The Worst Idea Of All Time - Episode Thirty Three - Satan Himself

Episode Date: February 14, 2017

SPONSORED BY AUDIBLE.COMGuybo has returned to Auckland so Tim has had to leave for another country and is watching WAYF in a bullet train from Tokyo. In this episode, the pair lay out the pieces for a grand new unifying theory; James Reed (from The Feelers) and Paige from (Gold Star Reality Solutions) are the devil. Not figuritively, litterally. In this trip into Judeo-Christian mythology, Zacole suddenly becomes Jesus(?) and we are still left wondering - Did Somalie and Zacole actually bone? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is a Little Empire podcast. We're doing a mini-festival with your favourite shows in Auckland, New Zealand on February 25th and 26th. Details and tickets are at littleempirepodcast.com slash live. Are you going to play that dastardly intro again? Ow! This movie's still fine. This is a colleague of mine. One of the guys, that guy's a squirrel. One of them's a hothead. His name is Jay.

One of them looks like Johnny Depp And his name is Johnny Depp Classic Maximum Joseph You forget that films are supposed to have a point Hello and welcome along to the worst idea of all time Episode 33 My name's Guy Montgomery And my name is Tim Batt Hello and welcome.

Yeah, we've just watched We Are Your Friends for the 33rd time. In my instance, Tim, you of course, in your quest to have seen it more times than me, your selfish little side mission, have seen it 34 times now. I'm a little vixen guy. I just want to be better than you. I'm a sexy little competitive vixen you are such a sexy little competitive vixen and what's more i can't even see you right now we are physically as not as far apart as we've been but certainly yeah now if i wanted to get in touch with you face to face it would take some doing here's the situation a guy is now back in auckland so i

had to leave i had to go to another country so that we wouldn't be in close enough proximity to record together okay it is paramount at all times that we make this not only as big a pain in the ass as possible but as technically unfeasible as we can um so as a result i as soon as i heard that guy was coming back into the country i jumped into a plane not even knowing where it was going i told my girlfriend said zoe i need you to come with me and this is going to require your passport so grab that pack something warm we're going to the airport she of course complied because she is a beautiful person who trusts me implicitly any context beyond your need to leave the country because that's quite a heroin i told her you were coming back and that's all she needed to hear so that is very mean we jumped in here toyota corolla careen down the highway and uh got on the next available flight which was bound for tokyo japan um that it's

both incredible and also tim sorry to interject did you just do a paid spot for toyota you wish we were being sponsored by a major car manufacturer i just thought it was important to put it in because i'm in um i'm in japan right now so it's it's important to uh you know when in rome shill for the romans as they say that is exactly what they say so you you're in japan yes and i'm in my lounge yes i'm no longer in tokyo though because i thought there was such a big center you might follow me over and find me so i've gone to um the the uh the snow-kissed plains of Kyoto. Is Kyoto a flat? First of all, is Kyoto a flat city? No, I don't think so.

I don't think so at all. And secondly, Kyoto's smaller than Tokyo. Surely the likelihood of me, first of all, bothering, like you've placed such a premium on your company that you think I would bother to book an expensive last-minute trip to Japan in the hopes of running into you. But if I was to do that, Tokyo is such a major center, the likelihood of us crossing paths is surely low. Yeah, but I've got snow cover here. So if you start using tricks like drones or satellite photography, I'm wearing white. So all I need to do is just hang out in the fields look i understand you know the the level of intensity you're bringing to

hiding from me but it's i just don't know how to re-emphasize to you i'm not really looking right now okay like you i just want you to enjoy your holiday you don't need to be on the move constantly i'm calling it a guycation because i left to get away from you well you're doing a pretty bad job of abiding your own rules by talking to me through the very specific lens no but that's the only means through which we communicate now i just watched we are your friends on the shinkansen which i tell you is not the way i want all right we've all got fucking stuff going on i'm just saying i don't want to spend my time on one of the most amazing impressive and famous pieces of public transport on god's green earth um by watching maximum joseph doll out another shoddy job at filmmaking

um but there i was and it just what it did is it reminded me of what a shadow this podcast project is. It's inescapable. It's just attached to us. It doesn't matter what's going on or what we're doing. It's just once a week, man, you get in there. It doesn't drop everything. We've got to watch We Are Your Friends real quick and talk about it. Yeah, it is.

And whenever one of us messages the other one to schedule a screening at the moment, you can sort of – the tone is really weird, isn't it? Because there's a sense of urgency, but also despondence. And I don't know. Yeah, you can't outrun this thing, Tim. But not even the Shinkansen. That thing goes a million miles an hour. Was it, does your appreciation for the tremendous feat of

engineering that is the shinkansen uh did it factor into your viewing of where are your friends this week did they you know were they um complementary to one another or did they sort of just happen at the same time but independently of each other well first of all can i just commend japan on what an amazing train system that is there's really impressive stuff um there's something good that happens when you're on like public transport doing doing the watches because you really you got nothing to look at around the room because you're not in a room um so you zone in and it's something about putting headphones in as well i had a pretty mean view because i did have a window seat so i'd wander

occasionally but it's pretty easy to stay focused and fixed on the movie so in some ways i think any any little mode of public transport is good because it kind of forces you to maybe it's just headphones maybe that's the secret ingredient headphones are a game changer i find i've watched movies uh both for this podcast and for my own enjoyment um own enjoyment in public places and on public transport before. And I often find the transport to be a distraction because I like the people watching opportunities provided by public transport. The thing with watching it in my lounge is i've already analyzed everything in the lounge and no one no one was coming into the house no one was leaving the house it was just

me and the boys um how are the boys how are the boys this week you've been checking in on them how they going yeah yeah they look they don't learn their lessons. And they don't live in a world which concerns me, Tim. And with each passing week, I feel a deeper divide growing in my relationship to them. To the point, you know, like, I don't know. To the point, I wasn't rooting for Squirrel to die, but I instead of viewing it as bitterly disappointing for both him and the friend group i sort of i considered you know i considered it a sweet release perhaps for squirrel that he no longer has to concern himself okay so it was more of these like a selfless you wanted him to be released well yeah you know the other guys as far've, you know, based on the evidence that has been before me week after week,

they're in it for the long haul, but I was really getting behind the grill. Seeing if he wanted to off himself in any of the earlier scenes, maybe. Oh, mate. Really speed things along a bit. Like when they first get into Tanya Romero's, wouldn't it be good if they took a shortcut and Zicoli just took the reins on the

negotiation proceedings and said, Tanya, me and the boys are looking for a house. Can you kindly extricate yourself so that I can move in with my meathead mates? By the way, do you have a pool? That is critical. Because if you don't, we're going to make one. We're four strapping lads. We're going to grab shovels

and we're going to create a pool in your backyard. Yeah, and don't you or my dad, Richard, who's also confusingly your son, say anything about it because this is how the world is now. Oh, boy. Well, I wasn't going to do this so early, Tim, but seeing as you mentioned it, Tanya Romero is actually responsible for my shining light this week.

Oh, wonderful. Yeah. shining light this week oh wonderful yeah um it's before she is about to be just brazenly ripped off by gold star reality solutions um and zicoli calls her up and he says hi i'm looking for sorry what was the slogan on gold star reality solutions again mate it's just slipped my mind uh which i mean diamonds mouth full of concrete yeah i just wanted to hear you say it What was the slogan on Gold Star Reality Solutions again, mate? It's just slipped my mind. Dip full of diamonds, mouth full of concrete. Yeah, I just wanted to hear you say it. With pleasure.

I've got to tell you, actually, for memory reasons, I had to, on my computer, I deleted all of the movie files I had on it. And a scramble, because I forgot I'd done it, to watch the movie so that we could sync up in time to record the podcast to avoid the catastrophic results of last week. I already forgot about that. Yeah, I had to. I found a. Look, if I see Zac Efron, I'll give him a fiver.

And same goes for you, Max, from Joseph. But I found a stream. And the whole movie was in English, but all of the title cards that come up during the movie, like when Zicoli's doing the, he's mansplaining DJing to Somaly. Yeah. And when Paige Laurel is doing his big picture,

Gold Star Reality Solutions. Well, according to the captions on mine, it was Laurel. Oh, shit. With an L. I always thought it was Harrell also. Anyway, all of the title cards were in German.

German? It just was a real pleasant change of pace. I don't know what language I was expecting you to say, but German was not even in my top three. Nah. It was so weird, because everything else like the closed captions and all the dialogue wasn't english and there was just these random

bursts of german um but that's neither hither nor thither tim because the shining light was as zicoly calls over and says i'm looking for a page uh sorry tanya romero tanya romero says this is she and there's something i really love about people who sort of refer to themselves in the third person, but with, well, like, it's a personal pronoun, but rather than saying then, do you understand what I'm saying? I absolutely do. Yeah.

I just love it. This is she. Yeah. It's one of my favorite things in the English language too. I will look for any opportunity possible to say this is he in real life. It so rarely comes up now because we don't phone each other anymore. You know? We sure don't.

A random person wouldn't phone me up that often. Not often enough to go, hi, I'm looking for Tim Batt. For me to be able to answer, this is he. But God, on the few times, maybe it's a sweeter fruit because it is so rare now, but on the few times when it does come up, I'm just chomping at the bit. I cannot get the syllables out fast enough when the opportunity arises. I couldn't agree more. And we're in the fine company of Tanya Romero,

who is also similarly inclined during phone calls from from random punters who are in concrete office blocks trying to ream her for all she's worth so that was your shining light her delivery of that yeah and just what it says about the character I mean you know hindsight being what it is I'm sure that she would look back on that phone call and wish she'd said, I don't know who she is. Please stop calling this phone number. But instead she said, this is she. And she lost her house. Got a box full of unmarked cash.

And isn't that just a lesson for everyone in not having a landline? Like, isn't that the ultimate takeaway from that if you have a landline there's a good chance someone's going to take your house yeah if secondly if you yeah if you have a landline yeah there's a pretty high chance that you haven't kept up with the times and your house is going to be in foreclosure like even if things aren't going that well at home um and you're aware of it but you've got a landline, just get rid of the landline and you would be amazed at the results that you'll see almost immediately. Guy, I don't know if you can hear a lot of the background noise here,

but I'm in like a pretty delightful low-key bar that's attached to the hotel I'm staying at in Kyoto, getting a lot of looks at the setup. Let me paint a picture for you. I've got a cup of coffee, a glass of apple juice, and a glass of water in front of me, a passport. That's a lot of liquids already. That's a lot.

Travel documents, a passport, a wallet, a portable battery pack, a recording device, a really, to be frank, oversized microphone. Are you wearing a T-shirt that says, mug me i'm not from around here i'm wearing i'm wearing the banana t-shirt so effectively yes i've got my laptop in front of me at the table and i just i i just can't help but think that i'm ruining people's wonderful time at this very magical city well yeah i mean if not for your horrible new zealand accent cutting across the the bar i can hear the sound of uh some sort of brass based jazz playing out yeah luckily it's not a live band but can you imagine if i had the audacity to park up next to a jazz three piece bust one of these out good god sorry guys i gotta do it who are the worst i dare of all time oh boy um hey listen i want to i want to throw some stuff at you because i'll tell you what being in public transport um

gives you a bit of thinking time and really zoning in on the movie lets things percolate and i haven't felt this focus since when i came up with the dick bot brady um paradigm for sex and the City 2. So you ready for some knowledge? Tim, I'm terrified, but please don't let that stop you. I've scrolled down some pretty incomprehensible notes, so there's a good chance that I won't even kind of get hip to what I was trying to say in the moment. But I seem to have been tugging at a bit of a thread um that lucifer um embodies both james reed from the feelers and page laurel um in this movie firstly they're the only two characters that are super duper prominent but they're never seen together ever They're never in a scene together. Paige, right.

Let's think about these guys' kind of motivations and backgrounds, respectively. Because the film has paid great attention to giving us certain clues, I think. Laying out all the breadcrumbs for us to follow this path. So what do we know about James Reid from The Feelers? He drinks, he smokes, he gambles. We know that specifically from the phone call when he's booking in his Vegas gig and he needs a blackjack day for it. He goes to strip clubs, we know that.

And he doesn't like organized sports, but he does love seeing grown men beat the crap out of each other. So he's kind of shirked all of the bit of sports that's like camaraderie, teamwork, humans getting along and working together for a common goal. But he just loves the visceral kind of physical fight, violent aspects of it, right? Yeah. I follow you.

Just as a quick sidebar. Yeah. What are your thoughts on golf, Tim? I mean, I'm not against it. Interesting. Continue. He gives Ziccoli a real dark speech in the bar about the things he has to walk around with

and not being alive. Ziccoli hasn't been alive long enough to know the meaning of the word irreparable. People learn at different times. That's always frustrated me and and he also on his birthday you know when he comes home hammered he said it's a good philosophy if everyone did what they wanted all the time everyone would be happy that is like a real chaotic um uh uh what's the word i'm looking for he like hedonistic approach to life. Yeah, yeah.

And it's not going to end well. And it strikes me as being the words of a man who has fouled our Lord and Saviour and gone against God and had to descend, you know? I certainly, you know, I can see what you're driving at, Tim. He's not a good guy by any means. He also constantly cheats on his beautiful and doting partner and just generally lacks respect for those around him,

although there are sort of glimmers of hope in that he does try and strike up a mentor relationship with Zicoli and he does give him the gig back and i think also almost acknowledges that he was the way he treated somali when they were together was wrong but that's kind of how i think about the devil like he's not this i guess you don't want someone who's 100 bad because then they can never kind of reflect on their own feelings and it's like less evil. The devil to me is someone who's kind of like keeps doing bad stuff and sort of knows it.

Yeah. You know what I mean? I do understand that. There was a clue from Sikoli where he says no one thinks they're a bad person and then the camera goes to James Reid from The Feelers for just a brief moment to kind of give his reaction it's like that's a that's a moment you know they're trying to tell us something yeah i would yeah i what they're trying to tell us is that even the devil himself doesn't

recognize how evil he is which makes it like more terrifying don't you think well yeah if that's the thing no like no one thinks they're the bad guys right not even the devil himself not not even the devil himself he might be cast as the bad guy in god's narrative but as far as the devil knows god is you know ruining a life of hedonistic pleasure with his self-righteous you know horse shit now page is kind of the other he kind of fills in the gaps of the devil that we don't see coming through in james reed the biggest one is uh the bible teaches us i believe this is in the bible somewhere um the love of money is the root of all evil. And what do we know about Paige?

Dude loves money. Absolutely loves it. Loves it. Paige, five-letter name. I checked the casting. They spell it with an I, which I will also hasten to add is a very rare spelling for a boy. Usually it's spelled without the I.

Five letters, five sides of a pentagram. Page means young servant. I reckon he is the fallen angel Lucifer who used to serve God and then became the devil. Okay. Can we just go back a little bit? So I understand page is five letters. I can follow that.

A pentagram. A pentagram. Five-sided shape, which is like a star. Oh, a five-pointed star, rather. Wait, which one is it? Yeah. No, five-pointed shape, I think. That's a pentagram.

That shape, that star shape shape is that affiliated with Satan Satanism? Correct but it's got to be pointing down so that like, you know how it's like a five pointed star? Oh so yeah yeah yeah so when you flip it so that the point is facing towards the fiery pits of hell, that's when it becomes the symbol

of Satan. So you get it, you're on board you get it. So well I'm sort of slowly following the breadcrumbs of logic you've left for me. And so the combination of the five points of the pentagram and the five letters spelling Paige's name and his love of money, which is the root of all evil, those sort of three facts are enough to suggest

or maybe even confirm that Paige is... There was one other page but but it's a little bit more tenuous do you want to hear it okay so i started looking up like lucifer and what it means and its origins and that sort of thing on the train and um found a lot of stuff about how it's about the morning star it's always about the morning star that's like the origins of the word that's its entomology all this stuff about the morning star going down and uh you know how he he thinks it's brunch all the time like when he sees the boys in the dark of night and he says brunch is on me it's because he's the morning star wherever he is he's the star of the morning so it's the morning so he's Lucifer and by the star you also mean

like the legend who shouts people in the cafe brunch you got it he's like the legend of the cafe yeah he's Lucifer well him and James Reid. They both are kind of imbued with the spirit of Lucifer. I mean, we don't see them in scenes together. This is making some sense. We don't see them in scenes together because they're different faces of the same devil. You are getting it. And where do we know that they spend time together? In the den of inequity that is the strip club where Chardonnay works.

Who is Chardonnay? strip club where chardonnay works who is chardonnay perhaps a messenger sent from hell to report to the um to the physical manifestations of lucifer himself above above ground i can't tell you how happy i am to hear that you're on board with this because i'm throwing a lot of stuff out out loud in a place um that is not suitable for this conversation and uh making some people uneasy. No, look, I... If they're listening into your conversation, Tim, then I was going to say that's none of their business, but no, that's totally their prerogative to feel uneasy. You are saying a lot of weird stuff. In some situations, it's hard not to, you know?

Yeah, what you mean when, like, this guy in a banana T-shirt rocks up into a tiny jazz bar adjacent to a hotel yeah busts out a laptop and a microphone and starts talking about why people are the devil the floor is concrete yeah the everything is just a shiny surface for my voice to bounce off and ricochet around and as i discuss theories of lucifer and um and zach efron no certainly i think it's uh it's interesting it's and it's because those are the the idea of doing the right thing are themes that the film tries to play with i think right like we see the boys decide that they can no longer work for page hurrell after the death of squirrel because you know they've seen how he operates they've seen what gold star reality solutions does to innocent people hard-working

people like tanya romero people who have an appreciation for the english language and a variety of ways it can be employed to maximize conversational satisfaction and they've said not for me and who does that leave johnny depp as the final the final recruit really for for or not the final recruit but you know the only successful recruit but that makes sense you can imagine he's the one who looks the most like the devil yeah well in fact holy crap dude we might have stumbled into something here you know how we've always been confused about why he shaves his mustache off yeah and jahe goes why'd you shave it maybe that's why because it's supposed to be like a visual signifier that he is following lucifer into the pits of hell why would they put it in

the movie otherwise? That's true. And you don't, that's, you know, it also raises a good point of why a lot of people in hell don't have moustaches because they get singed. Well, that's true. By the hot air. But a goatee, if you pay close attention,

it's protected on all sides by kind of chin and skin. That's why it sits in the middle there. Protected head chin and skin chin skin um no that it makes sense because you know pages try like they're working the same group from different angles they've obviously had them tagged for a while they've known that they're you know that they can be exploited that there is potential for lucifer to work through them you've got've got James Reid hitting them from one side on the DJ front. You've got Paige Harrell hitting them from the other side on the Gold Star Reality Solutions front. There you go.

Surely, I would say a good day at the office for these two manifestations of the devil would be two out of four recruits. Two out of four recruits, and they would be happy. I guess what we need to be clearer around is are these guys working for lucifer or are they actual manifestations of lucifer i i kind of do they report back i feel like it was more a thing of lucifer um putting himself into these empty vessels you know what i mean okay almost like a um what's that called when a ghost, you know, takes over your body?

What is it? Possession. Do you possess a body? Yeah. It's a possession. That's what I reckon. And actually, this makes it very dangerous terrain for old Somali to be engaging in yoga in because, as we all know know yoga empties the body of

of the spirit which is when the devil gets in I read that online sometime sometime last year I think from a religious teacher we never actually see her doing yoga but it is very subtly into that

um just to paint a picture, because this is a lot. There's a few missed opportunities from Maximum Joseph and Oppenheimer who wrote the script together. One of them that got me is if you want to create a bit of playful fun

between Ziccoli and Somaly, he's trying to get in the house to see James Reid from The Feelers. She's been at yoga. It's not said, but it's suggested. In the same way that we don't know for sure that they had sex in that hotel room in Las Vegas, but it is implied. She comes back and she's wearing. It's implied by us seeing both of them without clothes on in a bed, humping each other.

Quite the implication. We don't see P&V. Is that what you require from a movie to know that something's happening? I just want to see a little bit of that box office gold, baby. So she comes back from yoga. She's carrying a yoga mat. She's wearing yoga gear. And Zicole's waiting by the door.

He can't get in because James Reid's passed out inside asleep. And so he says, hey, is James home? And she says, yeah, he should be. I'll let you in. But what Zicoli should say as she walks towards him in all of her yoga gear carrying her yoga mat is, hey, where have you been?

Because, and I'll tell you why he should say it, because to me, every week, that's the best possible line for that moment in the movie. And yet every week, you think that they use it? No, they pass it up. Time after fucking time. That's why I walked out on the production. That's why I said I cannot work under these circumstances, because my opinions aren't being taken seriously. You offered that up to remember that day.

It was a heavy, heavy day on set. No one was happy about that. It was a heavy, heavy day on set. No one was happy about that. It was a heck of a day. Hey, I think you've really opened something up. Also, I can't remember the exact details of Kevin, the spawn of Somali and Zikoli. Okay, well, can I just... Sorry, before you take that in,

we've got to also recognise the fact that both iterations of the devil are targeting Zicoli. So clearly this guy is important. Possibly the second coming. So continue. I know, okay. Which makes Sonali the second Virgin Mary. Yeah, yeah.

Just to make this a slightly more sprawling blend of, you know, Christian mythology and pop culture. Yeah. You know, could it be, because we believe that Zicoli's a second coming. He's being hotly contested by the devil and he appears to show just enough willpower that maybe he could still, like it's not answered whether or not he is,

where his spirit will land, you know, what side of the battle between good and evil he will take. He creates a spawn. So everyone thought that Zicoli was the all-powerful, all-deciding or potentially all-powerful, all-deciding final say in this battle between good and evil. final say in this uh battle between good and evil but then he has a child called kevin with somerlead the most beautiful person in the history of the planet impossible to make eye contact with runs a ferris wheel yeah it's true i forgot about the ferris wheel yeah yeah but is it possible that Zocoli was merely a vessel

through which the actual greatest power would arrive in the same way that everyone thought that Goku was going to be the one who had to defeat Cell, but it actually had to be his son, Gohan, because he was capable of going Super Saiyan level 2 when as far as we all understood as Dragon Ball Z fans the only option was Super Saiyan level 1 which clearly wasn't enough to defeat Sal well this is appropriate me being in Japan that we get onto this track so who did he did he have to merge with Trunks to defeat...

Was that Majin Buu? Was that later? Or was that Sal? I think that was later. I think Majin Buu... Yeah. That's how I understand it. It's been quite a number of years.

It's been so long. God, it was good though. You get a reminder everywhere around here that it still exists. And I'm just happy to be reminded about it. Yeah, I just Googled Gohan and he is older now. He's not the lovable young rogue I remember. He's kind of hot. Now you see him old.

Hey, we should do a message from our sponsors because this is getting wildly off track. And it's hard to even call something on this podcast off track because it seems like anything's it's all good but let's let's uh let's refocus for a second get in there guy who are we sponsored by this week this week the worst day of all time is brought to you by our friends at Audible. That's right. They still love us. Yes.

And we, them. Why do we love them, Tim? Because they're a great purveyor of online, on-demand audio content, which you can get anywhere that you get the internet. And sometimes even after that, because then you download it and you've got it. It is a real joy to be in bed with the good folks at Audible because I love books. I love learning.

I love, you know, feeling and being superior to those around me. And the good folks at audible.com provide a very easy to use platform where you can feel exactly that. I recently read, I haven't listened to, but read the biography of Steve Jobs written by noted biographer Walter Isaacson. And in researching the fantastic layout of the Audible website, I see that is available for your consumption if you so choose. Are you curious about Steveve jobs tim very curious

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and that is one of the books available for free if you sign up now at audible.com slash try now you get a three a 30-day free membership and a book to download of your choice, that could be it. That's 22 hours and 54 minutes and a 4.5 star rated book out of over 700 ratings of your audio pleasure. Get it in you. Audible.com slash try now. Ow! This movie's still fine. So, guys, we're back.

Let's get this shinkansen back on the rails because, as we all know, when a train's get this Shinkansen back on the rails. Because as we all know, when a train's going this fast and it gets off, ooh, shit gets messy. So I want to throw at you my shining light, if I may. Please, could you? When they're getting paid, like all of us on payday, we like to go to an exotic location with a view, hopefully overlooking a valley of some sort.

We like to put on long pants, long sleeves, and the beating Californian sun. Maybe a leather jacket if you've got it. To a sort of raised plateau overlooking a suburban desert and just stand there, really, not talk to each other, just wait for our fourth friend to show up with our money. Yeah. That's true, Tim.

Well, not do nothing, because they are all telling stories about romantic escapades from the night prior, except for Zicoli. And I'd never noticed this before, but this is my shining light. Zicoli has his headphones on while both Skrill and Jarhead are sharing their stories of woe and sin the night before and it occurred to me that even Zicole can't stand these guys rabbiting on and he's just listening to some beats before Johnny

Depp gets there with a paycheck and I love that. I love the sense of ceremony they have about getting their recompense for their job. I love that he still love the sense of ceremony they have about getting their recompense for their job. I love that he still goes through those steps, but he hates the guys enough that he will put his headphones in to tune them out and then only take them off when it's go time for the cash each. What's not to love? I couldn't agree more. I always wonder, because it's hard.

Those guys who walk around with the headphones on, sometimes I'm one of them, and then other times I see people doing it, and I'm like, you don't need headphones that big. Yeah. You know, like, what do you reckon he's listening to all the time? Do you think he gets in, do there any fucks with podcasts, or is he pretty much a straight up and down EDM kind of guy edm from dusk till dawn uh and if i had to guess it's like probably different

remixes of darude sandstorm just 24 7 just that so that's the only thing his uh samsung galaxy s3 which from memory he's rocking uh can play like it's a modded version of the device. All it will play is different versions of Sandstorm. He's got one hidden version of the Bob Sinclair song Love Generation hidden in a secret file on his phone. He's too embarrassed for anyone to find out. He's all for publicly listing as many different iterations of Sandstorm as possible, but he is mortified that someone would find out he can't get enough of that catchy, jaunty, cheesy single, Love Generation.

His ramp into that was actually a mash-up between Love Generation and Sandstorm, which I tell you what, not pleasing to the ears, that particular track. It's a hard listen. Certainly not. It is a hard it's a mash-up in the sense that if you take two different things and put them together without doing any work you've created a mash-up you know it's the audio equivalent of getting an incredibly powerful blender like a magic bullet let's say and putting in there um uh an equal amount of weight of oranges

that have been peeled, California oranges, and horse manure, and you put them in there and just blend them together, that is the kind of mashup we're talking about. Yeah, it's a mashup in the same sense that if you took that blender, if you'd cleaned it after making your mashup of orange juice and horse shit and you took the

blender and you just put a functioning cell phone in there and you said you're not going to believe the latest mashup between this cell phone company and this blender yeah uh and you know to hear it you'd think wow they've finally managed to create a cell phone with a blender that's incredible yeah but the reality is they've just put a cell phone inside a blender and turned the blender on. The important bit is to breathe in all of that dust that's coming up off of that. Get that in you. It's good.

Oh, yeah. It's as good for you as the mashup of Love Generation and Sandstorm. And Darude's Sandstorm. Hey, Tim, I've got a question for you. It's something I wondered this week. And certainly given the new light through which we're looking at James Reid's relationship to Zicole, I think it's an important one. How much money does James Reid pay Zicole for his services as the Looking Pool Party DJ?

What a good question. What a good question. What a good question. Because we know it's enough to make Ziccoli uneasy. I mean, I don't know what that figure is. I want to say $500 so that there's another opportunity in the movie for someone to say, where's my $500, bro?

But we know... Okay. The only real person i can think of in the movie who would get to say that is maybe he's a colleague at the bank when they say the account that you're being paid from is overdrawn i'm sorry sir that that check is no good well i like that that's a great opportunity for that line to come up in. He's going to the bank to cash a check made out to cash for 500 bucks, slams it down on the teller's desk and goes, where's my 500, bro? Screams it at the bank teller.

I'm not going to do the guy's accent because, as I've mentioned before, I'm in a beautiful little jazz bar at a hotel in kyoto japan so i think i'm pushing the lowest amount of respect that you possibly can to your fellow patrons you huge piece of shit hey can i just quickly say speaking of pieces of shit uh a massive thank you to all the podcast fans who came and saw my show in perth why did that lead on to that because after my show in perth more than once people on the way out of the room said to me uh you're a real piece of shit guy montgomery that's so good to hear i'm not gonna um do a lot of effing and jeffing out loud in my current environment but know that i mean that i want to say it so badly to you what is jeffing i understand effing because f presumably represents the word fuck it's like

what is rhyming slam guy you just got to have another word that sounds like the first word doesn't need to always make sense it's jazz baby that is jazz oh so five hundred dollars i mean i gotta say i expected it to be so much more i thought really well just that that's a coley can't handle being paid that much this perth festival where tons of people came out to see you and lined your pockets i tell you what your radon money's gone totally totally astray well no it's just like zicoli's earning sweet as cash at that uh job he's working anyway gold star reality solutions like i feel like five hundred dollars to him at that moment of his life and his life is no longer such a foreign concept to be paid so it's um i guess the idea that he's so uneasy about it he'd go back around to the house to be like,

this is too much. He's got an ulterior motive, though, doesn't he? He wants to get into that studio. He wants to start mucking around with the mixers. Is that what you call him, Somaly? The walletsers. That is disgusting, you pig dog. I wasn't, but it's entertaining to me.

He does, because he does want to muck around with Somaly as well. Muck around with him. We know that. So we haven't done this segment in a little while, but I would love to throw in a... Oh, something is happening. I think you're being escorted out of the bar perhaps. That was dramatic.

Bursting right through the kitchen. She's left the door open too. Something's awry. Not good. Not all is well in the hotel, guy. I wanted to throw a no but, which is our segment where we try and guess during the shoot,

who was ad-libbing, going a little off page. And that's page without an I. And just making it up on the spot, riffing and scatting. And this week, I really got to hand it to the painting, which animates itself during the PCP party, because I reckon it was just someone making it up. That's what I saw in that painting this week.

Someone flying blind. You saw an animator making it up? No, the painting. Oh, the painting was actually... The painting itself, yeah. And turning in what I think is a great performance. Because the look it gave the camera, I think, is at odds with the rest of the film.

Because it was real good. And the rest of the movie is not quite as good. So I've made the assumption that that painting is probably the most talented actor in the film well there you go i actually had a bit of a bit of a moment with the animation of the painting and stuff i thought what could be nice this week is if the movie openly acknowledged that ziccoli was high on PCP and the entire rest of the movie was animated. Like, wouldn't that actually be playing with the form? If the painting animates and it bleeds out and it takes hold of their bodies and their faces

so that they become animated, as actually happens in the film, but then the rest of the movie is just set inside of this animated world. Very Wizard of Oz. You know how it starts in black and white and then she gets to Oz and suddenly the floodgates of color open. God, that's a moment, isn't it? How good is that?

When you first see Wizard of Oz, you're like, oh yeah. And your brain normalizes it so you forget you're watching a black and white movie. And then, boom, color. Have you seen on the internet there's the it's called the as we watch the wizard of oz and you sync it up with you play the reason wait what um you just play hoover stinks the reason on a loop over and over and

it's it syncs up perfectly like each little part of the movie represents a perfect video clip for the song the reason by hooverstank i wasn't aware of that one no i guess people are mucking around with that movie as much as the coley would like to muck around with the mixes on somaly huh getting out there having a fiddle with the wizard of oz um listen there's an important piece of business we haven't gotten to which we've got to do before we get out of here, you know, realistically. And we're in a jazz bar, so this has never felt so fitting, and I will never be so embarrassed to do the podcast by myself talking into a microphone and a cell phone again. But here we go.

Getting sentimental with James Reid. Possibly our worst one yet. Yeah, not good stuff. Not good stuff from us, but great stuff from James Reid. Yeah, as always. Well, I guess this is the first week where we've had a broader idea of what James Reid as a character might want out of it you know it's a self-serving gift he says is this an open acknowledgement that he is

the devil incarnate who's to say can i also just quickly ask him before we get into it for this week did you do one last week do one what i'm getting sentimental Couldn't even tell you. Did I? On the ships in the night episode? I think so. Not 100% sure. I was so curious when I was doing mine. I was like, shit,

I wonder if typically I was just so fascinated. What was yours? I could listen to it, but I didn't. It was a Swiss Army knife. But like, not one with all the bells and whistles,

just a real, you know, bareback knife, corkscrew, toothpick, tweezers, bottle opener. Such an indictment there. We really should start listening to our own podcast, but I guess usually we don't have to. I should listen to that episode though. The beauty of it is, Tim, we're living it.

That's true. So this week, Guy, take it away. What have we got in that beautiful crisp MacBook Pro looking box well I'm just thinking I'm thinking out loud

over here that you know he might want to start showing his hand a little more because Zicoli by all accounts is showing himself

to be not morally upstanding but certainly not quite as penetrable as as both Paige Harrell or Laurel and James Reid might have thought, James Reid from the Fiddlers.

So I'm thinking perhaps it's just a note written in blood that says, I am devil, join me? And that's it. Yeah, I like that a lot. It's simple, it's effective. I, I like that a lot. It's simple. It's effective. I reckon he's got really good penmanship too. Doesn't matter what the media is. Yeah, I mean, if you can call it penmanship

because he did write it with his finger. Yeah. Fingership? I mean, I guess what I'm curious about is how do you think Zicoli would react to this? I think positively. I think the man is an artist and he can recognize art well you know what they say about artists tim don't you what

they say every great artist they have this moment where they stop being an admirer and they find their signature and then james reed would snatch the piece of paper back off and realize he hasn't signed it and sign it in blood and then say, that's my signature, that's my blood. What are you going to do about it, bro? And I think that is where we will leave the worst idea of all time episode. What did we settle on, 34? 33.

Sure. Oh, wait, a three is satanic as well? I've got to look this. I think 33's something with the Freemasons. Look, I'll do some Googling, get that Illuminati directory of websites up again, fire up the old Illuminati box that I have a separate computer that I Google this sort of stuff on, you see,

so it keeps my internet history clear for the other ones. That's good. That's good to have two computers. I've got've got separate computers as well i've got three different computers one of them is exclusively copies of bob sinclair's fantastic airworm love generation and i've already said too much by revealing that on the podcast okay i'll let you get back to your three computers i'm going to go out there and have a look and see what Kyoto's got to offer thanks for joining us this week, God bless you and please come to our live show

which is happening as part of the Little Empire live podcast festival sweet baby Jesus, please come along to that because we're flying blind out there, I don't know if anyone gives a shit it's in Auckland by the way so you've got to be in Auckland, New Zealand to enjoy it there were a lot of disappointed people in perth who um who would who have become converts to all

of your little empire the entire stable of the little empire products they were frustrated that they wouldn't be able to make it um you know to the festival but you can't i don't know what i told them bravely that we will i said we'll do it anyway that's what i said okay what the show or oh the festival in auckland i'm with you i'm with you yeah we are going to do it anyway um so please if you're in auckland would love for you to come um if you just want to go to one of the shows like ours i think it's only 12 new zealand dollars which is about 50 cents american or you can go to all of them for 35, I believe. Just go to littleempirepodcast.com

slash live. As I mentioned, Little Empire Podcasts snapped up by somebody else. Support the cause. Stay frosty out there. Guy, it's always a pleasure talking to you. Yeah, and you, Tim. Have a great time in Japan.

Please send my best to the delightful Zoe Will do Goodbye Goodbye Ow Classic Maximum Joseph Agree is Jay. One of them looks like Johnny Depp and his name is Johnny Depp. Classic Maximum Joseph. You forget that

films are supposed to have a point. Thanks for listening to this podcast. If you're in New Zealand, come join us for the Little Empire mini-festival on February 25th and 26th in Auckland. All your favourite shows will be there, including The Worst Idea of All Time, The Male Gaze, The Walkout Boys and Bonus of the Heart.

Details and tickets at littleempirepodcast.com slash live.