The Flop House - FH Mini 108 - 1% Visible

Episode Date: July 27, 2024

Sure, Roman and Elliott might have all the heat with their excellent 99% Invisible series on The Power Broker, but that doesn't mean that Dan can't try something incredibly stupid!Check out our live show Three Men and a Hallie, tickets on sale now! Show debuts on August 4, and you can view any time for the following two weeks!

Hey everyone, welcome to the Flophouse. I'm Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. They call me Elliot Kalin out on the wasteland. Oh wow. Interesting. I mean, do you have any, is there any other like element to it or is it just Elliot Kalin? Like is it Elliot the Killer Kalin?

Is it Elliot Cannibal Kalin? Nope, just Elliot Kalin. Yeah, I mean out in the post-apocalyptic blasted nuclear desolate Wastelands that is the future world. They just call me Elliot Kalin. Wow, we are introducing a very dramatic element That's not gonna be addressed throughout the rest of the many. Oh, I call that Garfield's Dan It's not address the rest of of the mini. It linked. All right. Hey, guess what?

I'm in charge again. Oh man. So buckle up. Hey everyone. Somebody lost a bet. Over at a little show, another podcast called 99% Invisible. Never heard of it. Elliot Cailin has been hosting a book club for the Power Broker by Ron Carrow.

Oh, that's what I meant. That's where they call me Elliott Cailin is over at the 99% podcast. Was there ever a moment when they were thinking about just calling it 1% visible? Well, you've leapt ahead to part of my thing. Stuart, I love it. I can't help it. You love it when you see it. We'll get there.

We'll get there. We'll get there. But maybe that's a sign to let some more of this intro proceed unimpeded. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. When do we do that? Never, but let's try it.

Yeah. So, The Power Broker, of course, a terrific book, one of the great works of biography of history, also a very long book, one that sort of became a status symbol during COVID. There are a lot of articles and stuff about Zoom calls, people prominently displaying the power broker behind them. Dan could also be describing Johnny Tremaine if you think about it.

Well, it's not that long a book though, Johnny Tremaine. Well, it is a biography. It's not a biography. I mean, it's kind of history, Johnny Tremaine. It is a biography. It's not a biography. I mean, it's a kind of history. It's a historical fiction. It's a novel. Yeah. So that's, that's the power broker.

And they should call that book Johnny Deformed. Just a Simpsons joke. Just to steal other jokes. Simpsons call back. Call back? Is that what it's called? Yeah, we're the Simpsons, right? Yeah. Callback? Callback? Is that what it's called? Yeah, we're the Simpsons, right?

Yeah. The 99% Invisible Power Brokers series, of course, has been listed in some Best Of podcast list recently. So, I thought- Guilty as charged. We got a draft on a little of that action over here. We've had an Elliot Kaelin on our show for years. What has it gotten you nothing exactly and so, you know in our position as goofus to 99% invisible

gallon We you know, they cover the 99% as Stewart said this is gonna be our 1% visible podcast nice the bizarre world power broker cast. Nice. The Bizarro World Power Broker episode. Because the Power Broker is about a very long, very smart book, I went through my collection to find a short dumb book. One of the shortest dumbest books I have on the bookshelf. And what I came up with is this book it's called, I'm putting it up for the camera so we'll probably cut this out. It's called Dinosaur Joke Book. Yeah. Alex, take a screenshot of this. I'm putting it up for the camera. So we'll probably get this dinosaur joke book called it dinosaur joke book Yeah, Alex take a screenshot of this. Yeah

Then mail it to yourself with the picture of today's date. Yeah picture of today's date. Yeah picture of today's day We got your joke book Today to give us the money we won't give you punchline, just the joke and it'll drive you mad. That's called a setup. That's why it's called a setup. A little background about this book, you know, for this audio book club series of one in which we will explore the dinosaur checkbox is the Flophouse Dinosaur chance like it was a purchase. I only read it so I get a little pizza sticker on my pizza cover

actually This was given to me one Christmas by my brother John McCoy who I think gave it to me because he also found it So it's by Sam Berman who I assume did both the text and illustrations. I mean I said did the text. You'll see a lot of these are street jokes. But he's the only listed author. Yeah, but you want kids to learn them from a book not out on the street. Published by Grosset and Dunlap in 1969. You know, we're going to have a, as I said, we're going to have a little book club. We've got two Emmy-winning comedy writers. We got a bartender here who I assume has heard a lot of jokes in his day.

And told a lot of jokes, yeah. And of course, Elliot's a dinosaur expert. So as we discuss, you know, I thought we could evaluate with an eye towards... We could gloss over another dinosaur expert, but that's fine. I think Stuart proved when we were in Oxford that he doesn't know dingus about dinosaurs. Whoa, LA, calm down. He did a presentation. I don't want to get this podcast rated X.

Presentation entirely built to troll Elliot about his bad dinosaur info. Yeah, I'm out of my love of dinosaurs. Anyway. It's amazing to think that as man was landing on the the moon Sam Berman was accumulating these dinosaur jokes from publication You know, but but I thought we could discuss because of you know are assembled talents we could discuss these with an eye towards comedy dinosaur accuracy Historical significance, you know and how maybe the art enhances our experience of the joke,

so forth, these sorts of elements. That'll be perfect for this audio medium. Well, we can describe it. You know, we'll paint a word picture. We'll have to use a thousand words, Dan. That's the going race for picture. Yeah, well that's yeah, that's where the Inflation rate goes to or the exchange rate goes to us as writers versus artists. That's what makes us

So we won't be of course reading all of this book out of respect out of copyright reasons and of course respect with the late Sam Berman who Ali you'd be interested in his prolific career as an illustrator. He designed the titles for Nothing Sacred and many other movies of the 30s. So he was well into his career when he did this dinosaur joke book. He co-created Eski the mascot for Esquire magazine. I didn't know they had one. What's it look like, Dan? It looks kind of like a... Like a little alien?

It looks kind of like a little alien It looks kind of like the pringles guy like an early version of the pringles guy with more like bug-eyed eyes That's what I think of Esquire magazine is the is the italian immigrant experience immortalized on the pringles can yeah uh he also Some of his other book work includes pixie Pete's Christmas Party and illustrations for something called Sullivan Bytes News Perverse News Items. Real quick, I want to go tug at a thread here. So the Pringles can, that guy's Italian?

What's the deal there? Yeah, that was news to me as well. I mean, he always looks Italian to me. Maybe I'm wrong. Okay, yeah, yeah. There's no more Italian food than a potato chip. to me maybe I'm wrong okay yeah I don't know if he is canonically Italian maybe that's me being a little racist but when I see a big handlebar mustache on a yeah Mario taught you yeah I just kind of looked at that as like high class. Let's take a look at this website. The complete history of the Pringles logo.

Penny bag style mustache. Sure, yeah. That's possible too. So you're saying that they're saying potato chips are the snack of millionaires. They're the food of the ruling class. Have you found anything about the Pringles? I realized I had stopped talking because I was waiting with bated breath for your Pringles report. I'm looking at this article now which covers the history of Pringles.

No mention of Gene Wolfe, the inventor of the machine that made the Pringles, as well as author, of course, of the Book of the New Sun. Yeah. So wait, so all his books are in first person. When he invented that, was that also in first person? I think anything he did in his life. I believe was in first person Yeah, yeah pretty cool. It's mentioning a television commercial with Brad Pitt in the 80s. But where is the? Hmm. I'm not seeing much. Yeah. Look at just Google Pringles guy ethnicity. Yeah

Pringles guy feet if that Nationality let's say yeah Pringles guy nationality. Uh-huh straight behind the mascot. Okay. This is a different article Well, I think the mass back burner this for has a name. Hold on Let's see Guys, you see Dan you just start I'll do a little bit more research on this. Okay, I'm listening to you like at this point Guys, Dan, you just start. I'll do a little bit more research on this. I'll pretend I'm listening to you. Okay, because I feel like at this point,

you make fun of me for Garfield, but this has now become officially a Pringles cast. I know. But I do want to say, I called this a dumb book. The jokes are dumb. They do have some lovely illustrations by this longtime illustrator. So, you know, I don't know,

look it up in your local library if you want to. Oh, the mustache is meant to imitate or approximate the shape of the Pringle. His name is Julius Pringle that Julius Pringles. Okay madness Last name is Pringles That's according to this article. Yes, I mean On this but look at that Think those look like two potato chips But I guess that's why i'm not a brilliant, uh graphic designer because I can't make these connections I'm still not seeing a backstory for julius pringles though

So readers if you have any information about it, right in do pringles guy deviant art google that Okay, I don't know. But well he like dan you go keep reading. I'm gonna i'm gonna keep doing your thing I'm gonna read another article about this. Oh, God. Yeah, that's what I want. An unengaged co-host. I mean, he's pretty engaged with his computer right now. Yeah, he seems really loved. This article at least mentions,

and engineer Gene Wolfe created the machine used for making the chips. Finally. Thank God. He was going to be robbed of his place in history. Oh, it's possible that Julius Pringles is not actually his real name. My P.F. Hooks.

Do you think Gene Wolf wrote like a loving backstory for Julius Pringles? My guess is that when he was describing the Pringle machine to somebody, he was using such elaborate antiquated language that they just said, build it yourself. We don't know how to do this. We can't understand. So, 1% visible. The first joke here, we've got a dino talking to a young boy sitting on his back. Right away, I see Elliot furrowing his brow. I mean, right off the bat,

that's your number one factual inaccuracy about dinosaurs is that they ever encountered human beings at all or vice versa. Separated by tens of billions of years. But anyway. If they have two brains, they can figure out what human language. They don't have two brains, Stuart. They also don't have two brains. Yeah. I'll show you the illustration in a moment once I'm done describing it.

So this dino is talking to this boy in his back. The dino says, I'm glad they named me Maxwell. The boy says, why are you glad, Maxwell? And the dino says because that's what everyone calls me so this I think is an interesting philosophical question about the nature of names you know whether a name makes someone or so here you see it's a sauropod of some kind of small sauropod a Khmer like a baby secret of the lost legend right there. Yes very much a baby secret of the lost legend Yeah, yeah

Two-tone printing style. We've got black and kind of very 60s. Yeah little foot is one of those long necks, right? Yeah, they love portmanteau compound words. Yes guess they're not even portmanteaus. They're just compound words. No. Elliot, as a dino expert, how accurate is that this dinosaur would be named Maxwell? As far as I know, dinosaurs being animals do not have names. They may have been maybe identified by their scent more than anything else. We have given them species names, but it is only man, as far as we know, among all the animals that feels the need to label and thus possess the things around him.

To everything else, all other animals and organisms, it seems what is merely is what is, and does not need a word to make it real, but in fact, simply is reality. Dan? Yeah, no, I mean, that's- Yeah, that's quality joke book notation. Straight to the heart of what makes this joke so profound.

Let's move on to another joke. Not that I think we've exhausted the rich text that is- No, I feel like there's a lot more to say about Maxwell and his, I mean, what it is, that joke, to say about the joke, it's working in a rich vein of tradition, which is confusing what a name is for and the idea of a name and an item that you see

in the work of Lewis Carroll in Through the Looking Glass when the White Knight is talking about the song that he sings and he's saying, the song is called, the name is called this, but the name is this. You know, this brings up an interesting point, which is that Elliot, have you written this book? Is it completed or are you still in the course of writing a book about jokes?

Are you talking about my book, Joke Farming? Which will someday come out from the University of Chicago Press. I have written it. It is in the peer review process right now because it's an academic text. I'm hoping to get those notes back this summer because I'd like the book to be published next year.

So, Fodbus fans, keep a lookout for Joke Farming, it's my book about joke writing from the University of Chicago Press. Must be tough for you for people to try and find peers for you because you were so funny, Elliot. Thank you. You are peerless. Peerless, yeah, yeah, yeah. Outstanding. Yeah, I can never be found guilty in joke court because they can't find 12 peers. Impossible.

That deserve to judge me. Now, do you think one of these notes is going to be that there's not enough about the dinosaur jokebook and the jokes found within? Probably, yeah. I think probably the fact that I was not aware of this jokebook till now means I have to tear up the book and rewrite from scratch now that I found this new cavalcade. Now, Elliot, you're going to have to help me with this next word mm-hmm this track adon let me see it it's a hold on let me I have to it's a very

large books I have to yeah track adon yeah okay I saw that I saw the setup was how do you keep a track it on from smelling yes I have something about cutting something about cutting off his nose. You have a dyno. Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves We have we have a dyno looking down quizzically at again cavemen not who would not be alive Mom talking to the Sun it looks like the it's hard to say who's speaking whether it's the son or the mom they both have their mouths open there's another dinosaur at the side who looks like sort of a dog dinosaur in the Flintstones vein yeah is that the track and on like what so what's it what's its skull look like because the track and on is a duck bill dinosaur yeah dinosaurs I okay I think

they're actually meant to be the same dinosaur but they look very different the one on the top the, but they look very different, the one at the top, the bottom. Well, I'm guessing one might be older or larger. One looks like it has a flat top. Male or female. Maybe one got plastic surgery. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, one of them committed a lot of crimes, and the only way they could hide out like Parker is by paying for a black market plastic surgeon to change your face. However, that doesn't work out perfectly for Parker. He ends up having to kill more people. Exactly. Any number of, you could watch Point Blank, Payback.

I think there's other versions of the same story. That's some early Parker stuff. We're talking later Parker. Oh, later Parker. There's that, what's the name of the, why am I forgetting it? The Dark Passage in that movie. It's the same basic thing.

The guy gets his face changed and he's Humphrey Bogart, which is not a surprise because you've heard Humphrey Bogart's voice narrating the movie up till that point. But yeah, so the track, so you're saying, how was the Parker books be different Stuart if he was a trackadon instead of a human being? That'd actually be really interesting because I don't think a trackadon is a career criminal.

No, that's true. There is that one book where there's a velociraptor who puts on a human suit and solves crimes. He's somehow survived till now. True. That is a really cool Parker book. I like that one because Parker finally meets his match. Normally, you know, he's a little bit too tough and cool. But finally, when he meets his velociraptor and hiding in a human suit.

Yeah. And speaking of Parker, I'm surprised you two aren't nosy Parkers to find out the nose based comedy punchline here. How do you keep a track it on from spelling? Yes, Elliot, you got it. Try cutting off his nose and there's a kind of a graphic picture, not graphic of the violence of the nose, but you see the aftermath of the bandaged. Yeah, horrible. To be honest, this is pretty similar to the Parker story. Exactly, yeah.

It's very noir type, like something out of a Brian Azzarello comic. Seems very cruel of these primitive men that they're cutting off the nose to keep it from smelling not to eat or provide shelter or any of the basic needs of humans. I mean the dinosaur's nose is only so big. I don't think you could make a shelter out of it. Yeah, but if you get a bunch of them, they'd be like shingles. That's true. I'm just saying that this seems to be an act of pure spite on the Neanderthal.

Which is usually why you cut off noses, right, for spite. Yeah, well to spite faces, certainly. Your own or others. Now I know I said Neanderthal there and that's probably incorrect, but we're living in a world where dinos and humans live together, so. I mean, world where dinos and humans live together. So I mean Neanderthals and humans live side by side for and modern humans for many years,

many thousands of years. If one of them is going to be dinosaurs, probably they're going to say, hey, buddy, come along and meet this dinosaur with me. You know, what is it like? No, I just know scientifically that's the same as what we would colloquially call a caveman, which is, you know, the Flintstone-style cavemen we see here. Well, probably not. Your Flintstone-style cavemen are probably early Homo sapiens, but they would have lived side by side with, traded with, and had sex with the living Neurandathals at the time.

They were, you know, there were other, and they're Denisovans, there are other species of humans that existed at the same time and maybe they're around. I don't know. And sometimes they have like a club that has like gadgets inside it and their entire body's covered in fur. That's what we call the Homo Captainus cavemanus. Yeah. Hey, do you have this kind of discussion Roman Mars? I don't think so. So, uh,

That's true. While I'm Roman Mars, my discussion is like like we got to get back to the Mars base We're running out of oxygen and food Yeah, we're like the missing piece, you know Like 99% invisible is not complete without the tomfoolery that we can provide with our Roman might disagree. Sure, but yeah Here we go this one so here we have a primitive cave artist sure who is painting on the wall. Very accurate. And painting a big orange

dinosaur with a bunch of sort of human figures around it in black and I'm not sure who's asking the hit caveman song a small child and a small dinosaur stand before this artist And I'll show you the picture. Hold on. Hold on. This is for you know, this story time for people here and then Yeah, no, it looks really good. I couldn't quite see it Dan. Can you put it up again? I couldn't quite yeah Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Sorry. This is another oh, he's painting a sauropod. Yeah. Mm-hmm He's saying he looks embarrassed like oh you caught me yeah, and he he asks which has more legs a dinosaur or

no dinosaur Which has more legs a dinosaur or it's gonna be some kind of trick in here. Yeah. There might be some sort of word play on top of it. Does no mean like New Orleans dinosaurs? What? Nothing. It's a joke exclusively.

Yeah, New Orleans dinosaurs. Cause it's in the Mardi Gras parade. Well, I'll just answer this question for you cause I can see you're stumped. It says, no dinosaur. No dinosaur has eight legs a dinosaur has four What the fuck this kid because yeah, there is no dinosaur that has eight legs But a dinosaur does have four legs. Yeah, I know that my Delivery confused the matter before but the point is why it's best experienced as text. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah

this this has so Delighted the tiny little dinosaur that is collapsed the floor in gales of laughter and I'll Show you that Charming illustration presumably it's happy that it's not getting its legs chopped off or something Yeah, yeah Since it knows that it's with these brutal savages these human beings that are just chopping parts off of dinosaurs. What I like is that that joke that do all the jokes justify two pages? Do they all get two pages, Dan? There's a lot of one pagers, but that one, Berman was like, this is a two pager. This joke is going

to be so funny that it justifies taking up two pages. Now that's an editorial decision you have to make about the element of surprise when it comes to the joke. Is it better served in a big gulp? Or do you wanna have that pregnant pause in between? We have to turn the page. Yeah, let me- And usually it was served like a sugary drink

in a big gulp, in a lot of it gonna I was gonna break it down in terms that Elliott understands So it's like as if if you if you open up the book monster at the end of this book Yeah, it was just like it's Grover Because we have hit you know years of history with the book monster at the end of this book Yeah, but yeah, we confuse and dismay anyone How many more pages they're just blank Coat to keep my pen for making marks. Yeah at the end Grover's just like as promised I'm back. Yeah.

What I read about that book, I mean, The Monster at the End of This Book is a brilliantly designed book. And what I read was that it was supposed to teach kids how to read and finish a book. So it's literally about the mechanics of turning pages and how turning one leads you to the next until you get to the end of the book.

It's such a brilliantly put together book. Yeah, and Grover, Grover you like loses shit Keep turning these pages and there's another one there does there's another one he does with Elmo too in the same He has not learned his lesson. He continues to be just like so hysterically Panicked about getting to the end of the book guys You ever read this out there's this other Grover book about like the museum of everything or something like that. Yeah, I like that one too. That's another one. That one's pretty good.

Yeah. What's the deal there? Is he the monster at the end of the museum? No, he's going through this museum and it's different rooms with different, like things you would look up at, things that are small, things that, and then finally he's like,

but I have not yet seen everything. And there's the, it ends with a door that just leads to the outside world and just says everything. Ah, here's everything. I think there's something very kind of beautiful about that. Yeah, what is the world? But but a museum of everything, you know Uncategorized very poorly curated Very philosophical sort of punch lines from cruelly designed I think is it is it a Borges story where there's an emperor who has a collection of every animal on earth and he keeps

It on the earth scattered throughout the world, but he considers it his collection? Look, I I know that it's at heart. It's because we didn't grow up with him or is but no I'm gonna go back to Grover. Oh, but the reason I think one of the big reasons People of my generation don't like Elmo is that we're like we had a perfectly good Grover. Grover was great. And then Elmo came and did this all about Eve, you know, like shoved him down the stairs. We don't need this real little kid Grover. You know that was the original song that My Generation song? Talking about my generation. People think we need an Elmo talking about

my generation. We think Grover was just fine talking about my generation. Younger kids think like their Elmo talking about my generation. But Grover, I consider him mine talking about my generation. My generation. That was a, that's a real song. Yeah. My Groveration. Right. My Groveration. My groveration. Hello, sleepyheads. Sleeping with Celebrities is your podcast pillow pal. We talk to remarkable people about unremarkable topics, all to help you slow down your brain and drift off to sleep. For instance, the remarkable actor Alan Tudyk.

You hand somebody a yardstick after they've shopped at your general store. The store's name is constantly in your heart because yardsticks become part of the family. Sleeping with Celebrities, hosted by me, John Moe, on MaximumFun.org or wherever you get your podcasts. Night night. The following are real reenactments of pretend emergency calls.

911. My husband! It's my husband! Calm down, please. What about your husband? He, he loads the dishwasher wrong. Please help! Please help me! Where are you now, ma'am? At the kitchen table, I was with my dad. He mispronounced his words intentionally. There are plenty of podcasts on the hunt for justice. But only one podcast has the courage to take on the silly crimes. Judge John Hodgman. The only true crime podcast that won't leave you feeling sad and bad and scared for once.

Only on MaximumFun.org. Hey there, dedicated Flophouse listeners. By now you've probably heard about our next streaming show, Three Men in a Halley. Look, I'm sorry we hit these things so hard, but it's only because we're proud of them. I think we put together a great live show, and we love the way the people at StagePilot make these things

look. So we hope that you might join us to watch it. What is it? If you haven't heard about it already, well, we did a live show. We talked about 3 Men and a Baby. Hallie Haglund was there. It was great. We had a team of dedicated professional cameramen, editors, lighters put this together. It looks

cool and you can watch it with us Sunday, August 4th. That's the live sort of event part of it. But also, if you don't see it then, if you get a ticket, you can watch it for two weeks thereafter, as many times as you might like. So, like I said, we talked about three men and a baby. Elliot did a presentation about shitty 80s men. Stuart talked about turtles for some reason. I did possible reboots of three men as a presentation. All of those are on there.

Usually when you see a show, or listen to a show, sorry, in the feed, you don't get those presentations, but here you get to see a show, or listen to a show, sorry, in the feed, you don't get those presentations, but here you get to see the live PowerPoints that are honestly kind of my favorite part of the show. Go over to flophousepodcast.com slash events and that'll take you to the ticket link where if you're interested to get VIP tickets, that gets you a chat with us one on one. You also get a limited print that is signed and numbered by me because I drew it. If you are able to watch on August 4th, we're going to be in the chat. That's the advantage of watching it at the debut time is we're in the chat watching along,

responding to people, remembering what we said in real time because it's been a year or a since we did this show. But again, there's a viewing window if you can't catch it then. So that's been a longer than I intended reminder about three minutes and a half. But I hope you can go over to flophousepodcast.com slash events and get your tickets there. And while you're at flophousepodcast.com, why not sign up for our newsletter? There's a field on the front page where you can just drop your email in there,

and then every couple of weeks before the regular full-length shows, you'll get a newsletter written by me. It's got stuff like this that you may miss otherwise, but it's also got essays, funny things, stuff that makes it worth subscribing Beyond just keeping up on flop house news. So we hope you can do Both or either anyway back to this very silly mini

Uh, hey this one Again, it's two humans talking to each other one of them appears to have just invented the wheel or perhaps the wheel has been extant for a while, but he has one. Yeah, he went to the store and bought a wheel. In the distance, a brontosaurus looks on, or I guess it's a brachiosaurus because this refers to a brachiosaurus and it says- Use the clues, yeah. How would you run over a Brachiosaurus? What's up there on the cliff with him?

Is it a guy holding a saber? What's going on there? He's got a wheel and a long stick. Maybe that's the axle for the wheel. Now the Brachiosaurus, I'm curious. It's in silhouette in the background, so it's hard to see. Brachiosaurus has a very specific build. Its name means what? Long arm lizard? Because its front legs are longer than its back legs.

Oh, that's pretty cool. Kind of like me. Yeah, exactly. Like a gorilla or a steward. And it's got that bump on its head. Kind of like me. So I don't... Yeah, it's hard to say. Kind of like me. Yeah, I So I don't yeah, it's hard to say In the distance his legs are kind of or hers kind of absurd. Yeah, but let's not

Is binary Dan? Let's just say they're yeah. No the brachiosaurus So the answer and this is a three pager Wow, we need three pages to finish this big dinosaurachiosaurus is a big dinosaur. To refresh everyone's memory, the setup was, how would you run over a Brachiosaurus? The answer is, I'd start at his tail, run up his back, then his neck, and jump off his head. And so I think that the wheel is... Good joke. More good advice, yeah.

Yeah, the wheel I think is meant as a misdirect to suggest like run over as in like a car. But again, back in dinosaur times I don't think that would be what we would presume. So instead, of course we have this illustration of This child running off of the brachiosaurus kind of doing a reverse Fred Flintstone It's a pretty delightful drawing, but I think it's a pretty poor joke Yeah, how is it as a representation of the Brachiosaurus? Because we talked about this. It's not great.

It's the tail, I think, is too long. The head is not quite right. But the front legs are longer than the back legs. But it's kind of sitting down, so it's kind of hard to tell. I do like how the joke plays on our modern sensibilities that all means of conveyance are cars. Yeah, that's true. It reminds me of... Yeah, oh, Dan, what were you going to say?

Well, so I don't know whether you guys have been sharp enough to catch up on, catch's true. It reminds me of, yeah, oh, Dan, what were you gonna say? Well, so I don't know whether you guys have been sharp enough to catch up on, catch this yet, but most of these jokes don't require dinosaurs. No, I was thinking that, yeah, these are, it feel like they are oldies with dinosaurs shoved into them, you know? It's the fucking spoonful of sugar, right, to get them. Yeah, I mean, Elliot, you gotta admit to yourself,

you saw that there was a dinosaur joke book when you were a kid. For sure, finally, someone had made dinosaurs the ultimate serious topic, funny. Combined your. Yeah, well, it was like, when I was like, Elliot, you should really watch The Irishman, I think you'd really get a lot out of it.

And you're like, I don't know, it seems like a lot of movie. I'm like, there's dinosaurs in it now. And you're like, ah! Oh, watch it. And I'd be so mad as I watch it going when are the dinosaurs gonna show up I'm two hours and 33 minutes in there's no dinosaurs yet and I go oh Stuart meant that the elderly people are the dinosaurs in it I see now and the special effects are kind of like dinosaur special yeah yeah he meant he

meant the the old-fashioned rules of mob violence that they live by is truly the dinosaur. That's exactly what I meant. I'm so glad you picked up on that. That's why we're friends. That was very poetic of you. Dan, I'll mention that there is a better and funnier treatment of the idea of caveman car crashes, which is in one of the 2000 year old man man albums He talks about being run over by a dinosaur

I think or run over by I forgot what it is I don't run over by a man on a on a saber-toothed tiger or something like that and he goes Oh, wow, it goes but I didn't have insurance. He didn't have insurance. It was two thousand years ago. We didn't know It's really a setup for the insurance part. Yeah. Yeah, it's a I mean it is astounding It was made by four men carrying a log. I don't remember exactly what it is, but. It is a tribute to the specific performance and wording skills of those men

that they could make that premise work so well for so long. Yeah, it's wonderful. Where it is essentially just like, like, you know, a guy talking about old stuff, sort of a, you know, with the context of, like you like with the affect of just like a guy talking about old stuff, sort of with the context of, with the affect of just like a dude. Well, specifically of an old Jewish man. Yeah.

But we did, those jokes still work. Recently, my family went to a weekend of family camp with our Cub Scout troop, my son's Cub Scout troop. I was worried you were about to say weekend at Bernie's, and I'm like, that is not a family friendly trip. We went to weekend at Bernie's. Especially not the second one with all that like reanimated corpse stuff. They made a second one? Yeah, yeah, we went to Bernie's to learn dances. Yeah, the uh, so the

We went we and there was a night where the the campers were putting on skits and they were like So if any adults can put on skits and I'm like, you bet I do. And so I edited together a script from different 2000 year old man bits and my wife played Carl Reiner and I played Mel Brooks and the jokes went over very well. I was just copying Mel Brooks' delivery. I didn't add my own spin on it, but the jokes went over very well with the kids and you could tell none of them had heard any of this. They were not familiar with it. And you know, it was like a, I hope I made some young comedians that night

You know so between this and the Simpsons thing, I guess. Oh, it's just a plagiarist. That's fine That's the way he yeah, cuz all the jokes in the dinosaur joke book are original Yeah So this speaking of the lack of dinosaurs this joke has no dinos at all The lack of dinosaurs. This joke has no dinos at all. It's a guy in sort of a toga, a barber figure with what I guess these are stone scissors because they're kind of blocky

and a stone barber pole because it's kind of off-cut there. I mean, you can make pretty sharp stone weapons. I mean, they would use it, they were making cutting implements out of stone for thousands and thousands of years. But I don't know if these sort of shears would be made of stone, but I get your point. So this is if you carved a statue of Rhonda's year, that would be a shear made of stone. He actually has got you there, Dan.

You know, I said, I will accept that about you in writing though later if you want. Yeah, this is fully churches turned into BC at this point So the barber says to the kid so it's super Christian Yeah, what is early? Early, but early BC when it was funny. Yeah. Okay. The barber says your hair needs cut cutting badly Sonny and the kid says no it needs cutting nicely. It was cut badly last time. Boom. Nope. Nope.

Out of tradition. Here's the... Let's see what it looks like. Here's the picture. I have to go look that shit up. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It does have the barber pole stripes on the stone. Yeah. Kids, kids parse the darnedest things.

That was what the Alan Parsons project was about. Really? Parsons. Yeah. So, again, a wordplay joke. As the father of two young boys, I would imagine this is right up their alley, that kind of a joke. Incredibly so.

They love to take a commonly accepted phrase and pick it apart literally in order to act like they're smarter than us. They do the classic, can you, will you, can you do this thing for me? I go, yeah, I'll be there in just a minute. And then they'll go, it's been a minute. Where are you?

You know, I'll do it in a second. One. That's just like what Elliot does. Now you do it. Yeah, I don't like it when it's done to me, yeah. I was the father of the man. Well, I mean, truly I was the father of these future men. It's a real cats in the cradle situation.

Okay, so... I mean, if Cats in the Cradle was about the son not just ignoring his dad the way he was ignored, but also being annoying about it, like being very irritating about it. Yeah. ignoring his dad the way he was ignored, but also being annoying about it. Like being very irritating about it, yeah. Now here's one of the more baffling jokes in the joke book because it introduces the character of Tarzan, a fully different thing. Lord Grey's token.

Yeah, a Victorian era character now is known by these. Let's say Edwardian. Sure, but like around that zone. Sure, late 19th early 20th century. Yeah, sure. Yeah. What's your favorite film version of Tarzan? Probably the Disney one because that rockin' Phil Collins song. That's fair. What's that erotic one with Bo Derek in it? Tarzan the ape man. That's what it's called. That's not my favorite. Um, I think the Disney one is probably The animation on that is beautiful It's not like story wise not sort of up to no and it's not very funny in the comedy stuff

But it is the voice of the bad guy voice the bad guy somebody cool We'll figure it out. I mean the old Tarzan movies have Maureen O'Sullivan in them, who I love from the Thin Man. So you know what? Tarzan the ape man is a is a really good one. That's a good one. And I'll watch anything with Maureen O'Sullivan in it. With my like horny joke about Bo Derek, some was that is that pre-code nudity

or is it just they threw it in? Oh man, we got Lance Henderson. It's like a naked swim in that. We got Wayne Knight in the voice talent here. We got Brian Blessed. Uh oh. Is Brian Blessed in the back side? I think he might be.

Or is he one of the elephants? I don't remember. And Tarzan voiced by Tony Goldwyn. Hell yeah, baby from Cuffs. From Cuffs, that's the main thing I think of. I think Tony Goldwyn as well. Did you mention Rosie O'Donnell also? Oh, I didn't mention Rosie O'Donnell.

She wasn't even in the top six listed cast. Wow. I feel like that's Erasure. Yeah, that is. Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger? It's, yep, Erasure starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Where they sing, what songs do Erasure sing, Dan? Wait, the movie Erasure?

Oh, that's the band Erasure. That's what the movie Erasure is about. I don't know, they did a cover of Take On Me. The real guy is Erasure Head, the sequel. Or not Take On Me, sorry. Take On Me was A-ha. Yeah, I know, what's the A-ha song I'm thinking of? Your head the sequel we're not taking me. Sorry Aha Yeah, I know I'm what's the band that's always surprising you the thing I love about the movie eraser is That it's taking a chance on me. That's what I was trying to think. Oh, that's cool

Yeah The is the the the final fight is like we get to watch Arnold Schwarzenegger fight an old James Khan and I'm like at no point do I think James Kahn's going to win. Like he's... No offense. Like a crocodile, right? There's CGI crocodiles. It was like a very early CGI thing. And he does say, your luggage. And I, man, I laughed my fucking ass off. So anyway, this is...

It would have been more accurate to say, your belt and boots. In all cases, sad because the reptile skin trade is horrible Yeah, we don't support it. Certainly This is both a curious inclusion In this dinosaur jokebook including Tarzan. Yeah putting Tarzan in here a character that I guess they're just like I don't know anyone who wears a loincloth is the same is it okay? I mean, maybe they're trying to check they're trying to tie the dinosaur jokebook into a into Philip farmers

Wold Newton series of novels where where he connects all the old characters from pulp novels. Maybe that's it Okay, I want this to be part of it Could be this appears to be a joke being told to a young child by a stegosaur and to be a joke being told to a young child by a stegosaur and this this this joke turns on the existence of the character boy in Tarzan oh okay so okay it also requires some knowledge of Tarzan I mean this is coming out for a kid in the 60s they probably know some stuff about sure sure sure I'm just yeah again for dinosaur they taught that in schools yeah find Tarzan John Carter of Mars all that crap yeah that was that was the English curriculum uh here have this doc savage book they said as you walked

into this is all you need to know uh this says what did Tarzan say to boy when you saw an old stegosaur coming toward them in the forest? and the answer is oh Boy, there's an old stegosaur coming towards us in the forest and here of course Visualization of Tarzan delivering that clunker. We don't even get to see the stegosaurus I guess yeah, it's just a picture of Tarzan pointing off panel. And his monkey pal or chimpanzee, perhaps? Yeah, Cheetah, the chimpanzee, yeah. Again, it's the kind of thing that all kids at that era would know.

Yeah. So, to me, I mean, do you think Tarzan was just included just so that everyone's like, oh, yeah, Tarzan's in this. I love Tarzan. Maybe. Yeah, they were like, the dinosaurs aren't enough to get kids in. We better throw famous Tarzan in there. Well, that's the... Far be it for me. I'm sorry.

I don't want to besmirch you, Sam Berman, but this one... It seems like it's the odd joke out to include this Tarzan joke in here. And perhaps it could be justified if it was the funniest joke in the book, but it is perhaps the weakest So I think it's included orally. This was a mistake. Do you think it's included to make all the other jokes seem funnier? That's possible. You always got to put a dud in there to make the others look like studs. Yeah Mm-hmm. It's like how at the Daily Show When we had the one warm-up comic who was mean to the audience, the show was a lot better because everyone was primed for John to be nice to them.

I mean, that's one of the reasons too. I mean, it felt like the comic was he would sacrifice a couple members of the audience in order to get the other members of the audience laughing. And the thing is, if I was in that audience, I 1000% guarantee he would pick on me. I always get fucking picked on. You do always get picked on. There's something about you that just draws the ire of comedians.

I don't know what it is. I'm sorry. Stuart, you're sitting next to me and you're like, there's something about me that always makes me get picked on? Yeah, there's something about me. Well, no, Dan, he gets picked on by comedians. You get picked on by everyone else. I guess that's a fair trade.

Yeah. So this... But when you're sitting in a comedy audience, no one touches you. They're like, that guy's had enough. We don't... That would be cool. Yeah. No, they really see one of their own.

Yeah. Yeah, they're like, I don't know what he's hiding under that jacket. Like it might be a machete, Elliott. Yeah, yeah. Sure. So, this is a single pager, but it's a two paneler. So now we're moving into a comic sequential art. Yeah.

Will Eisner edited this part. So the first picture, there's a guy, a caveman talking to a lady caveman. Okay, cavewoman. Sure. If it was a Marvel Comics character, it would be called Lady Caveman. Or a she caveman. That would be amazing. So he goes, I love you Lulu, will you marry me? She says, have you seen my father?

And he says, yes, but I love you just the same. And the last panel, he is carrying her by her hair, having knocked her out in classic, and I don't say classic in quality, I mean it's just an old sexist joke about cavemen. Yeah, yeah. You don't, it's not something you endorse, the dragging of women by the hair.

Well, I mean, certainly not after she has already agreed to marry you otherwise. I don't like the way you put that. You're leaving a little gray area for it to win someone over by doing that? And if you're gonna be dragging her around by her hair, you gotta get closer to the scalp or else it's gonna hurt. Yeah.

No, no, I'm not adding any. I think the Flophouse Podcast is against dragging people around by the hair. Oh, right, right, right. We can come out 100% against that. I wasn't meaning to leave any gray area. Just, it's just even, there's even less motivation for this villain is what I'm saying.

And so, I don't understand the joke. I love you, Lulu. Will you marry me? Have you seen my father? Oh, she means like, have you talked to my father about me? And he's saying, yes, but I love you anyway. This is a double relic of an older time because he also needed to ask for her hand in marriage,

even though these are, again, CAFE people who did not have the societal expectations. We don't know that. We don't know that. We don't know. We don't know.. We don't know. Elliott, did you ask your wife's father for permission to ask both of your wives? I did, but it was more of a show of like kind of respect to him.

I didn't, if he said no, he said, what if I say no? And I said, well, we're still going to do it, but it'd be nice if you said yes. So, long sucker. Elliott pulls out a switchblade. Yeah. And then I just dragged her away by the hair. He said, no, but I didn't really. So my problem here was I didn't get the right wrong meaning of the line. When she said, have you seen my father?

I assumed it meant the first time, have you seen what my father looks like? Not have you seen my father about the business of asking for my hand in marriage. So this is one where unfortunately I was ahead of the joke in a way that hurt the joke, you know, this otherwise perfectly. I mean, that's a, you know, is it that's a occupational hazard. Oh, you're always ahead of the joke. That's true.

And you find fewer things funny because of it. That's incredibly true. Yeah. Yeah. I was watching something with with my sons Recently in a character got hit and then said that's gonna leave a mark and I went on a rant about how how How hacky that line is and that they did not understand they didn't care didn't understand They're like this is why I like baseball dad tell me that it's hacky and baseball

Don't why the daily just gave us a little preview about the movie he's going to recommend on the next full episode. Yeah, it's that one. It's Tommy Boy. So this is a... Do you say it's Tommy Boy? Yeah. I don't know Tommy Boy that that familiarly so I refer to it as Thomas Mann.

Oh sure. Yeah. Yeah, you're just confused. You're like the famous author? This is about when he was a young fellow. Yes. Don't worry. Oh sure, yeah. Yeah, you're just confused. You're like, the famous author? Yeah, so I was seeing. Is it a movie? Is this about when he was a young fellow? Yes.

Don't worry, we're in the homestretch. I have two more jokes for you. David Spade plays in this Thomas Mann biopic. So here we have two cave people down at the bottom of a large tree with a tail coming out of it. Okay, good. So there is a dinosaur element to this. There's a dinosaur hidden within the canopy of this tree.

And the one cave person says, how did that Stegosaurus ever get up into that oak tree? And then if you turn the page, it goes, well, he sat down on an acorn and waited. And I want to show you this. Oh, okay. It's kind of philosophical in a way, but I want to show you this drawing where it seems like there's a lot of like sort of action lines coming out. Yeah, it looks like the acorn is bursting with light.

Yeah, like fucking Paul Polk did the ink on this one. Like maybe the acorn was growing into a tree very quickly and it entered the dinosaur from behind. I mean, he's got a look on his face that's both surprise and delight. So it looks like a look of pleasure, yeah. Yeah. What sort of dino would you say this is?

I mean, it's got plates on its back. The head is not quite right, and the neck is too long, but it's got the plates of a stegosaurus. Yeah. Okay. All the marks are there. It the plates of stegosaurus. It looks like a stegosaurus with the wrong neck and head was put on it by paleontologists that didn't really know what they were doing. Now, obviously this is like a turtle head.

This is meant to be a joke, but as many in this dino joke, Burke, there is a portal of wisdom here, which is something that seems insurmountable and possible, you just start small, you know? You sit on that acorn. Yeah. It's like that, the ant pulling the rubber tree plant, whatever, in the High Hope song. Yeah. Then, God willing, you'll be stuck in a tree.

You'll have what you finally wanted to be, up in a tree where you can only fall and break your long stegosaurus neck. That's the thing about ambition, right? Is you put all this effort into chasing a dream only to realize that you're now a prisoner to that very same dream, right? Very wise. You were like, I want to be a famous podcaster and now look at you. Now I'm stuck doing this instead of being out with my family on vacation. Stuck watching bad movies.

I feel like that's a skill issue. It is a... What I... What also, they don't show the stores of food that he must have had to put in to not die of starvation while sitting there waiting for the 8-point-to-grow-in-trash. I mean, for the beginning of it, probably, it was small enough that he could just get off and get on as needed. At a certain point, it got so tall that he couldn't do that easily. But, yeah.

There's probably a point where like, he became such a staple in his local community that maybe like a cult grew up around him and he was offered, you know, sacrifices or as we call them, little treats throughout the day. Well, like in that early draft of Horton Hatches the Egg where they do build it, a religion around the egg-laying elephant and they're killing the animals that disagree with the idea of an egg sitting on an elephant sitting on an egg. Yeah. I like that more extreme grimdark version of Horton here.

Yeah. Yeah. That was when Dr. Seuss and Cormac McCarthy were working together on the book. Man, so fucking twisted. Yeah. What's in that egg that he hatched? All of man's evil. Yeah. Uh-oh. Yeah. What's in that egg that he hatched? All of man's evil. Yeah.

Uh-oh. Whoops. Sort of a Pandora's egg. So this is the final joke. Guys, we've come to the end of a real journey here. Just as I presume you will when you finish the Power Broker on the Power Broker series. What are you guys doing? Like a page, page an episode, two pages an episode?

Yeah, two pages an episode, so it's gonna be 650 episodes. And we're doing a hundred pages an episode. Wow. It'll take us a year to get through it, but we should have just done this dinosaur jokes book. We'd have the same philosophical and also ideological discussions about life in a city and how you build it for a human being. I feel like you get the same caliber of guests too because everybody loves fucking dinosaurs.

Oh yeah. Pete Buttigieg, would you come and talk to us about dinosaur jokes? AOC, you want to talk about dinosaur jokes? Oh yes, of course. Even Spielberg, you made a dino movie. Look, this is the- Did he? Yeah.

He made more than one dino movie. Always. Yeah. They're in the background. Jaws? You see mostly an oil form in the tanks of cars. Yeah, yeah. I mean, well then, most movies are dino movies if you consider the gasoline inside of machines. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, maybe you should learn. I mean, technically, birds are dinosaurs, so that's a lot of movies that are now... What is it? What's the one where the bird does a double take when James Bond goes Raker yeah triple take dinosaur movie technically it's got a bird in it yeah so listeners you know what you got to do you got to go put that dinosaur tag on every I'm TV movie yeah go to your local library rearrange the DVDs so that they're all the dinosaur movies. Make a sticker with a dinosaur footprint that says D and put that on all the movies.

Yeah. Once you've moved everything to the dinosaur section, then it just sort of regains equilibrium and is arranged like it was before. Like we said, it's the everything museum. So the dinosaur section just becomes the video store. Also, from the entrance to the library... DVD stands for digital video dinosaur. Dinosaur video disc.

To the digital dinosaur section, you've got to put little stickers on the ground that look like dinosaur footprints with a sign that says, kids, walk this way to get to your dinosaur videos. Yeah. You just pass right by the phrase digital dinosaur, which I think... Oh, man. ...that's got to be... Which should be a band, right?

Yeah. Yeah. That'd be awesome. Or like an amazing early CGI movie, like a virtuosity style. A dinosaur came out of the video game into real life. Oh man, like that's that's that should have been Brainscan 2, right? Yeah. Yeah, sure. Brainscan 2, the dinosaurs now. No, Trickster is a dinosaur.

So what we have here yeah and this drawing is there's a two cave people up in the top of a tree They've over the stegosaurus was before is it the same tree or a different tree? No, this one's sort of a this looks like kind of a early palm Tree, maybe okay. Um, they have lowered a new stone. Oh They're like that. Well,. Oh, don't like that. Well it's not like a hanging noose, it's a catching noose. Oh, so it's more of a lasso. A lasso, let's call it that.

And there's footprints in front of the tree and it says, how do you catch a brontosaurus? It says, say this way to the digital dinos. How do you catch a brontosaurus? And if you turn the page, the answer comes back, hide in the grass and make a noise like a vegetable. So, so, but they're in a tree. You said, well, I think it's, you can see here. There's the tree.

Yeah. And then, uh, I think this is their compatriot down on the ground. Oh, I see. Who is trying to lure the dino by with his vegetable calls. And I'll say that it's a commendable attempt to draw somebody hiding in the high grass. Mm-hmm. Does it necessitate an entire page? Probably not.

Yeah. It's also a commendable, you know know attempt to inform the reader about the vegetarian nature of The Brontosaur true. Yeah accurate source. Yeah anyway, okay, so yeah, that was a That was our mini and obviously it should be the very first episode of the show you recommend to anyone When Dan when Dan texted us ahead of time and said this mini is gonna get a new level of dumb. Yeah. Or whatever, however you put it.

You know, I said there's no way. There's no way. We've done so many dumb episodes before. It can't get any dumber. Yeah, excellent interview. How do you think I did on the level? Like do you think I... In terms of non-essential ways to of non-essential audio to listen to,

you have somehow topped the episode where you took us through descriptions of different enormous Johnson t-shirts. Yeah, that's true. What about that PowerPoint presentation that was about mustards of the universe? That was also incredibly inessential. Inessential and dumb, yeah. Yeah.

That's the secret sauce I bring to the show. No, but for real. D for dumb is also D for Dan. If this is a thing that you like, you're not gonna get it anywhere else. So do what you can to support us. No, there are laws against it. Become a member, you know. We're also gonna see in-depth analysis

of 1960s dinosaur joke books, but on this movie podcast the Flophouse. This is why Look our National Endowment for the Arts funding You Support nonsense like this. I called up the MacArthur genius grant people and they laughed at me I couldn't even finish getting the name of the podcast out But that's I mean we are a comedy show if they're laughing we're doing something right, you know, that's yeah That's right. And that is the show But this wasn't just the warm-up

Long Garfield style intro to our room. I'm just talking about birthday buddies talking about the puppets No, we're signing off. Now after we've had that one hour warm-up of talking about dinosaur jokes, it's time to talk about, guys, what do you think happens when we die? It becomes a very serious conversation. We're on the Maximum Fun Network, as I mentioned. If you're a member, you support us. We, speaking of membership, we will have those BoCo episodes out soon. We did record a Joysticks episode. That'll be the first of those. It will be out on the feed very soon.

Perhaps by the time this actually makes air, who knows? But that's going on. And I want to thank our producer Alex Smith who will be putting together that bonus feed content. He does great work for us on the main, on the bonus, he does the little videos that you see on Instagram. If you don't follow us on Instagram you should follow us because there's little videos of us. Maybe you can see the actual visuals that go along with some of this if you go to that and become a follower there on Instagram.

But that's enough end of the show rambling. I've been Dan McCoy. I'm Stuart Wellington. Whoa, I rambled so long that Stuart got lost in his. I got bonked on the head by a dinosaur coconut And I'm Elliot Kaelin or as they call me in dinosaur times Elliot Kaelin Hi They don't really call me about the apocalypse wasn't only talking about yeah, they call me that in both places. They're both times. Yeah

Yeah. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.