The Watch - ‘Severance,’ ‘Winning Time’ Episode 2, and ‘Top Chef.’ Plus, Drug Church Singer Patrick Kindlon.

Episode Date: March 15, 2022

Chris and Andy talk about the next few episodes of ‘Severance’ and how the precision of both the acting and the directing takes the show to another level (1:00). Then they talk about the second episodes of ‘Winning Time’ (25:42) and ‘Top Chef’ (38:15), before Chris is joined by Patrick Kindlon, the singer of the band Drug Church, to talk about their new album, ‘Hygiene’ (47:23). Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald Guest: Patrick Kindlon Producer: Kaya McMullen Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Let's run there. Learn more at brooksrunning.com. I need sports to have to clear the run. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the wrigger.com and joining me on the other line, he had no idea he had this much in common with Jerry West.

It's Andy Greenwald. Oh my God, I know. It's like looking in a mirror watching Winning Time. Oh, Andy, it's so great to see you. It's a beautiful Monday. I don't know what time it is because of this daylight savings time, but I'm ready to talk about modern art in all of its various forms and shapes. So we're going to talk about three TV shows today.

We're going to talk about Winning Time, Severance, and Top Chef, not necessarily in that order. And then the second half of the show is my interview with the lead singer of one of my favorite new-ish-er bands, drug church. I don't know if anybody out there within the sound of my voice is familiar with drug church because we don't talk about bands as much as we used to, but this is a band that seems like it was ripped from our brains in 1997, kind of. It's amazing. I don't say melodic hardcore. There's elements of it that remind me a lot of seaweed. There's elements of it that remind me a lot of super chunk. Patrick is a really, really interesting guy. He's got an amazing

podcast called Axe Grine that he does about hardcore that I've been listening to a lot. He does it with his two friends, Bob and Tom, and they make an incredible podcast. So I was really excited to talk to Patrick about the new drug church record, hygiene, which I have foisted on Andy. Well, that voice makes it sound like I'm giving it up. I have like made Andy into a drug church convert. It wasn't hard. I mean, I was looking for a place to worship. That's right. I was, congregation shopping, I believe it's called. Pull up a pew, brother. Yeah. So, I mean, why not cast my lot in with the drug church? Did my, seaweed, super chunk, are these good reference points, even if they are somewhat obscure?

It's terrific because I love a reference point that is less knowable than the original. That's right. I mean. I just feel like the people in the sound of your voice will respond to something that you like called drug church without being told it sounds like seaweed, who literally I have not thought of in two decades, but I think you're accurate. I think you're accurate. Let's just say you love it. People, the CR heads will follow. I fucking love drug church. I don't know what to tell you. It's just like this is, this is a band that you guys should all check out. So, Andy, since we have this interview in the second half, we can dive right in to the content of, to the meat of this episode, unless you had any personal updates you'd like to share with me. No, no, thank you. Thank you. I'm already done the part of the podcast where we don't record, but I brag about how much earlier I am awake than you and Kaya, which actually is kind of a cell phone at this point. So I, but you go to bed. Like, I still get to. texts from you at like 10-ish. You know, you're so up. Ten-ish is the borderline. Yeah, that's like, that's about it. That's about as late as it gets. What do you want to start with? Should we start

with severance because we haven't talked about it in a couple weeks? Let's, yeah, let's get into it. Okay. I have a question to start, just a general conversation starter here. Okay. Might be a hot take. Wow. Okay. I kind of think I wouldn't mind being severed. Whoa. Let me tell you why. Wow. Are we, we've watched, we've seen five episodes of this show so far. And for all these shows that we're talking about, for Severance winning time and Top Chef, it's spoilers through episode five of Severance, it's spoilers through episode two of winning time,

although you could also just read. Winning time, it's spoilers through Irvin Magic Johnson's stunning admission that he was HIV positive in the early night. And then Top Chef through episode two. For Severance, though, you know, a lot of it is just like this awful procedure that is bifurcating these people's lives. It's a metaphor about humanity's relationship to labor.

But I'm like, dog, do I get to live two lives in one life? And like, what if I had like a complete, would it be cool to have like two totally different personalities? Like, what if I got into work and I was, what if I was just like real chill monotone Chris at work, you know? Yeah, NPR Chris. Yeah. If I was Audie Cornish Chris.

Yes. And I don't know. As I was watching it, the tone of the show, obviously, is very serious, is very somber. The experiences people are having, while not without humor, are pretty extreme. You know, obviously what we've seen with Helly over the last couple of episodes, a lot of self-harm. But I'm just saying, sometimes when you, you know, you have a lot of carryover into your professional life. Like when we fire up the podcast here and you're just like, man, I've been grinding since five, 30. I've been parenting. I've been writing. I've been deal-making. I've been thinking about

the state of the world, about the state of the Western Hemisphere. What if I told you you could just wipe the clock when you could just wipe the sleigh when you left and you could just go home and enjoy a lovely, lovely life outside of work? First of all, I'm very interested in this lovely life outside of work. Do you have a pamphlet or a brochure? Because I'm interested. Two, There have definitely been times where I have, I guess, for all intents and purposes, blacked out during a podcast and not at all remembered the things I've said to you on the microphone. Sure. So it's not unfamiliar, the concept of it. The thing about the severance procedure, it just presupposes that both halves of your life are terrible.

And I'm hoping, actually, as we eventually get the opportunity, because I'm sure we will, to go home with another member of the macro data. refining crew, that it would be great if one of them had exactly what you're suggesting, right? Just a fabulous untroubled life in the margins, like someone who has the work-life balance tipped potentially in the right way. Yeah. And as a loving family or a rich social life and the fun stuff they do on the weekends. And then that's what they do. That's all they remember. Because the Mark S experience, it's pretty dark. You know what I mean? And I'm sure, I mean, it sounds like, it sounds like Helly's Audi is not the best

hang, you know, she would, like, um, but I, I think it would be an ideal situation if you were both happy in your work and happy at home because being severed would be like that late day macho latte. You know, it would just kind of give you the boost you

needed as you just unencumbered yourself, unburdened yourself of all your memories. By the way, in, in my 40, I have never received the looks of shock and judgment and an approbation that I've received from people like you, like our buddy Tyler, who have seen me order a caffeinated beverage after 355 p.m. Yeah.

Like, people look like I am contagious. Like, I am patient zero for something that could affect them. Only the best broadcasters do it. You know, who else does that? Bill Simmons. Bill Simmons is a late day coffee. Late day coffee. here's the thing that would be weird for us with severance.

Okay. Like, what would happen if we podcasted all day? Yeah. And then we got severed and when we were like, what'd you do today, buddy? Like, would it just kind of be like we never remembered potting together? But then like at later in the day, what would we say? Well, what's kind of amazing is then later you'd be like, have you ever heard drug church? I'd be like, no.

Let's listen. This is great. I just feel like it would be us high-fiving each other, but two different versions of ourselves. It would be like short-term memory guy from Saturday Night. So let's do a catch-up of where we are with this, because we last talked about the show after the first three, I think, episodes.

We talked to Adam Scott last week, loosely about four. I, on the plus column, and directly following up your point, the degree to which the show suggests that the innies, the severed versions of the characters, are completely distinct people was not something I was really checking for because obviously the hook is, as you described it, what if you just didn't have to deal with your work

or bring your work home with you? Or deal with your life at work, yeah. Right, but the idea that they were completely different people, essentially babies with very high-functioning vocabulary is really interesting. Larva's taking over their pouch fathers, yeah. And we talked to Adam about the differences in his performance, but the way he physically changes himself

when he's playing someone who knows nothing versus someone who knows way too much is really remarkable. And I'm really digging that aspect of the show. And episode five really, really drew a bright line around it because in this episode, we see someone whose last memory is of dying by strangulation

and then wake up again, assuming that she's still dying of strangulation. I mean, it is a gnarly transition. The presence of the elevator and that the Audi Heli wakes up briefly before descending again was a really kind of darkly genius use of the show's very, very complicated and heavy conceit. So I was into all of that. But where are you with the show in the choices that it's making?

Because one of the things that I think that is challenging with a program like this is, you know, it has such a huge idea. It has such a huge sense of aesthetics and style, you know, a lot of which we've been crediting to Ben Stiller and his collaborators, like Jessica Lee Gagne, the really brilliant cinematographer. At a certain point, and I think, honestly, with this show, it was episode four, you've taught everyone about this world and they've bought in, and now you've got to tell the story you want to tell with it.

And I think that from a viewing perspective, and I want to be careful about how I say this, because I am in no way out on the show. I am all the way in as much as I've ever been. these two episodes were, I think, demonstrably weaker in some ways in the first three as the show has sort of found its narrative footing about the story he wants to tell at the moment. Because I guess this is a long way of saying, spending all that time in the birthing retreat was a surprise.

It was just frankly a surprise. Yeah, I mean, I think that everything on this show is going to be kind of pitched at the heaviest level, even if the behavior or the action on screen seems pretty pedestrian. So having Mark kind of contemplate his wife's death while also then like subsequently welcoming in the life of his nephew or, or did we get a gender for that baby? I don't think we did. Well, his basically his sister's child, you know, it's like to every season, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean?

Like it's going to feel almost biblical and it's kind of movements. That's just the way that they've kind of set this show up. And I think I've been really keyed in on the, um, uh, the horonomous Bosch elements of the, the paintings that are being passed around at the office and the idea that in this blank canvas space and it's,

that that office is almost a, a blank canvas in a lot of ways that you start to fill in mythologies and histories and ideas and that these ideas are not modest that they, they're huge. There's a lot of the flies like, right? Yeah, but it's more that. It's even more than that. It's almost biblical. Like these are,

almost like origin myths and stuff like that. And I like the idea that the human mind goes to this place immediately. So in that sense, I didn't really, you know, first of all, just give me all the Ricken I can get anyway. I'm ready to sidebar on Ricken whenever you're. Ricken hanging the kelp, Ricken being like, I need to, I'm going to cry on my pregnant wife. All that stuff was great. But yeah, that was the thing that really was drawing me to this. Now, I, Ben Stiller did not direct this block of episodes, this middle two at least. Right, it's Eiffa McArdle, who's an Irish director. I thought that the direction actually was a cool change of pace.

So now obviously what usually happens is you've got a producing director or someone who takes the first block of episodes and kind of sets the visual tone for a series. And this is actually going to come up again when we talk about winning time, how directors, the subsequent directors work with the language that a director has kind of come with, but put their own stamp on it. And I thought that, um, I thought that it kind of had a different feel. Like it felt a little bit more intimate, a little less, um, obsessed with transitions, like this person walking to an elevator, this walking, person leaving an elevator. All that stuff in the first three episodes, I think did a really good job of like creating a mood. But I was ready to be like,

I got it. This guy walked down a hallway. We can now cut to whatever the action is that he's getting to. I totally agree with you. I think that, I think it's, first of all, being an episodic director of a television show is always hard. You come in, you have very little time. You have to execute, as you said, you try to put your stamp on something that is already moving and already is fairly well stamped. And that previous stamp is also one of the reasons that people keep watching because there's some consistency that you look for week to week. Not really, you know, I don't, we, other than our brief podcast with him over the telephone four years ago, never worked with Ben Stiller, but by all accounts, he is an extremely exacting visual stylist.

I mean, Adam told us as much last week, and that is the feeling one gets from the first three episodes of Severance. So when I was watching just the tone slightly shift, and in episode four, I felt, and this might just be me projecting, the shadow of Ben Stiller, like watching the dailies, sitting there like Patricia Arquette and Mr. Milchak at the elevator when the door opens and Mark steps out. You know what I mean? Like it felt aberrant in a way that the show doesn't necessarily traffic in. And it took me, it bumped me a little bit. The enter Sandman funeral montage, well, Patricia Arquette drills someone in the head. I mean, you could give notes at a certain level, at a script level of whether that is functioned, whether that's going to work. But once you've committed to it, execution is what

it's about. And I think that the show has been such a successful high wire act up to this point of making the incredibly difficult tonal balancing work that when it didn't quite for me, and I don't know if everyone agreed or if anyone agreed, I noticed it and it pushed me back a couple steps. And similarly, I want to join you in praising both Michael Churness's performances, Ricken, which is the kind of thing a show like this needs and just the whole character in general. Like there's there is a real comedy to Dan Erickson's scripts in his worldview that I really welcome that I think is necessary for this sort of thing. And the quotes that either he or he in the room came up with from the book were maybe my most loved part of the episode. But the idea that this guy's book, the U.S.

Is that what it is? Yes. That the idea that the script for their liberation in there is this completely shitty self-help book. It's their Bible now. I know. your religious connection analogy was correct. I love that.

But that the New Testament is written by this guy hanging kelp over his poor pregnant wife is just amazing. Where the show begins to fray for me is in,

and this is almost impossible to avoid, certainly incrementally, but not necessarily just on the larger scale, but shows like this that have very, very heavy conceits

and a very, very specific tone, it starts to fray for me in the emotional truth of some of the personal relationships that are required to get us to the place where we are with the story, which is a complicated way of saying,

why is a sister married to this buffoon? Well, this is what I was going to ask you. I actually was going to ask you more about, like, if you had any operating theories about some of the stuff that's going on in the office, because the thing that I pick up on is the character of Dylan and his hostility towards, you know,

lots of people, but primarily Christopher Walken's character, Bert. And the idea of this, this optics and design department as like a hostile force to him. And I'm like, this is great TV, but I don't understand what's happening. Like, I don't understand why this guy

is so fired up about this. And I, you know, there are a lot of elements to this where I think everybody's internal TV clock ticks as we are like, so what's up with Patricia Arquette's character or what's up with why is Dylan like this or what's going, like, you know, what

is this all a huge Stanford prison experiment on all of these people and they're not doing anything. What are the goats? What are what are what are the numbers? What are the different departments doing? What's with these like, you know, uh, almost like works progress murals about like here's cure stirring the, the molten lava and his wife coming to him. Like all this stuff is very interesting. I guess what I wanted to ask, this is a long way of asking, are you in it for the mystery box or are you in it for the larger metaphor that the show seems to be telling us? Well, I think the beauty of those first three episodes are,

at least the beauty of the promise of the first three episodes is that you didn't have to choose. You know, I think that the sheer, I mean, competency sounds like a low-hanging fruit, but the show made something incredibly challenging, look dazzling and, you know, breathless almost in its happiness and glee with which it tackled the high and the low and the in-between.

Like it was, you know, aesthetically just immaculate, but it also took time to give us a very, very, very, very, very, smart on ramps onto the emotional lives of the characters that were put into this manufactured hell. And that's hard to do. I mean, it's just hard to do even in less ambitious TV shows. It's just simply hard. And so that's why I'm trying to be measured in my response to it. Because if you ask me, point blank, do I want Rickin on the show hanging kelp in a birthing suite? The answer is yes. The problem is, there's the secondary question, which is just what am I to make of Mark's sister, who seems like a very no-nonsense person, in as much as she seems like a person.

Why she with her at all? Why is she with him? And I think we need to know that answer so that we both believe in the emotional truth of the show as a whole, but also so we can start to feel like a character in the world, especially a female character in the Audi world, has something going on other than being in service to the more dramatic or interesting or plot compelling. That'll probably, and I think a lot of that will probably change. if we get a helie outside of the office episode. Exactly, which I think now obviously we're all waiting for. But my only other main note is I was glad to see a universal.

I mean, not many people are talking about this, but in my own experience, which is now my two experiences, if there's one thing that women in labor crave, it's a hot cup of coffee. I was going to ask you this. Classic. Andy Greenwald, Bill Simmons, right. Mark's sister, late night coffee drinkers. That was borderline insane.

and I know I've used this metaphor recently but to the point where unless it's going somewhere, unless she was saying she wanted a cup of coffee because she saw a coffee mug in the other house or it was all just like a MacGuffin to get out into the rich mansion, earthing mansion.

Not one, two women in labor craving hot steaming cups of Joe is a little bit like Steve Carell and 40-year-old virgin talking about breasts. You know what I mean? Like it is. Like I just,

I defy you. Yeah. I want Dan Erickson. Maybe he needs to come on the show or at least just send us a message through like the Apple press channels to be like, this is written from my heart, my beautiful wife, you know, the hero of my life. She's the mother of my children. A steamy cup of Folgers as we were. Exactly.

From the seventh month through, you know, the end of the breastfeeding, she was Special Agent Dale Cooper. You know what I mean? Like she just needed a hot cup of Joe constantly. Is that something like that your child is like what in the world is happening? Like, why is all this gasoline coming down here? like to speed things up I just feel like there are a number of things that a body giving birth

it's a traumatic event you know like often what is the only thing that is entering other than massive pain killing drugs is like ice chips you know what I mean because you're just because the woman is so thirsty and dehydrated

and so you're giving something that is hot caffeinated and actually leaching fluid we should open up the DMs for any anybody wants to write and tell us about their late pregnancy cravings No, we shouldn't. No, because you know why?

Chris, there's one thing that people tune into this podcast for. It's for two men in their 40s talking about what women giving birth want and need. And I just feel like, I feel like our only job now is to say you're welcome. That's true. You're welcome. Join us in the drug church every Sunday, brothers and sisters. No, that was funny and weird, but that's the other thing that I bumped on, basically. It's a plot point or what are we doing?

I get the distinct impression that you have not gone Reddit brain on this show. yet. You're not checking for what the goats. You're not like, you don't want to know what a 266 is and like what Milchick is doing and who the older security guy and the relationship between him and Patricia Arquette. Mr. Graynor. No, I love the goats. Thank you for bringing us back to the place of things that I love. I mean, as someone who was

inexplicably put animals and television shows, obviously I felt a kinship. But I really like the thing that I still, look, I love Benzler's direction. I love the show's production design and art direction. I love Adam Scott and Britt Lauer's performance. I adore John Turer's performance. All that is great. But one of the things that I think keeps me in and will keep me in

is that Dan Erickson and his writers and the whole team, they just go for it once an episode. You know what I mean? And it's the sort of thing that you can only do if you're writing a script really kind of for yourself at a certain point. You know, like, I want to try this. I want the sound of a bleeding baby goat ringing out over a creepy, poorly lit hallway. Like, yeah, let's do it.

It's not a coincidence that the show has those moments. And we learned last week from, I think was Adam told us this, right? And I'm sure this has been out there in interviews that Dan Erickson, his team, his agent, his manager, submitted the Severance pilot to Ben Stiller's company, Red Hour Films, as a sample to get a meeting with Red Hour Films about other projects. Right. Right? This was like many great scripts before it from Mad Men to Breaking Bad. Like this was the thing that you wrote to get the thing. It wasn't necessarily the thing that you were going to get to do.

And I hope the show doesn't ever lose that, even if it occasionally falters or drinks hot beverages when nobody would. We can move on to winning time from here, I guess. Are you read it though? Are you brainbroken? Do you go deep on this? I'm starting to. I'm starting to dabble a little bit. Just because I'm curious as to like what, I know that people have broken down frame by frame the title sequence. you know, and that, you know, that the buildings where they work looks like the human brain. And like, a lot of stuff that's just like right now is like probably like coincidence, not coincidence, like they were unintentional by the creators. But like, I don't know that you can derive a meaning

from them other than that's interesting, you know, just, just curious. I'm just curious what these kids are up to with their numbers. I don't know. You know, like, and how big they want to go. And the stuff about, I don't think that that story about like the pouch and the larva is that far-fetched when you also consider that John Titoro keeps seeing goo coming out of the ceiling, you know? I love, I also love that occasionally we manifest the schism because I will happily say on Mike, I have not given a single thought as to what the numbers are, what they're doing. And I have never, I've not even curious about it at the moment. Yeah. What I love about the show at this moment and in the season, maybe why I'm being precious about the time spent in it,

is that once Severance reveals what the numbers are, it's a different show forever. And all of the, not just the fun to be had with the guessing or the surmising or the redditing or whatever, it's not just that that goes away. It's that a lot of the fluidity of the metaphor goes away to. the point you were saying about how like for these for these worker larvae everything is existential and you know a feud between departments or pettiness over office supplies is raised to the level of an extinction level event like that's great and insightful and one of the reasons why the show has resonated to the degree that it did and once it becomes oh it's actually an existential battle between forces of good and evil or you know um two people sitting on a beach one of them's Terry O' Quinn, but Terry O'Quinn's dead.

And, you know, not to go, this show isn't lost, but once you start answering the questions, it's just become something different. Right. But maybe they'll do it. Maybe they can pull off what Lost did, which was constantly, every time you were like, okay, now we've arrived at this thing, they were like, but then there's the hatch, but then there's this, but then there's, we have to go back. Fort Toad statue.

Right. Let's talk about winning time. We don't always to spend a ton of time on this. I just wanted to mention that, you know, Adam McKay, obviously. directed the pilot. That was the subject of much debate in terms of like the amount of formal wrist flicking that he did, I would say, the amount of, of basically like very, very look at me stuff that he did with the pilot, which I think was actually somewhat necessary if you're going to connect a 2002 sensibility to something taking place in 1979 or whatever the pilot

set. This idea that you can navigate that generational gap, both in sensibility, and, you know, whether it's like office humor and stuff like that and giving Gabby Hoffman the ability to like look at the camera and be like these fucking guys, that's cool. There's also like the text overlay. I think that especially is useful for the non-MBA fan to kind of understand like the importance of certain things that they may have like a passing familiarity with like Bird versus Magic, but maybe don't understand quite the context around that story as those two entered the league. This episode was directed by Jonah Hill. and I don't know how many people out there are familiar with his directorial feature directorial debut mid-90s, which I thought was really awesome. But it's a very penetrating psychological examination of these formative years in the main character's life as this kid is kind of coming of age in Los Angeles and finding a community of skateboarders, but also dealing with a pretty troubled home life and his single mother. who's played by Catherine Waterston. And this episode of Winning Time felt part of the Jonah Hill

Uvra. Like it's obviously like Jonah Hill is interested in what makes people into who they become. And you know, you could say like they put like a real cherry on top of the Sunday with like Jerry West dad seeming like the biggest asshole in American history.

But it does do a good job of explaining why Jerry West is never fucking happy. You know what I mean? And I thought that that opening sequence was kind of awesome. You know, like, I do feel like this show, candidly, to me, is better when it's doing Lakers stuff rather than Lansing, Michigan stuff. I think it's a stronger story when it's in L.A. I don't know that they quite nailed what, like, the magic origin story yet, but maybe

I'll be proved wrong. I still really, really like this show. but I'm excited for Magic to come to L.A. permanently and to be there and to have all the sort of pieces on the same chessboard. What did you think of the second episode? I think that's a great point about Jonah Hill and I agree with it. I have a lot of really good things to say about this episode, which I really enjoyed. I think the biggest compliment I want to pay it is that it made me so excited for the third episode. Yeah. Here's the reason, not just because it ends with a kind of a cliffhanger about the fate of Jerry West. who's going to coach this team, again, a cliffhanger that is easily Googledable, but, you know, do so at your own peril. It's that the first, and this is, this has happened with many series, especially recent series, but the first episode of winning time, as directed by Adam McKay, is the first hour of an Adam McKay movie,

or an Adam McKay movie slowed down with the ending cutoff. It is bells, it is whistles, it is everything you mentioned about it. This episode was the hardest, I hope, and I imagine, the hardest one, to do because this is the episode where Max Bornstein, who you had on the pod last week, writing staff, Jonah Hill must have been a part of that as well, had to wrestle the horns of the wild bull that Adam McKay unleashed into the world and wrestle it into a TV show. And there were moments in this episode where I was like, I can't believe we're really doing the scene where it's just like, mom, don't you love me, you know, or why can't I ever be

satisfied? So I'll say, why can't I be happy? like really, really some on-the-nose storytelling or Jerry Buss saying that, you know, the origin story of his cruel stepfather. But sometimes you need that stuff. You know, this is not rocket science. This is a TV show. Yes, it's HBO. Yes, there's a lot of fancy people involved in it, but it has to be a compelling week-to-week emotional TV show to get people to watch it and to keep tuning in.

And I thought it did a really admirable job of taming the wild beast into a show, you know, and finding some common threads in the... the lives of these three men that defined the episode and defined much of the next decade of not just the Lakers, but of basketball in general, right? So I thought that was very, very impressively done. What you then get to appreciate is that I agree with you. Like some of the Lansing stuff is a little bit clumsy. It doesn't seem as it. It's just not what the show is because the show is about the glamour and the glitz.

And this episode was about adding some of the, you know, the grim and the grit to it. you know, so you understand what goes on behind, the bruises that the pancake makeup obscures or whatever. But, okay, so you have this origin story in Lansing that is a little bit clunky. But Quincy Isaiah is amazing. Yeah, he's great. As Magic Johnson.

He's great. Rob Morgan as his dad is astonishing. Like, every scene he's in, I am riveted. And that's again, we say this every week, we talk about the show, but like, that's the premium. That's what you pay for, you know? Dude, this is. Sally Field for one scene in the show.

It's Sally Field in that scene. Yeah. That's crazy. And it's also, she's acting her ass off. It's not like an Oscar winner. Sally Field gets a check. You know what I mean? And I continue to feel that way about John C. Riley, which is like, I can't believe how

good he is in this part, especially because he's, you know, he's kind of cultivated a reputation of the last few years as like, you know, kind of a mysterious like Bill Murray or Andy Kaufman type figure. he goes on the road playing folk music and goes on Marin and is kind of grumpy and talks about clown paintings. And we're like, is he past the stage of his career where he is, you know, the youngest and hungriest and most talented, if unlikely actor in Hollywood. And it's like, oh, he can do this if he wants to. And he's crushing it. Like that scene at Chasins with Red Auroback, who, by the way, is played with multiple Emmy Award, played by multiple Emmy Award winner Michael Chickles.

What are we doing? This is outrageous flex after outrageous. just flex. That scene is awesome. And the turn, I mean, it's not new to see a character go from smiling to frowning, but it's awesome watching these two big old bears wrestle and get it done. You know, it's really fun to watch. So I really liked the Jerry West stuff. Yeah. I can, I will hear and will allow the idea that it is, it is like that Jason Clark might not be the right person for that role. Now, I personally don't think that. I thought he was fantastic in the first, especially the early parts of this episode and when he meets like the one night

stand after the funeral and is like, I don't feel anything. You know, after she picks the confetti out and like he realizes that this like, this brass ring he's been chasing this whole time is, uh, is, is, is, is hollow. But I, I, I will allow the idea that like, you, you, know, maybe it's because people just have a connection to Jerry West that I didn't really know about before, but after seeing Tom Brady unretire after two months with his family, you know, the Jerry West idea of this guy being basically tortured by his playing career, tortured by the fact that he can't go out there and coach for these guys or play for the guys he's coaching. It's just really fascinating. And I think Clark does a really good job kind of portraying that.

I love his performance. I have no relationship with Jerry West whatsoever. I have not watched press conferences. I don't really... I know he's the logo. I know his reputation on the court and off the court, but I don't know him. And so I love this character, which I think is probably the best compliment you can pay. Your point about the kind of latent sociopathic tendencies of the greatest... The greatest in any field, but particularly in sports, I'm really glad you made that connection

because when I was watching this, I was thinking that the bare... barrier to entry to making something compelling about sports in a fictionalized or dramatized setting is high because I think people, first of all, they make a lot of sports movies and the rigor covers a lot of them and a lot of them are great, but the best ones follow familiar patterns, right? Or subvert the patterns a little bit like Moneyball but are still kind of a certain kind of feeling you can expect. And it's a great feeling. There's nothing wrong with that, you know, watching The Natural or Bull Durham or Moneyball, anything like that. The second thing is, if you're using real people, often there is some hero worship involved,

either getting their life rights or you don't want to upset people. So you walk a fine line, you end up kind of hamstringing yourself when you're telling the story. But in watching Jerry West on this show, and even Magic Johnson on this show, what's most thrilling to me isn't just the performance by the actors. It's that it's a little Walter White. It's more than a little bit of Walter White, you know, in terms of just like that, the television anti-hero of the last 20 years who are driven to prove something to the world

and want to stick their fingers in the eye sockets of anybody who ever looked at them sideways, like, athletes need that. They feed off that. They aren't shy about saying it, even while they're just, you know, posting Instagram photos of themselves getting out of, like, super, like, fire rides.

Like, but that's who they are inside. And I think sometimes it results in a feeling like the Jerry West scene at the bar, which I was watching. I was like, I don't think I've seen this before. No. It was really well done, even though it was a little vignette. So I like that

the show is already dialed into that, being like, okay, so everyone involved IRL is going to hate us. So if they're going to hate us, let's not spend our TV capital making them like us. Sweaty, drunken anger sex. Yeah. Let's take the training wheels off.

And my favorite scene in this episode was the one between Jerry West and Norm Nixon and Norm Nixon is played by Norm Nixon's son, Devon And it's that bit where he's like talking to Norm about like, you know, I'm the coach now. And, you know, I'm here to take the shackles off. And he gives that like slight look about that. And then he's like, and now, you know, bus isn't going to met no more meddling.

And I think the character Norm Nixon says, because that's what we needed more control for you. That's what we were missing is more control for you. Great line. But it was also like the smoothing out of the style of the show where. that wasn't him turning to the camera because that's what we needed is more control for him. It's him actually saying that to him

in such a way that would make sense in a conversation and kind of fly just under Jerry West's radar because he's doing something. He's not paying attention to the nuances of the way his scene partner is talking to him. I love that. It's a great point.

And I don't, again, I don't presume to know what Adam McKay thought of this episode or what his involvement was in the series going forward. But I really admired that this episode committed to a number of scenes and specific lines that I feel like in Adam's hands would have demanded a wink or a turn to the camera.

You know, that whole Jerry Buss read Our Back scene or any scene involving Magic and his family, it went for it. And like I said at the beginning, in the form of a criticism, like some of the lines were a little heavy or heavy handed. But the show needed to put its feet on the ground, right, so that we would believe it or that we would have some emotional investment in these characters. It cannot just be the sort of like whizbang Coke-fueled ride through the memory box. It can't. It has to have some stakes in a different sense than just that, you know, it has to be more than just the game that they are playing or the game they are recreating on the screen. And I think that the show, I think this episode may prove to be the one, hopefully, that was both the hardest to execute, but going forward the most important one to have made. Yeah, and they have so many more, you know, pitches to throw at us because they've still got Adrian Brody.

we still have Jason Siegel. There's so much stuff still coming down the line and we haven't even really got much Larry Bird stuff yet. Speaking of games being played, though, let's talk about top shelf briefly before we get to

my interview with Patrick. We can get into the like, you know, who won and Damar's cooking and everything, which seems wonderful. And he just seems to be like, I'm only in third gear and I'm kind of cruising through

double win episodes. It also seemed like, I'm sure she's lovely, but Stephanie was just like a little out of depth on this show. I wanted to ask you about the elimination challenge, which was an incredibly elaborate, rather complex group challenge set at a football field that was essentially like one of those old school like board table, tabletop like air football games where you have to like, you know, you get like a couple of yards and then this other person gets a couple of yards and it

sort of feels like football, but really it's not. It's just like these back and forths. I thought that was a pretty thrilling game. even if, again, like, how much it relates to cooking, I don't know, because it's like a lot of, a lot of other things outside of your control can affect it. But I thought that it was really fascinating to watch them strategize about who goes when, what dishes go up against which. And I hope that they keep this, actually, as like a staple of the show, because I would love to see it kind of be iterated on down the line. Maybe it doesn't always have to be football. I don't know. But I would love to see people be like, I saw this challenge three years ago and here's how I would do it.

Wow. Chris, remember last week when I learned how to podcast? When you were like, you know, you got to sharpen your personality, you got to come on stronger. Let me say, Chris, that's the wildest thing I've ever heard you say. I knew you were going to say this. This was absolute incomprehensible insanity. When Padma described the rules, my first thought was, I don't even understand the order of the words that are coming out of her mouth. And my second thought was,

I'm not going to pause and rewind. It'll figure it out. I'll cook and whatever. Yeah. But it was so... For people who don't remember, because this was on Thursday night. I know, it was on Thursday night.

It was like, so basically they go to a football stadium in Houston. It's two teams of seven each. They have to cook seven dishes going head to head. And basically one team's on offense, even as I'm explaining this, it sounds crazy. But the thing you have to know is that there's five judges

and it's possible to win 25. yards worth of votes during, is this what you're talking about? Because there's just so many, yeah. I don't understand any of it. And then in the end, no one won. So what were you doing? Do you what I mean? Like it was so, but let me say this to begin.

It was the challenge that got me back on board with the season because of the cooking. Because even though it was total word salad insanity of nonsense competition, coupled with instructions that I don't even understand. like carb heavy food for athletes who aren't tailgating but are playing in a game. Yeah. What is that? They all cooked their asses off. And I was like, oh, I'm beginning to see that this is a serious competition show again,

despite the competition itself this week being the opposite of serious. It was, I thought it was an example A of a long-running show getting in its own head and getting too cute. Similarly, like a Koso challenge made sense. That was the quickfire for the region. but no one was capable of doing it. Like four people executed. Everyone else was just serving like this chalky milk water.

Yeah. It looked gnarly. There was the one guy from Noma who was like I made like a fried cheese like pancake. I made a crispy pancake. And the woman was like, who brings you here? What are you thinking?

It's so funny that the guy from Noma is just like, I'm so out of my wee. Like I don't even know what I'm doing here. I don't know what it is about this season. but he just seems to be like, what the fuck is happening? He's like, where did I leave my C buckthorn? And there aren't enough mollusks here. There's also, you mentioned that maybe in future seasons,

people will look back having watched this challenge. Chris, I'm not certain people on the show watch the show anymore because this week we had a woman who was just like, I'm going to do an ode to the chickpea, so I'll just buy some canned chickpeas. I mean, I almost was like, why does you just send her home now? Just go home. Yeah.

Just go home. This is season 90s. team. There's a fairly established track record of them not wanting you to take things out of cans or packages on Top Chef. Yes. Call me crazy. I hate when I'm watching like YouTube videos and someone's like, here's a cool sandwich idea. But first, we make our bread. And I'm like, that's not how we make a sandwich in most of us. You know, like, I don't have time to get my sourdough starter out when I want to make a quick, like, cool sandwich. But I would, if I was going on Top Chef, that would for sure be my attitude. You know what I mean? Yes, and I also think that there have been

many, many successful head-to-head competition challenges on the show. Every season, there's some. And whether it's a quirk of the talent, the game, or most likely the editing, it almost always is incredibly satisfying and thrilling. Thinking last year specifically, there was a head-to-head challenge

that went right down to the wire. And all I remember is, I just remember Dawn maybe almost missing things on a plate that time, too, but it was a great episode. I don't remember the specifics of it. but this one was just too cute where the rules were not clear and there was too much freedom for too many chefs plus Sam and Don back as coaches so that they kind of ended up stepping

on their own like the most dramatic moment right was um what's your name the woman who made the delicious sticky rice dessert everyone's like this is incredible and they sent her up to go second to last because if she had gone out and if she had gone up for dessert they would have won the game yeah um that robbed that didn't provide drama that actually robbed drama because she should have been at the end and it would have been a more exciting face-off between what were apparently two phenomenal desserts. Right? I just feel like they got in their own heads

and it was just, it just feels busy so far this season in a way that's a bummer. I think sometimes on Survivor, so first of all, and I don't mean any disrespect, I would love to know how much football people who make Top Chef watch. You know, because I wonder if there's like a slight adjustment they could make. Second of all, it's just like there are games on Survivor,

there are little challenges on Survivor that you can see. smooth out over the course of a couple of seasons. And they'll be like, oh, okay, that lasted too long, or this was too hard. Or it turns out people can stand on one foot for an hour and a half if we ask them to. So maybe we should add another element to this to shorten it or whatever. So I don't think that maybe we won't get another thing like this. And frankly, like a bunch of people who are living in a bubble in a quarantine state,

cooking in an empty stadium might be a little bit of like a COVID thing. You know what I mean? Like, in years past, maybe they would have gone to an actual high school football game and cooked for people there? I don't know. I mean. Chris, did this dissuade you from ordering Brazilian food in North Dakota on your frequent visits there? By the way, it's very possible for any chef from anywhere to cook delicious food. I do not mean to stomp on North Dakota or Stephanie in particular.

But it was wild. She's like, I will make this culturally significant famous meat stew and take all the meat out. Burke was like, where's the beef? People make insane decisions on the show, which I guess I respect. Did you watch Last Sand's Kitchen? I did. Yeah. So like the Leah from Morristown, New Jersey,

sent Stephanie packing in Last Chance that was cool. I mean, like, I was like, that was cool. In retrospect, Leah's spring roll with giant slabs of meat in it was maybe the worst thing I've seen coming on the show in like five seasons. She had a bladder infection. Give her a break. Listen, I will give her all the breaks because she came roaring back. But there have been a couple just real head scratchers.

But for real, though, that was just such a, for me, it was a mess. But it was pretty cool to see how talented a lot of these chefs. Yeah, DeMar is really talented. Yeah. That's cool. I hope next week they get out in about in Houston. I bet Nick 26 with his proprietary blend of spices. That's right.

That was cool. I'm super into Nick 26. Any parting thoughts before we get into my interview with Patrick Kenlin from drug church? Do I have to, is there a dress code in the drug church? It's necktats. Do I have to change? It's necktats only. Yeah. So I'll be back in a little bit. Please check out hygiene. It's a new record from drug church. It's really good. Play that. Awesome. My entry, my gateway drug to the church was the last track on hygiene, athlete on a bench. Yeah, I asked Patrick if he would be playing that. Like, I was like, how is that song going? And they were like, he was like, we're not playing that.

He's just not playing it ever? Well, he was just like, you can hear on the interview, but he's like, that song is hard for me to sing. because emotionally or because of his register? If I tell you everything, were you going to listen to the interview? Do you want me to tell you the truth? I am going to listen to the... I always listen to your interviews. I can't wait.

I really like this band too, and I'm glad he's on our podcast. Play Drug Church for your children and listen to The Watch podcast. We were produced by Kai McMullen and we will be back on Thursday. This episode is brought to you by Amazon Prime. Ever have a plan come together out of nowhere and realize you're missing something? like a last minute beach day, a spontaneous hike, or an outdoor movie night you didn't plan for,

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Download the Priceline app or visitpriceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. Patrick, thank you so much for joining me. I know that you are just starting out your tour for hygiene and you guys are on the West Coast now. and then we're recording this on, I guess, technically release Eve for the record. And I was wondering whether or not there's any, do you still retain any childlike romanticism about like record release day as an artist?

Like, you know, the streaming services make things a little bit differently, so they'll just be up tonight. But do you get jittery or anything when it's about to hit the public? So these questions put me in a weird position. Because if I say the truth, then I sound. in some way ungrateful, right? Like the example I always use is shout out to Nate Wilson, who was in a bunch of bands devoid of faith and the oath, right?

And I remember when I was a kid, he's a few years older than me for sure. And when I was a kid, the oath was touring Europe. And he just opted not to go because he had seen Europe too much. He just said, no, I don't need to do that. Okay. And I remember thinking as a kid who had never been to Europe, holy shit what an ingrate holy shit what a like

how could he squander an opportunity like this but it's it's all things once you experience it enough times you say okay I know what that is I know what to expect you can still get excited for it you can still be enthusiastic about it

but perhaps not the child like wonder is still there so that's all to say that I'm happy for this release. I think people will really like it. But somebody told me that it was tomorrow today. So I'll be frank. I'm not exactly up on these things.

Does it make a big difference when you're playing shows? Like, will you notice probably this time next week that people know the words a little bit better? Because I imagine drug church shows are audience participation is key to the energy of the show and like the people being able to shout back at you what your lyrics and stuff like that. Yeah, I hope so.

We'll see. It's possible they hate it and they just, the whole time they're just like yelling old stuff, old stuff. It could be. I don't know. I wanted to get to the bottom of something that I've noticed a little bit in some of your interviews where you have this funny role with drug church because I'm also a huge self-defense family fan,

but with drug church specifically, I've noticed when you're chatting about the band that you're at once kind of like the protagonist of the band because you're the front man. But sometimes you sound like the antagonist of the band where you're like kind of like in a healthy way interrogating like what the band sounds like and like the outer limits of what the band

should or shouldn't be doing with you as a vocalist, which I find it be a pretty unique thing for somebody who's like essentially like the forward face of a band to just be like, yeah, you know, like if it were up to these guys, we'd probably, I think you once said if it was up to these guys, we'd probably sound like Goo Goo Goo Dolls, which I may be miss remembering, but... No, that sounds accurate. I think that is the truth. So my question is basically, like, do you find that role...

How did you find yourself in that role of being at once, like, the voice of Drug Church, but also, like, the person who kind of keeps Drug Church maybe attached to the ground? Well, you know, it's because I'm just a limited musician in most respects. and I think it's great to aspire to something, and certainly you should always be trying to test your own limits. But I think that that's an incremental sort of advancement, you know, at least for me, like I'm just trying to get a first down. I'm really, I'm really, there's no like long bombs into the end zone.

I'm just, because I'm, I wasn't gifted with that much now. ability or maybe any and and it's kind of just like a crawl you know like a like a what do they call that like a little army belly crawl across across the creative landscape for me so I think that it's just by virtue of being a bit realistic about these things you know I've been singing music for a long time and I always have an idea of how I sound in my head and then I'm quickly disabused of that the second that I hear the first playback. And I go, oh, right, I'm still, I'm still in this body. I forgot.

You know what I mean? So, yeah, I mean, it's just that whole thing where I'm kind of being the governor limiting our progress, but I'm very aware of it, is just by virtue of the fact that I've got to be self-aware or I would sound ridiculous. But it's also what makes the band sound unique, I think. It's like if I think if you were, if you were like, yeah, I'm going to do the Goo Goo Dolls harmonies here and we're going to go for it. I mean, that would just be a completely different band. We were talking about that in the band today because, you know, every time I die had their problems before they broke up, like interpersonal problems, whatever.

And we were discussing how I would respond if I, you know, because the one fellow Keith alleges that he overheard the band discussing replacing them. And we were talking about how I would respond if I opened the door and I had like accidentally overheard that. And I'd be like, I think what we agreed on is I would probably be like, yeah, I mean, it's probably the right move. You should negotiate to be able to pick your replacement, though. That should be like part of your exit package. You know, I wonder how I respond to being kicked out of this band at this point. That would be very interesting. Like, would I go through an emotional roller coaster ride or would I go or would I just say, you know, thank you.

I should probably get into real estate now. You know, I don't know. I like that that's the next logical option for you. Well, not to get, not to get too heavy with you, but I really, like having observed the last few years of being a public-facing individual and on the smallest level, right? So I'm playing 300 cap rooms. I'm not, you know, it's not, I'm not Barack Obama over here. And I can just say that it is a minefield of, like the other day, I was just on a stage with a microphone behaving normally. And I offended half the crowd.

So like, I think that people are best. And this goes for podcasters as well. Yeah. I think people are really, would be wise to pursue avenues in life. that have more upside without infinite downside potential, because that's what being a public face has right now. It has infinite downside potential. So like, and also I would urge people,

sorry, this is getting really off on one, but I would really urge people to pursue avenues in life where there are no gatekeepers. So for example, if you have money, you can buy a home. And if you, hey, I'm not judging how you get your money together. That's none of my business. You know what I mean? You could be dodging taxes, selling drugs.

It's none of my business. But like if you get that money together, there's certain things like trading stocks or cryptocurrencies or land, certain things that they just can't keep you out of. Whereas if you're working a corporate job or beholden to a corporate climate in whatever respect, even if you're a contractor, like a lot of times, like, you can still you can still find yourself

with that infinite downside potential so this is all my way of saying yeah I should probably get under real I might quit the band here's the thing we don't know

that there's not cancel culture and house flipping you know what I mean like you know what I follow a couple Florida house

slipper types on on Instagram and if there was canceling these these two would be in the fucking stockade or the gallows.

So it seems like you can say it does seem like there's like a real wide birth for house flipping. Yeah, like you have a lot of room to play with. You mentioned podcasting. And, you know, when we've had musicians on in the past, obviously I'm a huge music fan, but

maybe it's not obvious to you, but I am a huge music fan. But sometimes we kind of don't know what to ask musicians because they don't necessarily think critically or in terms of narratives with their careers the way, say, like, a fan or a member of the media might, where they're sort of trying to lay over, like, this is what you were trying to do on this record, right? And these are the influences for this record, right? But you do a podcast called Axtagrine, which I love. And part of the reason why I love is that you guys have a lot of fun, you know, kind of gamifying hardcore and talking about, like, right now you're in the midst of doing this huge bracket of 80s hardcore bands and discussing record

versus record. And you always are having these really insightful things to say about these bands at various points in their career. And I was curious what it's like with both sides of your brain. Like, do you find yourself thinking critically about drug church or even self-defense since you've been doing the pod about about hardcore? Yes. I would say that I am able to approach music from a slightly more, I don't know if the word is academic or analytical, but or self-reflective. Maybe self-reflective is, is there a place? Because if I, if I'm doing it to other people, I should at least have that measure of self-awareness to apply it to myself and in however, however I can best do that. You know, like, it's not to say that I'll always be a success

at that because certainly you have blind spots. Like I was, some of the guys in self-defense sent me tracks the other day. And I said, okay, I'm going to go record over these. And they said, did you listen to them? They're not real songs. They're just, we're building the songs. And I said, no, I'll go report. And I had listened to them.

But I'm just so, obviously there's just things that I think are acceptable or I don't matter to me that would matter to musicians, you know? So certainly I have blind spots. but I'm able to formulate, I guess, both opinions and hopefully some objective perspectives on things that I contribute to. But does that make being in a band like Drug Church and a band that I think on the outside looking in,

you can kind of observe a trajectory that you guys are on to some extent? You know what I mean? Like, this is obviously a slightly more melodic record. I think you're doing more things vocally. it's like the production is incredible. The hooks are like almost instant on almost every song on the record. It's a very, very, very listenable album. Like, do you stand there and say,

this is our really listenable record, guys? Like, do you ever, like, confront other members of Drug Church with, like, your analysis? And they're like, dude, come on. Oh, yeah. I mean, because I wanted to go much heavier on this record. I've said this publicly. sick of it all is one of the few acts that still look good into their 50s playing

on a heavy music on a stage. Most people, I think to some degree, to some degree, I want to be careful with my wording because the exceptions to this, I think, are going to, are going to needlessly take offense, you know? Yeah. But a lot of people be clown themselves by just not realizing that there is, if you're performing in front of other human beings, there's a visual component to the performance. And if you can't move, if you are like you, because you're aged

and you just don't, your body is not able to do what it used to be able to do or you look profoundly terrible, as is the case with a lot of metal musicians, then, you know, it's, something is lost, right? And musicians never want to think about that. When they're young and their hair is all there,

they all think that, yeah, of course, there's, of course what we're doing is a performance. But then when they get a little bit older, it's all about the music and blah, blah, blah. But it's like, if it was all about the music, you could just record these songs and put them out. But there's something about performance that's rewarding, and there's something that an audience is really interested in.

So the reason I wanted to do a heavy record is because I think we're going to start looking pretty bad. So this is like the last days of you being able to dunk. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. And soon you're going to have to have like a crafty mid-range game and just kind of like playoff ball. But this is like you guys can still fucking slam it now. Yes.

Or it's like, you know, a lead off hitter versus like a DH. You know what I mean? It's pick your sports analogy here. It's a yes. I think that we should take advantage of the window that our relative youth affords us. That makes sense. I was wondering with, to continue with the athlete thing,

my favorite song on the new record is actually Athlete on Bench, which I don't know what that says about me as a drug church fan. If that's, you seem like the kind of person who could probably determine what your favorite drug church song says about you. But one of the reasons why I like that song so much is, I feel like you're doing all sorts of different stuff with your vocal harmonies and with your melodies and stuff like that. And it's just a wonderful song lyrically.

But I was curious whether or not like performing that song is like, it's hard. Because like, you know, you do you do your fair share of shouting. Like you have like a kind of like your traditional vocal style. But then this is seeming like you have to like kind of like get into like more like pure singing. Like right like for some of these songs. Yeah. I'll be honest. I'll let you know when I try it. because we're not playing it on this run.

And the other largely, the other song that requires a little bit more of me, Detective the Lieutenant, we are trying to build in slowly, but we rehearsed with it, and the guy said I sounded fucking terrible. So we're slowly easing into that one. This is where you got to start,

you got to put a choir on your show rider, like bring, like I need backup singers, you know? Well, to your listeners, I'll just, I'll prep them for this. My performance live is a very rough approximation of what I was able to do in the studio over the course of 35 takes. You know? Yeah. And I don't, I think that this will ultimately prevent drug church from kind of quote unquote going to another level or something like that.

But like it just is what it is. Like I'm not, I've been doing this a long time. And like I say, I get better in. I don't get better even in yards necessarily. So, you know, maybe by full length number 12, I'll be a proper singer, but by that time, nobody would want to see us. I won't take up too much more of your time, but you're obviously, you know, like we talked a little bit about the podcast, you do writing for comics as well.

And I was curious as somebody who's like a really like, very, like, very, consumer of stuff. I was curious how much non-musical influence winds up in drug church or self-defense, but as someone who's obviously reading and thinking and writing, and then also, I don't know if you're watching stuff as well, like movies or TV, and whether or not that you find that kind of like seeping in, I found that like over the last couple of years, like, it's all become flattened where it's kind of like I'm consuming so much stuff just because I'm just like sitting around so much that it kind of like winds up popping up in weird different places. cases? Well, to get heavy with you, I think there's a general flattening where we can say that we're all consuming different, for example, there's so many TV shows at the moment, that we can say that we're all consuming different shows and that everything is niche. And I would agree with that statement. However, I think that there's also a cultural flattening going on where everything is the product of a few. We have the illusion of choice and variety right now.

in our entertainment. So it's not like previous generations where there was three channels and then there was 50 and then there was 200. I believe that subculture, which maybe we could say in a proper American way that we would understand emerged in the 1950s,

I would say that subculture has been completely subsumed by corporate culture. I remember that. And we have just the, It's a most pathetic illusion of choice. And for that reason, I think that,

and I don't blame people for this, and I don't pretend to be some, you know, incredible outsider artists or anything. I just think that there is a decided sameness to, quote-unquote, subculture material. Like, for example, it runs a predictable pattern, right?

Something like Grimes emerges. And you'll see people go crazy for it and treat it as though it's subculture, you know? And sorry to pick on Grimes. And it's also like a 10-year-old example. That makes sense, though. I know what you're saying. And then Grimes will run through the public imagination,

and then people will pick a new faux subculture musical figure of that type. And you could argue the same thing for aggressive music, right? Or guitar music, that way. You could argue the same thing. So what I'm saying is when we see something like Imagine Dragons that has zero pretense of being sub-culture-related or anything like that, although I think they were a proper band. I don't believe that they were like a label creation or anything of that nature. But they don't wear any flags. They're not from subculture A or subculture B or anything, right?

It seems like they're just from the club circuit straight into the major label. machine. That has no pretense of subculture and that I you know that's pop right but I think even things that are marketed as subculture or subculture adjacent I think have a really dire sameness to them and and and and and or bandwidth let me put it like that sorry I know just I feel like I'm picking on fucking grimes even though she's a millionaire's got another whatever um it's very discouraging to be honest uh and I see this I see this I see this I see this in comic books as well. This is a very broad criticism about the influences that people, let's say ages 23 to 30, are bringing into the larger culture. And I can't blame them

because you are the product of what you consume. So in a nutshell, what, like, are those influences like they're writing comics to be adapted into movies or TV? Like, they're looking for that kind of like upstreaming or? No, but yes. I mean, that's, a fact, but we can't, the generation before them did the same thing. So we can't, we can't say that. What I would say is it's we've allowed certain things to

to take, to act as a what would you call them? They're not core values, they're precepts. It's not, it's nothing we agreed on. We just have been doing it this way for so long that something's got to change.

I think that'll happen eventually and then we'll get like a nirvana moment, right? But that nirvana moment would be pretty tragic in its own way because it'll be subculture, not subsumed, but directly

thought upon and consumed by corporate culture, whatever. I'm getting depressing myself at this point. Well, I do think the example I throw out there of like kind of what you're talking about is I think what will happen to movies in the next couple of years. Like where, you know, so like if everything in the theater is definitely

a franchise pretty much. And like just this last week, Fox came out and was just like, we're going to put stuff in the theaters that is essentially like sequels or preordained blockbusters. But everything else we do, we're just going to put up on Hulu. We'll just, we'll just stream it. And you have to wonder whether or not, even once the streaming movies that are like ones that we might check out that aren't superhero movies, if they go away and it's essentially all franchise IP being made, will there ever be a moment where people are like, I made a movie for $950,000, maxed out my credit cards, don't expect much of a return on my investment, but just felt like I had to do this. So like, do you know what I mean?

I mean, the Kevin Smith's and the Robert Rodriguez is we're a moment. And honestly, the only point of comparison I have there in 2022 is video games. There's still occasionally a non-Tripple-A that totally pierces the market in a meaningful way. even through the glut of indie material out there, that still happens. That's still like one developer can devote a year to something and create a media property that has meaning for a lot of people. But in film, no, I think in film that's entirely dead

because you're talking about, you're talking about the noise. So you're talking about on the highest level, you've got the blockbusters, and then there is no middle class. The middle class used to be the $20 million thrill, that had, you know, George Clooney as the lead or whatever. Yeah. And they weren't, they weren't meant to be, or Bruce Willis or whoever.

They weren't meant to be mega smashes. They were just meant to be thrillers, Richard Gear movies of a certain era, etc. Yeah, primal fear or whatever, right. Yeah. Now, these are not movies that, I mean, it's funny because I really enjoy these movies. It's the only reason I have Amazon Prime is because this is all Amazon Prime has. It's movies nobody gives a shit about. Except for me, I love this, like, sort of.

of the 80s, early 90s, thriller. Bruce Willis is a cop in Pittsburgh. Yeah. Oh, we found it. We found a woman's finger in the trash. You know what I mean? Whatever it is. And I love these type of films.

And I think that this is the heart of genre movies. It's sort of that filmable, you know. It's not a blockbuster. It's not intended to be. And I like that sort of thing a lot. That doesn't exist in the movie. it anymore. It goes from Blockbuster to maybe something that's a dark horse that they throw out in February. And then below that is, there is no middle classes, this is to say. There's just

beyond that, there's just a noise that is streaming. And I think that in principle, there should be some amazing stuff there. But, I mean, there's very little chance. I mean, even less, than previous times of making your money back. You can't even lie to your rich uncle and say, hey, lend me the money. If I get this into a festival, you never know. Right. Can't even do that.

I mean, so I think film is in a bad way, and I think that corporate greed is going to potentially make that worse for a time. But then it'll snap. It'll break because eventually all things break. Eventually, people who love money go, what the fuck have we been doing? What is it?

You know, However, at this exact cultural moment, we're in a space where taste is, I don't want to get yelled at. That's taste. Everybody's taste is the same right now, which is I prefer to keep my job. I prefer to not have people calling me names online and threatening my family. That's what is everybody has the same exact taste, which is being cowed into submission on principles that they don't, necessarily share or even understand. They're just legitimately scared and not scared like a shivering or a lot.

Because these are, we're talking about executives. It's not like these people having strong stances on anything in life. They're just, they just, I mean, think about it. If you could go to your job and get yelled at or not get yelled at, you would opt not to get yelled at, right? Sure. So this is all to say that I think that the straw that is going to break the camel's back is coming soon.

and we'll see like a very brief moment of bringing in a ton of different types of influences, throwing it all at the wall, seeing what sticks, and having like some maybe a real window for independent creatives to do something interesting. But there's also going to be immediately after that, like equally depressing. Just collapse. Well, no, I think there'll be an equally depressing, what would you call it, like feeding frenzy of, of, Like, there's going to be a lot of, a lot of Stone Temple pilots. You know what I mean?

Like, yeah. And, you know, Stone Temple pilots, no disrespect. They had a couple fucking jams. But, like, it kind of, oh, here's a legitimate scene in the Pacific Northwest, doing something interesting. Fuck, we ran out of bands to sign. Is there some dudes in kick around Hollywood that do babies? Yeah, that we could, like, put in a different outfit.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, no disrespect to Stone Temple pilots. The the the leaving

Interstate love song, man. Great song. Catchous fuck. You know what I mean? So there's just a sensibility at the moment and you're either tired of it or like you could I mean, you could share all the values

and still say, and still just say, yeah, I'm in the mood for something different. I've been eating the same porridge for fucking seven years. Yeah. Yeah. I think the same, I think that you're tapping into something that's like it does, there does feel a little bit of a monochromatic, like, vibe to a lot of art right now, which I think is, I think regardless of like whether you agree with it, like you're saying, the values of it, it winds up creating like a very static kind of signal going out.

And I think in a free society, monoculture is just like a monopoly in business. It has to be broken up. Think about the, I think about this. for a moment. The first time that you heard our house, right? Yeah. And it's just this, you have an

immediate connection to the song. For anybody that doesn't know this song, if you grew up in a house, you have an experience with this song. If you have a family on any level, whether that's your biological family or your fucking people in your neighborhood,

you have a connection with this song. And the reason for that is because that is a what would you call involuntary response to a piece of data. We could call it art, that's fine, but it's just

auditory data that is entering your head. And anybody that says that fucking policy, policy, are we fucking insane that policy is more resonant to them

than the experience of art or music? Well, that might be true, but I wouldn't have you make any decisions for me. Sure. Sure. I mean, I think also like even if you went back and did like a sociological read of the text of our house

and you were like, well, this was during Thatcher and yada yada and this is what was like, that doesn't change the, that doesn't change your visceral reaction to that. No, that's exactly right. That has to be for fun. Right. The context is for your enjoyment. It's not, it's not, firstly, it's never real. It cannot be real.

No matter how dead to write you think you have a piece of art and your understanding of it is complete, it's not. And you are projecting your own bullshit onto it when you do that. Now, that can still be fun, right? I'm not trying to take that away from anybody. But it's not real. And if it's not real, then it's just, you're sitting around talking about who would win in a fist, like the thing or the, or the, or the whole.

That can be fun a little bit But like that can't be all of it That can't be all of it I'll let you go I really appreciate the conversation man I love this record I love the podcast I hope people get a chance

To check both out Axe to grind as the pod And Hygiene is a new record From Drug Church I hope you have a good time on tour man Please play athlete on the bench When you come to L.A I mean we can try

Thank you very much for your time today And I apologize for the audio quality I hope you can do something with I think we'll be good man Thanks so much for joining me All right. Thank you. Take care. It's Mushrooms with me, Maddie Matheson.

You know what's better than thinking about dinner too hard? Not. Stop that. And just choose Mushrooms. Five minutes. Done. Dinner's that easy and you feel like a genius. It's not magic.

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