Just excuse me.
Let me ask another question. When do you want to make out? Who do you make out to? Sinatra?
A mess?
That's a stupid question.
One question.
Answer that.
It's a relevant I won't to answer about you.
I'm married.
We don't make out.
Well, it is December, and this is glop culture. It's a two man glop culture. Might be three now, we don't know.
Now, we don't know.
Now, we don't know. I'm John pod Hort's in New York and in Princeton, New Jersey. Is Rob Long, Hi, Rob John? How are you?
Happy holidays?
Happy holidays to you too, Just holidays.
I think Conica starts on Christmas Day?
Isn't it today? Around about? Yes, it's a late Conica. So we will all be so clebrating. So there's a little factoid for you. Interesting factoid for you. Because Honka, as you may know, extends eight nights and will be extending into January. The year twenty twenty five will be a rare year in which in the in the is it the Gregorian calendar is that we call it or the Julian.
I think it's that we're in Okay.
There will actually be two Honkahs in twenty twenty five. It's the end of the earlier Knka and then the beginning of the new Honkah.
At the end, it's it's a bonanza of honicas.
Yeah, some of us are hoping that there will be a miracle of the oil, just as as in the original honic As. You may know, the miracle Knica was that the oil burned for eight nights instead of one. Some of us are hoping that the oil will burn in on the ports of Iran for eight hundred nights from many many, never for many nights, as the Iranian capacity to export and produce and refine oil is destroyed.
Now that Iran is entirely without defenses and should be punished for its monstrous behavior over the last forty five years and is in uh We and the Israelis and others have all kinds of good reasons to that. But you know what, I'm going.
To political Rah, you are, you are, and you know what I just want to say. I wish everybody well, that's that's my thing. I wish everybody well, it's a happy holidays.
Are you wishing the moll as well?
I'm wishing the mill as well. I'm I'm here's here's what I am. I'm standing at the window. I've thrown open the window and I'm shouting down, boy boy, what day is it? And he goes, that's why it's Christmas days? And I said, and I'm saying to him, does the does the Greenes, the grocer or the poultry mongers still have the turkey in the window? And he says, give me the one as big as me. And I say, charming, delightful, lad. And that's that's that's the spirit that I'm in.
But you know, why is the grocer open? Why does the butcher shop open on Christmas Day? What kind of monster has that shop open instead of celebrating Christmas with his family? How come we've never taken a turn down that road in a revisionist history of a Christmas.
Carol because he's a Jew?
Oh okay, fair enough now, I just want to say.
That that would be like, boy boy, is the Chinese restaurant down the street open? You mean things such one delight why?
Yeah? Yes, charming? That wonderful. Can I get some mushu pancakes? Please? I just get a duck pushu pancakes for the entire tidy Tim family cratches. They love twice cooked pork.
I gonna have a nice vindalo, you know, speaking of interesting spinoffs, Oh, how about a spinoff? Now?
Jonah uh Goldberg is not with us because he is caught in traffic. But Jonah as as as everyone who has now been built bored enough to listen to this podcast for I don't know twelve thirteen years knows, Jona, I have an unhealthy obsession with the television show The Odd Couple, So rob with a. Bashar al Assad having fled to Moscow in la uh On you know, December eighth, Bashar al Assad was asked to remove himself from his country of residence. Yes, that request came from his people.
Deep down he knew they were right, But one day he also knew that he would somehow return to murder them all.
Wells to go, Yeah, there was to go.
He showed up at the Moscow apartment of his friend Edward Snowden.
Now, are you just did you just invent this?
Yes?
Because okay, because I have to say that we have a listener a fan who's a writer, very fine writer, name is Eric Twardzik. And he just sent me. He sent me yesterday sick on my idea, Edward Snowden, but share all assade have to share an apartment in Moscow.
Okay, you see that. Great minds think aike.
And it's now And he had a title too, I'm giving him credit. Yes, two bedroom, one Baptist.
Oh, that's good.
It's pretty good.
Right, that's good. Yeah, it is uh that this is the way it should go. Now we need we need Armando Yanucci, the author, the director of the Death of Stalin, Oh my God, to capture in full the world of the Assads.
I find all that fascinating. I'm so interested in the TikTok of it all, just the actual specifics of it all. There's this moment and I can't I'm not really comparing these two situations, but I think that in terms of my interest, they are the same. I saw this this clip of Rudy Giuliani and he's saying, I don't have any money, I don't have a bank account, can't get any cab. Everything's tied up. I can't if I by hail a taxi cab. He's a very New York way
to say it. But if if I call a cab, which of course yes, I have no way to pay them. I can't go to the bank because they can't get used the ATM card and there's no money in there anyway. I find that really fascinating, like that that that is what happens. And so but shir sad they left. I don't think there's like all the fift of roses. I think they could. They took what they could carry. They're like the czars, like the Czarists, right, yeah, and now
he's in Moscow. At some point they're going to say you owe us, where's your rent? Where's your rent?
Yeah?
What are you going to do?
I mean, where's the rent? I know it's very important. I you know, there is this novelist that you and I both are are fans of. Alan First, Oh yeah, of course, who has written these wonderful books about Europe in the nineteen series and nineteen forties while the war is going on, kind of spy novels whatever. He wrote one about Paris, oh yeah, which is called The Something.
Of Night, The World at Night, The World at Night.
And what what fascinated me about it is it's this portrait of this movie producer who is trapped in Paris when when the Nazis invade and has to sort of keep himself alive. And much of the book is dedicated to what it is like to live in a city where you have no money and you're starving and you don't have any money to go and buy yourself a sandwich.
I mean, you have, but you have money, you just can't get to it.
You can't get to it, and uh, it's across town, and you can't get across town because if you someone might ask for your papers. And the just the logistics of life an extremists is a is a genuinely fascinating subject.
It all becomes you know, as you know, I'm I'm in seminary John, I'm studying, I'm taking Holy orders soon. And one of the most interesting things about I'm sort of fascinated by in the in the both the Hebrew Bible and also it's analog or it's a you know, it's part two. It's a little code of the New Testament. Is the idea of written of wealth is not a It's not a philosophical or abstract notion. It's a physical thing.
You have.
You have gold, and you hoard it, and it's heavy, and it's in bags and you carry it around with you and in your little purse, and you have to store it, and you to think about it, like we're you gonna put it, you gotta bury it, you gotta guard it. It's like a thing. And if I take it from you, you don't have it anymore. It's just that. That's just that, and so so gold and hoarding and money. It's everywhere. It's in It's in the Psalms everywhere. It's
in Ecclesiastes everywhere. It's in the Proverbs, it's in the New Testament. Of course, Jesus talking about a lot, and we just don't have that. That idea doesn't exists anymore. It's so we don't. It's a piece of paper. But it must seem to you that if you're Bashir al Asad, that you just get in an airplane and you fly to Moscow, and that piece of paper still counts. And if your putin you're like, no, no, that paper doesn't count.
Yeah. You know, it's funny because one of the best books ever written about America and economics and American history is by John Steel Gordon. It's called an Empire of Wealth. Oh, And one of the things that he describes in this really wonderful book is the transition to the modern economy that was represented by the idea that people came to accept that a piece of paper could stand in for something of ye could stand for that pile of gold. Right that it was. It was the representation of the
pile of gold. And this was the big difference between the Jacksonians and the the people who were opposed to Andrew Jackson, because Andrew Jackson could not get into his head the idea of currency he could intellectually held.
Doesn't make any sense. It really doesn't make.
Sense, right, it doesn't make sense. It is the entire kem to the modern economy.
Well, there's always that story. We always hear that story. But in the Fed, you know, they have they move gold in forklifts from locker to locker depending on the clothes that day and sort of the closing out the accounts at the end of the day. And it's just a stupid thing that I mean, the guy could like just I guess, sleep late or something or or or leave work early, and then some gold will be in the wrong locker and then technically some country could be insolvent.
But it's really just moving the gold the right spot.
I believe it's possible. Could it be possible that Jonah Goldberg is.
Oh Joanah Goldberg?
Is that Jonah Goldberg? I seel it's Jonah Goldberg. Have a little picture of a handset of a phone zoom, and I believe it's Jonah Goldberg.
On I see. I was listening to that gold of a conversation and I didn't want.
To you can't come, you can't come now and derogate.
Yeah, he's not derogating, he's praising. He's praising this gold of a conversation. I think, Jonah, I do want to ask you how traffic is?
Uh, traffic is ass cancer, Okay, traffic is terrible.
So I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna go back into the boy. So we have to go back into the glop memory banks to remember the day when our own Rob Long was daily driving from his apartment in Greenwich Village out to Eastern Long Island, far Eastern produced to produce a television show. And he drove himself every morning. You might think that a man of high a steam executive producing a major network sitcom would have a driver and a limo taking him no, but let me.
Tell you, let me tell you. Yes, not only did I not have that, they the studio. They were very careful about saying we we won't pay for your uber more than twice a week.
So Rob had a car. Rob out a car, and he was driving, and we were doing a blop in while he was in his car. He was crossing, I believe, going across the Williamsburg Bridge to get onto the B QUI to get onto the l I E to get out to Hicksville or wherever the studio was. Literally Hicksville, that's where we're talking. And then Rob is like, oh, holy hell, okay wait, I got to jump off. So it turned out while we were doing Rob got into a major traffic accident on Delancey Street.
Well it was a major. I was sideswiped by a South Asian gentleman. And this is the I don't know what.
His being South Asian has to do with this.
Rob, Yeah, let me feel exactly, let me finish. I'll tell you the story. It really does. It's very It's germane I swear. So I was sideswiped and I got out. I yelled and screamed, and I was late and uh, you know, the podcast was ruined, as we say. And then I got to work, and this is this is now twenty seventeen, maybe twenty eighteen, a different era. It's hard to believe that I got out of I got out of the car I got and I got to work,
and I was telling everybody what I was hit. And I said to I said, in the sort of tone of voice, and the guy hit me. He was like from India. And I looked with Daggers at the young writer on our staff who was South Asian from India, who's very very very good, a very funny guy, and I said, so, you know, I'm really gonna have to ask you to, you know, chip in to fix my car. And and and he said, I'm very very sorry what my people have done. You know, we're not a driving culture.
And went on and on, and I realized and we all laughed and it was very fun. And the rest of the day I kept saying, yeah, I got in a car accident, and I would shoot Daggers at him and we'd all laugh. And I realized that that very joke would get me not just fired, but probably arrested.
Yes, Yeah, and probably two weeks later I mean what you didn't. There wasn't much time between that joke. Yeah, when that joke could no longer be made.
Absolutely absolutely.
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off your purchase. And thank you Luhman for sponsoring this episode. Okay, So, Jonah, I want to ask you an important question about America today. Yes, so, as you know, a healthcare ceo was shot and killed on a New York City street. An amazing dragnet was placed around to find the shooter, who was found yesterday. I guess as we're taping this Luigi Mangioni is his name.
And not to get overly serious, but are you at all troubled by the fact that there are certain commentators on what I would call the anti Trump former right now, kind of like moderate left who seemed to be overly excited by the homo erotic nature of the photographs of Luigi Mangioni on an out inside in Hawaii with a six pack.
I didn't think that this question was going to go to homo.
Like well, if you knew who I was talking about, you would know why I went to homo eroticism. But I'm not going to name names, but in any case, that was the that that that was actually a key element of the reaction on the podcasting question.
Yeah, so I missed that. I've seen a lot of asenine stuff said about this thing, and I'm utterly and completely appalled by it. And do you guys remember Fox used to keep this in the realm of pop culture of the moment you. Fox briefly had that series, the one like two seasons with Kevin Bacon and the guy
who played Mark Antony from Rome, the British actor. And the British actor was basically a literature professor who convinced all these hot grad students and other people to become part of a stabby cult where they would just stab people all over the place.
Yes, and I thought it.
Was like the most ridiculous plot, but I found the show kind of weirdly compelling, and I think, like that's like, that's what this reminds me of, is this is people watching real events. I've been complaining about this since wrote my last book about like people following you know, events and politics, like it's a form of entertainment. And then you know, you root for the hero and you root against the enemy, and you don't care what happens to the enemy because all you wanted to hear to get
the mcguffin. And here's this like family man who's shot in cold blood and they're these, you know, and there are thousands of people getting two message about it and thinking it's awesome. And that was before we saw the guys six pack ads. And I just think it's it's it's it's so friggin grotesque. Yeah, and I don't I don't think there's any defense of it. You can say, what do you want about how healthcare companies suck, that's fine.
But like the one thing I'm thinking about writing about this tomorrow, the one thing I cannot friggin get my head around, is that these people think that if if healthcare wasn't run by capitalists, there would be no rationing
of healthcare. And it puts me into this frame of mind like, gosh, you know, I really even hate thinking about this, but like, at some point someone's gonna shoot someone from the National health Care Service in Britain or a bureaucrat from Canada for denying coverage, and you're gonna see all these people go, well, that's different. It's not. It's just so friggin stupid and evil.
I agree, you know, it's EA, that's wrong. But I guess I'm more struck by the number of people. I guess maybe my Twitter feed is different from everyone else's that are saying things like this doesn't add up. His arm is in a different position in the one photograph as it is in the other photograph or something. Those abs, how do you get those abs with that back injury? And you're like, okay, that's actually actually I don't have an answer to that.
And by the way, we do we do have right presumptuum innocence. We don't know that he did it.
We know that, Okay, what I mean to say.
What I mean to say is that in a this is there are there are sort of forms and norms in relation to this. He was arrested in Nowton in Pennsylvania. He was carrying the same fake ID that the guy had at the hostel, that matched up with the photo, that matched up with the description and all of that. He's pled not guilty, he's fighting extradition, all of that. So that whole show, you had a manifesto.
A manifest like we haven't we haven't read the MET.
I understand he had a manifesto and he had a ghost gun, which looks remarkably like the ghost gun that was used.
I mean, yes, I'm not saying what are you saying?
Yeah, the paraphrase throw some circumstantial evidence is very convincing, as when you find the murder weapon, the I and the manifesto.
But isn't that too perfect?
I think that Emerson, I don't think that's Henry throw.
Isn't it just oh, some thing some throws the line? Thing some circumstandial evidence is very strong. Is when you find a trout in the milk, and so I was paraphrasing that.
I know you're you're so literate, that is you you you nailed me to the wall on that one in the car boy trout in the milk. But don't you.
Find it strange? I mean, they found the murder weapon, and they found a manifest stow, and they found a ghost gun. Isn't it all adding up a little too much? Yeah, I'd be more believable they didn't find any of the I'd be more convinced that he did it. If they didn't find any evidence, they couldn't connect him to the crime. That's what That's my point.
Listen, listen. I think that the problem with talking about this, and like our mind inevitably goes to jokes and things like that, is that, in fact, this may be one of the worst things that has ever happened. And I'm now not being hyperbolic because this is no because I think this could be the tip of a terrorist iceberg in the United States. Let me just lay this out for you, just very quickly, Okay. Nineteen sixty eight, nineteen sixty nine, Richard Nixon beats Humphrey in the election.
There's a starting there.
Let me just spin it out for thirty seconds. Okay, there, when.
You say I gotta settle in, I feel like.
Then there have been any war protests were like for a year, year and a half, right, moratoriums, marches on the Pentagon, all of that going on. Populous is getting
more and more radicalized on college campuses. And what happened was that that all morphed after, particularly after they started doing a lottery for the draft and various other things, a lot of the street action stuff settled down, and then came the wave of domestic terrorism from sixty nine through seventy three, twelve hundred bombings domestic bombings in the United States. A lot of them have military recruitment centers, banks,
things like that. There were bank robberies. This country went nuts, and the weathermen emerged, and of course the held up the house next to you in Branwich Village. And I've been wondering what would happen if Trump would win? Right, for so for months on the commentary podcast, we said, you know, well, Trump may win, and there could be riots in the streets if Trump wins. Look, they've all been kind of primed because of what happened after October
seventh on the college campuses. And then it didn't happen, Right, it didn't happen. Maybe it's because he wanted to convince a victory, or maybe it's whatever blah blah blah, or maybe what we just saw on the street of New York. But you know, is the beginning of the action that is going to be taken in regards to the horrible inequalities and the billionaires running everything and all of that. And this is very reticent of late nineteenth century, very
reticent of it. Go read The Possessed by Dostoevski or the Princess Casamasso James or the secret agent by.
The culture to the secret agent.
Right, So this is a thing that happened where right where people were by by Joseph Conrad, right where people were targeted. The way terrorists acted was either they tried to assassinate leaders, which has now become extraordinarily difficult, even though someone almost killed Trump right three months ago. Or they could just start doing random stuff against industrialists.
I guess. But you know what, can we wait and see it's Christmas, come on yet, have a little advent, have a little cheer. Let's could we don't?
We don't have advents?
He seems a little he's you know what, I could use the little window. Maybe that's the problem.
That could be it only everybody had an advent calendar and we.
Only had maybe. I guess I just would like to just alternatively. Nutty people do nutty things, and they are in their own little nutty world. It seems like this guy was. We don't know for a fact, but probably and I think that's that's the natural governor to this kind of thing, which is that you have to be a little bit nuts. I mean, when was the last time.
Yeah, I'm I'm normally the one talking John and Steve Hayes and a lot of other people off ledges about catastrophizing, and I think John's closer to.
Right on this one. Not because because normally we have a mass shooter and something like that, like you have the people who are encouraged by that have to make these inferences why they're just the general same or intomy of them. But this they're turning this, this schmuck, this murderer into a folk hero. And I'm thinking about writing about this because you know, there were a lot of copycats of dB Cooper after he, you know, successfully did that hijacking and parashut it out of the plane. They
made the Treat Williams movie Out of Him. Planes actually have a thing called Cooper veins because they had to retrofit all the planes to make it impossible to do what Cooper had done because there were so many copycats.
And when you have like one hundred thousand people responding with laughing emo emojis to the United Healthcare statement of remorse about the guy's murder, like there are people and you have people, you know, people gushing about the dude's abs and you know, going on TV and praising him as if he's some sort of Robin Hood John Brown against capitalism. I think that that will create copycats in a way that like the normal just kind of like crazy people do crazy stuff.
Thing doesn't Maybe, I guess I want to say, is that that that a smiley emoji thumbs up emoji costs you nothing. That the people's behavior and statements online are utterly, utterly devoid of any commitment or action. That's why they're so much five and but just like you know, I just look that the unibomber didn't inspire any more unibums, just this guy.
It seems so like Taylor Lawrence, who is you haven't read my manifesto roup.
Well, that's true. That's true only because it's a only because you insist it has full frontal nudity in it.
So, Taylor Lawrence, who is, I'm going to I'm going to hang up for a few minutes and I'll join you on the computer. You keep going, okay, I'm on there, Okay, So I will quickly just mention Taylor Lawrence, the internet journalist who worked for the New York Times and then the Washington Post and then left the Washington Post after.
Calling Biden a mass murderer or something because of Dava Yeah, then went to start a sub stack, went to Vox to do a podcast. She said that she was full of joy at the news of the murder. Let me finish. It's full of joy. She's thrilled, exciting. You know, she has long COVID and people are breathing air around her and killing her. And then she went on Piers Morgan last night in London, I guess where his show airs.
And he said to her, I don't understand you're expressing joy at the murder of a man in the street. And she said, yes, I'm expressing joy because healthcare people are do monstrous things or whatever. And then he says, let me just get this straight. You say that you're joyful at the murder, the cold blooded murder of somebody unarmed walking down a street in New York City. And then she said, well, I didn't say joy, and he said, yes, you did. You said joy. And then she said, okay,
I said joy. Yes, Now why do I bring this up. She's crazy. I've always thought she was crazy. All of that. She's a major American journalist, Like this is somebody who has worked for the most.
What is that?
I don't think that doesn't matter. She's a joke, she's a hideous character, she's a loathsome person. And that's a looksome thing to say. And because we all are amplified constantly, and we all have a giant microphone in front of us, anytime you want to, she's she's been she said, she's been revealed. I don't that doesn't that does not mean. All that means is that she's irrelevant. I just don't think you can connect.
We don't know that she's irrelevant. I think that's what.
Yeah, you're right again, Taylor Lorenz could inspire and this guy could inspire the next twenty years. But I just don't think there's any evidence of that, and I just don't think there's any evidence in the past of that. And I just don't think that picking out Taylor Lorenz as like as a data point is is valuable. She's a fringe character. Fringe characters get a microphone now, they don't have any effect. What on earth name one. I hope you're packed on so far.
I hope you're right. I hope you're right. My fear is that there is something bigger and larger going on that the that the institutional crisis, the anti institutional fervor, the idea that you know, inequality now governs everything and everyone is being screwed by the rich, and all of that creates a permission structure over time that will mean that when somebody shoots somebody in the street, there is
a panoply of people. Let me about this way, what about like, let's go to Norman Mailer, Right, Norman Mayler writes an essay called the White Negro in nineteen fifty four, which is the celebration of the beating up and the killing of a shopkeeper in Harlem by a bunch of thugs, White Negro. This is the essay he's saying that basically, they were expressing a yop of you know, about the unfairness and injustice in our time, right, Okay? Was that
an outlier? Yeah, it was kind of, except like ten fifteen years late, ten years later, when the crime wave starts in the United States, some of the ideas that were floated by Mailer in this outrageous essay start becoming the coin of the realm in intellectual journals and in think tanks and in discussions on sixty minutes about why people are committing such crimes and all of that. Ideas are infectious, and irresponsible ideas are no less infectious than
responsible ideas. And so I'm not saying it's going to happen. I am worried that it's going to happen.
Yes, I get it, I get it.
I mean, I see, I see that. I just feel like the problem with the interconnected media culture is that everything seems important. And the good news is that nothing is important. That's also the bad news. Nothing has an impact. Our problem isn't that everything has this enormous weight. It's that even the important things are treated trivially. Everything's being trivialized,
including this guy. When people talk about his abs, it seems callous because they but they don't because in a sentimental culture, or we don't have any image of his wife and children that could easily happen. I mean, I guess what I mean is that I just come out from a different side of telescope. I think the problem is that nothing is important. Now everything is, but lol, nothing matters.
There are two things about murder, right, So he was Hamilton was murdered on a street. We have two ways of looking at murder, one of which is that murder creates these victims, right the victims are his family, children, the people who have been denied the rest of his existence, the snuffing out of his own existence, his legacy, all of that. But we don't look at murder solely as
a crime against an individual or a family. There is a long common law tradition that says that not just you know, if you kill one soul, you murder the world entire, which is which is a biblical line, but also that this is a crime against the United States,
It is a crime against our society. People are not allowed to go around killing other people for any reason unless that reason is that they are in fear for their lives and they have a merited and justifiable reason to do what they must do to protect themselves or to order to protect others. Otherwise, we have no truck with it. We do not accept it. We do not believe that it is because if you say one murder is justified, there is no way not to say that any murder is justified.
But there are always people who have this crackpot view we now hear from them. I don't think it's anything new. I mean, if this was an MSNBC podcast, we would be using the same language to talk about Daniel Penny, wouldn't we.
Yeah, there are people are trying to compare the two things, and I think they're very different. But I agree that like people are. I mean, you can make it. It's very Gotham, right, Like this guy's bane, the guy who shot the United Healthcare guy, and Daniel Penny is like Bruce Wayne. Yeah.
Yeah. The difference between them, and the reason that the comparison is so horrific is that Daniel Penny and the jury found this. So I'm not just opining about it. Daniel Penny did what he did to protect thirty other people from a marauding psychopath.
Who, by the way said it essentially said I'm gonna maraud and kill you and you can't do anything about it.
Yeah, So he sacrificed him So he took his own life into.
I'm just talking about he sacrificed himself to save the lives of thirty million people caught up in the rapacious maw of capitalistic exploiter healthcare. I just heard an interview on NPR basically saying that, yeah, that's right, right.
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I feel it's weird that the guy did that Feels So Good song. It was such a big hit. I remember that, Chuck.
Can I tell my Chuck Mitt Wait a minute, I now I now need to ask you if I've told this story like recently, because now I'm having one of those senior moments. I have a Chuck Mangione story that is a very name Okay, so should I tell it here? Scott, I just came in to say my story involves the
restaurant Elaine's. Sure, okay, legendary legendary restaurant Elanes eighty eighth and Second Avenue, a watering hole for journalists and everybody in New York and Woody Allen for thirty thirty five years until Elaine died about fifteen years ago, and for a brief moment, I was a denizen of Elaine's in the late nineties. Elaine liked me. I was a serve. I was a figure at the New York Post, which
is very important to her. She enjoyed my company. So I would go in to impress girls or I was dating or whatever, going a couple of times a week. And the big thing was when Elaine came and sat at your table. That was like a sign you were you were like, you were a hot person. So I was briefly a hot person. And Elaine sits down at my table. I can't remember what it was a different time. Yes, I was hot then ain't.
I ain't no hat and also Elaine Laine was Elaine was really harriers.
Anyway, So we're sitting there and Chuck Mangioni comes in the author of the song feels so good. No relation apparently to Luigi as far.
As we know.
Too convenient, don't you think.
And Elaine says, oh no, oh no, And I said what She's like, Oh man, he's going to play. I just know it. He's going to play. And it ruins the whole evening. These guys they come in Groover, Washington did this once and they come in and they just start playing and it just ruins the whole vibe of the and I'm like, really, it's kind of cool, Chuck Mango are gonna come and play. She's like, you don't understand, Like, we want people to talk, we want people to have
a good time. They don't stop talking to listen to some smooth jazz nonsense. And sure enough, Chuck Mangione stands up, Rob's gonna start playing, stands up and takes out his flugel horn or whatever the hell it is, and then he starts playing.
The best of a disco. Here. Here it goes on. I will tell you this anyway.
He went on for like four minutes, and Elaine, being a brilliant restaurantor, was totally right. Everyone stops talking. Yeah, people are kind of getting uncomfortable. They didn't want to stop talking. Yeah, right, they're there to be hanging out with each other. And then it was sort of over, and then there was this kind of uncomfortable kind of applause, and then that.
One more time and someone says, what are and you'll chuck the out. My connection to feels so good. It came out nineteen seventy seven, and I was once a boy scout camp and so I was I don't know, I was eleven, maybe twelve at the time, and an older boy said to me, who may have been twelve or thirteen at the most said, you know that song that feels a good song, that Chuck Menji Andi song. It's like, yeah, yeah, she just just remember this. I'll tell you this. It's a great makeout.
Uh wait, Jonah, who do you like to make out? Two more? Sinata of mathis? Sinatra? Of mathis.
Sinatra?
Okay, that's uh, that's my I was talk about d know what I don't and like I'm just imagining. I'm sorry, you know what. Now I'm going. I'm going. I'm digging so deep. It's a scene and diner all right, right, Gottenburg.
Says, who do you make out to?
Sonata? They have this like five minute fantastic conversation about whether you make.
Out to Sinatra with Johnny Mathis. That's all I.
Can. I can I change gears real quick because I'm all, I'm all hyped up driving and I don't want to talk about murder anymore. So, you know, I'm sure you guys have had this experience where, for some reason, they put certain movies into rotation, and you happen to catch the movie, particularly the same scene of the movie, like over and over again in your channel surfing at the weirdest times. Yeah, So I've been watching I've been I've caught National Treasure, the first one, you know, the Nick
Cage movie, like fifteen times. Now I've caught the last ten minutes of that movie. And there's a scene in it that for anyone who hasn't seen the movie, maybe and you really care, uh, skip ahead thirty seconds a minute. But they find the treasure, right, they find this game. Oh no, they find this great treasure and everyone's happy.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. So it's sort of like.
The scene in Raising Arizona where Nathan Arizona leaves the gun in the occupied crib and it just gives you anxiety that you're like, you can't.
Leave a loaded gun in with a bunch of babies in the grip.
So they literally have the hot blonde chick Fine, the missing scrolls from the library of alex Andretta and then Alexandria, and then like literally thirty seconds later, the next thing Nick Cage does is realizes that the room is honeycombed with these braziers or whatever full of ignitable gunpowder, and he's like, we need more light in.
Here, and he lights it on fire, and you're just like you know, like like if you find a fossil, you're supposed to like back up really slowly and not touch anything or anything like that. The idea that like you're gonna have this wildly open flame around where you just found like Aristotles or Aristophanes missing poems. It drives me crazy and I start screaming at the TV about it. So anyway, I thought I would add that to the conversation.
Thank you. Well. It's like, I was so scared by Alien when I first saw I saw the night that it opened in Chicago when I was in college, and it was terrifying and I had to walk out because I was so terrified. But it did have this trope that I now recognize, had I been more sophisticated, would have made me think that the movie was a laugh riot. And it's true of all of these haunted house movies,
which is essentially what Alien is. It's a haunted house movie in space, which is like, there are seven people, right, and there's something stalking them, so their genius plan is to go off in seven different directions. Yeah, yeah, you know, we have to do split up, right, And every time you see that, now you're like.
What are you doing.
Balance, you make a phalanx like you.
The Roman soldiers understood this two thousand years ago, Like you all get a circle back to back so that everybody has eyes on everything and then you can savor them. It's like, you know what I'm gonna go. You know, over there, I'm gonna go. You go over there, and you go over there, and then will you all be eaten? Serially?
And you can't that doesn't have a name. You go into that dark area where we heard that noise.
Yeah, yeah, well that was always the great thing on Star Trek, which was always like, oh look it's Jim's friend from Start Fleet Academy. It's like, well, he'll be.
Start the countdown clock for that day.
Well you remember that. It's a fantastic joke on that in Galaxy Quest when Sam Rockwell realizes he's gonna he's the one who's going to die because he was only on one episode. He's the starting guy.
The guys in the Red Shirts always died, you know, yeah.
So oh my god, like I'm not going to survive anyway. Those things are so maddening when you when your disbelief you have spent movies, have to spend all this time getting you to spend your disbelief simply because life does not work like a plot in a movie, and you
kind of fall into it and let it happen. And then they do this thing where they betray you or violate this compact that they've made with you, where you're going to go along with them as long as they don't make you feel like you're an idiot, and like an idiot.
It's a term for that. It's called hang a lantern. You got to hang a lantern on it, meaning you you you call attention to it, you say it's crazy. Who would have thought that the combination for the sake of zero zero zero? Who would have thought that your dad is my thing? You hang a lantern on it, and once you want you acknowledge it. Audience are like, fine, I get it right, because that stuff that does happen.
But you just you can't pretend that it's normal. You have to have your characters say there's like two tricks, right, one is hanging a lantern and the other is It's always the problem with exposition, because it's usually with things that you have this incres Now, of course, people are so lazy, they just have the guy in the movie who works on the computer to do the well, I have to get to the frame. Yeah, ten minutes to launch.
You have to have that.
But when you had exposition that you need to get out and you didn't want to be cheap about it, all you had to do. It's amazing. People just don't do this anymore. Old movies always did this. You have two characters argue about it. Right, if I'm arguing with you over what happened on Tuesday, the audience knows everything they need to know about us, and we're actually doing something dramatic. But people don't do that anymore. What they really do is they just have the guy at the
computer turn See here's the problem. This is this, This is this kind of chemical reaction.
Or you could have two implausibly well groomed, really hot whres make out in the background while little Finger explains huge devices in the fraightground and you're like, what, oh, Gil, thanks for explaining that.
You know.
That was an an old Bogart line. But Boger had some It was in some one of one of his detective movies. I don't know if it was multis Falcon. It might have been big sleep where he Uh, you know he's got this two paragraphs and that's what you knew because you saw Bryson leave the bar and you knew that he had And Bogart look it, looks up from this and says, what what am I doing here?
And what you got to say this is so we know we didn't know who did it the murder, and he goes, you're gonna put two camels in the background, and then he used the common Anglo Saxon expletive for intercourse because that's the only thing that's going to keep people interested in.
Yeah. Well, there's that great scene in Love and Death, one of the funniest movies ever made, very hard to find, by the way, as a lot of Woody Allen is for obvious reasons. But there's a scene when you know, there's Napoleon and Napoleon has a double. Uh. Love and Death is, you know, a parody of Russian novels. So Napoleon and Napoleon has a double, and the guy who plays Napoleon and the double is the guy who plays
the principle in Back to the Future James Tolkien. So and Napoleon's faks like this, and then they say, we're going to introduce your double, and then the double comes in. He's like, hey, are you doing, your highness? I hate to see you anyway. In the foreground, you get this speech by Napoleon's aid, who is like and then they will come and they will kill the wrong Napoleon, and I will become the dictator. I will become the leader,
and they will know my name and history. Sidney Applebaum, you never pay any attention to this dialogue because in the background, the two Napoleons have started to have a fist fight and wrestle because they meet each other, they're talking, and then as all this is going on, Alan in a brilliant piece of staging, has the two Napoleons un cheating each other and throwing each other on the ground. I don't know when you called that's not hanging a lantern on it, but.
That's something else. I really like the idea, Like can you imagine I mean, I mean, since we're talking about culture, I mean imagine going in I mean I cannot imagine going into a studio or even trying to raise money even an indie picture. Say it's a parody of Russian novels.
Well, remember The thing about Woody Allen is he had this deal yeah United Artists, and they said, do whatever you want, we'll back you. You know, if you spend three million dollars, we're not you.
Still would expect at some point to have a conversation, Hey, what do you got just two minutes here?
I just want to ask you.
So it's a parody of Russian novels.
I love it.
I love it. I'm one hundred percent on board. I'm just wondering where if you look and seize anybody talk to me about Russian novels.
But the seconds why it's so great because it's got the two Napoleons punching each other, It's got the village idiot's convention, It's got the herring salesman who marries Diane Keaton and walks around his house having a conversation with a herring that is sitting on his arm, like the herring is a parrot. Like this is one of the silliest movies ever made with this through line of this insane and it doesn't Russian.
Plot, and it does include the funny word herring. Herring is a funny word. What do you all used it a lot? Herring. Hey, John, do you do you like pickled Herring?
I love pickle?
Do you really?
I do? I know many people I like. I like Harrying and the raw really love.
I know.
It's a very it's a it's a it's an acquired taste. Some people like tongue. Jonah, Yeah, I liked tongue. I liked tongue. I liked tongue once, tongue later, and it was the most disgusting thing.
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that will power the Christmas economy. I am sure, Oh, so I didn't get to tell you guys about my trip to India. Oh yeah, oh yeah, you know, I don't.
We don't have time to get into speaking.
Did you did you meet the guy who smashed into Rob's car? Yeah?
Tell him I'm still made. It was a really interesting trip, lots of things going on. All I will say is.
We did this trip up into the Himalayas, saw the Chinese Russia and the Chinese India border. Very cool. We were treated as like real dignitaries. Had They put on shows for us, did all sorts of cool things everywhere we went. They gave us special like scars that we had to bow, sort of like lays and Hawaii kind of thing. And I had to sample several different preparations of yak products. Oh sure, I had industries yak yack milk,
yet yak this grizzled. Do you remember the scene in Time Bandits where God yells don't touch that that's concentrated evil. That is how they prepared the yak for us. So just these dark black as coal bits of gristle that you eat that were basically the everlasting gobstalkers of stoppers of rat rantid meat and I started to get those beads of sweat under my eyes and got the full pre vomit sweats from trying to eat yak and yack milk is maybe worse.
And yak cheese smells.
It's like an old vaudeville skit. It smells so bad, like like animals would drop out, like instead of reading the the funniest joke in the world that kills the Germans when you read it, you know, like if you just open the bag, like things, living creatures would fall out of trees.
Hard to believe something called yak cheese is delicious, but yeah, it's super super super fermented. But other than that, you know, that was that's that's that's the that's the news you can use. It's just that, unless it's going to cause an international infant incident or really offend your host in some way, just avoid the yak I mean, And there may be better preparations that I missed.
But you know, you know, you know what you have. You know what you that I have that you don't have you could have, you can you can claim rob anyone can claim it. They don't know just sayer, But well, I have.
A yak allergy. I would bet you that yak is kosher.
Probably not, I don't think so. It's basically a probably probably wasn't slaughtered.
That's true.
That's true. Okay, So there you go. I'm gonna tell my I'm gonna tell my Himalas joke.
And then I have a joke.
Okay, And I have a joke. And the little old lady, little old lady shows up, you know in Ulan bats or whatever that, you know, whatever the catman do. Says, I need to go up and see that. The the dolly chris up up at the twenty thousand feet in this in the monastery. And they say, ma'am, he won't see anyone, he doesn't see anybody. He never sees anyone. Also, it will take six months to hike up there. She says, I don't care. You gotta go up there, gotta go
see him, very important. Hike up takes six months. They get there, they say, I'm sorry, he's gone into hibernation for the next you're gonna have to just sit here in base camp for six months, live through the winter before you can see him. And she's like, fine, I'll sit here, it's fine. This here's six months, six months, the spring comes and she's like, okay, you gotta let me and go see the Dolly Christmas, the doctor, the Dolly Chrisman. They say, okay, but very important. You're only
allowed to speak three words to the Dolly Christmas. That is all you're allowed. All people are only allowed to say three words to him. She says, fine, three minutes is all I need. So they usher her the giant you know temple and you know the echoing, and there's the gongs and you know incense, and there's this little man sitting one hundred feet it's cross legged, you know, in front of a giant gong. And he's sitting there and she walks after him and she says, Sheldon, come home.
That's a really good joke. I feel like that.
Thank you, thank you. Okay, what's your joke? Rob?
All right?
I got a joke. I was walking down the street the uh a couple of days ago, and I ran an old friend of mine, Phil, who is a h got a famous wildlife photographer. This guy's like done a lot of stuff for National Geographic and stuff, and he looked terrible. He had like scar on his face and one of his eyes was like swollen, and he had a patch and his ear was torn off. Looked terrible. I said, Phil, what happened? He's well, you know, I was in Africa and I was doing a kind of
a wildlife safari shoot from magazine. And I'm climbing through the bush and I lift, you know, I go in the bush and I come fake to face with a lion. The lion's right, and I soiled myself. And I said, well, Phil, that's understandable. Scary thing. There's no no just now. When I said, raw, I love that.
All right, you know, we gotta go because we have a heart out. But anybody have anything you want to suggest as viewage for viewage purposes. I liked Wicked. I'm not gonna lie. I liked it. I really enjoyed it. Ariana Grande is spectacular in it, so as Jonathan Bailey. You may not like musicals, you may not like Wicked. I don't care. It's a great time at the movies. I really enjoyed it. Moana too is garbage. If you have to take your kids, go ahead. I'm really sorry. Sure you like that.
Yeah, it's good, It's super great. I mean the end, it's got a little woke thing. At the end you gotta get over. But all the process, all the way up, is like pure fantastic. That it's Vatican realism. If you're into Vatican realism, you love it. You'll love it.
Yeah, yeah, your number.
Two was okay, probably Clint Eastwood's last movie, so you know, not not fantastic, but okay, pretty you know it stuck with you. I'm really liking the Dune Prophecy Show.
Really, I'm a Dune.
Dork, right, Yeah. And uh, and I got my wife.
I rewatched Station eleven, which I hadn't watched, and I watched basically when I was really sick, I think with COVID, and I wasn't sure how much. I was sort of like a fever dream that I remembered from it, and then you watch it and you're like, no, no, I remember correctly. It's kind of like a fever dream.
But she really liked it. We really like I enjoyed rewatching it, So there you go.
Okay. I will make one final recommendation, which is I think I didn't do this the last time is the movie Anora, which is it's spectacularly good and I don't And here's what I'm going to say about it. It's very dirty. So if you if that's something it's hard for you to take, don't go. But it is one of the most surprising and brilliantly told movies that takes
twists and turns you cannot see coming. It's about a It's about a a as they say, a sex stripper basically, who falls in with a the son of a Russian oligarch who lives in a giant mansion in Brooklyn, and and what happens to them as they fall in love or seem to fall in love, and it just goes like a rock a train into all kinds of hilarious, surprising and very moving places. It's probably going to win the Oscar. Mikey Maddon, who plays the title role of Honora,
will almost certainly win the Oscar. And uh, it is a It is a mussy though it is very dirty. So that's my one.
Push me to that briar patch. There you go, all right, guys, great to see you. Sorry from my from home. Yeah, thank you, talk to you soon, welcome home, Talk to you later.
Sure.
Peter