The Dogg Zzone by 1900HOTDOG - Dogg Zzone 9000 - Episode 7, People Who Became the Best Parodies of Themselves

Episode Date: January 19, 2021

Seanbaby and Brockway bring in a ringer, Jason Pargin, to discuss people who have become the cruelest possible joke about themselves. They discuss Dennis Miller, they discuss Steven Seagal, they do terrible Dennis Miller impressions for a long time, they make fun of Steven Seagal eating a carrot for a VERY long time.

You're in the dog zone for an hour. Come on. You got the number. You got the number. You got the number. You got the number. You got the number. You got the number.

You got the number. You got the number. You got the number. You got the number. You got the number. You got the number. You got the number. One nine hundred.

One nine hundred hot dog. One nine zero zero. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine hundred. One nine hundred hot dog. One nine zero zero zero. Welcome to the Dog Zone 9000, is the official podcast

of the 1 900 hot dog website, and with me as always is cracked legend, Robert Brockway. As always. as always, together, forever, inseparable, joined at the hip-hop. Fates intertwined. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

Also with this is fellow crack legend and returning guest, our first returning guest, Jason Parjan, best-selling author, and you might know him as David Wong if you're old school internet, but now he's just Jason Parjan. Welcome to the show. I love what a curse and what a jinx it is to have the, we will be together forever on record,

because like every band that's ever said that, you're usually about one month away from the horrible breakup when it's like, hey, we're just slow-creating together. Right, but now they know it's his fault. They know I want to be. I gotta say, I can't imagine doing this website by myself. If you leave me, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna start my solo project. Thanks for breaking us up, Jason. There's the, They had to bring up the omen. The emotional manipulation from Sean that was, should have been the warning sign we all saw long ago. I gotta say,

But that's the thing I'm into. I'm a little afraid of this episode. And I'm gonna just say, because when Sean proposed this to me, dropping it on me before the holidays as like a task, you know, like your boss drops a huge report in your desk. It's like, this has gotta be done after New Year's and you realize he's like dropped.

That's how I talk. Yeah, homework on you. And he's like, hey, you know, we're gonna do a show about Steven Skull and also Dennis Miller and also Nicholas Cage, but you don't need to do any homework. You can just show up. It's like, okay.

We both know what you just asked me. I didn't mean that. We both know what you just asked me to do. I assume rightfully. Yeah, that you just know all of that. But I mean, did you have to do that much homework? How much of it just came off the dome though? Yeah, here's a look behind the scenes.

Earlier today, we were in Slack and we started talking about face-off. And it turns out all three of us have that movie completely fucking memorized. And that's all we did was trade face-off quotes for hours at four hours. Yeah, it was most, it was a good part of the day. But my...

It was a great part of the day. I will say right now I go on record. Like I warned Sean. It's like, look, what are you more afraid of? If you piss off Steven Seagal and he comes after you and tries to like fight you, or if comedy legend Dennis Miller hears this podcast and then comes after you on his social media,

like using his comedy wit to start skewering you and roasting you in public. Like which of those two things are like when he went after me? Like when he went after me? Shell Wolf. He will absolutely butcher you in 460 characters. Yeah, no, it's...

If I had to face them both at the same time, I still feel like I'm pretty confident. Like if I'm having to like dodge from Steven Seagal's clumsy pause while still trying to like retaliate against Dennis Miller's quips, I still think I like my Jesus. The vicious mockery.

Yeah, he's like, look at you over there, babe. You're like, God, no, waiting for the DMV. It would be very distracting. You have to admit. That's true. I'm genuinely worried about disappointing Nicholas Cage. I just, I don't think I could take it if he gave me that like sad look he does.

That hang dog expression. Yeah. He'd hold up your wife's wedding ring and say, see anything you like. Oh, shit, we're already doing face-off wits. Okay. Is this the part of the show where we explain to the listeners what the premise of this episode is?

Yeah, that's a pretty good idea. Or is it just self-evident? And as I mentioned last time, Jason, you're our best communicator, so please try to explain what the hell we're doing today. Okay. Look, everybody listening, we realize that everyone we're going to reference today

is far more successful than we are financially. Like, I don't know what Steven Seagal's career earnings are, but I know that if someone were to give us the number, all three of us would just sit here at dead silence for like the next 20 minutes to contemplating it. And then there was a news article that I shared with you a couple of weeks ago saying that Dennis Miller

recently sold his $50 million mansion, $50 million mansion to Ellen DeGeneres. So the entertainers. I immediately started doing the math on that because I think we all agreed like, what the fuck has Dennis Miller done that would give him any income in like the last 15 years? Exactly.

You know, just measuring it from my house and I was trying to extrapolate what his income or his property taxes would be. And I think it'd be about four or 500 grand a year. If you have a $50 million home, that's what you pay just aside from gardener and maintenance and mortgage, if you have a mortgage, that's just like for existing,

you have to pay half a million dollars every year. If any of the three of us... Imagine being Dennis Miller's butler. If any of the three of us just got Dennis Miller's air conditioning bill for that property, we would think our lives were over. But anyway, so we realized in the course of talking about it, that Dennis Miller and Stephen Segal

and for, I guess in a bonus episode, we're going to discuss Nicholas Cage. These are all people who at one point were not only extremely successful with mainstream success, but were actually considered cutting edge. Like as in, teenage and college boys had posters of Stephen Segal on their walls

as like, here's a cool guy I would like to be. Dennis Miller, you know... With the heart around it. You know, Dennis... John Baby Segal, written on my trapper keeper. You feel like cropped in a photo of your face next to his so it looks like you're kissing or whatever. You know, and obviously Nicholas Cage

as one and a Best Actor Academy Award been nominated for a second. Dennis Miller went from his very first stand-up show to being weekend update host on Saturday Night Live within five years. I mean, it was meteoric success. People were imitating his style. These are all people who at one time were wildly successful

very early in their careers and then at some point in their 50s or 60s at some point in their life, they became parodies of themselves and the world just sort of started laughing at them. And it's not at all clear if they know the world is laughing at them because that was the thing with Dennis Miller. Dennis Miller, for those of you who don't know,

if you only remember him from the 1990s and when he was the weekend update guy, after the early 2000s, he reinvented himself as a right-wing crank and started becoming a full-time like Fox News guy and is now like a full-time pro Trump guy. And if the Dennis Miller, I think from those early days, from the cutting edge early 80s comedy scene

that incredibly hot stand-up comedy scene could be introduced to the Dennis Miller of today and as mid to late 60s and what he's doing now, I think he, I think young Steven Seagal, like I think all of these guys would see their future selves and it would be like a Scrooge situation where it's like the ghost of Christmas future. It's like, this is where you're going.

It's not too late. It's not too late. Start, surround yourself. Send me back to the 90s. By people who will tell you no. I've been looking through some Dennis Miller books for this podcast and he did sort of have that like sort of edgelord, like conservative Republican type

act in the 90s. So I don't think, when you say he shifted to like a right-wing crank, it wasn't that far of a jump. He always sort of had this, I don't know. For me, I guess what defines that philosophy is not caring about other people, right? And Dennis Miller had that in his act. Like he just doesn't give a fuck about other people.

And he had, even before he was a right-wing crank, he'd be like, oh, global warming. Who gives the shit? We'll tell the kids. We've moved to Miami. And like that was like a joke to him. And I think that was to a lot of people in the 90s because we sort of knew that was naughty.

We're like, yeah, people don't really think that. But then some people like Dennis Miller like took the joke out of it. And they're like, no, no, no, I truly don't care if the world gets hotter. Like I don't care if the coasts get flooded. I don't live on the coast. And I guess he might not see his future self

and say, what an asshole he might. Man, I loved him. I loved him in the 90s when I was a shitty teenager because it's everything that appeals to a shitty teenager. Especially a shitty teenager that thinks they're a little bit smarter than they are. Like that would have been his core audience, I have to believe.

So he was so at home in the 90s. Like that was exactly his style of humor and her culture was ready for it and embraced it. I think he just, when people started to move on from it, it was the symptom of a, well, I'm not wrong. I'm not wrong now. I've been doing the same thing I've always been doing. It's you who are wrong.

But gentlemen. And then where else do you go except for to the right wing when you start to sort of drop this in? I am self-aware enough to know that if you looked at the stuff I wrote in 1996, you could say the same thing about me. I think I've changed obviously in a lot of ways, but like that's just kind of how we talked.

And it's what a lot of us thought was funny back then. Right, the 90s was shitty. The whole theme of it was, let's all just be shitty all the time. Isn't that great? Yes, but see herein lies the true horror of what we're talking about. Because you could also look at Nicholas Cage.

And when he'd say, well, now he's just a clown, but you could look at his early roles and say, well, maybe he was kind of always a clown. And you can look at, you know, Steven Sugawa and say, and you can say, well, he's deeply uncool. Like he's like this big chubby dork with, but then you look back at him and I was like, and he was a dork then too.

The fear is that aging and getting that place in your life does not change you. That it simply reveals what you always were. That's gonna terrify a lot of people. Because you can't stop it or else they would have stopped it. And so this is what we're here to explore because one, just be clear,

we are balancing this shows on a razor's edge because on one side it is very, very funny what has happened to all three of these men. But on the other side, it is deeply, deeply tragic. And in it, we may be seeing our own futures. I didn't realize we were doing philosophy this episode. I think that insecurity that you just put in our, and probably everyone listening's head is very healthy.

And I think it's very good for an entertainer to sort of constantly think like, oh my God, does this completely suck? Am I a joke? I think that helps push people to be better and to, you know, check their work. And yet the more successful you get, the less likely you want to ever hear that.

I guess with Steven Seagal, like he has to sort of build up all these delusions, like I'm the total badass, I have magic powers, there's a right-wing conspiracy to make me look uncool or whatever, left-wing conspiracy, I suppose for him. And so if any chunks of that gets shattered, he has to create new delusions to sort of cover that up. And so I guess someone like Steven Seagal

sort of has to grow into this kind of crazy. And I think Jason's right, like if he was to see his future self as a young man, he'd say like, oh my God, what the fuck happened? But I do think he has that delusion-building mindset that give him a couple of minutes and he'll come up with a way that it's actually super cool that he's a giant fat guy

with a triangle glued onto his head, you know what I mean? I don't know. I'm not the philosopher. It is kind of cool. Just give you a think about it, it's kind of sweet. Okay, so if we were to start with Dennis Miller, I don't know how much our listeners care about Dennis Miller, but the reason we mention him a lot

is because there's actually a lot of entertainers who've done what he's, well, I think he's done, which is where he simply kind of saw where the opportunities were. I think in some ways, especially in the early 2000s, he made a specific choice. Like when you get the call from Sean Hannity on his show in 2003, because Dennis decided

he was on the side of the Iraq war or whatever. He made a choice that if you fast forward a couple of decades, we are laughing at him and he's laughing at us from his $50 million pension. Like for us to sit there and say, wow, how did he go so far off the rails? He would, and I cannot do a Dennis Miller voice. But if we were to mock him for going off the rails,

Sean, in his voice, what would he probably say back to us? He'd say, oh, I feel real bad when my butler's feeding me rock cocaine. I don't know. Yeah, exactly, but he was- I didn't have anything prepared. I love that you're our default impression guy, and it's just every single one is so good.

It's spot on. It's a tenet. There's no error. Anyone who's hearing that, you can understand why me and Brockway cannot do a Dennis Miller. Like it takes a lot of practice in doing it. Years of practice. Years of vocal training,

just to be able to get that cadence. Yeah, a lot of people, they're not dedicated to it. There was a point where I think lots of teenagers who loved stand-up comedy in the 80s, and just to be clear, in the 80s stand-up comedy was like the coolest job you could have. It was, there was this boom in the 80s

when all of these giants came up, Jerry Seinfeld, everybody, when George Carlin was still out there and Sam Kinnison and all of these guys. To be, to shoot to the top of that scene, and doing it as Dennis Miller did. We had this persona of this young brash. It was, like you said, it was screw everybody.

But it was, if you're anti-establishment and you're doing it in the 80s, it means you're anti-Reagan, you're anti-Christian, all that stuff. And so he was, I remember one of his bits about gun control. Well, he talked about that bumper sticker where it's like, you can have my gun

from my cold, dead fingers. And Dennis was like, that's fine. That was his, it was like screw you to all of the old, cranky people. And that was, at the time, you know, that was where, you know, that was the zeitgeist. You're a comedian. It's not funny to be a comedian and stand up there

and say, and like defend our great president. Like there's no, not a lot of great comedy comes from that as we are going to demonstrate when we go into Dennis Miller's Twitter feed. Which he has since deleted out of shame. I'm so excited. So he must know that he sort of sucks. This is, no, everybody else sucks.

This is the question, does he know he sucks? Because what happened was, as far as I can tell, because again, he left Saturday Night Live and he was there until the early 90s. He actually got his own late night talk show after he left that. That only lasted, I think, a year. And the late 90s actually became one of the announcers

for Monday Night Football. Like that's how big this guy was. He could get his own show. I remember that going very poorly though. Yes. Oh yeah. It went very badly because it turns out maybe not a great improviser. And some of you who have not heard Dennis Miller's comedy,

he has this very distinct style where it's nonstop references to like early 80s pop culture figures that if you are then too young to know them, it's just gibberish. It's like that Star Trek episode where the alien race speaks entirely and references that no one else has. It's just like an alien race of dickheads

who don't care if you do understand them. The obscurity was always part of it too. It was supposed to be like you barely got it, which is such a dangerous place to go to for your entire stand-up routine because as you age out of it, you guarantee that nobody gets it. Exactly.

Which is not a great fit for Monday Night Football. I wanted to say that he's kind of a talented stand-up in that his timing is good and his delivery is good. And when you talk about comedy, it's just a really broad thing. Like he follows a lot of the rules of comedy and that he sort of knows which sounds are funniest. So if you were doing like stand-up to a baby, Dennis Miller would be one of the greatest stand-ups,

I think, just because of the cadence and the timing and like the bouncy Gs and the hard Ks and all of the things that he picks. And you'll see that in his work. You'll pick words like October Fest and Oingo Boingo just because of all the random nonsense references. You'll find ones that have that sort of thing in their brain says, oh, we're being whimsical.

And so I don't, obviously don't think much of him as a writer, but when it comes to like standing in front of an audience and saying these things, he's good at the craft of it. He's more of a slam poet. He's more of a slam poet. So I don't look at him and say like, how the fuck is he successful? Like I'm like, sure, that's fine.

I don't know how he became so successful because the content of the things he does. Like I've just read three of his books and I honestly, if I was back at Cracked and this was like a draft that was handed to me, I would put it in the below average part of it. Like the jokes are very, very low quality. Yeah, I cannot do what Dennis Miller does.

I could not, if you transported me back to 1979 and you made me move to New York and live out of my car and try to rise to the top of that field and the sheer grind you have to go through and the abuse you take and all of that. It's truly admirable. Well, now I'm rock hard. Same with Steven Seagal.

I can't do what Steven Seagal does. He learned enough acting to be able to make a few several blockbusters, international blockbusters. His face is known around the world. It's to the point that today, he will get paid multiple millions of dollars to show up on a movie set for like a weekend,

not really get out of a chair. And they can stick his face on the cover and the thumbnail of the, and it will go direct to streaming and they will instantly make their money back because there are still people all over planet Earth who will watch anything with Steven Seagal in it and won't even notice that he didn't leave his hotel room

to be in this movie because in the movie, he's playing like the crime kingpin who only, they only talked to him on the phone is to discuss him and he's clearly like in his, the expensive suite where the rest of the crew had to like sleep in their vehicles. Like Steven Seagal, like half the budget is just taking care of it.

And the other half is the sexual assault allegations. He's not a good guy, Steven Seagal. We should also mention that. Don't leave the women with Steven Seagal. He's got a writer just attached that you have to pay for any sexual assaults that he commits on set. There will be a disclaimer at the end of this episode that these are jokes that are being made.

We have not witnessed any kind of sexual assault on the part of Steven Seagal. We've never been in the same location as him. What's that? This is comedic exaggeration. Does he under siege one not proven? I thought that was proven. I do think it's just sort of known.

I mean, it's, there's multiple allegations. We're getting sued. Multiple credible allegations against Steven Seagal for such a thing. Okay. He's kind of one of those people that assumed like, oh, I'm famous. Now I can do, women want me.

I can do whatever I want to women. And it turns out that's really, really not true. You do not. It's since been explained to him, but I'm not sure that like changed his mind about it. Okay, but I'm not worried about lawyers coming after you. I'm worried about one evening, you'll be walking out to your car at night

and you will sit down and you will look up and you will hear a voice behind you and you'll look into the rear view mirror and there's Steven Seagal sitting back there. Oh my God. Can you imagine how fast I would have to run to escape Steven Seagal? We're talking ones of miles an hour.

It depends on how many people he has there to help him out of the vehicle. Still, it's still that initial. I've seen that motherfucker run in those movies. You're just, you will be crippled with laughter and he will take that opportunity to just devour. To savage you like a velociraptor. He'll immediately dislocate both his wrists

and I will be so overtaken with laughter and he'll be able to like waddle over to me and bite my neck. The movies he's making now, he runs so fast that it almost looks like a different person in those cuts. Almost. You will see him shambles.

I swear he's teleporting. He's teleporting. That happens. And the guy was like, he's pausing, it's like a guy with a goatee glue to his face. They yet somehow looks far more real than Steven Seagal's. Anyone, I apologize. Anyone listening this, you need to pause this

and go just do a Google image search for Steven Seagal now. Cause a lot of the references to Sean is going to make to Steven Seagal's appearance. It may not make sense unless you can see him. You're going to think they're exaggerations. Here's a hot tip. Google Steven Seagal carrot. Okay.

See, I did not. Imagination runs wild. I did not Google that. I know what photo he's talking about. And at the mention of it, my visual imagination Googled it in my brain. And I can see it perfectly. Brockway, if you do not know the photo he's talking about,

please Google Steven Seagal carrot so that you now have it in front of you for the rest of this episode. Okay, but you're going to have to give me a second because my keyboard is like a shotgun. Okay. I can edit all of it out. Hahaha.

Oh my God. Let me ask you. Why does it look like he's uncertain what a carrot is? Why would you eat a carrot like that? Before anyone thinks we're being too mean to Steven Seagal or Dennis Miller. Robert, do you think anything you've created in your life? has brought people more joy than that photo brought you just now.

I can't say that. No, I am dust in the wind and I am looking at a legacy. And Steven Seagal likely doesn't even know that photo exists. It's just out there bringing people joy. Like that's magical. I can't, everything we're saying. Right along with them, he's carrying two watermelons at chest level and just smirking hugely along with this photo.

And the context of that photo is much funnier than what the photo is. It's Jesus Christ for getting so far off track. This is supposed to be the Dennis Miller section of the episode. Oh my God, Jason, you're the guy that gets us back on track. I don't think so at all. He had you Google Steven Seagal carrot in the middle of the podcast. Stop. You had our listeners stop the podcast.

Okay, well, they all if they've all done this and they all need a moment to collect themselves before they can hear anything we're saying. Okay, now back back back to Dennis Miller's life story. The issue that break. I need to get this off my screen. I'm sorry. Disappointed you. I failed you.

I know very, very quickly in this scant few years in between he was fired for Monday night football. In fact, it was just like a year 9 11 happens soon after. So as all of our episodes, there's the first reference to 9 11. I know it always gets back there. And then Dennis Miller started incorporating that his stand up like how mad he is at Muslims and how cowardly the French are like the French wouldn't there that people don't remember.

There's a whole thing where during the war with Iraq, the French wouldn't let us fly over the airspace. So he started in like anti French stuff and pro military. And then during the Iraq war when the left really came out hard against the war, Dennis Miller went all in. And at that point on from about 2003 is first time I can see him showing up on Fox News. But since then, I think he has that like he said shows on Fox News like he

was an all out. And at that point from then till now, we're going to decide some of the comedy he's done during that period. It is some of the worst comedy ever created because you have somebody who's whose entire stick was based on being the wise ass, you know, the whole world was ridiculous to having to pivot to being the. Pearl clutching. How dare you insult our great President Trump right right wing conservative

fifty million dollar mansion owning when he gets roasted on Twitter. He deletes his Twitter and then goes to the Nazi platform parlor. It's I guess it's not a Nazi platform, but it's where all the Nazis went. So they wouldn't get banned because Twitter banned them. And to try to do comedy from that place. And this is why he's on this episode, even though some of you maybe have literally never thought of Dennis Miller, even once in your life. The reason we're talking about him is because when we quote where he

went with his style combined with I don't understand the world and I'm very scared of the world and also I can make bundles of money by just doing comedy for other scared old people. It is. There's no word for it. I don't have a word for how sad and also funny it is that the other thing about writing comedy for this crowd, I did an article on on cracked about right wing comedy and how it doesn't work, at least on normal

people, but like for right wing people, they they are all in on all of this crap. So if you say here's a joke and the point of the joke is that we hate the Liberals, they will declare it funny like whether it made them laugh or not, they will fight to the death that it was funny. There's a guy you might know on on the internet called Stephen Crowder. Have you heard of this dude? Of course.

Okay, good. He's very much like this. Like it looks like he started off trying to be funny at one point and it like didn't work out and people are like, oh, no, dude, you don't make jokes like that. Those are awful jokes. And he sort of, you know, spun it into how, oh, actually, I should make jokes about people like that.

They need to hear these terrible things because it helps them. And so his comedy sort of turned into more of a like lecture series on how like like it's okay for me to make fun of crippled people because like they have it too good or whatever and toughens them up. Sure. I'm ready for the real world like that. He did a good thing. You know, they're all tough and like his audience.

Um, they're like, yeah, of course it's funny. It must be funny. Otherwise, what are we doing here? Otherwise, we're just a bunch of like crazy bigots and intolerant people like saying mean things. And so, uh, so I think Dennis Miller has that safety network. If he goes on Fox News and say, you know, president Trump's a real smart guy. Like they're like, I didn't quite get the joke, but it's obviously

very funny. Otherwise, you know, we're, we're fucking mad men. I always picture your impression as being done by a Dennis Miller Muppet. I guess that's the visual I get from that. So explain the Michelle Wolf thing is where a lot of people on Twitter became aware that Dennis Miller was still alive. And it was, it is one of the low points in the platform, but you have to kind of set up the context and then why the everything about it is the

saddest possible thing. Michelle Wolf gave the, God, what was she? What was the event she was speaking at the White House Correspondents Dinner? And so, uh, she obviously had some criticism for the, uh, near fascist right wing, uh, politicians. And, uh, Dennis Miller tweeted, um, what a horrid human being Michelle Wolf fits.

I'm going to read up on her over the next couple of days. I will have a few brutal. They made jokes about her by Wednesday. And always good when you set appointments for your car. Expect punchlines in two days when I think of them, which was so great cause I think what he's going for is like, oh, I don't even know who she is. Even though she was a daily show correspondent and a very famous

like standup performer. So he's already swinging pretty hard on like, I don't know who this pretty famous person is, but, um, of course to say, I'm going to write some jokes in a week is, is not how Twitter works. It's specifically like one of the oldest man things I've ever seen said on Twitter. Like it's not how comedy works to be a comedian and someone throws a, and you say, I'm going to come back.

It's going to take me easily 72 hours to come up with a sick burn in response to that. There's no amount of shame that you should be feeling that they would actually convey how sad that is. Again, the whole thing is that, you know, you're supposed to have these things instantly. That's, that's the whole, that's. Look, Twitter, you always had the option of just typing nothing.

You can just not respond. The fact that he tweeted, I'm going to do homework on you. And then here's the best part. Sean, what was the joke he came up with when Wednesday rolled around? He literally did not come up with a single joke. That's right. He was, he was unable to keep that appointment stumped. Now there's nothing.

She's great. I'm sorry, but I, uh, wow, what a lady going to read this. I actually wrote four jokes for him on Twitter that day. Um, I'm going to read them. Yeah. And I'm going to do the voice and everything. What's new in the world? Yeah.

I, uh, looked into this. Michelle Wolf fair, you know, this chick guy, uh, I call him like a same and all Shelly's got more tangles of red hair than Oh, be Taylor's bumming. Okay. So that's just one. He could, he could have done that. Give me another.

Give me another. Okay. So, uh, this is Michelle Wolf. You're seeing this lady. I, uh, this is a broad set. It's a year than an October fest in downtown Miami. Did she? Oh, thank you.

Did, did she not think I'd be coming out of it? Well, guns blazing. I'm captain fucking hairdo, baby. That one, you're probably wondering why that one was so funny is because, um, October fest in downtown Miami, emptier than an October fest in downtown Miami was a real Dennis Miller joke. I took that from a YouTube clip that I found. Yeah.

That seemed especially on point. Her head is empty. Yeah, I did that. I did that in downtown Miami. That's, that's the, okay. The joke being that there's no, that's the joke. He did not, he did not come up with, but could have. Yeah, the joke being that, look, I thought about this a long time

because I was really stunned by this. I guess the joke is that no one in Miami would want to go to an October fest because there's not a lot of Germans. Um, but again, this is that Dennis Miller thing where October has a hard C and a bouncy B. So that's a funny word. If you're a toddler and so, um, no, the downtime, I mean, it's got to repeating even more important.

Sean, if you're a teenager listening to that and you don't quite get it, the cadence makes you think it's you and that this guy is so cool. He made a reference that you're not. So you laugh because you don't want to come off like you don't know what October fest in Miami is and surely everyone else in the audience is not doing the same thing and that over time it's not going to be revealed that we were all just doing that

the whole time. He's absolutely taking advantage of your intellectual insecurity and, uh, I guess that's a good description for him. And the, the fake Dennis Miller tweets are a lot of fun. Uh, give me a week. I'm going to come up with a few best of luck. I was going to make Sean. I'm not going to read all of his.

Okay. Well, that we will post them somewhere. I could. I guess. So we can post them on Twitter. Fast forward a few years and because again, right wing comedy is not great as it was during the Obama years, at least during the Obama years, you could take the stance that your anti

establishment, right? Cause I'm fighting back against the feminists who now rule the world and all of the, you know, the Muslims and all the people like they're in charge now, you know, cause like Obama, he's a, he's a Muslim feminist. Um, but when Trump Trump took office, it comedy really bottomed out in a way that I don't know that we've ever seen before because again, when you have to do comedy deep ending, Donald

Trump, the world, a man who was manufactured and placed on this earth to be a comedy target in every way that he can be from every strand of his hair to his skin tone to his tone of voice to the things he does, the things he wears, the things he is. He has the most perfect comedy target and you are a comedian who not only can you not make fun of him, you can't acknowledge that he's ridiculous and have to feign outrage at the people

like Michelle Wolf who, who do and you'll call him monstrous. It is such a bad position for comedy to be in or a comedian to be in and for someone like Dennis Miller, that's why he never came up with a joke. Exactly. It stumped him. Uh, even though the bar for him to clear is literally so low, it's not visible.

It's underground somewhere. You could just walk past it. You wouldn't know how to get under it. Like it's, he doesn't have to do anything in order to get cheers from his audience. And I guess that's what his answer was. Well, I don't need to do anything. It's I'm fine either way.

So during the, the Trump years and the, the, the final tweet that got him roasted so hard that he literally deleted his Twitter that was in early, I guess it was in like spring of this year. Do you want to read his tweet? And again, people, this is not one of Sean's fake Dennis Miller tweets. This is one written by Dennis Miller, trying to be the funniest

2020 Dennis Miller he could be. Okay, here it comes. Limber up. The young Jedi beat team that is the White House press score have been Groupon comp lifted back to the real jobs being overly astounded by the new tailgate kick plates and oomph she was Chevy truck commercials. Now I'm worried that some listeners will think, well,

Sean must have read that long because that just sounds like eight or nine somewhat totally unrelated top culture references that do not form a coherent thought at all. But no, that's it sounds like a speaking spell like getting lowered into the lava like T 1000 style. It in the, I cannot believe that's not parody of him. That's the best parody of him that's ever been written in the, how can we beat that?

What are we even doing here? In the one hundred hot dog posted companies this podcast, I assume we can link to that tweet or the article about that tweet, which became something of Twitter legend because it was it was the moment when we all realized, oh, this is this is as sad as it can get. And this is the point where I wish I could go back to 1985 Dennis Miller and just to read him that tweet.

And to where she would say, oh my God, future me is having a stroke. Did someone call an ambulance to which I would, we might just think that this is the meanest impression of me. Anybody's ever done. I love unctuous Chevy truck commercials because like what a, I'm trying to sound smart word that doesn't really apply to Chevy truck commercials.

I guess like it just means there for purely for that sound that lets it fits his cadence is the only thing he needed to use a word like that right there. Why are they Jedi tailgate? They're the young Jedi beat. Well, you need that's it's Dennis Miller, but also isn't that lives that implies a second team of Jedi is better than them, but also they're the Jedi you see in Chevy truck

commercials. Right, but they're impressed ones by the new tailgate kick plates. It he's referencing ads. He saw on Fox News. So like he knows lift is a thing. He knows Chevy truck commercial commercial thing because on Fox News, that's what you get.

You get ads for cars and for, you know, like erectile dysfunction medication, things like that. So that's I have read this tweet easily a hundred times and I find something new and magical about it every time I do because you have to understand listeners for someone who writes for a living and I think all three of us fear that one day we will get old and everyone will will laugh at us and we will will think, oh, good, they're still laughing.

It's like, well, no, they feel sorry for you. They they don't they actually don't understand the joke you're trying to make there. And look, I get it. It's just that he landed in a place where he accidentally did parody of early Dennis Miller that is so perfect and destroys his early self so beautifully that it is almost Shakespearean in its tragedy.

He should have just like folded up and blinked out of existence thing. You should have just like annihilated his past self. We shouldn't even know who he is. He should have erased himself from the timeline with this thing. This is why I wanted Sean's fake Dennis Miller tweets compared to this real Dennis Miller tweet that came years later, by the way, and realized that Dennis accidentally roasted

himself so much harder than Sean ever could have. Because you know that he was trying to be cool 1986 Dennis Miller and this is as close as he can get and it's amazing. And I I went through I spent hours for some reason over the holiday, you know, because I could not go home and see my family and instead just the went into archive.org. It's the only way to see his old tweets because he he deleted it to just look at some of his Trump era.

It first his Obama era tweets and then it progresses into the much sadder Trump era tweets. And so and I cannot again, I'm not going to do and by the way, I we mentioned that he has since fled to extreme right wing Twitter ripoff parlor and his most recent tweet is the Supreme Court is just a regular court with sour cream and tomatoes. Phew. Oh, it's not even Dennis.

That's a joke from what you know this listeners. Yeah, like that is at least 30 years old tired joke like like that's the kind of joke that if you said that in 1995, some would be like, Oh, yeah, I heard somebody say that. There are literal children's you want to take another crack joke books that have that joke in it. I 100% I'm sure of it. Yeah, there are jokes for kids books out there from 1995 because

kids are old enough to know what a taco supreme is. And it's like, Oh, Supreme said whatever. And he rewrote that in 2020 a few months ago. So that's a chicken cross the road joke for sure. This is a somewhat random selection of Dennis Miller's tweets 2011 and again, I'm not going to do the voice. What do you get when a jet? Does that mean I have to read it?

If you want to, I feel like it takes a lot out of you, but it's if you it does if you want to you can because the more you do it, the more you slowly please do because I do have to do the voice further for Sean baby's book game. Not to spoil anything. So for March 2011 or thereabouts, what do you get when a jet that is strafing Benghazi is shot down over Benghazi by French jets, a jet that crashes to earth and Benghazi.

Hmm. You hear the dead silence there. Is that a joke? Is he making a serious point? He is referencing something he just heard on the news in an interview that he assumes everyone is listening to. But of course, we're not right. So I feel like home implies that like someone lied to him like

that this that's not the real story. That if a French jet shot you down over Benghazi, like you'd you would go to like like a fromage restaurant or something. I don't know. I don't understand what what he means. And any time we get you down to you landed a different. Yeah, you're not going to crack it. If you actually successfully understand that you will lose

an intrinsic part of yourself that you'll just never get back. Honestly, I'm going to say this. I'm really embarrassed about this now. But like after reading all these Dennis Miller books, I was starting to feel like I kind of got him. Like I got like his motivations because because he reveals a lot about himself with the references that he repeats and like the little windows into himself.

And I'm like, I'm going to give you a quick example like you find the one I'm picturing. Okay. Okay, go ahead. I have American gladiators trading cards as bookmarks in my Dennis Miller book and I just found the quote I'm looking for. He says for me charity is keeping six ball losers whom their union insists on calling writers in quotes employed in spite

of their drunken binges and $900 a month phone sex bills without firing their unfunny fat asses for making me try to sell their heck need. It should be me out there lines of witless dung. So like what? That's that's how Dennis Miller thinks about like people who wrote for him and Jesus Christ.

When was that he hears that book from that was I think 1990. So really all of these writers are intentionally sabotaging Dennis Miller at this point. That's what's happening. That was a year 2000 book. So this is

Oh my God, that was 20 years ago. Yes. Yeah. Pre 9 still go pre 9 11 but like for me that's maybe one of the most unlikeable things have ever read like it's it's obviously not funny but like to throw his writers under the bus and use such cheap insults against them but also to imply that all of them want to be him and he's like this superstar

but he's like saying the words that they hand him and and so I read lines like that and I was like this is a window into who he is and how he thinks and how he thinks other people think and yet I just don't fucking know anything about him. And he's extremely wealthy by that point right because he was he had by that point he's been famous for a very long time and has been doing you know so I mean this is a guy who could go on top of the stadiums.

Yeah, he would sell out stadiums on tour but I actually looked it up after I saw his $15 million house like what the fuck is he doing for money and I guess he and his wife flip houses which is sort of like at a certain threshold of being rich you could just kind of make a ton of money buying houses and selling for a little bit more and so yeah that's what he does now so I don't think he needs the comedy stuff anymore. Just like everybody I have no respect for does right. Yeah

once there's a point where you get rich enough that you kind of can't lose it like the like society has all sorts of ways where you just you just buy a bunch of property and that it's going to be worth three times more than what you paid when you sell it like even if you're spending money stupidly it's you're still you're still pretty rich by the way I have to ask this this is related please please don't take this the wrong way that you mentioned you're sorting through your

multiple Dennis Miller books and you're you're you're marking your many many places with your American gladiator trading cards if you had to estimate what per and maybe this like on your taxes but what percentage of your income is spent ironically. Oh my God. I tell the IRS it's probably 30% but it's probably closer to 60 I don't want to just embarrass myself for the IRS.

So you would actually you would make more money if you would get it that I take the hit because I just don't want anyone in the government knowing is when they audit you this guy's going to be like I can't do this. They're going to come in like look there's no way somebody bought this many Dennis Miller books how much did you spend on honestly the Dennis Miller books were literally one penny each so I okay it cost about $14 to get the mail to my house

like that's oh my God how many how many billions of copies did he sell to make that by that and that is 60% of my income anyway I'm going to race through I'm not going to read all these tweets if you want to go look them up yourselves don't do it there's no reason to but just quickly this is what it looks like when you're trying to be a conservative comedian in this in the last decade March 2011 famous polar bear can do was found dead this a.m. left the suicide note saying

he couldn't bear the shame now that global warming is falling apart the logic of that joke look why would the polar bear kill itself if it turned out global warming wasn't true do you see how he's trying to force ideas together like do you understand what I'm why I picked this out like you see how hard he's trying to dunk on who the bear that the people who sell a guarantee you it's because canute is a funny sound that's going to you saw that and wrote it down and he was like

yeah that's my that's my in that's my entry another good look into how he writes and you maybe write like this too but when I'm trying to form a joke I sort of just let my mind explore in every direction and I'll think like polar bear what do I think about polar bears global warming ice blah blah blah and like my I just let my neural map go in every direction possible and then you pick the parts that are interesting and see if you can link them back to the other one create some ironic

connections some absurdities this leaves out at least 90% of what I just said like this is just a very stupid man who heard polar bear and thought polar bears have something to do the global warming how do I link you know I don't have time for that to eat it parlorate but here's the thing you you're in a position where you have to land in a spot where you are absolutely taking the 100% partisan position you're not just you can never just make a comedic you never just observe

something being ridiculous now your bread and butter is you've got to be you know you're marketing to a certain audience every time Nancy Pelosi opens her pie hole I feel intellectually famished President Obama has done what do you President Obama has done more for the half step than Kevin Spacey and the usual suspects that's pretty good you're getting better

anybody know what that I actually just 100% did not know I accidentally started doing the Dennis Miller voice until you call it does anyone understand seriously does anyone understand what he's saying there this is from April 2011 Obama's been president for Kevin's Kevin Spacey played a character named Kaiser so say who had a fake limp for most of the movie I understand and so so the half step is sort of a reference to the limb because he's okay but what you take a

half step you gotta live so President Obama I don't understand that the policies referring to but I think President Obama was criticized for not being like a bold decision maker like his predecessor George HW Bush and so Obama would be seen as wishy washy by the right wing people and that would be something that could criticize him for like he didn't fix the entire world he just kind of came out and said like hey here's we're gonna try this and you know didn't fix the world so it's a

half step and then therefore he is he's popularized the limp but again he has done he has done press for the length is the premise now this joke is that he's doing PR for the abstract concept of limping I I do want to say that there is a lot that doesn't work I'm just saying I get what he was going for and you're in you're a hundred percent right that it doesn't work and he's

wrong and this joke is objectively wrong and bad May 2013 thank God Alicia Masters can't actually see her and Ben's baby NBA ref Joey Crawford I don't know I don't get any of that June 2013 who's Alicia Masters no no we're moving on there's don't don't June 20 the answer is not going to satisfy anyone Sean why it's whose life is going to be improved by finding out what he was referencing there.

Wait wait that's from comic books that's from the Fantastic Four that's a Fantastic Four joke is it good. Well I don't know who NBA ref Joey Crawford is but he must look like the thing because that's the joke is that man looks like the thing from Fantastic Four I think I got it. Well the joke is that he looks like a combination of the thing and Alicia Masters and who's that and a blind woman yes

and okay and an average looking blind woman. I love it. I love that joke you read too many Dennis Miller books so fucking stupid in the headspace now you're in the Miller space but like listen it's got you I'm a fucking hardcore comic nerd and I wasn't like I was his best shot of getting that joke right I'm legitimately now a Dennis Miller expert and a comics nerd and if I don't get that fucking joke no

one does so congratulations Dennis on blowing your your only shot June 2013 the White House press room was turned into men staring at goats blaming other goats. It's getting very good impression but that that joke means nothing to me. Don't don't even have a guess November 2013 working working on a reboot of the Crucible starring Richie and Cognito. Great job Dennis don't not even not even any funny sounds in

that one April you're not giving me anything not giving me anything to work with you don't think incognito is a funny name for a Richie I guess April 2016 April 2016 Frank White and I stood in at a Ewing coffin basketball Academy to protest size is against Freddy Patek. Wow now here's a free there we go he's got a back is a famous short baseball player. Here's the thing white I believe was good.

Well here's the thing I worry that someone will take that audio out of context and that it will turn out that that tweet is incredibly racist somehow I don't know because I don't know who's being referenced here. It's a good point. Oh I saw the one you just highlighted in the Google Doc. Just feel free to go ahead and read it for you. Sunberg kid reminds me of Baruch assault.

That's the complete tweet. That's the first one is what was from after Trump became president because the previous one was Trump was running that was clear he's going to win the primaries this one was from October 19 just months before he finally deleted his Twitter and all of that work he had put into it and declared that the platform couldn't be saved because these people clearly do not get real comedy like I throw this gold out there and

they just all get his people making fun of me and quote tweeting it and so by the time that Trump's been in office he is you know has every house of of Congress and the Supreme Court and all Dennis Miller's got left is. Thunberg kid reminds me of Baruch assault. That's that's it. That's it Duncan on an unrelated teenager. It's such an incomplete thought.

It's like something that a wife would say that's a no follow up better. Uh-huh. Okay. It's absolutely something that you would respond with okay boomer to like that's an okay boomer set up. And I feel like now when you go back and hear the tweet that caused him to destroy his Twitter.

You can see that that was him coming back and trying to put in effort and saying look okay so fine that was it's lazy for me to just insult people because I'm now standing on the side of total power. And I'm trying to be an edgy comedian and so he comes back with the young Jedi B team that is the White House Press Corp has been group on comp lifted back to the real jobs being overly astounded by the new tailgate kick plates in the

unctuous Chevy truck commercials which I got you fully doing the impression I think he has you just you fought it so hard but you didn't Dennis Miller has 15 to 20 hours in that tweet and in drafting it. I think he went through version after verse work and thought when he put that out there it was going to go so viral and people were going to be you know what that is right you know he though they are the young Jedi is back.

Captain hairdo is. They are the young Jedi B team babe and and the people just were so baffled by it and so I mean some people were dunking on it other people were like you know is he okay as someone you know can someone go to his house and see if he's collapsed on the floor like is it possible that. You know can say it like Dennis was like it's half your face gone numb like if the muscles gone dead and like can you.

Yeah that's a dying brain misfiring for sure yeah that's we were legitimately afraid for him but then no he that was when he got so frustrated we didn't appreciate his genius anymore because clearly again from the old person's point of view it's not that he's lost his fastball is that audiences don't know what's funny anymore so I do not doubt that he thinks to himself this was too edgy because the world has lost its edge and I Dennis Miller and of course an edgy

comedian so it can't be anything that I'm doing wrong but the world has gotten so soft. That gold like this hard hitting gold just sales right over their heads. Well and so it's time to find a new audience you know what it's time for. In this version of some of his book game to you are going to hear me read a Dennis Miller quote.

Yeah I'm going to do the voice and everything and you're going to tell me if it's real or if it's fake and I'm going to take it from the books I read before I am or the rants I know you're both familiar with both those books or I'll be making it up all my own and you have to tell me so Jason you're going to go first you're going to listen to me say this and you have to tell me if it's real or fake. If the date of every celebrity picture and them have been

black that with the ballpoint pen patients are waiting longer than they should I know people are waiting for me to say God know what the DMV but God know wasn't waiting in if I had to say flat to me and after gone I'd have been waiting even longer for a laugh. Jesus Christ. Wow there's and so these two books were written in the late 90s so that's like being punched in the back of the brain.

It's distinctly unpleasant. I think this is a reference to the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for God. Yes, deep well for Dennis Miller. Yeah, which I don't think he has actually seen I think he just knows that almost certainly not title and he uses it when you know something a smart person would say but but I think you think I've masterfully known this and incorporated

it into a fake tweet or a real quote. I think you I think this is a real I think you wrote this because I think you were trying too hard. I think you put too many terms in there and I think that's no would have kept it more controlled. I think it is fake. It is a real quote. Jesus.

So you read it again without the action without the voice. Just read it. I know you can't not do the voice as much as not done. It's difficult, but I can focus the listeners. Yeah, you hear the construction. Don't you be taking your high horse? If the teeth of every celebrity pictured in them have been blacked out with a ballpoint pen.

Patients are waiting longer than they should. I know people were waiting for me to say gado at the DMV but gado wasn't waiting. And if I had said Vladimir and Estragon, I'd have been waiting even longer for a laugh. Now I didn't take this out of context. This is the full paragraph and the paragraphs before and after it are not really related to this.

So this is that was a complete thought from Dennis Miller. I think I feel like it's it's like a jumble that I have to unscramble to make real sentences. So I believe the joke is the play is called waiting for gado. And so if gado was waiting at the DMV that would be a reference to the name but since people were waiting on gado if the joke wouldn't work now. He could have said Vladimir and Estragon which were the

characters in waiting on gado. The people who are actually waiting but then he didn't think you'd get that because like and he's right. He's that's the one thing about this. He's right about so. Yeah, that's a real quote. Congratulations Dennis Miller and I'm sorry you lost that around Jason.

So probably you have a chance to pull ahead. If you can tell me if this quote is real or fake. When I went to college I lived on campus and the guys I hung out with made the characters in Revenge of the Nerds look like the rat pack in 1962. I myself made that kid bugger look like Remington Steel. I remember finally breaking down and trying to wash a pair of socks but shaking them around in a rinsed out skippy peanut

butter jar full of hot water and a squeeze of cold gate tartar control toothpaste. I think I think you wrote that because there is like a world in which some of those references could be understood by a general audience. So you think that's fake. Yeah, I think that's fake. It's real.

Okay, we're going to do one more round of these. And so Jason is this real or fake. Hype is everywhere in our society on every level. It starts at the top with our promoter and chief the man from Hype Bill Clinton Clinton has done more for spin than Brian Boyk ton with an inner ear infection in a fucking centrifuge. You know if Clinton blows any more smoke up my asthma sphincter is going to soup Philip Morris.

I'm worried that you're doing that thing where these are all real and you're trying to make some sort of a point by by not inserting any fake ones and not because you instead of taking the time to write them. We are at the third entry that this would be the time a pattern couldn't be determined but it's a very risky risky play. That still that sounds more fake to me than the level of more fake to me than the last one because it's got the anti

Bill Clinton stuff in there. No, I think I think you wrote that one. I think it's fake. That is real. So Brockway we're going to do one more and you plan and you might have a chance to win this first round. It's real. The last one.

Okay. I'm sorry. Just back in for a moment. When he gave Brockway the moment when he specified that the toothpaste was tartar control that's where I thought it was fake because it's like well that's one extra that's too many references that don't affect the scenario at all like it's just thrown in there is like a code word you've heard in an

ad somewhere and that's supposed to make you laugh because it's that's the Dennis Miller School of comedy writing you just you'd make the full product reference and that's it's got tartar control. Those are funny toddler sounds Colgate product you've heard of this was probably like after Colgate tartar control was running a big heavy ad campaign. So it's sort of like a you know just like a sound you might

have heard before I don't know it's hard to get inside Dennis Miller's head. I got to be honest but it was very real I promise. All right what's mine. Okay yours is Bill Clinton dodges responsibility like a motley crew roadie after a crack stripper chokes to death on her G string or like an Oingo Boingo roadie when it's time to wash the communal Mountain Doopie bottle in the tour bus they

share with gadget guru. Damn it. That's got to be fake. That's got to be you right that actually was me I wrote I knew that because I don't think Dennis Miller may reference Oingo Boingo as many times as you think he did when you imitate Dennis did reference you always yeah you always go back to Oingo Boingo but I don't think it came up as often as it's

fair it was actually catch a go go that tipped me off you don't think Dennis Miller would mention catch a go go. I do but I don't think he would go for the double dip of Oingo Boingo and catch a go go. I think he's he's a subtle man. I thought I was better at writing fake Dennis Miller than this so although if you told me you had written that by constructing parts of three different Dennis Miller jokes

word for word and combining them I would also believe you like if you said well it's fake but I did I did it by grabbing words from two different pages of the book and just putting them together I would I did absolutely do that I didn't pull out entire like sentences but like fragments here and there that the wording is taken from other parts of the book and crack stripper was something I noticed because I did actually I went to Google Books and searched for crack in all of

his books and he made so many crack jokes which is another like comedy hack thing in the late 90s is just crack crack crack and I saved a bunch of them. I'm not going to subject you to them because we'll be on Dennis Miller all day but like that but you saved them so that you have them when you need them for something. So congratulations Brock you you are up by one point if we do another round Jason will have a chance to tie but it's looking

like we're not going to get time so this could be your first victory. Oh my God. I have a ticket I have nowhere I won't be proud of it. I have nowhere else to be and I'm going to tell me right now I'm not ever doing another episode on Dennis Miller because that that contest that's a good point that weighed on me the same as if like you had asked me if you'd give me like a

series of like test results for my family members and one of them had a terminal illness and I had to guess which one had cancer and which one didn't that's what it felt like hearing that these were real Dennis Miller jokes. Yeah they just they wither your soul like you can feel some part of you just grinding away the more he it's everything it sounds like we're going to do another round let's give Jason a chance to tie.

I want to see how far we can go down this Dennis Miller whole so I'm done exploring the Dennis Miller whole you're just up by a point you want to stop but we're going to do one more no shit I forgot this is the only one I've ever been winning all this is such a Sophie's Choice scenario you give me so are we in agreement with what do I want to sacrifice to do one more round for the tie. It's sure I this is your last chance you put the work into

putting this together so this is because we're not we're not ever going to do it again. This is too hard. This is too hard for me to hear this. Yeah but counterpoint it does suck. The problem may not be that rock and roll sold out but that simply everybody bought into it MTV did for rock and roll what the full like me or did for Liberace even a current

president ran for office with the fleet went back to Mrs. Camp Bainsaw sure we never dropped acid but Bill Clinton's mind is about the only thing that hasn't been blown who are some of my favorites well I kind of like whole you watch Courtney Love on stage and that raw aggression is so sexually intimidating even Clinton's ever ready man bone would retract like a motorized Volvo antenna. Really fake motorized Volvo antenna that's how a boner goes

back in if you see Courtney Love right that's that's how Dennis Miller's boner works. And so relatable to who was asking am I being asked that or is Jason do you think that was real or fake. I don't think you would have come up with the antenna thing. I think that's real. That's that hurts but it's true. It's absolutely real.

I don't think you I don't have made your mind. I don't think you could have made your mind go there. I don't think you could have. I don't think you can make yourself you can imitate like the references in the way the stuff barely but in terms of coming up with a bad comparison like that it really is very nobody gets that's just utterly unrelated and also not related to the subject at hand that if a horny man saw Courtney Love

his boner would retract like the antenna on a Volvo you can't make your brain generate that it's I don't think you could I don't think you could do it. I think you're right. I wish I could for just because it you know what I well you got to understand your enemy you know what I mean like I when I wrote this article about right wing comedy I I spent so much time trying to understand them so I could like explain

why they're wrong. I don't want to just look at something and say hey look at how not funny that is like I really wanted to academically explain why it's not funny just like how I want to understand why a human brain would think yes sometimes you're so sexually like intimidated that your penis goes in in a way a penis doesn't actually work and I don't know there's something to that that fascinates me.

Because he was trying to come up with like a visual that would be funny to the audience but one we don't have cars that have antennas that do that. I've never owned one or ridden in one it and to specify the specify Volvo narrows your audience even if you had just left the Volvo off of that. Yeah but he's got it in. Maybe somebody has seen the brand in there.

That's his thing. He's got it and that's the thing. Yeah but he's got to satisfy the sponsors Volvo sponsored that. All right give you a Brockway so Brockway you could win it or you'll be stuck in a tie. This is is this real or fake. Now I don't want to go off on a rant here but America has

become more paranoid than Ross Perot watching three days of the condor after a 72 hour crack binge. Real that or fake is. Fuck I'm so stressed that is fake it's real. Dammit this is impossible. It's a tie. This is impossible. I try to apply logic and it's broken every single time and

we've established I'll just get out of the way we've established that ties go to the guest. Brockway you'll get one of these days. Okay. Congratulations Jason Pargent. You want to scrap the game for a moment. How many fake ones did you write. Did you just write that one.

I did just write that one. Yes because that's why you just counted you counted wisely. Yeah I like 20 that I threw away because I cannot get there's there's a sort of like flatness to Dennis Miller's jokes where they like they end with just these sort of groany punchlines where you're sort of like oh you're done and it's like you made us sit through all of that for this. And I spent so many years trying to train that out of my

brain that like it's that I can't write it it feels unfinished and so I would keep hacking at it however I feel like you you wisely banked on Dennis Miller sounding like he's doing a bad Dennis Miller impression right so that we we screwed ourselves just not having any confidence on like how bad Dennis Miller can really be yeah it was psychologically just brilliantly cruel on every level and you were to be a plot. Thank you very much the Brian Boytano one is the one that's

stuck in my brain how he says that like Bill Clinton is does more spin than Brian Boytano with an inner ear infection in a fucking centrifuge because it's so got to take that one extra step the adding the fucking is like so desperate to like oh dude I'm really fucking saying something here but like the other things are just like the first thing a pedestrian mind would think of that spins like centrifuge of Brian Boytano and the inner ear infection is the closest thing

to edge that joke has and it's just like lost in this clumsy analogy I don't know and someone who writes a lot of clumsy analogies I recognize a bad one like that's something I would have given no thought to backspacing just like nope that's not it yet you know anyway like that but better like that your thing do you think knowing what you know about comedy and how it works do you think that Dennis is so used to writing a joke and then knowing that it's good enough

that he can sell it and the delivery that he can that he knows he can get a laugh from it just through his manner and in the speed at which he says and as you mentioned he's very good at like his delivery is very good like he knew exactly how to like that punch things or do it faster or drop the references so quickly that your mind is trying to catch up and he's already moved on to the next thing like he's so I wonder if that's part of his crutch because you know you

your entire background is in text for the most part and so it's like it all has to come off cross on the page like it's all gonna your reader can read it over and over and over again and it's got to be funny every time whereas his he's doing these things in the moment he knows a lot part of the show it's gonna be you know he knows what joke followed it and what came before and what came after so I wonder if these are not jokes that maybe would play I don't know like I

wonder if I went back and I do think he's a talented stand-up and if and if he was to deliver one of these jokes and the audience is just like oh Brian Botanian or okay I don't get it I think he'd have the talent to be like also so no ice skating fans in the in the crowd tonight okay well you know about and move on and like get sort of a chuckle between jokes and this is gonna sound crazy but I've seen carrot tops show in Vegas and carrot tops obviously you know pretty

reviled as a terrible comedian but if you watch his show that's part of the act and the things that get laugh is after he does something totally fucking stupid he's like he looks like disappointed and sad in himself and he sort of says something self deprecating and moves on and that's where the comedy is and so Dennis Miller has that ability to when his jokes don't land to be like to turn that into sort of a quick laugh or a quick like uncomfortable snicker at least

so I you're 100% right that these could work as as part of a stand-up bit not a good one not a classic but you know the the totally don't work on on the paper. And I feel like if say Adam Sandler tried to write a book he would have a lot of the same issues that a lot of it because obviously people do like Adam Sandler but a lot of it is just in his manner. You just it is hard to get mad at him especially like his

stand-up persona. He's like such a slob and carrot top to he's like such a likable guy. He's not you don't want to hate carrot top like he's just he's there to try to make you happy and he's not like you know insulting you or anything. So yeah that's I don't know I'm fascinated by the sanctimony of the carrot top right so here it's interesting how poorly

it translates to the page and then how poorly it translated to Twitter which is why I got I got sucked down a rabbit hole reading his tweets because it's like man he's probably hearing these in his head. He's like on the stage I could do a Greta Thunberg brook assault joke that would like like he could kind of hear himself doing it and like that he would have the right venom in his voice that would just make his old right wing audience

laugh that then you type it on Twitter and it's just words and it's just there's no cleverness there. There's no twist or joke or comparison or anything. Yeah it's it's just a clumsy observation by a very normal mind. So that's how he's going to get back on top. He's going to start a TikTok. He's going to be dancing dancing while he does all of this.

That would work. Tick tock has that advantage of there's always an abrupt end on a tick tock and then it like you know fades to a little picture of them and it it works as a as a punctuation of so many different types of jokes like if someone's falling down and it just cuts to like a little credit it's it's a great ending tick tock has a little button built in to every single joke.

All right well Dennis Miller if you want to start a tick tock I would like just five million dollars for the idea. Okay cool. That's pool money for Dennis so that's Dennis Miller. That's the dinner section of the break before we start the next two two sections that we still have to go. I think we'll have to go real fast. There's much there's a lot less to say about Steven Seagal.

I agree. Clearly we're going to be concise for the Steven Seagal segment of the episode it may not immediately be clear why you would do a podcast on Dennis Miller and Steven Seagal and we will not spend as much time on Steven Seagal but they their lives follow very similar paths because let's be let's be frank. There's a lot of famous people we could have put on here.

You could argue this the Sylvester Stallone who you know didn't Oscar nominated screenplay with Rocky and later became kind of a joke. There's a lot of celebrities who wind up kind of doing parody of themselves. Steven Seagal has taken a wild card one. I think John Carpenter is a lot like that in a good way. I think John Carpenter made a lot of like really daring art

in his early career. It was all you know he did some schlock horror type stuff but it was always really like profound and visionary and as he got older he stopped giving a fuck in a fun way like if you look at Assault on Precinct 13 it's like weird and cool and then he did the same movie on Mars with Pam Greer and it's just fucking silly and stupid but also awesome and if you look at Escape from New York it was you know this

anti-establishment like action movie with a statement and then he did Escape from LA and he's like fucking surfing down the canal with Peter Fonda and it's so stupid but again in a great way. I love John Carpenter and I think he got more fun after he stopped giving a fuck. I would say William Shedner also did that. William Shedner I think is very good about like he kind of

knows that he was always hamming it up. He kind of knows who he is. You know he's got to be close to 90 years old now but it's still out there and still you know he makes fun of himself and it's a self-awareness is the difference where you really can't kind of skewer your earlier work unless you understand why it's silly. Steven Seagal is accidentally skewering his old work.

I think I don't think he knows that he has no idea. I am positive. I will commit where you cannot. He has no idea. He thinks he's doing the best work of his life. He's so tough. He doesn't even have to do martial arts anymore. So some of the kids out there.

Go ahead John. I was just going to say that and it's early career like not only was he kind of a cool movie star but like like maybe third or fourth grade. I remember kids talking about how he had a standing invitation fight to the death anyone anytime and like that was like believable like that's like the kind of like mystique that he had as not just cool but like a magical kind of cool.

Yes. And we can kind of run through his very very briefly his biography here for the listeners who are younger and more of like the the tic-toc generation. It sounded like Sean may have collapsed. I heard heard the sound of like a surface stepped in the Sean trap in a floor. There's a lot of three year olds running around.

Okay. So but he was a legit blockbuster action star for a solid decade from the late 80s to the late 90s. So he lasted longer than say Taylor Lautner or a lot of people that have that have come and gone for someone who I would say was maybe a little limited in charisma and acting ability. That's generous but he and martial arts ability and and

just general like ability. Yeah. And it was kind of a lot of limitations. Yeah. And which is kind of inspiring because he was a legit international movie star. It is to the point that he can still get huge paydays doing these direct to video movies even now and people our age

all know who Steven Seagal is. And back then yeah and in the early 90s absolutely thought he was a cool dude. Now this is interesting because recently on Twitter I asked a question asking my followers it's like do you think I had pictures of Steven Seagal in his prime. I said do you think he was a handsome man and 80% said no. I think that is recency bias.

I don't believe that if you had asked women back in the day and the actual early 90s do you think like would you date Steven Seagal if he was I think I'd agree to that. Yeah. I think I don't think it was a symbol but I know it when he boned a girl in a movie you're not like what's going on here. The interestingly I asked a follow-up question where like if you found out your mother was having an affair with Steven

Seagal on the side and I didn't specify whether it was current day Steven Seagal or in his prime like let's see you went to your parents home or if you or if you live with them you went to the bedroom and you found a nude Steven Seagal in the closet where he is hiding because he would he wouldn't make it to the closet. He would just sit there and let let him be discovered he doesn't he doesn't walk he doesn't hide.

But the question was would you gain or lose respect for your mother finding out she was getting Steven Seagal on the side and it more than doubled 40% said no actually I would be happy for mom and only 60% said they they would actually be lose respect for the mother if they found out she was getting some a little bit a little bit of Steven Seagal on the side from I love that you did like actual sociological studies coming into this podcast like very few people do this much

prep for a podcast and I really appreciate it. Yeah and we feel like you did this prep unrelated to the podcast but I will also give you give you points. Yeah don't check the don't check the dates on that poll because it may turn out this predates you asking me to be on the show. But the point is I guess my the point is that now retroactively he looks ridiculous and I don't think he knows that but for

him at some point and if you go back and watch his movies and I've seen most of them I've not seen the recent ones where he started cranking them out because as I mentioned down here in 2016 Steven Seagal was in six movies like you can go to his IMDB like he he cranks these things out and at some point in I guess the mid 90s. He started to do that thing that happens with certain celebrities you know of course happened with Michael Jackson

and having with where it's not necessarily a mental illness it's crazy but it's more crazy in the sense that you get famous enough and you have just enough power that there's no one to keep you in check like you you're just right powerful enough that you can surround yourself with yes man because Steven Seagal was not acting in the equivalent of the Avengers of that era it was more the second tier like these are movies that it's it's made

because he's in it right so it's a tremendous amount of power on that set right. So by like 1994 he made the movie on deadly ground and that's the first time where Steven Seagal was like well now we need to make an action movie that will fix the environment. It literally ends with him giving that I was going to say that that movie his character like legitimately had like a bit of magic if I remember like before he was a bad ass but

now he was sort of starting to buy his own like a keto master hype and he's like we got to put some of my like mysticism into this film. I think that I think you're right that that's the turning point where he's he he started to think is that the one where he's where he started playing minorities so I think that he's like in the turning point or some sort of a native. Yeah I'm totally on board that the Native American like jacket

and the movie literally ends with him giving a four minute long speech about the need to save the planet over like B role of pollution that it's like it's like a meal brain type thing where he literally thinks this movie is going to be the thing that in the rest of the movie. It's just some just corny plot about of course the evil oil company wants to whatever. Dusted his hands when they were done filming well got that

sorted what's next do it. And then he can't imagine that didn't do it by 1996. He was in a movie called The Glimmer Man where he played like a Buddhist magic detective and that's where he's starting to do the thing where as you said he's convinced that he because he was in some action movies were very successful. He's now convinced that he has the answers to what ails the human soul and he has like a blues album.

What's his music album. It's got these got the tails from the Crystal Caves. Is that one but yeah it's the name you don't need to hear the album the fact that the album is called something like I don't know if Sean just made up the name of the album or or if it's something exactly like that but it's either called tails from the Crystal Caves or something very similar does someone want to Google it or are we happy to just leave it.

I think we're fine. Songs from the Crystal Caves but it's definitely something Crystal Caves. Something terrible happened in those Crystal Caves but yes Steven Seagal at this point was kind of redefining himself as like sort of a Native American shaman but also like like a Nolans black man and right when he was like all of a sudden I can play every month you don't need to cast minority

sidekicks anymore in reaction movies. I can just play the minority is the nobody's going to tell you no to that nobody's nobody's going to say you can't be a black guy because you can't there was a public perception shift I think in 1996 he made a movie called executive decision with Kurt Russell and it looked like he was going to be the star of this movie. If you're going into that movie not knowing anything about

it you're like is the Steven Seagal Kurt Russell buddy cop movie in in the sky and he dies like on the way into the plane like he's like the super spy or super. That was the best moment there's a story about Steven Seagal is in a screening and he gets wiped out before he does shit and the audience cheered like sarcastically like he's dead and Steven Seagal got so mad that he left in his agent had to like talk him down and say like no they're cheering because

they love you and they were like you died heroically and with that level of delusion the weakness that you carry with you is that you're susceptible to that type of bullshit. If someone comes up to you and says here's here's why something happened is because you're so great. You believe anything they say. Yeah, okay that makes sense. I was wondering why I was so great and I couldn't hide that

you got it though but I get one but everyone and when he died in that movie thought it was funny. No one's like oh damn it I thought this was Steven Seagal movie. Yeah, so he died so uselessly and still just in a tube just in a tube in the sky. If you die here that you're the action master and you're caught in a tube and then just fall out of a plane.

I don't even think they cut to his face. He was just like no just in the tube gone. It was just off camera almost. What a solid and then somewhere in there. He became one of the only celebrities to get banned from Saturday Night Live because he treated I guess the crew and everybody so badly and had like these really tight restrictions on like not making himself look silly.

Right. He still won't show the episode to this day. I think they cut it from Netflix but it's still on you can still see chunks of it on NBC dot com and but it is very difficult to find you have to get it. I have to find it. I never saw it to check it out. It's it's a bad episode even when he's not on it but when he's

on it he he's like ruthlessly not allowed to make fun of himself and so like the sketches are super weird because like people like getting beat up by Steven Seagal and the crowds just kind of like what is going on in this skit. So why is that funny? Yeah, like he just it's it's fucking weird. So this even have like stunt guys if I remember. Like there's he was like no we got to do a real fight scene and

Phil Hartman was like dude I'm not going to let Steven Seagal throw me through a fucking wall. Phil Hartman I would die. So this is what I find fascinating because there's some point where fame just detaches some people from the world and if you listen to the bonus episode we're going to talk about Nicholas Cage. Nicholas Cage I think for the average person is the like

platonic ideal of this happening where it seems like he now lives in another universe. I would say that probably Johnny Depp it appears that has happened to him like they just can't relate to the world anymore. The funny thing about Steven Seagal is that it doesn't seem like you know this is Saturday Night Live. There's like freaking Donald Trump pre politics Donald Trump

could go on there and make fun of himself. You know like you know freaking Barack Obama Tom Hanks like the biggest superstars in the world could go on there and mock themselves a little bit. The Steven Seagal was like you know no you know the people out there don't want to see my image desecrated. They I'm a hero to them and that's that's what's so great because it doesn't he either thought he was way more famous

than he was or as I meant said earlier on in the show it's just the true him came out like he was just going to be a dick like even if he was just working at a muffler shop he was going to be a dick about it like it just didn't matter what his job was. I am fascinated but I got to ask both of you this kind of personal question. How do you think you would handle mega fame Brockway first

if you became like say you wrote a book and it became like Harry Potter huge like huge enough to like children all around the world were dressing as your characters for Halloween. How do you think you would handle it. I think I would retreat from society completely and elaborately possibly leaving behind the trail of riddles that you could solve to find me. But generally yeah I would pull back I would go the recluse

route crazy eccentric recluse route and maybe maybe like a young writer would find me and I would you know find myself and him and inspire him and maybe could be maybe could be like a minority or something and I could be like you're the man now dog that's that's my dream I want to be the finding for us to type. By the way do the kids doing tech talk realize that they're just doing like live action you're the man now dog people

remember that website or just fine from even a few years ago yeah that if anything they're doing a lesser version of that of that site we're just looped some audio to a good point. All right. Sean in terms of if you like if you I don't I don't know whatever if something you did became mega mega huge Star Wars huge so usually that you don't control it anymore.

That's that's the thing. It's big to the point that it's not even about you do you think that would make you a bad person. Do you think you think you would handle it. I don't think it would make me bad person. I think I'd be cranky a lot like I mean at times in my career I've been famous enough where if I go in a public place for more than an hour someone will like recognize

me and want to talk to me but that's really flattering and nice and not like obnoxious but if I was at a place where like if I stopped a crowd forums and I have to like stop and take pictures and autographs like I think I would be just so cranky all the time that I wouldn't be able to like even fake it and I yeah I want the riches but the fame seems like a curse. Yeah so I think I'd be ill equipped for it but I do like me people have that would be happy that I made a Star Wars

level thing or whatever sure but I don't think I'd want to talk about it all day with strangers I don't think I'd want to here's here's the thing about me I guess I don't like sharing a lot of positive energy with strangers through like intimate like person on person thing so like I don't like to go to like concerts or music festivals so much because it feels way too intimate to share with like people I don't like having all that positive energy like that burning man

thing where everyone goes and falls in love with everybody like that makes me really uncomfortable and so if if multiple fans come up to me it's it's like dude this is way too much positive energy I don't know I don't know you like that I guess that's why I don't like good vibes I do like good vibes it's just I just don't trust them with people I don't trust I just don't I just don't trust good vibes see I actually about you Jason this is one of my fears and there's

no way to say this without sounding like an asshole like I'm afraid I will get too famous you know it's like you know it's it's be like like your your bodybuilding fans like well you know I don't want to get too buff my shirts won't right it's like okay that's that I the way we know that this world works there is an element of randomness to it because Harry Potter is not even the only book series about a child who goes off to magic school like that is not a unique story

or unique format it caught lightning in a bottle at the exact right moment you know JK Rowling could just as easily have retired having sold a healthy hundred thousand copies of those books and had a decent career writing and bought a house with it instead of being literally a billionaire whose every horrible opinion is just endlessly dissected on the in the British tabloids like like you reach a level where it's you have to realize this is madness that no one should care

what I have to say there should not be a good point I want to interrupt here if I became mega famous I can't imagine like surviving the nitpicking through my old through my early work it would be a nightmare and normally my old jokes they're jokes and you can tell their jokes but you chop off a few words at the start and end of a sentence and I it just looks like hate crimes I would imagine from today's point of view right but but I guess that's kind of part of it is it when

you get big enough you don't control it anymore so I'm going to give you my example. I feel like there is an alternate world where the first book I wrote that let's say it got adapted into like a TV series and let's say that it became Rick and Morty because Rick and Morty is a buddy comedy about a pair of people who it's this blood and guts comedy with profanity it's very fast paced that's the exact same tone and premise where there's monsters from other dimensions

and they have to go like stop these world-ending threats but it's a it's like a blood and guts slapstick profane kind of format formatted comedy and then each time to kind of like skewering some trope some genre trope it's very similar to what I wrote they didn't steal it from me obviously it's just me and the people wrote that are the same age and we came from the same place with the same influences so let's say in some alternate world they adapted John Dias

the end into a TV show and then it became like say it caught fire the way Rick and Morty has him and Rick and Morty is now a merchandising megalith like they there's you know freaking sleeping bags and t-shirts and lunchboxes they sell billions of dollars worth of toys and everything like it's there's there's bootleg stuff to totally lose control of your thing and to where like the Rick and Morty fans were like writing out of McDonald's because they didn't bring back the sauce

because of some throw away joke in an episode that you wrote two years ago it takes that long to animate it and it's throwaway joke and the McDonald's size to bring back the sauce in response to that joke and then a bunch of fans go viral from being dicks about it and and then it reflects badly on you like you would feel such a loss of control because that fandom that now has nothing to do with you or your creation or your what you're trying to say or anything it's become

just a meme it's become a series of images I have I get like short of breath imagining that happening to me or something I made like where it becomes so big that there's toys and there's knockoff shows and other shows like trying to imitate it and like all that like I might it can't fit in my brain and the thought that all these other people are out there talking about it and debating it and it's just the lives outside of where I can like kind of be there for it where

you write a book like I'm 100% in charge of the book I decide every word you know it goes out itself and then that's it but the idea of it becoming like this phenomenon that's going to outlive you I kind of hate that idea no matter how much money I made I kind of I I hate the idea but see like all three of us I have like a negative view of it right because Broadway is going to go live on an island and have and be friendless and alone in your work like all three of

us are kind of like shrinking from the possibility because each of us have been in a situation like we've been in rooms where we were famous in that room and where people are treating you like you're famous and I it was awful and ironically it was terrible like to like took a solid year off my life so if you're Steven Segal then it seems like I don't know I wish I could I have so many questions for him and I'm sure he cannot answer them because

I'm fascinated by he couldn't even articulate them there's no way that whoever was on the set of very of his very very first movie they would probably say you know what he was acting like he thought he was Arnold Schwarzenegger back then too like he thought he he was a superstar from the moment he walked on set and it was just you know he's just always the same jerk it's just that now he doesn't have the same you know opportunities like he couldn't he's like not in

the expendables are the first one because he like would be like the man too much money or something like you thought he was too famous to do it it's just like Bruce Willis shows up in these movies and it's like well yeah but I'm not I'm not all the way down on Bruce Willis's level it's like this is like I'm kidding these guys got old they don't have it anymore like me so anyway I his recent movies the ones he's making right now

the ones that you can go on Amazon Prime or wherever they live I guess they're on I don't think they're on Netflix maybe they are it is sometimes janking free services listening to this Sean do you have in front of you some of the names is the movies from last say four or five years something like that like some of those 2016 you could easily just start making up titles and you would be right it's true after about 2000 they

all full on run together I've seen a lot of them I like to get together the friends and watch Steven's ago movies you have just kind of tell like how fatty is in the movie and that's like how recent it is and it's other than that it's just a gray sort of Romanian thriller the other thing about Steven's ago movies to you mentioned this early Jason that he sort of just shows up and sits in a chair and that's very true that like he doesn't even do like fight scenes anymore

occasionally you'll see him do some sort of a keto slap to a dude and then a real tight close up on his face and then it'll cut the back of somebody else doing the actual fight but what this creates is this whole new like visual style of editing where Steven so they can't even show walking or running so when he moves most of his movies he'll sort of teleport a few feet with these weird like ghostly fades so it's a very horror movie style editing in an action movie

that I don't know how much Steven Seagal is haunting his own movie. Yeah, I don't know if he if he's there telling editors to do this but it's very common Steven Seagal movies for the editing to be just fucking crazy in ways that might be artistic somewhere else but in Steven Seagal it's just in the dark you can tell make make me look like the ghost at 40% more ghost and darkness teleport me there. Oh, that's good. Can you can you make me look 180

pounds smaller? Anyway, I guess that's just a fun fact about Steven Seagal is that he teleports a lot in his films for purely practical reasons I imagine but it it it's a weird in the movies have titles like I'm gonna I'm not looking at the list but like strike soldier contract to kill general vengeance out for a kill is general vengeance a real title or did he make that up? You don't know you'll never know. That's the next show.

Maybe the game real or fake Steven Seagal movie that should be one. There are so many you might actually land on a few real ones by trying to make up ones. Gut shot straight real or fake Jason? That's I'm gonna say fake. It's real. He played a guy named Polly Trunks. Well, let's if we rattle off some names you just run down IDB some names of characters he's played. They include mason

Storm, Elijah Kane, Lieutenant Jack Cole, Travis Hunter, Jack Taggart, Jonathan Cold, C-O-L-D. No, does not be confused with Jack Cole. There's cold vengeance. Jonathan Cold in what was the name of the movie, Brockway? Cold Vengeance. Cold Vengeance. Forest Taft. Axe. That one's pretty bad. And just Decker. Just Axe. Just Axe and just Decker.

Yeah, so like I do these things called man comics on cracked and so I'm always trying to come up with like action movie names for the characters and like you can't parody any better than Steven Seagal's real fucking character names like fucking Jonathan Cold is inherently funny to me. Like if I landed on Jonathan Cold while writing a fake character, I'd be like, I'm done. That's funny. I'm very confident that just the right amount of trying an

actual surname in in the world that people have, right? Am I wrong about that? Is that has to be for a title, right? It has to be like cold case starting Jonathan Cold. Vengeance is always served cold. It's always served Jonathan. So listeners out there who if you're listening to this, I assume you're the type who likes to like watch bad movies and get together friends, watch bad movies and make fun of them and whatever if you're not and you you're living a lesser

life if you don't because some people I think would say well what's the point? Why would you pay money? Like why would you pay money for all these books, Sean? Why would you pay money for like all of this all of this stuff? Why would you pay to watch a Steven Seagal movie on Amazon Prime? You have to enjoy you get from a bad movie is so much greater than a good one because the fact that the movie these movies are made every bad movie is made under such strict restrictions that seeing

how they get around them is always kind of amazing because these movies that he's making now in the movies that like Bruce Willis makes some of these on the side Nicholas Cage makes him on the side. These are things that they just dump to streaming where I'm going to guess the budgets on these are probably I don't know like three to five million dollars and I would say most of it goes to the star that the famous face they can put on the cover because they can and so then the

rest of the movie is being shot on I don't know a million you know between half a million dollars and two million dollars depending on the movie but it's mostly they've got you know they can get investors together to get a few million bucks together and they know that the moment they put Steven Seagal's face on or Nicholas Cage's face on our Bruce Willis his face on the thumbnail or on the DVD and international markets you can still sell DVDs and they'll dump these in

grocery store bins you've seen these you've checking out at Walmart they just got him piled in there and they'll have somewhere it's like eight movies on one desk for like four dollars and you get a famous face and they've done the math they will make their money I do I have a friend who does used to work with Jean-Claude Van Damme basically they would attach him to the project and then they would sell the movie and then they'd get the budget so there's like you put Jason

Statham in your movie and then you go to Romania Bulgaria and you're like hey got a Jason Statham movie coming out it's called like you know Razor's Edge and they're like cool we'll buy 800,000 copies of whatever the fuck they buy and then they just make the movie for less than the money they've already made and that's as simple as that and if they make more if the it sells more awesome they'll go somewhere and shoot either if they're either shooting in LA or also go some

places they can shoot for really cheap Eastern Europe or some place if they need an actual setting if it's not just taking place in a guy's apartment in LA like some of the Bruce Wells ones it really looks like they just shot them in the director's apartment but if they need like like an old factory to shoot in you know they may find one and I don't know the Ukraine or whatever an old closed down steel factory and that's it you can set up in there for a week and then and then

you will get this contract from Steven Segal that says I am there for 48 hours I will have X Y and Z in my hotel room I'm not I'm not going to be in a trailer I'm going to stay in a hotel you know you've you've got to figure out you've got X number of scenes you need me in we're going to bang those out in a couple of days I will work for four hours a day or whatever I can only get out of my chair twice and they will shoot around it and so you watch these and it is fascinating

to see them trying to work around one how little these guys are in the movie because in some cases like every scene they're in is going in the trailer and then seeing the logistical challenge of well the audience expects a climactic fight between Steven Segal and the main bad guy but Steven Segal who at this point is how old is Steven Segal like 67 or something he's not a young man obviously anymore sure and has already left right he's not there anymore so so trying

to cut in some shots of his face because you can't just do stuntman in the end you've got to cut to his face somewhere in there and seeing them try to match it it's really amazing everything about eating a carrot like how do we take this carrot photo and fucking make it look like a fight and this not like spits the carrot through the bad guy's eye it's not like they've got the budget to like recreated in CGI or to map another face onto the double like they've kind of

got to work with what they've got they've got the best stunt man they could find in a ponytail wig and it doesn't look like anything other than the way it just said it is magical because I don't know whether I should be happy for him that he's still working because at least he's doing something he's getting out of the house but does he think these are good or is he just so bitter that he's like I know this is trash people watch anything I don't I honestly don't know or does

he think that he's so awesome that like this is all they this is all it takes like just just me showing up these couple days in this chair definitely think the latter probably I think he still thinks I think he's of anything he thinks he's gotten so much better with age that now he just has to show up and kind of squint and people just women women explode and lost men men wither like they've just seen inside the Ark of the Covenant and so good I was talking about how much I love

bad movies but Steven Segal like strains that love like there's about 20 Steven Segal movies in a row that are are so like joyless and slow and like they're boring like poorly written and like yeah they're really boring and there's a competence to them like generally aside from Steven Segal everyone's kind of doing fine and I could sit down and I have written some articles on them because like you can find funny problems with them but like sitting down with your friends you're not

going to be like that was a very funny thing that happened it's just sort of like later you can make your criticisms about the film funny because they're so huge but they make the world the worst place is my point Steven Segal should not be making these movies they're bad art he doesn't even accidentally manufacture joy anymore right right the most even Segal inner entertains me is is that he wears tiny little glasses that are far too small for his head and tiny

little everything that's far too small for him he doesn't know every time I see them I laugh and and I know I don't I just picture him looking himself in the mirror and he's like yes these glasses make my head look huge it does look like you're putting hilarious tiny props on like like an over plumped hot dog like you're just sticking them in Mr. Potato Head style magic markering on hair that was the stuntman from kill switch it's a very big hot dog and tiny

sunglasses again please audience I would kill switch starring Bulgaria's biggest hot dog Google Steven Segal goatee or I guess just his name is probably enough we'll get you what we're talking about it looks like someone has painted it on with a Sharpie so I guess to try to to try to wrap this up two hours into it I guess the point between the two of these to take home there are plenty of entertainers who have aged gracefully when Sean Connery got old like he played

Harrison Ford's dad in a movie he played the old man he was he knew you know he could transition to playing the because he was he used to be freaking James Bond he used to be you know I'm having sex all around the world on the hottest man but he didn't try to he didn't like paint his hair black and continue trying to be James Bond he he gracefully you know knew he's getting older he's gonna you don't even Harrison Ford who's something of a cranky old guy

but he started to play doctors and lawyers and he didn't pretend he was Han Solo yes I know he eventually came back and played Han Solo and it was very sad but there was a period of time where he was aging gracefully and I think there's a lesson for all of us where if either of these men had had the self awareness to say you know what I'm not the edgy comedian I was when I was 25 and that's okay I don't have to be you know I'm a millionaire I can just be

decent to people I don't have to like chase a paycheck by like yelling making jokes about pronouns or whatever like I can I can just peacefully reside in the background I don't have to always be famous it's actually not necessarily a good thing and Steven Seagal we could have still like he could have graduated to some other stage of his life if he had wanted to he could be playing like mob bosses and stuff but it's like no I'm gonna be the guy who's still

the best at karate I'm gonna you know again cuz the bad guys always some buff dude and it's like Steven Seagal is gonna take him out with what's the what's the martial art he does I key to I key to with I key to or whatever like at some point he believed both of these guys kind of believed their own BS I guess and I don't know that's that's what here in this Christmas season when we're recording this I'm sure you're listening to it long after but this is the time

for reflection let these men serve as a cautionary tale you can you don't have to try to cling to the awesome person you were when you were you know 27 it's it's fine it's time time we'll make a fool of you right because if you do I mean if you try that if you really can't learn to let it go you will make hundreds of millions of dollars yes you will be fabulously really wealthy but people will be laughing at you that's the thing about these two men is that they have achieved a level

of success they could fucking literally do anything they want like Steven Seagal doesn't have to work Dennis Miller doesn't have to do these doesn't have to do this right wing shit he could jump jet skis whatever he could he could rent a Ferrari and crash it and be like oh whatever what's the be back tomorrow he could do just stuff for fun he could just pick projects that look fun he could go out and go to the comedy store just do a do a set I don't know do a set of the old

stuff just go out and people will miss you if you're if you're gone right there's nostalgia people like oh it's Dennis Miller you still have him back in high school you don't just kind of show up and stuff you know pop up on do a guest spot on a on a show on a set common the whole audience will clap when you walk on set it's like no the world must must know that they're wrong to yell at Donald Trump or whatever like I don't know if you truly believe it and you know I don't know it's

like you're you're as famous as Steven Seagal was back then you can you can keep doing stuff for a long long time it doesn't have to be sad that'd be like you're selling you know you're signing autographs like boat shows or something like that you can you can find stuff to do he could have a really funny like like a YouTube cooking show and everybody would love him for it it's like no I'm still it's 68 years old I'm still I need people people want to see me kick this young dude's ass do you

have a specific way that you end the show I've only done one other one is there is there like a thing that we that you do that ends it you don't have a catch phrase or you don't think the patrons or something that is it that's our main show thanks to our guest Jason the margin go by his book so we punch the future in the dick it's available wherever you get books it's fantastic I'd also like to thank our patrons which Jocelyn Luke Sky jogger Lane hey good Doug Redmond Jamie Gordon

Benjamin say ran and Dr. Awkward Ken Paisley Josh s you sorry and Zachary Evans Adrian Hissbrook thank you very much Aiden Muatt Mike Styles toasty God Josh Fabian Neil Bailey Eric Spaulding the artist formerly known as Devon David Fornoff Jabra Al Aiden Mike Phillips Neil Schaefer Zidara fan Lyman Armando Nava John McCammond Yannis Ianitis John Nick Rauston Dean Costello Rhea Hock three finger Louie Timi Lehi Brian Whitney Matt Riley and Nick Heyman thank you

very much for supporting our page the bonus episode will be on the discord our theme song is by the oral knots and the bonus credit song is by three-year-old rebel Riley it's on right now you go swing swing down turn turn turn around good god son of a gun take my place the sun shines in this bedroom

when you play and the rain and always starts when you go away the sun shines in the bedroom thanks pal I love you is that version the nirvana cover or is that the that the original