The Dogg Zzone by 1900HOTDOG - Dogg Zzone 9000 - Episode 107, Knife Or Death with Lydia Bugg

Episode Date: January 25, 2023

Seanbaby builds a janky burning obstacle course of buckets and fish, then invites Brockway and guest Lydia Bugg to chop through it with hobo-made knives! It's Knife or Death! The reality show about kn...ife lunatics! Knife! Or Death!

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Starting point is 00:00:00 1,900 hot dog. Hot dog, baby. 1,900 hot dog. Hot dog, baby. Our podcast slams with maximum hype. Say hot dog podcast word. Yeah. When you taste that nitrate power,
Starting point is 00:00:17 you're in the dog zone for an hour. Hour. Come on. Come on. Do not win number. 1,900. 1,900 hot dog. 1,00,00.
Starting point is 00:00:29 1,900 hot dog. 1,900. 1,900 hot dog. 1,00,00. Yeah. 9,000. Welcome to the dog zone. 9,000, the official zone of 1,900hotdog.com.
Starting point is 00:00:48 Come sign up on our Patreon for the last precious remains of internet hilarity since you every weekday. I'm enduring web sweetheart, Sean Baby. And I'm with large penis magazines, an unrelated man of note for the month of Carch, Robert Brockway. Robert Brockway is a Brockway fact. It's not illegal to make a knife out of your own excrement.
Starting point is 00:01:09 But it is illegal to throw that knife at a postal carrier. There are no follow-up questions. No follow-up questions for that. But we're joined by our own weekly columnist, Knife Master and convicted hot dog, Lydia Bug. Hello. Thank you for having me back again. It's always a pleasure.
Starting point is 00:01:27 So your book just dropped today. I just saw on Twitter. Yes, my first mystery novel. I'm very excited about it. Oh, my god, Lydia, you finally have something to plug. Yes, I know. I was writing that last year, but yeah. I wrote it last year, and you always
Starting point is 00:01:44 asked me what I have to plug. And I was like, I don't know. I could have been talking about that, I guess. Yeah, you're supposed to. You're supposed to like the whole process before. You got to talk like a year in advance. Yeah. So I did write a book and a novella last year,
Starting point is 00:01:58 and the novella is coming out in March, and the book came out today. So I'm looking forward to it. Is the novella also about pants murder? It's not the novella. I'm really excited about the novella. It's a horror novella called Healthy Choices. And the tagline is it's about these women
Starting point is 00:02:14 that go into a total body transformation thing and get more transformation than they bargained for. Oh, hell yeah. Where were we? I love it already. I'm going to throw out some guesses. It's not werewolves, but it's a horror novella. You'll like it.
Starting point is 00:02:31 I was just thinking bigger women. Yes. I said I could just go them together and make like one really big woman. That would be cool. I'm going to rewrite it right now. I'm going to send my editor a note and say we've gotten this all wrong.
Starting point is 00:02:45 I think now it's a sexy novel, not a horror novel, though. Yeah, Voltron style. The women just kind of bolt together into a bigger woman. Yeah, there we go. I'm going to write a competing book to yours. And where can people find it? The Scribd app. It's an app that is kind of like Netflix for Books
Starting point is 00:03:02 where you can like, you pay one fee and you get unlimited books. And they look up Lydia Book once they're there and then they know other things. They just look that up and that's it. Yeah, don't read anything else, just my books. Thank you. Awesome.
Starting point is 00:03:17 Well, congratulations. Thank you. We are going to talk about something that's less artistically accomplished. We're talking about Knife or Death. Why would you say that, Sean? It's there's so much art in this. OK, so there's a show called Forged in Fire, which I think
Starting point is 00:03:33 most people are familiar with, where people make their own swords. And then that show is so popular, they had a spin-off called Knife or Death, which is now on Netflix. So you may have even seen it. Or you could watch it now and come back. We're going to be talking about the first episode. And it's basically what you'd expect.
Starting point is 00:03:52 People take a bunch of knives and chop through some shit, which is a very popular type of YouTube video and a fucking bonkers insane TV show. So Lydia, what did you think of this? OK, when I was watching this, my immediate thought was like, you know, when you watch a professional athlete at the top of your game and they're so good at it that you're like, I feel like I could do that.
Starting point is 00:04:16 Like, that looks easy. Yes. That was not the case for this show. Absolutely not. Maybe this looks so difficult. Yeah. Some of them had like a real sadness and like frustration that they carried with them in their body language,
Starting point is 00:04:31 where you just don't see that usually in a televised competition. Like, even on YouTube, where you're like. All of them. Yeah, there was nobody. How is this competition about like cutting stuff with a big knife and no one can look cool doing that? I do have a theory on this that like,
Starting point is 00:04:48 everyone at least five times in their lives will pick up a sword and think, I'm going to look awesome holding this, take a picture of themselves, have no idea they look like a fucking nerd, put that on the internet and that's going to live forever. I just feel like that's something we all were born with and we all have to learn the hard way that nobody looks cool with a sword.
Starting point is 00:05:08 Maybe Conan. Is there a picture of you holding a sword looking like a... No, it sounds like that. But no, every time I've ever picked up a sword, I make a funny face. Because I know I'm going to look like a dumb asshole. But you have picked up a lot of swords is what you're saying. I do really, if I see a sword, I'm going to pick it up.
Starting point is 00:05:29 Yeah, that's true. And if there's a camera around, I'm going to do a funny sword picture. It's again, it's just how it is. All I'm saying is that early in my life, I just sort of realized that you can't look cool doing this. Like it's just the one guy and... I did a Google Sean Baby sword to see if I could find anything.
Starting point is 00:05:50 Yeah, everybody needs to do that. Did you find anything good? No, you're like very sword related, sword adjacent. Like you've written about things that feature swords. It looks like a lot, like some video games and stuff. But no immediate picture of you with the sword. There is the two searches that it suggests are Katana and Comedy Rider.
Starting point is 00:06:13 Equally violent. That's what those two things are. Speaking of the Katana community. Yeah, I'm a Katana and... Or Shint Ken, as we call him. Where's my collaborators? Jumping ahead already. This is going to be so hard to sort of go through the show
Starting point is 00:06:28 just because there's so many insane little moments in it. All right, I would like to start with the opening montage because it's amazing that they managed to make me embarrassed in an opening montage. I did not think, I don't think I've ever been embarrassed via montage before. Just showing like brief one second clips of anything from the show makes you just go like,
Starting point is 00:06:52 oh my God, I can't watch this. And again, there's the failure of it, but I feel like when I watch YouTube videos of people chopping through shit, they're obviously like nerds. But like you kind of look at it and you're saying, that's kind of, that looks really fun. This guy's having a good time, good for him.
Starting point is 00:07:08 Whereas the show, you just add a tiny touch of production and then also failure. And you're like, well, this is the fucking stupidest shit I've ever seen. Why did anyone do this? It's a really hard thing to mess up. I was just shocked at the lack of empathy I had for these people.
Starting point is 00:07:24 But as you know, when we watch documentary and stuff, I feel bad for those guys. When we watch most of this stuff, I'm like, oh, this is a little sad. These people, I was like, no, I think they deserve this. I think that they, you know. Go home sad, Craig. Yeah, pretty much.
Starting point is 00:07:41 I don't know, I was vicious. I laughed a lot. You know who I felt bad for? Goldberg. I never thought, I never thought I would say this about Goldberg. He's too good for this. I don't think anybody thought they'd say that.
Starting point is 00:07:55 Disagree. I think he was going for intense and he was hitting cranky, but he was also trying to be like in the spirit of it. So if like, see, watching these like dumb assholes fail and something he would shame any pro wrestler for, if anyone was this bad at what he's chosen to do with his life, they would be humiliated
Starting point is 00:08:14 and kicked out of the locker room. But he's like talking about them like there's little brothers and sisters. Like, oh, they're really putting their heart into it out there. That's the announcer guy that wasn't the special forces guy. Yeah, I thought he was having a ball.
Starting point is 00:08:28 I didn't feel bad for him at all. Like when the one guy's like sword broke, he was like, oh my gosh. Like he was having a great day. Yeah. He might be having a good time, but it's done some damage to the Goldberg brand, which again, I didn't,
Starting point is 00:08:45 I don't think anybody's ever uttered that sentence in human history, done some damage to the Goldberg brand. Yeah, it was a really big wrestling star and he should be better than this, but it's also kind of where, kind of best case scenario for an old wrestler to land, I guess. It's like seeing macho man lose an argument
Starting point is 00:09:02 at a like with a McDonald's employee. No, like I know it happens. But I'm glad you brought up macho man though, because if macho man hosted this, he would be macho man. He would be like, oh, look at the knives, brother. Everybody like, oh, macho man's fucking doing his macho man thing.
Starting point is 00:09:19 This Bill Goldberg is like, hi, I'm fucking Regis Philbin, but just kind of giant. You know, he's not like bringing any of his own energy. Macho man would save it. Yeah. Macho man. I had no idea he was a wrestler or anything. Like they should have mentioned that, but they just introduced him as like a guy.
Starting point is 00:09:34 Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how wrestling licensing works, but if you probably say WCW's Bill Goldberg, you have to pay Vince McMahon, you know, $800 a minute or something. I don't know. I don't know how it works. But his co-host is Special Forces Green Beret,
Starting point is 00:09:50 two-long martial arts master. That's how he's introduced. And I looked him up and I found a very glowing article about him with a million photos taken all on the same day. So clearly there was a publicity press to make this guy like the badass guy, right? He's got no IMDb credits other than this. I think, God, what was he on?
Starting point is 00:10:14 I think he was in a Call of Duty game is what I found. Cause something about him rings real false. Like he seems like the kind of guy that convinces like a TV producer to think he's a badass. But I watched six episodes of the show and not once did he say a single thing that was coherent or useful about knives or martial arts. I thought the exact same thing.
Starting point is 00:10:33 That's so funny. I wrote that down like, I don't believe that this guy is who he says he is. He might be in the military, but I just don't buy him at all. I think it's the surfer voice. Like he talks, he talks like he's making fun of a surfer from like the 1980s.
Starting point is 00:10:52 It's like, it's a very Spicoli voice. And it's very at odds with like, I'm a green Beret. Like you could be, I mean, people talk different all over, but I'm just, I'm physically incapable of being afraid of that guy. Like that guy has a blunt he wants to share with me. And I know it. It could be too that he, like Sean said,
Starting point is 00:11:12 he just didn't have much to add. But then at the same time, how much is there to say about a guy hitting a box with a knife? I would argue a ton. I feel like the amount of like education that has to be given to the viewer to say like what this person's doing and why it's cool
Starting point is 00:11:29 and how this knife is better than some other knife. It's like, that should be really a rich place to talk and explore in. And this guy's just like, here he comes. He's got a knife. This is a type of knife used for stabbing probably. I don't know. And then there'll be like an ADR of him reading
Starting point is 00:11:46 the Wikipedia of a knife. Like that's the other thing is the production values are real bad. And clearly on the first time through, they're like, dude, we are not explaining anything to the viewer. So let's go back in, record some new dialogue. Anyway, I just feel like he knows less about martial arts than like a casual Lorenzo Lamas fan.
Starting point is 00:12:03 He just doesn't, whatever he knows about knives does not translate well into mangling a wooden crate. And I don't know what he brings to the show. You just saved the show. Lorenzo Lamas and Macho Man as hosts. Oh my gosh. Yeah, Lorenzo Lamas could do great. I felt like the guy wasn't, maybe he has special forces
Starting point is 00:12:20 but he's not an entertainer. Like he's not, he doesn't know how to do the. Or a communicator. Yeah, like he, yeah. The only thing he ever, I think the first episode like the only things he says are like, no, that guy's not doing a good job. He shouldn't do better at that.
Starting point is 00:12:35 And it's like, yeah, but we all know that. We don't need that commentary. We can see the guy about Teva Harditech because he like hacks away at the crate. I didn't take any sound clips from the show but I did write down his opening line. He tells the contestants, if your techniques are on point,
Starting point is 00:12:50 if you choose the right angles, have a fish at movement, you can win this competition. Which I found this to be as close to nothing as a person can say. Like this is NPC chatter for a boxing game. It's just absolutely nothing. And they're like, okay, okay, too long. Yeah, yeah, our angles and efficient movement.
Starting point is 00:13:07 Compared to what? Like we don't even know what we're fucking doing yet. No one has any idea how to follow this advice nor do any of them do it by accident. I would argue that from an angles and efficient movement standpoint, these people are zero out of tens across the board. Yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:13:25 I think that's the point of the show. Yes. Yeah, angles in efficiency, like none of them, none of them did that at all. And they're all so tired and so sweaty. Yep. And like, not- No one trained for this.
Starting point is 00:13:42 No, they're trying so hard. The conceit of the show, one of the major conceits is that they have a guy there to review the knives for safety. To make sure they can- I love that guy. Yeah, to make sure that guy rules. But to make sure that they can like,
Starting point is 00:13:58 take place safely in this competition. And they don't have that guy for the contestants. There's not a doctor there that's like, can you physically walk across this course? Like let's ignore the knife stuff. Can you make it? And if they can't, they can't compete. And I'd say there's like four of them
Starting point is 00:14:14 that would just be out. Yeah. Yeah, they're so frail. Hope we could have done this part. You could have like tossed some medicine balls. Hey, can you catch this, you little fucker? And then if they dive in, they're out. Let me see, you can lift that knife eight times in a row.
Starting point is 00:14:29 Can you do that? Let's test. There's no way. There's no way any of these people would pass a physical. So, okay, let's talk about the courses because that's the structure they introduced the show in. The first course is knife fight. And-
Starting point is 00:14:46 I got so excited. Knife fight, we're starting right off with knife fight. You're ready to watch some people die. Yeah, I thought, oh, okay. Well, we're gonna see which one of these people is secretly has, you know, the will of a winner. It's fucking hunger games the shit. This is a series of little obstacle courses.
Starting point is 00:15:05 The first one is called trailblazer. And you have to cut through six little closet nails. And then this drops a big torch into a burn barrel. I like, it's a bit much. And then- They need so much help making this look cool. Like they made them go through this once like without that. And we're like, this fucking sucks.
Starting point is 00:15:24 Yeah. What do we do? Honestly, they should have all been like that first one where it was super easy to do, but it looked pretty cool. Right. Like as they progressively get harder, it gets much nerdy here. Cause this is so easy to do.
Starting point is 00:15:39 I really think if a 10 year old tried to chop through these closet dowels, they could. Like you can snap a closet down in half by letting a woman move into your home. Boom, roasted, 1990 style, ladies. The one joke Sean has prepared and it's a bad. Women be shopping. I like the, I like the thing I had that prepared.
Starting point is 00:16:01 No idea. I'm not writing that joke. The next one is called stick and move. And it's only the second event and everything's officially stupid because this one is about hacking through a big ass wooden crate and then two plastic buckets. And they're all filled with sand and enough sand
Starting point is 00:16:19 has to fall out that a counterweight that it's attached to touches the floor. That they did not balance a counterweight that nobody went through because a few people make it through that and like absolutely slash the bucket open, it, it eviscerates, it falls everywhere and the counterweight does not touch the ground.
Starting point is 00:16:35 They're like, oh, that's a penalty. What the fuck are you even talking about then? What's the point of this? Right. They added some ADR and to help explain this that like it has to touch the bottom because that isn't explained to them during the competition.
Starting point is 00:16:48 But the idea I think was that they have to knock enough out that they have to get it to hit the ground before it's too tall for them to stab. Yes. Yeah. That was part of it was that it's getting higher and higher. So it's harder to hit it at like a good angle as the sand comes out. Cause there were some people that were shorter
Starting point is 00:17:07 that were like jumping to get to the crate. Which was a very funny wrinkle I will give you. They knew that people trying to like hop in the air and stab something above them is always going to be physical comedy gold. So good on them for that one. And then next up is ice pick, which is just a three foot block of ice
Starting point is 00:17:29 and it has a little vein of blood in the center, which is like just like a set designer was kind of winking at us like, I'm a murder, I just murdered a little bit. That's the thing, that's the point in the montage when I saw that they just flashed that briefly. I got very embarrassed. Like, oh no, it's not enough to chop through the ice block.
Starting point is 00:17:47 You're like, and this could have been a guy. Look how tough we are. What if that was a job? What if you were murdering fucking Iceman? What if you were killing him? I bet if you did stab Iceman enough times, you'd eventually bleed and be really awkward, a really, really sad issue of X-Men.
Starting point is 00:18:06 And we know exactly what that would look like. It's true. The next event is, again, as you might have noticed, none of these have a lot to do with knives. Like this is only about 20% of the objects on this show is something you would use a knife or a sword to kill. So it's just sort of the wrong tool for the job, like demolishing a house with a spoon.
Starting point is 00:18:27 So it has an element of nerd, but also stupid. But the next one is actually a good knife event. It's called Lifeline and it's a chicken and a fish hanging on a rope. Cut them in half or die. You have to cut it in half in one slice through the middle. They're so specific. And the middle, kind of in the middle.
Starting point is 00:18:50 They're really generous. And there's no lines on the chicken or the fish to say, here's the middle. And there's a few guys that clearly miss the middle. Yeah, but the one woman, she missed, like she did through the leg, I think that's what they said. She missed the middle. Oh, get out of here.
Starting point is 00:19:08 Going for strategy. I loved that you could have tried to make this look tough with like a big slab of meat, like from rocket. Like just a big slab of meat and you got to get through that or something. That's like hacking your way through just a meat pillar. It's a column of meat. But they used-
Starting point is 00:19:24 You think they had the budget for like ribs though, Brockway? Maybe not. Had the budget for ribs. What they did have the budget for was a 5.99 chicken for like a little mini chicken. It's just like a little mini chicken from the store that they've hung up and that's the first thing they cut through.
Starting point is 00:19:42 50, $60 red snapper. Like we're making fun of the budget, but there's no expenses like skirted around on this. I would say that every time they run this, it probably costs them $5 to $600, not counting like the crew fees. Like to just- They make that back.
Starting point is 00:19:58 To get a big block of ice with blood inside it. Like none of this is cheap. All of this, crates, the buckets, all of this. I think Red Lobster would buy it. I think most testings are paying to be on the show. I think if they're like, please let us be on the show. I really need, I have this katana and I need to use it. They could have charged these people a fee, absolutely.
Starting point is 00:20:22 Well, let's talk about what they might win. Okay. I don't even remember the price. I think it's like- It's the right to possibly compete for $20,000. The entire, that's the entire contest. You win nothing for this today. If you win this competition, which nobody did.
Starting point is 00:20:44 Which nobody ever will. You can compete in the final competition and only the winner of that will make $20,000. Which is not enough to buy a certified used Toyota Camry. So that's the prize is not this certified used Toyota Camry. They could wheel it out there and say, if you win this competition, you only have to give us $5,000 for this car.
Starting point is 00:21:13 This competition is for independently wealthy staff masters only. Like you can't take a day off of work and come here for the chance of winning $20,000 nine months from now. There's one last one. It's called curtain call. And it's just a big dripping wall of meat
Starting point is 00:21:30 and then a big thing of sheet metal. And so you have to cut through both of those. And the sheet metal really is a nasty thing for knives to cut through. Nobody really has a good time with that one. I don't even think anyone gets to that in this episode. No. No, in the first episode,
Starting point is 00:21:47 the fish got anyone that made it that far. Nobody in a competition of absolute knife masters forging the deadliest weapons on earth, true masters of their craft. None of them can cut fish. It's the lesson they accidentally wound up proving. You've said forging, Brockway. And one of the biggest problems that I have with this show
Starting point is 00:22:10 that I think makes it so, so nerdy is that a number of these people just bought a sword. Yeah, they couldn't, they didn't have to forge the sword. They could just buy it and several of them did. And we're just like. Yeah, it's like if project one way was just people buying nice clothes and then walking around and being like, look what I bought.
Starting point is 00:22:30 I bought this shirt and Tim Gunn's like, I don't like it, designers. Now step back. I'm going to transform into a bat. I'd do a perfect Tim Gunn. I'm just glad you brought him up. There's another, another line I wrote down from the end of this
Starting point is 00:22:47 where it says your time ends when you plunge your blade through this tree stove. And I think that was another funny thing about the show is that the copywriters are clearly like Renaissance fair dorks and Goldberg doesn't have any notes for the script. He's just takes these fucking pages, they hand them and reads them.
Starting point is 00:23:02 So every line he's reading cold and like super like nerdy. And it just seems like Hacksaw Jim Duggan is your dungeon master. You know what, I take it back because that would be fucking rad. All of our suggestions would make this work. Yeah, I keep fucking it up and improving their show. If instead of whatever this was,
Starting point is 00:23:19 it was Hacksaw Jim Duggan running a D&D campaign and you have to like, larp it out while he describes what's happening in your adventure. The best show ever made. Incredible. Yeah, that's gotta be on Amazon Prime somewhere right now. USA Hacksaw, I've rolled to USA and Hacksaw would say USA, USA.
Starting point is 00:23:37 And that's all we would do for an hour just like a Hacksaw Jim Duggan wrestling match. So you were both out of breath, sweaty, in danger of having a coronary over USA again, brother. And in 1690. Speaking of standing 1690, the show kind of has a hunk, but a weird one. His name is Travis Warts
Starting point is 00:23:59 and he knows a lot about Forging Blades. And we can cut some of this, cause I might get mean, but he kind of looks like a baby driving a buff guy. Like... If you watch the show, Nathan, for you, there's this episode where they hired a maniac to age-progress kids to show what they'd look like as adult athletes.
Starting point is 00:24:18 And he basically sort of remapped their faces on fitness models, like GoldenEye 64 style. And that's kind of what Travis Warts looked like to me. Like he kind of just looks like a baby's face smeared across a giant man's body. It's definitely kind of a, somebody trying out the beard filter
Starting point is 00:24:38 on Snapchat kind of thing. Just, is this, let's see how that looks. I swear it even moves around a little. Like he just has that broad-shouldered, like athletic muscle man body, but like he was clearly meant to be like a choir boy or something. I don't know, I don't know.
Starting point is 00:24:58 It's like, he took what genetics gave him. He's like, you know what? Fuck you genetics. I'm going to turn into a killer gorilla. Yeah. Like he had the vibe of Tom Hanks and big. Like he's the Tom Hanks and big guy. He's just happy to be here.
Starting point is 00:25:11 Really likes dives. Kind of a cuddly big guy. And then he stands next to these poor contestants and you're like, oh, he shouldn't do that. Yeah. He could snap every single one of these people in half. Like he could fight Goldberg. And, but he also has this shy way he carries himself.
Starting point is 00:25:26 Like, like he's been a nerd until like just a year of HGH ago. And anyway, I love what you do. The two tests, he's the guy that tests all their blades. So two tests them, he standing like slashes these mats in half, which looks kind of cool. And it's way cooler than anything they do in this competition.
Starting point is 00:25:46 So he's the only guy. Only guy that can scoop stuff. The best part of the show is when he tests it. And also he's the only one who seems to know anything about knives actually. And I think that they added more of him to the show later. Did you guys get that like by? Oh, that was a good idea.
Starting point is 00:26:03 Yeah. If they made that choice, that's a good choice. Cause it seemed like in the beginning they were like, oh, he's just going to test your knife. And they did that segment with him. And then they were like, you know what? We're also going to bring him back at the end to tell them why they didn't do a good job or whatever.
Starting point is 00:26:15 And like, essentially he becomes the host of the show. That's true. He like takes over. Yeah. Because they realized he was the only one who came across looking good the whole time. They're like, oh, shit, that looked, that ruled. Can you, can you do that with your knife?
Starting point is 00:26:29 And they put him out there and like, oh no. He also does a good job of educating. Like he'll say like, he talks about parts of the knife that aren't really explained, but you can tell there's a depth of knowledge out there. It's like, oh, your haft is a little too thin here and blah, blah, blah. And there was just a taste of this.
Starting point is 00:26:47 And I feel like they should have gone like full on like stats and powers. Like each knife should have had its own bashing and stabbing ratings and stuff like that. I feel like it, it was sad that it didn't have that because it's so clearly needed it. And Travis Ward's job was to sort of explain to the viewer why this knife might be better than this knife
Starting point is 00:27:06 at certain things. And he kind of doesn't as much as he should, I guess. I also, there's this moment where he takes their knife and he's like, oh, thank you for handing me your knife. And then he goes like, boom, boom. And he cuts through the thing. And then he like gets calm again and hands the knife back. And I think there's these transitions
Starting point is 00:27:23 between like stabbing and calm is maybe what needs to work. Like when you watch a samurai movie, a samurai is like totally chill all the time. And then they're like, hi-yah! And then they cut. And then there's like this moment where they like get rid of that energy and then slide the sword back in. And I feel like that's the only cool way to do it.
Starting point is 00:27:41 And so watching Travis take your knife. Oh, thanks for the knife. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah! Oh, here's your knife. That pal, it's just, it's fucking weird. I don't know what you talked about. There was a samurai in this and he was cool as hell. That dude.
Starting point is 00:27:54 That dude, after all this, they come to that middle-aged samurai and he's like, that's a real scary course. I think he has, I think his first line is, I sure hope my blade doesn't break. Dun, dun, dun! Dun, dun, dun! Oh, fucking guess. And I actually did, that was the only guy
Starting point is 00:28:14 that I had like a monochrome of sympathy for because he talked about like how hard it was to get that blade. And I wanted to like yell at the TV, like don't do this to it. Like this is not gonna be good for it. Okay, well, what he says is that you're not allowed to take a sharpened blade out of Japan.
Starting point is 00:28:33 And he, so what he did was- He didn't break it airport. So what he had to do was he found a Japanese Smith in China. Motherfucker, you bought your sword from China. They all say that. Like they say that my fucking mouse pad was made by a Japanese master, but it's $4. So you know, it's not.
Starting point is 00:28:53 You have a mouse pad made by a Japanese master. I have a mouse pad made by a Chinese sweatshop that doesn't care about lying to me, which is exactly what he has. He has a made in China sword and we all see it. And he has an adult karate instructor that I would say also lied to him a little bit. Oh, we need to specify at this point,
Starting point is 00:29:19 this is a grown adult white man, a little- Culturally like 50 years old. Yeah, a little over the hill. And he is dressed in full authentic samurai garb the whole time, except for anybody, anybody? Except for his little fucking shoes, except for his sneakers, except for his new balance sneakers. So he's in a full samurai outfit,
Starting point is 00:29:48 except for a little white new balance sneakers. And it's new balances. That had to have been like thrown upon them the day of cause there's a jujitsu guy, Rodrigo, that also has weird shoes on. I feel like they probably said, you guys can't go barefoot. Even though real samurai would wear like wooden sandals
Starting point is 00:30:05 and a real jujitsu guy would be barefoot. I think they're like, you have to wear sensible shoes for safety. They seem to be very concerned about these people's safety. Cause they made them wear a full bulletproof vest. And I like, when they first interviewed the very first person, they were wearing a bulletproof vest. I was like, what?
Starting point is 00:30:23 And then I realized they make them wear all wear that. And I was like, they think someone's going to attack them. Is there stabbing a chicken? Yeah, but they only got one. From Afghanistan. He might just shoot you as my point, contestants. Let's talk about the contestants. Because when I first saw the show,
Starting point is 00:30:40 I thought they'd handpicked them from every corner of the nerd kingdom to embarrass them. My wife was watching and I was like, dude, is this like a really old show? Because it had that mean spirited like 2000s era humiliation to it. But I don't think it was intentional at all. I think some of these people are like
Starting point is 00:30:57 local or national champions at whatever this thing is. Bladesports, Sean. That's what it's called. I wrote it down. Bladesports. Thank you for writing that down. I would have forgotten it. Yeah, these are.
Starting point is 00:31:08 And they call them blade wielders who play blade sports. It's fantastic. I think, I do believe this is the best the knife world has to offer. I think they put out the call. Yeah. And they, I think only these people showed up. And this was it.
Starting point is 00:31:28 Yeah. I believe that Bladesports is real, but I also believe that it's entirely a cover for people who want to practice stabbing. I don't disagree to that. Yeah. I think that's the. The country enough that I enjoy like playing
Starting point is 00:31:41 with knives and stabbing stuff. And if something like this was in my town, me and my friends could have been like, let's go try our hand at stabbing competition. But I feel some sympathy for these people. And like getting caught up in a hobby that's kind of embarrassing. So it's the, it's the inspection thing
Starting point is 00:32:03 that makes me think this is who showed up. Like I think they, they did not get the pull that they wanted because otherwise this inspection part where like they see whether or not you can go out on the course with this blade would have happened off camera as the first thing you do. 100%. But they were like, no, no, we got a,
Starting point is 00:32:22 what would they do if it just broke? They'd be like, oh, I guess you got to go home. And that's good TV. And Goldberg has to pull a chunk of Katana shrapnel out of himself. But let's talk about Carl because he's a Holtzville samurai. He has a black belt in the style of martial arts that I'm not familiar with.
Starting point is 00:32:44 It's ergonomic sneakers. Ergonomic sneakers. And he bought the Katana, which absolutely fucking sucks for this competition. And he does like a full, he's such a weeb. He does like a full on tea ceremony thing to hand Travis the Katana. He's like, I got to test your sword.
Starting point is 00:32:59 All right, first I got to get down on my knees and do some bows and do with two hands. Like I seen in the movies, but, but here's what trap, what I love about Travis is he isn't it, my instinct is to make fun of this person, but Travis is just like this fucking rules. Thank you for bringing this energy into my life in this show. Like he's, he just genuinely seems to think
Starting point is 00:33:20 this is all totally cool. Yeah, I thought he was going to hug that guy. Yeah. Oh, I love that. More like this guy. He Travis doesn't like the wiggle of the sword. So he has to test it. And then Carl's response to that is,
Starting point is 00:33:34 hi, which I love, gave him a little bow and everything. This guy fucking Carl. So. Do you have his quote? Oh, I just wrote down that he said hi. What did he say? He says, there is a confidence and a spirit that shoots through the blade and into me.
Starting point is 00:33:52 And you, it's a really nerdy thing to say, but pay attention to what he said. He said, there's a confidence and a spirit that shoots through the blade and into me. Not your brain makes that reverse. You're like, my confidence shoots into the blade. He said, I'm empowered by holding a sword is what he said. Which you're not supposed to say out loud.
Starting point is 00:34:11 When he stabs his wife with the sword, he takes her confidence. So when Carl gets out on the course, it's really funny cause he's in his full, like Samurai Pachamas. And then they add some ADR of too long coming in later to read the Katana Wikipedia page because he didn't say fucking shit about it
Starting point is 00:34:29 the day they recorded this. This knife expert saw a guy with a ninja blade and he's like, I don't know what the fuck that is. Carl completely wrecks the dowels. He's like, Samurai's through all the closet dowels. And then he comes up on the wooden crate and you're like, well, this is the wrong tool for this job. And Carl agrees.
Starting point is 00:34:48 And so he starts doing like stabs. Like if you played Ninja Turtles, this is like the basic Leonardo stab. He's just like two hand stabbing this wooden crate. Clearly this is going to take 12 or 13 days to cut through. And it's the first thing that's happened on the show and you're just immediately sad. You're just like, oh, I'm watching someone fail.
Starting point is 00:35:08 Oh, forever. And he's going right into the middle of the crate instead of like at the sides like everybody else did. Like he has no idea how to tackle this crate or at the, I don't know, at the bottom. Just not the middle. That's like the one place you don't go. It's clearly the strongest part of the crate, man.
Starting point is 00:35:24 He knew though. He clearly, that's the second he started doing it after his maiden chai uncommon. I'm like, oh, he knows he's going to break his sword. And they foreshadowed that to start by him being, I hope my sword doesn't break it. So you know, right there like, oh, he's worried it's stupid little toy sword
Starting point is 00:35:40 is going to break if he does anything but this. And he's right. I think his idea was that he would stab it and make a hole and then all the sand would fall out the hole like a cartoon. And then it would just slowly go all like, he just thought, all I got to do is puncture it. And yeah. Like a complete misunderstanding of physics on TV.
Starting point is 00:36:01 And he just kind of waxed at it a little bit. And then I don't know, just kind of gives up. And two lamb, this is, this is two lambs best comment. He says like, no, this is like no way to kill a man. Like in special forces, you make sure that thing is dead before you move on. Like this is his area of expertise. You don't just stop stabbing something in the middle of it.
Starting point is 00:36:21 We never leave. Never leave a wooden crate alive. We put two in the skull. I said, he's mad. The guy didn't kill the bucket. You make sure that thread is down before you move on. That bucket full of sand knows that you have a family. I felt Carl, Carl moves on from the, from his failure.
Starting point is 00:36:47 And he starts slashing through the ice and he bends his sword. It's, it's not quite at a 90 degree angle. It's like at a 45 degree angle, but his fucking Chinese ninja sword is broken. And he tries to bend it back with the sneakers. Like that'll do it, Carl. Good job, buddy. So we get one, one shot, one beautiful, perfect shot
Starting point is 00:37:07 of the white nerd Samurai trying to bend his broken Chinese sword and his full samurai garb with his new balance sneakers. You're like, yes, yes, this is everything. The montage at the start of the show should have just been that on a loop. The savage in me is just appeals to this. Oh, yes. I want to show that in slow motion. Give me his tears.
Starting point is 00:37:29 When he doesn't cut through the fish, he does almost cry. And he walks off in shame. With all of his sword confidence. And then he actually says to camera, my sword didn't break and my spirit spirit didn't break. But like they both fucking did. We watched it both. We watched it happen to them.
Starting point is 00:37:48 They've been for sure. He also says to camera, I took that fish for granted. Oh, anyway, the sword didn't break. My spirit didn't break. Didn't even, didn't you did? It did. They both did. You came up short of inert fish.
Starting point is 00:38:05 You weren't good. You weren't as good as a fish that did nothing. And he has the nerve. Fish, the single. And his spirit wasn't that buoyed by the sword, apparently. His sword confidence failed him. He bowed to the course that defeated him. He bowed to that fish.
Starting point is 00:38:22 I fucking Carl, you couldn't start the show with a better guy. Like he's so perfect to just demonstrate. The way the school system failed so many of us. David is next. He was on the main show, Fortune and Fire, where he did not win. And he comes here today with a homemade Bolo knife, which is kind of just a big curved, bowie knife, which, again,
Starting point is 00:38:47 is not explained to the viewer what this knife, what makes this knife special or effective. He is four feet tall. And Travis does not think much of his knife. So right off the bat, I don't think David's going to win this. Yeah, Travis is so nice, usually. And then to have him be like, there's
Starting point is 00:39:07 like a chip in this knife right here. That's not good. I was like, oh, that's definitely not good. Or he would not bring that. I felt like a knife expert after watching one guy do this. And I was like, oh, I totally. That knife is not going to work. It's like this knife's a piece of shit.
Starting point is 00:39:22 Who made this piece of shit? I did, sir. I'll hop it down here. Goldberg is an action expert. They called him an expert. Like, he was on Forged in Fire. He's a knife expert. And then they're like, oh, he lost on Forged in Fire.
Starting point is 00:39:36 He didn't do well. He brings that up. He says, I came in second place, and you could phrase that as like, that's pretty good. But he immediately is like, I won't let it happen here. OK, so you view that as a personal failure that haunts you. Got it. And then later, before the knife test,
Starting point is 00:39:54 he says, I'm feeling a lot of anxiety. I just want to cut something. Yes. I wrote down, I just want to cut something, too. Didn't I don't want to hear that from anyone ever? I don't want to hear that from that guy specifically, from somebody's some beautiful woman's unhappy best friend. I don't want to hear that.
Starting point is 00:40:14 From his on-camera work to his knife making to his physicality, I would say David is 0 out of 10 for all these. No stats. Goldberg, like myself, is a natural bully. And so he immediately starts making fun of David's size. But not with a joke, just the casual observations of someone who wants you to feel bad about yourself.
Starting point is 00:40:35 He's just like, yeah, this guy's like, barely bigger than this knife. Fuck this fucking little guy. This made me remember this moment in Goldberg's career where he was doing the color commentary on an MMA show. And I feel like it wasn't UFC. It was like an off brand. It might have been Brock Lesnar's first pro fight, which
Starting point is 00:40:57 I think is why I was watching it. And they cut to a crowd shot. Tracy Oman was in the crowd. And she was sitting next to someone ugly. And Goldberg, as the color commentator, professional announcer says, what is she sitting next to? And so there is precedent for Goldberg just fucking saying really hurtful things for no reason.
Starting point is 00:41:17 Oh my gosh. Yeah, it was fucked. I guess it's co-broadcaster. He's just like, what the fuck, dude? You could tell there's a real tension in the booth. But anyway, David just casually marches through the stupid closet dowels. And immediately his knife just obliterates on the wooden box.
Starting point is 00:41:37 Like it's the third swing, I think. And he's made no progress. And he just shatters exactly like. And you can visibly see him flash back to Travis criticizing his knife. And how mad he was at that. He's just like, no. No, it can't be.
Starting point is 00:41:54 That's funny you bring that up because we should talk about that, that all these people when Travis criticizes their knife, they take it very personally. This knife is them. And Travis is like, this shit sucks. And you should feel bad about yourself. And they do. Well, no, that's what they hear.
Starting point is 00:42:10 He's like, there's a little bit of a dull spot here. And then it shows you his face and all of the murderous emotions that he does not process and will come back. Yes. Yeah, they zoom in, too. They love it. They're like, look at this nerd feel sad about this little chip in his knife.
Starting point is 00:42:25 And I hope David doesn't listen. This is going to send David over the edge if he hears three people making fun of him. Making fun of his knife specifically. Right. His knife that snapped unlike anybody else that broke their knife. Nobody broke it like that.
Starting point is 00:42:40 His knife flew. Yeah. And I think maybe having an untrained, tiny amateur knife maker hack through a crate with a homemade knife. That was a bad idea. I just think all of this was a really bad idea. But a great guy Travis comes in and he's like, got to say something to make this guy feel better.
Starting point is 00:42:56 So he says, you had good edge geometry. This knife had some pretty good edge geometry, David. Yeah, he made that up on the spot. Yeah, David's not going to Google that. You instantly clock that. He gives the little guys like a fucking chunk of knife back. He's like, here's your tip. Gives them a shattered remains of his humiliation.
Starting point is 00:43:20 So that's the show so far is just two hilarious failures. And then next up is Rodrigo, who is a Brazilian grappler. Judo and Jujitsu. I have no idea if he's good. They show a very brief clip of him doing fine. He has a copus, which is like a thin bolo. That's all we know about it because Tulum, his explanation for it is this was a hoplite sword.
Starting point is 00:43:47 They would use it to like, OK, so like they had spears. And then when the spears were done, they had this. And as he puts it, man, I tell you what. That was Tulum's expert explanation of this sword. Is it similar to a sword that, man, I tell you what? And then Goldberg said, carnage. A great Goldberg addition. That's what you're here for.
Starting point is 00:44:13 Rodrigo has real stab maniac energy. I kind of I thought he was pretty good on this show. Oh, yeah, he he stands like a video game in PC. Like his arms are kind of out. Like he's always ready to start moving. There's only three frames of Rodrigo animation, just this sort of hunched gorilla walk. He says, I don't he says, every morning
Starting point is 00:44:34 I make the orange juice with my blade. You know, I love it. And then we cut to a scene of him making orange juice with his sword and he loves it. He just loves it and he's not lying. Rodrigo's a simple man, loves to stab, no second thing. That's all the personality I need is that, like you don't have to do the rest of this.
Starting point is 00:44:52 If you just had that scene of that guy, like I'm rooting for that guy now. The rest of what you've done makes me not root for him. But if you just showed me like every morning I make the orange juice with my blade. You know, I love it. And then he makes orange juice with his blade and he goes, I love it.
Starting point is 00:45:05 That's also like tiny little kitchen, enormous sword. I love that combo. And he's just swinging it, like toward his fridge. It's his only silverware. Tulum makes a good point here where he says he didn't release his hips, because Rodrigo can't get through the fish. And so Tulum's like, yeah,
Starting point is 00:45:26 the fucking guy isn't moving his hips when he swings, which brings up an important point that nobody here seems to have any experience in making a sword hit harder than default. Like nobody seems to have put any training into the martial art of swinging a sword better than random asshole picks up sword is my point. Wait, did we skip past his test phase?
Starting point is 00:45:52 Because I loved his test phase the most. Let's talk about it. Travis asks him, like he asks everybody that didn't make their own blade, which you shouldn't be allowed to do this competition if you didn't make your own blade. But he says, who made your blade? And he says, it's a guy up a mountain, you know?
Starting point is 00:46:08 He's good with knives. It's a guy up a mountain, you know? He's good with knife. He got it from a knife hobo, a magical knife hobo on a quest. That's all he knows. My favorite character. Yeah, it feels like he doesn't want you to know
Starting point is 00:46:24 where he got that knife. Like you may as well just said, don't ask, buddy. Yeah. The next we have Joe Carruthers, who's a North Carolina gal. And she actually kind of blew my mind because this is the first point in the show where they demonstrate that this show is not a new invention
Starting point is 00:46:40 because this woman has experience in a competition like the show. And she's carrying a knife that's clearly designed for this type of competition. It's called the behemoth chopper. And Travis loves it. Travis is like, oh, this is a great chopper for knife chopping competitions.
Starting point is 00:46:56 And I was watching the TV and I said, I can't fucking believe that they're not inventing this sport on the spot. It's amazing, right? That was the revelation to me too. I paused it there and rewound it to be like, is that right? Is that right? That this is a thing that they're just capitalizing on?
Starting point is 00:47:12 Well, and we should also note though that it's not like she's in an arena or anything. Like the footage that they show of her competing in this sport looks like she's in someone's garage. And there's like 12 other people there watching her hack away at a closet dowel rod with a machete. A very valid point. I don't even think she was doing that well.
Starting point is 00:47:32 But this thing exists. She looked like she was pretty terrible. And it has its own equipment, I guess, is the thing that sort of blew my mind is that they're still kind of bringing in samurais and mountain maniacs when like there is a standardized thing specifically for this type of event. See, I thought this was like UFC one
Starting point is 00:47:53 where they brought in just every hilarious stereotype they could find to see like, I don't know, maybe Sumo's it. You don't know, we don't know, let's see. And then there's such a great UFC one energy. That's a perfect way to put it. But this has apparently been happening. I just, it makes me very uncomfortable. I feel like if it happens in your town,
Starting point is 00:48:11 they shouldn't tell you about it. Like there should be a notification that local maniacs are practicing stabbing in your area. But Joe, she doesn't really have a costume or personality. So they just put a brown shirt over and they're wearing bulletproof vest, like Lady mentioned. So she has a very Frankenstein look, like just a small angry, very weak Frankenstein.
Starting point is 00:48:35 You have one. She has to share with Rodrigo. So it smells a little like orange juice. So she can't even really get through the closet towels. She's just casually bonking these like Frankenstein. And Tulaum tries to put a positive spin on it because he says, you know what? She's not quitting.
Starting point is 00:48:57 They're so sad watching this. This is, and it's sad because like, they went to the world of chopping competitions and recruited this woman. Or like, this is the only person so far that has credentials and she's just already tired. She fucking misses the middle of the chicken by like a half a chicken.
Starting point is 00:49:15 And then she said, I was proud of my performance. What are you not proud of? Take me to feel shamed, Joe. I will say, she was the first one that made me go like, oh, there is some skill to this. Because I watched her doing it. I was like, oh no, this is significantly worse than the other people have done.
Starting point is 00:49:35 I get that. You couldn't be bad. Can we, and we flashback to her knife test. I didn't bring it up at the time because I wanted to wait until she had lost to flashback to the moment where she says she made her own knife and Travis gives her all the high five like way, way out of her range.
Starting point is 00:49:52 So that she has to jump to high five them. And so it's the most patronizing high five. He knew this was gonna happen. Travis is like, I can't put this in a nice way. I'm just gonna give you an awkward high five. And I thought like at the time when he was like, oh, this is a really good knife. And it looked like a good knife to me,
Starting point is 00:50:10 a sudden knife expert, because it was like big and like thick. It looked like a good chopped stuff. So I was like, okay, maybe this tiny little lady is gonna come in and like beat everyone with a really good technique. And then it became immediately apparent that wasn't gonna happen at all.
Starting point is 00:50:25 I don't think such a thing exists. So far, every person has been beaten by meat or less. Meat or not as impressive as meat. They've been lucky to get to a fish and have been destroyed by that fish. Well, next up we got Kilt Guy. And he seems like he's been training for this his whole life.
Starting point is 00:50:45 He loves to chop and stab. And he also uses a chopper that he made from junk around his house. Travis is like, what the fuck are you making sound? And he's like, oh, it's a little tile. A true hobo's murder weapon made. He's the guy up the mountain. And he, again, seems so excited for this,
Starting point is 00:51:05 like it's made for him. And he just kind of boardily walks through the course. And I'm sort of, at this point in the show, sort of thinking about this like a martial artist. Like, I spent a couple of decades in my life trying to maximize the damage I could do with my shin. And for the record, it's six grenades. But like watching this guy try to hack through an ice block,
Starting point is 00:51:25 it's like, scientifically, with my expertise, I don't know if a human skeleton can hit something more gently. Like, I'm smarter than this guy, Swings and Machete. Like, I don't know how he did it. It took him 400 stabs to make a dent in this ice with this fucking sword. I don't know.
Starting point is 00:51:45 Yeah, he started off looking really cool and like going through the rods really easy and everything. And then, yeah, he hit that iceberg and just petered out really fast. Then he absolutely like doesn't make a dent in the chicken. I say cancel the show at this point. Like, if you're filming this and you see this guy do this, you're like, okay, we can't put this on TV.
Starting point is 00:52:07 You could take a survey back and be like, wait, has anybody got through the fish? Because the fish was not supposed to be a thing. Like, the fish was supposed to look cool when they got through it. And then we have like eight other obstacles after this. Should we make it two chickens? Should we just put another chicken out there?
Starting point is 00:52:24 I feel like the whole show needs to be... So someone got through the fish on the first episode. It would just take no effort. Yeah. But they didn't. That's a little respect they have for them. They're like, no. Because I'm never watching this again, obviously.
Starting point is 00:52:40 I'm never going to see the last half of that course be completed in my entire life because no one did it in the first episode. Craig is up next. Craig claims to be into African martial arts, but he looks like he's trained by cutting fruit in half in the Arby's parking lot in like South Carolina. And I don't think there's a ton of African martial arts
Starting point is 00:53:02 schools in South Carolina. I also find it suspicious that he didn't name the style of African martial arts he does. I think this is just a man who bought a Bowie knife. From Palestine. Yes, it looks like it's made out of a lot of gaps. And he generally looks like he might kill Travis when Travis starts talking shit about the knife.
Starting point is 00:53:21 He has real like, I did my five, but I'll go back in if you keep talking shit about my knife. They zoom in on his face. But Travis is right. What he's saying is that he said it's like a fine knife or whatever this Bowie knife he bought from Palestine, which is a fucking crazy thing to do. And you do little side flips in a parking lot with it,
Starting point is 00:53:42 which is also a crazy thing to do. But it's also, it's like eight inches long. And like, this is a competition about chopping through large things and he's like. Yeah, it's so tiny. Like I know nothing about knives, but again, I was like, why would you bring that? Yeah, immediately.
Starting point is 00:54:00 Also knowing nothing about knives, you can spot like, oh, this is a problem based on physics. Like if you'd pulled out a Swiss army knife, I would have had the same effect. Like that makes no sense. Don't bring that here. That's not right. I got this plastic knife with my salad.
Starting point is 00:54:15 I don't know why they gave it to me. Why would I need a plastic knife for a salad? Anyway, I haven't touched it. It's ready to go. Let's do it. Check it out, Travis. And he would use it to slash through that man and be like, you're through because we need more people.
Starting point is 00:54:28 There's not enough. Tulum helps explain African martial arts because I'm not really an expert on that type of martial arts. It's pretty rare to find a school that teaches them. He explains that they are African martial arts and that this knife could be used to breach, to eliminate the threat.
Starting point is 00:54:46 And that's it. That's all he knows is that you could use that knife in Africa to kill somebody, theoretically. Craig drops the fucking knife on his first job. So he doesn't know how to hold knives? Yes, he is like herking and jerking around like just with a lot of manic energy. Almost as if someone has no martial arts training.
Starting point is 00:55:10 Just wild stabs. His fucking blade shatters while he's mashing it against a plastic bucket. And he does not have a sense of humor about it. He is pissed off specifically. The quote he has is, I'm mad because I paid money for that blade. But he's like.
Starting point is 00:55:26 I'm disappointed in the blade because I paid some money for it. That is an intention to murder. That is motive right there is what you get. The motherfucker's about to get stabbed with one-tenth of a bowie knife. Absolutely. Yeah, he's like one of the few people
Starting point is 00:55:40 that didn't have an elaborate story about how he got his knife. And yet he's the most angry when it breaks because he paid some money for it. Seven dollars. Some amount of money. Next up is Boy Joe who has claimed staff years of blade sports competition.
Starting point is 00:55:59 And he has a big old chopper cleaver. He's the 2017 amateur points champion. I believe that was the exact title he has. Incredibly nonspecific. Anyway, it's a decorated chop veteran. And he has the raw athleticism of a dropped cheese wheel. He's a very large man in a much smaller man's cowboy outfit.
Starting point is 00:56:23 In like a Walmart cowboy outfit meant for. He looks like the trustee guy in a chopper hat. Yeah, you gotta have a cowboy. He stands there, he comes out and he stands there looking intense with his crazy knife. And like my immediate thought, which was very cruel was he looks like an assassin in a Coen Brothers movie, just like a goofy out of his depth maniac
Starting point is 00:56:47 with this strange weapon. And he's about to die in a ditch for laughs. And then Goldberg says, looks like an assassin in a Coen movie. Fucking said it out loud. I wouldn't get it out loud. He really did. The meanest thing you could say to the guy.
Starting point is 00:57:05 What I loved is that the closet dials are sort of set up one on the left, one on the right. And so this guy used his natural country training to like hokey poke through him. He's like line dancing, whack, whack, whack. And it seems like it has perfectly prepared him for this course. Like he blasts through the first part.
Starting point is 00:57:21 And of course he can't get through the fish. Goldberg tells us, he says, only two have made it past the chicken. He's got to make it to the fish to even have a chance. Those are the dramatic words we read halfway through this competition. Yeah. Yeah, I did write down that he knifed so good
Starting point is 00:57:40 that I almost respected him. Like it did look like that guy had professional experience in whatever the hell this is. Yeah, right up until the fish. And then he just kind of missed. Gives up this little limp little like whack. Wait, what were you doing? What happened there, Joe?
Starting point is 00:57:56 Tulam has a great comedy says, this is a nationally ranked champion. It should tell you how hard this course is, but it's just a fishy mist. I don't know. So they bring back. Really hard fish, Sean. It's a really, really tough fish.
Starting point is 00:58:11 It's like flopping around. We make it sound like it's just a dead fish hanging, but no, it's a live fish on a line. I love it when they melt down after not getting through a fish. Like you have to, this is, because he melts the fuck down. He starts ripping at his goggles
Starting point is 00:58:24 and he goes, get these fucking things off me. He was psychologically dominated by a fish, by an inert fish. Yeah, he said something like, I am a national champion. He got right back to fish's face. He's like, you son of a bitch, you promised me good naff.
Starting point is 00:58:45 They bring back Carl and Jiu-Jitsu Rodrigo and Country Boy Joe, because none of them finished the course, but they're- Due to the fish. The fish knocked out all of them. Faster than the others, or still have a knife with them.
Starting point is 00:58:59 But then they immediately kick Samurai Carl out. They only brought him back to say, get out of here. It's the other two. With your bent knife, use your new balance to walk away, Carl. Those are property of the show. You can't take those with you.
Starting point is 00:59:16 Your sword's bent, so we don't like you anymore. He gave a little bow, and then he says to the camera, he goes, I should be holding the championship trophy right now. Like he's learned nothing. None of this has humbled poor Carl.
Starting point is 00:59:30 If this was Deadliest Warrior, and this is really close to Deadliest Warrior, this would be definitive proof that Cowboy beats Samurai, just so everyone knows. And now they do the final course. We'll have to watch that Daniel Craig movie. Is that a Daniel Craig movie?
Starting point is 00:59:46 I think it's Cowboys versus Aliens, but this is the sequel. Oh, right. Oh, God. I wonder how an alien would do in this course. Bad. You didn't get through the fish. I'll tell you that.
Starting point is 00:59:55 Well, nobody gets through the fish. Nobody gets through that fish. They'll learn that the fish is the most powerful creature. An inert fish is our deadliest weapon. Take that message back to the stars. Does anybody have a Rodriguez quote when they tell him he's through?
Starting point is 01:00:09 Oh, absolutely. Oh, wait, maybe I have the other quote. You do it, and see if it's the same as mine. His quote when they tell him he gets through is, ah! Ah! I'll just write that down. No.
Starting point is 01:00:26 I know he fell to his knees in joy. I wrote that down. And he's just made baby gibberish noises. Thanks for Sam, God! He's too excited for human language. Oh, I love it. He's my new favorite. But now they have a final course
Starting point is 01:00:43 that they would normally get to if they could get through a fish, but they'll get to today just because like, we're not gonna just take it down with that stabbing all these things. The first one is a bunch of hanging meat on a weird carousel. Very strange.
Starting point is 01:00:58 And like the amount of ADR meat slaps they had to do, they ADR'd in so many meat slaps for that meat carousel. That was somebody's job for the day. It was just, I need you to slap this meat like this guy is slapping the meat, because it did not sound good the way he slapped it. We didn't like it. I was like, how sad it must have been
Starting point is 01:01:16 before they like added all the camera cuts and music and meat slap ADR. Like it had to have been just a weird, echoey, empty warehouse of some guy missing meat. It can't believe anyone. It's freezing in there. Did you notice that they can see their breath and I realized that they have to keep it cold
Starting point is 01:01:32 because of all the meat? Because of all the meat. I was like, why is it so cold? So just also know these people are suffering in many ways. Like not just in the life leading up to this moment, but like they're cold, they're tired, and they're failing. To me. The next event, to me,
Starting point is 01:01:56 defeated by the one enemy they thought they could take. Next up, they cut these ropes that makes a water bottle swing and they cut through the water bottle and that's supposed to spray water into a funnel, which may or may not put out a candle. It's completely arbitrary. It's like their counterweight thing again.
Starting point is 01:02:12 Nobody designed this course and then tested it. They just put it together and we're like, yeah, work. This should work. And if it doesn't fuck it, they'll get a penalty. After that, it's something called weight cut where they have to hack ice and meat into buckets. And it's just like a bunch of pork shoulder hanging like in a grotesque serial killer way
Starting point is 01:02:32 and a big ice block and you just chop it until it falls into a scale. When you hit 40 pounds, you're done. Then they kill falling watermelons, which is fantastic. I think this is the one thing. That was so funny to watch them because it's like directly on their heads and they're like looking up and I don't know.
Starting point is 01:02:52 It has a very like chicken little vibe. They're running around trying to avoid getting hit in the head by this water melon. What I like about this is it's such a classic measurement of like dexterity and athleticism and like all these people, you can just tell they've never played a moment of team sports in their life. Like they're just, here comes the water melon.
Starting point is 01:03:12 They're like, they're like, they're figuring out how to swing at a moving object for the first time in their life. Just it's a fun little thing to experience. Then they just kill fucking hanging random stuff. Like they knock down this curtain. I think they call it curtain call. And then there's fish and water bottles, some ropes,
Starting point is 01:03:30 some sugar cane, some pork belly. It's just like whatever they had leftover is just arranged and they're surprised with this. And they're like, okay, go stab all these objects in half. I love the way they phrase it. They say in a very serious announcer voice, behind that curtain is a variety of objects that you must attack.
Starting point is 01:03:50 I'm just gonna drop the curtain and you're gonna go ape shit in there. You're just gonna go nuts in a thrift store. So then they have firestorm, which is, sounds fucking awesome. But what it is, is you cut two ropes and that releases a big old staircase. And then as the copywriter said,
Starting point is 01:04:08 you fight exhaustion to ascend the stairs. But like, fuck you, it's 12 steps. And yeah, they're middle-aged men with diabetes who didn't train for this, but like to end this knife. I was concerned. When they said they were gonna have to climb stairs, I was like, I don't think that's a good idea. Can we be fair?
Starting point is 01:04:26 Joe does struggle with it. Yeah. Everyone's gonna be a little tired after doing this course. But to end such a dramatic stabbing thing with like, carry your groceries inside, but forget the groceries. It's just kind of a let down.
Starting point is 01:04:40 And I don't think any language can save it. So like, they're trying to make this sound exciting, but it's, you gotta walk up one flight of stairs. Rodrigo goes first and he kisses his knife because he was born to do this. He loves this, he has killed someone. The proper lunatic etiquette, right? I mean, that's what a lunatic does
Starting point is 01:04:59 before they display their knife skills. Like a gentleman. You know, he's the kind of guy that would lick the blood off the blade after cutting you, which you need to see. Yeah, absolutely. So again, they're trying to set this up like this is the Olympics of stabbing. And the drama is killed instantly
Starting point is 01:05:16 because Rodrigo is just fucking stabbing at this meat on a carousel and missing most of them. It's just like little flank sticks. Like it's not like big dramatic chunks of meat either. Little flank sticks. It's so hilarious to have just like store bought steaks. I don't know what it is on a carousel and then have somebody whack so that they spin around.
Starting point is 01:05:38 You know what I think it is? Is it looks like at a diner, what they put tickets on and they spin it around, but they put steaks on it. That's exactly what it is. Order up for one murder. I thought that was cool. I guess it's just like, they can cut 10 steaks. They should be little diner tickets.
Starting point is 01:05:59 They're gonna cut through the paper with a deadly samurai blade. Every event is just like follows the same structure. Fail, fail, fail, fail. Finally, then they move on to the next. For nail fail. Nope, nope, nope, fail. Finally.
Starting point is 01:06:14 So we're just watching unremarkable people learn how to do something new in real time. I can't believe it's a TV show. Joe easily beats Rodrigo. I guess there's, I don't have anything more to say about these finals. Oh, I have one thing. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:06:29 Joe faces off against his enemy, the fish. Joe, Joe gets to the fish because they have one of the competitions, one of the random objects. They put a fish back up there as if to say, fuck you, Joe. And Joe slices the fish in half and says, physics actually says, gets in the fish's face
Starting point is 01:06:46 and says, fuck you, fish. As though he's revenging himself upon fish kind. But it still takes two, right? I don't think anybody cut through it in one, even in that round. No, he didn't like prove he could do it. He was just like, fuck you, fuck you, yeah. Once the fish wasn't on his same energy,
Starting point is 01:07:03 the fish was like, I'm a different fish. I'm racist against fish now. It only takes one bad experience to turn me. So Joe wins, congratulations, Joe. You have a chance to win money. Four cowboy hats worth of money. I have in my notes how this is such a sweet spot of the show. I don't want to revisit this in three years.
Starting point is 01:07:27 I probably won't ever. But this is like this UFC one moment where they still have the weebs showing up with the ancient samurai blades. And I feel like if this ever gets popular, it will be just standardized cleavers and power lifter dudes. So it'll just be very powerful men
Starting point is 01:07:42 with very powerful specialized knives. And I guess it kind of reminds me of Battle Bots. If you ever watched Battle Bots, it's like. I love Battle Bots. Yeah, it has the energy of like indoor kids doing sports for the first time, but they had like a quicker learning curve. Like almost immediately the cool buzz saw Hammer Bots
Starting point is 01:08:01 got replaced by the dumb ass little roller skates made out of triangles. And so like, I feel like that's a good, I don't know, demonstration of what this show will eventually become is like soon everyone will have the same knife, the same body type, the same snap training background. And yeah, they definitely need more rules.
Starting point is 01:08:22 Like they should not let anyone walk in there with a bowie knife. It's funny, but they shouldn't let people do it. Yeah. And I don't think they should have them quite so kitted out as if they're in mortal danger from the meat that they're attacking. They can, they don't have to wear.
Starting point is 01:08:38 So they were in mortal danger. Yeah. You want that bulletproof vest so you don't stab yourself with your own knife while it's in your hand or when it's exploding into the air. Yeah, they're not good enough and their blades are not good enough to do this without parental supervision.
Starting point is 01:08:54 If these people did this competition 10 more times, one of them would die a hundred percent. I say two more times. So my point is enjoy this while you can right now is in the sweet spot of human failure. And I think Rodrigo said it best when he came in second on this really embarrassing competition. If life give you chicken feet, make a stew out of that.
Starting point is 01:09:16 I wrote that down too. I'm going to get a tattoo. Perfect. I guess what he's really saying is if you lose the embarrassing game show, at least you still have a knife, Craig. If the life give you chicken feet, make a stew out of that. Podcast?
Starting point is 01:09:46 Correct. Yeah. The craft is not trapped. It's not over. Stick it in the 100's out. Four and a stunder. Come on, John. You can do it.
Starting point is 01:09:57 1,900. 1,900, Frankfurt. 1,900, yeah. 1,900, Frankfurt. 1,900. 1,900, Frankfurt. 1,900, yeah. 1,900.
Starting point is 01:10:17 There's been too much violence, too much pain. None here without sin. But I have an honorable compromise. Just walk away. Give me your artifacts, hot dog creams. Give me your sexy sci-fi photo shoots, your horrifying secret comics, and the whole untubed sausage compound, and I spare your lives.
Starting point is 01:10:46 Just walk away. I will give you safe passage in the wasteland. Just walk away. And there will be an end to the horror. Three-finger Louis, put down your boomerang and go. Aaron Crossden, Adrian H, Aiden Moore, Alpha Scientist Javel, just walk away. Anandhi, is your heat cliff truly worth dying for?
Starting point is 01:11:14 Just walk away. Andreas Larsen, you could live. You could have children. You could eat them. Just walk away. Armando Nava, Badger, Benjamin Siranen. There are so many dogs in the wasteland. You could pet them all.
Starting point is 01:11:34 Just walk away. Bim Talser, Brandon Garlock, Brian Saylor, Brian Whitney. You would be a champion in the Thunderdome. Just walk away. Brockway loves the meat-kneeling. Burrito Mouth, Cerell, Rev. Look at this sweet dune buggy, Rev. You can have it.
Starting point is 01:11:58 Just walk away. Chance McDermott, look at that sweet dune buggy. You can still catch Rev and take it. Just walk away. Chris Brower, Curious Glare, Dan B, Devon the Rogue Supreme. I know a place with all the dog food you can eat. Just walk away. Dean Costello, Donald Finney, Dr. Awkward, Eric Spalding.
Starting point is 01:12:28 My war party is badly in need of gimp's. Do you have a gimp resume? Just walk away. Fancy Shark, Jella Ho, Greg Gunningham, Hamboad, Harakka. Harakka's already gone. Good job, Harakka. See, he walked away. Harvey Penguini.
Starting point is 01:12:49 There are two mannequins over that hill. Both girls. You could make them kiss. Just walk away. Hot Fart, Jaber Al Aiden, Jeff Orasky. John Dean, your battle wagon is mighty. Everyone respects a radio flyer in the wasteland. Just roll away.
Starting point is 01:13:12 John Hector McFarland, John Minkoff, Josh Fabian, Joshua Graves. It would be a shame to destroy that mullet. Just walk away. Josh S. Ken Paisley. If you go, I will give you Joshua Graves' mullet. Just walk away. K&M, M. Jahesh Adel, Mack Miserable.
Starting point is 01:13:38 Do you want to be stripped naked and strapped to my war chariot? If not, just walk away. If so, just walk away. We can work it out. Matt Riley, Max Baroi, Michael Lair, Michael Wells. Just hop away. I am sorry we ate your leg.
Starting point is 01:14:00 You can still hop away. Mickey Loewen, Mike Stiles, Mojo, N.D. Neil Bailey, the wasteland needs lovers. Just walk away. Neil Shaffer, Nick Ralston, Ozzy Olin. Have you seen Barter Town? They have pig races there. It's adorable.
Starting point is 01:14:22 Just walk away. Patrick Herbst, Rain Vargas, Rhiannon, Sarkovsky, Sean Chase. Spotty reception. You don't have to die like your father. Butt naked and upside down in a catapult. Just walk away. Supernaut, Ted H. Thomas Cavazos.
Starting point is 01:14:44 Life is precious and the dead cannot whip. They cannot name A. Just walk away. Timmy Leahy, Toastie God, Tom Sakula, Tommy, Waylon Russell. We all read your poetry out here. Everyone, we all read it, right? It's like really good. It makes us feel ways about rivers and old broken guitars
Starting point is 01:15:07 and stuff. Just walk away. Yossarian, just walk away. We hate to see you leave, but we love to watch you just walk away. I await your answer. You have a full day to decide. You will be safe in the wasteland. Except for you, John McCammon.
Starting point is 01:15:27 You're so fucking dead, John McCammon. Oh my god, John McCammon. You're fucked, John McCammon. You can try to walk away. It will not work. You're so fucking dead.

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