The Press Box - Kamala Drops Out, 'Irishman' Reviews, and RIP Clive James | The Press Box

Episode Date: December 4, 2019

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss Kamala Harris dropping out of the 2020 race (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (18:15), Martin Scorsese’s gangster epic 'The Irishman' (23:45), and pay tribute to the late, great critic Clive James (33:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Throughout the month of December, the Ringer staff will be releasing their year-end reviews covering the best and worst of 2019 in sports, TV, movies, music, and more. This week, we're getting started with Shays Serrano and Rob Harvilla on the best albums of the year, and Allison Herman and Chris Ryan break down the best TV shows. We'll have tons more in the coming weeks, so make sure to check it out on the Ringer.com. David Kamala Harris ended her president. campaign today. Note my emphasis because what I want to know is, and please be honest, when did you learn how to correctly pronounce Kamala Harris's name?

I mean, the safe thing would be to say that I haven't even learned it to this point so that no one can call me out on being incorrect. I feel like it's one of those things that I probably learned like the third time I, like, saw her or heard of her, but, like, forgot repeatedly. It's like every time I try to say, like, Turkish president Erdogan, I trip over the picture of the letters in my head. But, yeah, man, I mean, I think with confidence, with confidence, I mean, somewhere around the first debate, maybe the second debate, how long, I don't know, I mean, I'm sure there's

there's audio evidence of me putting my foot in my mouth. Sure. We delivered at least one post-debate pod where we mispronounced her name repeatedly. Oh, my gosh. Which is really everything you want out of a quick reaction pod. The host cannot pronounce the name of the candidates correctly. Jim has gone back and re-edited all those, I hope, to make it sound like we knew what we were talking about. That and all the Ukraine references.

I'm sure he's going to use it for the end of this one. Oh, God. Yeah, this is, I love moments in American life where all of society figures out how to pronounce something at the same time. Yes. There have been Middle Eastern country moments like Hatar, you know, or none of us knew. And then it became the news. Yeah, you're right.

The Ukraine thing was another recent one. Yeah. And then we all pretend we always knew. Yeah. And then there's always like once a year there'll be a professional athlete that just corrects us on the way we've been saying his name for 15 years. Or someone like, remember when Jeff Hornacek? Like just he announced he was changing the pronunciation of his name back in the day.

I don't know if that was a decision that he made or, if it was we'd been doing it wrong. That happens a lot. I guess, I know Jim's presumably listening to this. The best use of his time, I think, would just be to put together like an in-memorium reel, like with soft music playing in the background of us just saying her name incorrectly over and over and over again. That's definitely what he should be doing. We are the Pete Buttegege of Media Podcasts.

This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello Media Consumers. You've got Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. here lots and lots to get to today, including the critical reaction to Martin Scorsese's long slash too long gangster epic, the Irishman. We're going to pay tribute to the late great critic Clive James, plus the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, let's begin with breaking news. This is almost emergency pod zone.

Remember when Kamala Harris was going to be president or at least had a pretty good path to the Democratic nomination. When we've gone from that to her not even running, let me quote the letter Harris sent out to her staff today as she ended her campaign. 11 months ago at the launch of this campaign in Oakland, excuse me, I told you all I'm not perfect, but I will always speak with decency and moral clarity and treat all people with dignity and respect. I will lead with integrity.

I will speak the truth. And that's what I've tried to do every day of this campaign. So here's the truth today. I've taken stock and looked at this from every angle, and over the last few days have come to one of the hardest decisions of my life, by the way, is quitting a campaign ever not one of the hardest decisions of the candidate's life. Anyway, continuing, my campaign for president simply doesn't have the financial resources we need to continue. The news comes after Harris had qualified for the December 19th Democratic debate.

Here's where I want to start, David. is this a case of a formidable presidential campaign blowing up like a supernova? Or is the right way to look at Harris that this is a lot like, you know, Amy Klobuchar's campaign or Corey Booker's campaign, one of those campaigns that made a lot of sense but never got off the ground, except she had one good debate, which convinced us all that she was a front. on her. Well, I mean, I think that she, I think that by a lot of metrics, I mean, metric might

be the wrong word because I'm not speaking about hard numbers here, but I think there's a lot of angles you can, you can take to view her as a more realistic candidate than those two. And, I mean, there's a lot of ways you can look at it the opposite way, I'm sure, but she certainly had a little bit more of an outsider status than those two. She was, she had been discussed, you know, she was relatively fresher and knew her on the national stage. And, you know, had a lot, had a, I think a lot of the upside without a lot of the baggage of some of those other people that you named. But I also think that there's, you know, I mean, it's weird. I mean, somehow, like, her walking away and at least doing it the way that she did is maybe the most impressive part of her campaign to me.

And maybe that's, you know, I don't mean that as a backhanded compliment. But, you know, I mean, I think that if you really look back and take stock, her, her, you know, path was pretty difficult in the sense that she was, I mean, she had been discussed as a presidential nominee, as a potential presidential, you know, Democratic nominee. And once that discussion takes place, there's not a lot of room for you to become the Pete Buttigieg of the race, right? I mean, you can't be the outsider who gets a lot of numbers because anybody that even had the cocktail party conversation that she, I mean, that people had about her, you know, the race that she's run, it's been so much. I mean, the campaign that she's run has been something of a disappointment, at least a reaction to it. You know, she's done fine. The results have been disappointing. And, you know, I'm not one that that gives anybody any extra credit for sticking in the race. race just to be more, you know, to increase your odds of being a VP pick. You know, I don't think you should, I mean, unless you have, you know, a specific platform point that you think needs to be aired out there, you know, there's no reason to stay on the debate stage just for vanity purposes. So, you know, congratulations. Cudos to her for seeing, you know, the honest lay of the land

out there and reacting. Is that how the VP thing plays? Because isn't there a scenario here where you walk away now rather than finishing sixth or seventh in Iowa. The state she was apparently going all in on, and you seem like a better VP because you walked away and you didn't lose. I think that's probably, I think that's more correct than what I said, but the point that I was trying to make was just more the vanity point. I mean, there's no reason to stay in just because just to continue to campaign haplessly. You know, I mean, just to just to continue to keep your name in the news.

And maybe this is a calculated effort. I mean, it's a very calculated decision meant to kind of win the war in the end. But regardless, this seems like the right decision at this point in time. I just wish that, I mean, after her, you know, you mentioned that she was up in the polls after that first debate. And we, you know, we covered the last debate. And I was, I guess, relatively effusive about her. I thought that she just had turned in an incredible performance and a really, compelling argument for maybe the first time as far as I'm concerned for her candidacy. And,

you know, maybe it's the Kastanza, you know, you leave on a high note or whatever. But like, to me, it's, uh, it's, you know, I mean, it's a similar thing with Castro, I guess. I guess there's, I don't, I'm not going to name names, but there's people I would rather see, you know, shuffled off the, shuffle off the stage ahead of her. But, but, but I think that in, that aside, I think she's probably making a wise decision here. A couple of data points that are interesting about the now former Harris campaign. One is she, like almost seemingly every candidate in this race fell into the Sarlac pit that is health care for Democrats. Her big moment you remember several months ago was she was on CNN and she made a comment about eliminating private insurance.

And then got into this whole issue or isn't she for Medicare for all, which you'll also remember is basically part of the reason that Elizabeth Warren has fallen down the polls in the last month or so, or one of the reasons anyway. That's just baffling to me that this has become the issue that trips up all Democrats is health insurance and how pivotal somehow that's become to the, you know, we may look back at this if there's a Democratic president in the White House in 2021 and say, wait a second, no health care plan is going to get past anyway, but that for whatever reason was the eliminators. That was disqualifying people. Yeah, exactly, of

Democratic candidates. Anyway, that's number one. The other thing is this big New York Times piece that came out and probably presaged the end of this campaign. It was by three of their campaign pros, Jonathan Martin, Shane Goldmacher and Aestead Herndon. Lots of revelations

about the craziness and disorder within Harris's campaign. Times got their hands on a resignation letter of Kelly Mellenbacher, who was her state operations director, Mellenbacher wrote, this is my third presidential campaign, and I have never seen an organization treat its staff so poorly. She was attacking Juan Rodriguez and Maya Harris, who is Kamala's sister and the campaign chairwoman.

They had just had a bunch of layoffs. The piece also notes that Harris's relationship with Juan Rodriguez, her campaign director was, quote, frosty. There was also this whole dynamic, David, that Harris was losing votes to Pete Buttigieg, whom you mentioned, who again, here we are. And it really seems like, I don't know if I would have, I don't know, I talked to political reporters here and there and a few of them told me, Buttigieg is the one who has a chance to, this is a couple of months ago, has a chance to come in and up in this race. I'm kind of surprised we're honestly here, where somebody like Harris is no longer running at all. and Pete Buttigieg is arguably in the driver's seat for, if not just Iowa, then maybe Iowa in New Hampshire.

That's pretty crazy to me. Yeah, I mean, I think with the speed at which, you know, we process political news, you know, it's impossible for anyone with any experience to really run an outsider campaign. Like I said before, and Buttigieg just sort of like fell into that role. I mean, obviously beat Beto and, you know, any other potential opponents to that, into that slot. And he's, and he's, you know, he's going to take, he's going to go a long way with it. Well, you know, he's, he's got, he's got a lane, he's got a couple of lanes that he's occupying that nobody else is. I'm interested in the health care thing. I mean, I think it kind of begs a longer discussion at some point.

But, you know, I think that, that we are, I mean, somewhere between the way debates are, moderated in the way that political discourse happens on Twitter where like, you know, in social media in general where, you know, the minority parties still are still has these little like, you know, interesting squabbles as if it was the governing party. And we start in every, and there's, you know, purity tests left and right. You kind of have to be an extreme candidate one way or the other, at least in reference to the rest of the field to have a, to have a, to have a, and I think the Harris campaign struggled to really find that lane to find what really set that campaign apart at least, you know, platform-wise from everybody else.

And this was not the cycle for a candidate like her, despite her, you know, many positive attributes. I think everybody sort of, the reaction that I've been saying is sort of people who were like generally shocked but not shocked in this moment. Like nobody was surprised to hear this, but it was all sort of, there was a lot of, you know, I really thought that she would do better. But having watched the past several months, it's like nobody's surprised that we got to this point.

If anything, it's surprised that she couldn't figure out a way to, or she didn't carry on through Iowa like most candidates in her position would do. I think your point about health care is exactly right. I think the other thing that did, we have to go back and look at the clippings to really confirm this, but it seems to me that the moment she started, started flip-flopping on Medicare for all was the moment that the political press decided she wasn't a serious candidate or she's that she was kind of an amateur candidate.

Now, that's happened a bunch of times in this race, but it's with people like Biden who have all this other infrastructure behind them and all this other support behind them. She didn't. And I don't know. I just, I remember at the time reading articles about her, it just felt like reporters decided like this is amateur hour. This person's not serious. And, you know, again, that didn't end her campaign on its own.

But man, that just feel like it colored all the coverage after that. I would like to bestow I think that's right upon that comment. And by the way, if your campaign is as disorganized as that Times piece pointed out that it was, remember they had this whole thing about, are we in on Iowa? Are we out on Iowa? We don't have any money. We don't know how much to run. Kamala as a prosecutor or we don't know whether to be afraid that running her as a prosecutor

will make lefty Twitter mad. If you're going through all these things and the way they are, that's a bad sign for your administration. I like Kamala Harris. I really do. I kind of thought she was going to win this thing at one point. But man, that just seems that's a, that's not good as a preview of your administration. No.

And, you know, it seems like she picked wrong in her campaign director and her. her sister in running this. No, I think that it's a it's a little bit trite. It's a little bit over you know, it's a, it's a, it's a little bit too easy to say like the way you run your campaign is the way you're going to, you know, reflect on how you're going to, you would, you would run an, you would run the country or whatever you're running for. Um, but on some very basic level, we are interested in voting for a person who has, who wakes up and does their job, you know, who has like a certain amount of control over the things they can control. the operations going on around them.

And being able to tolerate, being able to tolerate that level of chaos is not a positive indicator of what you would do in any sort of position of significance like that. So I think you can look at it like that. It seems like a cliche, but wasn't it basically true for Obama and Trump? Yeah. Don't their administrations basically reflect the chaos or lack there of of their campaigns? Yeah, no, I think that. I think that's, I just think anytime you feel yourself leaning into a cliche, you should investigate. But yes, I mean, I think in those cases, and presumably this one, there's, there's truth there.

So that's the big 2020 news of the day. Do we, do we have even more breaking news? Well, yeah. I mean, as we're, first of all, this, the Kamala Harris dropping out got more, I got more push alerts on my phone about that news than any single issue outside of Frozen 2, I think I've ever received. I went to get a cup of coffee and picked up my phone to like 12 push alerts. And I don't even like, you know, I'm not like subscribing to every political blog to send me push alerts on my phone. It was a lot of news. And then immediately right around that time or immediately thereafter, there was this news that the Intelligence Committee has officially reached their conclusion

in the Trump-Ukraine investigation. I guess we'll see where we get from here. there's a lot left to be to be sorted out. But we'll probably be touching on that later this week. But this news is sort of breaking as we record this. The House Intel Committee concluding that the President Trump, quote, use the power of his office to solicit foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election. Which is exactly what we kind of felt like we were leading to.

But it does feel a little bit. It does feel like there's a lot of weight to this. like very straightforward New York Times headline that I'm staring at right now, right? I mean, doesn't it feel a little bit like, like somehow of all of the things we've been through during the Trump presidency for better or worse, this feels like, you know, there's something here. Well, a couple months ago, I might have picked another country with exactly the same headline in terms of soliciting foreign interference. But yeah, you're right.

And it seems like a, it's amazing. It says something about Trump. It says something about us. and it says something about our news environment that we can, by the way, news about the president's potential impeachment. I mean, again, soliciting foreign interference on his behalf in the 2020 election.

Wow, more to come on that later in the week. All right, David, it's now time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully, received. This is, by the way, going to be a baby Yoda free edition of the Overward Twitter joke of the week.

Respecting spoilers? Spoiler alerts? No, not, well, not only am I anti-baby Yoda jokes. I don't even know where to start. I mean, what, what was, sorry, what was the overwork baby Yoda tweet of the week? There were but nine billion. By the way, I went to a, I went to, I went to a Disney store. in a in a giant mall yesterday to ask about and just was like hey can I see the baby Yoda section and and the woman who I the very nice woman who was working there was just like no we don't have them in yet I haven't heard anything about when we'll get them in I was just like wow who's a sleep at the wheel at Disney right yeah Lucas they're only making a hundred billion

dollars every time I blink and they and I just get some baby Yoda's into the story do they not foresee that taking off yeah that that's a real surprise with anything Star Wars wow All right, so we agree that we've made too much of Baby Yoda. Let's talk about the Irishman, David, last week, last Wednesday. Martin Scorsese's movie was released on Netflix, allowing people to see it who didn't see it at a Hollywood theater with Leonard Moulton. By the way, that is, I went to the Egyptian in Hollywood to see it a couple weeks ago, and Leonard Moulton was in the theater with me.

This was not a critic screening, just Leonard Moulton hobbling in to watch it. That was weird. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, time to watch the Irishman as Martin Scorsesean. on my iPad in 20 minute chunks in between mandated family activity over the next four days. Thanks to Joshua for that one. God, this is almost baby yoda level, but I'm going through with it anyway. David, did you follow the Billy Eilish doesn't know who Van Halen is controversy?

No, I was completely oblivious to this. Oh, oh good. Elish was on Jimmy Kimmel's College of Rock and Roll Knowledge and she flunked. Listen to this. I do know who Madonna is. I do know who Madonna is. You know, can you name a Van Halen? Who?

I'm going to start crying. Have you heard of Cindy Lauper? Yes. Huey Lewis. No. Fill in the blank. Run, DM. What?

I don't know when the, the Huey Lewis backlash is going to start. we just got Van Halen backlash. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. Oh, so Billy Elish is dumb because she hasn't seen Van Halen. That movie sucks. Hugh Jackman's worst performance. Easy.

Thanks to David Mulhern for that. And finally, David, I don't know if you checked out the Egg Bowl on Thanksgiving night. That's the annual football game between Ole Miss and Mississippi State. Ole Miss was down seven with four seconds left in the game when this happened. There comes the pressure. Corral towards the goal line. It is Corley from touchdown after the play.

Oh, a big time extra point here. If this is excessive celebration. What you can't see there is Ole Miss wide receiver Elijah Moore, who scored the potential game tying touchdown, celebrating by crawling across the end zone on all fours and lifting his leg like a dog, going to the bathroom. The refs called unsportsman-like conduct because you really can't celebrate like a dog going

to the bathroom. They assessed a 15-yard penalty and then Ole Miss missed the extra point and lost the game. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write for the first time in history. A team has literally pissed away a game. Thanks to Michael Love and Argyle umbrella. If you paid attention to Mississippi football at all last week, Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, before we get to the notebook dump, let us take a quick break.

For over 115 years, Oris has been making purely mechanical watches in Holstein, Switzerland. Staying true to a rich heritage, Orris is one of the few Swiss watch companies to remain independently owned and operated. And because of this independence, Orris has the freedom to follow its own path. They're focused on bringing change for the better, which means making choices that are ecologically, socially, and financial. responsible. That includes ocean conservation and recycled plastic partnerships. Of course, that's along with Oris's century-long and change commitment to making inventive, high-functioning Swiss-made watches that serve a real purpose, and at prices that makes sense, the best possible watch for the money. Comprised of four themes, diving, aviation, motorsport, and culture,

orris watches are made for everyday wear. Shop the many different unique styles at oris.c.ch slash pressbox. You're sure to find one that's your style. and suits your tastes. That's or is.c.ch. Not dot com slash press box. All right, David, time for the notebook dump. And you know, back in the 1970s, you had to pick a side in movie criticism.

Were you for Pauline Kale or were you for Andrew Saris? Well, here in 2019, at least at the ringer, the choice is between Sean Fennessey and Bill Simmons. And the question is, is the Irishman too long, as Bill says, or is it not too long as Sean says. I really don't want to answer that question right now.

I'm on Team Bill, by the way, as somebody who had to sit in a theater and see it. But I do kind of want to talk to you about reactions to the Irishman. Yeah. Because these feel revealing in a way about film criticism and cultural criticism. And I guess I'll start here. And this is as somebody, again, who enjoyed them. movie but probably doesn't think it's an all-timer and thinks it's being a little bit overrated.

But isn't one of the most popular journalistic templates of all time, the old guy still has it? Oh, yeah. Or the old master still has a few tricks up his sleeve? Yes. And I feel like Martin Scorsese making a movie that is at all watchable at this point in in his life and career, he's 77 years old, like hitting that mark is just going to guarantee you

this enormous wave of critical goodwill because you're an old guy, you're an old guy we love, and you did something good. Can I attribute at least some of the Irishman reaction to that? Yeah, I think so. Especially coming off Thanksgiving

where we all hung around with our grandfathers and saw how they were losing, losing steps or dads even. Wow. That was heavy. No, you just keep coming out. Yeah, you come away from those moments and you see somebody who's just still, you know, an incredible artist.

And yeah, it really works. I mean, listen, it's weird to think of Scorsese as the old guy who sells a few tricks up his sleeve. I mean, it's not like he's, you know, coming back from some period of inactivity. You know, he hasn't laid, there's no dormancy in Scorsese's career. He's made, you know, he's made. like what, like 12 movies this day, I mean, this, this, this, uh, this century. Um, and he has like two more, like on the agenda. Um, but yeah, I mean, I think that's, that's the way that a lot of people

are coming to this, you know? I mean, we all, we, part of it's the way the media works now. I mean, we can speak from firsthand experience of the ringer. I mean, not without giving too much away. I don't think, I think people can probably imagine, but we're always looking for new ways to celebrate sort of unobjectionable things, right? I mean, we're like very clickable headlines. Like Martin Scorsese is a good director. I mean, that's, that's like, that's, that's fertile, fertile ground there. Damn it. I was working on that piece for tomorrow.

I can't believe, uh, I can't believe somebody already got it. No, I think that's right. And your point's well taken. Like, he's been making movies and he's also been, he's been making movies that have, that have been good, at least to a lot of people. I can't say I've seen a ton of the recent ones. But I guess there's a couple of, there's a couple of different versions of the old guy still has it. There's the one like this where he's hitting a mark and this movie is just getting more

play than a lot of us. movies. Then there's the Robert Altman version. Remember that one of the old guy still has it? Oh yeah. Where he'd been kind of in the Hollywood wilderness and he had to come back with the player and shortcuts. And then I feel he had like another comeback with Gosford Park. Yeah. Some years after that. There was a big deal. I was also just trying to think of like other people in American life who have gotten the old guy still has a treatment. I came up with Peyton Manning, that last Super Bowl run. even though he could barely throw the ball five yards. Can you think of anybody else?

We could turn this over to the press box on Twitter too, at the press box pod. But I feel there's some other people I'm missing who've gotten that. I guess a lot of old actors too. I mean, we could say, hey, Joe Pesci's getting that treatment for and Harvey Kitell for the Irishman. He's definitely getting that. I mean, anybody that, you know, the Tarantino types have,

resurrected over the years. Travolta definitely still has that. And, and, and, you know, I mean, actors, I think are probably the most obvious category. I mean, I saw somewhere on the, I think several news channels today were like celebrating Jimmy Carter, you know, putting nails and boards after his recent surgery or whatever. But I mean, but the, I mean, I think it's just, it's easy to, we all love this narrative. I mean, it's a victory narrative that we can all associate ourselves with because we all hope to be there someday. We always feel like we ourselves still have a lot to give, you know? Well, I don't know about you and I on that one. How about John LaCarray? Hasn't he been in like the 30-year. Oh, yeah. Yes.

Old guy still has it. Novelists get it so much. I don't know why I didn't think about that. That's, I mean, that's a perfect one. The one I'm waiting for, and again, this is not a guy who's not been working or really, is that all that old, but is it? Imagine when the next Steven Spielberg movie that like hits the three and a half star level comes out because he's had stuff he's had stuff that's kind of worked but it's been a little bit of a dry spell i feel spielberg mania you know the old master is back that that's like that's coming up next couple years it really is yeah uh the other thing here is something that scorzzi himself brought up this is something else i've seen in the reviews which is scorcese versus marvel

Oh, yeah. And that whole bit. Because I think if you look at critics, at least generationally, the kind of people that write for the ringer, they're not at all upset about the Marvel era. They like those movies. They find they can look at those movies and find, you know, auturiness in them. They can find quality in them. And I feel the same way.

But they don't want to be locked in that world. Like any film critic, they don't want to. world where Marvel is the only thing. And so Martin Scorsese comes along and says, hey, I've made a three and a half hour movie about my passions that doesn't star Iron Man. And as much as people may have even been on the Marvel side of the initial argument, I think those same critics want Scorsese working because, again, it makes their job a lot more palatable.

What do you think about that? Yeah, nobody wants only Marvel stuff. I mean, I don't know. I mean, Scorsese, I mean, an incredible, I mean, he's the director of his generation. I mean, there's no questioning it. But he's also like, you know, he made Shutter Island not that long ago. You know, I mean, he made, I'm not, I don't want to get in this whole conversation. I mean, but he made a bunch of mob movies, which in another generation we would have looked at as, you know, light fare.

at least conceptually, I think that, you know, nobody wants, I think what we want is more Scorsese's, right? I mean, we want people making popular movies that don't,

that aren't necessarily like what he would say, you know, probably call like lower, not lowest, but lower common denominator, uh, movies. I love lower common denominator.

But yeah, I mean, yes, this is a, I think everyone's very sympathetic to his point of view and also very, you know, interested in the traffic that that, you know, that point of view drives and the angst that sort of, I mean, listen, nobody in the current generation or no diehard Marvel fan wants to be told

that their movies aren't movies aren't, aren't films, aren't art, aren't whatever. But this is like, this is one of those classic arguments where I don't think anybody particularly disagrees with one another. We just like, you know, just deliberately misunderstanding or misinterpreting or overblowing things makes us, you know, makes for good online back and forth. Ingredient number three, Martin Scorsese gives lots of interviews. Oh, yeah. And has for years.

We love available masters. We love artistic masters, but better yet, we love extremely available masters. And Martin Scorsese is incredibly available. And the last one I came up with is that that, He is a link, speaking of art films and personal films, he's a link to the 70s. And he's probably one of the last links to the 70s that's still alive and still working. And as a journalistic, you know, reason to write a piece, man, that's really powerful. I do it all the time with sports writers.

People who are still going concerns, who are still making things, who are still making things. but are a link to a previous golden age of making things, those are incredible subjects. And to me, Scorsese is that, in addition to all the other stuff. Yeah. I mean, 100% availability is nine tenths of sympathy. I don't know.

Your absolute, whatever it is, that's the right point. Availability is nine-tenths of the, getting the profile assigned. David, we do not do Irish wake mode here very often at the press box. but I think this guy requires it. It is Clive James, the Australian critic, writer of all kinds.

I saw the word polymath used in the New York Times obit, which is pretty, you know, probably an overused thing, but perfect for him because Clive James literally wrote everything. Passed away after a long battle with cancer. He announced he had cancer back in, 2012 at age 80 left behind this huge corpus of work, including recently a book where he wrote

very long and very interestingly about Game of Thrones. It did a lot of things, was probably most famous or at least got famous for his TV critic as a TV critic in the British newspaper, The Observer column he started writing in the 1970s. I feel this is a guy that you and I, when we were back in the days and we were going to use bookstores and buying literally everything, that we were scooping up any Clive James collection we could find. Because he was sort of like, it was almost like, oh man, I'm reading Anthony Lane and the New Yorker. Oh, wait, I found the er Anthony Lane. Yeah. I found the guy who was doing all those tricks 30 years before.

Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of those old critics who, you know, I've found, bought in old copies of hardcover books and, and, uh, attend to them like they're, you know, part of the National Archive in my apartment or whatever. But I, but I, but he's, he's definitely at the top. And, and I think more, I mean, he, you know, he came from a prolific generation, but he was prolific beyond, you know, most people's comprehension and consistent and brilliant. And, um, and you're right about the, doing those tricks. I mean, he had the ability to, you know, wow you with a, with, with, with the shift between, you know, with, with the, with, with the, with the, with the, with the, with the, he could, he could do, he, he could make you, uh, he could put a smile on your face when you're reading him on the subway, you know, I mean, that's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, among other things James will be remembered for, David, is an amazing poem called The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered. Yes, yes. This goes on for verse after verse, but I'll just read you a couple of lines.

The book of my enemy has been remandered, and I am pleased. In vast quantities, it has been remandered, like a vanload of counterfeit that has been seized. And he goes on and on and on. I think another thing about him that's so fascinating is his influence on American critics, especially because he was writing, he was writing in an age or started writing in an age where his stuff was hard to get in America. This was this was not only pre-internet, this was pre-VHS tape. according to Leo Robson's very good piece about James in the New Statesman. The New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik didn't discover James until the appearance of his book

first reactions, by which point he says he was already half formed as a writer. But he clearly picked up some of James's tricks, the love of inversion and wordplay embracing generalization. Another one is James Wolcott, who was influenced by James. he said he conceded in a village voice piece bidding farewell to James's TV column that he'd stolen from him, quote, left and right. And this is, I think, my favorite,

Martin Amos was so indebted to James's tone in his book reviews that Kingsley Amos, himself a big influence on James's style, would insist on reading his son's book reviews allowed in an Australian accent. Now, think what an amazing move that is. You are doing Clive James. So I'm going to read your book reviews in an Australian accent.

That is incredible parental trolling. Nothing that happened, David, at your... That is so good. Thanksgiving dinner lived up to that. The only other one I wanted to share with you, another line. We could quote James Lyons all day. But he was writing, he was a huge, huge smoker. I believe he smoked 80 cigarettes a day at his height. He had a line. I smoked so much that I

needed the hubcap of a Bedford van as an ashtray. But this is even better. He smoked a lot of pot too. And he wrote, The Immortal Line, I not only Bogarted that joint, I lemarvined it, which is really great. Really, really good stuff. RIP to Clive James and if you don't know his work, go out and grab one of his collections everywhere that fine collections are sold. All right, time for David Shoemaker guesses the Strain Pun headline. Okay. Patiently awaiting David's, there we go. Last week's

strain pun headline was, I did bad last week. You did. Heavy time monks seek enlightenment. As usual, David, our listeners were way funnier than we are. Everybody, and I mean everybody, baby Yoda level everybody, wrote to say, why wasn't the headline Chunky monkey? Oh my God. Oh my. That's why we do this.

That's why we do this to get those kind of puns from our listeners. But wait, there's more. Steve Hendrickson and Steve Bonifero suggest chow of silence. Chow of silence. Oh my gosh. Michael O'Keefe suggests padded tie. Simone E. Simone suggests the art of thin, not the art of Zen, but the art of thin.

K-Fave Rabin suggests Watt Watchers. That's pretty inside. Doug is my co-pilot says, brother, what ate thou? Pretty good for monks. Soup Dog and Jeff Hoffman suggest deep fat friars. If I are. Oh my God. That's great.

That's great. Yeah. And made up movie has a slight amendation. You want friars with that. You want friars with that. This week's pun headline comes from Matt Simmons. It's from the Wall Street Journal. They did a piece back in October, David,

where they were checking out the homes of food and beverage entrepreneurs. What a Wall Street Journal can see that is, checking out the homes of food and beverage. Like people that make like what, like the creator of Mr. Pib or something? I think it's a little more refined than that. one of the people they went home with was a whiskey entrepreneur. So they went to the house of the whiskey entrepreneur. Now, this was a headline that was used inside the paper. So this was not the main headline.

But if you can think of kind of a funny little inside the paper headline, what was the Wall Street Journal's strained pun headline? For a whiskey? at home with a whiskey entrepreneur at home with a whiskey entrepreneur at home with a whiskey bourbon rite

I mean it's not on the house right oh that's really good that's not it but that's really good the actual one is much more strain than that I'll give you that. There's that old like there's a like it like it's a like it's

I don't know why I have the voice of one of my grandparents saying it used to say home and dry, but that would fit, but no one uses that, right? That's really funny too. Whiskey, whiskey, whiskey. It is not poor house, by the way, to also use the thing. Oh, that's really good. Familiar pub, pun. Old fashioned.

Let me give you guys a little guidance here. You're not going out, you're ordering in, staying in, staying in. Yeah, so stay kind of pun stay

staying in. It's really terrible. Let me give it to you. Okay, give us. Whiskey a stay, stay. Oh, no. Not whiskey a go-go. That is the worst thing I've ever heard.

whiskey a stay stay I can see Chris checking my work on the on the on the are you clicking through right now promise it's real that might be one of the worst we've ever had he is david shoemaker I'm Brian Curtis cackling is Chris Almeida production magic by Jim Cunningham for back Friday with more lukewarm takes about the media see you then David see you later Brian