It's gold.
Showtime. Folks. Well, we're coming to the end of September and it's another edition of block culture. That interesting new development, which is that our own Rob Long is now in Princeton, New Jersey, and sadly I have to report, since we do not do this on video, that Rob has no vestments.
He just is looking like I won't have been here three weeks. That there's a Okay, you're altar.
Boy, but if you're an altar boy, don't you get some kind of an outfit?
Yeah, but you don't hang out You don't hang out in any outfit.
You don't you know?
Okay, you you were the big beard in the hat all day. No, yes, well, if.
You are a big beard in the hat guy, you wear the big beard in the.
Hat all day. So we're starting, we're starting.
We're starting to anti Semitism and anti Christianism. We're going everywhere except anti Muslimism because we do not want to we don't want to sell so in Washington as he usually is, Jonah Goldberg, Hi, Jonah, Hey, John, and I am, of course John pot Horns and I'm in New York and we are here to amuse you with feats of press to digitation the likes of which you have never seen. We have no topics, we have nothing to talk about. We're not going to talk about Trump and and Harris apparently, Okay,
I got nothing to say. I talked five hours a week about them, so I got nothing left to say. Uh So we did put out a call on Twitter for questions from the gloparati. The the glopatariat. I mean, I like that you are going low. I'm going high. I'm going with the gloss.
You are concern you said the GLASI.
Now right in the middle glo.
Yeah, the glop. What I like is that you put that you tweeted that thing, like, you know, forty five minutes ago, and we have a million billion tweets suggesting that the people who listen to glop are not busy in the middle of the day.
Is anybody is anybody in America? Is that the people who are who are actually doing things that are valuable.
I'm busy in the middle of the day. I'm in between classes. You know that. I came back and I'm sitting here. I'm in between classes, in between Biblical Greek, and then I have to go back and I have to study for my Old Testament quiz.
Okay, well, you know, as a as a master of biblical Greek, I guess that means you're not a master of like literary Greek. I have an interest. I'm in an interesting place. Not to get incredibly pretentious, but I am my son is about to start reading the Odyssey in high school, and I decided that it had been many, many decades since i'd read the Iliad in the Odyssey.
So I started to read the Iliad and I really didn't know what to do because I didn't know whether to read the Fagels translation or the new Emily Wilson translation Robert Fitzgerald translation. Okay, so I ended up downloading to audible the Fagels translation, which is amazing, which is an amazing I actually don't know who's reading it. I should look it up and tell it, but I mean, it's a British actor who is declaiming it, and it is it is thrilling to listen to it.
And he was like, you know, he taught right here. He taught it, Prince did and his his Odyssey, I have to say, is actually I mean I tried to read the Elia of the year few years ago, and I just thought, I hate I hate this so much. Uh. And then then I thought I was going to read the Alien on the Odyssey, and I threw the Ilia way and I picked up the Oys. And what you discover when you read the Odyssey is it's really good. I mean, it's good stuff.
So I think the Iliod is really good stuff. And I had forgotten again because it had been decades and decades that the Iliad, which is essentially it's one of the two foundational works of non religious Western culture, right, I mean, it is these sort of foundational.
And Valley of the Dolls, and you know.
It begins smack dab in the middle, like there's no there's no lead up, there's no there's no introductory, there's no prologue.
There's no previously on the Iliad.
We're right there in year ten of the Trojan War, right there. And it begins with the argument between Achilles and Agamemnon over who gets the greater honor and whether Acabemnon is going to take Achilles's honor away from Achilles
is doing all the fighting in the war. Agabemnon is just a big blow hard jerk, and and and this opening is just two men screaming at each other on a beach, and it is fantastic and you're like, you know, we always think about these literary works as they're sort of high bound and you know, and I mean, this is this is like woof.
I also remember that it wasn't it helps Remember it was not written right, it was so it was spoken after dinner. It's an after dinner piece. So like people had already had a little bit of wine, a little bit of food, you know, and you had to keep them occupied, and you had to tell them the fun stuff. You had to jump right in the middle. I mean storytelling. When I want to like start in the middle, don't start at the once upon a time. It's like people
aren't gonna they'll just turn it off. It's kind of good stuff.
Okay, So I'm gonna bring one thing up and then we can go to the question. So I just watched what I think this is your business?
Rob.
So that's why, aside, of course from saving souls and interpreting, I got a lot of Yeah. But so there is a new version of Mattlock right the Andy Griffith Lawyer show there. It is starring Kathy Bates, and the situation is Kathy Bates is a seventy five year old woman. She walks into a law firm in New York City saying, I'm been a lawyer in thirty years, but I can really help you, and she immediately threw various ways gets on a case. It's a case of police corruption thirty
years earlier. Blah blah blah. So two things about it. This to me, having watched another pilot of a police procedural earlier this week called The High Potential. Also a very good female lead performance by Caitlin Nelson from It's Always Sending in Philadelphia, that very contrived. This was maybe the best pilot I have seen in decades. Establishes characters, establishes this law firm.
Starts with two guys arguing on a beach.
Practically where you find this?
What network is? It's on It's on CBS. I just watched it on.
Paramount Plus, so you want my take on that.
But what I'm saying is, here's the thing. So you have to establish this. It's a it's a it's ad a question. I'm about to ask the question, But unlike in Medius race, I must set up the question with a prologue, a lengthy prolog so that you know where I'm So you got to set up Kathy Bates is an old woman, a Southern coming into this New York
law firm. Figures out how to walk into walk into the partner's office, cutesy corn pony, gets herself in, gets yourself on a trial, establishes herself as a character, establishes they established four other lawyers in the firm as characters. And then there's a case that needs to be solved, and then there is a reveal at the end that I won't go through. And it was picture perfect as a setup for a long form series, not a sitcom though, like drama obviously. And I'm looking at and I'm thinking,
why is this so? Why is it that most pilots are so labored that you watch them and you never want to watch another episode again. Is it that they figure out how to live in it and then they make the pilot, or is it that they go into making a pilot with some external idea that they don't really buy, and then as they're doing it, they kind of make up reasons why these characters are together or what they're doing and therefore it never feels lived in.
Well, I don't know. I mean, I'm not sure. Every pilot's different, right, everybody doing one's different. And sometimes they're just deal memos that just became shows, and sometimes they're you know, they were started something else and then got
moved into something else. I don't know the answer. I would just say this is that the surprising thing is that if you take all of the TV production entities and all the networks and you find the one found found the one that's the most hide bound and probably the most cost conscious, it's CBS. And that those those restraints and restrictions made the pilot better, I guarantee you.
And the fact that the people watching that pilot don't have to be is this a you know, like if you're a free market conservative, it's like, once you pay for something, you're just you're done, You're in. Right, the customer in broadcast television and add support a TV, they have to keep that customer watching. If if you turn away from it, it's all over. Whereas if you're watching Netflix and you decide you don't want to watch episodes ninety through ten thousand, or six through nine or whatever,
it is there to get your money. It's all you can eat, and they thought for years that the all you can eat model was going to be better, and it actually turns out of bankrupting the whole business and they may end up having to go back to the people who know how to put on a pilot that gets John but Oritz to watch the whole thing.
Now. Of course, I'm sixty three, which is why I like Matlock. Right, It's like it's now built into your DNA as you age, as entropy overtakes. It's a it's Mattlock, Matlock, Okay.
But it's a law show. It's a court show. Plucky lawyer, she does the thing. Hey, I got it. Like it's like you're calling them out lock just to get you to watch it. But it's like a it's a courtroom show they have there's a courtroom show on all the time, right, and they're the best, the easiest to write. It's one person stands up and gives a speech and the others are forced to listen. It's sort of like the commentary podcast and then that person eventually sits down. But that's
what that's what it's the easiest thing. You're out of order. Counselor approach the bench. I got it, I'll allow it. I got it.
I'll allow it, which is my favorite, as you know, and then go through life like that, right, and.
Then you write this somewhere. The drama part is the best part is then you have to like this, but I need to know about these people. Then you have the lawyers at home and they're you know, they're in bed, and then one of them says you're the other says that's out of order, counselor because they talk that way. And then when you the lady, the ladies who are tough, I'll always call you out your last name. It's done. And then people like it. It's like, what's why? Why
think about it so hard? Make it good? And they made a good version of it.
Is that I want John from now on to introduce every the other people on the Contrary podcast is jour number one, number two?
You're out of order?
Know when they try to say something, I'll say, I'll allow it. How about that? Yeah? Yeah, watch it. I'm going to give you a short lead. We're gonna take this to thin I counseling. All right, Okay, so I'm gonna I'm going to offer the first question. I'm we're going culture nerd here, okay with the first question from our from our followers. I okay, this is from someone called novel Drive. So it's not even a name novel Drive.
That Gary, you just respect the great family of the novel Drives.
There we go.
They changed him and they had Ellis Island.
Okay. Why do you think Hamilton completely vanished from the cultural zeitgeist? Did it just get old? Or do you think it's message? So this sweek became problematic in the wake of the Trump presidency and the Black Lives Matter movement. This is a very interesting question has out viewed in twenty fifteen. Just too right. It is still running on Broadway and it still has multiple editions of it in different cities. It's in London, it's still selling out on Broadway.
But it was a gigantic cultural phenomenon. It seems to be no and a debut on Disney Plus during the pandemic. Not a huge audience. But yes, so he do you accept the do you accept the basis of this question that it's vanished from the cultures like geist or is it just simply that it's nine years old and things have passed it, or is there something about the way the culture moved that made it that dated it in some fashions.
I think, yeah, sorry, John, I'll so.
I think it's carefully Jonah's a great question and perfectly timed to the recent debut of America's foremost intellectual Schmendrick U tany Heasy Coats because uh, who has a cover on the New York Magazine cover profile New York Magazine. I think Coats and Black Lives Matter came in an exact moment where it became unfashionable to think that we
were that we had made any racial progress. It was unfashionable to be you know, I don't want to say everyone was became unpatriotic, but to sort of conventional expressions of patriotism became even less cool for a while. Yeah, I agree, and I think, I mean, you guys would know this stuff better than I do. But you know, we've talked about like before, how like Moby Dick wasn't popular when it came out, and all these kinds of things.
There are some things that are very popular when they come out, and then they go into a long hiatus, They go into sort of a quiescent phase, and then when the mom's right, they become popular again. And I could definitely see Hamilton sort of having a second wave at some point down the road, probably like even under
a Harris administration. But I do think that like it became ghost to celebrate the sort of I mean, I remember Rob, you know, we were talking about how it was like a modern day schoolhouse rock, you know, and it was such a wonderfully pro Erican thing and such a great sort of syncretic thing to use in all black casts and use basically in rap and all that. And and then that just got welched by the Black Lives Matter movement and the anti Trump stuff and all
that kind of thing. But I think the fact that it's still going strong in the real world suggests that it could get a new found appreciation. I could see someone writing an essay it's time to watch Hamilton again, you know, and coming.
Back, I would just say this, the premise of Hamilton is that the founders were great men, engaged in a great experiment.
Great flawed men.
Yeah, and and and the they should be celebrated for that. And that is anathema to the left, and it's anathema to the Trump right the question mentioned tripe, you know Trump, I mean, Americas, is this where a failing country or disaster? Everything, Everything's horrible. We're on the precipice of room in a disaster.
I mean, if you're if you believe in the if you believe that the founders were correct and they created a government and a subsequent society that is fantastic and you know, the probably the greatest single achievement of mankind. You know, you're just at a step where I don't know what party you're in because you're not in neither one. So yeah, I think it needs to take a break. Which is the irony of it is that it does.
It came right at the right at a time when it could have been celebrated, and instead it just feels irrelevant, which is tragic because it's a it's probably the most patriarchic piece of art that's ever been created.
I mean, and it's patriotic in a in a new way, and that there was there were objections to it on the part of a kind of phide bound you know. Yes, Uh, it's a multicultural cast. You know, Linn Bahn Miranda is himself Puerto Rican. Uh, Daved Diggs who played Jefferson and Lafayette is half Jewish, half Black, Lamar Odom Junior who played Leslie Odom Junior, who played Burr Black, you know,
the Scholar Sisters Black, all of that rap music. But the idea was that they were going to enact, they enact a pageant version of the Founding of the United States, with Alexander Hamilton as the central figure. And it is. I happened to listen to it with one of my kids on a long car drive a couple of weeks ago, and it is a masterpiece. It may well be the single best work of American art of the twentieth twenty first century. And I'm not I can't take.
That's aim right.
And the expansion the idea that the found talk about an important message for now that was made possible maybe by the Obama presidency, but now that the Founding is for everyone, Yeah, the American Founding is for that's everyone.
That's what's yeah. Because it was amazing was that for years in college and before in the culture, Uh, it was considered normal. This is this is now very the tinkertoy version of the craziness that exists now. But on college campus is the dead white European man. At least people have nothing to say to me that, the people who wrote the Constitution and the Declaration and the founders, they have nothing to say to me if I am not also a white European male. And the response to
that was, no, no, you don't understand. George Washington belongs to all of us, and so does Thomas Jefferson, and so does Alexanda Hamilton, and the story of the founding of America belongs to all Americans, irrespective of their race. And lin Manuel simply took that on its face. He said, okay, how about this. And it was a magnificent piece of art. It's incredibly riveting, it's a great piece of theater. It's it's a Le'll give it the highest possible accolade. It's
the highest piece of show business I've ever seen. Right, it's great show business. And it just simply, you know, it took us, that took those people saying that at their word, and what came out of that was something terrific. He didn't say, you're a liar. No, I have to come up with my own, you know, the quansa version. No, it's he took the version that exists and he said, okay, it's mine too, and that's pretty amazing. It's been amazing.
Yeah, just before you do it more amazing. Okay, just to close the circle here. So I think it has thirty four numbers. Hamilton's three hours long. I think it has thirty four separate numbers. The lyrical invention, the wordsmith ory that this guy who I think was thirty three or something when he did it all in spaired by the fact that he brought Ron Schrenhau's biography of Hamilton with him on his honeymoon. I don't know that it's
ever been matched. And you know, this is one of these works, rare works that the book music and lyrics pretty much written by the same person. There four or five of these in Broadway history. But you know, simply as a matter of as a piece of writing, word by word, lyric by lyric, rhyme by rhyme, internal rhyme by internal rhyme, it is jaw droppingly clever and incredibly touching. And if it has gone out of fashion, that's because
Trump is right, and we stink he's just raw. He's right the wrong way, like we stink because everybody is now viewing everything through every possible filter, except what is this thing in front of me that I can experience fresh without putting on my ideological filter and saying, oh, I don't like what it says about immigration, or or it doesn't say enough about how many America and the founders were to people. There's a joke in it about Sally Hemmings.
There's a joke, big, big laugh in the show, big laugh in the show.
Okay, anyway, I'm just going to.
Say that he was.
Also, you would never have predicted it from the guy who worked on the J. Peterman catalog in Seinfeld, Right, this is glop. I have to point that out.
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Can I just ask you, now that you are back in school, are you going to get Kurt Vonnegut to write your paper?
Well, he's he's deceased.
So you could, yes, But could you get you know, I don't know, Matthew, Mark Lucer John to come and write your write your paper.
And well, I mean they didn't write the Gospels, so yeah, No. What we do is we look at primary sources. So I don't need any of those people since I have you know, Athanasius and Origin and blah blah blah, and other people whose names are complicated to to the one thing I've enjoyed was that I'm with a lot of young people, right, so like a lot of young people, and and I I am me so like we're reading about the Christian martyrs, and I'm like, man, that's some
that's all over the top. I think I think that that stuff really happened. That seems you know, I mean we've all seen Saw Saw too, right. I raised my hand, and you know, these are very earnest young people, like well, I don't know, I don't know. It reminds me of Saw,
Like well, it does reminds me of Saw. So anyway, that's that's my my my take on it is that college camp, this college campus anyway, seems filled with very purposeful, thoughtful, very smart, very well read young people who who who I'm Well, I'm I'm Rodney Dangerfield, That's what I am in this respect. And this yeah, this firsture, that's the question.
Yeah.
The next question for us is where to build a factory?
How about fantasy land? That's right, That's what I'm saying. And so you would, yes you should, Okay, all right, so here we have.
The school.
Yeah, it's very dangerous because you know, no one should do that dive.
Because it's it's it's one of those famous famous college swim diving rivalries that the whole college turns out to see. Yeah, are you going to go to the big swim diving meet against State? Well, yes, of course it's it's not a made up thing at all.
Speaking of it, you know, you remember that Robert Downey Junior plays Not That Not the Sun, like you must have auditioned for the Sun, didn't get the Sun. Keith Gordon got the Sun, so he gets the best friend of the Sun. As this happens to these movies.
I do think he was miscast as doctor Doom. Someone's got to hold up. They're part of the traditional glop here who had a lot of Iliad and Philip I apologize.
Okay, so doctor Doom, so you should explain what you're talking about here, because I barely even know who doctor Doom is. So I do know he's getting paid two hundred million dollars to be doctor Doom or something.
So so, Doctor Doom is one of the great villains in Marvel comics. He's the primary foe the Fantastic Four, which they've tried to make good movies out of and failed and and they cast uh Robert Downing Jr. As Doctor Doom. Doctor Doom is a from a fictional East European country. He's a dictator there. There's actually a Grada Latvia is what it's called. No, no, no, no Latveria. I apologize and sorry all my friend.
Captive nation by Doctor Doom. Okay, go ahead. Sorry.
Well, there's a great episode where the Fantastic Four go to Laveria the issue with the comic where they go to Laveria to capture doctor Doom and bring the fight to him, and out from behind the corner comes Henry Kissinger who says, you can't. We've just signed a treaty because they're holding off the communist heer. Anyway, they shouldn't have picked him. You know, he's the guy who played
iron Man so well blah blah blah blah blah. But I don't blame him for taking the because was it eighty million dollars or something to do it.
I believe it is thought that if those he's signed two movies, two movie deal, he can't play iron Man anymore. They have a problem because the because everything that's happened since the end of the Marvel cinematic, the first phase of the Marvels that has like been a dud except for Spider Man movies. So they shot the wad. They were like, Okay, what we got to do is bring back the magic. We'll cast him in a different way. He'll play a villain in the Fantastic four reboot that
we're about to do. And he's like, you know, Brinks trucks, back up twelve of them again, I'm not doing this. And apparently it is going to be the single biggest payday that any anyone has ever had from any work of popular entertainment ever. Could be as much as two hundred or three hundred million dollars, depending on how it does. He supposedly made a hundred million dollars off of Endgame, the last I believe that Bengers movie. And know, yeah,
speaking but he's bad casting. You're saying it's bad cast.
I think it's a bad idea. That should have had that what's his name, the guy from Oppenheimer and Peaky Blinders, Uh Killian Murphy. Yeah, that's who the fans really wanted to play him.
He would have been great, But when he played Sandman, right, doesn't he play in the Batman? Okay? All right, okay, I got so.
Rob, can I just talk here a minute? Just I don't know whether this you mentioned this or not that Matt Locke airing on CBS overnights. Overnights got a seven point seven million viewers overnight, so it's live plus the same day. Oh no, sorry, that's those the Fast Nationals. So that's actually that's a lot and it won't go up that much after the Fast Nationals, but it might. He hit eight eight halfs. It's a lot of people, now, yeah, people like him at yeah, okay, it.
So there are some questions. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna go through them very quickly. You don't have to answer any of them. And if you don't get what, I'm going to make a reference something here, we're just going to go past it, and no one is allowed to answer it. What glass cleaner did Danny Thomas endorse. We're just going to move past that to go.
To to go to.
Yes, okay, okay, did Game of Thrones poison long form show plots so that few, if any, likable characters are included. So this is an interesting question. So we have these shows, uh, and they're very anti hero based, and this guy, uh, just another Bob is his name? I want to know if they ruined it, and I would say that it's it's not Game of Thrones, which did the opposite I would say, which is that it introduced a lovable character and then murdered him so that you knew that the
show could go anywhere in any way. Had your set up a hero and then killed him off, and then it had to build from a bunch of very seemingly unattractive people, people that you nonetheless came to admire. But wouldn't you say that this is really this is the Sopranos effect. I mean that if you have long form shows that are based on characters who aren't that attractive or likable or something like that, that's that attractive.
What is attractive means likable?
He says likable, likable.
I mean.
It's Tony.
You know, you had to remind yourself of a psychopath because he was still appealing.
Okay, Well, you wouldn't have said that about Vic Mackey of the Shield, right, because he wasn't really likable. Right, that was his biggest show, right, Although that was that is considered in the annals of the sort of academic studies of the anti hero introduct the shield. What was that a snore? It was this?
It was a snore turned into a snort.
I think, yeah, the sound of one makes during Okay.
So maybe that's not a good question.
I think a quick stid of uh, because uh, I've actually written a lot about these byronic and basically bad people as heroes for a long time. I think you can make the case. It starts with Hannibal Lecter and Hannah Lecker was incredibly compelling character. But I remember taking a girl on a date. I'd seen the movie in Prague when I lived in Prague, and I brought her to the movie and she spent most of her time
hiding behind her coat and terrified. And at one point she turns to me and she says, he thinks it's good to eat people. Yes, And it's like, yes, he thinks it's good to eat people.
It wasn't.
But anyway, the thing is is like, remember they made a show out of Annibal Lecter. It was three or four seasons on I think NBC, and then you had more and more characters. Mel Gibson in payback, Right, you had and then you had NYPD Blue, where you're supposed to root for the guys who beat up cops, beat up suspects and that kind of stuff. And then you go into overdrive with the Shield. And then you have the Sopranos. You have Breaking Bad right, where you root
for the villain. You have the wire where you're like rooting for murderers and drug dealers who are slightly more compelling, and you're off to the races. And I think this has just been one of these things that has been supposed to be smart writing is supposed to make evil people compelling for like the last quarter century. And I think the Godfather is the Godfather. Yeah, the Godfather probably right to really do the bigats.
You can go back to the Godfather. Yeah, but right, okay, so okay. Nick Newfield asks the following.
Wait when you wait, wait Jonah, when you say to the guests, do you mean follow the toldo for?
Yes? Sorry? Are we are we in the visit? Are we in the Are we in the Arian creed or the Athenasian creed? Here?
No, No, I'm in the ot my friend?
Okay, whoa easy?
You heard me?
The bait pob like that.
You know what I said, You're in the apocrypha. I referred to you. I refer to your book your way.
You're indeed, thank you, I said, Arian Creed. I deserve I deserve a couple of Brownie points for that. Could Rob write a pilot I like comedy about the page or operation? What wag?
Operation?
What would be in the running for the show title? And I and then we are answered, by the way by somebody who says, shouldn't Why isn't anybody referring to that operation as Stuck's nuts? So I really get that's pretty good. So I think.
Necessarily it already has.
We have the title from another tweeter. So, but Rob, how do you write a like comedy?
Well, it's perfect? What do you mean, it's a great, delicious, I mean horific. The bad guys get it. You know, you make it. You make it. It's an out landish idea, right, it is an outlandish idea that I and I one hundred thousand percent guarantee you that. When they first talked about it, someone said, this is the stupidest thing I've ever heard of my life. There's some old guys, some network executive at the you know room whatever that is in the most saw the tech the tech room, what
they called room something. What they called room.
Something was a young woman.
Yeah, first pitched.
This thing and again, and some old guys said, you know, you know, honey, I and I sent it there no bad ideas, that's a bad idea.
Okay, get me for coffee.
I thought this was a safe space for brainstorming, like yeah, but not for stupid stuff. Okay, so give me the thing that I can use. And then she went off and she did the thing. I uh, you know that happened. Untilally happened. I've been actually working for the past six months, nine months with a friend of mine on the project
project he brought to me. We were working together and he to partners on this and the premise of it is very very close to this, and we have spent you have no idea how much time we spend saying this is just the thing. When you say this that nobody believes it. It's just like it just sounds so dumb. And then this happened, and it was like, you know, I when I when I saw this happen. The minute I saw it, my phone was ringing with what do we do.
Now, that's amazing. I need I need to see that. I need to see your treatment. I got to see your treatment because I want to know if you got hacked. Are you the author of stucks Nuts, the real Thing and the pilot?
Well great if you. If you're gonna call it stuck nuts, it's got to be called s T S T U X and U T Z and and and it's the nerdy, the nerdy young you know, kind of unattractive because she wears glasses uh you know, uh huts. Her name is me Nuts, doctor nuts, and she's been you know, it's teasing her all the time, and she's, God, what what kind of what are you working on? Come on, doctor Nuts?
One, don't we just go out.
Let's go outside. It's come on, I buy your come on. And she's like, no, I have Tom in the lab. I have to do the thing. And you and the lab and you have plots and your plants.
Come on out.
We're all gonna go dance sink to the thing, and we're gonna have a smart.
You know, you could also do it, you know, borrowing loosely from Mean Girls, where the girl who comes up with this at first wants to be part of the cool kids, but she's really a nerd, right right. She gets all sort of caught up, and then at the end, you know, she realizes, I've lost my way. I got to go blow up some terrorists. And then she gets the boy, you know, and that's how it's you know, not supposed to end.
Okay, I want I want her, and she's you know, and she's got to have this. And it's like this young, super super hot Mosad agent, you know, and he's just like you know, Benyamine or something. Uh, and he's just like he does can't care for the time of day.
So she's so madly in love with him. And then one day he's in the lab and he reaches to pick up the pager and she reaches over to stop him in her hands touch and he looks at her and he says, what you don't don't touch the pager and then uh, and then they kind of lock eyes and you're like, oh, wait a minute, something happened. And then you know, in like third act, he's he says, can I can I can I just do something? Can
you just look at me for one minute? Nihal? And she looks at him and he just takes her glasses off her face and says, you know, you know, you're beautiful Dutch and she says, stop it. We let's just keep up. Let's focus on blowing up plo.
And then you know it could be called jahad me at hello.
Okay, now that's good, all right, okay, so uh let me see if I got okay, got something to read here.
Let's talk at at least first about it. When you move to the new places I have, you ended up having to buy a lot of stuff, and you ended up buying a lot of stuff on the internets. And one of the ways that you do that is that
you discover a lot of vendors to Shopify. I bought a lot of stuff, and I bought a lot of books, and a lot of them, like use bookstores, use Shopify and shopfi is really simple and it's mobile, and it's incredibly great product to use both as a customer and as somebody who is a If you're a retailer, even a small retailer, Shopify makes all those things much much easier. So if you have a business, if you sell some stuff,
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Okay, here's an interesting one that is.
But you know that's true.
Actually, that is very true. That is very true. Okay, here is something that is so out of phase that it's just sort of an interesting thing. Should the final scenes in Taxi Driver be understood to be real or a fantasy? That is all in the mind of Travis Spickel.
So I now must point out The Taxi Driver is a film from nineteen seventy six, directed by Martin Scorsese, written by Paul Schrader, starring Robert de Niro, about a Vietnam veteran taxi driver who is plotting a possible assassination of a presidential candidate while getting obsessed with saving a teenage prostitute from her pimp. In Times Square, you're talking to me, talking to me, But who the hell are you talking talking to me?
Well, I'm the only one.
And in the course of this whole thing, he has a brief flirtation with Sybil Shepherd, who is a campaign worker at the staff of the presidential candidate whom he is considering assassinating. As we discovered in the course of the plot, he ends up saving the teenage prostitute from her pimp and an incredibly bloody one of the bloodiest scenes in film history in a tenement shootout. And then the last scene is him driving his cab and Sybil Shepherd gets into the cab and having ditched him because
he had taken her to a hardcore porn movie. In Times Square, rather like Jonah taking the nice young girl in Prague to see Silence of the Lambs on the date, Darnk tutened she flirts with him, and he kind of flirts with her back, and then she gets out of the cab, and then you see his eyes in the
rearview mirror. And there's always been a debate about whether or not either the scene in which he survives the shooting of the pimp that maybe he dies and that the final scene is his fantasy life, or that the entire murder of the pimp is a fantasy, as is Sybil Shepherd's appearance in his cab, and that he remains the same psychopath that he was all along. So this has been a debate since the movie came out, and I don't know if either of you has a theory or whether this was.
I'd have to rewatch it. It's been a long time since, so watch that. The only thing I will say about Taxi Driver is last year were to comment about it, you guys talked about on Commentary Pod, there was that poll that came out that said the huge numbers of Americans think life was better fifty years ago in America. Go watch Taxi Driver. Yeah, yeah, tell me that, Yeah exactly.
Yeah. So I will say for the for the record that I believe that the final scene with Sybil Shepherd in the Cab is Travis Bickle's fantasy, and that and that yes, he he believes that he has become this great hero and that his only goal really is to be thought of as a hero, but that this doesn't doesn't really happen. I what's interesting is in a couple of weeks, this a billion dollar movie is about to open the sequel to Joker, right the Joaquin Phoenix Joker.
You when the Oscar for a Joker made a billion dollars, and this is the sequel, Joker Folio Do, which he co stars with Lady Gaga. So what was striking to me about Joker when it came out in twenty nineteen is that it was an homage, which is to say, a complete ripoff of Taxi Driver, and not only a ripoff of Taxi Driver, but then stitched together with Taxi Driver was Martin Squersese's movie made three movies later, King of Comedy, which is also the plot of Joker, which
is Taxi Driver meets King of Comedy. And it is astounding to me that you can sort of do that, that there was something shocking about the degree to which the entire all the emotional beats everything. Basically Jaquin Phoenix is playing Travis Bickel, and that's fine. So he won an Oscar for it. Congratulations. But this is the weird
part about Joker folio do as a comes out. That's a ripoff as far as I can tell from the trailer of another movie from the same period, which is Bob Fosse's All That Jazz, because it's a musical and it's a musical that takes place in the head of the Joker apparently and is all about killing and murder or suicide or whatever, which is what All That Jazz is, which is fantastic, one of my favorite movies of all time actually, but nonetheless very interesting that we are now
mining the seventies so deeply and with such that or Hollywood is now this guy Todd Phillips who made it, is like, I'm just going to remake All That Jazz, but I'm not going to pay Bob Fossey's estate. I'm just gonna make the Joker into the Roy Scheider Bob Fosse character, and that'll be fine, and I can make a billion dollars. Now we're getting into the weeds. You want weeds, I got weeds. For you. On a recent flight, Jeff Dana writes, I watched an episode of the Twilight Zone.
Let's start ed Winn. Ed Win, what a great actor in Personal Win.
By the way, Ed Winn is Noted Winn.
Any favorite memories or roles of ed I need to rewatch the Diary of Ann Frank, which Edwin was it?
Now?
Ed Winn was a great vodvillian and Broadway star of the twenties, thirties and forties. Does anyone remember?
I feel like we're being true. I feel I feel like that he didn't. He doesn't care about ed Winn. He just wants to get Grandpa going. He's like, hey, what do you say about ed Winn? And there's a bunch of people listening to this right now and say, there's no way to let me tell you. Come on, no, I think I thy're gonna And there's like a drinking game that happened right this minute about whether any whether we're talking about ed Win or not. So I don't know. I really have no feelings.
Remember Ed Disney was the thing he was. He played Uncle Albert in Mary Potter.
I love to love.
Long and clear.
I love to love.
That's I would say that's the only thing that I know Edwin from.
Oh Fred Gwinn, Just to be clear, but I mean Edwin.
Fred Gwynn, not Win. Here's what I remember about Fred Gwynn is that every time that Fred Winn was interviewed, of course Herman Munster, and then after Herman Munster, he had a queer as a character. Actor hated being associated with Herman Munster, like all TV stars of the old days when they thought they were more important than their shows, And Fred Gwinn had to let you know that he went to Harvard. You never read an interview with Fred
Winn that didn't say went to Harvard. You never heard anything about Fred Winn that didn't say went to Harvard. He went to Harvard. I just want you to know that.
He was No Monster went to Harvard is a kind of a story.
That's definitely, But.
John Aston, who played Gomez Adams, also went to Harvard. He was intellectually secure enough not to mention it.
Every Like you believe that Goz went to Harvard, you do not believe that Herman Monster went to Harvard. Herman Monster at best went to Cornell. I don't know that the guy from from.
The the Joe Petty Lawyer movie. Yeah, no, I know that guy went to Harvard, but it's funny.
But really to Mississippi State, that would be my guess. But I am the judge.
But yeah, I was recently driven through northern Maryland a couple of a month and a half ago in the sprinter van and we drove through Teeneytown, Maryland, sure, which is kind of charming and seemed to be thriving for a lot of small towns don't seem to be thriving anymore. And I'm I'm googling tiny town like wanting to know like the history of it. And it's not related to the Tainy from the Teiney decision Ary that kind of stuff.
But it is where Fred Gwyn lived and died at the end of his life, where he retired and died, this Kingstown found in Maryland.
He needed a big coffin. Yeah he was one. He was one tall drink of water.
Yeah. Also he was. He was buried with so much of his Harvard me bill. He went to Harvard, just said the H bomb the twosan just said I went to school in Boston with a question mark at the end.
I did see him once play Big Daddy and Cat on a Hanson roof on Broadway Elizabeth Ashley, and he was great. He was a really wonderful actor, particularly given his Harvard pedigree.
Harvard traink is what I.
Want to say, and by the way, fantastic as Herman Munster.
Yeah, oh no, he was good. I mean that very feels.
Is beyond is beyond criticism. I would say that was a very original, delightful performance as Herman Munster.
I have to say no, can I interrupt for one minute by saying it if there if this was a drinking game that they were playing to.
See if we would go over an ed wmin.
No, they didn't win, but I hope that if they were going to play that game they were going to they used a game changing product that I use also before night out with drinks. That it's called z biotics pre alcohol. So let's face it, after a night with drinks, I don't bounce back the next day like I used to. I have to make a choice. I can either have
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Joana, listening to Rob continue to mention the fact that he has to be in class at eight thirty and all of that, And can I just say that I am being triggered. I am now going to have school nightmares every night for the next six months. I'm still I'm sixty three years old. I've been having school nightmares since I got to college. Me too, Okay, so now are you having them while you're at school?
That's the problem. It's curious to have them. And I would wake up and I would say, this is hilarious. I don't know why I had this nightmare. It's not really because I'm not in school. Now I have them and it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute, this could be true.
I love about it is that not only do you are you going to wake up in a cold, sweat, stress nightmare, but what you're going to do when you wake up is rush to read the Bible, which is like such a great look if you're just watching from the outside on a camera, like, oh my gosh.
He woke up in a panic and he's first Bible.
All right, let's go hi brow for a second. We got a question here. I name the most overrated novels of the last two hundred years. Now, I know there's a whole world of people on the internet who love to do things like as I think happened to his shame Rob's friend. This American Life host Ira Gross? Who who went to see Glass? Excuse me? Did I say Gross?
I'm sorry? Who went to see king Lear? Terry Grose went to see king Lear in Central Park and an admittedly terrible production with John Lithgow and said, I don't get it. King Lear is boring. When people are willing to admit that Shakespeare is boring, and the world came down around it's had and he said, I don't know, I'm just But by the end of like the three hour Twitter hysteria, he had already gotten to the I don't know, I'm just some guy who was a radio show.
Leave me alone. I'm so sorry all of that. So this is a big thing wanting to say, you know what.
I don't like.
But you know, everyone says that The Last Supper is a great painting. You know, I don't agree. It's a lousy painting. You know, that kind of thing. So that this this does there is jeopardy here in doing the most overrated novels of the last turn of years. But Moby Dick, thank you. Okay, uhb Dick, Moby Dick the most overrated novel I've ever read. Period. I'm going with that. I like it. I like the Ahab come conceit, I like the ab Okay crappy on American stuff. Okay, I
don't go anyway. I'm not a fan of family either, although which you'd have to pick the book.
Oka say something even even more, or you'll be quiet. I don't like The Great Gatsby.
A more common opinion. Then you realize, for some reason, over the last couple of years, I've discovered that many people do not really like The Great Gatsby.
I don't like it. I mean I don't I didn't enjoy it. I don't think it's I mean, who cares. I don't get it.
And I have a theory about The Great Gatsby and why it has become the book that has become. First of all, it can be read in all high school classes because it is short. It is two hundred pages long. It is very it doesn't have a lot of plot. It's really a series of four sequences. It's got a murder in it, so that's.
Good, right good.
It's got a big drinking scene, so that's good. I read it again a couple of years so again one of my kids was doing it, and I thought it was both amazing and unbelievably sketchy. Like the thing about it is, it's almost like the second draft, and he needed to write two more drafts and thicken it, enrich it,
and solidify it, and he didn't. He got He wrote down what he could write down, and that turned out to be a thing of genius, because the book is suggestive without being kind of like definitive, and you have to bring a lot to it if you're a reader, and it's really easy to read, and it's fast and so for an American kid. That's why it's become the Great American novel because unlike other great American novels, it's
really short and you can read them three hours. What do you think of that as my theory?
I guess I got to play this game too, you do. You guys read a lot more novels and retain them than I do. That's one of the things, is like, if you can get me to read like a great piece of literature, it's usually if I don't like it, I don't finish it right. But I will say, you know, we often say the golden age of science fiction is sixteen, right, I missed the like Catcher in the Rye did not grab me by the soul, and I understand that it does for some people. But I was just like eh
and just never got the palpitations from it. So I'm not saying that people who do are wrong, because some books you just need to read at the right age, and I was maybe too cynical and jaundice or whatever.
But uh no, I think the Catcher and the Rye. I don't like Catcher in the Rye. I don't like what it says. I don't like what it is as a piece of imaginative literature or sort of if you want to think of what it proposes or what it propels about the world, what it has, and what I think is the reason that it endures, like my son's about to read it in ninth grade, is it has an incredibly charming authorial voice that Salinger found for Holden Callfield.
And it's all the voice because it's the radically subjective, it's all him. It's just through his eyes. And this weekend of that sort of this disastrous weekend in his life. Again a book that's easy to read, which is one of the reasons why it remains read. And I like, I'm not sure that kids should read it, not just because John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan because he read it.
But it does he watched Taxi Driver, Oh my god, wow.
Yeah. Okay, So we got Catcher in the Rye, we got Moby Dick, we got Gatsby. As the three most over books of the last two hundred years, I would ask one other question then yes, okay, yeah.
I mean this is more of an intellectual point than it is a literary point.
But like.
Edward Bellamy's Looking Backwards Between the Last two hundred Years was arguably the one of the most influential books ever written in the English language or in America. It launched all sorts of utopian and nationalist movements in the United States. And it is garbage, but it was wildly influential. It's largely forgotten now, but like I had to read it for yeah, for two books I wrote, and and it's like the people who fell for HG. Wells, they fell for Bellamy.
First I just thought that, well, that that is a right, Well, that's a whole other interesting topic is the world of the false prediction and how unbelievably damaging the false predictive stuff was, and then also how astounding the like yeah and every ones are you know? That really kind of freak you out.
It's also set us up though, for this flying car thing people always talk about, like, oh, where are the fly was promised flying cars? Like can you imagine how awful it would be if cars could fly? Who wants flying cars?
Well, everybody else had them.
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Okay, So Jonah, where where can people find you?
In the next couple of weeks, I'll be if all if my flight home works out, I will be on the Chris Waller Show this Saturday, and I will be doing scenn on Monday from New York for the.
Pre would be Monday the thirtieth, something like that.
Okay, the pre vice presidential debate commentary on CNN, and then I will go home from that and that's it.
Can I just say that Tim wall said the best thing ever in the history of anything in terms of.
Revelations of you're talking about studies are biblical history, and you're saying, guy, yes, the best things ever in terms of revelations.
Well, I'm saying that, of course ironically, as I assume you assume if I'm saying that, Tim wall said a great thing where giving a speak getting himself wound up. He's like winding himself up as he's going, he's going talking about everything. He's like, we can't go on another four years like this. Yeah, uh, and you know what. I agree. That's why Tim Waltz was a unique choice for a vice. We can't go on another four years
like this was a was a great moment. So I hope you I hope someone asks him what he meant by that during that debate, which of course is a week from is neck October first.
I believe.
Okay, Rob, what about you now that you are, aside from being at a Nassau Hall or wherever the hell you have your your classes. I thought that was a pretty good poll.
That's not bad.
I haven't been I didn't go to prison.
You know, it's not the university. We're not the university.
Oh, I'm sorry you're that. You are not you are there?
They separated the administrata.
So are you in the cotton, either building or the.
Yeah, so you can't do a Fred Gwyn I went to Princeton kind of deal.
You can, but you know, you'd have to say, I went to Princeton, but it's not exactly price charter.
Yeah.
I could be found in chapel. Okay, I can be found in the library. Okay, can you be found a Martini shot?
Martini shot? Still going there because I'm still on the best, you know, And of course in the pages of commentary and page see every month I I am. I am nowhere except on the commentary podcast, and I have discovered something interesting. No, but I discovered something interesting, which is like people ask me to go on their podcasts. I'm sure it happens to you. When Jonah came on the commentary podcast very grace graciously last week and Rob, I guess you still do the rics podcast the times.
Not all not not all the time Friday.
Okay, But like I realized, you know, I like I'm on the air an hour day, five days a week. Like I'm done, Like I don't want to do any more, Like I don't, you know, unless someone wants to pay me money. Really, I'm not going on your pot. Basically, I can't do it, like I'm I'm I'm all in, I'm all out, like I'm spent, like my you know, my wife wants to talk to me on Saturdays, and I'm like, I don't even know if I've anything left
to say. And then I think about like Rush Limbough, people like that talk fifteen hours a week or handy like three hours a week on the radio and an hour on TV at night.
Like what you're saying, you're saying, John Pator, it's you're saying. Let me see if I know what you're saying. You're saying. You're saying that you that you're you're done. Like yet you couldn't do fifteen hours twenty hours a week. You couldn't pay me, and I could do it. I'll pay you what you can do. I posit, John of Doors, and I posit this with all the Christian love, not to that I have, because I don't have that much, but all that's that exists, and that's a lot that
you're studying to get that I'm studying. I posit, sir, that you could do it without paytent. You are gifted in that respect.
I'm trying to gin up some money here because unlike Jonah, I'm not making any money on the road.
I mean either.
I was, by the way horrified. I will tell you what it's like to be a writer and a monster at the same time being both. On last week, this terrible thing happened to Rich Lowry. Right, Rich Lowry was accused falsely and disgustingly used, you know, used a bad word on the air. People like tried to spin it up at something on Twitter. And he lost two speaking gigs and it was really shameful. And rich is a
wonderful person. And I've known him for thirty years and he has never said anything offensive about anybody ever in my entire experience of him. And I'm sure Jonah, you got all three of us know him. And no, this is true.
I didn't stop you for trying to get those gigs for yourself.
Right, it was terrible that he lost.
He's a good friend. I love him the Badger Institute.
No, wait a minute.
When I emailed the people who canceled him, I told him I was available. I also gave them a piece of my mind. No, no, this is no.
I was going somewhere else. I was in the Why didn't I get speaking gigs. That's where I was.
I was in the Hey, cancel me.
What the hell he had it to magazine? I had a magazine. I'm a pretty compelling He's out there getting gigs. What about me? I didn't feel sorry enough for him that he was punished unjustly for this horrible, you know, horrible mistreatment. I had a little I had a teeny bit of Shotenfreuda undeserved. He did not not deserve shod before it from me. I have nothing but kind feeling. It's about me. It's what is nice, as my as my.
Pastor nice And you realize you're a pharisee g thanks.
Well, you know, regular thing would make this a regular thing. On glop Is, the last five minutes are ask Father rob or yeah right, where behavior? And then ask for contrition and the guidance and healing from yes, yes, Well.
This is the month of Eld. This is the Jewish month of Eld, and we are to when we are to reflect upon our behavior in the in the previous year, as we approach the high Holy Days which begin next week and in which we go through the ten days of Awe, in which we are to reflect on our own misdeeds, failures, and seek a restitution with with the Lord to have the Lord of Verth the evil to create let us continue to be inscribed in the Book
of Life for another year. So I guess what I did here, even though it is not yet the days of all, was uh, make some kind of a public amend to Rich Lowry for not being sufficiently upset at his loss of a speaking gig. Me.
No, you would never hear that from me.
Okay, so Rich, I'm sorry, Joan up. I can't wait to see you on with with Chris Wallace. Uh and uh and Rob just say uh. You know the problem is that you're like high Church and I don't even know what what what it is I'm allowed to say to you.
Yeah, I'm so, I'm so high Church. You could say anything if it's really you could say now I'm as stay and it'd be like I think you.
Oh, I know we're running along, but I just I want to get your take on this real quick. Went to the CI dinner last week. Great time. They gave George Willie award. A very charming lady got another award. It was at the National Cathedral, sure right, and which is just like an event space, which I'm not sure I really approve approve of. But and then they do a joking video at the end that was kind of
funny for its painful nerdiness. Fine. Fine, And then they had these dancers performers that who were the theme of the night was Prometheus, and literally on the altar at the National Cathedral they're doing like this modern dance circusolet thing in homage to Prometheus. And I like.
This even offends me to a pagan dance literally.
Just like literally pagan in the National Cathedral.
And I just if you, if you go, if you'd look at the uh you go to anything that's at the cathedral, say, John, the Divine is the cathedral in the New York, New York. That's where the bishop is. It's the biggest giant case. I think it's the second largest largest Gothic style cathedral in the world.
The dog and cat stuff, which is awesome.
Yeah. And usually in the back of the whatever the program is, they'll have a list of people, you know, the the staff and the people associated with the cathedral and the bishop and the bitch of coadjutor, the all the it's a huge thing. And then they have this other, this other job that's down there, which is the resident trapeze artist. No, no, sorry it was wrong. No, the resident tightrope.
Artiste artist in residence.
I think I think it's what it is. Actually, I think it is. Yeah, and.
At least change the light bulbs.
I don't know, that's a good question. They have a little speak of circus lays. So yeah, I mean, obviously we probablybably should be rethinking. The irony is that we took this is another glop and I had to run. But we took all of the mystery and the grandeur out of the religion, religious experiences, certainly the ones that are sort of foundational American you know, the mainline of
Protestant churches. And then because we say, oh, well, people don't want that, and then you look at what people do, and it's like they're going to burning Man and they're going to yoga, and they're chanting, and they're doing all sorts of things that suggest that actually people are incredibly, incredibly in search of mystery. And meanwhile, the mainline American Protestant churches that built the country, you're busy saying things
like it's all a metaphor, don't worry about it. By the way, we have Starbucks coffee and okay, well, yeah, we're gonna have a little We're gonna do a Prometheus, because Prometheus is basically Jesus, you know, like, oh, by the altar, it's not even an altar. And then you end up kind of where they are, which they like, Hey, why isn't anybody ever coming anymore? Well, you know, because you told them to go to Starbucks. So that's where they.
Are an unexpectedly deep ending.
Yeah. No, that's why I want. We're here to tell you about the good news. You see, John, you.
Can all right later later go with God.
My toe bones connected to my foot bole. My foot bones connected to my heel bone. My heel bones connected to my ankle ball. That's how they connected those dry bone do do do do do do do do do do shut Charlie shit bones connected to my knee bone. My knee bones, can do month fine bone, My fine bones connected to month hippo bone. That's how they connected those ryme bones. Do do do do do do do do Do Do Do with Dr Frankensteins where my story starts. Everything that have may not be mine, but I'm a
gentleman of parts. Microphones connected to my shoulder bone. My shoulder bones connected to my neck bone. My neck bone is boulder tuma, headbone. And that's how Herman was born. I was assembled, and that's how Hermie baby was bond