very attached to one person in particular but i had to expect like uh the bird would not be a welcome presence in anyone's life in this episode i guess i figured like well they're not going to keep the bird so what's going to happen but yeah don't worry though bob they don't this is not season 13 so they don't kill the bird at the end of it that's good yeah and also i i saw some of the drawings and it's a very cute drawing of african of an african gray which is not a parrot that's used often in media because it's not colorful in the way you expect a parrot to be but i think they're cute just because of that and i will say i thought it was animated very well like it was great observational animation

of it like you if you see the just a clip of it walking up curtains uh it was very cute but but then it destroys the curtains but uh you know that's that's comedy for you well and then the last one of the new ones this uh this last month was it's a blunderful life an aljean run thanksgiving episode it begins with a flash forward to 60 years from now where bart and lisa are grandparents guess what the whole town hates homer for something and because he ruins thanksgiving and then they fix it somehow but it even hits multiple beats from the movie they don't destroy the house but they the house gets expelled from the town and homer has to make it up to the whole town and he even has a moment

of saying marge you got to believe me in one he does a parody of the speech in the movie of in a couple's life there's one time where like he does that speech so now we're nostalgic for the movie i guess it is 16 years old now i saw that uh i mean i was still looking at twitter uh while i was on my vacation um and i saw the real jim's friend of the show uh simpsons content creator was pretty down on this one yeah i it was my least favorite of these three i'd also say there's i honestly my favorite was iron marge i think mike scully and the team did a good episode that was based in an emotional place the biggest problem with it's a blender for life or the lowest point to me other than it just being repetitive of too many previous ones it also was like oh monty burns is gonna sing a song

and the animation the animation is good for it but boy you just it's it's asking harry sure to sing in that voice and he's uh he's 80 and you can sense it basically Basically, Monty starts to do the wind-up of a song, and I was like, no way. They didn't ask him to sing a song, did they? But he does. Also in Iron Marge, there's a scene where Ned and Marge are talking to each other, where again, I was like, boy, they both sound very old. Harry, if we're on old watch of who I say sounds the oldest

in any given episode, current episodes, Harry was winning this month in the old off. I think we need to retire the old watch segment though because it is uh basically our commentary for every new episode at this point yes yeah but and uh yes and yes yeah and we are sounding older too if you go back to podcast 10 years ago we sound like children we're all getting more grizzled and worn down uh so that has been uh new episodes from season 35 also there was a scandal uh in in the woke world because yes there was a big misunderstanding of a joke in the october episode mcmansion and wife i believe i'm paraphrasing here but like homer meets a new person and the new person compliments his handshake his his grip strength he's like oh yeah

my hands are so strong because i strangled my son but i don't do that anymore it's a different time and people took that to mean the wrong people took that to mean oh the simpsons is woke now and they're retiring this joke but uh you know they didn't mean it it was just a joke yeah it uh and and it passed by in the episode i didn't mention it last month when we were talking about that episode it was that one was just like another the simpsons get new neighbors thing but obviously and it's something we've talked about when we had real jims on the show we were talking about how like homer really doesn't strangle bart anymore and not long after that real jims did a great video called jerk ass homer is dead where he dug into that more of like here was the last time homer strangled bart and it was like you know several seasons earlier he doesn't really do it anymore but now it seemed like a non-thing to us but then when it's a line in the show then it gets

headlines like the simpsons isn't going to have homer strangled bart anymore woke culture kills simpsons best joke homer strangling bart and then uh the simpsons fired back uh the official twitter account uh tweeted homer simpson was unavailable for comment as he was busy strangling bart and there's an original david silverman drawing of homer strangling bart uh homer is saying while you little click baiting and bart is holding a smartphone implying that bart is the one who uh who that clickbait headline. It was a good silverman response to James L. Brooks. Also, he told People magazine, nothing's getting tamed. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

He'll continue to be strangled. If you want to use that awful term for it, he'll continue to be loved by his father in a specific way, which honestly, that sounds worse to me. That quote, it's a little too broad. But hey, hey. and speaking of james l brooks uh he is making another movie yes he did not decide to go out on top with uh how do you know i always remember it is like what was that thing who did you do what is uh we hate movies came up with the title uh you gotta do it you gotta do it it is it is the Patton Oswalt uh joke about how

romantic comedies are named like things like feeling sort of kinda oh yeah I also think of that movie because that's when Tim Kalpakis was working for Gracie Films so most of his stories about interfacing with James Earl Brooks were about taking that uh screenplay to some of the most famous people in the world like Leonardo DiCaprio so yes I guess this movie uh is going to is it going to be called Ella McKay is that is the name of the movie yes okay and uh and it's gonna have you know actual like stars in it and stuff and but at least one guy on Twitter or not Twitter and uh who wrote a whole article says to sources, it's not just one thing that 20th century films, a.k.a. Disney, agreed to with it. Right, right. It's basically the deal is they want another Simpsons movie out of him.

Yes. Yeah. That they that they say the green lighting it was contingent on getting a new Simpsons movie. Now we have been hearing about a Simpsons sequel since the minute the Simpsons movie ended and they have been talking it on and off. I think, you know, Al Jean was saying stuff in the last few years, like, oh, we were thinking about it and then COVID or whatever. Uh, now my, I am skeptical, uh, personally, because I think one, I read the the rumor, and it seemed to imply that Brooks partially got the green light for Ella McKay. If he would also give a thumbs up to green lighting in the Simpsons film, or at least get it moving forward. I mean, that could have been a note an executive gave of like, hey, let's really do that Simpsons movie. Because Brooks has to do it.

Like, if Brooks doesn't want to do it, he can be the roadblock in it. But also I don't think Al Brooks, that's a different guy. James L. Brooks does not need any help to make a movie that costs like $20 million that stars famous people. Yeah. And I am skeptical about another Simpsons movie because uh the time it was made everyone was much younger and they were able to split the production in a way i don't feel is as possible anymore just given the realistic expectations for people who are approaching their 60s because before we had um with the movie in production for years uh it was also on top of the tv show uh writing for the new video game the ride they were split nine different ways and i really question as to

uh if if most of the same creative team that's still involved with the show now has the energy to do that anymore yeah yeah i do uh well and also like it's a real gamble. If they started working on it today, it could be released in four years. And that's a gamble with some of the cast four years from now or James O. Brooks, too, to be honest. Yes, yes. I mean, as these actors enter their 70s and 80s and producers, I think James O. Brooks is 83. Starting a years long project like that is risky. And, you you know this is not us just being morbid famous directors and actors have died mid-project because they were cast when the uh when they were very old or they started the project when they were very old so that is a concern i think but uh but hey james little brooks had basically retired from directing and apparently this l mckay thing

has really got him to pick pick back up his megaphone and his his job and it's ready to go back to filming stuff again after i don't know if owen wilson will be in this movie or not though let's hope not uh moving on to uh other news this is related to a show related to the simpsons but it does speak to uh larger things happening in the world of animation. So The Simpsons will remain on Sundays. But their sister show for many a year, Family Guy, will be moving away from Sundays for the first time since 2005. When the series was brought back after initially being canceled. And now Family Guy in the past had been on Sundays on and off. But Fox was just shoving it all around the schedule so it was not known as a Sunday

anchor show until the reboot, which is now almost 20 years ago. But this is a big shakeup and apparently they're making room for a new series called Grimsburg. Jon Hamm plays a detective cartoon. Sorry, Jon Hamm. It's a

detective show with Jon Hamm as a detective in this cartoon, right? Okay. Yeah. And he's an executive producer on it. Will it be as successful? Only time will tell. Yes.

Yeah. I mean, Fox optimistic about some of these new shows, like buying three seasons of Krapopolis sight unseen, possibly not understanding how far the NFT market would go into the future. I think that's really why they did that. I did hear crapopolis was doing good ratings at the start i mean you know good good is a relative term but it's not a bust for the night so they might not regret it too much yet but yeah i mean i i have not heard a single person talk about crapopolis also i didn't know about this grimsburg show and

that got announced like three years ago but uh it's only getting done now that reminded me um that we we talked about like all of the shows that greg jen daniels and mike judge are making together or like separately or there's like bandera entertainment and greg daniels i forget there there were all these announcements i saw like praise pd was just canceled uh that show about like working in a cult and that was a greg daniels thing and then i was at the at a board game store recently and i saw exploding kittens i was like oh uh this was gonna be a greg daniels thing too whatever happened to this so maybe exploding kittens is still in in our wonderful future yeah i remember praise pd you know the trailers just didn't grab me gotta say i maybe i'll give it a shot in on hulu but now it's now it's a one seasoner i i'm less excited for it so we have some uh interesting

information about disenchantment specifically the comic books because a lot of comic books were announced uh one was released as basically a san diego comic-con freebie just a promotional comic and we knew people had been working on comics behind the scenes for a very long time and then came the announcement of these hardcover compilations and the question was lingering what exactly happened was there going to be a planned disenchantment series and the answer is yes actually so I saw Ian Boothby a friend of the show share this on Facebook the bongo writer Terry DeLaGuine had some info on what exactly happened. Apparently, there was going to be some

app, some comic book app. The title was never announced. He didn't go into detail as to what it would be. But 19 disenchantment issues were written for this app and illustrated and fully completed. Plans for that fell through. Everyone was laid off in 2021,

and they just had all of these completed comics in limbo until the announcement of those hardcovers. Now, my speculation is, and this could be completely inaccurate, this is just my own thought, is that Matt Groening, via Bapper Books or whatever, wanted to do a Simpsons comic app where you signed up for it. Maybe it was a marketplace to easily buy every issue.

Maybe it was a subscription thing like sign up. You can read all the Simpsons comics and Futurama comics. Who knows what happened? But a great deal of content was written for something that just never materialized. But now it is coming out long after Disenchantment went off Netflix or not off Netflix after it wrapped up its series. It was supposed to be a supplement going into all of these mysteries about the world but now unfortunately it's coming out long after the series has ended it's being published after the series is like

five years it's it's crazy because i remember reading the final issue of simpsons comics which was a very sweet ode to bongo and its history and it ends one of the last scenes is mr burn saying you know what my mind turns to disenchantment it was their tease of what we're publishing next is disenchantment comics so they felt even then and i mean i i would nobody will i don't think this is going to be public knowledge and maybe somebody should ask mac reigning this but this is very low on things anybody would ask Matt Groening about. But Bill Morrison, I was just seeing another, I follow him on Facebook, he had another public post about this, but he mentioned it when we interviewed Bill Morrison.

The Simpsons Comics publishing rights and all publishing rights to Simpsons things were owned by Matt Groening, and he was the sole approver of it. He did not have to get Fox or Fox permission to publish Simpsons anything it was it was only his permission it was an amazing rights he got and I I still am interested that the timing of the end of Bongo and this kind of stalling on Simpsons content being published in book form other than well actually there was the hang up with the calendar as i know and you know and also the uh and and now only bapper books is publishing the old stuff i am just curious like is disney causing problems with publishing simpsons despite what graining's old deal uh was and had been for so long yeah i wonder if his sweetheart deal with

fox ended after the acquisition and that was what created the uh the wrench in the gears for launching an app full of content based on now disney characters yeah because disney doesn't just i mean they will let some stuff happen i was just seeing our pal thad talking about how they just let uh they just published a new uh translation of some classic duck comics that he had worked on from from europe like a new translation of them so disney still allows boutique publishing of modestly uh profitable comic books to happen like they're not just preventing it from happening but yeah i do wonder what's going on with simpsons uh why there aren't new comics still? Yeah. So I guess that's all we know,

but these hardcover editions are coming out full of disenchantment comics. And I will say, to be honest, there, there is a real lack of enthusiasm for anything disenchantment. And this is just me observing reality. I'm not trying to be negative about the show. And it does seem like they're giving people way more content than they ever

asked for, for disenchantment. It feels like I'm, I'm wondering if all of these hardcovers will make it into the world but i want these creators to have their work seen it's it'd be a real shame if all of this work got created but it makes me just think about how much corporate waste there is where 20 comics were commissioned and they just sat in limbo for three years until someone decided like we could probably sell these oh you know what because you mentioned that that did i forgot to put this in the notes but also futurama got renewed for two more seasons and this is a real renewal not them saying the 10

other episodes or season two got renewed this was 20 new episodes so by two seasons you mean one split in half yes yes so but basically there will be 20 more episodes in addition to the remaining 10 of the first spate of 20 that got released as two seasons. So, yeah, basically they have a new production season has been renewed for for Futurama on Hulu. That's great. Yeah, I've enjoyed the first 10 a lot, and I've really enjoyed the weekly launch. Something to look forward to every week, and I can't fall behind like I do with every series that launches with 8 to 14 episodes. And I immediately feel like, well, everyone has watched more than me. So I do approve of this weekly launch schedule, and I hope more people pick it up. Absolutely.

So moving on, we have a new interview from min max it is an hour-long oral history on the uh making of simpsons hit and run the 2003 gta clone and it's very great i actually was just kind of skimming through it i need to sit down and watch it because it is an hour long but some information came out as to why there was never a sequel the the developers have a lot of fun quotes saying we had well you know about how they can't believe there wasn't a sequel and that they put in you know all this these plans for like they're going to be able to fly in the next game there'd be flying vehicles in the next game and that uh they didn't really fully understand why it didn't happen though again i i wrote this wasn't in articles that were quoting that but uh that

new interview but this was talked about two years ago where it's like yeah ea bought the rights uh from vivendi in november 2005 was when it was announced so vivendi didn't have two years to let um them make a simpsons hit and run sequel for one thing yeah and uh we've seen over the past year a fan has done an amazing remake of the original uh game so if you know where to look it's easy to play this game again but i i feel like ea is so happy with their uh their simpsons ant farm you pay money to unlock references in that they're not going to even bother doing a re-release of this game although like i always say prove me wrong but thankfully when companies don't make games available fans find ways to make them available and playable with modern modern hardware

it is probably the most requested simpsons game hd remaster slash re-release unlike with EA does seem oh uh moderately okay with working with Konami to republish those but up until recently the old publishing rights for that game were owned by Vivendi aka Blizzard aka Activision and so EA and Activision if you don't know video games were mega rivals now that government has failed us in stopping uh the monolithic monopoly of microsoft buying activision maybe that changes things and microsoft will they technically have ish sort of ish rights to simpsons hit and run via all that vivendi uh purchasing it would be great to see it officially playable and for people to realize that while it's a very good simpsons game it's also a 2003 licensed game that uh can only be so good i recommend you go out and listen to the

watch out for fireballs podcast about the game where they do praise uh how faithful it is but they also point out there's basically five kinds of missions you do over and over and some of them are pretty ruthless in terms of how much time they give you to complete them i never actually finished the game and i played a hell of a lot of it at the time it is a good reference delivery system one of the best in simpsons games you could tell they really cared and our last news item is all about the smithsonian because al gene uh recently donated his uh noted table redraft of simpsons roasting on an open fire to the smith the Smithsonian. I'm surprised there was not an existing copy there. Yeah, it was. I've seen Al Jean post pictures from it online several times,

and now he had decided, you know what, if the Smithsonian wants it, I'll send it. But I mean, we know he knows this, but when he calls it the first Simpsons script, and that's what he sends the Smithsonian, we also know it's not that like it isn't. It was like the eighth commissioned script. Yeah. But to everybody but us, it is the first episode. So it is. I mean, if you look at the title page on it, even that he is noted on the post, it's like Simpsons Christmas. Better title to come by Mimi Pa. If actually, if they actually donated the first episode,

Some Enchanted Evening, I think Smithsonian would reject it. Send it back. Yes. We have a better one. I mean, this is history, but still, we have standards. But yeah, Al Jean, though, I'm sure it's, he's a student of history he's uh loves museums i uh it it is an honor to have something of yours in the smithsonian there's no i wonder

what mimi pond feels about it yes yes i mean uh she has company i mean you interviewed her henry um and that's a great interview and i'm sure the feelings are complicated but i have to assume some part of her is proud that her work is there i think so i think so but also she wishes she could have had worked on more simpsons yes had been given that opportunity but yeah listeners if you haven't listened to it before look that interview up in the in the back catalog especially because it is holiday timed as well yes and i wish i could have been there but i was sick and i felt very bad about it but great interview henry so moving on to our news let's talk about what's happening on the talking simpsons network schedule for december of 2023 and we are doing more holiday things so we just covered the muppet christmas carol on our patreon that is for people on the ten dollar and up level

if you want to check that out and we are doing more Christmas stuff because our first podcast of December will be all about the TV Funhouse episode Christmas Day and in case you're wondering TV Funhouse was a short-lived Comedy Central version of the SNL segments you might be familiar with but it basically blends the things all of us comedy nerds like SNL, Mr. Show, Conan O'Brien, all of our favorites. And they start incorporating filthy puppets and Harlem Globetrotters. And it's a perfect TV experience. So that's what we're kicking off the month of December with. Yeah, we love TV Funhouse. It's been on our list for a very long time. And never forget that if you want to hear us talk about classic Christmas christmas specials we've kind of covered almost

all of the 30 minute ones and that's all in the back catalog of what a cartoon uh and we even have a whole collection of them at talking simpsons.com yes yes if you go there you can look at the collections tab and look at all of the holiday episodes that are available on the free feed and then if you go on the patreon you can look at episodes of you know batman that we've covered that are holiday specific and uh and uh king of the hill and futurama and things like that so uh that is also going to be on the free feed the tv fun house episode but for five dollar and up patrons on patreon.com talking simpsons we have the talking futurama episode obsolutely fabulous this is the episode in which bender travels to an island of obsolete

robots, gets an operation that turns him into wood, and then leads a rebellion against technology. And it's very, very fun. Although you may know this by now, but it was all just a dream. Spoilers. The second episode where Bender goes through a huge body transformation and the second one where it's all a dream in the same season uh they they're really fixated on a few concepts in season four so that is a fun episode yeah it is that's happening on talking for drama and then on talking in the hill we have the wedding of bobby hill which uh is just i mean we've had a lot of emotional episodes a lot of character rich episodes this is just a fun episode that ends with an incest-based prank. your needs weird i don't remember saying that part visit dejaden.com slash care and get insurance

that's really big on care did i mention that we care and it's all very delightful it's great it has some my favorite lonely bill sections as well in it and uh yeah that is happening on our uh five dollar and up level and then our our What a Cartoon movie for December. We're ending the year with a fun, light movie, The Emperor's New Groove. It's been requested several times. And I'm personally a big fan of this. I saw this in theaters. I watched it in a bar last year with the sound off.

And I remembered like, oh, this movie's great. We should do this movie. And so we're doing it now. And uh yeah I can't wait for this one and of course we're going to cover the rocky rocky history of this movie oh yes yeah you know I've only seen clips from it so it's going to be time to watch the sweat box in full I'm going to finally do that which I think is just on YouTube the uh the documentary made by Sting's wife, I believe. Yes. And speaking of YouTube, we mentioned TV Funhouse. There is a DVD for that program, still available, very, very cheap. But if you don't want to buy that, it's on archive.org. It's all on YouTube. Nobody is policing this. You're free to

choose whatever venue, but it's very, very available. Yes. Ember's new groove. Can't wait to cover that one. It's going to be a great way to end the year. Yes. And also more news about us. We're going to be talking about this as the month continues, but we are going to be at SketchFest for the fifth year, not in a row because of COVID, but basically in a row. And we have not decided what we'll be doing yet or who the guests will be. We're doing that now. We're planning that out now, but it's happening, I believe, Henry, on Januaryuary 24th that is right bob it is wednesday january 24th we are at 7 30 p.m you can get tickets uh now and yeah it's our big it's our triumphant return to the bay area as well since uh leaving yeah and when we know more about uh who the guests will be and what the

topic will be we'll do our normal little post with uh an ad a podcast ad to remind you but it's still a few months away as of this recording, so there's still time to plan your trip to the Bay Area. And we are in a new venue because our old venue no longer exists, as a certain crazy Valkalov would say. And also to let people know, our new venue is in a much better neighborhood than the last one. If you have been to Piano Fight and were like,

this is the scary city they told me about. It's a much nicer area. And yeah, some folks were put off by the surrounding misery of the venue that was our past venue. I totally understand people are just like, oh boy, I didn't like the vibes of sending people. And Piano Fight was a very nice place. They were very, as in the people

running it were very good to us and then we i was sad to see it go but yes i i did feel bad sometimes of uh sending people out of the show from that or also i think after one year we told a guest hey if you're gonna get your uh hotel don't do it in nearby where piano fight was we had one person who did and we are not uh pearl clutching uh weirdos who are like oh san francisco terrifying but it was uh interesting to say hey folks come see us at the part of the city society abandoned yeah it'll be a fun night see see all of the neoliberal misery spread by this wonderful city but unfortunately we're not there and it's a bigger venue as well so more seats but remember it sold out last time so you know before we announce the guest if you get your tickets now uh you're you are ahead of the curve yes uh don't

miss out folks so let's talk about what we've been playing and watching that's not related to the podcast and i spent uh more than half the month in another country playing very few games watching very few things but I can just tell you what's going on in my life so still playing through Super Mario Wonder I am just like dipping into the game a little bit at a time I want it to last throughout the rest of the holiday season and I'm like five out of six worlds down. And I still have to go back and get all the flower coins. And all the secret stuff. So having a lot of fun stretching that out for as long as it will possibly go. I've been sitting in World 7 for a month now.

And I just don't want it to end. So I've been playing other things. Yeah. I mean we don't need to tell you this. It's such a good game. Also I'm still going through Final Fantasy 16. An interesting game that I'm not a huge fan of, but I just kind of want to see like how it's going to go.

All I can say is that I played through what I thought was a prologue and then I played through another 20 hours and then something happened and I thought that was another prologue and then all of these new things open up and I'm just like, well, when does this game actually start? So I'm still having fun with it but it just

the structure is very odd so yeah Final Fantasy 16 hoping to finish that by the end of the year also I mentioned this last year Resident Evil 4 remake I missed it in the when it came out like last winter like winter of 2023 now I'm really getting into it such a good remake another good remake is the Mario RPG remake huge fan of that game played it over and over and over because it is like a 15 hour rpg and i would just play through it when i would get bored because it was so digestible but i gotta say like this is such a good remake they add very little but they keep every weird uh off model thing about the game things oh mario shouldn't do this or this is not what bowser's identity should be and like they were breaking the rules back then and they let all that stuff fly in this new game uh this new remake and

i love it it's totally worthwhile and it's it's done so well and i'm just very impressed by it yeah no i i barely touched it myself but i i did get to the start screen basically and then when i did that i was like hey i need i need to save this for my own long flight at the end of December. It just, it is so, the pacing is so great. I hope this encourages more developers to make 10 to 12 hour RPGs because, God, it's just so great to be able to sit down and make progress in an RPG. Go back to what I said about Final Fantasy 16 when I'm like 40 hours in and it's like, when does this game start?

What's going on here? Also, I've been in a real Kirby mood lately. I don't know why. in and it's like when does this game start what's going on here also I've been in a real Kirby mood lately I don't know why and I realized like oh I never went back and like did the post game stuff in Kirby in the Forgotten Land and there's a lot of it and it's really challenging and I recommend if you have finished the game and

not dipped into that yet check it out because the post game stuff in Kirby is always very interesting and made for let's say people who have played a lot of platformers not the entry-level light challenge of the main game it's for the grown-ups in the room the adult Kirby fans let's say the discerning adults who love who's also love the big pink puffball and I also for the first time in eight years finally got a new gaming PC I'm having a lot of fun with that.

The last time I had a gaming PC, a new gaming PC, Obama was president. That's how long it's been. And I love having, briefly, the best graphics possible, period. Just like PS5, you're trash. Switch, you're in the trash. Just every option available, every resolution available, it's been so great. I've been just testing everything out at all the max settings. This is the most fun about having a new gaming PC.

And because of that, I'm also getting back into Final Fantasy XIV for the first time in two years because I bought the new 2021 expansion for myself and my wife, and the servers were just so clogged. We barely had a chance to play it when it was new, and that both made us fall off so i'm getting back into it and i'm trying to get her back into it uh because we both played it a ton during quarantine i i'm waiting for the xbox release of it coming next year to to pick it back up again oh it's not on xbox yet it is about to be it only took um uh what seven years since the remake of it oh uh a realm reborn is is 10 wow yes that's a long time and i think the original release is 20 is 2010 and then a realm reborn is 2013 yeah that's right man uh remember that trailer for final fantasy 14 online at the bottom

what what a prank that was a prank that has gone on to make them uh so much goddamn money but that's it for gaming i have so many other gaming plans in my future uh including some of the stuff that you're playing henry that i'll mention when you talk about your list but i i'm playing i have four games playing at the same time i'm still buying games because i'm stupid but these are my future plans you see and i have a lot of them in terms of what I want to play in the future so watching not a lot because again big vacation I'll talk about that soon I went to Japan for two and a half weeks and because of that it's not like I don't watch anime but my wife and I were like let's just start watching more anime because we're seeing all the anime merch around us and all the new shows and we're just part of that world so

when we got home we picked up where we left off on spy shows and we're just part of that world so when we got home we picked up where we left off on spy family and we also started chainsaw man which uh henry i know you've seen at least some of that show i watched the first episode i was like oh that's cool i need to watch more of this thing but then it kind of fell it fell into the back burner but yes i it seems like a really cool show it is yes, yes. Actually, we were talking about it at a Christmas party we were both at and we mentioned it and somebody just said, Chainsaw Man? Just the title confused them.

They found it odd and I said to the person, it's exactly what you think. It's about a guy made of chainsaws and he fights demons, but it's really cool and it's animated by the guys who made Demon Slayer, so it's top of the line animation. So I recommend, Henry, go back into it Demon Slayer so it's top of the line animation so I recommend Henry go back into it is just a fun monster of the

week show with just impeccable TV quality animation and it's about the crippling debt right yes yes very but also very gory very dark and that's what I like about it nice perfect for the holiday season and of course Spy Family it's just fun for the whole family it's a great comedy action series I also

recommend that too but it was also like the highest selling book for one month in 2023 just book period we covered that news wow right one of the volumes like go to hell harry potter screw you bible we're all about spy family in this house spy family number one book period that's incredible meanwhile american comic book nerds will be like that's manga that's not really big comic book spider-man and batman that's what's big i could show them a graph that would make them cry in that case so we didn't really watch any movies i i guess like last night we watched the great muppet caper which i have not seen as an adult and i really liked it i liked it more than the muppet movie just because i thought the direction was better because it's Jim Henson and not some guy they hired to direct the movie Henson understands how these things should be filmed it's a more comedy than uh than Muppet movie is too right yeah it's just a straight

comedy and uh with uh they really up all the Muppet effects and the dance sequences it's all it's all very extravagant in terms of what you can do with a puppet. And I will say that the holiday season is upon us, and we're prepping to see a ton of movies because I'm part of this, like, cine club thing for the big chain of theaters here, and it's sort of like what they used to do in America where you join the club and you can see free movies,

except here your free movie passes accumulate over time. They don't take them away if you don't use them, so I have just a giant stack of free tickets. So i think we're going to see all the stupidest movies at the theaters this year i think we're going to see wonka and wish just because it's basically free in quotes meaning i paid for it uh months ago so i'm not thinking about the concept of money at this point that's uh that's funny right now none of the prestige things wonka and wish yeah although i do want to see what is it The Holdovers

that's a good that's on my list of stuff I've seen I give it a thumbs up yeah it's like what is a real movie that's in theaters

you know a movie that's real about real things The Holdovers totally is that especially it's a great holiday season well I'll just say it now

The Holdovers I really enjoyed especially like it was a great holiday movie and paul giamatti is great at being him if you if you love what paul giamatti does well which is being a bitter old loser who you still love he is perfect in the holdovers and this shows how much i love this movie i'm still not sick of it so we did the muppet christmas carol podcast uh

tons of work for both me and you watching it very closely listening to the music over and over again and it's playing at my local theater the Rio on December 9th I've already made plans to go see it so have never seen it in the theater before and I think I was going to last year maybe but my trip got delayed by horrible weather in Vancouver but this time yeah definitely gonna see it and I can't wait boy I forgot last year you Christmas was delayed in time you weren't in Vancouver for Christmas were you no I my trip was delayed by a week and I ended up having to get three separate refunds from three separate airlines and chasing those down for months it was great boy that was rough but hey now now you have

to go work to get away from Vancouver if you want to, like, say, to another country. Yeah. Oh, thank you. Thank you. I say let it snow. But yes, let's talk about my Japan trip. And I want to keep this kind of limited because Henry's editing this. And also, I think we've all heard enough about a white guy went to Japan and he's going to tell you about it. Oh, the vending machines. You should have seen them. I mean, we've heard these stories before. But yes, I did take my long, long delayed honeymoon with my wife. Of course, she was there to Japan for two and a half weeks. And it was marvelous.

And I have to credit my wife for being a Japanese speaker and reader, number one. But for number two, also doing a lot of the planning because she has been toapan a lot in her life so a full credit for the entire experience goes to her uh full credit every time she uh answered a question uh and she did not she was not bothered at all by like what's that say what did he say what does that say were they talking about me like all these questions flying at her and she fielded them all but uh henry uh what do you want to know about now see you're going on your trip and here's here's one thing that i can warn you about um everybody in japan very well dressed and i thought you know i'm gonna bring my most subtle t-shirts my most subtle video game and anime t-shirts

because every shirt i own has a thing on it i'm wearing a sim city 2000 shirt right now i don't have shirts without things on it i think i probably should at this point in my life. I thought they were subtle, but then when I saw how well everyone was dressed around me, I was filled with deep shame. And then because I was in Akihabara, you see a guy with a ponytail, in cargo shorts and flip-flops,

with his Naruto t-shirt that's clearly from college. And you're like, boy, I wonder if they're putting me on his level. I feel even deeper shame. And I'm proud of that guy for making it here, you know, to Japan. Good for him. But maybe get a newer Naruto t-shirts, I would say. But I will caution you.

They will view you in a certain light if you're like, check out my references. You guys made this game. Well, I am thinking I will definitely take that in consideration and pack lighter on japanese media stuff but also i do think that like i'm gonna be there for new year's and it's gonna be cold so i think i will have an un no characters on it heavy jacket with me to cover up my nerd shame you see that that was my plan too i was like well i have these nerdy t-shirts i'll bring the most subtle one and then it's fall in Japan. It's late fall. It's going to be um observations from this will pop up on on many of podcasts but i guess my biggest one was you had a controversial thing for compared to most

disney theme park freaks that you rank tokyo disneyland above disney sea is this correct yes let's settle down everybody i've done both i did one day at each, and I find that Disneyland gives me all the corny Disney stuff I like and a greater variety of experiences. Now, I know what you're asking. You're asking, why would I want to ride something in Tokyo that I could ride in California? The answer is because there are many fewer Americans at Tokyo Disneyland. The worst part of going to Disneyland is all the guys with thin blue line Mickey tattoos and Punisher t-shirts.

Those are the freaks you're in line with. This is a stereotype. Very polite people there. The crowds are very well controlled. And again, you're not seeing borderline racist imagery on the back of a t-shirt while you're in line for Splash Mountain for 90 minutes. So if you're wondering like,

why would I want to do this? The experience is better because the people is better, because the service is better, because you're in another country and it's just more fun. That's my answer. But I did enjoy all the experiences. And then the versions of the rides are better because they're newer and in better shape.

And you can do things like country bears that you couldn't do in California Disneyland, which was the first thing that we did in tokyo disneyland i bet it's pretty mid but i am just want to eat country bears curry because that's what they serve at the country bear diner as well they have like their own curry set there yes i didn't have the curry but uh because there's no baggage there a lot of tokyo disneyland has a Song of the South imagery. So you eat in the Grandma Possum's giant kitchen.

That's one of the big, huge eateries you can eat in there. They had really good food. We ate at the Alice in Wonderland place for lunch. Had really great food. You can find a lot of food, obviously, you're not going to find in American Disneyland. Like a lot of things that japanese people like to eat that americans would find odd at a theme park uh what was your favorite uh disney

snack favorite disney snack i did i found the popcorn to be completely overrated the lines are way too long for all of it um but i did try a little bit of it but i did really like the curry popcorn so if you're going to find the popcorn of your choice and you don't want to stand in line for many kinds i found all the other kinds too sweet for me i'm not a sweet popcorn liker but the curry popcorn was good but then i also thought like i have curry powder at home i can just do this but hey it was available to me then and i really liked it then well i have no other questions than about disney theme parks when you went to japan now um well what did what did you uh you also got to ride the shinkansen for the first time i mean i'm jealous of that because the you got the last uh friendly prices on the jr rail pass i i did ride

it last time because i did go to uh nagoya uh on my last trip so it was a brief ride but because we had the jr uh rail pass uh we were able to uh go all over the place on the shinkansen for an unlimited amount of times within a certain span of time so we were just like i think we might have written it like eight or ten times um but yeah it does make you realize how even even when i'm in canada and the mass transit is much better like oh what we are missing out on a train that just stretches the entire country. And it's possible. Two more I'll ask about it.

Like, so you went to so many cool bars I saw in your pictures. What were some of your favorites? Oh, boy. When you're asking me for names of them, I'm drawing a blank. But I encourage everyone to go to my Instagram account, RealBobServo, because I posted a batch of pictures for every day, and there are names and images of all the little places. But we went to many a place, lots of places where bartenders would ask you, like, okay, what kind of whiskeys are you into? We're going to make you a flight.

We're going to pick out things for you. But just the world of tiny bars and being in them and like the intimacy and just how everyone is so very unique we went to a rum bar that i was not expecting to find in japan but i just love how there are these very tall buildings on every floor there's a completely different business and some of them are just these tiny bars that can seat six to eight people um but yeah that world was great just exploring that world and thankfully nina was able to help me navigate it a lot of the places weren't because they were not just just tiny tiny businesses they were all like not especially english-friendly sometimes so she helped me out

a lot but we went to like a heavy metal bar uh there were just so many of them i think we might have hit a dozen of them so it's a jumble in my brain which is why i'm glad i took like 2 000 pictures during my trip and i i liked your pics from luida's bar uh from dragon quest yes so of course we went to many video game cafe because you just have to do it at least once uh monster hunter cafe that that was my favorite that had the most real estate and the best theming the dragon quest cafe perfectly fine uh you know the food is never amazing at any of these, but you're just there for the experience, for the exclusive coasters. And then the Final Fantasy XIV Cafe, I was slightly unimpressed, but it was cool to just

have done it at least once. But, you know, people ask, you know, well, why would you do that when you can just have a drink at a bar and it'll be cheaper? The point is you're there for the experience. Just like, oh, they made a bar based on this game i like and i'm here and i can take pictures of props and things that's that's kind of the reason you go and then you can uh get a drink that would be overpriced if you were in another country but because it's in japan the exchange rate is so great you're like oh i'll have two of these it's it's rough for businesses in japan or people who are paid by japanese businesses but great for tourists right now. Yes.

I mean, the main reason, I mean, we were going to go anyways. This was the plan for a long time. The funny joke is we were saying, you know, before COVID, let's go after the Olympics. You know, maybe fall of 2020 when things quiet down a little bit. That'll be our plan. Thankfully, we didn't buy tickets or anything. But the big reason we went is because Nina and I were invited by the Game Center CX TV show. The producer invited us to see the 20th anniversary screening. Not screening.

20th anniversary event. Live event. Where Arino, the host of the show, does a bunch of game challenges on stage. And there's sketches. And it's a huge celebration and i thought i wasn't really understanding how big the show was because it's still a fairly small show on japanese tv and like very very low budget as well um and if you're curious as to what this is you can google game center cx he's basically the first let's player um this started in 2003 and it's a very entertaining show much of it has been subtitled by by great

groups and it's still being subtitled today but going back to the amount of people that were there i was like this will be fairly big no he filled a stadium he filled a stadium in saitama with fans and i i guess i never understood how popular the show was until I sat down because for me, it's always been like, well, these are these fan subs I watch where a guy sits at a table alone for an hour. Uh,

and then I see the full scope of just how many lives it's touched. And I'm not the only white person there. It was an amazing event, but you, I, it's hard to put that into context if you haven't seen the show or know about it. But,

uh, Nina does merch for the show. And that's the reason why we were invited. She's friends with a lot of the people that work on the show or know about it but nina does merch for the show and that's the reason why we were invited she's friends with a lot of the people that work on the show and she's got a great connection with them so yeah that's that's what really brought us there and then we found a billion other things to do we stayed in tokyo in nagoya and kyoto saw a ton of people and because the sun never sets on the talking simpsons empire I ran into a fan I was at a one of the crane game game centers

and I was talking to Nina she was going away to do something and somebody came up to me and they were like are you Bob Mackey and I couldn't believe I ran into a Talking Simpsons fan or a Retronauts fan I think they were fans of both in Japan just at a random game center in Shibuya so

yeah incredible that's that's amazing man i yeah i could i could talk all day because i also want to ask like more i'll ask bob off the record more more tips and tricks for my my own planned trip in a month from now is uh i'll be there um but the one thing i'll say that i that I wasn't I wasn't getting I would have had the worst FOMO if I didn't already have my own tickets built because it'd be like god it looks so fun but you went to one thing that will not be there when I'm there I was so jealous of that that cowboy bebop uh 25th anniversary experience thing that looks so cool I went just because it was there honestly it was kind of dinky it was just

an excuse to get you to buy merch but it was neat enough to at least have said i was there because i missed the anniversary one uh when i was there last uh spring of 2018 so i could have went to that but i i just had other things to do but i it was just an excuse to buy merch you basically go through like a bunch of hallways with some original art, mostly just like they made their own printouts of different characters and dossiers on them, and they built big props and stuff. But honestly, I wouldn't feel too bad about missing that because it was just a glorified gift shop. But hey, the gifts are pretty nice.

It looked good on the gram, at the very least. That's the power of clever editing. But yeah, I'm not sure what to talk about because again if you want to know more about my trip you can just you could add me on x or twitter or whatever you can look at my real bob servo instagram account because i documented everything thoroughly and i know when we're done with this recording i'm gonna think god damn it i why didn't i mention blank but i will say like the one thing that surprised me and Nina had been there before was the ramen museum in Shin Yokohama. The first floor is like here is the history of ramen.

Here's where it comes from. Here's how it's made. Here is just like different ways it was sold over time. Here's a gift shop. And then you go down basically into a recreation of 1958 Japan. And I have a lot of pictures of this on my instagram it is a very thorough recreation of the city streets of i think shinyokohama or perhaps tokyo i forget which city they are trying to capture but you walk through a recreation of this and a lot of the little stores are open and this is where ramen shops uh will have like a satellite branch in this museum so you can try

different kinds of ramen all year round at the ramen museum in this recreation of old tokyo and it is it was so cool uh and because they want you to eat a lot of ramen they serve little bowls if you want a little bowl so i ate three bowls of ramen at this museum and i was not about to die so definitely look into that it is such a cool experience and other things i didn't really get to do last time like go to shrines we went to this shrine um i forget the name of it because we went to a billion things but we had to get like a a tiny bus that crawled up all of these hills and then because it was a remote shrine we were just there alone at night for about an hour in like the pristine darkness at the shrine.

And we just hung out there drinking sake until the last bus came to pick us up. It was like an amazing little event that had nothing to do with anime video games or, you know, Japanese snacks. It was like, I'll never do this again. Just to be alone at a shrine in the middle of the night and just having nice sake and and relaxing with my wife it was great that sounds awesome because even the shrines i i've been to on previous trips very crowded very full of people i i never got a very intimate feel to shrine i guess i i definitely i'm gonna go to a few shrines in the city uh in tokyo i i'm mainly we're mainly sticking to tokyo but definitely going to check out uh you

know the inari gates and the uh i think the the the original uh temple or castle that uh that was there for old tokyo i believe inari is in kyoto because we were making plans to do that and they fell through because we had to do some other things but that's going to be next on our list uh when we come back but yeah i'm looking at my my huge amount of photos and it's just hard to even know where to begin with all these of course like if you want to hear about all the stupid dorky stuff i did i went to every nintendo store just because we were in osaka or in kyoto we were in tokyo we're like what do all these look like they kind of all have the same merch but it's just neat to say that you you were there in them and things like uh nara deer park where these wild deer will come up to you and eat your

little senbei rice crackers and they bow to you because they've been conditioned to do that to get food it's all very adorable just i'm just pouring over these pictures and i it's like i i could do this as a podcast but you don't want to hear that but those were the highlights uh and i'm very happy that i was able to take that trip with my wife it was a long time coming and we really made the most of it and i met up with uh friends like uh diamond fight uh and alexander fraioli uh who has the uh the bar critical hit in nagoya and things like that so you were with maddie too right yes yes we met up with maddie and some other people, too. So, yeah, it was great to meet up with a lot of people in Japan who I haven't seen in a very long time because for good reasons, they don't really come back to America.

Yep. Totally understandable. I hope I am going to be following a lot of your a lot of your tips and tricks. And yeah, we'll see. We'll see who had the bigger souvenir haul when they come back. Oh, yeah, I did take I did take pictures of all of those. And it souvenir haul when they come back oh yeah i did take i did take pictures of all of those and it was really nice to come back like usually after a trip it's just like oh i'm the fun of the trip is over and i'm so depressed but coming back to my nice condo in vancouver i was like oh i actually like being home i'm looking forward to not going on vacation for a very long time this is great i'm gonna play with all of my new things i bought and wear all my new shirts so yeah i didn't have the usual like post-trip drag afterwards which was which was very nice for like the first time in my life well uh well my month uh i had a kind of

exciting month too but for games other than mario wonder i played alan wake 2 and i 100%ed it i got every achievement in alan wake 2 that's how much I enjoyed it. It actually was really great. It was way better than the first Alan Wake. I'm curious about that because it was a special deal. I didn't buy my computer because of this, but because I spent $2,000 on a gaming computer, they were like, do you want a free Alan Wake 2?

I checked the box like, yeah, why wouldn't I want a free game? Actually, I fell off of Alan Wake 1, but I really loved this weird spinoff game they did called Alan Wake's American Nightmare. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's great. And it was just basically a digest version of all of the action in Alan Wake. I don't know why they made it, but it was great. Like, Alan Wake just got too long for me. But I've heard nothing but good things about this one. I'm looking forward to playing it on my new gaming PC.

So it's ready for me to go and jump into it but i have other things first but i've heard nothing but good things about this game and it sort of came out of nowhere alan wake 2 learned all the best lessons from american nightmare and also made me want to play control i didn't play control i should have it is very meta but also it is it has such clever ideas for for level design and integration of a writer with reality shifting it has such a fun like spirit to it there's a million things to rip off twin peaks eight trillion things but this weird finnish version of it they like leaned into its nordic style to be even more weird and disconnected than it than it even previously was yeah that's really cool i i'm also thinking whatever like what was quantum

break about that was one of their other games that just came and went and it had a weird live action component as well they're always trying something interesting uh remedy yeah i'm i'm so happy the remedy still exists and still gets to make things and it didn't get bought by a publisher and shuttered like 10 years ago like they they still exist they're doing better than ever i can't alan wake 2 can't say enough great about but if you are gonna play it and i say as somebody who beat alan wake 1 and american nightmare i love those games you gotta watch a there's hosted by sam lake Lake, the writer and creative director of the games. He did a 15 minute previously on, and it is almost essential for anything to make sense in Alan Wake 2.

Because they count on you to know Alan Wake lore. Okay, that's good to know ahead of time before I jump in and get very confused. Because I think I played Alan Wake 1 when it was new. Or at least maybe in 2012 or something like that uh and then after that i'm playing on game past like a dragon the man who erased his name friend pretty good so far it really is just the sped up version of a regular kiryu adventure in the yakuza like a dragon rgg series of games like it is just digestible fast like uh i believe those stats i've seen online that like oh if you don't want to do any of the side missions or limit your side stories

you'll be done in 15 hours like that's kind of is what it feels like which is totally good that sounds great but hey never fear because we're already getting warnings about how long the next game will be i think even the developers are like listen uh quit your job that's all we're saying this game will fuck you up. It's criminal how long we made Infinite Wealth. And there's a demo for Infinite Wealth on the game, but I kind of even don't want to play it because I'm just like, why do I need more of this game? Yeah. Why do you want to take up more time?

Yeah. But the Man Who Erased His Name is really good, especially as a thing I didn't pay for. Or I mean, I do pay for with Game Pass. And then also, i'm in 115 day streak in duolingo it is kind of fun to be playing uh a yakuza game and walking around and being able to read some words that are on signs and be like oh that's his hotel i can read that now aren't i smart like it's it's a fun little feeling as for watching i watched all of pluto on netflix uh the entire eight episodes.

And really, if you're going by minute count, it's more like a 24-episode, half-hour season of anime. It's big. It is almost one-to-two-one adaptation of the comic. And the comic's perfect, so the show's perfect. Do you think they should have split it up into eight hour-long things? Or do you think each episode should have been shorter? Like what's your take on that? You know, the pacing of the episodes, I think they could have split each episode into three episodes that were 20 minutes and it would have been perfectly fine. And who knows, maybe that's how it'll broadcast in Japan. The hour format though is interesting to see because

it did make it feel more prestige and important. And I think it did fit with like the show has a lot of silence it has a very mature pace it does not feel like a lot of other even Netflix hour longs that are like we got to keep you watching we got to hold your attention like this show is is much more in the spirit of Urasawa's original work and also I there was something fun to it or interesting to me that every episode is one volume of the eight volumes there's eight volumes of the book the comic there's eight volumes or eight episodes of the hour-long show so it's kind of novel in that way oh cool I like that uh and speaking of uh Netflix animation I watched all of Scott Pilgrim takes off uh if you like Scott Pilgrim or or once

liked Scott Pilgrim it is really good I think it is a good I don't know I don't want to spoil it for folks but you probably have heard it is not a one-to-one adaptation of the original comics and has some clever trick tip tricks and twists in it well I will say I have made an enemy of many of my peers by disliking the thing that was made for me, which is Scott Pilgrim. I could never, ever get into it, and I tried, and I'm sorry. It's just not my thing. But I'm glad everyone is talking about it.

I feel the same way about Doctor Who. Everyone is talking about Doctor Who lately, and I think it's finally coming to an end, not Doctor Who, but the discourse but i'm like everybody i know is talking about doctor who and i'm feeling left out but i'm not going to seek out doctor who no no that's not going to happen well at least with scott pilgrim you have a limited amount of things you'd have to engage with to have seen it all but the animation is great they did get everybody back which shows you that some people are good voice actors and some

people aren't um it's uh it also has a scene in the seventh episode that is literally made for me and my personal tastes in both comedy and anime but also uh i watch speaking of hour-long shows invincible watch the four episodes of that it's uh still a good show still good fun violent show as for movies yeah the holdovers really really great i also saw in imax napoleon some of napoleon is really great just because it's you get to see like how movies used to be where like you see hundreds of people on a battlefield inter like pretending to do classic battles it's like wow this is a big budget and this is about the importance of history blah blah

blah though man i feel like uh joaquin phoenix is napoleon he's like a i kind of kind of meh on him though he the scene that has stuck with me the most is napoleon when he is horny for josephine honks he goes like i'm hearing a lot about the honking napoleon lately yes it's weird i didn't know napoleon honked all that much he's napoleon is honk if you're horny the movie that's the movie yeah uh one for honk please uh and then the last movie i saw in theaters was the marvels there are worse marvel movies but there's a reason people are feeling marvel fatigue and uh this it feels way too short it feels weird it's weird to see a marvel movie that the problem is it's not long enough after all these other MCU ones.

But, you know, there's good acting in it and stuff. But, yes, I have been some wags on Twitter have got me on this. But, yes, the last 90 seconds were great for me. Again, Henry, this will come up on a podcast we just recorded. But I will download the cam rip and I will cut out the stinger and just send that to you you can watch in the privacy of your own home well it used to be in the Marvel movies I liked the stuff that preceded the stinger and then the stinger is the promise of things to come all the stingers for this last like three years

of Marvel movies have been well this previous movie you're pretty mad but did you know if we do another movie you might see this? And that's the big one at the end of this. But, oh, and then also, I am now at chapter 600 of One Piece. Wow, wow. It's crazy. I just got to episode 319. That's where I am.

I am now at a very pivotal moment in in the series as well it's been it's been like wow i but it's just when i started this adventure with one piece three months ago i figured i would slow down before 600 and i'm like nope here i am and now i know i only have 500 chapters ahead of me currently at this very moment yes uh i'm looking forward to once i catch up to where i left off i'm looking forward to plowing ahead because uh i bought a great number of the volumes before they were just available for a small subscription fee on shonen jump so i have up to like volume 90 i think on comiXology i love flipping through that shonen jump app it's a lot of fun uh and then other uh

stuff i did uh while bob was out of town i did take advantage to do a couple tiny vacations now here's the thing i went on vacation and henry was like what if i took three vacations i'll show you i mean look they they were all around california but uh and i have i have a bunch of southwest credits to burn off so yeah i went to palm springs it was beautiful and lovely it was uh it was pride weekend in in Palm Springs. They do it at the start of November because it is insanely hot there in the summer when everybody else does Pride. So it was also fun to finally go to a Pride parade

where it felt like everyone surrounding me was a LGBTQ person instead of all these straight allies. Yuck. Hey, that's why I don't go to them. Also because I hate parades. I think I sent you a picture of Chester Cheetah as part of the parade,

and he was beloved by the furries. Yeah, I didn't know he was out, but good for him. He's at the very least an ally. And I went to Sacramento for my mom's birthday. That was very nice. And then went to Los Angeles for a few days. One, mainly because I wanted to see Rebecca Sugar's gallery exhibit at Gallery Nucleus,

which was really cool. And she has a new album out, everybody. You should check it out, Spiral Bound. It's an EP. It's the first time she Written music that's not for an animated Series it's just for her own music And it's it's really good and then And also got to See some old podcast pals in person Including Ian Jones Cordy And Toby Jones I hung out with both of them And Nick Weiger and

Mike Mitchell Nick Weiger even showed me around the HeadGum Studios which was really Cool making connections Or tightening connections because we already know all these people. That was really good. Lastly, I want to officially announce here that I am on a wrestling break.

I will be seeing wrestling in Japan because I already bought tickets and I'm not going to waste it. We're going to have to hire an editor, Henry, to go back and edit out every mention of CM Punk over the years. My formerly every mention of CM Punk yeah it's uh over the years uh my favorite formerly favorite guy CM Punk has gone back to WWE like a dog to vomit uh it really upsets me I do not like that and so I had already started to distance myself from pro wrestling and in fact it also was a real jerk ass move of CM Punk to get fired on the day of our Penny Arcade Expo show

and I had to work very hard to not be distracted on that on our on our live show oh that was true yeah the the day of our mortal combat the journey begins live show anyway so yes uh the the henry's wrestling conversations on these podcasts will be greatly reduced in in the future uh going forward and there will still be no wrestling channel on the Discord. Nope, no. Now it would only make me feel bad were I to see it these days. So that's what's happening in our world.

Actually, Henry, I wanted to bring this up because I saw an ad for it and I was curious. Are you still Marvel snapping? Oh, yes, I am. I'm snapping it up. I forgot to, I never even put it on there anymore because I'm like, yeah, I'm still playing it. I'm just curious. when I see new content,

I wonder like, was Henry still doing this? Because I saw like the new Spider-Gwen content just launched or something, or it's coming soon. Yes, yeah, you know, it's less than I used to, or it's less than I was doing even a couple months ago, but I still snap it up, I'd say about an hour a week or so. It's a fun, it's a fun just like, oh, i got three

minutes to kill i'll do it like it's it's still a really great game though i have fallen behind on buying the new cards which once you start skipping cards and you're out of the meta game it's like uh it's a it's the slippery slope into not playing anymore i think they should be more predatory get you back on board you know they i actually did buy a 20 she-hulk card because i was like man i really love that art on she-hulk that's good one card for 20 it came with other things but it was like a bundle for 20 bucks but the she-hulk card was the primary thing i see i see uh discuss that in the comments uh moving on to talking simpsons comments.

First up, Marge gets a job and Jason Liu says, is this like a correction, Henry, to something we said? Well, one of our guests was talking about a scene from Yellowstone where he said it was Japanese tourists, but this is a correction about that scene. Okay, sure. So Jason Liu says, I have seen that clip from yellowstone and the tourists are actually from china the tourists are taking pictures of a bear and kevin costner

confronts them explaining to them that all the land from the foothills to the fence was owned by him and that they were trespassing one of the chinese tourists comments that it's wrong for one man to own this much land to prove his point america style costner shoots his shotgun in the air and growls at them this is is America. We don't share land. As they run back to their tour bus, I guess it was supposed to be some kind of multilayer commentary about how Chinese communism is incomprehensible to a real American. Yeah. Now that I think about it, this is Bob speaking. Now that I think about it, the anti-China sentiment does make a lot more sense than anti-Japan. Because, you know, even our good friends the Democrats put a lot of anti-China sentiment in their campaign ads.

It's it's very popular these days because, hey, their empire growing ours. Not not so great. Shrinking. I have a feeling we're going to see it ramped up a bit more in the in the coming year was. Boy, am I looking forward to that 2024 election, aren't you, Bob? It's going to be the bleakest election of our lives but because of that the best jokes we have to find we have to just treasure the best jokes because they're all going to be coming out in the next year or so well i mean biden has been looking great this last month with all of the wonderful things no but i was i was glad to hear that scene of with costa with because there's a similar scene in some of the Yellowstone Universe content I have seen.

Where basically in a 100 years ago flashback, Irish immigrants are mad that he has all this land. And the land barren hero of the show isn't sharing it. He's like, well, maybe I'll just kill you. Or you can try to kill me and take it. But I ain't sharing. It's an anti-social democracy for sure very popular show yep also on March gets a job Joe Hodgson says I love the home improvement segment from this episode this is not a Simpsons predicted it since how to VHSs were very common back then but it's still a relatable bit as anytime I have to

fix something around the house I just head to. And there's no pace that ever works. I'll watch some guy do some plumbing or disassemble a carburetor, and I think I have it, only to find out after a few minutes I'm trying to backtrack on my phone with now grubby hands as I get frustrated with myself. At least now I don't have to drag a TV or VCR

into the bathroom to follow along. So hey, that's easier, yeah. Yeah, hey, it's semi-relatable. I've used YouTube tutorials for certain things, mostly like computer and audio tech. And what's really good is that you can, if you turn captions on, you can kind of fast forward to the part of the video

that's relevant to you because you can, without having to watch what's happening, you can read the captions to know like what part of the process they're in. So I find that cuts out a lot of time in the how-to video process you should do a video how-to on how to do that i'll waste a lot of times with a preamble that nobody cares about uh this this also reminded me i should have said another thing i did this month i i guess start on two of our pals's podcasts i did gayest episode ever about the sarah silverman program which was a lot of fun i've

been wanting to talk about that uh perhaps problematic show uh or at the very least you know stars of january sixer um uh hey co-stars co-stars yes you're making it sound like sarah silverman was there uh on january 6th yes yeah no and and the guy plays a cop who sucks but uh and but then the other one i did uh was minion death cult and we covered the new south park uh extended universe or multiverse movie they did as well welcome to the panda verse you can hear me talk all about it on there but one of their points was nobody knows how to do shit anymore and nobody knows how to fix things uh which uh yeah you know look hey listen to the podcast if you like to hear all my thoughts on it henry simply couldn't stop podcasting while i was gone

moving on to strong arms of the ma and eric schumann says as far better known as twilight zone twists go to serve man is probably right up there along with eye of the beholder though it's a cookbook is a lot more efficient to parody than the gradual unrolling of bandages from someone's face simpsons did both uh by the way the sound quality with your new double remote setups is very good uh thank you eric for pointing that out i'm very proud of how this has gone um despite the very different circumstances in which we now record i think most people are happy and if you're not we're making little improvements as time goes on i'm getting a new mixer very very soon did they do a twilight

zone no wait it's new year's marathon they do they don't do a thanksgiving marathon of twilight zone yeah it is it was new year's but also what twilight zone thing was in the strong arms of the maw oh it was the uh the the time enough at last uh thing with the oh yes and the issue was like the twilight zone magazine yeah just to make sure you really get it yes uh so yeah that was thank you eric for uh the compliment i really appreciate that adam east also said in that episode's comments it's an odd thing to have maggie shit herself and it stinks jokes in an episode about bodybuilding and yet completely miss out on how much marge's flatulence must have stank with all the protein she would have been loading

up on the writers clearly didn't do their research hey you know what that is true marge farting all around the house that's see that's funnier than like she's growing a lot of body hair because she's a man now baby instead it's like no it'd be funnier just mar she's growing a lot of body hair because she's a man now, baby. Instead, it's like, no, it'd be funnier just Marge is farting constantly for observable reasons. Yes. And I would permit that fart joke because it's observational, right? Yeah. Yeah.

The only other great Marge fart joke was when she said, that shut me up. Yes. It was crossing the Rubicon to make Marge fart in an episode. Moving on to new kid on the block, and Brian Bonnell says, Believe it or not, there is some news regarding Northern Exposure. Since June, the show has been available, in the USA at least, on Amazon and iTunes with most of the original licensed music intact. It's not perfect, but the diehard fans seem to be happy enough with it.

If you need the pure Northern Exposure experience, it looks like the only legal option right now is to buy the pricey european box set and something that can play region 2 dvds uh thank you brian i am looking into this very shortly there's going to be a lot of northern exposure being played in my canadian home very soon you're going to be watching out for mice moose mice moose everywhere my spoon hey uh our garbage cans are uh inside so uh we've got a garbage room i like to see a moose breach the garage door to get into the i mean it's animal proof i really want to see the industrious moose that can do this also a new kid on the block vance jericho says always like this one and it has a lot to do with how low-key it is compared to the rest

of the season kind of throwback to the two or a two or three episode i'd say it mostly is that and that it is like bart doesn't go anywhere uh it's not like uh in in the zaniest his story gets is it becomes like a parody of halloween but it is like a down-to-earth love story. But then a crazy sea captain and Homer being a bottomless food monster is the B story. Yeah. Yeah, it's like the Conan touch that elevates what would have been a stock sitcom plot. I forget the history, but I think that plot had been sitting around for a while at the Simpsons. Bart gets a crush on an older girl. So that's a sign to Conan.

And then he's like, what if Homer was a barber? What if Homer met Don Rickles? girl uh so that's a sign to conan and then he's like what if homer was a barber what if homer met don rickles what if homer uh went to an all-you-can-eat restaurant and they closed down the restaurant because he ate all the food in the restaurant uh we're about to record homer's triple bypass and i was thinking of the same thing of like this was supposed to feel like a very special episode where the father has a heart attack but then it has our old pal, Mr. McCraig. Yes, I forgot that joke is in that episode. We don't see Dr. Nick getting beaten to death, though, unfortunately. And up next, we have Pray Anything.

And Kyle J. says, Larry H. Lawyer is exactly like Larry H. Parker, even down to the we'll fight for you. Hablamos Español and Henry chimed in on the comments to say this is also the obvious inspiration for Mr. Show's Don Pratt and I can play this Larry Parker ad I was in a car accident and Larry Parker got me $33,000

I was in a car accident and I called three other attorneys and they expected me to do all the work when I called Larry Parker attorneys and they expected me to do all the work. When I called Larry Parker, he took care of everything. If you've been injured in an auto accident, don't wait. Call me now. Toll free 1-800-333-0000. I'm Larry H. Parker. I'm nearby and ready to fight for you. You won't have to worry about medical bills, suffering or loss of wages. There you go. Yes, that's the character for Mr. Show that's like, I am not a lawyer.

Yes, yeah, the same. When I watched that commercial that we were linked to the very first time, and it's him wagging his finger, like, I will fight for you behind a thing, it just reminded me of like, I am not a lawyer. Call me right now. I am available right now. And it's about a guy who will hang out with you, I guess, is the service. Who will go wherever his mother will drive him to.

And my favorite was that he explained the plot of a Star Trek film to somebody. But I appreciate that Larry H. Lawyer, I mean, the name even is like, yeah, it's Larry H. Parker. A very specific, I believe, L.A. area attorney. Also on Pray Anything, Colin says, I love the Ken Burns baseball docuseries, and I have to say, Al Jean's gripe with it is lame. With something that has as much history as baseball, you're going to have to make choices about what to cover,

even if the doc is 20 hours. I think he does a pretty good job of covering the most important stuff. Sorry he didn't cover one World Series the exact way you wanted geez al yeah algae is very touchy about the detroit tigers so we understand but also he needs to be reasonable maybe it gave him he came to like ken burns more because he's like oh ken burns will set do any humiliating thing we ask him to do he will do this show and i don't think anyone solved the mystery of what happened with the voice track on that episode why it was uh hank azaria in the disney plus version but apparently not in broadcast we have not discovered the solution to that mystery yet we did have

someone in the comments mentioned that they remember they remember it that it was hank's voice in the original broadcast version they taped but they they couldn't back it up with proof that's how they said it felt to them so I wonder yes did he re-record it for the other scenes I could not uh we will keep digging into this we will uh you'll be able to sleep at night soon enough don't worry uh moving on for uh what a cartoon movie we did Project Echo in October and up first we have Feiong fong who says as a kid i always love saturday mornings the sci-fi channel would run project echo every other month as part of their saturday morning anime block this is where i fell in love with the strong female protagonists like iria ryoko from tenshi moyo sailor jupiter and makoto kusanagi i assume that's from ghost in

the shell yes yeah yeah yeah uh yeah like Yeah, like I said on that podcast, I totally missed the Saturday sci-fi anime because it was just not the kind of thing I wanted to see, but it seems like it had a really big impact on people. Not as much as like Toonami, but still it was one of the few places you could actually see anime on TV at the time. Relatively uncut.

And also like how many people even had sci-fi channel back then though you had sci-fi channel because you were watching mystery science theater yeah i i got it just before that show moved to uh sci-fi channel but uh but yeah we had a number of sci-fi channel memories from this so that's how that's how most of our just to put the age range of our our fandom in there or our listenership they are sci-fi channel anime viewers another comment on the project echo was from robert denby who says md geist is trashy fun so long as you watch the original when md guys too which sucks was made the director of the original went back and made changes to the original to make it less cheesy

and weird that original version is just on youtube there's never been an hd scan as far as i know so i didn't know this about md geist i i only knew it as a thing a box on the shelf i never gave md guys to shot yeah i just know md guys the the brand as uh things older anime fans would make fun of like as a punchline it sounds like they really blew it as far as a brand goes they could have they could have tried a lot harder. So up next we have what a cartoon comments for our Swatcats episode. We covered the episode A Bright and Shiny Future. And Sean Ryan says, Always my cue to shut the TV off. Most often it'd be something like Bob Seger's old time rock and roll with random clips of Astro running around or a shit of Yogi and his buddies laughing to themselves. Disney was almost as bad with their DTV, but at least those music videos showed clips of

characters playing musical instruments or actions kind of matching what's said in the lyrics. I did not, so this is Bob speaking, I did not have like the sing-along songs videos or whatever i'm more familiar with the disney version of editing existing footage to match 80 songs and it sounds like the hannah robera people either they weren't paying their clip people enough or there just weren't enough compelling clips to match bob seger's great lyrics uh when he said old time rock and roll, instantly that Funtastic video appeared in my brain because I was like, no, I watched this video a number of times along with DTV.

The two that stick out to me from Funtastic World, now that Sean mentioned old time rock and roll, I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that one. And then another one I remember was the police I'll be watching you one of which I remember they have clips from the Yogi movie of the Venice, like the Venice gondolier scene, which was very strange in the movie. Yeah, I forgot there was a Yogi Bear movie, but there was. Yeah, yeah. It's one of these days we'll do.

I think it was the first Hannah barbara movie i think they did that one before they did the uh a man named a man called flintstone the uh the flintstones movie yeah yeah when i never think of those as uh movies that were in theaters but they actually were same with the charlie brown movies i was like oh yeah those were actually in theaters and not just on tbs when i was a kid same with charlotte's web i do not think of that as a theatrical film because it just was like yeah it just played over and over and over again on turner television networks and when i was a kid well i'm learning this for the first time and speaking of ted turner uh michael branson says i used to love this show in street sharks there was a real anthropomorphic

thing going on in the 90s my father actually works at ted turner's steak place in charlotte north carolina i'm always bugging him to ask ted about wcw now i have one more thing to bug him about and uh you know if you're if your dad has face time with ted turner take advantage of it very soon i would say he's i mean he's a very rich man but you know he's getting up there in years ask ask many questions about jane fond i'm sure he'd love to field them oh yeah i wonder if he even remembers he had swat a show called swat cats on a channel he owned he really i wonder if he might remember captain planet i don't think he's gonna you're not gonna dredge up any swat cats memories for him no no uh so moving on we have uh the talking future i'm on episode bend her and lambda says so two observations

first as a Futurama fan non-Simpsons watcher second as a trans person so point one I'm watch Futurama more because it aired on Adult Swim and Comedy Central two channels that I was more used to watching than Fox there's probably other stuff more specific to my age I'm 26 born in 97 and my specific brain chemistry but it wasn't anything against the simpsons which i tried to watch when i had the chance point two critiquing trans women's and to an extent drag performers performance of femininity and accusations of over sexualizing or over exaggerating is a crucial component of trans misogyny as defined by julia serrano that being said this episode doesn't seem familiar enough with transness for that to be the

place it's coming from um yes thank you very much to lambda and the other trans listeners who wrote in the thing i definitely didn't want to see uh is a bunch of comments saying you should have gotten a trans person you guys are totally wrong about this and i'm glad that didn't happen i'm glad we covered it well in a way that made you folks happy and uh yeah going back to um what gayest episode ever says when they cover trans, often there's not the language or the awareness of what a trans person even is. So an episode isn't even making commentary about that because the concept is just unknown to the writers of that era. And the same is true for Bender. This is not an episode about like trans people.

It's an episode about uh bender cross-dressing basically and then you're having a wacky stuff involved what's that yeah bender has a wacky scheme yeah it's a wacky scheme and there's some ickiness involved with like the surgery jokes or whatever but at the same time they don't know about trans people so this is not a pointed attack on them yeah i mean with that uh uh what lambda said about the performance of femininity stuff again this was something i was not aware of either for a very long time until i started listening and uh to more trans people and and seeing that like yes that the way leela and amy get mad at how coylette uh dresses or or acts on dates is now similar to critiques people have had about how

the femininity uh is performed is uh policed on on trans people uh also say a clark uh says uh on that same episode when i saw this pop up in my patreon feed i shuddered i've thought about this episode from time to time but it's been so long since i've seen it that i wasn't sure how bad it might be all things considered it's not as bad as i remembered as a trans woman i am certainly familiar with all the cultural tropes that get made into jokes in this episode but i find it difficult to be offended by any of it it doesn't feel actively hateful just uninformed if this episode were made right now in the current political context i think it would be fair to judge it much more harshly. But it wasn't, and context really is everything here.

I doubt anyone in the writer's room had any close trans friends. Ultimately, this episode is just plain funny. Even as a trans person, I actually felt some of the jokes were fair game. Playing with your new boobs until the novelty wears off. Wild mood swings when you start HRT. And being a slut in your new gender made me laugh wears off wild mood swings when you start hrt and being a slut in your new gender made me laugh because i could definitely relate good job henry and bob for covering this episode with the usual amount of grace and well-researched professionalism

so thank you thank you very much uh it was very well received the episode and like i said on the episode i was very worried because the last thing i wanted to do is bum people out with our fun podcast that you pay for. So I'm glad we didn't do that. And I'm also glad to pat myself on the back. Sometimes if the thing is just a very ugly scene or a very ugly clip, I just want to say, let's just not listen to it. What good does that do any of us? We know what happens in this clip and we know you can look it up if you want to. But ultimately, I didn't want to bum anyone out it sounds like uh we didn't do that so that good

for us yeah it's a real win for us but but thank you for all the compliments yes we really appreciate it um so up next we have uh king of the hill talking to the hill rather we covered the episode deconstructing henry and And Celestia says, The quick Britney convo kind of reinforced the misogynistic stereotypes the press would peddle when in reality Justin cheated on her multiple times and pressured her into getting a dangerous at-home abortion. This is Bob speaking. Is this person saying we reinforce these stereotypes?

No, no, no. We mentioned that the Britney Spears biography had just come out recently and how I think I did maybe misquote what one of the new revelations or I read a headline wrong. But yes, it was there. There were new revelations about Britney's love life from her new memoir. And one of them was that like that Justin Timberlake cheated on her many times when the when the press at the time was like is britney stepping out on justin where the news stories okay because i did see this con uh this comment and i was wondering like what what did we say i thought we were pro britney we do a lot we we do a lot of podcasts it's hard to remember but yeah i believe uh i think hit me baby one more time was at the top of the charts when that episode aired oh yes yes there was a britney britney was in the news at least yes yeah uh and then our last comment for the episode is from f shackleford

very fitting they say this story and the super news and phones in general are good examples of the importance of representation in media for young audiences i was nine at the time this episode first aired and it wasn't just the king of the Hill was a show where I consistently saw someone of my general ethnicity in popular media but the characters experiences were a pretty solid reflection of my own. I think ultimately it was extremely valuable for my development that this episode was able to put the model minority stereotype into words explaining why I and my family occupied a specific niche of American society. Because of this, even though this story about the Asian American experience was written and acted by mostly non-Asian Americans, I have to hand it to them for delivering it with good

intentions even in 1999. P.S. On the flip side, insufficient representation leads to things like me misinterpreting Frank Grimes as an Asian character due to his backstory and character design. Yes, I am that guy. Face palm emoji. Thank you for the feedback, F. Shuckleford. I'm glad you liked the episode. And since we recorded it, Greg Daniels has actually answered some questions about Khan. There was one news story. I think it happened while I was in Japan. It was after we recorded the episode, but he basically said on the record we have not decided what to do about kanya and he explained that yes it was a very 1997 decision of us but here were the logistics of it we would have had to hire another person fox didn't want us to hire another person and toby huss is very funny so that's that

explains why we did it of course we wouldn't do today. So he explained the answer we knew was in his head the entire time. But still to this day, we don't know if Khan will be in this first round of episodes or they have not reached the point in the production where they have made a decision about the character. Yeah, I guess they would have just resumed now because the SAG strike has ended. We didn't mention that at the start either. SAG strike is over since the last time we recorded this. So all the major strikes are done. Though good, best of luck in January for IATSE,

which is going to be a lot of the animation folks who are not in SAG and WGA. Hopefully they get a little something because it sounds horrible to be a person working in American animation. It really does. But about King of the Hill hill i think on the record daniel said that they've done a few table reads before the strike and then of course uh johnny harwick passed away there's a lot of things that need to happen

to get this show back in production but uh they're they're back to work they're working on it i'm curious to see like who dale will be if the Hardwick recordings will be used and if con will be included or recast. You know, I'm just curious about all of these things. A lot of questions to answer. I I'm curious myself as well, but yeah,

it's a, but I, I appreciate that we hear, you know, someone, an Asian American comment on that episode's portrayal of it. When again, you know,

people, I, I thought it was, I thought it was good too, was good too but also yes you do you do you know as an adult now take into consideration like well this isn't written it is a viewpoint that is expressed well but it's not that the voices behind it are mostly white people yeah i guess the uh the the silver lining of that is it wouldn't have been made otherwise yes yeah back yeah, back then, no way. Yes. So yeah, that's the end of the comments and the end of this episode. And one thing that I think we normally do, Henry, is give a year in review at least of, you know, where we are in a preview of things to come.

And I can say that everything's great. Our moves went great. I'm still like in the last 10 10 of moving in into my new place but in terms of the network um this is when we normally announce like what's happening in 2024 the answer is uh everything that happened in 2023 so the schedule will be the same we're going to make up those two batman episodes at some point uh next year that we missed this year because of our various uh life uh you know, complications. But yeah, no changes to the schedule, no changes to content.

It's going to be the same thing for 2024 and we can't wait to keep going. Yeah, yeah. No, no. As our lifestyles have solidified more in our new homes and our remote stuff, I also I still have a good chunk of Ikea things I got to build. But yeah, as I I was reflecting on how nice things were at American Thanksgiving this last week, too, and how solid everything feels right now. And yeah, there's no big changes coming your way in the new year,

but we've just got more cool stuff planned. We've got some really cool guests coming up in the the near future too not just uh in december but we've got some january recordings we're doing uh now as well that i think folks can look forward to and yeah no i'm i'm feeling really great about where the talking simpsons network is at i and that we folks can visit talking simpsons.com as well now and see all the cool stuff we have on there like yeah i'm just i'm feeling really good about uh about where we're at now for this is the first year interview we've done in i think four years that we haven't thought about like well next year i guess we're probably going to be moving or something yeah with the these important steps have finally happened but yeah i'm very proud of where

we are now and how far we've come and like i said our fifth uh in a row in big quotes sketch fest show other shows like packs uh and you know all the touring we've been doing and just yeah in general everything is going great and i'm looking forward to the future and just we started in 2015 so uh after like june 15th or something we'll be in our 10th year of doing the show yeah that's amazing yes and and our eighth year of having the patreon yeah that's wild it's been going that long i i'm i'm so excited and thanks to all the new signups as as always on patreon and the folks who've stuck around and you know tell your friends about the uh muppet uh christmas carol i we're both very proud of that one and uh and also you know what i you know what? I, I feel like I haven't,

uh, we haven't had this call to action forever, you know, new, uh, new reviews on lots of places where podcast reviews can be. That always helps. If you haven't,

if you haven't done that, give it a shot on like iTunes or well, Apple podcasts. What am I saying? Or Spotify there. Those are current things, things that still exist. I think Apple podcasts is still the default place

where people leave reviews so that's a good place especially because uh fairly seldom do fans leave reviews people that like your thing it's always your enemies who are leaving reviews uh in bad faith yes i found absolutely yeah so go to those reviews for us and and uh and and say nice things but yes i'm very in i agree Bob. I'm really looking forward to 2024 of it being a normal year, knock on wood. I'm looking forward to us being nice and settled in in our new lives. Yes, and we will see you again in 2024

for the next episode of Talk to the Audience. Until then, take care. Wow. Infotainment.