Talking Simpsons - Talk To The Audience?!? - November 2024

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

Whew, that was certainly an eventful November to say the least, and we're not just talking about all the podcasts we released. After we look back on the Simpsons news of the last few weeks like Halloween eps and NFL crossovers, we look back on the movies/TV/games we used as escapism in these dark times before heading out on a vacation for the rest of this Thanksgiving month. Then we reply to some of our favorite comments as usual, so listen in and commiserate in our monthly community pod! Support this podcast and get over 200 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

I hardly endorse this event or product. Ahoi hoi everybody and welcome to Talk to the Audience where this is always death. I'm one of your hosts, Bob Mackie, a man who needs cartoon characters to make football interesting and who is here with me today as always. Henry Gilbert and I'm siding with Homer Simpson slash the Dallas Cowboys. And yes this is Talk to the Audience, our community podcast. This podcast launches at the end of the month on Patreon, the beginning of the month on the free feed and in this podcast we talk about what's happening in the Simpsons world and in

our world and then we respond to your questions and comments from the last round of episodes and we are recording this one about two weeks earlier than we normally do. This is gonna be a bit of a smaller talk to the audience because I'm traveling which means you're getting screwed because I gotta go to Japan for two and a half weeks. Well, December's episode will be larger to compensate for that, but we have a few things to talk about. Oh, yes, yeah, though happy American Thanksgiving to all of those who celebrated. I refuse to recognize the Canadian Thanksgiving back in October, but now You really missed that bus Henry. It's Disparaged Canadian Thanksgiving. I don't like it either

Certainly it feels like a whole month of things has happened By November 15th when we're recording this. Hey, we're gonna get to that. Also Henry is traveling too I'm traveling Henry's traveling and then we're taking a bit of a Christmas break. But the schedule will remain intact because this is my fifth recording of the week and there will be a sixth one to follow immediately after this podcast is recorded. We have been busy bees to get ready for all of this time off and same in December too. We're taking a little time off too. But don't worry, there are no interruptions in your regular content. time off too, so but don't worry there were no interruptions in your regular

content. And yes there is a little bit of Simpsons news because season 36 is rolling out and of course Treehouse of Horror 35 aired after Halloween as it should and this one I didn't really like it. I thought it was kind of a bummer and kind of weird especially the first, which was a Pacific Rim parody that in my estimation is essentially attack of the 50-foot eyesores but with social media. Yeah, replace uh beloved ad characters killing everybody with red versus blue social media anger and hate and all that. I thought it was also if you you're gonna be a little late, and by a little like at least 15 years late to Pacific Rim, then functionally I wouldn't have it be so similar

to a classic era Simpsons treehouse of horror. Yeah, apparently that one was called the Information Rage. I do like how it ends in that there's no hope for society, which actually very prescient for when this episode aired. Yeah, no, that part was good. The other bit I chuckled at, and I thought they animated the kaiju fights all right too, but the other part I chuckled at was when Lisa was watching the blue monster.

Like, she thought the blue monster was like gonna destroy a weapons factory, but instead he like put a rainbow pin on it or something like that. I felt that way at times like Lisa. I feel like that. There were an okay few jokes in there. I like the second segment the best, which was a Victorian horror story starring Montgomery Burns.

It was called The Fall of the House of Monty. And there was something about this episode where Julie Kavener and Harry Shearer, their voices sounded about 80% normal, much better than they normally sound. I don't know what's going on there. I don't know if things were removed from their throats. I don't know if Disney is using robots to massage their pipes, but whatever's happening, I'm hearing their voices sound better in the next episode as well.

So I don't know what's going on here, but I like it. Yeah, maybe, maybe they've, I mean, the team was definitely seeing people complaining about how their voices sounded and yeah Burns sounded way better in that Burns focused episode or segment than then he had sounded in a while specifically Mr. Burns was sounding way better and yeah March March 2 I I hope it's just they they were given some sort of you of new supplement to help them instead of AI trash to help it. Well, in this case, I feel like that's a valid use of it as long as it's not creating an

entirely new performance if it's augmenting a performance because now the term AI is just poisoned. When AI has always had useful functions, AI is how you fight enemies in video games. They're all powered by AI. Use AI when you're like resizing a photo in Photoshop. AI can be good. Sure, that's true though. I mean, just like marriage equality,

it's a slippery slope and I don't approve of it. That's true. Hey, if AI can make Julie Kavner sound, let's say 63 years old, I'm for it. That's true. Maybe I'm also just in an extra grumpy AI mood today from seeing the new today AI Coca-Cola commercial. I don't know if you've seen this hard.

I have seen it. Actually, one of my friends has worked at a video game company for 20 years, and he is an AI programmer, meaning he programs artificial intelligence for use in video games, because all video games operate on artificial intelligence. But now he is sick because all video games operate on artificial intelligence, but now he is sick of that word being poison. When he says, I design AI, people think,

oh, you steal from artists? You create art from nothing? Actually, from stolen other people's artwork. Yeah, it's sad. I do, we are not, are outside of that industry, so yeah, we know that AI actually is a real thing that has been used for a long time, but not this means theft and not paying people for things. So we can increase profit margins for rich people. But anyway, yes, Victorian ghost story. I think it

was the strongest of the three too. I agree with you. Yeah. And the venom one, which was called denim, I just thought it was odd because the the jeans so okay in this parody Homer's jeans become venom and that's the joke and because venom rhymes with denim, etc, etc The the jeans element of the character was stop-motion in a way that didn't look good It looked odd and kind of bad and I don't know why they did this and sometimes it didn't look like it was a stop-motion Element at times it looked like it was basically painting the texture map of the denim onto the 2D animation. Yeah, I think I expected a little better from Shadow Machine. There were some points where I thought they showed off alright where Homer like runs and changes position in a way that like, oh you have to see the 360 of

it. Like I thought there were a couple shots, I thought they did sync up pretty well, but no other times it felt like, why are you bothering for this? Because it's not impressive in the way that like, even the toy gory Toy Story episode they did a few years ago, they're like, oh, I look pretty good, that one. Yeah, that looked great.

It looked like basically let's do the Toy Story guys, but with Simpson's style in CG. It actually looked better than the ride does now. I did like in Denim that it gave a, they didn't give the part of the jeans to some famous person. Maybe they tried and couldn't get it, but I don't care because Kevin Michael Richardson rules

and he has worked on the show for so long. He deserves a kind of major showcase role in a tree house like that that normally goes to a famous person. Was it better than Venom Till Death Do Us Part? If that was, no sorry, the name of the movie is The Last Dance. Till Death Do Us Part is the name of the tagline,

which that feels like it should have been the name of the movie. We'll talk about that later though. We both saw Venom. Yes. Unfortunately. And if you have not gotten enough of Halloween fun in November,

if November has not been terrifying enough for you, there will be another Simpsons Halloween special on the 24th, a little bit after we record this actually. So we're going to talk about it next month, but it's going to be the trilogy of stories based on Ray Bradbury short story. So look forward to that. It's called something or sorry, Simpson's wicked this way comes. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, what's a time to do it? Uh, four weeks after Halloween. That's a strange timing, but oh, oh, you know, also on the treehouse 35 though, I didn't want to say I liked the Mexican wrestling theme. They did intro with like demonic Mexican wrestling style done by George R.

Gutierrez. He's a funny guy on Twitter. He follows me too and he confirmed to me that animation of Homer beating up Mr. Burns and the the monster version of Burns and Smithers together and then it spits out an atomic bomb that blows up. He confirmed to me that was a Simpsons Arcade Konami reference. Okay, I had an inkling and he is younger, and by younger I mean 49, so he would understand that reference, enough to put it in.

And congratulations to friend of a friend of the show, Tony Rodriguez getting his first Halloween name, Boney Rodriguez. Nice, that's an honor. That goes on your tombstone after you die. And the other new episode to air before we started recording was Women in Shorts. It was a collection of shorts about the women of Springfield written by Christine Nangle. I just watched this actually right before the recording and it is interesting but I'll

say super uneven. And it is basically, this is not me, anything, criticism of the show, but it's essentially the Tress McNeil show the Tress McNeil show, because Tress McNeil is everybody. You realize she is almost every woman in Springfield who's not like Lou Ann Van Houten or Mrs. Lovejoy or whatever. Yeah, in the featured roles,

like if it wasn't for the recasting for racially appropriate things for some characters, she would have been more in this episode too. That is true, yeah. She would have been Bernice Hibbard and Kumiko and a lot of other folks. Yeah, though it does seem like the cookie-quand is not gonna be speaking anymore, I don't think.

They're not gonna hire another voice actor. Have you seen this one, Henry? Did you like any of this? I thought it was good, it was a nice, another one of like, oh, let's do 22 short films in Springfield, except this one is the women of Springfield written by a woman. I do wish what, you know, what if they had hired you like, obviously this is a budget thing, just like the voice

acting, but what if they had hired like six women to write multiple sketches for this? But that's Christine Angle being the one to do it. She's one of their main writers and a good one. And you know, tree houses aren't shared with writers anymore either. Also a budget thing. So I get that. I think my favorite of them, the role play one was fun. And I also liked the intervention about buying wine based merchandise. I liked that too. Yeah. That's kind of where it peaked for me, even though it was the first sketch. I thought, well, here's an idea I haven't seen before. Lisa's dream one just made me want to just play the take that Lisa's beliefs. At least she complained about it, but I was like, yeah, why does even at least his dreams, nothing

ever fucking works. It's just about how like, oh, everybody hates each other. There's no progress you can make in American society. The some of the stuff didn't work. One I thought was kind of lame was the sketch where Homer had to buy tampons for Marge and it was all a song to shame him about having to do things for his wife because women do so much for him. And I don't know, maybe I just have a positive attitude about menstruation like Dave Foley.

But is this really still a problem, men being too ashamed to buy tampons? I sadly think it is for some straight men. It's a real thing though You know that sketch to me smacked of Al Jean's idea I don't want to blame every musty old thing on Al Jean But it was literally a parody of the officer Krupke song from West Side Story Okay. Yeah, I was wondering what it was a parody of because then they start doing, they use the word can a lot. Oh yeah.

But then they start dancing the can can. Or at the very least the last bit of it where they go like, it's in I'll buh buh, dun dun. That's how Officer Krubkey's song ends too. Hey Officer Krubkey, Krub you. Yeah, I think you're right about that. But he needs to back away from West Side Story. The Spielberg movie didn't even make it that much more relevant.

No, sadly, it's, we all still love it, but it's not particularly relevant. I also felt a little sad about its timing because perhaps they wanted to have this episode air after a woman was elected president, maybe? I don't know. Oh right, that happened. Oh, this just in from the Simpsons Predictative Department. Donald Trump elected president for the second time. He's a regular Grover Cleveland. Yes, you're all aware of it, as are we.

And at this point, I still think podcasts we recorded before the election need to come out. There's a few more. So we make that very clear that we don't know yet. So please forgive us. But yes, if you make that very clear that we don't know yet. So please forgive us. But yes, if you know us, you know we don't like this. And I feel like we're gonna try as best we can to not let Bummer talk about him and dominate the podcast.

Of course, we live in reality. And we sometimes are reminded of things in reality when we watch a television show. And of course, that'll come up. And we're not gonna shut down a guest if he says, oh, this reminds me of when Trump did this. But I feel like we have the privilege of just kind of being tired now. There. It's very hard to get angry this angry anymore. So we've been through this for four years and I feel like we're going to have a more

of a muted response, at least on the podcast, because again, you're here to have fun. You're here to hear about cartoons. So yeah, we're gonna try to keep it light, I think. Yes, yeah, I agree with those sentimenties. I did like your tweet, Bob, using the Grover Cleveland spanks me onto non-consecutive occasions bit of what Abe said. That was the night of the election, which was not fun for anybody,

anybody listening to this podcast, that is. But we're in a very privileged position where this will not affect us as much as other people. So in a way, I understand it's privileged to not talk about it, but this is an escapist podcast, of course, so we don't want that to dominate the discussion. I imagine that when it first happened, if you listen to any podcast from early 2017, everyone is losing their goddamn minds. And then in early 2020, everyone is losing their goddamn minds. And then in early 2020 everyone is losing their goddamn minds. So I think we've learned how to kind of like navigate this kind of stress in these bad situations without letting it dominate the discussion of mostly unrelated

topics. Yeah, no, I think it feels painfully familiar. Like, and yeah, it sucks. We do not like the Donald Trump as president, obviously. If you need us to specifically say that to you, just so it's clear. I, Bob Mackie, am hereby against it. Yeah, it's bad. I'm swearing on a Simpsons episode guide right now. It doesn't feel, in 2016 it felt like a gigantic shock of like, this shouldn't happen. How

does my, I couldn't figure it with reality. Sadly this it's like, well, it happened again, kind of feeling instead. And so, yeah, I think I, we will bring up, I also think we will bring up things when things feel appropriate or, or if it reminds us of something, we don't want to be too much of a bummer all the time with this stuff. Yeah. And I noticed that, uh, other podcasts are kind of following the same approach, which is why I want us to. I've heard some ones that were recorded after the election and

they're just kind of winking at the audience as to, well, we all know what happened and let's talk about something else because we're just so tired. It is like the end of Sideshow, no, sorry, the end of Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming, the here we go again. end of Sideshow, no sorry, the end of Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming, the here we go again. Right, oh god yes, god yeah. I guess in this case it is the the hauling ass to Lollapalooza done by a man in his 80s is done by Donald Trump. He's the man in his 80s. Yes, hey hey it fits, it really fits. Except he can't drive, so I guess he's just sitting in the passenger seat of something. Of a dump truck I guess, right? Sure, sure. He loves doing the horn honky motion.

We know that. Yeah. But yes, the Simpsons did predict it, I guess. Hey, if a woman takes over in response to a budget deficit left by Donald Trump at the end of this term, then the Simpsons will have correctly predicted one more thing. So keep an eye on that in 2028.

I think I was reading somewhere that the script for Bart to the Future has Lisa becoming president in 2028 or the current year is 2028. Oh, really? Okay. Yeah. All right. But it's not actually reflected in the show that aired. Then we'll see how much the predictions keep going

and they can still stick to whenever a woman is eventually elected president, who knows when, they have to wear a purple pantsuit and pearls to match Lisa. I hope they at least do that. They need to. So yes, that happened. As many Marvel movies have said, that happened. So that happened.

In other news that's not related to politics look forward to Simpsons Fun Day Football It's coming to ESPN on Monday December 9th. Actually it's on Disney Plus as well, right? Yeah, yeah It's part of Disney Plus or the very least if you have the ESPN Plus with Disney Plus package Which because I have that plus Hulu it comes with the Hulu plus Disney package Yes, you will get to watch that on Disney Plus as well. A streamed Simpsons meets the NFL game. Yeah, I guess it's some kind of AR thing

that inserts animation of Bart and Homer into a Bengals and Cowboys game. And I've seen Nickelodeon do this a lot to great effect. And this may seem kind of dopey, but if they had done this when I was a kid, I would have started watching football I didn't care about sports, but I liked sports video games that were a little wacky I liked NBA Jam and Mutant League football and things like that, but I would never watch the actual sport

I feel like this is meeting little nerdy kids halfway funny that the Simpsons goes from All of those jokes about gambling on football without using any of the actual logos of the teams to now doing branded content with the NFL. Yeah, I'm glad they're shilling for the NFL and not some other Disney property. Well, I mean, the NFL is like the biggest thing. Like, as all the other ratings go down for everything, NFL keeps growing.

Like, it's the one thing on TV that has more viewers than they did five years ago, I think, or at the very least the same. And I guess if you want to see what this looked like or what it'll probably look like back in last October, Disney already did a thing like this. They mentioned it in their press release of a Toy Story type one where it's like, Oh, they did a touchdown and then Woody and his pals dance around to celebrate it. They should be dead. I've seen Toy Story 4. But yeah so Bart is repping the bangles, Homer is the cowboys. And in related news Henry was

retweeted by Al Jean because in response to the news about this Simpsons NFL integration, Henry, you tweeted that original video clip from 1995 about the NFL on Fox. Yes, I mentioned that it was the first, it's like, oh, if you think this is the first official Simpsons with the NFL thing, that's not true. Here's the two minute sketch they did of it. Though I had to clip out to fit on Twitter in the two minute version. I had to clip out the beginning where they're watching Married with Children and then Call of Fox

to win the tickets, but Al Jean retweeting it definitely told me, okay, not that I needed it confirmed, but this was written by the season six satellite staff of Jean and Reese. And we played that clip on something, maybe it's on our Patreon as part of one of our videos by the season six satellite staff of Gene and Reese. We played that clip on something, maybe it's on our Patreon as part of one of our videos that we did back in the day too, I can't remember.

I remember commenting on it with you. I also saw people note that like, oh, NFL on Fox from 1995 has almost the same hosts now that they had 29 years ago. Hey, that's job security. Howie Long, who's there? Yeah, you got, well, in the script, in this cartoon, it's Howie Long, Terry Bradshaw, Jim Brown,

but not that Jim Brown, and then a Cowboys guy. He's the one, he did a joke about he worked for Jerry Jones, which people are also saying Jerry Jones is still evil and in charge of the Cowboys all these years later. Well, this sounds like a lot of fun. Maybe it'll get kids into football. Who knows? I just want to see how janky it looks because it always looks so janky to me because Disney did this with Little Big Greens and Nickelodeon did this with Spongebob characters commenting on a game. Everybody's doing this now and it seems like it's working.

Definitely the NFL, highly paid PR consultants are telling them kids aren't growing up to like football, partially because they probably don't want to get concussions, so we gotta have them watch cartoon characters playing it to hopefully indoctrinate the next generation of football fans. So yeah, that is the small amount of Simpsons news happening in the first part of November.

Now let's talk about our news, most importantly, the upcoming schedule for December. So we're kicking off December with an episode of What a Cartoon, our podcast about many a cartoon. And this month we are returning to Beavis and Butthead. Yes, it is our fifth Beavis and Butthead podcast, two of those are movies. And this time around, we're covering the 1995 Christmas special, a Beavis and Butthead Christmas. It's something that I've always wanted to do. And we want to do something fun and light because of certain world circumstances. So this was the perfect subject that we recorded already. And it was a lot of fun. We're really looking forward to you hearing this Christmas special podcast. Yeah, it was a great pick. It was great to go back and remember the fun of Christmas morn, or Christmas time, especially of 95 or 96, depending on what time I or Bob watched it.

You'll learn all about our histories of seeing it too. And yeah, it's just a comforting 90s classic. I really had a great time watching it. And then for $5 on our patrons at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, you'll get our normal episodes of both Talking Futurama and Talking of the Hill. these are two all-timers because Talking Futurama we're covering the Emmy award-winning episode The Late Philip J. Fry. It's the one with the time machine that can only go forwards in time and again we recorded this one already because we're working way ahead and it is

great. I love that episode so so great yeah one of, it's, so far it remains what I had felt, my favorite of the Comedy Central era. And we are beginning season four of King of the Hill, finally, with the second part of a three-part string of episodes. This is called Peggy Hill, The Decline in Fall. We see what happens to Peggy after skydiving accident, and we watch her recuperate and go through a whole lot of emotional stuff. It's a great episode of television and a great episode of King of the Hill. Yeah, if you wanna hear childless men talk about newborns,

well, you get that and then some. Now that was also a lot of fun to talk about. We dare you to not get mad at us, new fathers and mothers. And so yeah, that's happening at the $5 level at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. There is a $10 level as well, and that is the What a Cartoon Movie level. And as always, we're covering a movie as we do every month.

And this month's movie is, again, it's a stressful time of the year. It's extra stressful because of early November. We're going to cover something most people like, and that's something is Frozen. It is thematically appropriate, although it's kind of a secular movie, but there's snow, there's a talking snowman, there's lots of fun songs. So, and I like this movie. So I'm really looking forward to covering it. It's a movie I already like. Yeah, for research earlier this year, I went to, I rode the Frozen ride in Orlando. That's why I went to Orlando. But yeah, I am looking forward to talking about as we, we haven't covered a lot of new Disney, and by new I mean over 10 years old now.

This is kind of a peak of the new era of modern Disney and once we cover this one, I think we can explore others from that same era that are also really great. Yes, now we're in the Disney slump. Let's see what Moana 2 does, which is probably coming out around the time this podcast comes out, or maybe it already has. That's true.

It is like their Thanksgiving release, isn't it? I keep having to tell myself, like, oh wait, wasn't that supposed to be a TV show and now it's a movie? Or not TV, obviously a streaming series, not being as a TV show. Well when I see the trailer in theaters, I think, well this isn't real. It seems like unrelated Moana footage. You're not telling me what this movie even is. Yeah. I wonder what the next era will be. Well, also, because every, there was like D23 in Brazil,

I believe it was, where they, and there was like a screen of what all their next things are. It's all sequels. Everything, every next movie from Disney's Animation Arms, and that includes Pixar, are all sequels. There's, there's one original Pixar are all sequels. There's one original Pixar thing coming I think. Yeah, I've seen the slate of movies coming up and I'm hoping for the best. New ideas would be great. I don't know where Toy Story could possibly go from here, but we'll see. There's nowhere. Nowhere is a good answer. And because of certain early November events, many people are leaving

the social media website that used to be known as Twitter, but one I still call Twitter for weird reasons. But if you want to find us at the other place, Blue Sky, the Talk Simpsons pod account is there, Henry is there, and I am there. So please follow us there as well. I've even started posting there after my year plus of never posting on Blue Sky. I finally given up and realized I kind of got to do it now and it's been fun. So you can find us there. Just check out, you know how to search for our names. It's very easy. Yeah. Blue sky has been a fun place to go as opposed to like, I feel like I wasn't going to be a Twitter abandoner. I didn't want to have like, no, these vibes can't get rid of

me, but it's like, man, the vibes are just so bad and it's just, also every reply is just like useless, like it's just junk too, like that's the other problem. Sorry Henry, the perfect word was sitting there, you were saying Twitter abandoner, it's Twitter quitter. Twitter quitter. I didn't wanna be, that seems too good, being a Twitter quitter.

I say go with it. No, well also I've done A-B testing, if I can use like evil marketing parlance, but I have done like A-B testing of a post on Twitter versus doing it on Blue Sky, and it really does feel like the engagement is the same or better on Blue Sky, despite me having numerically many fewer followers on

Blue Sky than Twitter. I think the Twitter numbers really are fugazi as the kids say. Oh did they say that now? No I'm being the kids of 1920. Oh okay I was wondering if it's just a bunch of kids misreading the alternative rock bands name. But yeah I've been been having fun on the Blue Sky. It's been fun to post videos and engage, though they really need to be able to upload GIFs. That's, the GIF upload, kind of troublesome, but at least they got videos going now.

So yeah, check us out on Blue Sky. We are posting there. And other places you can find us is the podcast Doughboys. We just were on Doughboys. We recorded an episode with them in July. We went to Universal Studios in June for the sake of recording it with them. Everyone got COVID, so we recorded it later. And that episode is now online and people seem to really like it. So check out Doughboys on YouTube, check out Doughboys wherever you find podcasts. We are covering

the Krusty Burger, but it's really us covering the Springfield area of Universal as a whole. More about the food that's available there. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. If you guys wondered why we were together at Universal Studios at the end of June, that's why. And yeah, it was terrible timing that I believe while we were in line the day before we learned that Mitch had tested positive for COVID and we were going to have to do it later. But I think it worked out great for a great video podcast too. If you guys are like, oh, I never see you guys in video podcasts, check it out. You'll see us there. You'll see my old setup with just a blank white wall behind me. I

do prefer my new setup now. You guys can't see it, but yeah. If you watch that video, you'll see the mole on the right side of my face that I had removed in September. So one member of that podcast is no longer with us. And my beard is shorter too now. But yeah, it was so much fun to finally get to do Dough Boys. We had been wanting to do it for a long time. They are the funniest guys. And I hope that they take into future podcasts the new hog that we taught them about, of famous celebrity hogs. Oh, that's right.

I forgot, we brought that knowledge to their podcast. Somebody in the replies to their podcast on YouTube brought up a video I did not find in my previous Forrest Tucker research, and it was a interview with Forrest Tucker's wife confirming his hoggitude. And did she walk up to a microphone bow-legged to give her a statement?

Her main joke was that she said she was a virgin when she married him, and so she would joke with friends that she thought all men had penises like his. How lovely. So yeah, listen to us talk about penises and food on Doughboys, wherever you find podcasts. Now it's time to talk about what we've been playing and watching that's not related to things we're covering on podcasts.

I only have a few things to mention. This has been a very busy time for both of us, so we're mostly recording podcasts and just kind of laying on the floor in our downtime. So as for me, I've only been playing Metaphor Re-Fantasio, the great Atlus RPG. I'm about 50 hours in now. I'm really loving it. Again, this could be recency bias, but it could be my game of the year.

I need to review what I played this year. It is extremely good. It is such a great game where everything is so well designed and fits so well together. I'm really enjoying the hell out of it. I really, really do wanna play it, but yes, I just have to. Of the game I played this month,

it made me go like, I think'm gonna have to like wait another month before I start it up. It might be my Christmas break game. I think it's very very good A lot of people are loving it and I'm gonna have an international flight very soon And that's where my old switch is gonna come along with me. I need to finish the new Zelda game I need to start the new Mario Luigi RPG and I also need to play Luigi's Mansion 2 which that HD remake came out I think in September so I've got all these new Switch games waiting for me waiting for international flights and downtime on the bullet train and stuff like that so I'm looking forward to playing through a lot of those while I am in Japan and flying to Japan. The brother ship

reviews weren't the greatest but I also this is me gonna sound like an old man I see every review on like Metacritic or whatever and I saw this for another game I'm playing this month. I was just like, I've never heard of these people, why do I even trust this review? Now I'm too old to listen to people 15 years younger than me how they review something. This is fake, I've heard of fake news,

what about fake reviews? That's what I'm looking at. Well I mean honestly, I like the Mario and Luigi series, it really peaked at three and then it kinda stunk with four and five, so I'm looking at. Well, I mean, honestly, I like the Mario and Luigi series. It really peaked at three and then it kind of stunk with four and five. So I'm not expecting a lot, but I just want to see what it is and I kind of want to support the brand. And to this day, I don't know who made that new game. And I'm sure the information is available now, but it's probably not the original developers that Nintendo shuttered. I used my voucher on it to support it as well. I will play it eventually. I'm really looking forward to next month perhaps learning your feelings on Brothership.

And in terms of watching stuff, just a few quick things to mention TV-wise. I've been reading a ton of the Vinland Saga manga via the library and I watched the entire first season while working out via Crunchyroll, and it is a very good, very literal interpretation of the manga. So if you're interested in absorbing the story of Inland Saga and you don't want to read the manga or can't access it, the Crunchyroll season one of Inland Saga, very, very good. Can't recommend it enough. Again, like I said earlier, it's a less icky berserk.

That's how I choose to view it. It's still pretty icky, but it doesn't have a lot of the icky icky stuff that's in berserk. Oh Oh cool, all right. That's uh, I, you know, I gotta finish my Berserk first. I'll eat all my Berserk vegetables. I only gotta re-eat another five, uh, ten giant heart covers. Well get to it. I'll be in Japan for two and a half weeks. Bring them all on the plane to, uh, to California, right? California? Yeah? Yes, uh, yes. I'll be flying to California real soon. And I also started, I'm nearly done with the first season of Ranking of Kings.

That is a very fun fairy tale story with a lot of darkness. I started watching it because I liked the premise of a main character who can't hear or speak. And I was on board for that alone. And I figured it'd be like, Oh, a fluffy fairy tale story with some emotional moments, but there's a lot of surprising twists. It gets very dark. There's more severing of limbs and heads and impalements than I expected from a show that looks like this, but I've been really enjoying it. It's been really good.

And I know there's a second season that's been out for a little bit now. So I'm sad that I waited this long, but it's been great. It's only like a 13 episode season. So it's easy to get through if you have other commitments. And in terms of movies, I am one of several hundred people who has seen the fantastic new film Juror Number Two by this little guy, an upstart director, an indie guy. He might be in his 20s or 30s. I don't know.

His name is Clint Eastwood. Oh wait, he's 94 years old and this is his last movie. Okay. Sorry. I got the wrong information here in front of me. Very, very good. I said this on another podcast that you probably will hear in the future, but this reminded me of the movie The Holdovers, which I loved last year, where today it is very rare to

go to the movies and you're watching a movie where there are normal people having regular conversations in normal rooms and nothing insane is happening. There are not alien symbiotes popping out of them. There's not mystical gems being shattered. It's just characters talking to each other and resolving issues. And this is really mostly a legal thriller with a premise I have not seen before.

And keep in mind, I have not watched very much Law and Order, but I was very surprised by where the premise goes. Don't look too much into it if you're interested because it might spoil things for you. But I really like this movie and it's inspired me to go out and get more of Clint Eastwood's movies. Check those out. Oh, there's so many great Clint Eastwood movies. He's, and yes, he has bad politics before anybody says that. Yes, he does. There's a lot of great Clint Eastwood movies though. I should watch it as well. Everybody is enjoying

Juror 2. I think in the next week, I've been planning to, I've been letting my Cinemark movie pass lapse, not lapse, as in my free movies are piling up. So I'll be, I think I'll be seeing Juror number two well coming week. You better hurry because Warner Brothers is trying to crucify that movie. They resent even having to release it in a theater. So in my town of Vancouver, a tiny little town, sort of like how Clint Eastwood is a small movie director, it's 600,000 people, one theater is playing it, and it's a tiny little theater. Wow, my nearby one is playing it,

or was at least two days ago, so I'll double check on this. I think it is crazy, I believe in spite of itself, it is making profit, or it is successful to the degree it is allowed to be successful. Like it's actually so, and I bet it would definitely make more money than that second Joker movie that costs like the price of like 200 juror number twos or four juror number 400,

I guess you could say. Yeah, actually I heard that movie, which looks like total utter garbage red one. I'm seeing the trailer for that. Every time I go to the movies now, that is the most expensive original movie ever made. That's not a sequel to something. That looks like the crappiest piece of crap. There are movies, you've said this about the Weird Al movie, that it feels like an extended internet sketch, not a real movie. This feels like a terrible internet sketch extended to a real movie. I seen I think there's more than one trailer one of the trailers I've seen for read one the straight man character basically saying are you telling me this crazy stuff is happening?

And the movie is acknowledging. Yes. This is a very stupid premise now Shut up and give us your money the movie up front is trying to acknowledge. We know this is asinine Listen dummies the Rock is here. Just give us your money, you pigs. I think guys like Chris Evans like appearing in movies with The Rock in them because Chris Evans gets to look like a normal person again instead of a bodybuilder. Who is he in this movie, Jack Frost? Right, yeah, he's like the prodigal son.

Well also too, if you star in a movie with The Rock, you always have to be like the beta to his alpha. You are the guy who has the dorky scenes and gets beaten up while The Rock says, yeah, cookie puss, I am kicking your balls in. Well, yeah, so journey number two, a lot of fun. If you can see it, go check it out. It's really good. Again, it's a normal movie.

They don't make normal movies for theaters anymore and it's a great experience to sit in a quiet theater with a bunch of people who are 70 years or older And just have a quiet time at the movies who occasionally an old person will go. What did he say? Who is that? Yeah, that well that just feels like seeing a movie with my mom There were there was not I wouldn't call him chatty It was more like the old people asking questions couple that you get in these kind of movies where at one point

Someone is looking something up online and the man was confused and the woman said she's looking something up He's looking something up on the internet now Well, that's helpful She helped him and I saw another movie just because it popped up on Disney Plus in the in the roulette wheel And I thought oh people wanted me to watch this. Well, for a weekend, they wanted me to watch it. Then they never talked about it again. And that movie is Chip and Dale rescue Rangers, the 2022 spiritual

sequel to Roger Rabbit. And I thought this was extremely disappointing. It is just a reference cake. And I am now, I am so tired of references. I think we should out the president Trump, please outlaw all references for five years. We need new things, and then we can start referencing those new things. And it's okay to do references,

but I feel like in this movie, they really underline everything. It's more inspired than I thought it would be, but there are some fundamental issues with it, like the bad, fake 2D characters, which I cannot get over to enjoy this movie. I put this in my letterbox review, but they look like bad anime avatars in VR chats. That's how bad they look. And when the

premise of the movie is Chip did not get the 3D surgery and Dale did, you're showing me a bad 3D character. It's just destroying the entire premise. And it looks bad, it animates poorly. And then when an actual 2D thing is on the screen, I'm like, okay, this is what I want to see, but that rarely happens in this cheap, cheap movie. This is the Spielberg difference. When Steven Spielberg is not there to say, no, this costs is what it's going to cost and you're going to give me money.

And instead it's the lonely Island guys and John Mulaney doing, I think they have, there's fun in there. I laughed at it, but they have none of the power to be like, well, we envisioned this as full 2D animated characters meeting with 3D characters and they're told, well, we're not doing that. Like that's, that would cost 10 times more than we want to spend. It feels like it wants to be a little more risque, but it can't. Something is holding it back. And I also get the sense where Bob Zemeckis loved the classic Looney Tunes characters. The movie was an homage. This movie seems something is holding it back. And I also get the sense where Bob Zemeckis loved

the classic Looney Tunes characters. The movie was an homage. This movie seems to despise or just be completely ignorant of the Rescue Rangers cartoon where they don't know what it is or what they're making fun of because there are some jokes in the movie of hey look at how bad this show used to be or look at how cheesy and corny used to be when it was one of the best shows for kids on TV at the time. And the fake clips of it they show you doesn't really line up with my memories of the show at all.

And it had to be weird for Tress McNeil to come in to be like, hey, resume your role. It's just for like five minutes and the jokes are you fucked a bug. Yes, yes. That's all. She marries Zipper canonically. There's just all of these very weird choices in it and a very boring human character who I think should not have really been the focus of the movie, I think that's an issue

with all of these movies where cartoon characters interact with humans. Eddie Valiant, great flawed character. This person, very, very flat and boring, no real arc to her at all. And you know everything she does is gonna be the right thing because she won't make a mistake like Eddie Valiant might. And she's a fan and the stuff about fandom I found revolting, this is stuff we just have to

include to make you feel good about knowing stuff. I just feel so cynical and bad to me. So maybe I'm holding this to two, I have a standard, but if you make a movie like this, don't ever show me Roger Rabbit within this movie because I'm just thinking about Roger Rabbit and all the ways it was better, not just in terms of the technology, which was 40 years before this movie was made, but in terms of the storytelling and how it was so much better. It's like, Oh, it's Roger Rabbit. And they even got Charles Fleischer to make like a two line or just make noises. And it's like, it's right here. This is all you're doing. Yeah. Well then because they have to animate him like he is in the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit,

they can only afford to do that for, well I mean they can afford to do it for the entire film because it's Disney, but they will only allot so much money for a character like that to appear. And the best jokes in it, they're just, they're a fucking GIF you can put online, or like a five second, like it's just like, oh yeah, the weird Sonic, he's here.

Like, their first draft's a 3D Sonic, here he is. And that's the joke. Yeah, and this is not even worth getting mad about because it's actually kind of depressing because things like this and Hocus Pocus 2 and Disenchanted and all of this streaming slop, it's designed to be immediately forgotten. So just so you won't feel as bad when they shove it

into the tax fire in a few years. I feel bad that the Lonely Island guys, I felt like they've at least worked hard to get, I don't think they really understood what Chip and Dale was about, and this is really just about 80s and 90s cartoons and vague memories, but they did at least put the effort of like on screen, Pumbaa gets to hang out with Seth Rogen's DreamWorks bug character from the Mantis from the Kung Fu Panda. Like technically that is on the level of the Looney Tunes meeting Disney when it comes to cutting through red tape for business reasons. It is not impressive at all like Bugs Bunny meeting Mickey Mouse, but technically it took the same amount of work. Yeah, I mean in 2024 or 2022, back when the movie was made, you look at the size of Disney

and you can't ever think, well, how'd they do that? You remember, oh, it's Disney and they have a lot of money or a lot of power and you want to be nice to Disney and lend them your characters just for the sake of sheer marketing. Yeah. But yeah, don't watch Chippendale Rescue Rangers, but you probably already did because you're a fan of cartoons. If so, I apologize. And I also saw Venom, The Last Dance. I guess Henry can talk more about this because he did as well.

We just saw this to see something because there was literally nothing else in the theater that we wanted to see and my wife is a big Venom fan. It's very disappointing and I kind of like the first two Venom movies. I think the second movie was a lot of fun. First movie takes too long to get to Venom, but the entire premise of this third movie is that Venom won't be saying anything or doing anything. Well, he'll be saying anything, that way you can just go in late and do a lot of ADR to spice up boring scenes with Venom saying, shut up, bitch, or whatever he does.

But yeah, too long, a big waste of time, and also the villain never stands up or interacts with anyone at all. It is really like a I'll get you next time gadget for a movie I'll never see in the future. So it's another one of those like, it was a lousy commercial, a Christmas story things. When you get to the end, you're like,

oh, this is a commercial for another thing. My biggest frustration about the last dance is all the wasted opportunities of like, so Tom Hardy doesn't seem like he likes being there. The there's also multiple other great actors in it. And it's like, well, you don't care. And then, you know, yes, they, they create 15 minutes in, they create an excuse for venom to never be venom. And, but also he doesn't care about it a couple of times when it's like, no, I want to turn into a monster to dance with my friend and then he and it's like well

Then why why do you deny me fun for all that but all this time until these 30 seconds you cheap bastards? Yeah, they take you to Las Vegas and a lot of fun happens No He just sits in front of a slot machine until he just goes to a different room and then they're they're kind of out of that Scenario. Yeah the trailers's classic Sony trailer trickery where they show you 30 seconds of him in a casino or making a venom horse, and your brain thinks if the movie's gonna be great,

then if they give me these 30 seconds, then it must be much longer. They must be saving really cool stuff for the movie. When you go to the movie, you find out the 30 seconds you saw of him in Las Vegas or riding a horse, that is the 30 seconds and there's not more of it. Yeah, hey, I like what if Venom was a horse was answered. I've always had that question.

But the fact that no other character from past movies appears is very odd. So when one of them does, you think, this is just very weird to find this person here. It's sort of like on the Simpsons spinoff showcase when Troy McCuller says now keep your eyes peeled because you might spot your old friends the Simpsons Yeah, no a total total waste of a at the very least venom to let there be carnage Andy circus new This is stupid and Tom Hardy wants to be weird Let's just have him be weird and also have it be kind of a love story this one

It's like they don't even want it like they're it's a dead marriage between venom and Tom Hardy They don't even want to fuck anymore. Like is this boring? Yeah, the interplay is not as fun and I just like seeing venom in the city with Eddie here They just didn't like blasted desert landscapes in Las Vegas for five minutes. That also, yes, yeah, my last, yeah, that's a good point too on the last dance that like in the first two, it's him running around San Francisco and all of these interesting

cityscapes and they maybe even filmed on location a couple times. He's in the goddamn desert for most of this movie. It looks very cheap and boring, although I'm sure it costs $200 million or something. And it's a big hit too, I guess. So they're being rewarded for this. So what do we know?

Hey, we paid for it. We're guilty. Other things, I saw Book of Mormon. It is, well, at least just the week we're recording this, it is playing in, or playing, it's being performed in Vancouver at the Queen Elizabeth Theater. I've never seen the play. It's one of those things where you can listen

to the soundtrack, but there is no movie version, so you kind of have to go and see it. And I did like it a lot. I thought the songs are great. And it really shows what Matt Stone and Trey Parker can do when they have to focus on something, when they don't have to do their write their episode in 24 hours deal. It really feels like, oh, you're not just hitting the same joke over and over. You're being more thoughtful about things. And then you're bringing in this musical guy who can dress up your songs and help you write some better ones. So yeah, I thought it was a great experience. And it does feel a bit like an early 2010s time capsule, but in a charming way. Well, I haven't seen it in a very long time. I got to see it in it's, I think, first run of touring nationally. And I had

a really good time seeing it too. And I'd be interested to see the updates they made to it, some of the mature updates that they agreed to make to some of the language in it. Though also too, it's so funny now you've seen it. My mom and brother saw it together before me, and they saw it in Orlando, Florida, which, that'd be so amazing to see it in Orlando, Florida, when that is a plot point of the Book of Mormon. Yes, that, I wonder if the last were a lot louder during some of those parts in Orlando, when it was being referenced.

I wonder, but yeah, no, it's great you saw it, and it's, as you remarked before, you wouldn't have Josh Gad in Frozen if not for Book of Mormon. Yeah, Robert Lopez helped write the songs for Book of Mormon and he's also one of the main songwriters on Frozen with his wife. So we'll talk a lot more about Book of Mormon

and him on our Frozen podcast at the end of December. And yeah, I mentioned this before and I won't belabor the point, but I'm going to be in Japan for 17 days and I'm leaving less than 48 hours after I record this. So it's going to be a lot of fun and I'll be posting a lot of fun pictures and doing a lot of different things. And I won't be too annoying by recounting everything I did on the next talk to the audience. I did that last year already. So maybe I'll point out a few fun things I did, but it's going to be a less nerdy trip.

So I feel like pertaining to the interest of our listeners, there won't be too much to go over. I'm looking very forward to seeing you and Nina's picks from there and hearing about it. I, you know, I can't wait to go to Japan. I hope to go to Japan next year. Believe you me, I was eyeing my, I was eyeing all my frequent flyer numbers and thinking, could I just go again in December?

Like I could I just do it now? And you know, there's there's been a lot of the drive to spend to not think about things in the news right now. It makes you want to do that. But you were planning this trip way before the yeah, like we bought the tickets in August, I think. And yes, we do go other places than Japan. It's just my wife's 40th birthday. And we decided like, where should we go? Where should we go? Then we thought you know what the exchange rate is still good and there's still things we have to do Let's just go back to Japan. So we're doing that this time though. I did a ton of homework I'm proud to announce that as of yesterday

I have now memorized the entire Japanese language syllabary both hiragana and katakana I know about 10 kanji, so let's get to that later. But I did not know that last time because we basically took our trip right after we moved. So there was not a lot of time to do Duolingo. So I'm a little proud of myself. That was a huge hill to climb, and I never thought I'd be able to do it,

but it turns out if you do Duolingo for 40 minutes a day, you can get there in 75 days. You have really outscored me in Duolingo since you've gotten in there. I just celebrated your 75 day streak in there and the first kanji I can recognize, not counting the easy ones like one and two, was water. That was like or watashi. Yeah, watashi, the kanji for dad, the kanji for mom, things like that. I'm gonna look up a few more travel essential kanji, but thankfully Nina's with me

and she does not mind translating or answering questions. It's funny, I just finished Unit 25 in Duolingo, which on my 470th day of it, and that unit was the one of like, here's how to get around a theme park. And I was like, where was this a year ago? Yeah I mean I can ask if people are Brazilian. I can say more rice and water please and things like that but a lot of what I learned so far

is not really good for travel although I can say I've learned how to say based on what Duolingo taught me my Japanese wife is over there. I can say that in Japanese. If anyone starts talking to me like my Japanese wife, you can find her there. And I have to learn actually, I have to learn I don't speak Japanese in Japanese. But I'll turn to Nina for that.

But hey, congrats on that. It does really feel special to like, oh, I can at the very least read the simple text now on when I see Japanese text out there. Oh yeah, one nerdy thing we're doing is Nintendo Museum. I'm not sure if I said that on here before, but we got in there, we got our tickets for that, so I'm looking forward to that.

Oh yeah, that one is the big one I'm jealous of. I'm like, god damn, but as you learn, if you go to Tokyo enough, if you're blessed enough to get to Tokyo enough, other Japanese cities, you're not just going to Tokyo. There's always something cool happening there. Like the day after you leave, it'll be like, oh, it's too bad you're leaving now,

this awesome museum exhibit is opening or whatever. Yeah, if you're wondering about Japan, there's always, if you're a nerd especially, there's always something cool and you're always going to miss something. So when I was there in 2018, I missed the Cowboy Bebop 20th anniversary event. There was a little museum, but then I went five years later,

I went to the 25th anniversary event. And then I just found out they're having exclusive Mother 2 items at Lawson's all throughout November. So I'm just stumbling into things I like. It's always been nice. And now you can be able to read the word Muzza on things and know the logo. Fortunately, the logo for Mother is just the word Mother

in all caps in English. That's true. But that's it for me for the 17 days that we are covering since we last talked to each other and talked to the audience. Well, my month has been the two weeks of it have been, I've done a bit of stuff. I finished Persona 3 Reload I finished persona 3 reload over a hundred hours

Basically a hundred and seven hours was my hour count on it. I got every achievement and I was very happy about that I don't think I'll be playing the the Fez DLC. I've I have heard the answer DLC is Fans don't like it as much. It's not as worth the 30 hours of time I've heard you know I watched a video about it because I was always curious and they really jazzed it up for the remake. Previously, it was just a lot of dungeon stuff in the original release of Persona 3. Here, you can do a lot more,

although it is, I think, another 35 or 40 hours of content on top of a what, 120-hour game? It was 110 for me, and that was with speeding things up or like knowing what I was doing. But when I think of that 35 hours I could spend on the answer DLC, I think why don't I just play Metaphor if I'm gonna play that, like which I still haven't started up yet.

I think Metaphor is a tidy 80 hours, although some people are taking 100 and I should be one of those people because I'm doing everything in the game. Well and I instead started up another giant RPG, Dragon Quest III 2D HD remake that just came out. I played the first three hours and I do think as a replay of it,

I haven't played the game in full in 20 years and doing it at fast battle speed and double speed walking, the opening area, the opening continent, I got through that in three hours and I feel like that was like seven hours the first time I played that that's great Yeah, I'm hearing it's not just one for one You know the thing is in the Nintendo game we put it on the PlayStation or switch or whatever and with better graphics

They are making gameplay changes that that make it a more playable game for 2024. They're they're fixing some dungeon layouts There's a lot of little behind-the-scenes tinkerings going on I'm looking forward to seeing what what all changes are, if they're going to be listed anywhere. A part of my old man brain at first was like, I should turn off the objective markers on a map. That's not classic Dragon Quest to me. And then I was like, why do I?

I've already beat this. I'm not proving this to anybody. I beat it on the Game Boy Color. I don't need to redo this harder. So I turned on objective Game Boy Color. I don't need to redo this harder. I'm putting, so I turned on objective markers on screen. Yeah, I'm glad they did more than just make the graphics prettier and put it on new platforms because it is a $60 game. So I was expecting it to be a little cheaper, but it sounds like a big overhaul. And frankly, they need to do stuff because they just need to kill time

before whatever Dragon Quest 12 is. We need more than a logo at this point. It sounds like it's going through some production issues. I'm sure they might have scrapped development twice by now. It sounds like a real mess, so they may as well. That's why they delayed. I feel like they delayed three. And then once they decided, OK, you know what? We're using this engine on one and two and announcing it right now.

That'll buy us another year of Dragon Quest. And they're like, call up Akira Toriyama. And what? he what? Yeah, it's a rough time. Yuji Horii, the last man standing of the group. Oh, and I also played a little bit of Tetris Forever, mainly playing the Tetris new gameplay mode in it, which is basically like, I haven't taken it online yet.

I basically played a 90 minute straight of one game of the time warp mode, which randomly has older versions of it pop in every like level. I played until my eyes hurt and then I was like, okay, I have to just lose. I lost the game intentionally 90 minutes because I was like, I can't keep doing this. A shout out to friend of the show, Chris Kohler.

They're doing really great work at Digital Eclipse with these game releases that also serve as interactive museums. I have to watch the documentary stuff soon. That's what I was like, I'll play the time warp mode. I'll watch documentaries later. But yeah, Chris Kohler and everybody at Digital Eclipse are doing the Lord's work here.

They are creating the Criterion collection of video games. It's beautiful. They're interviewing all the people. The games are secondary on these things. The lords work here, they are creating the criterion collection of video games. It's beautiful, they're interviewing all the people. The games are secondary on these things. It is like incredible living histories to play and I'm so happy they were able to do something for one of the most beloved and well-known games ever, Tetris. As for movies, yeah I talked a ton about Venom 3, 3 that's really only movie I've seen at this point TV shows are wrapped up the penguin I I have been watching more Twin Peaks the the only things I wanted to really talk about were though

I watched what we do in the shadows the the final season. I'm halfway through that. It's a lot of fun I'm really they are doing great in their last season and I watched first episode of Invincible Fight Girl, which is fun action, it's an American anime basically. It looks sort of like an anime, but made by Americans. Some cool folks, friends of friends of the show, worked on it too, and also I mean, it's like what if, it's pro wrestling,

Dragon Ball anime basically. Yeah, I recall when he was on the podcast recently, Ian Jones-Courty said he worked a bit on that show. Yeah, yeah, and he's not the only one. And also Keith David is the narrator on it, so how can you complain about that? Yeah, it's on max, it's a lot of fun. And also another show I just started up

was this new show called English Teacher, or the English, no, I think it's English Teacher. I look, I get the those mixed up, forgive me, but it's one of those Hulu FX shows. It's by people who worked on What We Do in the Shadows, but it is about a gay 30-something who is trying to be a teacher in high school today, and it is about how like every second year

around teenagers today they are like filming you to try to make fun of you for a video and it drives you insane. I guess I technically was teaching teenagers but I stopped teaching college writing classes around 2008, 2009 and that's when people were everyone was starting to get a smartphone so I completely bailed before that took over. There's a hilarious thing in the first episode where this cis gay teacher, he's called in to help teach a gym class.

Oh, the gym teacher goes, "'I was asked to explain non-binary. "'Can you explain non-binary, please?' And he's like, "'God, I don't want to.'" But he goes in there to explain it. But when he starts explaining, he's like, "'I don't know why I there to explain it but when he starts explaining he's like I don't know why I have to explain it to you kids like you're you're on tumblr You all know what this is, you know it better than us

But he starts to explain it accurately then when the kids like had his phone up and he goes Oh, yeah, we all know we were just hope we wanted to get it explained badly so we could put it online and make fun Of you, but you did it right, so it's not a good video. I love this new anti-generation alpha content. It really, it felt really good. It felt, oh man, yeah, there's a lot of things in there of like, are you a millennial and now getting older? There's so much of it, and the gay angle, too, too,

I also enjoy. But that's pretty much all the stuff I've been watching. And lastly, I do want to say, yes, meanwhile meanwhile when you're listening to this, I will have come back from a Disneyland trip going finally taking my mom and stepfather to Disneyland as I've dreamed of doing for six years now. I finally got him to go. They've we've bought the tickets were going to have a lot of fun. And I happened to be going there. This was not part of the plan. This was when my mom wanted to go. I found out that they are doing tie in garbage for Wookie Life Day there. That's so stupid. I'm like, well, I got to buy the Wookie Life Day sandwich and

the Wookie Life Day drink. Oh, they've got your number. Well, Henry, I think at this point, the characters at the parks know your name. They should by now. Yes. It is my, honestly, you would think I'm super hardcore having been to just Disneyland twice this year. This will be my second trip this year to just Disneyland in addition to Disney World and Universal Studios. But there are many harder core people than us out there.

They're gonna start sending you stock in the mail if you keep going. Oh, and also afterwards afterwards we have decided that we're adding one little extra thing to it on our flight back. Since we were gonna fly over San Francisco, we're actually gonna stay there for a couple days to see Cyndi Lauper in concert there.

We're gonna see, she's on her farewell tour and she has a more fun opener in San Francisco than she has at least one that we want to see more opener for in San Francisco than Seattle. And so we're like, you know what, let's burn those, finally, finally, finally do our last Southwest credits, fly to, stop in San Francisco and see. She's got to play that Goonies song.

I cheated and looked at her at the set list she's been doing. Goonies are good Enough is the second song. I hope it will have been. It's gotta be True Colors, Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, the Goonies song, and then Good Night Everybody, I'm 70 years old. There's She Bop is also on the list.

I forgot about She Bop, how could I forget? But yeah, that's what I, funnily enough, that's what I did in November and hope to have done by the time you hear this. So yeah, that's what's going on with us. Let's talk about the recent comments left on the Patreon. Starting out with Talking Simpsons, the first episode was the Regina monologues. And Jonathan says, had to chime in

that drinking around the Epcot world is definitely a thing. It has been for a while, I guess. My wife has participated, but she said they used to give you a little passport that you checked off rather than a shirt. Not sure if they still have the passports or both now but if the cost wasn't so outrageous and the park was not in Florida I can see its appeal. And this is Bob speaking. How did Florida come up in the Regina monologues? I'm confused. I think I kept bringing up Epcot because I was like well I haven't been in London but in Epcot they have this in the London Pavilion like in the UK Pavilion

So this drinking around the world challenge is what they're talking about Yes, which now it is like a t-shirt you check off But apparently it used to be like a passport that would get stamped at each drinking spot But I think they are trying to discourage the binge drinking aspect of it. I had a passport thing to stamp there, but it was, have you tried four different cheese items all around the world? Like that was the stamp's idea.

Maybe, it sounds like they also want you to buy a $40 t-shirt to participate in the drinking challenge. That's also true, which I wouldn't have done that. My $40 t-shirt was instead on a Muppet Labs thing, because if they put any, if they're like, hey, we only have two Muppet things, I was like, well, then I'm buying that. You leave me no options, sir.

Rory also says on the Regina monologues, let me put on my Genius at Work shirt for a moment to point out that this isn't the first time they went to the UK, as they said near the start, because in Monty Can't Buy Me Love, they went to Scotland to catch the Loch Ness Monster. Much as I wish Scotland wasn't a part of the UK, enough with this Scottish erasure. And then also Nick Mould chimed in to point out that future Lisa in a fantasy also went to the UK in Lisa's wedding.

Groundkeeper Willie would have been very ashamed of us had he heard us and had he been real. That's true. Our erasure of Scotland, been very ashamed of us had he heard us and had he been real. That's true. Our erasure of Scotland, I mean, it was only Homer that went to Scotland, of course. And only Lisa went to the UK. We're talking about the family as a unit. And I mean, I think about Scotland in that regard because I watched, I should have thought about it more

because I watched Trainspotting and Trainspotting is about how much they hate being a colonized people in Scotland and they really wish they weren't part of the UK. It was a whole rant in the movie. So moving on to Trios of Horror 4, Eric Schuman says, As a lifelong Philadelphian, I am always delighted to see the Broad Street bully show up in this episode. Gritty's similarity to the Philly fanatic is not coincidental, as the original fanatic performer David Raymond was a consultant on Gritty's similarity to the Philly Fanatic is not coincidental, as the original Fanatic performer David Raymond was a consultant on Gritty's design. Here in Philly, the unspoken but widely accepted story is that Gritty's introduction in 2018

was a direct response to the death of longtime anti-mascot flyers owner Ed Snyder in 2016. An additional fun fact, the Fanatic and the Montreal Expo slash Canadian's mascot You Youppi, was created by legendary Muppet designer, Bonnie Erickson. Oh, thank you, I had no idea. The Fanatic is very Muppet-like to me. Oh yeah, googly eyes, he has the trumpet nose of a space alien from a meeps or whatever. I'm so sorry, I forgot the name of the fake alien world.

I'm glad they hired a Henson person and not some kind of Sid and Marty Croft freak. I'm so sorry, I forgot the name of the fake alien world. I'm glad they hired a Henson person and not some kind of Sid and Marty Croft freak. Yes, to know, I love to learn that Gritty maybe is created just because an old man who hated mascots died and they're like, finally, we're allowed a mascot. And now he's trapping that costume for all of eternity. Meanwhile, Seth says on that episode, all this talk about a nightmare at 20,000

feet reminds me of one of my favorite episodes of third rock from the sun. In the episode, William Shatner plays the character of the big giant head, the supreme ruler of the alien species. The main characters go to pick him up at an airport. When they meet him, they ask how the flight was. He says it was terrible because he saw something on the wing of the plane. John Lithgow's character replies saying that the same thing happened to me. Needless to say that they got a big laugh and the applause break from the audience. I think

I've seen that clip a lot because I remember John Lithgow saying, you saw it too? That's right, yeah. So them so them talking about it. I had no, I remember watching that episode live and, and thinking, you know, I was a, a light third rock for the sun watcher, but you know, this was back when seeing William Shatner in a comedy context felt fresher though. Uh, it was still years into him being a comedy figure, but I never, when he was announced for the show, the connection of Twilight Zone's never occurred to me, and then when they said the line, I also clapped like a seal at recognition.

Up next we have the What a Cartoon movie, which is all about Hotel Transylvania, and Joshua Marchant says, I could be reading a joke where there isn't one, but I think Wayne's name might be a pun on the waning phase of the moon. Werewolf moon? It might be more clear if his wife's name might be a pun on the waning phase of the moon. Werewolf moon? It might be more clear if his wife's name

was Luna or something. And yes, Joshua, I have the same inkling as you when it comes to the name. And also, I think it was Nina who revealed this fact to me that I was not aware of at all. We did not point this out on the podcast. Jonathan from Hotel Transylvania, he's named after Jonathan Harker from Dracula. Oh, well, shit.

Because he's the human who goes to Dracula's castle and Dracula's being very obvious a vampire. He's like, wow, there's something weird about this guy. I can't put my finger on it. So him and Keanu Reeves actually very similar. Yeah, you're right. Oh, Keanu Reeves. I just saw that again. Stinkeroo. Again, AI can fix this. Put Johnny Depp's head over him. I understand Johnny Depp is problematic character. Put 1992's Johnny Depp over him. I was ashamed, I included that one

because I too was ashamed to go like, oh yeah, Wayne, of course. Wayne, a waning moon, Wayne. Yeah, it's totally, I think totally intentional as well. Meanwhile, I have nothing but contempt for this court says, wow, the chub chubs cut me deep I remember watching that very ugly animated short as a bonus feature on the men in black 2 DVD I was like eight at the time and I had a small passing fascination with it and can distinctly remember showing it off to my friends

When they came over as I said, wow, can you believe DVDs kind of a thing with watching the bonus feature? I'm assuming he means. Yeah, again, please watch the Chub Chubs and think about how it won an Oscar. Yeah. And try to be okay with the rest of your life. That's so funny to know that like for kids who, for younger people who grew up with a Men in Black II DVD,

which was like, that's a movie I don't, I didn't even see that in theaters. I saw the first Men in Black, but I was good after that. Then, honestly, I was mad that Men in Black 2 brought back Tommy Lee Jones. That was the thing that bugged me. Cowardly move. Yeah.

Cowardly move. But clearly, by missing out on the DVD, I missed out on learning about the Chub Chubs. Well, now you are learning about them, but now it's not too late to stop them because society stopped them. Yes, where we were saved by indifference. Yes so up next we have what a cartoon some questions and comments about that the episode was the Beetlejuice cartoon episode Mr. Beetlejuice Goes to Town and

Joe Hodgson says my main memory of the show is similar to Bob playing Beetlejuice but with my sister as opposed to a friend my best friend at the time was a girl but I don't remember any Beetlejuice talk with her. She would often go to my mom and tell her she wanted to have hair like Lydia's, which just meant she wanted that top ponytail thing instead of more conventional ponytail. I'm pretty sure the Lydia terminology for her hair

stuck around in our house long after we ceased to watch the show. Okay, thank you, Joe. I was not the only weirdo. That's sweet. It's sweet to think a little girl going around like, give me a Lydia, give me a Lydia. And then it means putting up her hair

in a ponytail like that. I think it was the fact that this cartoon had no toys, that children had to create their own Beetlejuice role playing games. That's true, man. You couldn't just sit around with your Beetlejuice and Lydia dolls and smash them against each other and throw them in the basement

and pretend it's the neither world. You're right. All these, the lack of action figures from Kenner or whatever made it so you could, like you actually had to use your imagination for once. I was forced to use my imagination and now look at me. Meanwhile, Bradford A. Barker says, a little tangent on the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes show,

I watched it pretty regularly when it was airing and one time my dad let me know that it was based on a really poorly made movie. So I was in on the joke when in one episode, the characters in the cartoon are being tortured by being forced to watch footage from one of the two movies. I think it really was the Sharknado of its time where they just made a bad movie on purpose,

but then the bad movie they made on purpose was actually bad, so it was also fun to laugh at for those reasons. Back then, a bad movie, we're really stuck with you if you heard about it. Now bad movies come in and out of your ear. Sharknado is now like, if there's a Sharknado 8, who cares? Yeah, and then there are all those spiritual Sharknado spin-offs like Ghost Shark and Land Shark and all the shark bad CGI movies you can go see.

Well, you can't go anywhere to see them, you watch them at home. Yeah, you put them on on 2B and I probably take some drugs to pass out. Yeah, exactly. Up next we have Talking Futurama, the episode was lethal inspection and Matt Quintanilla says, or I apologize if I'm mangling your name there Matt,

but he says, here I was thinking I could write a spec script Futurama that's a parody of Nier Automata and it's summed up entirely in the line, so I'm doomed to die, and I'll never even get to punch whoever's responsible. God, I wish I could punch whoever stole that opportunity to make something somebody else already did from me.

Yeah, I guess Bender sums up the premise of that video game, and a lot of video games, with his very succinct line. Yeah, it was fun. I didn't make the Nier Automata connection the entire time watching it, but yeah, it's fun. I didn't make the near automata connection the entire time watching it But yeah, it's this this obsolescence and of them wanting to destroy who before you're gone as a robot like yeah It's it has more than a few similarities to near automata and our final comment we have at this time of recording is from

Andrew Bouvier saying my pet theory for the retcon of Hermes andender's backstory is that Hermes didn't know Bender was the robot he let pass until this episode when Farnsworth says Bender has no backup unit. There are thousands, potentially millions of bending units in the world, so how would Hermes know all these years later that Bender just happened to be the one he let skirt by? Of course, your comments on the proposed but scrapped scene during the montage of Hermes reacting to Bender first getting hired Sort of scraps that theory but since it never aired I'm sticking to it and I like that retcon. I like it I also wish they would have just put in the scene where

Hermes recognizes Bender when he's first hired it would have been so nice and good and it would have made a lot of things make A lot more sense. Yeah, they could have used one, they wouldn't have lasted that long. It would have been like five, six seconds. Like, yeah. But the fact that all he saw was a baby bending unit that didn't even speak. And he put him through, maybe he never figured it out though. Then again, with a, a guy is, uh, a perfect bureaucrat like Hermes. He would have known the second he saw Bender or the very least his name and serial number,

he would know it was the same robot that he saw four years earlier. Right, right. Yeah, so that is it for all of our questions and comments so far. Again, it's a lightly truncated episode because we're recording this a few weeks early, but look forward to next month, a larger episode. And again, even though we're traveling, we're going to Japan and Disneyland and San Francisco, your schedule will not be disrupted. We worked very hard to make sure all the content holes were filled.

So yes, look forward to, well soon, you will have heard eight crazy nights, but in December, look forward to a Beavis and Butt-Head Christmas, Talking Futurama, the late Philip J. Fry, Talking in the Hill Peggy Hill, The Decline in Fall, and Frozen at the end of the month. There's a lot of cool stuff, and if you haven't listened yet, please check out us on Doughboys,

and I think in December you're gonna hear us on another cool podcast. Oh yeah, I forgot about that. We've been very busy. Yeah, yes, yeah, but it might be a podcast about some sort of men or guys perhaps. Sounds familiar. We'll let them figure it out.

But yes, thanks for listening everyone. We'll see you next week for a brand new episode of Talking Simpsons and next month for another episode of Talk to the Audience. Take care. Wow, infotainment.