The Morning Stream - TMS 2835: Historical Nudity

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

Two Wheeled Root Canal. Rubber Chicken Ibbott. Dawn's Ass Crack. Leaving Moby Dick in the Rearview. Dudes of a Certain Age. This Ride Ain't meant for MEEEEEEEEEE. From From. Cinder block calves. Eye Karma. Owen Wilson headbands. 428-Year-Old Spoilers. Say Dress to the Yes. Red Fraggle-ino. What's Dicetomato doing these days? you know he's got negativity. More Like Cubic Zirconia Distribution with Stephen and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Doc Brown once famously said, if my calculations are correct, then this baby hits 88 miles per hour. You're going to see some serious TMS Patreon. I swear it's true. Find out for yourself at patreon.com slash TMS. Coming up on the morning stream, two-wheeled root canal. Rubber chicken Ibit. Don's ass crack. Leaving Moby Dick in the rear view.

Dudes of a certain age. This ride ain't meant for me. From from. Cinder block calves. High karma. Owen Wilson headbands. Whoa. 428-year-old spoilers.

A sage rest to the S. Red Fragalino. What's nice to me doing these days? You know he's got negativity. More like cubic zirconia distribution with Stephen and more on this episode of The Morning Stream. Well, let's all get set for a TV pal game right now. And this time, let's limit it to callers only in Sullivan County. Don't anybody else call me unless you live here in Sullivan County.

How do you tell left from right? The Morning Stream. Let's do the Time Warp again. Hello, everyone. Welcome to TMS. It is the morning stream for Monday, June 9th, 2025. Scott Johnson here, Brian, I bit there. Hi. Hello. Good morning. How are you? It's another week. It's a brand new week. I'm good, man. How are you doing? I'm good. You know, as your ride loom closer, I think about it a lot for some reason this time of year. Yeah, I do. Probably as much as I think about it, or maybe almost as much as I think about it.

I just feel like you and I are, you know, because we talk every day, and I think we're dudes of a certain age, you know. Yeah, yeah. And I just know this is a big undertaking. And so I just worry a little. Not worry. You know, the older I get, the more I worry too, Scott, because, you know, I'm no spring chicken anymore and uh it sounds like you might have a story to tell tell us i might have a story let's just

get right into it this last weekend uh saturday was the training ride and uh you know i've been i've been gearing up i've been uh practicing doing doing at least three regular rides a week increasing the um severity and time and mileage of each ride and making sure that get plenty of hills and things like that. Yeah. And so got up at the ass crack of dawn on Saturday morning to be at the parking lot where all this starts between 645. About 645 is when I got there a.m.

And this is for a big 29 mile. They call it the high roller training ride because only if you raise enough donations over a certain limit, you're put into the top 150 participants, you know, based on how much you raise. And only you, only those 150 people get invited to this ride. So I... And you can drink all you want while on the ride,

like the high roller. That's the rule, right? Right. It's the, it's the high roller bar car. Scott, if only, if only I think that might have made things a lot better for me. um so uh we all met up there there were about you know of the 150 people to get invited there were maybe about 50 50 writers and you were everyone was able to invite a plus one and so there was probably about there were probably about 70 people on this ride okay so so that's a decent number of people it's a decent number of people and i look around and dude it is it is

exactly the group that I described last week. It is the young freaking works for a law firm accountant or is the the CFO of this

capital, venture capital company or this dude here. They're real go getters these guys. They're just out there. The real go getters. And their calves are like a freaking cinder block, like it's a cinder block stretched in a in a skin sock on the back of each of their their legs.

Wow. And they're all young and they're all, you know, skinny and they're all ready to do this. And I'm the old fat guy who decided to play in their sandbox. Now, last year, I did the training ride, but because it was a film sack day, I timed as like, well, I looked at the map of the training ride and saw that it comes within half a mile, between half a mile and a mile from the house. So started up at the regular point with everybody else. And I even let, you know, there are a couple of guys from my team there. And I said, hey, just letting you know, when we get to the point where we get close to my house, I'm just going to peel off and go home because I've got a, I tell them I've got a Zoom meeting.

Because, you know, if I go into, well, I'm going to go talk with four guys about a crawl. No, this is 100% the right way to do that thing. I do it the same thing every time someone has. Yeah, exactly. You can tell the people you talk to in life, you can tell the people that would be like, oh, yeah, I know what a podcast is. Oh, that's really cool. Sounds good.

What's the name of it? I'll check it out. But then there are the guys are like, so do you intentionally watch bad movies? Oh, my gosh. And then you're down a road. You're never getting off. You're never turning off there.

Right, exactly. It's like, what's the best bad movie you've seen? Like the, I mean. It's like you gave a reverse time. I'm on a Zoom meeting with some colleagues, done, finished. Right. Exactly. So that's exactly what I did.

I peeled off basically halfway through the right. last year, went home, then just had Tina drive me back to pick up my car after film sack and then drove it back. Well, this year, we made the arrangements with you and Dunaway and Randy to push off a week so I could do the full training ride. And Scott, I'm happy to say. I'm really proud to say that next year, we don't have to do that. Really? So wait, we knew that you had already said sort of that this wasn't compulsory, but it was like... This is not compulsory. This is not like a ride that has to be done and it's one

that's like offered here's they call it a training ride Scott no this is like two-wheeled root canal is what it is or it's it is hey hey I'm a hardcore cyclist

and that lame MS-150 ride is just too pussy for me I'm not going to do it I need something a lot more hardcore how about we go up a mountain that explains the incline thing you were talking about oh my god scott so um so before we even get there so five miles in yeah it's starting to get warm outside it's like in the high 50s and then it starts to get warmer it's getting into the low 60s in the mid 60s and i'm peddling and i'm going and

i'm like five five miles in and starting to perspire a little bit and all of a sudden my perspiration is starting to kind of leak some sunscreen into my right eye. And zing, it's like a sting, like, oh, my God, oh, this sucks. And so I'm like wiping, you know, trying to wipe my eye. And no, that's not helping. It's kind of spreading it.

And it's, you know, my, my eye is tearing up. And then just kind of that natural reflex. Whenever this happens, you kind of start getting the sniffles, right? So it's like, you know, like you're wiping your eye, you're sniffling. I feel like I'm the 13-year-old on the Ares tour or something. seeing my first Taylor Swift concert She pointed at me

She pointed at me She totally looked at me Yeah I'm singing the loudest And of all this Everybody in my section Oh that's funny So

Can I show this photo by the way This eye photo? Please do Yes That's taken at the end of my ride After I had gotten back And flushed my

Oh my gosh Look at you're all redded out man Oh, you went mute for some reason. Did I mute you? Hold on. Did I do that? Oh, now you're back. Oh, is that thing back?

I hope that's not back. Oh, no. We'll find out. Continue on. We'll find out. Anyway, so, yeah. So, I mean, it was, the only water I had on my ride was flavored water because Mrs. Taffy guy was nice enough to give us some packets of this hydrate powder stuff.

You can dump in a water bottle. It was really, really good. But I couldn't. There was something I couldn't, like, just pull up to the side to, like, squeeze over my eye because I don't know what if sugar would have been worse. So I'm kind of going like this, you know, kind of got my eye closed as I'm peddling and wiping and then, all right, pretty good. And then I'm blowing my nose. I get Kleenexes in my pouch and, like, blow my nose. And then you're peddling.

And then 20 miles in, we get to the base of Lookout Mountain. And this is where for the next eight miles, it is a five, four. percent grade up and usually with hills yeah um if you get switchbacks it's like all right it's it's a it's an incline for a while and then it kind of flattens out and turns and then it kind of goes up more and then it flattens out and turns and then it goes up no flatten out anything on this it is it is a just grade up uh for the whole thing so gross i go i make it about five miles and I'm paddling and I'm breathing heavy and uh okay I'm going to pull over I can't you know my legs are kind of I'm losing energy I'm kind of um not able to catch my breath so I

pull off to the side and I'm like all right I put my elbows on my handlebars I'm kind of hunched over and riders are going by me I was at this point I was still in the first in the in the front third of the pack wow and yeah I at this This is making me want to lay down and not get up, honestly. Honestly, it sounds really hard, man. It was really hard. So I got my elbows on my handlebars. I'm like, oh, yay.

All right, just got to catch my breath. I brought this. This will demonstrate the sound I was making. This is the, that is what my breathing sounded like. For listeners at home, it's one of those chickens. You see in social media videos all the time. Rubber, rubber chicken. Yeah, that one's great, by the way.

got sunglasses it's all blue and mohawk yeah punker uh that's badass yeah so i'm breathing like like you know basically taking as much air in my chest as i can and then breathing it all out and then um finally getting to the point i'm sitting thinking you know i could just flag down because the ride the support vehicles are going back and forth up at making sure everybody's doing okay and they go by i'm like dude you okay i'm like yeah hold out my thumb yeah yeah i'm good all right All right, good, yeah. No worries. And the couple by, by the other cyclists are going by like, hey, you need anything. I'm like, nope. I'm getting my water out. So they could, it's good to know that they, you know, they're community driven. They could tell you were, you know, having a bit of a breather. They could. They could, they could see that. And they're like, you know, picture it in my head. Like, yeah. I'm surprised there. So like, all right, okay. No, you know what? I'm not going to stop. I think I can do this. And so I get back on the bike and I kind of, you know, there's no traffic.

so I can kind of cut across the road and kind of like a little bit of a horizontal thing and then turn and then start going up and that gives me a little bit of momentum to kind of go back into the 5% grade because starting, even starting to pedal at a 5% grade is hard as hell. Yeah, no, that's a bunch of work.

I have to imagine it is. I say this as if I'm a guy out there doing this, but... Exactly. So I'm peddling, I'm like, all right, and I do this thing where like I'll put on Mews. I have a, you know, I put on Mews playlist.

Fricking good driving will not on us. We will be Victoria. I'm just like, I'm peddling. And I'm doing this thing where I focus just on the few feet in front of my wheel. Because if I look up and I see the hill, it starts to mentally like disheartened me. But if I look at the first few feet just in front of my wheel and I position myself to where I'm staying parallel with that white stripe on the side of the road, I know I'm good.

So I'm making, all right. Okay, all right. We're doing okay. Yeah. Nope. Nope. I'm losing my breath again. I can't get any breath.

Okay. Hold. I got to pull. So you make it a mile and then I pull over again. Oh my gosh. And like, you know, I'm, again, elbows on my handlebars down. New cyclists are going by me saying, hey, dude, you okay? You need anything?

No. Yeah, good. Good. All good. well basically there's all i could think of and this was in my head at the time all i could think of was you know that there's an s and l skit where um i think it's chris farley on an ice skating rink in front of rockefeller center in front of 30 ron oh man i got a memory that sure yeah and he's skating around he's actually like you're surprised like oh my god he's doing really well he's

actually pretty graceful and then he falls down and kind of slides on the ice And he kind of gets back up and they start skating. He's like, okay, okay, he's got to get, nope, he's down again. And then he gets up again. He's skating a little bit more. Nope, he's down again. He gets up. He's worse and his hair's a mess and he's like done some sort of fake bloody nose

and that sort of thing. And it's just, you know, it gets worse and worse. That's kind of how this went. It was like that first time I restarted, I was able to get a mile. The second time, maybe about half a mile. Then after that, a quarter mile. And I'm just visualizing, maybe, maybe I'm really, close to the top of this.

Maybe you're nearly done for all you know. Yeah. And every time, every time I think, and I do that and I make that mistake where I kind of look up and I see the mountain ahead of me, I mean, I mean, the psychological thing is one thing, the physical thing is another. I'm still physically exhausted. Finally, a mile and a half from the top, I just say, this right ain't meant for me. I mean, that's a long last mile and a half.

That's a lot. And in seven years of doing the MS-150 and doing it again this year, there is nothing on the course of the MS-150 that even compares to this piece of shit lookout mountain hill. So this is the good news, though. That means that you have gone, you did the, you ran in the sand to train for the Super Bowl. Exactly. I may not have made it to the, you know, the yellow tape in the sand, but at least I ran pretty far in the sand. So I did not make it to the top of like-out-up.

Mountain and I am just fine. Oh, yeah, dude, you made it way further than I would have. Holy shit. Totally fine with that, yeah. I mean, you actually got on the bike, put on the stuff, chote, chote but it up. You did everything more than I would have, but still, I think you did plenty, and it's going to make that ride even more. It is.

Oh, you know. It totally is. Because any time on the, on the MS-150 ride later this month, right, anytime I see a hill, I'm like, that's nothing compared to the crap, like, lookout Mountain is now, it's not my great white whale because Ahab kept wanting to get him. Of course. Right? Ahab kept wanting to chase Moby Dick. Nope. I left Moby Dick in the, in the, uh, in the, uh, in the rearview mare and said,

cool, nothing else. I can, I can, I can harpoon a barracuda. Yeah. I'll harpoon a freaking, uh, nurse shark. No problem. Let that, let that whale dive natural causes and old age. It's fine. Exactly. Damn, dude. So, all right. That's actually, you know, the silver lining is you're going to kill it on the final head, right? Oh, yeah. No problem. I was talking with Barb, because she asked how the training ride went. She and George was going to come with me, and he's like, no, I think, you know, the weather's got me a little bit worried.

I don't think I'm going to do it. He said nothing about, nope, that stupid hill at the end, there's no chance in heck that I'm doing that stupid thing. So I talked to Barb, and she said, hey, how did the training ride go? And I kind of told her the story that I told you. She said, yeah, I did that ride back twice when I was in my 30s, and I thought it was going to kill me then. Oh, geez. So I came back home and bought myself a pack of terry cloth headbands that will keep the sweat and the sunscreen out of my eyes. I love the color choice.

That looks like the 70s came back and slapped you right in the head. That's great. Part of the Wes Anderson collection. Yeah. Yeah. Like Bottle Rocket era of Wes Anderson. it was totally Owen Wilson totally the Owen Wilson special that's great so uh so yeah that was the other thing I was worried about and this was genuine I was like crap is this going to like you know not making it up the top of this hill is it going to affect my confidence in being able to complete the MS 150 but I decided no not even a little bit it increased it does not it increased it yeah it's like yep no no fear at all about the MS 150 but here's the weird thing about you you didn't just do that you had all kinds of other shit the same thing day, right? That's right. Yes. So I came home from that.

I would have been straight to the couch and there. Brian's going to go have a whole full day after this. Exactly. Came home from that, took a shower. I did get a 30 minutes on the couch. That was nice. And then dressed up real nice. And then went with Tina to go see and Juliet at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts play. I don't know what that is. Is that a famous play or is that something I should know? It is. No, it's a brand new one. And it is, you know how wicked is this kind of alternate history of how Elphaba and Glenda the Good Witch met and all this stuff? It's like, oh, we're taking this really, you know, established work, The Wizard of Oz, and we're going to add a new story that kind of works alongside that. Sure, sure.

And Juliet is that for Romeo and Juliet. Oh, right. You talked about this last week. It was like an alternate what-if deal. It is what if, at the very end of Romeo and Juliet, you know, the original, Juliet takes a potion that makes it look like she's dead. She's put in the crypts. The messenger gets word out to Romeo that, hey, don't worry. It's a fake poison.

She's just fine. The messenger never gets to Romeo. He thinks that she's really dead. He goes to the script, kills himself. and then she wakes up sees Romeo dead with his dagger and then grabs the dagger and kills herself

and, oh, tragedy of the star-crossed lovers known as Romeo and Juliet. This, Anne Juliet is the what-if. Your description of the original story is dark. You have the essence of it

real well there, by the way. It's one of my favorite play. I mean, it's probably my favorite play. I've seen every version of it. The Zephyrelli, you know, we all saw that one in high school and it, you know. I had boobs in it in high school. It did it well.

It didn't have boobs or I think it actually had undercarriage. I think at one point. We may have a full frontal on that. You're right. Yeah, the actress flips over the covers after their little night of Nookie. Oh, no. Anyway. I remember the teacher's going, yeah, this is, because it's so old, this is like such historical drama.

You guys are fine. It's fine. Exactly. Exactly. Right. Exactly. It's practically a documentary. Yeah. I don't think they would do it today. I feel like they'd be treated differently, but I don't know. It's practically a documentary about 14-year-olds getting married and getting it on. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so the alternate ending is, what if Juliet woke up and saw Romeo had killed himself with his dagger and then said, oh, well, that sucks.

And then she moves on with her life. Oh, man, that's wild. So wait, does she end up with like one of the, you? opposing or no someone on her own team or like another yes like another montague or does she go with a this would be a spoiler that's why you can't it would be a complete and total spoiler i will not tell you but this is um a jukebox musical and it's all the music of max martin and you know max martin from back street boys brittany spears um in sync uh pink writer producer or both producer producer producer of all those songs. Oops, I did it again, and Backstreet's back and

and bye, bye, and like, you know, yeah. Every song that you can think of by those artists, who's the Ellie Golden. Oh, I like that song. Her stuff too. And so, but it's cleverly done. It's like they integrate the songs into the story in a very clever way that doesn't feel like, well, we need a shoehorn way

to do bye, bye, bye. That sort of thing. It's all really relevant. And it's excellent. I will say this. You know, I'm not the biggest fan of that era of American pop music. I feel like a lot of it was cookie cutter kind of mass produced. However, a little bit of a dip.

I can appreciate those songs and even hearing them in this situation. It's like, okay, yeah, I kind of like this. I really like this. I want it that way. It is very prominent. That's one of the most prominent. that that's that's even reprised in the second act it's it's played in the first it's sung in the first act and it's reprised in the second i know it was overplayed to hell and back i understand all

this but i actually think that is a banger of a song it is a banger of a song and it's impossible when you hear you are my fire you can't help it sing along with you yeah you're the one that recommended i watch uh Tokyo vice on HBO oh yeah and there's a dude there's a yakuza guy in there. Total psycho. Completely psychopath that is obsessed with that song. That is one of my favorite little tiny bits of that show. Which, by the way, I don't think

I ever circled around to tell you how much I loved Tokyo Vice. Oh, my God, it was so good. Who's the dude? Baby driver. Yeah. Baby driver kid. And then you get your... You get your Legion, the girl from Legion.

Who's your police guy? My brain. Ken Watabbe. He was amazing. I can watch an Abbe. Yeah. Yeah. Great show. If you don't, people at home, you're missing out.

Watch that show. It's really good. Yeah. Anyway, so went and saw that and then walked around downtown for a little bit. It was a nice little date for Tina and I were, you know, it's our anniversary weekend. So we went out and went to a place called Not a Damn Chance Burger, N-D-A-C burger. That sounds like it's going to be really good to me, probably. It was $50 for the two of us.

It's like Vegas prices It's Vegas prices And let me tell you what we got We each got a cheeseburger And we shared an order of fries And we shared a root beer This is So this is

This is Larimer Street, man This is downtown Denver It's It was put together by Neen Williams A professional skateboarder And Philip Franklin Lee Who's a Michelin star chef

Oh interesting What a combo And great exactly right um but it was you know 100% wagyu beef and um and onions cooked i mean it was smash burgers like really good smash burgers but for 50 bucks i mean that's a that's a high bar it's really it's really good but i would have been okay with freddies yeah if all things can sit you could put both of them in front of me and i probably would have picked the freddies because freddie's least has uh lettuce and onion on it yeah and you didn't have to take out of

loan for this right right jeez louises um that that's uh that's fun though more more really good yeah good time on the uh you know you guys celebrating your 33rd pretty right pretty rad pretty awesome so and then we went to uh so that that uh was it for saturday and then sunday um we found out that we qualified our trivia team qualified for the semifinals for um group called dj trivia they do a few locations around Denver we kind of bounce around between geeks who drink and and and j trivia and other things. And we got an email and said, hey, you guys earned enough points in the first half of

this year that you qualified to be in the semifinals. And then if you make it through the semifinals, you'll be in the final tournament. And so we're like, oh, cool. So we kind of emergency slapped together our team, you know, and said, hey, can you guys go Sunday to do the semifinals? And most of them were able to. Sure. And it was 20 teams, only the top six.

would move on to the finals and we were 10th we bounced around between 10th and 11th place for most of it it was really really tough there was some I even actually even brought a lot of the best of the best moment here right this isn't like the these aren't stragglers

these are the these are the exactly asking questions about okay what's the name of the bridle boutique feature on the show say yes to the dress atlanta oh my lord exactly we did get that one wrong um that's the part that's the moment i go out to my car and drive home i would not know any of this how how old did uh the characters in my best friend's wedding say that they if they weren't married by the time they are age x that they would just marry each other holy shot that one wrong my wife

would probably know that one she's seen that she might know that one but um anyway um we doubled on very last question went for it and got it right and uh we were sixth place so we're moving on to the finals on the 22nd we actually made it wow well done dude thank you that's great so what next for that you got to um is there anything past it like i mean the the final other than the finals but i mean like are you going to go on to i don't know what is this like world tour stuff oh no no it's it's it's the finals is the finals so it's it's the finals so it's it's It's, um, yeah, it's, uh, trophies, money, money, hookers and blow. Oh, okay. I think a thousand bucks for first place, for the first place team.

How big is a team? How much do you have to split it? We're a six, we're a seven person team, so whatever that, however that comes down to us. It's okay. I mean, it's still money. That's all right. A hundred and some odd bucks. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Buy things with that. You can go to that restaurant three more times or something. Right. That's the sad thing having to try to compare that. But our final question, all right, what state's capital was originally built among an active oil field?

It was like inside an active oil field. This is not multiple choice, but I will tell you that one of the pump's names was Petunia No. 1 and another pump's name was Petunia number 2. Okay, I'm going to try to guess this. Yeah. There are, there, it could be Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, and probably other places I'm not thinking of. I'm going to say this was in, they would make it too easy to be in Texas, it feels like. So I'm going to say this was, I'm going to just say it was Alaska and it was Anchorage. Very not right.

It's, uh, but you were, but you was among your choices, Oklahoma. Oh, shit. Okay. All right. I figured it had to be one of the oil-producing states. The few that we have, right? Yes. Right. Decide shale stuff, I guess.

Well, that's a boy. You guys got that one right? So we got that one right. And it's funny because the guy on our team who is the oldest member of our team is like, oh, crap, this one's so easy. Everybody's going to get it. It's Oklahoma, and we write down Oklahoma. I'm like, I don't think everybody's going to get it.

Only 16 of the 20 teams answered the question. and only nine of those 16 got it right. So seven of them, basically it's an all-or-nothing wager. If you miss it, you're at zero. It is not like a jeopardy. I'm going to wager this much, so I still have some left over. If you answer the question, you're either doubling your score or ending up with zero. So seven people, seven teams went right down to the very bottom.

Yeah. Well, that's great, though. You guys kicking ass. We kicked ass. So all in all, you know what? I'm calling the weekend a win. I agree. I think that's pretty great.

How's your, I know that could be pretty rough on your lungs. Are you still breathing? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yesterday, man. Like that night, so Saturday night, like, if I took a deep breath, it hurt. It's almost like, you know, if you lift weights, your muscles get sore, right? Because you're repeating that action over and over again with a lot of effort.

That's what happened to my lungs. Like, when I took a deep breath, it was like, oh, that. that hurts. And it even hurt, even hurt, even hurt a little bit into yesterday. Today, no problem. No problem. Feel great. Yeah. Big healed up lungs now. That's fantastic. And once I got home and actually was able to like, like douse my eye with some saline solution, it was totally fine. Like I wasn't, I wasn't weeping and sniffling through Ann Juliet, fortunately. I just picture you sitting there in that thing. I all red, dripping, your lungs hurt. And you're like, is that guy back there okay? Can one of the, what do they call him? What do they call it? Usher's. Can we go check on that dude on Isle 4? Yeah, he's just crane because of the Backstreet Boys song. I want it that way. He's fine. Wow. Well, a whirlwind weekend for you. Yes, for sure. I have one thing to add to that, and that is this. Prior to all this, Brian saw ballerina and then talked about it on TMS Friday. And you liked it. You enjoyed it. I did. I really, really liked it. We saw it yesterday. Kim and I did. We had a blast. That is a fun movie. I have a thought about your A-O-E thing.

but we'll talk about that off air at some point. Yes. I think it's, my bottom line to it is I think it's okay, given the circumstances. And I don't think they have any rules about how. No, no, it just, it just felt kind of funny because both Wes and I both looked at each other and said, that's an interesting, you know, I didn't you hate it. Yeah, it's quite the escalation, isn't it? It is an escalation. Yes, exactly.

You're like, wow, all right, where's this going to go? It's like all of a sudden, you know, John Wick saying, yeah. I'm going to, um, I'm just going to bomb the Continental. Yeah. I'm not going to go up to the room and try to pop them twice on the head. Why bother walking in and doing a bunch of melee attacks? I'm just going to go it up from a distance. I'm confident to say, though, if you're into that kind of action or you like the Wix series in general, this is a really great fun side addition to it that could well bleed into the main series.

But I had a ball. Like the creativity of some of these fights and choreography, freaking mind blowing. I loved it. And let's then. I'm just going to put it out there. Anadarmus, not at all hard on the eyes. She's a lovely, lovely actress. She's great at this kind of stuff. She's great. There's more humor than I expected.

Yeah. That lady from, it was nice to see the lady from the, but from from from. I hate talking about that show because you have to say from from. Oh, yeah, I know, from from. The wife from from from. She was great. I thought everybody was awesome. There was a couple of surprises. I just absolutely loved it.

All right. Moving on down the road. Oh, we could do half-asses. all right oh yeah that's right we got we got halftasses there are other things there are other things today so we're going to do them right now whether you guys like it or not this is happening so i'm going to go ahead and uh let's see we're going to add our old pal uh to the stage and you might say wait done away today no he's getting his colonoscopy right now that's right poor guy he's got somebody's thumb up his ass he's getting a series of tubes that's right right up the hooter so instead we have tvs travis joining us hi tvs travis well hello hi how are you you. I'm doing all right. I am not getting a colonoscopy today. So it's a good day. Yeah, it is a good day. Any day you don't have somebody poking your hole. You're in a better place. Sure. Well, thanks for sitting in for us. We appreciate it, dude.

Yeah, no problem. I do want to back up, by the way, ballerina was a ton of fun. Yeah. I really like that. I mean, good time. Flame thrower fight. That's all I need. There it is. Yeah, I guess we may as well just say it. There's a flamethrower fight and also a great sub boss or mini boss. I love that guy. Yes. Anybody who can keep fighting while his legs on fire? Bad ass. Jeez. Real good.

Badass. Yeah, I can't wait for you to watch John Wick for Scott and... Oh, yeah. Because there's a great sub-boss in that one, too. Yeah, and I keep hearing amazing things. And for there's some single shot where he's... Like, there's a camera down. The stairs?

Yeah, I think that's it. Where he's working his way through some labyrinthian building or something. It reminded me of the scene in Old Boy where the main dude is like fighting his way down the hallway and he kids you know sometimes he's doing the beating up but sometimes he's getting the tar beat out of him but it's all like a single shot like this this trudge down this hallway with more and more guys getting thrown at him yeah i can't wait and it's no this is no secret of spoiler that john wick is in ballerina it's a smaller role obviously but he's on the poster and all that um but i just love how consistent how consistently keanu reeves he is

throughout the runs of these movies where it's just like oh yeah i am and it's okay. But so much of his dialogue is just a pause. Yeah. Yeah. I'm still working on it. Like he's just the best, man. Yeah.

My wife would marry him if she could. She really would. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. She loves him. All right. Well, let's get to it. Travis, we've got some, oh, oh, before we do.

Travis, sorry, I know we're running out of time here. We're a little short in time. But you went and saw the dogma theater thing. Oh, yeah, it was the anniversary. I was really curious about that. How'd that go? It was great. I wasn't expecting, because I'm in a smaller area, so I wasn't expecting many people to be there.

But we had like a half full auditorium. And it was a nice remaster. It was, that was a movie I did not get to see in theaters back in the day. So it was great to get to go to it. And then they had 20-ish minutes of Kevin Smith Q&A footage from him touring with it after the movie. Oh, wow. Oh, that's cool. That's cool.

That's great. I love that kind of stuff. That's my favorite Kevin Smith movie. I love that one. Same. Yeah. The rest of them are kind of, um, they, to me, they are actually lessened by that one. That one was so good.

I just went, oh, well, okay, we're on a new, we're on a new level here, but then I didn't really like clerks two or three. They're okay. Right, right. Chasing Amy was good. Yeah. That was maybe, that's maybe my second, actually. I was going to say that's right up there with, uh, the first clerks.

Yeah. for me yeah but but i'm sorry jane silent bob strike back it's it's tough it's got some great moments but it's tougher for me to get through the others it's kind of a cartoon it kind of is not that great anyway uh let's get to it hey brian let's uh let's lay it out what are we doing here sure why you know Travis may not have ever played this so i'm going to give him the rules hey welcome to the morning half ass is a trivia game where i'm actually going to be giving you guys the answers i'm going to give scott and travis a category and six possible answers three of which are correct and three like that damn hill are incorrect depending on how confident

they feel with the category they can provide one two or three guesses but if they get any wrong they get zero points for that round guess one get it right you get a point get two right get to three points and if you guess three all three correctly you'll get five points for that round the player with the most points after three rounds wins the prize for their contestant and contestants have been pulled for members in the tadpool that aren't able to listen live scott you're playing for sean in sylvania ohio sylvania they make light bulbs or something. Light bulbs, I think. Yes, yes. All right, cool. I'll play for that guy. And, Travis, you're playing for Vito Sestito in Auckland, New Zealand. If that's not the most

New Zealand sounding name, it really isn't. But Vito, what was the full name? Vito Sestito. That's amazing. That's great. Love it. I feel like you might be an Italian transplant, but I'm guessing, but maybe not. Maybe that's common out there. Anyway, so in Auckland, New Zealand. So, We've got prizes. We'll talk about those at the end of the game. Let's get to your first question. I'm going to softball you for this first one just to establish some good points for maybe both of you and maybe give you a chance to, you know, go for broke.

Movies, I'm sorry, TV show based on movies. So a TV show is based on movies. That's a great one for Travis. It's a great one for both of you. Your choices are Riverdale, Fargo, The Walking Dead. Lucifer, Stargate SG1, and Flipper. Oh, my gosh, I feel like this is too easy. And these are based, the TV show is based on a movie?

The TV show is based on the movie, correct. Okay. Um, one of these is throwing me. Uh-huh. Uh, damn. You know what? I'm going to try to hedge my bets here. Okay.

I'm just going to go for it. That's locked in. Teas Travis is locked in. Yeah, the two easy ones, right? Fargo and Stargate, got those right away. Both of you, I watched you fill in, got those instantly. And then you guys kind of both hesitated and we're looking at like, all right, what's the third one? These first two are obvious.

I mean, Riverdale, based on Archie Comics. Locking Dead, also based on comics, the Kirkman deal. Lucifer, though, Lucifer and Flipper. The devil and the fish, or the mammal. That's right. Well, TV's Travis went for Flipper. and it's correct. Flipper is also based on a movie.

I had no idea. Lucifer is also, Lucifer is based on a comic and I wasn't sure about that. That was what ended up giving it to me was I knew Lucifer was based on the comic. Yeah, you got a good process of elimination.

I wasn't sure either, and I hovered on Flipper for a minute, but damn it, I didn't do it. All right, nice job. All right, so both of you going into round two with points, three for Scott,

five for TV's Travis. Let's go to question number two. I've given you all the gimmies I'm going to give you. Good luck with these. Question number two, too, bad you can't phone a friend, Barry, but the question is, sparkling wines. Which of these are sparkling wines?

Your choices are Rioja, Cava, fragilino, fragilino, fragalino, frascati. It's got, is it fragilino? I would say fragilino because it sounds like someone getting shot by someone in Dune. It's red fragilino. Yeah, right. I like that. Frascati, Sardon, and Volna. Good Lord.

three of those are sparkling wines three of those are not I'm not fully convinced that any of these are actual names of lines I know right that's how I feel the ones that seem obviously like they might be I feel like her tricks I'm going to be conservative again

I don't know okay Travis has the advantage on this one I don't know I don't know if drinking wine gives you any sort of advantage well he comes in with a better score so I don't know oh that's true he's got a little bit more to play with All right.

Well, you both have locked in. You both locked in with two, and your Venn diagram of selections was the one I wasn't sure of the pronunciation. If it's Fraggilino or Fraggilino. You know, it's probably Fraggilino. Frajolino. When you're here, you're sparkling wine. Because that is correct. Frajolino is a sparkling wine.

Very good. Now, one of you said Kava. The other of you said Sardon. Oh, Lord. And both of those are correct. Good job. Actually, between the two of you, named all three of the sparkling ones, yeah. Kava, Sardin, and Frajolino are all sparkling wines.

Maybe Barry can tell us what Rioja, Frascati, and Volme are. If they're just, they might just still be wine, just non-sparkling wine. I almost went with Sardin. Did you really? But I just couldn't pull the trigger on that. Rioja, I was pretty sure it wasn't because it sounded too much like a red wine. Sure, right. I don't even know that.

So you definitely have an advantage on this one. I have no idea. It's funny, the restaurant right next to the place where we got the not a damn burger, not a damn chance burger, is called Rioja. It's an Italian restaurant, yeah. Weird. Yeah, it does sound Italian for sure. Okay, well, now it all comes down to the last question.

You guys going into it, Scott with six, TV's Travis with eight. It all comes down to question number three. words coined by Lewis Carroll. So, you know, author of Through the Looking Glass and other things. Yeah. Or I guess it's Alice through the looking glass. He was quite the inventor of words. Which of these are actual words coined by Lewis Carroll?

Your choices are Slithy, Galumph, Unidexter, Runcible, Chortle, and Cromulant. Good Lord. These all could be true. Yeah. Right? Yep. Or they could all be from a Dr. book yeah right that's true yeah or some some shakespeare bullshit because that guy made a bunch of words

too um so tempted to do that one but i got to go all out here so you kind of have to yeah i mean or you could you could you you can't play it too conservatively right you at least got to go for the tie i'm tough to either go for i guess you can't i guess you can't go for the tie you got to go for the win yeah i got to go all in i think i'm doing it all right okay i'm scared right i'm scared okay you both have locked in you both locked in with three of them and you're you're uh if i'm talking about vend diagrams he kind of both settled on those two middle ones galumph and chortle like to laugh like he sound like he sounds like uh Pokemon don't they a little bit they do yes I think they're I choose you right exactly oh what about a war chortle yeah war chortle oh shit that's evolved I can't

have that that's great uh guess what those two that you both selected galumph and chortle are both words coined by Lewis Carroll. From there, you guys veered off. And one of you chose Runcable, the other one of you chose Cromulant. Yeah. And neither of those were correct. Slithy was the other word.

Cromulant comes from the Simpsons. Oh, shit. That's why it's familiar. Yeah. Cromwell was the one I knew wasn't. Rensable was coined by Edward Lear. And Unidexton. was coined by Maoage, Peter Cook.

Oh, no way. Term Unidexter, yeah. Why him? That's weird. I don't know why him, but... Are these all in the dictionary now? Is like functional, like, definable words? I think so, actually.

I think because Cromulant did eventually get added to the dictionary. Oh, if they're letting that in, they'll definitely let in, you know, the good ones are the ones by real authors. You know what I mean? Let's see here. Let's actually take a look and say, Cromuland. yes oh there it is there it is often facetious oh this is eloquent that's not right but anyway yeah first recorded 1996 on episode the tv show the simpsons a facetious formation ending with the latin

adjectives adjectives adjectives suffix that's a lot cromulent there it is yeah promulent that's a that's a great word to sound pretentious with oh yeah it really is yes but I don't know if M. Biggins made it into the dictionary. No, probably not. I love it, though, when popular culture creates words. I actually think that's great. I kind of like it.

Yeah, M. Biggins has not made it into the dictionary yet. Yes, there's time. Give it time, guys. Give it time. Anyway, very good. Congratulations. TV's Travis, and by proxy, can... Oh, you cut out.

I was hoping that would never happen again. You're still cut out. Hold on. Oh, now you're back. Now you're back. Oh, did I disappear again? disappeared again. All right.

Yeah, we're going to figure that out. I don't know what that is. Yep. Excom Enforcer and Terraforming Mars prelude courtesy of Taffy Guy. But don't worry, Sean,

in Sylvania, Ohio, you're getting a copy of XCOM Interceptor also provided to us by a Taffy Guy. That's awesome. Big winners all around,

I think. Both those, all those games are good. Heck yeah. Definitely. You're going to do fine. Hey, Travis, because you're here,

you get a chance to sort of pimp anything you got going lately. So what's going on? So I've got that new show that I debuted in Vegas that we have I think the sixth episode coming out now fast and curious how many so six so you've watched six of them so far right because that's the way yeah every episode is one one one movie in the movie yep so that that's out and then I just recorded last night wait you haven't seen I watched Grand Budapest Hotel for the first time great movie and

that was a phenomenal movie such a great movie I think that movie would have done better at the Oscars, if it didn't come out so early in the year that it was nominated. Yeah. Because it really gave people a lot of time to forget about it. And you had a lot of good wins around it, but it wasn't, you're right. Anytime that happens, you're just like, oh, you guys, don't do this so early. You're going to get screwed around Oscars time. I think that might be my new favorite Ray Fein's performance.

And I love him in so many things, but he was amazing. And then the kid who played Flash Thompson in the Spider-Man movies. Oh, yeah. Oh, I forgot he was in that. Yeah, he's really good. Real quick here, Ray Fines are going to be a big old buff, ripped old dude in 28 years later. Oh, right. Yeah.

Pretty excited. Yeah, I saw that. A week from Thursday. Saw a trailer again last night. Oh, I'm so excited. So many movies coming out there. I know. It's pretty wild.

Yeah. We're seeing, like, the night before we have to fly out at the ass crack of dawn to Washington, D.C., we're seeing fantastic. four first steps. And Tina's like, couldn't we just wait until we get back? I just laughed at. Yeah. Are you kidding? I just looked at her and laughed. She knows who she's married to. Come on.

Come on. Come on, Tina. Well, that's great. Well done, dude. It was great for you to step in today. I know that you along with us are wishing done away nothing but a speedy, speedy finger up the butt. And, you know, let's hope it all works out in the end, as the kids say.

We'll see you soon. Bye now. All right. That's going to do it For that, let's take a break. When we come back, Stephen Schleiker making his triumphant return to the show. It's been a few weeks. We've missed him terribly. Yeah. So he'll come in here, tell us a few things in the world of pop culture and comics.

That's coming up after this song, Brian Brought. Would you bring? Yeah, this is cool. This is a band called Twilight Testament. And if you think that evokes sounds of like metal, like kind of more symphonic metal kind of stuff, well, you'll be kind of right, actually. This guy's from Hackettstown, New Jersey. I don't know where that is.

in relation to our own wicked kitten, but might be pretty close. And it's a guy named Donald Deinst, who merges deep spiritual themes with dark atmospheric sounds of Gothic electronica and EBM. The album is called Songs Beneath Winter's Vale. You're going to hear the song waiting to begin. Here's Twilight Testament. I look upon you by the light of the video. screen a ghost of your soul in the glow unseen you're putting your heart on hold locked away hiding the

burdens you fear to betray waiting for our time to begin calling through the static to forgive your said my arms were open longing to draw you in long to heal you from within filling your hours with fleeting your hours with fleeting things doom scrolling shadows that promise wings emptiness grows where hope should bloom a crowded heart that's become a tomb waiting for a time to begin calling through the static to forgive your stead my arms are open longing to draw you in I long to heal you from within can't you hear my whispers call in

Through endless distractions, I remain. Waiting for our time to begin Culling through the static to forgive your sin My arms are open and longing to try you in I long to heal you from within The screen fades to black, but I still see You're moving from project to project without acknowledging me When will the noise fade and you let me in?

Maybe tomorrow we can begin Again again Again Again That's a statistical improbability 47% of all phone calls are for favors How much zilch are you willing to give for 20 bucks And we've returned.

Who is that again so I can go get that album? You bet. That is Twilight Testament from their brand new album, Songs Beneath Winter's Vail. Big thanks to Music Submit for sending me that one. A song called Waiting to Begin. That's a convenient name, Music Submit. Music Submit. It tells you right what it is.

It's almost like a Scott Johnson podcast. You know exactly what it is just from the name. Yeah. And there's a good reason. Yeah, there's something to that. I like that. For sure. All right, check this out, y'all.

And now welcome Stephen to the show. He's a huge freaking nerd. Dollar, dollar bills, y'all. Yeah, it's right. Stephen Schlecker joining us after, I wouldn't call it a hiatus. But he has been busy. He's had stuff going on. I mean, a lot of graduations and stuff to get through.

A lot of graduations and stuff. Yeah. How are you doing after all that? It's a lot going on. Kids are graduated. That's good. One from high school. One from eighth grade.

Yeah. Last week, I wasn't here because my youngest son is now completed driver. or completed driver's ed but I got to tell you if Dunaway is still backed up after his colonoscopy he can ride with my child and he won't be after that he'll plug him right up

he'll be all good after that no he'll clean him right out scared the crap right out of him all right either way yeah yeah I remember this being a real thing when my kids were I don't remember what I was like when I was 16 and how big of a pain and he asked that may have felt like to my parents but to me

all three of them felt like stress ball nightmare it was yeah hated it my oldest i didn't have as much problems with but the youngest is just like you wrecked my car on day one first hour oh no really oh i think you did tell me about this yeah when we saw you in haze yeah oh my god oh yeah so yeah but he's much better now he's much better now i thought of you guys when i was in uh freddies's the other day because you guys were at freddies yeah yeah i've seen i've seen brian more than i've seen you guy. I know, right? We've got to fix that next nerdtacular, you know.

Absolutely. Kind of make Stephen great again. I'm going to make hats and everything. You watch. Well, anyway, it's good to have you here, man. We're going to get into some stuff and kind of catch up a little bit. For example, we're not done with Diamond Comics being kind of a problem, are we? Still kind of an issue.

So Diamond Comics finally got bought out. They just, you know, declared their bankruptcy, and then they went through and had two different buyers. The one that bought the comics distributors is a company called the ad populum, which is I want to say a subsidiary of the same company that does a lot of other pop culture stuff like WizKids

miniatures and those kinds of things. So it looks pretty good. However, because we've had all this time where people are like, well, we don't know if Diamond is going to survive, a bunch of publishers have jumped to a bunch of other distributors including a publisher's Random House or Penguin Random House,

sorry. And And pettiness, spite, whatever, Penguin said, hey, listen, Diamond was still allowed to order comics through us as a third-party distributor. We're cutting that off. We're not going to do third-party distributors anymore, which cuts off Diamond. Well, Diamond then last week said, yeah, we're just not going to ship any Penguin Random House comics anymore. So anybody that had stuff last week and going forward, that was coming from Diamond, that would include your Boom Studios, your Dark Horse, your IDW, you're basically everybody oh you have to love it when the customers become the bargaining chip that's great that's real fun yeah always a positive always a plus yeah and then so yeah so

that's that's the first thing so if if your comic store has been getting stuff through diamond you probably don't have your marvel comics or your codantia or your whatever else that's on the list um because of that yeah and then i heard this really weird now this is rumor-ish that ad populum said we were going to pay the publishers money that was owed to them, and then ad populum kind of ghosted everybody on paying them. Oh, great. And there's not been any kind of big follow-up on that. And there's a book publishing company that kind of got a lot of flack on Twitter and blue sky and everywhere last week,

because they also went through bankruptcy and another company bought them out. And the new company was like, yeah, we're not honoring any of those. previous contracts. So we're not paying authors for those works. This is all new company, all new thing. So I don't know if Ad Populum is doing that exact same thing or not, but man, I would, if you are somebody who loves comic books, I would make sure that you're checking in with your comic book store to see how they're holding up because they're running sometimes week to week on whether they're getting their comic books right now or not. And even though things are really rocky. This still could be the

final straw that kind of breaks the industry. Do you feel like this is a sign of a real, it's got the smell of like this industry's got some serious health problems. We're going to, and we're just now we're just now going to have to really get dirty with it. Like it's, we're not doing great

here. So, comics is still a billion dollar a year industry. So that's good. And that's with ancillary merchandising, all that stuff. So that's, that's good. It's getting the comics into people's hands and doing it at a price that's affordable is the thing that people do need to take a hard look and say, hey, can I spend $599 or $4.99 on a weekly comic and expect to buy 20 comics, $100 in a single week. I mean, back when we were young, I could spend $20.00 and get, you know, 30 comics, a tank of gas and a McDonald's meal.

Exactly, yes. Right. But that's not how it is today. And certainly with the economy going the crazy way it is, a lot of these. fun activity things might have to be put on the back burner. So things are, yeah, you're right. There probably does need to be a good look up and down the aisle that says, what are we doing, what's the point, how can we get this into as many people's hands

as possible, at an affordable price, at high quality? And I don't think anyone has the answers or the answers are the ones people don't want to hear. Yeah. Like maybe Brian doesn't need his brand new runaways. number one coming out this week. Oh, is that a thing? I probably don't. Yeah, you probably don't. I didn't know they're reviving that series. Yeah, they, yeah, they've got a new series that kicks off this week. No way. Is there original people involved? I know. Rainbow Raoul is the one who is the writer on this one,

and that was not the creator. The original was the saga guy, right? Yeah. Brian Kayvon. Yeah. Brian Cave on, yeah. Oh, I love his writing. It's not him, though. That's fine. The other guy's fine. Actually, that was actually one of the better non-MCU, MCU tangential TV shows because I think they acknowledged, they acknowledged in that show that there was the battle for New York. Yeah, because that's the whole thing with the runaways was that the spoiler alert, the kids' parents are the supervillains. Right. They were using their powers to keep the East Coast heroes from coming to the West Coast. Right. Right.

That's right. That's such a dumb idea. but I love it. I mean, it's a great in-universe explanation. I mean, it totally is. It didn't work.

It works. I found some great actors for the kids and, uh, yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, Stephanie disagrees. She says, Runaway's show was bad.

Was it? I don't think it was that bad. It was all right. It wasn't as, uh, in humans or, uh, I only saw three of them,

so I really don't, I can't talk, I guess. Yeah. But I liked what I saw. Dagger had, had it some moments. I think was,

you know, was better than it could have been. Yeah. what was the dove and dove and crow or hawkin dove yeah i thought that was all right that was okay it's not marled i thought you were going to talk about um cloak and dagger that was also another oh yeah i mentioned cloak and dagger that that was yeah it had its moments but it was yeah it wasn't strong it wasn't strong no um the actress was great who played dagger and even like has a singing career that uh but yes exactly graham ellis's cloak and dagger was too slow yeah it was a lot yeah

have too much buildup. I agree with that. Stephen, speaking of weird crossovers, which we didn't say at all. We're going to talk about that now. Oh, you guys haven't talked about this? I'm really surprised. No, Batman and Deadpool crossover. Who the hell is doing this? I didn't know about this. I didn't either. These companies, one is called Marvel, and they have the Deadpool character.

The other one is DC and they have the Batman character. And they haven't had a Marvel DC crossover event since Justice League and Avengers crossed over like 20 years ago. Jeez. Well, when was the Batman? So Batman's On was all in the 90s Batman Spider-Man was in the 90s Superman Wild

What was the Gen 13 was in the 90s? All that stuff was in the 90s And then the last time that they did it was 2003 with the Justice League Avengers team up So yeah they've been pretty quiet Of course you know when you think about it 2003-2005 area

That's when we're starting Have the Marvel Studios movies launching and getting really big and people creating a lot of are you a marvel or are you a dc so i can see these two not um teaming up but with the new deadpool of course the most recent deadpool movie going uh banana crazy the new quest uh game uh with deadpool coming out it makes sense that you could take deadpool and throw him into any situation and it would probably work and sell a lot but for dc they've got to get their their batman all over this i noticed that trailer for the VR game, they got a pretty good Timu level Ryan Reynolds to do the voice. It's not bad. It's not the war. Is that who it is? Oh, shit. Yeah, it's Neil Patrick Harris. I didn't know what's a famous person. So here's what you need to do. Here's what you need to do. Here's what you need to do. You need to go over to Twitter and you need to look up Ryan Reynolds account. He has done a hysterical Dugie Houser send up of what it means when someone comes and steals your primary role that you're known for. Really? And if you guys remember Dugie Houser,

You know that Robin Lively was Dugie Hauser's love interest, who is Ryan Reynolds' sister-in-law. And so, Blake Hively has his wife. So yeah, she makes an appearance in that. So go watch that. It's a brilliant piece of marketing that Ryan Reynolds and crew did on that. I know some people don't like what's going on with Ryan right now, but that's, you know, beside the point. You said this is on Twitter slash X is where I can find that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He posted it. I saw it on Saturday or Sunday. But what if I never want to go to Twitter? Oh, I don't know then. I just look up Ryan Reynolds. Ryan Reynolds, Dukey, Hauser, VR game. Okay. I'll look into it.

That's interesting. It's really great. It's really great. I kid mostly. Like, you can go look at things without being involved in Twitter that much. It's fine. I mean, you know, if my kid driving will make you clean out that way, going to Twitter will increase your blood pressure. So, you know.

Yeah. All the health implications are right here in front of us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So here's the thing about the Deadpool Batman crossover is that each company gets a chance to do something with this. So first we have over on Marvel, we have, it's called Deadpool Batman because it's Marvel. So you've got to put their name first. Zeb Wells and Greg Capulow are working together on that. Always interested in Capulow, always.

Yeah. And he's been over there at Marvel now for a while. but Zepwell's writing is really good. He's done some amazing Spider-Man stuff as well as a bunch of other things. When it goes over to DC Comics, when it will be titled Batman Deadpool, that's going to be written by Grant Morrison with Art by Dan Mora. Oh. And that's a really great combo as well because Dan Mora is a fantastic artist.

And of course, Grant Morrison is Grant Morrison. Yeah, he is. And he's great at being Grant Morrison. Yeah. And I think it'll be an interesting team up, of course, when we expect first time they meet. they're going to fight yeah um but it feels to me it feels like deadpool is a pretty good foil for batman yeah i agree i think it'd actually be a good time batman's not gonna

have any patience for his bullshit no no that's what's gonna make it great right yeah um it's gonna annoy the hell out of him yeah but i was thinking for you guys real quick if you could pick like a spider man villain to go up against batman oh brian you got to answer this first would be a good Spider-Man villain to go up against Batman. Who do you like? I mean, you know, you think about, you've got to kind of get into Batman's head a little bit. So I think I actually think it might be a good Mysterio. Yep.

Mysterio has been, I asked this a couple of weeks ago on Blue Sky and a lot of people said Mysterio. Yeah. Who else? Man, Mysterio would be fun. My pick would be Kingpin just because he's an ongoing. Oh, yeah, for sure. It fits with the stuff you see with the falcons and the stuff in the Batman universe anyway. That's pretty good.

And then what about Craven? Craven the hunter. Craven could be interesting. We're all a little bit sour on Craven these days because of that bad movie, but the comic character is pretty awesome. He's pretty awesome, yeah. No, Crave would be another good choice. I like that a lot. I like that one.

I can't think of another good one. Spider-Man, there's so many. I mean, they're all good in their own weird way. Sandman. Sandman, Doc Doc. I don't really see like a green goblin or a hobgoblin being great with Batman. Pretty much over. Fight would be over before it begins.

Mary Jane. There you go. Perfect villain for anyone to pick from the list. That darn Parker luck. I know, right? That's right. What are you going to do? All right.

Moving on down to Jock's Detective Comics 880 and the cover being up on the auction block. Tell us about this. Jock is a fantastic artist. And if you've ever seen a stuff, which I know you have, 100%. His art is brilliant. It's just stark, good lines, good contrast, everything. One of his most popular comic covers was Batman 880, where it's this version of the Joker, where he kind of explodes into a bunch of bats.

Yeah, his head. A little splash of red for the eyes and for the lips. The original art is going on sale on Heritage. auctions. It's got like 12 days or something like that left, 18 days, 17 days left. People can buy this. Now, Jock doesn't get any of the proceeds by this because this is a heritage auctions thing. But currently, I see you have it up there on the screen. I was going to see if it was a guessing game, but $45,000 plus fees, $54,000 with fees, can get you this piece of iconic comic book art. The next bid is, Brian, if we want to get in on this, our next bid is $46,000.

Yeah, but again, you have to have those fees. So it's really 55,200. Yeah, yeah. The fees. Oh, my God. Why are these fees so expensive? What's going on? Because this is heritage auction.

That's what they charge, taxes, shipping, insurance, all of that stuff. Oh, my gosh. That's included in the fees. It's like in the auction, like, if you watch any, like, the car show auctions, there's also fees that it's like, it's only $850,000, but with the fees, it's a cool million dollars. This is like, this is the way. This is like the way that DoorDash works, except exponentially higher. But it's the same idea.

I like Heritage Auctions a lot. And it should be anybody who is a comic book collector or movie memorabilia collector or anything like that. This isn't really a plug for them. They're not paying me any money. I wish they would, though. I would go and check out Heritage Auction on a regular basis because they have some really cool stuff going on. And sometimes that stuff can be bought for less than a thousand bucks. Like I was in, I didn't want to go spend $1,000.

I went, I think up to $125 for some original costumes from the Watchman television show. Like original screen-worn costumes, the starting bid was like $50. And I think it ended up at $8.50 with fees. But I was like, yeah, I'll spend $100 on one of these costumes if I can get it. Sure. So, you know, it's worth going and checking out. They often have Star Wars things going on. If you are a comic book collector, they have graded and slabbed comics that,

that go on sale quite a bit. This is where heritage auctions are the ones that have sold the most recent first appearance of Batman, first appearance of Superman, titles that go for millions of dollars. So they're kind of have become the go-to for high-end collecting. One of my favorite things about Jock is that he looks nothing like you would expect him to look like. Oh, really? Right.

Here he is, Brian. He's just a normal-ass-looking guy. It's like, hi, I'm Jock. I'm normal. Let me check you inherit the grease monkey. Yeah. What kind of services you here for today? Yeah, I just, because.

When you see this name and you see that it's like his go by first and last name, like this is what he's known by, you just, I don't know what I expect. I was expecting someone, I was expecting someone to look a little bit more like this chicken I have with the sunglasses and the mohawk. Play that again. Oh, I love that thing. There's something, oh my gosh, this thing's really good at blocking that out when it's far away from the mic. Really? Yeah, that's great. Well, anyway, Stephen, this is great. All this stuff can be found at major spoilers.com. You guys cover a ton of stuff and, of course, the podcast.

and everything else. What do you got going on right now that you would like to tell people at home about? So speaking of podcasts, we've been off for the last couple of weeks because of, you know, things with critical hit. We ended our big, um, Octun Cthulhu campaign. And now we're taking a little breather. And we are back this Friday with monster wranglers. So if you are a fan of Pokemon, this is a, uh, not Pokemon RPG game. And it looks to be a lot of fun. We've got a couple of games already under our belt, but the first episode drops on Friday slash Saturday on the critical hit feed so people can go and check that

out there. Also, it's going to get really hot today and Brian, I know you already know this from your bike ride but I do need to make sure that everybody stays hydrated. Do you hear? Oops, I unmuted myself. I muted myself. That was a manual mute and now we're all okay.

Okay. Well, thank you, Stephen. We will remember that, of course. Okay, quick couple of notes. Yeah. where are we there we are monday show today one one p.m that'll be me and carter doing our thing all right sure dad daughter you know that whole thing of course doing monday things doing monday things that's how the theme goes that's what you're exactly yes yeah it's all about monday stuff and then play retro normally today but brian done away's got fingers up his butt so we're not doing that

today it's the way goes and instead he's getting you know do play retro oh what game we play yeah anyway he's going to be uh he's going to be uh he's going to be here tomorrow so we're We're going to do it tomorrow. Tomorrow, normal time, 4 p.m. in the afternoon, just shifting it a day to accommodate his colonoscopy, which by all accounts so far, it sounds like everything's gone great. So I think we're in good shit. Glad to hear it. TRP wrote in, quick email to end the show. The morning stream at gmail.com is our email address. Tom is his real name. And he says this, hey, shark and barracuda. Your local neighborhood paleontologist here. We've heard from him before. I was listening to your latest TMS and wanted to drop a line. The blowfish you see in pictures is, deformed because it is a deep sea fish that is evolved to live under tremendous pressures. It looks completely different in its natural habitat before it is fished up and brought to the surface where rapid changes and pressure severely deform it.

That's why it looks so weird and different, i.e. the nose. Love the show though, TRP. So I think somebody had told us that once and I forgot. Yeah, somebody mentioned it. Somebody mentioned in the chat when we, oh, you said blowfish, blobfish. Oh, did I say blow, I meant blob? Yeah. We got a lot of people in the chat room who brought it up when we were talking about it last week that it looks like like the one that we show in that photo which is the commonly shared photo of the blobfish

it looks like all weird like that with the big nose just because it's been brought up from the depths and and is I'm going to argue it's still pretty ugly even down there though I really have a look to find a picture of it of what it looks like here's a shot so that's the one we think of right just nasty there it is down there

it's a little more fish like but it's nothing like this but it's nothing like this but You know, it's still kind of. Oh, it's way better. Way better there, though. Oh, my gosh. Because that nose goes, boom. Yeah, that's a good point.

No matter what, it's bringing it up is bad news. Right, right? Exactly. Because you don't even get a nose down there. There's another one. It's a little more high rose. Just a little, like, just a little bump of a nose. But apparently once it's out of the high pressure sea depths, it's like, boom, it pops out like a.

This is how somebody drew, or this is the 3D rendering of what it looks like once you bring it up, full fish. Oh, jeez. So it loses its spikes and everything. It's just like the poor thing. What are we doing to these things? Let's not do that. Leave them down there. Let's keep them down there, exactly.

Are these those kind of fish that live to be like 300 years old or something like that? Right. Like the, I don't know. I don't know. It's a good question. Also, somebody thinks they look like Ted Cruz. They totally do. And ever since Kimmel pointed that out to me, I cannot unsee it.

Yeah, that's really hard not to see it. especially with the beard now like where like the weird coloring on the bottom half of the blobfish face did you ever see the late I think it was his either his high school or early college there's a video of him in the 90s sitting on a somewhere outside

talking about titty movies have you seen this no but that tracks it's so stupid it makes me want to punch the screen anyway everyone's a douchebag everybody that's the answer to the life the universe and everything All right. We're going to get out of here. Thank you for writing that NTRP. If you want to do that, you can do it at home, the morning stream at gmail.com, or you can text and voicemail us at voicecast. Dot app slash TMS. Let's play them out with something cool. What do you got? Sounds good. Ryan, aka Ryo Atemi, wrote in and said, I'm turning 46, my youngest twins of just turned 18 and graduated from high school, but I had to miss TMS Vegas this year. So some good and some bad so far this year. Can I get Veronica Belmont telling us she's our best friend?

or maybe a toaster screaming about nuclear Armageddon. Best friend. I don't know that one. What is that one best friend? I mean, I know the sausage and I know the... I'll do a quick Veronica search, but I don't remember this. How about a booby? I know it's another one of hers,

but I can't think of a Veronica Belmont telling us she's our best friend. All right. I've got a couple here. Let's just see if we can find it. So here's one. Nope, that's Todd Cochran talking about somebody else's thing. Okay, how about this one? Tough titty.

that's Stan Lee calling her a silly person how about this one I don't know if I'm supposed to be hearing those but I'm not hearing them on my oh I turned that off I'm such a dumb ass I don't think anybody can hear oh nobody's here okay yeah I turned it off I can fix that though really fast okay so how about this one

yeah that's not it okay so you miss this one that's a fun one I haven't heard that one. That's funny. All right. How about this one? Okay. That's all I got.

Isn't there a, I just want to tell Scott Johnson that he's my bitch or something like that. Oh, is that the one? Hold on. Oh, yeah, I do have that. Okay, yeah, I have that one. Yeah, he is. That's it. That's never changed.

We'll go with that one. We'll go with that one. All right, fair enough. And then he says, if Brian could play his favorite song from Stix's Big Bang Theory covers album, it would make for a great birthday. I am happy to play that for you, Ryan. It's actually a really good album from Sticks called Big Bang Theory. He came out in 2005.

Does Sticks like Sticks? Yeah, like, you know, like, I'm sailing away. That sticks. No way, Mr. Robato, all that. I had no idea. Yeah. Okay. 2005, they released now, I'm called Big Bang Theory,

featured a bunch of great covers. You want my favorite? I'll tell you my favorite. It's a song originally by Blind Faith, and it's called Can't Find My Way Home. Here's Sticks. Come down off your throne and leave your body alone somebody must change

you are the reason I've been waiting so long somebody holds the key well I'm near the end and I just ain't got the time well now I'm wasted and I can't find my way home

Come down Come down on your own and leave your money at home Somebody must change You are the reason I've been waiting all these years Somebody holds the key Well, I'm nearly in the end and I just ain't got the time Oh

And I'm wasted and I can't find my way home home, and I can't find my way home. Oh, and I can't find my way home. I said I can't find my way home. And I can't find my way home. And I hate that nothing road. Said I can't find my way home. And I can't find my way home.

Wear them loud and proud, friend. You're always welcome at frogpants.com. Do you like peppers? Sure. Yeah, I sure do. Yeah, I love peppers.