The Biggest Problem in the Universe: Uncucked - Episode 83

Episode Date: June 14, 2018

Welcome to the biggest problem in the universe, the show where we discuss every problem in the universe from bad investors to child molesters. Maddox! With over 5 million downloads. This is the only show where you decide what should or shouldn't be on the biggest of problems. The Maddox with me is Dick. What's that funny? And Sean, our audio engineer, and joining us is Asteroos, Mysterios, boisterous coconuts. This is a digital cyberdeven.

I think that's all my nicknames. Hey, everybody. How you guys doing? Welcome back. Is it bad that we all laughed our asses off at Cholk? Child molesters. Well, I think juxtaposed with bad investors. Yeah, we'll go with that.

That vote was confusing. The child molesters vote, pedophiles that you brought in? Why is that? I wasn't sure if we were supposed to vote that up or vote that down as a problem. Oh, no, up, up, it was a problem. Okay, already, again, you're sending a mixed message. You want us to vote up pedophiles. Right.

Except you brought in, and you mostly talked about the defense of pedophiles. I didn't defend pedophiles. You kind of did, not offending pedophiles. You brought in. You were like the petto smile is great. I try to smile like that all the time. I'm a huge fan of Jared. No, you were listening to the Mark Maren podcast, buddy.

Oh, my God. Shots fired. How is your one-sided war with a much more successful person doing? I got the last word in that, so I won. Oh, they go. Oh, I see it. So so far you've beaten Penn from Penn & Teller and Mark Maren. That's a good record.

Who's next? Who's next? That's our motto for this show. Who's next? We should go after like a big game show host or something, you know. Alex Trebek? Alex Trebek. That Canadian fuck.

Yeah. Let's get that guy. Oh, he's a creep. I've heard creepy stories about him. Have you seen that YouTube video where he's like super drunk and refusing to do promos for Jeopardy? He's just like, fuck it. Just go. Just go. Trebek.

Trebek is awesome, though. Tell me why you think he's awesome. Because I've been to a Jeopardy tape. My friend was on Jeopardy. And here's the one story about Alex Trebek. He gets up during the commercial break. and he's like, everybody, give me your questions. I'm here to answer questions, right?

So the first question is this woman from the Midwest, I'm guessing. Because, oh, my mother, who's sitting next to her. She's like, she's 90 years old, and she's a huge fan of yours. Can she just get up and get a picture with you? And he goes, no, next question. There's a guy who's like a career game show contestant. He just goes around from game show to game show, and he has this loop that he goes through different countries

because they put a blacklist on you for like nine months or five years or this or that or whatever. So he just like goes from country to country playing different game shows. And he said, I heard an interview with him one time on a podcast. And they asked him, who was the worst radio, or excuse me, who was the worst game show host you ever met? And he said, Alex Trebek by far. He said he's the meanest. He's just like, oh, yeah, he's awesome. Yeah, he's a machine.

I feel like in another universe you could be that guy. Well, you're already halfway there. You're good game show host. Yeah. Oh, speaking of games shows real quick, because I know we don't have. time, but if you're bored on the internet, Google Asterios plus let's make a deal. Because I went on Let's Make a Deal and I won. You did?

Yeah. I'll tell the story super duper quick. Okay. So long story short, I dress up in a giant bee costume, but I make my hair gray and I make my beard gray. And so I say I'm Grumblebee, the old man bee who likes to complain. Grumblebee. Grumblebee.

And so they calm me up. Check pot, they think. Look at this loser. You got to get him on TV. Oh my God, are you kidding me? And they were like, here's what they told us beforehand. They're like, we're looking for people with a lot of energy. So make sure to dance around a lot during the commercial breaks.

And I was like, wait till I see this dancing. I'm doing like the cabbage patch. I'm like, I'm doing the running man in my seat. I'm just like, I know they're looking at the old man B. And so they call me and they call me to play literally. This was weird. Like an improvised game where they wanted me to do a bunch of improv into a microphone where the hosts were speaking.

gibberish and it was my job to tell the host what was happening in a fake news report. Wait, what? Yes, I'm not kidding. This is on the set of deal or no deal? On the set of deal or no deal, they play this game called, uh, no, let's make a deal. Let's make a deal. Oh, let's make a deal. Yeah.

They play a game called let's make a deal news. So let's get to the let's make a deal action news desk with our correspondent Grumblebee. And they're like, what's in the news today? And I look over all the teleprompters and they're all blank. So I go, oh, they want me to implement. improvise what's in the news. So I make up a story that actually works really well and let's make a deal of continuity

about an invasion of Zonks that are ruining everybody's great deals around the country. But long story short, I made up so much crap about Zonks and the mythology of Zonks and their continuity and history that what's his name? What's the name of the host? The African-American

gentleman? Bill Cosby? Was he the host? Wasn't he? Worse. No, the guy from Family Food? Hitler? Yeah, the guy, no. The guy from the improv game. Steve Harvey. Wayne Brady, exactly. Oh, he is worse.

Wayne Brady is worse than Bill Cosby. Yeah, exactly. So long story short, Wayne Brady, between the commercial breaks, is like, you gotta stop acting like an asshole, you are ruining the game. He, like, tells me this to my face. And I fell for it.

I was like, I'm sorry, Wayne Brady. I'll behave. Holy shit. He's next. We're taking Wayne Brady down and notch. Fuck him. You're ruining the earth, Wayne Brady. Exactly.

Stereos is helping your dog game about zonks and whatever the fuck you're talking about. You throw, and by the way, they don't know anything about you. So they're just throwing this to, like, potentially a random person who's had no improv experience. Go ahead and make our show entertaining. Here you go, idiot. I think the idea was that they expect the person to crack and not know what to do. And then everyone else sort of makes a game out of his mistakes.

But the problem was, I was just like, well, we need a story here with characters and beats. You gave them what they weren't expecting, which is that performance. And they got super mad. Yeah. And they aired it? Yes. It's on YouTube. We're going to post it.

Of you talking about zonks. Yeah, you can look at it right now. We're going to post this. I've got to the final round because I was the most successful. So I'm just, so there's three acts of me acting like a bumblebee and Wayne Brady just clearly hates me. Bravo.

That's an incredible. We're going to link this on the website. He's jealous. Yeah. Wayne Brady is jealous of you. How does that feel? Pretty good. Yeah.

This is a guy whose entire career is based on not scaring white people. Yeah. Oh my God, you're right. He's one of the good ones. So is yours. I think it's on his resume. Yeah.

Yeah. I'm the mixed race guy with the pleasant, I'm the mixed race, pleasant face. That's a hell of a notch in your belt. Now I feel good about it. Yeah, man. Co of your spin. Oh, he's jealous.

He's so jealous of you. He found someone more lovable than himself. He got scared. That's not hard. All right. But guys, moving on. Let's go. Sorry.

The biggest problem from last week, Daylight saving time. Yeah, that's a big problem. Yeah. Yeah, well... You don't have to be upset by that. That's a big problem. It's a problem.

Okay. Yeah. And then the inability to disconfirm. And then the slippery slope arguments, pretty neck and neck. And then walking, dead last... Not even a problem, dick. Not even... A lot of people called you out for a dick versus dick.

They said, uh, your problem is everyone needs to lose 20 pounds, but then you, like, shit on walking. Which is a way that people can lose weight. No, no. The only way you can lose weight is deadlifting. Yeah. That in caloric restriction. That caloric restriction? No, you gotta eat if you're gonna deadlift, hysteria.

I forgot about how important. Pizza after pizza. No walking, drive to the gym, take a segue up the ramp. That's why those ramps exist. And start deadlifting. That's how you lose weight. Well, we've all had donuts and none of us are losing weight this morning. I got a comment from Alonzo Larios.

He says, gotta love how Dick instantly fell into both of Maddox's problems when it came to gun control. What a fucking Hitler. Was I talking about gun control in the last episode? No, because I mentioned. We were talking about slippery slope arguments and how the gun control one is a big one because people who are gun control advocates... People say they have small dicks and that's not true, right? Is that what you're trying to say? No, people who are opposed to gun control say that if you give an inch, they'll take a mile. Like, that's the argument.

The most recent argument being the terror watch list, it's like, you know, Obama wants people that are on the watch list not to have access to guns and gun advocates say, well, then what's next? That's a slippery slope argument. They also say that you can just put anyone on that list. There's no qualification. Oh, my God. You can just put everyone on the list. And that's how he takes our guns. That's what happened.

Wait a minute. This is one. That's what happened. What a trick. One by one. First thing, they be the anti-crime themselves. They put a couple of tears. It's copy and paste.

One, control C, control V. Now no one can have guns. Congratulations. Everyone's on the no-fly list, right? The terrorist watch list. Everyone. Yeah. Then that's how we lost the Second Amendment, kids.

Through the TSA. Copy and paste. Slipery- Killed it. All right, I got a voice. You want to have another comment? No, go ahead. Go ahead.

Hi, guys. Maddox is Hitler because he's trying to lead the red delicious apple from its place of downtroddeness to a superior race of apples. That's true. Using half-based scientific experiments. from the bonus episode to prove his weird theories. Dumb shit, moron. And it only took me four voicemails,

and this isn't even that funny. But it goes great, guys. Keep it out. I brought in those other four voicemails, by the way. Oh, we're going to hear those. So we made a determination that Maddox does not agree with. Okay, so if people listen to the episode, they're going to... The bonus episode. The bonus episode.

If you spend $2, you'll finally get the answer to watch the show. So in our regular sales meal, I got to spend this two bucks. Exactly. And, and if you remember, a listener reminded me of this, but we had a little wager on that test stop. And the loser had to read an apology written by the winner. Yes, I remember this. Do you remember that at 250 word apology? So I think next bonus episode, someone is going to have to read someone's hilarious apology.

Oh, my God. You can't miss this. Okay, next bonus episode, there will be an apology read. and we don't know who's going to read it. There will be an apology rag. Could be Sean. We don't know. All right.

All right. I got another voice, yeah. Hey, Dick. Do you ever think about shooting your guns in the air and your buddies might hear you? I'm probably not if you didn't think about walking, but.

Yeah. You know, innovation. Talking to Mexicans. We're wearing your eagle shirt. Can we hang up on? You're talking a guy's dick. No. We never hanged up on the week.

All things I came across your mind, but not walking or shooting your gun. I'm not sure if this guy is high or just an idiot. Because it sounds like he's laboring to put the next word, not even sentence, next word in sequence. No, it depends how drunk he is. True. Well, yes.

And he's three hours ahead. That was weird Matthew McConaughey. He's a regular caller. I got about six other calls from him. Okay. All similar in cadence to that one, right? But he gets hammered, and I can see when the calls come in, and as it progresses throughout the night, they get increasingly like that.

And we see the timestamp of these calls, too. So we'll see, like, 6 a.m., 3am, like whenever, in what city they're calling from. But he does have a big fan. Listen to this one. I just listened to episode 13, The Solutions. And weird, Matthew McCona Hay has to be my favorite listener. It's Mrs. Weird, Matthew McCona. We got to put these two in touch.

Yeah, right? She sounds just as high as him. That was almost an O at the end, like an oh. Yeah. I got a comment here. So this is kind of funny. Anything I brought up Trump on the show and libertarianism. Thank God.

I've been waiting to talk about Trump on the show all week. Oh, good. Love that guy. Love that guy. I've been called a lot of things. So if I ever shit on anyone conservative, I'm immediately a liberal. And if I ever shit on someone liberal, I'm immediately a conservative. And now I'm accused of being a libertarian.

I told you that you have libertarian tendencies. I know, I do. I took the test and I'm about 67% libertarian. No? We don't want to be left alone. Yeah, sure. Who doesn't? Yeah.

Who doesn't want to be left the fuck alone? Of course. Yeah. This guy, Garrett Voight, he says, Does Maddoch secretly read Libertarianism.org? And then he posted this big quote. It's like, the black and white aspect of politics also encourages people to think black and white terms.

Not only do political parties emerge, but their supporters become akin to sports fans, feuding families, or students at rival high schools. And he just goes on. And then he posted a link to the website. That was your point. Now the libertarian. That was your point, though.

I agree with you on that. I want to say something real quick about Trump. Do you think that like... Nothing is real quick about Trump on this show. Hopefully his candidacy will be. I'll try to be real quick then. Do you think that they were like also people during Hitler's rise? They were like, this guy's hilarious.

Here we go. Like that we're just like, he's all, look at this funny mustache. He gets so mad. I don't agree with everything, he says. It's like he's talking about putting people in that. He's talking about like stopping Muslims for coming in the countries. He's getting pretty out there, this guy. How's that out there?

Shut the borders down. Nobody has a right to come into this country. Sorry, it makes you guys sad to admit that, but no one has a right to come in here. Well, how about this? Who's not vetted the shit out of. How is that a libertarian principle, shithead? How's that not intrusism? Libertarianism applies to our country.

Oh, it's our country that we run like this. How about this? Don't you think it would be slightly different if he was like, no more immigrants, period, as opposed to saying no Muslim immigrants? Do you know what I mean? It's like, I can see what you're saying if he was just like, no more immigration until we set, so we're. solve everything. Well, that's sort of, that's a very conservative opinion. Saying no more Muslims

is kind of out there. Yeah. And let's see how this. Makes headlines. Well, yeah, no, shit it makes, so did Hitler. All right. I'm posting, I'm posting a new video about this. It's a really short one, 20 second. It's a 20 second piece in response to what he said recently about that stuff. But yeah, it'll be real funny to see how this plays out. What a liberal. What a liberal you are. Yeah. Trying to stump. You guys don't realize that you cannot stump. him. There's no breaks on the Trump trade. I know he's unstumpable, but it doesn't mean we can't try. I don't think you know that in your heart that he's

unsumped. You think I think I'm going to stump the Trump? You can't stump this guy? First of all, you win after Wayne Brady? Now you think you can go after Trump. You're getting too big for your britches. You got to find intermediate steps. Take out Drew Carey next. All right, I got to go ahead. Oh yeah, I was going to ask you, do you have

Yeah, I got a special bit just for you, Aserios. You'll recognize the music. The biggest problem in the universe presents erotic stories from real men. This is the first erotic story I brought in that makes me want to throw up. It was left by, it was left by Carlos Vega. Is it about Maddox shitting in a pile of leaves and wiping his ass? No, no, no, no.

Carlos says, stop dick in Maddox, it's Carlos, the guy with the eight-year-old sheets. By the way, I finally bought some new sheets after my ex found me out. because I got her into listening to the podcast. Oh, sorry, buddy, we're going to read this comment now. I finally caught up on all your episodes. And after listening to Maddox's friend's story about his sexual experiment, it reminded me of one of my own experiences.

This is about a, we talked, well, you'll see what we talked about last week to spawn this. Four months ago, I moved to San Francisco. It's already getting hot. It's all experimentation stories stutter. I was swiping on Tinder. Got a couple of matches. I started talking to this one girl who eventually admitted.

He was a cross-dresser. Oh. I was like, hey, bro, that's cool. I don't roll that way. But we can be friends. I'm open-minded. Oh. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Budding friendship? Yeah, I'm established on Tinder. A week later, I was drinking at a bar, and he messaged me at 2 a.m. saying, you want to hang out? I replied, is this a hookup? He said yes. I was feeling pretty drunk and horny, so I figured I'd experiment. Okay.

The pictures looked enough like a pretty girl, so I made it clear that I was straight. I didn't feel comfortable doing anything with this penis. I made it clear. at being drunk at 2 in the morning Hey look buddy Is this a hookup? I just want to be clear that I'm straight

And I won't be doing shit with your penis There's a lot of You gotta draw the line somewhere There aren't there a lot of Craigless posts that say like I'm looking for a bunch of completely straight dudes To jerk off with me I have no idea You tell us a series

You guys are going on the weekends Just Google it I'll forward you guys some things So I made a good clear that I was straight. Uh, yeah. He said it was fine and to bring condoms. Multiple.

Multiple condoms. I take an Uber over and was let in to his place. As soon as I was right there in front of him, I just couldn't do it. Even with the alcohol in me, I saw him as another man and felt immediately uncomfortable. And honestly, honestly felt bad for leaning. him on. I apologize and walked out and went home embarrassed and ashamed. Oh, there's nothing to

be ashamed about here. You should have get, look, I think he should have given him a quick hand job. Who? I think the straight up, look, some sort of hand job should have been exchanged. But I'm saying, if you're going to go all the way over there and get this, and get this, I guess he identifies,

I guess he identifies a man. Yeah. You get this man all worked up. Just give him a little release and get out of there. You don't need to do the whole thing. Yeah, but he said he wasn't doing anything with the penis. I know. I'm just saying, be a bro. He's straight.

Be a bro, do your bro a solid and give him a hand job. That's all I'm saying. If he was a real bro, he would have done it. Well, read the rest of the comment. Yeah, let's, you'll hear, you'll see. I used to say things like if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck. Confident in myself that I could do anyone that appeared feminine and attractive. Oh, wow, okay.

Interesting way to look at it. The experience made me realize that I am 100% without a doubt completely, mentally, and biologically straight. Because I almost jerked a guy off. Because he looked like a chick. Hey, there you go. And I read that comment. I commented, I said, that's the straightest thing I've ever heard. Absolutely.

There's nothing straighter than that. I mean, he went the distance with his straightness. He put his straightness to the test. That's true. Yeah. You've been listening to a presentation of... All right. Neurotic stories from...

Let's go. Somebody do a problem. All right, guys, I got a problem. ...by the biggest problem in the universe. All right, guys, I got a problem here. All right? Maybe the biggest problem in the universe. Okay.

Star Wars merchandising. Hmm. Sick of it. Sick of it? Fucking tired of Star Wars merchandising. Like the toys? Tell us about it, buddy. I got a pretty stinky eye.

from Astorios over here. No, I'm withholding judgment until I hear your whole problem. Thank you, Asterois. Very open-minded of you, Sirius. Thank you. Basically, I'm tired of Star Wars everything. You can go to the store and find

Star Wars branded clothes, toys, video games. I understand that, right? That makes sense. Because, you know, the property appeals to kids and kids like to wear their superheroes and play with their toys. Awesome. Kids who are 30.

No problem with that, right? There's no problem there. And then there's the cereal. Okay. No problem with that either. I've had branded cereal all my life. The toys are fun. It makes sense.

Sure. Fuck it. Toys. Cereals. I get it. But then there's Star Wars condensed soup. There's Darth Vader's SpaghettiOs. C-3PO's.

Yeah. They're delicious. Of course you know, not only the brand, but the actual marketing slogan they use for. What's the dinner's between that and alphabet soup other than the shapes are? You know what? I'll let you say, I'll let you finish a problem. I agree with that. C-3 POs.

They're just fucking. spaghettios, man. Yeah, they're better. They're spaghettios but better. They found a way to make Spaghettios better. You're eating little adorable droids. You get to have little adventures in your soup. Of course, of course. Okay, you know,

you know, I'll let you roll your problem, I'll withhold judgment. No judgments. No, see Maddox is very, he's very protective of his soup. That's why you don't understand. Why are you these Star Wars stamps on my correspondence? Yeah. What about the little X-ray? Droid, R2DP.

Oh, Sean. I love that. So you can get Yoda branding, if you prefer. There's Yoda-shaped pasta and high-sodium tomato and cheese sauce that they're literally shoving down our throats. Now, this fucking Star Wars merchandise. Have you ever had low sodium soup? It tastes terrible.

No. There's a reason they put so much sodium in all soup. The only way to make it taste good. No, there's a middle ground. It's like Coke. A bottle of Coke is like 300, 400, 400 calories, whatever it is. A bottle of Coke is like 300 calories, and it has like 30, 40 grams of sugar. I'm like, guys, why not just a little bit of sugar?

You don't have to like fucking go ape shit with it. What, Asteroos? What, defend your high sodium soup. All I'm saying is there's no difference between Star Wars soups and non-Star Wars soups. They're all high sodium soups. You can't throw Star Wars soups. It's like to put Minichlorians in there that have extra sodium. You're not going to get gout because you ate some goddamn Yoda pasta.

You eat a lot of pasta you're going to get... All right, I'm sorry. I'll let you finish. Yeah, no judgments, right? No judgments. No judgments. Okay, so we still don't know what a serious opinion is on this problem. So we'll get to that.

Then there's the Darth Vader burger at fast food chains in France. Remember the Burger King's spooky Halloween burger with the black buns that made everyone's shit turn green? Yeah, remember that? That's the exact same thing. Now it's rebranded as the Darth Vader burger at the Quick Chains in France. Le Quick. There's also the Jedi burger, which, according to ABC, News looks very much the same as a regular burger.

Oh, that's it? It's just called a Jedi burger. It's called a Jedi burger. Here's what's on it. The burger has two beef patties, a slice of cheese, onions, mayo relish, and pickles. Oh, I'm sorry, I meant Yoda Piquels. They invented a new process to brine the pickles to look exactly like Yoda's wrinkly skin. Oh, wow, that's clever. They made pickles that look like scabs? No, they just pickles like Yoda. They're just wrinkly fucking cucumbers. That's what YODE is. In the shape of Yoda? No, they're just pickles. I mean, yeah, they consider oh, another Yoda pickle.

Well, I would like to eat a shape of Yoda pickle. That sounds fun. Listen, if you're going to start, if you're going to start limiting the way that fast food brands can experiment and brand with their food, here's what you're not going to get. You're not going to get the Basket Robin Shrek Ogre Sunday.

Good. Okay, you're not going to get Gandalf's gobble melt. You're not going to get all these wonderful branded foods. Why are you, you're trying to shut down burgers? Really? This is the biggest problem in the universe? If you go on any other day of the year, you can just get the exact same Jedi burger. It has fucking onions and cheese on it.

What makes it Jedi? There's nothing Jedi about it. Who cares? I want to order a Jedi burger. I want a Jedi burger all the time. Good. If it's the same thing I don't, I'm buying the branding. I know.

I'm trying to commune with this franchise I like by eating a hamburger. How does that hurt you? I'll tell you, it doesn't hurt me as serious. It hurts you. And I'll get to that in just a second. It obviously is because it's a fast food burger. Let's start there. And these kids, these kids they're marketing, too,

who don't know any better, eating these high-sodes, high-sodium garbage. 30-year-old kids. Yeah. Look, if you start, look, all I'm saying is, if you start attacking, older than 30, if you start attacking branded foods,

you're not going to get Nintendos. You're not going to get Legend of Zelda cereal, Super Merebrother cereal. You're not going to get Batman Returns cereal. The legacy that branded foods has had in our lives has been as immense as it is wonderful. And if you start attacking Star Wars branded food, you're attacking all branded food.

That's true. That's true. What's wrong with you today? I'm going to get to it, Reseris. I'm going to get to exactly. What does she get to it already? What about the Maddox branded hot sauce? Yeah, exactly.

How is any different? Guys, I'll tell you exactly how it's different. Oh, yeah, here we go. Let me go through this. There's still, there's still more fun. 10 minutes technical difficulty break. You're going to get to it. This is from metro.co.com.

They're going through all the different, like, ridiculous Star Wars food items now. And there's one that actually makes sense here, but it's not this. It's, there's, there's a Chewbacca-themed Spiced Latte coffee mate creamer. A coffee mate fucking creamer, Chewbacca themed? Okay. Is it brown? Huh? Is it brown?

Yeah, it just has Chewbac's face on it. Oh. What's wrong with that? Spiced Latte creamer. Yes. Then how are you having fun with your coffee? Because it costs more. All this brandy costs more shit heads.

It costs more. We're paying more for this. branding. They're paying for the thing. Yes, we are, because they pay a licensing fee. Let me tell you what Maddox wants in his food. Okay. He wants it to be exactly like it is

on TV, where beer just has the word beer on it. All cereal is just white boxes that say cereal. You have no choice in anything. You walk into the store, they fill your card up for you, and then you just walk out. Sounds like Cuban and me. That's not at all what I want, but the

non-labeled branding, actually I did think about doing that. I want to create to store with non-branded items. So yeah, you do come in. I'm okay with that. That's fun. And you do have a choice. Yeah.

I can't wait to eat cereal o's and drink milk-branded milk. You can draw whatever you want on the box. You don't have a, like there's no place to draw on the boxes on sale. I don't have time. That's a fucking lie. I don't have time to make my own food creative. Look, the other day, I bought a can of shaving cream that had Dennis Neddry's face on it. Oh, Jurassic Park?

Yes, because remember how in Jurassic Park? Yes, because remember how in Jurassic Park? Park, Nanjri stored the embryos in a can of barbersol. Barbersol made like special like, huh-huh, there's dinosaurs hidden in here. Shaving cream and I was like, I'm buying this one. Now I get to pretend I'm in Jurassic Park every time I shave. Now every time I shave, I pretend that I'm going to get covered in Dilafasaurus pit and die in a mud pit and have the embryos disappear until they're found in Jurassic Park 3.

Yeah, well, it would be better if you pretended like you were a supporter of the show and went to Harri's.com slash biggest. I'd say $5. Look, I put it... If you want to pretend to live with dinosaurs, use promo code big days to say $5 off your first purchase. Here is an actual Star Wars food-related product that I am 100% on board with.

It's totally makes sense. There is a Pop-Tart with Han Solo frozen in carbonite made out of frosting. That's great. That's awesome. Yeah, look at this picture. That's fun. Look at this picture.

It's kind of hard to tell, but it's Han Solo in frosting. Okay. Which is the only Star Wars food item that actually makes. sense. That's fun and it's practical. You know, I get it. You have really high standards for your, like, marketing. Yeah, what about Darth Taters?

Oh, geez. Luke Piewalkers. ArtuFrux, chicken drums. Yota soda. Chalk, teas, iced tea. Don't you drink or eat any of these things? Salacious crumb cakes. Landos, flandos. What are you eating?

Yeah, you know what? It's serious. It's just normal food that isn't a pump. of a Star Wars character. That's it. Antiquin's Brannathins. You're not eating these? Anyone can do these.

A death star. Okay, what? Obi-1 can Kobe beef. You nailed it. Yeah, great job, asshole. Obi-1 can Kobe beef medallions. Emperor Pelper beans. How come you're not eating these foods?

Oh, great. Awesome. What's wrong with you? How about Ewaks, Pee-Warks? They're just a can of peas with E-Waks on. Pea-b-b-pewarks? Pea-warks? It's not a food.

It's peas are foods. Peas are food. No, what you want to say, you probably want to say something like... Wayne Brady. Yeah, exactly. Wickets, stick-it-buns. No, that's not good either. No, that's not good.

All right, what's the... You'll have to cut a lot of this out. No, you quit. We end on failures here. That's it. That's my whole life. All right. Chewb-b-b-choo-bach.

How about chewy, bachalca, armba. I already said stewbaka, asshole. Chewbac-stubbaka. I already said that. Oh, that sounds real hearty. If you listen to this, though. Then there's Star Wars cookie cutters. The Darth Vader cookie cutter makes it look like a little gingerbread girl.

I got the picture here. Look at this. This is in the corner, in the lower left-hand corner, there's a little Darth Vader. It looks like a gingerbread girl. Looks like Kathy. They don't look like anything. You got to decorate them with icing. You can't just pull a cookie.

A gingerbread cookie kind of doesn't look like a gingerbread cookie until you put his little gingerbread buttons on him, his gingerbread bowtie, and his little gingerbread smile. You need to stop with this problem now before I continue to humiliate you. Assyrius, I tease this, right? I said, I'm going to tell you what this is, and it's going to hurt you with Stereo's, and everybody who loves branded food and products, right? There's something called the Frozen Effect, and this is from Forbes.com from an article titled, When Disney Movies Merchandising is Too Much.

and they talked about how frozen merchandising accumulated $107.2 billion in retail sales. That's more than the GDP of Morocco, Slovakia, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic. That's like saying, hey, Dominican Republic, you know all that product you've been producing domestically? Every single bottle of rum,

all those bananas, tobacco, refined petroleum, and medical instruments? Like nothing. We spend money, we spend more money on shitty frozen merchandise than everything, every single citizen in your country makes combined. You know what? Then maybe the Dominican Republic should fucking get off its ass and make some products

who you want to buy. Okay, I'm sorry that we all like the snowman from Frozen. How about instead of making refined petroleum, they make Uncle Owen and Anteuroos pumpkin-flavored Dunkeroo's. Wedgantilles is Aunt's Chili. Huh? Monmouth's prawn cakes. Just get off your ass and do something. Yeah, make a pun-based food item.

That's how you make the real box. New gun-raised bun tray. Get to work. Fuck you, Osterios. Senator Flanadalah, General grievances, federal encrusted eagalices. Get off your ass and make something people want to buy. Serious, I don't even know where you're getting all this shit, right?

You just rattling his off? This is the food I eat every day. How can you know? Don't you guys eat Quigon gin flavored pizza? No, it's just pizza. What's wrong with you people? I do. It's just pizza, Stereos. It's just fucking pizza with sausage on it.

How about that, huh? I'm sorry, Sean. I hate you. you too now. I hate all of you guys. I don't even know why. I'm just disappointed in humanity and you guys are represented. I don't know. I'm just mad at everything right now. Yeah. I need to take a, I need to take a minute. Good. And while you're taking that minute, stew on this, this is from the articles. Frozen seems to be too much of a good thing. It brought the understanding back to retailers that they can sell character license throughout the store, but was also seen as

freezing out other attractive licenses because retailers were too overwhelming in their support of Elsa and company at the expense of placing other licensed goods on the shelves. Now, you think, well, that's fine because the market determines what's popular, right? Yes. But the problem is, Disney has purchased so much property. They own Marvel now. They own Star Wars. They own Elsa.

They own all their other Disney properties. So if you are a creator whose property is owned and purchased by Disney and you want to sell some of that merchandising, Disney and Disney alone determines how much money you make because they determine what they're going to market and if they want to have a whitewash in the store of everything Star Wars or everything Frozen, too fucking bad. Now you can't buy any other merchandise for any other brand because Disney's determined that Frozen's number one. How is that a problem? Use the internet if you want to buy your shit. If you want to buy your breaking bad action figures, get them on Amazon. I mean, honestly, a lot, I know a thing or two about toy determination

in the retail space because of my... No surprise. And it's, look, a lot of the shelving space is determined by the retailers themselves. Walmart, Target, some of these bigger brands actually have a really big saying in what toys show up and what toys don't. Also, as a Disney stockholder, I want them to buy more and more. As soon as Disney bought Star Wars, I'm like, I'm buying a lot of Disney stock. It's got up 150%. It's fantastic. I hope Disney. I hope Disney ruins everything. Yeah, well, you guess what? They're ruining Star Wars. You're short-sighted. Here's why. They ruined Star Wars? I'll tell you why. Well, we'll get to that. I might place the blame of ruining Star Wars and somebody else. This is, uh, continue from the article. It says, with Frozen, we may now be seeing what Lima, it's a licensing industry merchandisers

association, respondent called brand fatigue. Oversaturation of entertainment and celebrity properties was mentioned as a negative trend minimizing available shelf space for all, though Disney does not seem to be suffering. Now, here's what happens. When you start to see Star Wars showerheads in the shape of R2D2 and Darth Vader, Awesome shower. You're pretty much past the hump of brand fatigue. And this is from maus.com.

It talks about why no one pays attention to your marketing. There's this article. So if you have too many messages on a medium, right, or the value provided is too low or infrequent to deserve attention, like I can go to the dollar store right now and buy a 24 pack of Star Wars branded water bottles for a dollar. Yeah, that brand association has been devalued to nothing because I'm buying essentially...

Wait a minute, wait a minute. You give a shit. Why are you worried about their brand? Right, exactly. I'm not, I'm telling you how people like a stearice who like Star Wars merchandising, in the end is going to nip you in the bud because they're devaluing the brand by making it so cheap. But how is it going to nip him in the bud? Yeah, I get Star Wars water.

And Star Wars showerheads. You get it now, but you won't be able to in the future when it kills the brand. Yeah, but listen, what the solution. It's like, yes, this happens with licensed properties. At some point, the Ninja Turtles waned in popularity from the 80s. Yeah, this is what happens. G.I. Joe gets less popular. He man gets less popular. Why? Why? It's definitely not because there's too much He made stuff. It's because people grow up. It's because the storytelling gets bad. Clearly they haven't,

Dick. Clearly they haven't grown up if they're still buying, what's the Dunkeroo's one? Uncle Owen and Andrews, Pumpkin flavor, Dunkin'Root. Dunkin'Rooz. Look, here's what, look. A lot of us do. Yeah. All I'm saying is Star Wars has been selling merchandise like really well for decades now. If your problem is you're worried that Star Wars is not merchandising enough. That Star Wars merchandise will get worse. Look, don't worry. It's already... I'm sure they got a couple guys at Disney

trying to figure it out. Yeah, they'll fix this problem. No, Disney right now, I mean, the entertainment industry for movie and TV is hurting, really bad. Most people outside of the industry don't know this, but, like, TV's essentially dead. Also good.

Whether it's good or bad is irrelevant. Right now, the industry is really hurting. So Disney, this is like one last hurrahs, a big cash grab to merchandise as much as they possibly can for the Star Wars franchise. And I mean, if the movie comes out and is anything less than stellar,

it will kill this brand, especially with how much merchandising there is. No, but didn't they put three movies through that were dog shit and they still couldn't kill the brand? Yeah, that's... Oh, I don't know that there were dog shit, Dick. But listen to this. This is the final point here.

It says, the messaging can't be effectively tuned or controlled by the user. When you have an oversaturation of a brand campaign that is so overwhelming that people get sick of it like I am now, it becomes something that you resent after a while. And then this is from Marketingweek.com, the biggest factor that's missing in all this stuff, I think, is authenticity. And this isn't not, they didn't say this with, in specific to, excuse me, specifically with regards to Star Wars. They just said this with all brands. They said, with the research showing that extensive exposure to brand message is causing fatigue, creating authentic experiences for consumers should help refresh the interest.

And that's why I said the Pop-Tart with the Han Solo Frozen and Carbonite is one of the few items on this list that is an authentic Star Wars brand because they are actually making it a non-trivial aspect of the product. It's not just slapping a logo on the side of a can a can of a soup that you can buy any other day and say, oh, now it's Star Wars. Wait, what was it? Do you C3POs? Yeah. Yeah. Well, those are fun now. A delicious soup for delicious people. I think that, look, buddy, I could take a big dump on these Pop-Tarts, too. It's like if anyone wants to be a contrarian and take a dump on something fun, they can do it. I can be like, well, Hans Solo is a really cool character.

He's a smuggler. He shot Grito first. Doesn't it devalue him as a character to put him on a Pop-Tart? Why do I want to eat Han Solo? Isn't it weird that I'm eating my hero? If anything, I want to eat Jabba. Like, you can make some argument about all this shit. It's like, you, look, I don't.

just think that everyone's a sad about Star Wars and you're being a bit of contrarian about it. Well, it seems like your argument is that it will devalue their brand and then a stereos won't have access to all these products anymore. In the long run. Why do you give a shit about Disney's brands? I, because it doesn't just affect Disney. It affects a lot of things. Like, this kind of oversaturation of brand, a brand marketing almost killed the video. In fact, it did kill the video game industry. There we go, video games.

In 1984. The Atari. So when the ET movie came out, Atari decided that this was going to be the biggest fucking movie, and they're going to make this game, and they pushed it through before it was finished and made this shitty product. And they decided that this game was going to be so popular

that they printed more cartridges of the game than there were systems to play it on. People might buy two. They assume. One for saving. One for a bonus episode. I always encourage people to buy two just in case. And some know.

I don't know how computers work. Yeah. Maybe something for happening in Dropbox, it might disappear forever. So the video game industry was killed by this oversaturation and this marketing, and to the point where it took a company like a juggernaut like Nintendo with their product to be able to resuscitate it. But that's potentially what could have because here's the thing. I like the original three Star Wars movies, and the prequels are awesome. They're the best movies.

And I... That's not surprising. And I like these things. I genuinely do. but this oversaturation is going to kill the brand. And I'm telling you, you know what? I'm the ghost of Christmas future. And I'm telling you what the future looks like,

and it's a Star Wars list future, buddy. And I wouldn't want to live in that future either. But I do. I know you do. That's the problem. Just say, I'm annoyed by all these nerds, when you're like-sabors around. Just say that.

Don't attack the branding. I am. Other people's excitement bothers me and confuses me. That's true. I don't like that all those nerds are happy. I'm unhappy. How come they're not unhappy? Let me complain about it.

No, it's too much, man. Every time a Game of Thrones comes around, every idiot on Facebook and their analysis of the last night's episode, I just tune it out. I'm like, oh, I'm good. That's how we bond with each other as human beings. Mr. Romato. We talk about things that are going on and stuff we like.

And we eat that stuff too. We want it in our bodies. So it can be a part of us. They make start, like some... It's brandedly delicious. This person, it's not an official branded product, but there's a guy, I think, an artist in Hungary, who made Star Wars seem dildos.

So you can fuck yourself with Star Wars 2 now. Go ahead, Dick, fuck yourself. Hey, but you know when you don't want to get fucked is on the price of your razors. That's. That's true. This episode is brought to you by Harry's. Use promo code, biggest problem,

to save $5 off your first purchase. Look, the holidays are coming up. This holiday season, Harry says something for every guy out there, whether it's a secret Santa gift for your office. You know about those? You know what Secret Santa's up? where you get everybody a present and it's a huge pain in the ass

because you don't want to spend too much money, but you don't want to look cheap. Exactly. You get their ass a nice Harry's holiday set for $15, say $5 when you use our promo code, right? Do they have Harry's phaser razors, Star Wars-themed razors? No, because they're a great company that cares about your shave. They don't care about branding. They do, however, have a great holiday pack.

Asarios, I want you to look at this. Tell me. This is the Harry's holiday kit. Let me take a look at this. I want to give this to you because you look like shit. No one's going to tell you that, but you need a nice shave.

You guys can't make you feel better about yourself. You guys can't see this. Asteris came from a night of heavy drinking at a bowling alley. And he was... And heavy pot smoking. Oh, heavy pot smoking. At the bowling alley after party.

Thanks for not saving it for the air. All right. So I'm seeing a daily face wash. I haven't watched my face in a few days. I think my face could probably use the power of cooling peppermine and eucalyptus to gently exfoliate all the Star Wars cereal off my cheeks and lips.

All is a little aggressive. I don't know. I mean, it might take a couple of sessions. Oh, okay, and so here we go. Oh, all right, so this Harry's razor comes at this nice, cool little blade, kind of like a Montblanc pen. Now, seriously, I want you to hold that right. It's heavy like, it's not like a gun. It's gold like C3PO, it's gold like C3PO, but it's almost heavy like sort of Han Solo's blast tech blast official.

That's true. That's not a real Disney is not paying us for this free product placement. We're not getting paid by Disney. I'm seeing one, two, five blades? Yeah. Is it how many it has? Yeah, I'm counting them right now. There's five blades on this guy?

That's great. You know what? They could do with three. With the quality of those. Imagine you're telling all these companies how to run their businesses today. Disney, this is how you should do marketing. A billion-dollar marketing initiative. Harry's got too many blades in the razor.

You should be a consultant. I like the number of blades. I think it's a perfect razor. And then everyone should do the opposite. Yeah. Well, hey, visit harries.com and use promo code biggest problem to save $5 after your first purchase. So thank you for supporting us, guys.

Thank you to Harries for supporting the show. Awesome. All right. Asturis, you have a problem? Yeah, and you know what? I think we can probably go through mine real quick because I don't think we're going to argue about this too much. I don't...

What show are you on, buddy? We had an entire episode arguing about apples. Okay, well, but look, apples are one. thing, I don't think anyone in this room thinks the prequels are awesome. And my problem is prequel apologists. Star Wars. Star Wars prequel apologists. Yeah. I suppose the Godfather prequel was even better than the original. So let's not say all prequels are bad. It's just, there's an easy way to get hits now on the internet. It's to put out a think piece or a podcast that's like, let's take a second look at the prequels. Let's reconsider the prequels.

There's this article on the AV club. I, it's, it's. It's called The Star Wars prequels don't deserve your hatred. And it came on a month ago. I see this every day on Facebook. I've only clicked on it now for the purpose of this podcast. Because every time I see that headline, I'm like, that's fucking clickbait. I hate that annoying clickbait bullshit. Right.

And it's just like comedians have made a lot of money shitting on the prequels for decades. I mean, the first one came out 15 years ago because they're bad movies. And so there's no more money to be made in it. So all these fucking think piece. blogger got to get hits assholes are writing like, oh, let's reconsider. In many ways, like, isn't this unrestrained genius kind of interesting and blah, blah, blah. And it's just a noise.

What are their points? Because I hate, like, I'll listen to the Mr. Planket reviews. Yeah. I listen to those. Red Letter Media. Well, do you know, have you ever heard his reviews of the prequels? Yes. They're like an hour and a half long for each movie.

They're so good. And for some reason, they're so satisfying. I'll just listen to them on a loop all day. The first time I saw his reviews, I recommend everyone go check out Red Letter Media's Star Wars reviews of the original three movies. I saw that he went in depth reviewing each movie and each one of these videos is like an hour and a half long. Oh, yeah, that's great. There's no fucking way. I'm going to watch this shit.

And then I watched a few minutes and I ended up watching all three. And they were so satisfying because he really breaks down everything wrong with that movie. And one of the big things, you know, back to the branding thing, is his criticism of the original three, the prequels. was that George Lucas let the outside world seep into the Star Wars universe. So Darth Vader was originally not a main character, not a very big character in the original three movies. And because he became so popular after the movie, George Lucas retroactively made movies about Darth Vader.

And that kind of seeped into the universe. That's where that branding also hurt the actual franchise. I'm not going to, I wouldn't blame the branding on that because between Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, people were like, oh, we like this Darth Vader guy. Yeah, in Star Wars, he's like the muscle. He's the enforcer. Like in Plinkett and the Red Letter and Media Reviews,

Mike Stacassel calls him like an SS asshole would be for the Nazis, just a guy that does the dirty business of the empire. Right. But after Star Wars, people are like, this Starz Vader guy is pretty fucking cool. So in Empire, he's the main bad guy now. He's not answering to General Veers, or he's not answering to Admiral,

I forget the name of the Admiral. He's like choking these motherfuckers out left and right in empire. And then obviously in Return to the Jedi, which is not as good of a movie, he, you know, he's the, you know, he's the emperor's hand. You know, he's sent to... When is he Luke's dad? Because that was obviously thought of afterwards. Oh, yeah.

He's definitely not Luke's dad in the first movie. Yeah. Absolutely not. Right. So, serious, right now, everything you're doing is, are you defending the prequels? No. How is that... No, those are the originals.

How does that sound like that at all? Because, because, uh, the criticism. of the prequels is that George Lucas let the outside universe of this Darth Vader seep into the story and made it more about Darth Vader. Well, but the thing is you could make a compelling story about Anakin Skywalker. He just didn't do that. The problem with the prequels isn't that they decided to focus on Anakin Skywalker. The problem is that it's bad storytelling.

Like, you could do any, you know, you can give me, like something that Bob Odenkirk says is like, hand me this script to Casablanca and watch me turn it into a huge piece of shit. Like, you can ruin any story. Not Mad Max because there is no story. That's why it's the best, man. That was the best, 100 out of five stars, I still like that. I'm not going to argue with you. But yeah, so here's something from the AV Club.

Here's a line, quote, they're far better, far more fun space operas than their damaged reputation suggests. For that matter, I mean, they are space operas, because it's like soap operas but in space. Like Star Trek was a space opera Star Wars, it's considered a space opera Babylon 5 is the biggest space opera

Ballastar Galactic, a huge space opera Yeah, exactly, because there's a lot of sex and relationship shit and people talking You know, this article also says For that matter, they're also better written than they're given credit for it It's like, no, they're not These are bad movies

And if you like them, it's because you were 12 When they came out And you liked being a kid And so, okay, look, I'm not going to say the Goonies is amazing, I like the Goonies. Yeah. So it's just like, just write your fucking blog piece about that bloggers.

Just go, yeah, I was 11 and I wasn't that judgmental of the media I consumed. And, okay, yeah, I guess I like it. I guess I like it a little more than an adult who saw it. I had a friend who was my age still who kind of liked them, and it really made me lose, less in my opinion of him. Yeah. Just because he liked the prequels. What was his reasoning?

Like, what did he say? I think he just liked lightsabers. I worked with this guy at, uh, my old job, who is as fanatical as a Star Wars fan gets. You know those guys on TV? I didn't realize this about him at the time, but I was kind of, I made an off-handed comment one day about how there are these really fanatical Star Wars fans

who have entire rooms of their houses dedicated to the action figures. And they just have like, it's just like a storeroom for action figures. And he got really defensive. He goes, what's wrong with that? And I thought, well, it's weird. Yeah, it's super weird. And also it's like kind of creepy. And then I found out that he was one of these,

guys and that he he rented this apartment that he didn't live in. It was a separate apartment in a different state that he had just filled with Star Wars action figures. You're friends, man. He had two or three. Corn and porn apartments for their action figures that he probably housed his real doll in as well

when people weren't looking. I don't know. That he put Yaddle's face on. Yaddle is the female Yoda, by the way. You're welcome. Thank you, Sterios. Um, no, he, so he had all these action figures and he had, I think, two or three of every single one, one to open and play with, and one to, one to keep forever, and then one to sell or trade.

So he had, like, three of every single one, and there's this huge, like, subculture of these people who go around doing this, and he was a huge defender of the prequels. He was a huge prequel apologist. How would he play with them? Like, he would open it up to a pu-poo, pu-pute. What did he do that? What do you do that? Poo-poo!

I mean, he'd put him up on his desk at work as, as decoration sometimes. I didn't, I think I saw him like carrying one around one time, but I don't know. I don't know. It's kind of weird. In his back pocket next to his slingshot? No, it was not like that. It was like almost like a fanaticism. And this is what, where I'm talking about.

Like a rosary. I don't know if he, I don't know if he worshipped them, but he did carry them around a lot. To put in his butt, yeah. This goes back to last week's problem. The inability to disconfirm. These are people who are such fans of the franchise that they cannot. disconfirm their belief that the entire franchise is good and nothing that comes out of it is bad. And this is one of the big problems is the prequels.

Yeah, well, because you don't want to believe that it could, that the thing you like could possibly be bad. It's sort of why people stay with shitty, like, spouses or a girlfriend's a boyfriend because you're like, well, I put in all this time. Like, I would hate for all that time to be wasted. It's the sunk cost fallacy. The sunk cost fallacy. Exactly. That's why a gambler keeps gambling. It's like, we'll see, I can kind of relate.

I remember being 17 and walking out of Star Wars Episode 1 and going like, I think that was good? Like, I think I liked it. Star Wars 1 with the kid? Yeah, well, just because I was a teenager and it had not occurred to me that Star Wars could be bad. Like that was the farthest thing from my mind. So I kept having to come with ways where I was like, I guess I like that. I guess it's like that scene. You know, it's kind of like when someone's like losing their religion.

Like at first, like, well, that's weird. No, but Jesus said this. Ah, but that's weird. It's like, it's a slow descent into like, into realizing like, oh, no, I've been lied to. So when was the moment that you decided there was no George Lucas? Don't tell me that. How was the progression of, like, as a fan? Because I saw the first one, I was like, this dog, like, the first 10 minutes, you're like, oh, this is or shit.

You're smarter than me. Not smarter. I just don't have a fanatic devotion to Star Wars. Yeah. I went nuts for it. I mean, I'll tell you honestly, one of the big things that's kind of helped me, because for a while I just ignored the prequels, I was like, I don't like them, I don't know why, whatever.

Like, they didn't bother me until I saw the Planket Reviews, you know, at red lettermedia.com, and he dissected, like, from a filmic perspective, why these movies are bad, these characters have no motivations, this plot makes no sense. And after that, I was like, I'm super mad. Like, now I get it. It's like, he unlocked the middle.

of why they were so terrible. He really went in depth. You know, I'll tell you the exact moment that happened for me when I became disillusioned with the franchise is the first time I saw... Like, it was the prequel movies. I got early tickets. I went opening night, and I'm going opening night

for the new movie, too. Oh, absolutely. You guys are both huge Star Wars fans. I'm a fan of the franchise. I like the original three movies, but then this is the moment. You sound like it. So there's the grievous... General...

General Grievous. General Grivus. Dracula. Right? Yeah. No, no. The first two guys with the Asian accents, the... The Nemoids. Nemoids. Which guys?

How did they sound? Like a really racist, like a very stereotypical Asian accent. They're supposed to be like the Japanese powers in World War II. Like that's how they go. Like they essentially made this guy like Hirohito. Like that's absolutely true. So I heard that and I'm like, oh, this doesn't... Newt Gunray.

Newt Gunray, that's, yeah. By the way, which is Newt Gunray. That's Newt Gingrich and Gunray is Reagan backwards. That's George Lucas, taking a point. pot shot at your conservative heroes. Yeah. How'd that work out for him? And there was

stumped. And there was another one too. He used, he intentionally gave the line only Sith Lord see things in absolutes. Yeah. And that was a pot shot at George W. Bush at the time because George W. Bush, after 9-11, came out and said, you're either with us

or against us, this like black and white, good or bad, Old West point of view. And George Lucas took a pot shot at George W. Bush at the third movie, too. Yeah, absolutely. Because, yeah. So, anyway, the moment I became stupid.

It didn't work out that well for it. No. The actual moment that I became disillusioned with the franchise, though. And this was, like, a shocking thing for me is when I first saw Jar Jar Binks on screen. Everyone in the theater, like, became quiet, and we looked around. Everyone's, like, looking at each other. Yeah, we were like, is this really happening? Is this what this franchise has become?

This is an actual thing I'm supposed to consume as part of my media. of this entire rich franchise where there's all these great puppets and creatures and this rich diversity. Now we got fucking Jar Jar Binx. And this is how bad the Star Wars Apologists have gotten Astirios. Now there's this article floating around on the internet about how they're trying to fix the prequels retroactively by saying, oh, well, Jar Jar is actually a clever character because he's actually a Sith Lord. And there's all these theories. Yeah, there are all these fucking theories where people spend hours of their lives dissecting these movies

and trying to retroactively justify Jar Jar Binks as a character in this universe. Here's this YouTube video by, I think it's Vincent H. It says, is Jar Jar Jar a Sith? Crazy Theory might be true. And then there's like, might be true. I better click. Then there's another one by Shatana Studios, the exact same thing. They just ripped it off.

There's one, Jar Jax is an evil Sith mastermind theory. Another one by Dash Star. There's another one on crack.com, why Jarjr Binks is more evil than you ever know. It's all these, like, click-lady things. Yeah. Here's a little excerpt from the Jar Jar Binks theory. Listen to this. You may have heard already about the theory that's blowing up around the internet now.

Oh my God. About how Jar Jar Binks may actually be a Sith master. So I decided to make this video to explain every single detail for you. So here it is. This is the completely airtight, absolutely foolproof case for why Jar Jar Binks is the most powerful Sith master in the universe. And for why Kelly should let me go to the prom with her. Number one, I'm cool How do you guys feel when listening to this?

I want to, I want to give this guy swirly. Yeah. Oh, okay. Do you feel any camaraderie with him at all? Do you identify with what he's saying at all? No, no, because he's just trying to make a bug off this dumb jar jar thing. I don't know. That's a cynical.

I think he sounds genuine in this retarded video he's made. Oh, it goes on, man. Doesn't it sound genuine to you? I'll listen to him. You know, let's find out. It's an eight minute long, we're not going to listen to the whole thing. He just goes, like listen to his voice and cadence and how like, it's almost conspiratorial. Listen to this and then go listen to like any of the young version of a pedo smile.

Yeah, it does sound like that. Absolutely does. It sounds like a guy I would say, okay, cool. And then turn around and go, hey, don't let any of the kids go near that guy. Yeah. Anyway, this video goes on, man. He just like, uh, rant about this. Yeah, listen to the cadence.

It's almost exactly like those 9-11 truther videos. Yeah. Listen to the conspiratorial tone. Jar Jar Executes a 20-foot twisting somersault through the air that if performed

by any other character you would assume they were either a Jedi or a Sith. As we know, the Jedi themselves are inspired by Shaolin monks.

The convincing theory is that Jar Jar is based off of another traditional martial arts discipline called Z-Quan. Jar Jar Jar almost single

Anyway, it just goes on man, it just goes on and on. ISIS is right. We got to be wiped off at the face of the earth If this is what we're doing.

Yeah, I know. There's so many times when... Like, I get it. I get it. Exactly. I get it. I get it. Radicalize me right now. This is why they hate us.

Send me the bomb. I'll take this guy out. Anyway, good problem, mysterious. Prequel apologists. Yeah. We're all tired of them. Yeah. And that video, by the way,

has two million views in one month. And every other copycat video also has like at least 100 or 200,000 views. What's the problem with them, though? With the prequels? No, with the people who apologize for them. Because I honestly, I don't think it's genuine. I think it's just a pose. I think it's a way to get some content out in the

month before Star Wars comes out. Because no one's going to click on, here's why the prequels are bad. Because at this point, we've had, I mean, the first, you know, episode one came out in 1999. It's, it's 2015. We've had 16 years to know why it's bad. So now they've got to come up with why it's good. Yeah. And that's the only reason they're doing it. It's a way to capitalize on the upcoming Star Wars movie. Anyway, hope you guys appreciated the story. Star Wars themed episode, brought to you by the biggest problem. I want to talk to on Star Wars anyway. Here's my problem, Dick.

Geriatric action heroes. Okay. Okay. Why is that a problem, dick? What is the feeling that you got when you saw Hans Solo lumbering out of the Millennium Falcon in the commercial? Yeah. You mean sadness?

I heard in my heart, I'm like, oh, please God, don't let him go on an adventure. He's going to hurt himself. Right? Yeah. Like, what universe is a, is there no router that needs to be reset on the Millennium Falcon, by the way? Because that will stump a 70-year-old for sure, all day. It's because they're trying to- The hyperdrive doesn't work. Yeah, Dad, you got to unplug it and plug it back in.

We've gone over this 100 times, Han Solo, pull the plug, plug it back in. I'd pay to see that scene. It's because they're trying to sell Millennium Centrum to old people, geriatrics. They're trying to steal Star Wars themed adult diapers. A blue milk of magnesium. Yeah. Is that a thing? Yes, that's great.

And who made the oatmeal so fucking spicy? Yeah, I mean, I hope there's no... Steel cut, light saber cut. Light saber cut oatmeal. There's no rebelling that needs to be done after like 9.30. Because that's when he's going to be kind of out. Or dancing with the... Dancing with the Hollow Stars is on.

It's going to be on. Yeah. Dancing with the Sith. Him and Chewy are going to be watching. in their recliners, ranting about which judge they hate. Yeah, and then talking about how hot the girls are and then falling asleep before the show ends.

Yeah, I hope that a blaster is harder to lose than glasses. Which my dad has lost three pair in one week. It's like, your glasses are on your forehead, and your blasters and your holster dad. We got to go blow up the death star. Where's Hunter? Solos Blaster fucking lost it again. Why is a

73 year old man on this adventure with us? We got to give him a blaster chain that we clip to his pants. So he can't, so what is it, leave his blaster at the hyperspace dannies. Yeah. Yeah. In the clip, there's a commercial where he goes,

oh yeah, all the stories are true. It's all true. It's all true. Yeah. You would have been telling them all day, every day. To everyone. To everyone. You'd be telling them 10 times a day, 8 days a week, until the sun exploded. Everyone would know these stories. Yeah.

Or until the sun crusher artificially blew up a sun early with hyperspace proton torpedoes. Nerd, nerd. I got a stats for you. I got a stats for you. The average age of an action hero today, when you say 48. Oh, that's bad. 48. 10 years ago, it was 35 and a half. It's Stallone.

It's Bruce Willis. It's all of these geriatric fucks who shove themselves. You don't talk about shoving down our face. Why? Why did they only put these guys, these old assholes in these roles? Because honestly, to go back to some of the Maddox said before, it's like Hollywood's making less money, they're less willing to take a risk on a new face.

Right. They would rather kind of do a limited budget Stallone movie because they'll be like, well, at least people know who he is than try to build a new star. It's fear. You know what? That's the easy answer. Okay.

And that might be right. But this is, this is, see, that occurred to me right off the top. Like, okay, that could be it. It's a safe bet. They're bankable. However, it costs a lot. It costs a lot to pay those guys. Not anymore.

Well, okay. This is an alternate theory. Maybe everyone needs a dad. Maybe everyone in society needs a dad. That's alternate theory number two. But I don't know. I don't kind of buy that one. Alternate theory number three, you're appealing to multiple market segments.

Because, look, my dad saw Rocky in the 70s when it came out. So, like, maybe they think that my dad will go see Creed and a young kid who's into Michael B. Jordan go see Creed. Like, maybe they're, maybe it's multiple quadrant marketing. It's old people porn. It's baby boomer porn. That's what it. That's the result of it.

The result of it is like, I can still get my dick hard. These fucking baby boomers have midlife crises every 40 seconds. And they constantly need to be told that they're still worth something. You still got it? These kids don't know how to punch like you do at 70. Here's some cortisol shots. You're going to need them to walk into the theater. Yeah, man. The 60s never ended.

Incense, pepper, mince, da, da, da, da. Yeah, he's absolutely, you know what? You're absolutely right about that. Oh, they need it. Yeah, I know. Of course they do. One of the saddest things I've ever seen is the draped leathery skin on Arnold Schwarzenegger and expendables too.

Hold on, I got a great picture for you. like a fucked up crocodile. I read a thing like leather face was trying to make a full body suit. Exactly. Made out of like old Arnold Schwarzenegger that stayed out in the sun too long. I read a piece about how empowering it was that Sylvester Stallone was still doing Rocky movies while I was doing research for this. And they said, wow, even at whatever, 60 something, his physique still looks great.

So I pulled up the shots of Rocky. This was Rocky in the 80s, right? Yeah, it looks pretty good. I want to be that guy. If I was a chick, I'd want him to fuck me, right? Here's the Rocky they're talking about who still looks great. Holy shit. Oh, man, that looks like a bag of smashed potato.

It looks like the ghost of Christmas AIDS. It's embarrassing. It's embarrassing to me that these old men are doing this and that other old men are encouraging it. We can, men, as a whole, get blamed, like that age gap shit where it's like, oh, Tom Cruise is trying to bang like a chick. in a movie who's 25 years younger than him. No shit.

I don't want to see that either. What? No, I don't want to see Tom Cruise's stapled ass trying to plow Emily Blunt, a young, nubile female. Do you want to see that? Counterpoint to that, I want to think that I could bang people in their mid-20s until I die, and if the media tells me it's possible, I'll consume that media.

Really? Because I'm afraid of... You both want to see that? No, look, hey. I have that fantasy. Look, yeah. Why? Buddy, I'm telling you why this works.

I'm not saying it's correct. I'm just saying you can see why you can see why you would want to go watch a movie where you're sitting in the audience. You're some fat fuck shoving popcorn in your mouth being like, my dick still works. I can still pork you all the hot girls. As an old man, yes, but not as a 30-something year old. I'm just, I'm just explaining the appeal of it. There's two things that go into that. There's that study they did recently where they looked at the, uh,

age of, the median age of men who women are attracted to, and it correlates directly, like, linearly with their age. A 35-year-old woman is attracted to a 35-year-old man, more or less, like, give or take three or four years. Yeah. Men, all the way across the board, up until like 70, all attracted to the age of 21. And I think that, you know, the reason is probably has more to do with our biology, because... Because they've never dated one. That's the real reason. Well, just, just, we're talking about physical attraction. I think it has more to do with our biology because they are the most fertile. And as a species, we exist to propagate. So you want to have sex with the most fertile type of person.

And men, unfortunately, for women, don't have that stigma associated with them because they can reproduce forever. So there's that. They have super fertile boobs. Yeah. Like men? No. 21-year-old girls. All right.

Let's move by. Sorry, that didn't work at all. Nope. God damn it. Jesus Christ. You know how old Bruce Willis was in Die Hard? Oh, no. Oh, in the first one?

What was he? It was after Moonlighting? He was 31, 29? 33. A normal age. A normal age for a guy to be running around fighting terrorists. How old was he in Die Hard for when they went to Russia? 300.

The Rock, Nicholas Cage. 32. So imagine The Rock with no Nicholas Cage, just Sean Connery. That's what all action movies are now. Oh, God, you're right. He's disgusting old men. Watching these old guys in Hollywood give a hand job to our dads. You're still worth something.

You could still do it like these young guys. I don't know. My dad doesn't watch anything. He's just like a dinosaur. He doesn't listen to anything. He doesn't watch anything except occasionally the news or boxing. And that's it. So Dick, as someone who has more of a normal dad,

would your dad watch this stuff and like, you know, would it appeal to him? Is he the target demo for this? I'm not sure. When he's going to see, like, Spector? Well, it's even, yeah, I think he has, I think he did see Spector. But Spector is, how old's? Isn't Daniel Craig in his late 40s?

Does he banning like a 22-year-old girl? Doesn't he ban like a girl half his age in Spector? Probably. Because the joke in Spector was like, James Bond is, what, saving his own daughter? Like, why is he with this super young girl? Here's something else I found. So my dad's the kind of guy who can never sit still. Like, he's always running, hiking, doing all these crazy, sweaty things.

Wow. Who knows why. The average age of an Ironman competitor is 43.5. And runners running the London Marathon in their 40s finish a minute faster than runners in their 20s. So these old guys have this some kind of like weird fixation on virility. Yeah. That I don't think we have.

No. Because they had some heyday in the 70s that they're always trying to relive. And we never had a heyday. I've never been happy one day in my life So there's going to be nothing In 30 years, there's going to be nothing to relive I just want to be in front of a bigger computer 20 years from now

That's what I'm hoping for Let me say this though about these Star Wars movies Which again I haven't seen I don't even have my ticket to Star Wars 7 yet Really? I do and I know you do If you have an extra I'll take it I'm just I just didn't want to have to fight the crowds I'm like I'll see it on Sunday

Just because I was burnt by the prequel I don't want to get myself excited again Dude I got D box seats and I got an extra ticket. I'll buy it off. All right, we're going together. All right, excellent. But here's what I'll say, at least in Star Wars.

They just executed the most lame high-five. Yeah, I told you. We're nerds. I was a force high-five. Yeah, I'm not going to pretend I'm not a fucking nerd. Here's what I'll say, though, hopefully, at least in Star Wars movies, it'll be like, yeah, Han Sol was like a general and Princess Lee is a general, and Luke Skywalker's an old Jedi master. and hopefully, because it's like what the Star Wars movies did, the new one is the trailer is all about these three super young characters.

Poe Damarin, Ray, and Finn, like these like young, cool characters. And I'm just hoping. Why are they cool? They don't ever say anything. I don't know. They seem cool to me. Poe Damarin's an ex-wing pilot that's intrinsically cool. Wait, which one is that?

Poe Damrant. I think he's like Iranian. He's the Middle Eastern X-wing pilot. He wouldn't be allowed in America. No, he certainly. but he could fly in with it. He could hyper jump into America. Prove he deserves it.

America's a privilege. Don't you two forget that. Take this privilege for granted. All I'm saying is all I'm saying is that because it's like you look at a movie like fucking Indiana Jones. That's way worse to me

because you're making Harrison Ford the action star. Like hopefully in these new movies he'll just be a supporting character he'll give some good advice. Yeah, well you know there might be two things going on with that. Like, they could easily cast one of these old guys, Dick, in one of these movies, to pass the baton onto a younger dude.

And I think they've tried that. But the problem is that I think egos get involved. Because Silester Stallone's not going to be like, he's not going to do a movie that's going to end his franchise of Rocky and pass the baton. Although they tried to do that. He just did with Creed. It's like now he's the Mickey. Yeah. Oh, I mean, that's one of the examples of it working.

There's a term, I forget who coined it, but it's called a legacy sequel, which is a sequel in which is a sequel in which. you pass your legacy on to someone else. But it's very rare that it works. Like in Creed, apparently that's the most successful Rocky movie of all time from a financial perspective. But you look at again, Indiana Jones 4, he tries to pass a baton on to Mutt Williams.

Yeah. And it absolutely doesn't work because his ego gets to the way or in Die Hard 4. It's him and his son running around Russia. Yeah, that's true. And they try to pass the baton off. He's like, you're the new McLean. And no one.

No. I don't need my action hero to have his fucking dad along on the adventure. Yeah, I know. That's it. Yeah, I know. I know. You're not going to hear any argument from me. Yeah.

It's like a fishing trip with explosion. It's old guy porn, guys. We're watching porn for old men. Vote up non-porn porn. Yeah, good problem, Dick. So would you say that this applies to the new Star Wars franchise? Because Harrison Ford is in it. All it is is is Han Solo.

And didn't he break his hip or something? Yes, he did. Yes. Every time I see. an old man on a movie, I'm worried. I know he's going to hurt himself. He hurt himself. He was out for six. He was out for seven weeks because he fucking hurt himself on the 7 of Star Wars. Old men are like toddlers. Like they start as toddlers. They're running around hurting themselves. Then they go through life. They have a job. They have a career and everything.

They hit 60. They become toddlers again. They're running around like crazy trying to hurt themselves. But can you imagine us in our 70s and our sons trying to take our car keys away from us and us just being like, get out of my fucking house. I will drive. I will die in my car. It's like, male stubbornness never dies. Oh, no. That's what happened to my dad?

My dad is, what? He's like, 86, 87 years old now. And the doctor's like, you can't drive anymore, man. Like, the last few times I rode with my dad. Like, I'm not a worrywart when I'm driving with someone. My mom screams at everything. And then this is like the first time I was like, yeah, dad, maybe you want to drift back into the lane you're supposed to be.

You're like driving towards traffic in their lane. I'm trying to Tokyo Drift, son. Shut up. Oh, and he was so pissed when we took the key. He's like, I would not take the key away. And he's like walking everywhere being a real rebel. It's like a drunk girl who won't let you have her keys because she thinks that you're like trying to step on a privilege or something.

It's like, just give me the fucking keys, Julie. You're going to die. Yeah. That's going to be Hans Solo and Boba Fett, cruising around the galaxy, running into planets. because they're too fucking old to be in a movie. Their old Cadillac X-Wing.

Yeah. But just imagine like, imagine like... With the feelers on the side to knock on the asteroid. The little antennas coming out the side of the wheels. Just imagine Han Sol behind the controls of the falcon going like, pew, pew, come on, chewy. And then you look up and it's like autopilot on.

And it's like, just let Dad think he's driving. Yeah, you're doing the Kessel Run. Yeah, and under 12 parsecs. Yeah, Dad. He's got the crocheted blanket over the back seat. I said the dream catcher hanging from the rearview bear. His Libertarian newsletter. Yeah.

All right, Dick, are you got anything else? Do you have anything you want to plug? Yeah, thank you, Dick. You could pick up my comics. The enemies at 20-something Mega Man or the enemies at 20-something Mega Man 2. Go to Devastatorpress.com slash Mega Man 2. I made these 12-page comics based on the assholes we meet in our 20s. So Mega Man has to fight couch surfing man,

unnecessarily complex high fives, man. Vapes at inappropriate times, man. Movie theaters. Yeah, unsolicited financial advice, man. Don't give away the whole look here. You know what, you're right. I guess I should stop here, but go to Devastatorpress.com slash Mega Man 2.

Print copies are finally out for the sequel. They're only five bucks. Great. Yeah, that was teased a long time ago, and you could only buy it digitally. Now it's finally available in print. We'll link to it on our website. Thank you. Thanks for coming by, Astero.

you guys were having me. Always a pleasure. Oh, and thanks to Harries for supporting the show. I'm going to wait for the prequels. God damn it. All right, guys. My problem this week was Star Wars merchandising. Star Wars Apologist, prequel apologists. Cheriatric action heroes. See you next Tuesday. I got a bunch of Japanese emperors. Do you guys want to pick the best one? Sure. Like six people called in claiming to be the emperor of

I can stop him whenever you want. Oh, Maddox, undik Masa-son. This is the emperor of Japanese people. I thought you say, that white people wearing the kimonos is shameful cultural appropriation. Much like claiming you drive like the samurai. You drive like the ignorant asshole, Ladox. And Dick Maser-son, Vok you son. Okay, that's pretty good.

No, I drive like a samurai. Like, the samurai ethos exists outside of Japanese. culture guys it's a set of rules it's a set of conduct right the busido code the bushito code right i could imagine you doing that at 70 attacking so on the samurai sword in his own i'm a japanese emperor this is how i talk i personally riko and american women wear kimono it's sexy and they take them back to paris and disapprove negative stereotype I don't know what he's talking about. You bring a great shame to family.

Because you shit in pants so much. You didn't need a reason. If you have a shred of honor, rest. You use bathroom next time you have to fart. Fuck yourself. Was that the same guy or is these just like multiple? He's had like three different accents in there at least. Okay, so that guy didn't.

Oim Japanese. Oh, hello. matter. This is the emperor of all Japanese people. This is how I talk. I was listening to your podcast, and I am very disappointed that I have so many pussies getting offended. You see, in Japan, we love America. We're very happy that you love our fool. Why not commit more, though? Maybe buy stack in Japanese market. Okay. I got two more. All right, let's keep going. Hey, guys, this is the prime minister of Japan. I can certainly be able to English and have

the voice of a girl. So I heard that Dick wanted to hear my opinion about is some dumbass American-drichs-mono. You really want to know what I think? I don't give a fucking shit asshole. It goes on like that. Well, you cut off the Emperor of Japan. All right, here, here, here. I'm putting things to worry about. But you're out at bars trying to get laid. All I need to do is snap my fingers and move on with my life because I'm the prime minister of Japan. Go fuck yourself, you small-faced. That's not what I'm trying to do at bars. I'm trying to get drunk. Okay.

Try and you show up that way, man. You say Bolo. Harul Maddox Khan and the Dikusan. This is the emperor of our the Japanese people. Oh my God. This is how I talk. Let me just say that I am very offended by White Tupigu's wearing our kimonos. They are a part of our culture.

And when you wear a kimono, you are elacing our carter identity. Please do not to do it. You are sarring the great regency of our people. Thank you. And get a rape too. I think that's the best one. That was the most Mexican of Japanese emperes we've had called through the show. All right.

I got one more. I know. I've done with Japanese people. I just wanted to end the show on a high note. All right. Hey, I just wanted to thank you guys for doing the show every week. It's one of the few things in my life right now that's kind of keeping me going. I've been going through a lot of hard stuff lately.

And yeah, I guess that's it. I just wanted to say thank you. And you're hilarious, so please don't stop. Fuck you, dick. Very touching. Because of that voice, I will say, fuck you, dick. Very touching. That's obviously a prank call.

Yeah.