The Worst Idea Of All Time - Overlooked 3 - 4: Vibrato

Episode Date: January 16, 2021

Tim needed to go outside so is recording from what (in)correctly may be described as a patio but it didn’t stop this watch f***ing up his day. In this viewing, Rob cuts off his young daughter and our hosts review a review of Asian Momma, Mexican Kids. The fellaz also get in the weeds of Sandler's jobs programme in Hollywood and Tim would also like to upgrade Rob's singing to OK. Guy would like to correct Tim's pronunciation of Vibrato. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

so here's my question why the fuck does he cut off his youngest daughter who i think is three in his retelling of the special when she offers her name to the crowd when he gives her the microphone like it's such a it's such a hard situation that he's put his family in where he's just delivered this absolute dinger for 40 minutes and then done a bit of karaoke at the end and then brought out his family who has been railing against and then his daughter's like super cute and she says hi to everyone and then she says my name is and he grabs the fucking microphone back off there and laughs embarrassed he laughs what's there he does uh i guess it's a guy who is not willing to let go of the microphone just yet he's a man with more to say you know i'm imagining uh once this pandemic has blown through the world you know still got an asian mama still got their mexican kids you know rob

more to say about both again yeah i feel like he's he's barely skimming the surface of these experiences in the special i feel like he's he's actually the surface of these experiences in this special. I feel like he's actually going to explore a premise, you know, in 2022. Man, you've got a dead look in your eyes, brother. I'm outside today. I just couldn't handle watching this indoors. It's quite a nice day. We're still in lockdown at time of recording in auckland where

guy and i are and so i've i've watched it outside in my i think what americans refer to as a patio would you call this a patio guy what i've got going on in my backyard it's what is a patio no patio is smaller you've got a yard you're like paved yeah you're underneath a covered awning um i i think that you're just in like i it's all yard and you're just in a beautiful covered and sort of tabled and seated part of it which is sounding more like a patio the more i say it um now in the interest interest of injecting some positivity Into what You know like last night we had Joseph in the house And that was obviously great for morale

Today it's just us It's the morning You asked not to do this I said we're going to do it And then I started lashing out in the comments To you and I do want to apologise For that But I found a review by an author Named Christopher Lloyd And then I started lashing out in the comments to you, and I do want to apologize for that. Equiest.

But I found a review by an author named Christopher Lloyd, written on August 12, 2020, of Rob Schneider, Asian mom of Mexican kids. Of course, for those of you who are tuning in for the first time. Is that the Lloyd doc? Yeah, it is. It is. Different guy, presumably. Yeah, it is. Different guy, presumably.

Yeah, or Doc Time Traveling with the same name and a different face. But this is the review. Yes. I used to be Rob Schneider. Now I'm just Al King's dad. He says this without a scintilla of resentment or regret. Rob Schneider is older, lumpier, possibly wiser, and most certainly funnier than he's been in years.

No. No. He shows all this off in his new Netflix comedy special, Rob Schneider, Asian Mama, Mexican Kids. A meditation on aging and looking back on a career that... That's... No, you can't use that word for this special. That is absolutely fucked. By his own admission, has cooled. And he seems fine with that. Schneider looks more like Billy Crystal than juice bigelow these days and yes he still delis in problematic spheres of comedy enshrining male lust and ethnic speech patterns he just does it in a slightly more apologetic

way of aging men who've come to terms with the fact that they aren't cool anymore what was that the problem that people were being unapologetically racist but if you do it with a little bit of a bash decorum it's totally melancholy i've never had a strong impression i've never had a very strong impression of schneider i liked him in his saturday night live days and i remember he would sing on some of the christmas specials imitating albus or what have you he went on to a solo film career of comedies ranging from lowbrow to awful schneider seemed like a guy smart enough to know his movies weren't very good and he got quite thin-skinned and defensive about it i recall he once publicly attacked a los angeles critic who trashed his latest flick in a huge ad he took out

which prompted roger ebert to respond with a scathing column that ended with, Your movie sucks. This later became the title of one of Ebert's collections of reviews. Dude, that is absolute king shit right there. Kind of from both of them in a way, but in a very petty king way from rob this uh this helped take the knees out of schneider's star wattage leading to leading roles in smaller

movies and then supporting parts in other people's movies for a while he was part of the adam sandler make work projects for his buddies notably grown-ups but found himself left out of the sequel reputedly due to scheduling conflicts which is the hollywood-esque equivalent to the corporate world's spend more time with his family do you know we've never like adopted the terminology but i think we've often talked about the concept that adam sandler's um production company is a jobs program eh it's like a government work scheme for c-list celebrities and offshoot comedians who can't really make it anymore on their own it's kind of sweet when you look at

it that way and then also occasionally love of socialism occasionally propped up by equally talented friends who have a couple of months clear and want to you know cash a paycheck to hang out with their buddies if you do think about it in those terms it is a beautiful jobs creation scheme like there's a hoop on every set you are literally you've got permission to just go and work for two months just just having beers like you know you didn't see that guy put put air quotes on the word work there. It's not work. It's not work. It gets released, but it's not work. It's not for the stars, but it is for a lot of crew.

And I'm kind of rolling that into the job scheme program as well, which is, it's good. Absolutely. Is this work? Is what we're doing work, Tim? Yeah, this is undeniably, unmistakakably work this has all the hallmarks of work i'm up uh we're not like super duper early i actually wanted to do this even earlier than what we are doing it but this was your one day opportunity for a sleep in it's saturday um but i'm up in the morning watching rob schneider for the fourth day in a row and there's more to go

this isn't the end of it um don't want to be here don't want to be doing it so i think that makes it work brother brother brother let me say this let me say this because okay we're only halfway through the review by the way but yes i oh yeah well i just want to say i think i was too harsh on rob singing and i'll return to that note later. Let's continue with the review. Schneider didn't even get to ride the Hotel Transylvania gravy train and he's mostly done bit parts and voice work the last decade. Let's be blunt, he's a has-been. Telling it like it is over here.

Telling it like it is over here. Asian Mama reflects his acknowledgement of this fact, which at times takes on the tone of a confessional of the sniggering schoolboy who has grown up, but still can't help cutting up. I learned some things about him, starting with the fact his eldest child is in fact Al King, a crooner with a magnificently soulful voice. After his stand-up set, Schneider brings her out for a duet of Roy Orbison's In Dreams

that is achingly haunting, but also joyful. Is it? Is that rendition achingly haunting? Would you describe it in those terms, Guy? No, I would describe it as odd. It's odd. It's an odd song choice, and it's an odd creative decision it's like i mean

odd is the most generous euphemistic description of sinister or cynical like it's it's just it's a it is cynical it's a deeply cynical decision to have it in and to close the show on it and uh after yesterday's episode about the um the adam sandler connection to his because he got so much love and respect from what was a beautiful artistic choice from adam sandler to like legitimately put into well get the whole special with songs but to have like a musical tribute to his late friend which and he was such a public figure that everyone can kind of get on board with with um you know being in a moment of remorning chris farley that it it really worked and rochstein looked at that it was like how do i do the least amount of work to generate the closest

amount of public goodwill and money off the back of what sandler did. It's a... How about my daughter, who is one year younger than my wife? Why don't I get her on stage? Because she's got talent, and then I can ride some coattails. Just while we are inside of that conversation, I want to say that that sort of detective work,

very limited detective work that unearthed the age gap and the genesis of their relationship... Hey, give me some fucking credit. I did the research i got the receipts one article yeah that's right but um also i mean it's bolstered by wikipedia pages which are unchangeable of course ironclad uh i i just want to say like it really gave a very different and much more um saddening read on some of the material where rob's talking about how he's been married to his wife for 10 years and every three months she wants a divorce

and we we know at this point that they married at 23 when he was 47 oh yeah sorry 47 yeah and uh his wife says i'm wasting my youth and there's a refrain that he keeps coming back to over the years and he keeps saying no no no no hold on he he makes it funny though because he does it in a faux mexican accent so he keeps saying you've taken my drus yeah yeah it is actually that is that is true that's hilarious and i he sort of keeps going no no it gets better and then you know three years pass and it doesn't get any better and he starts telling her hey you're you're fucking crazy like i'm not the problem here you're not a happy person i'm doing all i can you can leave me sure you can go find

someone else but it's not going to fix your problems. I'm all you've got. I'm your Prince Charming. And it's like, that's already super, super dark and like grim and not actually funny enough to qualify. Like I understand the notion of sort of edgelord comedy or like walking right up to the line of saying something which is intolerable, but sort of either making it funny enough or sort of acknowledging usually when you do that you're voicing an uncomfortable truth it's it's a truth that we don't want to

reckon with there's no reason or another there's no nuance there's no second layer it's it's literally just if like rob schneider at his current age detailing how he has gaslit his wife into remaining in their marriage like in his special before he brings her out. It is, it is like, it's a disaster. It's, it's a confessional.

It's, um, when viewed through that lens, it's quite, um, perform like it's almost, it's performance art in a way. It's so fucked up that it makes it interesting it's not nearly

as interesting as you're making it out to be like it only in the meta analysis after the fact if it was as like raw and and he had any awareness of what was going on and he was discussing that in front of her and brutal on like fuck man now we got something now we have a thing but there is no awareness yeah not the case anyway the review continues so this is these are the things he learned about rob schneider during the special by the way the first one as i've already just read is that he has a daughter after 45 minutes of material one one you get a for that? I also discovered that Rob Schneider is Asian American. No, really. His mother is Filipina.

And his repertoire. It's like the reader has just done a spit take. Yeah. He's what? His mother is Filipina and his repertoire of various Asian accents of English are collected from his childhood. He even breaks out in Cantonese at one point. He mimics his mother's constant demands for straight A's in school and hectoring ways.

I'm really sorry. I know there's a slight delay and I know I keep interrupting you, but at what point does he speak Cantonese? When he's in the Chinese restaurant, at one point, as the proprietor or owner or operator of the restaurant he calls out back to the kitchen to see what dishes are available

and he calls out embarrassingly I'm not intelligent enough to know or educated enough to know whether or not he's speaking in genuine Cantonese or some sort of faux my immediate assumption based on the amount of work that's gone into other parts of the special is that he is just stringing together

syllables and either way it doesn't really qualify the rest of the disaster but the review continues where he says um it's not racist it's accurate he semi-apologizes after one long screed. He jokes that in The Great Awakening, he may be Asian, but he's not Asian enough to get any jobs out of it. Much of the second half of his set is devoted to Schneider's third marriage in two young children.

This review isn't even that good. Is this worth it? I'm just, I hate everything. Yeah, yeah. I hate everything. This review's like a school project review. It reads like, but then this guy's got reviews coming out the wazoo on film.

Yep. You know, popular review website, film. Yep. You know, when you literally never heard of it. And I like being a good reviewer by the fact that he's done quite a lot of

them. You know, when you go Wikipedia and they tell you the movie's got this on rotten tomatoes, this on Metacritic and this on film yap yep yep yep always in the mix you're an unhappy man i'm so unhappy you're an unhappy i feel like it's fucked up my day too because like usually i um you know you want to design these things so they get done so the rest of the day can go.

But I just feel like this is going to cast a really yuck shadow on the rest of the day. I fucking hated this, man. I absolutely hated it. This is like taking me back to the dark days of seasons gone by of Worst Idea. Maybe reminiscent of Sex and the City 2 vibes in the 30s. This is having an incredibly dark effect on you. I mean, it's um it's only a 45 minute

special Tim but it's my Saturday it's an hour and a half out of the day alright yeah that's a lot of time man when you think about it because we're doing that

every day how many hours have we awake a few yeah at least a few 12, 14? 14. 16?

14 to 16. Seems like too much of the day, man. It's just too much. Now let me talk about Rob's singing. What would you have done without this? I was working on a proposal before I started this to try and get funding for a documentary series about um psychedelic drugs that seems like a worthwhile application of my time i don't know if watching rob schneider's

dog shit special for the fourth time in as many days um is as good a use of my time you know mouth young man dog shit you don't like that not at all that sounds like a cool prop and I would agree that this is probably less worthwhile can I talk about Rob's singing dude you can talk about anything you want here's what I want to talk about

I guess this is coming from a place of I was trying to find little bits of light because i can recognize how negative i'm getting and how negative um uh i don't want to say this is making me because i have a decision in this you know it's not like it's all happening to me i get to frame this how i want but um it's it's going bad fair to say it's going badly um either because my hands are on the wheel or the wheel is turning on its own so I just wanted to revisit some bits that I've dumped on Rob on and I want to say

that his singing is fine like I think yesterday I was talking about it being very very bad karaoke and I'd like to upgrade that to it's fine he's got a serviceable vibrato which he cranks out. Do you say vibrato?

Vibrato? Vibrato. Yeah. Nah, it's vibrato, surely. Isn't it? It could be. I don't know. Seems like a weird hill to die on and weird thing to hang me up on

in the midst of me pouring my heart out about how depressed this whole adventure is making me, Guy. I don't think you're doing that play on player you're just you're just saying like this is a big sort of heartfelt tribute to how rob schneider's actually okay at singing that's what you're inside of right now one hundo one hundo so just let me speak my truth oh dude yeah fucking if if rob schneider's singing be the song of life play on i noticed that they didn't put a massive amount of reverb on his voice which is often a trick you do when someone sucks at singing um there's not a ton of reverb that i can hear so well done he's he's raw dogged it and he knows his limitations handing off that high note to his daughter and he says

this one's all you al because he can't hit that and he knows so he doesn't try although it would have been fucking and it is a comedy special it would have been really funny to see him attempt it because you can't edit out part of a song can you that would be tricky you can edit out a joke pretty easily but to edit out a portion of a Roy Orbison tune, that's hard. That's tricky. You got any reaction to that guy, or are you happy to just see me wallow in my misery?

I'm quite enjoying the wallow. Okay. Well, fuck you then, I guess. I'm back to lashing out how do you like them apples i started sending into comments into like i was yeah i just got quite aggressive i was like fuck rob rob is nothing i was like fuck guy fuck rob fuck guy and i think's, I'm back to there now. I blame you for this. Why? Because you said that we should do it out loud and you know,

that I'll do anything that is said out loud on a record. That's a problem with Tim. That's not a problem with. Hmm. You could be right about that. I did find today hard. I didn't, I thought today that we should have watched it once. I felt that.

In total? Yes. But we've watched it more times. Should we talk about some of the jokes, Tim? No. Should we talk about his iconic opener, Sex vs. Cookies? Oh, I thought You Can Do It was his opener. Technically, that is his opener.

That really jutted out to me today. Fuck, it was sad. It was so sad. It's such a demoralizing way to take a stage, is to utter your catchphrase from 20 years ago yeah that's sort of like andy millman level shit and extras when he uh he gets his own sitcom and he it's like all the things that he was trying not to make is what it becomes like to see a comedian trot out a catchphrase from 15 to 20 years ago as they take the stage is it's hard

it's hard to watch it's just like it's just it's a lack of confidence it's a lack of faith in where you are presently the reason that people have come to see you and the product you're about to deliver maybe being too precious though you know maybe it's fine maybe it's fine to do it everyone loves a catchphrase right that's why they exist i'm also engaged in a battle inside my own mind of um trying to like i don't know not get too negative just bring some balance a little bit but while i'm doing that applied to this special i'm constructing these incredibly low bars for rob to meet like guy and i are engaged in in live chat while we watch um because we watch it simultaneously and we've got a little chat thingy up in uh in this this

chrome add-on called netflix party and um i keep saying to you a couple of times throughout this special like well at least i understand that this is a comedy premise so he's got that going for him you know like one in particular is um he sort of sets out this joke where it's uh like woman i know what you're about to say and i can't believe that it's come to this you're explaining the oldest comedy premise in the world i know that you said rob schneider declared i know but this is this is the whole point of what i'm talking about like what is my mind doing to itself he like sets out this premise which is women will tolerate sex in the pursuit of a relationship and men will tolerate a relationship in the pursuit in the pursuit of sex he doesn't word it that cleanly and it goes

on massively too long and it's quite muddled and massively offensive in the wrong take but at least i understand it as a comedy premise which i cannot say for 75 of the special where i just don't really get what he's doing i don't really understand it yeah or like what point he's trying to make it's quite an interesting point that you've raised there because it does sort of like the world must be it sort of explains his character in real Rob and his character as a person, I imagine, because if you think about in terms of these are his ideas that he's worked on and finished and is presenting to the world and as a person you're watching them and saying,

I don't understand. That is a frustrating world to live in for Rob. Yeah. Like a world where in conversation he makes a joke or he makes an aside which is meant to like elicit a very clear response of laughter and he's just met by incredulous like it's a it's a difficult place to be disagreeing with the joke is very different from not recognizing something as being a joke you know and so like at least there's a couple times in the special where i can see the

i can see the silhouette of a joke and i'm like just even i recognize that one even to think about him um even to think about him taking his show real rob to networks and like pitching it and him pitching the jokes and the storylines and everyone in the room like i guess everyone you know in those meetings is always good at pretending to enjoy whatever someone is saying but like i'm just really getting a picture of how exhausting life is for this guy right now for rob yeah but it's entirely of his own making like he refuses to he's a man who refuses to learn i feel like he's a man who refuses to take in new information and and change his opinions based on new data that is presented to him and there's kind of clues to this in the special like when he says um the stuff about how you should you shouldn't you shouldn't do what

your wife or what your partner tells you and you shouldn't interpret what they're saying like on the surface level of the thing they're communicating there's always this other second layer the subtext that they're actually delivering to you so you should ignore the literal words that they tell you and infer your own meaning because that's the true thing they're trying to communicate and i just um i think that that is the core of so many issues and in relationships and life in the world of just people trying to infer what meaning in spite of just like the evidence is right there what they're trying to tell you is what they're trying to tell you so just listen to the words they're using and respond to it there's also if we're talking about those

that bit of material is a reflection of society at earlier in the special when rob does his um earlier in the special when rob does his um his iconic molesting his mother-in-law material that is a great bit yeah great i agree which he prefaces by saying you know sometimes when i'm in bed and i can't get to sleep i just start you know just grabbing you know and he sort of says when he says that someone in the audience goes yeah bud and then it's like an unmistakable voice. And then later on, when he's doing his material about, the thing is, you don't listen. The same voice goes, yeah. Do you know who it is?

It's Nick Swanson. I'll put money on it. They flew him out and they put a microphone right above him dude no you got it wrong swanson and schneider aren't friends because they're they're battling out for the same sort of like that's true position in the sandler verse like they are mortal $60,000 appearance that's got three lines in the in the movie swanson i mean if swanson isn't the special he's not there to supportively heckle. He's there to very destructively

insert himself. Fuck. How many stars would you give this watch, Guy? This special. Because I'm going to give it zero stars. It gets zero stars from zero from me.

No stars. You don't get anything. You get nothing, Rob Schneider. I am going to see if I can rustle us up some company for tomorrow because I do feel a responsibility for this. Can you reach out to Slomps? See if he's around? I have.

Okay, cool. But look, I'll take anyone. I really, truly will. Jesus Christ, you're in a dark Okay, cool. But look, I'll take anyone. I really, truly will. Jesus Christ, you're in a dark place, man. I will investigate this. I am enjoying... This is like... Because I know that this is only a short project.

It is honestly a bit of a nostalgia kick to see you at such a low ebb. That is such a shitty thing to say to your friend. We've done together. I know, but I... What beautiful memories, me seeing you in pain as a listener. This is...

Maybe this is where... I'm your friend, guy. You need to remember that. What we're doing is divorced from reality. I don't think of this sadness as permeating the entirety of a day or week. I'm imagining this is only existing while we're spending time together

doing this project do you carry this energy with you into the day now or do you say that's out of the way i've got 24 hours off couldn't help but influence i don't even think about the fact that i've got to watch it tomorrow thanks for that jackass no it's just like the afterglow of this that i'm not looking forward to but then the the despair of having to do it all again tomorrow. But this is something where we've always been on the same page, where there's never further between you and the next screening than right after you've finished the last one. I know, but these daily watches, man, they're something else.

They're really something else. We picked such a such a fucked source material this time you know thank god for the duration he's got this great CBS sitcom

that I'm hoping we could look into at some point as well anyway it's still morning time here the sun is shining the sky is blue Tim Bat is at his lowest ebb

I am not and I am also responsible thanks for listening we'll see you soon At his lowest ebb, I am not, and I am also responsible. Thanks for listening. We'll see you soon.