And I would like to talk about a product that I'm very angry about. I'm also good like that's something I've got. Some rants make words go.
Now you know what the public's like, a page full of guinea pigs.
Good night, you stupid idiots. We're nearing the end of March, and this is culture. Sighing.
In Princeton, New Jersey, is Rob Long, Hi sighing, Rob Long, how are you?
I'm doing very well, John, how are you?
I am well? And in Washington, d c.
As with a copy of Doune over his left shoulder is Jonah Goldberg.
Jonah, how are you?
I'm all right? I consider myself there of size, So I feel like Rob's taking my material.
But Prince of size s I D H S or s I z e H s I.
G plays some corn hole with the Prince of size.
Well shall we?
I mean you guys did see the story we did text about the story about the cornhole champion who is a multiple amputee be arrested for murder because not only can he play cornhole though he has wellcated arms, but he can also shoot someone with a gun while he has no arms and legs. He's like a really successful versus Black Knight from He's the Black Knight as the Black Knight would wish to be in yea Python.
My question though, is is he is he? Really?
Is he?
I mean, I hate to do this, this is unfair, but is he a corn hole champion or is he a special corn hole champion?
You know that you have this to.
Cornhole, which, by the way, is is never a good idea.
And by the way, I think that that is you are. This what you've done there is you have othered him And just because he's accused of murder and been arrested for murder does not mean that you need to other him.
That would be my just shame on you.
Do you remember those missus Jones and missus Jones jokes when we were kids. I mean, I know, I'm a little younger than you. I was like, missus Jones, Missus Jones, can Bobby come out and play?
Oh yeah?
Oh yeah, yeah, no, you know he can't. He doesn't have any arms and legs. And you're like, well, can you play second base? Yeah?
Yeah?
The marble jokes and marble and horrible and whatever, but like.
Okay, more horrible jokes.
They were funny.
My daughter says to me the other day, do you know that my generation believes that Helen Keller was a fake? Apparently there is a TikTok, there was a whole yeah, TikTok that is devoted to either proving or just suggesting that Helen Keller was in fact not a genius socialist memoirist hero who learned the fundaments of language from Anne Sullivan. That it was all answer, then the whole thing was a fake. Did you know this theory?
I've heard of this.
I've heard of this, but I think it is an outgrowth, a bad cultural outgrowth of the truth, as sometimes these theories are, which the truth is that she was a terrible person.
She really was.
Apparently she's just a terrible, parial person.
So people now want to take from her, you know her like although you know, you know how she burned the side of her face right answering the iron, she.
Burned her hand trying to read the waffle iron.
Oh that's true, Yeah, right, okay, but so fine.
I'm just saying, like, I did not know that this was one of the many otherwise a conspiracy theory so old, yeah that you know it? How I didn't even know people knew who Helen Keller was anymore. I guess maybe maybe schools still staged the Miracle Worker or something like that.
I did once have a brain kind of a mini stroke in my head once, and I two more different people. I can't imagine, but I was trying to talk about the eponymous diarist, famous Amsterdam girl diarist who wrote a diary and then went to Holocaust and went to Auschwitz. And I was for some reason, I kept saying the Diary of Helen Keller. But you know, Helen Keller when she was betrayed by the by Dutch collaboration.
Okay, that is an interesting, uh whatever you call that kind of thing, solicism or brain peart. Because another thing my daughter did, who has been doing research on contemporary Jewish topics for her bachelor thesis, a friend of hers sent her this thing from summer camp, uh, Jewish summer camp from nineteen ninety or something like that, on whom do you admire? And so the list of people was as follows, whom do you admire? You talk Shamir, this is a Jewish summer camp.
Then okay, this is Martin.
It's not where Tucker sends his kids to camp. That's what you're saying.
Yeah, that's right, that's.
Right, Martin, Luther King and Frank or Helen Keller.
These were the four Attle four choices you got.
So your.
Your kind of confusing, and Frank and Helen Keller has a cultural root dating back decades to the Jewish summer camping.
I liked the idea, though when the minute you said, you know, she's doing this thing in contemporary Jewish topics, all I could think it was like topic one, my prostate hicks me forever to pee you are.
She's twenty one, and so.
Those are still topics. Those are still topics. Those are our cultural topics.
They are topics you know what make fun of Jews all you like. But I did point out on the commentary podcast today that the baseball season has started and the first game was the Yankees versus the Giants, and there was the Yankees pitch to shut out, and the shutout pitcher was Max Freed, one of the few Jews in the major leagues, and somebody who played for Israel in the Macabea Games when he was in high school.
Score one for my belagued people. Let's see, if you know Hassan Piker wants to take on Max Freed.
It does.
I mean, look and I, of course, as you know I I I love all peoples and all all creeds.
Do you do well? You love them all equally. Let's just put it back. Well, I didn't say that. I mean I'm not.
I'm not.
Yeah, I'm not a saint.
I am.
I don't think at least today or probably this week, you will do anything more perfectly in line with every anti Semites idea of Jewish people than to watch a baseball game on Opening Day and say good for the Jews.
Find the Jewish angle in it.
Hey, I can't help I can't help myself.
You know, there are like three really good players in the in the in the in the you.
Have like a divining rod. You're like a dowser. You just find you. You can find anywhere you like.
My my mother who grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, there was a Jewish paper as there was an even city as small and Saint Paul with a small and Jewish population, there was a Jewish paper in Saint Paul and wasn't Star Tribune, no, actually, but my mother, uh, there was a feature in the in the weekly. Her favorite feature and in every featured in every Jewish newspaper in the United States.
Called our fellow tribe members.
And it would be a thing about, hey, guess who's Jewish. And the greatest moment of her life, when she was I don't know, eight or nine years old, was when she discovered the Dinah Shore, who was from I think Charleston, South Carolina, was in fact a Jew.
Well, people forget about Charleston. That is the thing that people forget. How incredibly Jewish Charleston.
But a veiled reference to the slave trade rep it.
No, it has one of the too old.
Some other Jewish thereia type.
As the second oldest synagogue in the United States something like that is in Charleston anyway. But Dinah Shore, that was a great moment. So we we take our we take our comradeship with our lunesman very seriously, particularly if they are involved in fields not ordinarily known for their Jewishness.
So that's why I'm mentioned Max.
There's also something a lot of people don't understand about Jews playing count the Jews or celebrate is it's actually a very patriotic thing. It's it's it's like We're part of America. Look how cool this is?
You know?
Oh you mean for America. Yeah, yeah, for America. I'm sorry, but well Max Reid isn't playing for the television, friend, But I want to get back to like, like I think I am. I was well trained by my father in the importance of holding utterly meaningless but ancient intellectual grievances and carrying receipts for a very long time. So I kind of I'm enamored with the idea of trying to expose that fraud. Helen Keller, I am.
It is great. I'm sorry, it is absolutely great.
I agree. I just don't know if it's true, but like, like, if it were true, I'd be like down for it. It does raise the question, who is someone that you're that you think are someone that we are told by conventional wisdom that we are supposed to revere who you you will not let go of your more balanced interpretation of their character. Oh, I'll go first, you guys, So I'm not gonna do Martin Luther King because I think the people who wanted to and then right, that's fine whatever,
Martin looking good and important. Man, it did important things. My guy is Gandhi. Gandhi was a pretty terrible person in all sorts of ways.
He was.
He refused to let his wife get life saving medication, but on the grounds that it was some you know. He was basically RFK in a toga, and he had all these theories about modern medicine, all that kind of stuff, and his wife died because he wouldn't let her get medical treatment. But when he needed medical treatment, he got it. He was the guy who told he was obsessed with his bowel movements to a point that we don't need to dwell on too much here.
And his.
His whole violence never solved anything. Stick He only used that against the Brits basically and the way and just referred to Hitler as his friend and never told him violence never solved anything. He did tell the British that they should just surrender to the Nazis and that the Jews should all kill themselves in an act of civil, disobedient resistance to the Nazis. So yes, I'm sorry, I'm going to problematize Gandhi a little bit.
There is a magnificent piece that was published in commentary magazine Richard eighty two by Richard Grenier called the Gandhi Nobody knows because this movie had been made that yeah, every Oscar by Richard Attenborough, starring and absolutely brilliant Ben Kingsley, who, by the way, is absolutely brilliant this year on this Disney Plus show wonder Man Spectacular. He is one of the great actors who has ever lived, and he was
great as Gandhi. But the movie is a giograph hegiograph portrait of Gandhi, and so Richard wrote this, Oh you want to know who Gandhi really is, well, let me
tell you. And then I was remembering, It's interesting you brought this up because I was thinking about Iran and the trouble that Iran has made in the world for the last forty seven years, and I remembered a totally forgotten cultural event that Richard Granier wrote a really funny comic novel about that is now it would cost me one hundred dollars to buy it on Amazon, so I'm
not going to buy it on Amazon. But it was called The Marrakesh one two and it was about the making See if you guys remember this of a movie called Mohammed Messenger of God with Anthony Quinn as Mohammad.
And it both the Pope and Mohammad. That's impressive.
He can't play anything.
And a New York City copp and across one hundred and ten street. I just want to buy a Vincent Van Goh, I believe.
Yeah, I think so.
But wait a minute, are you?
Are we off of the idea of like of good people who are really secretly No?
Yeah, please, no, go ahead, please.
I think everyone I mean, as you know, I love everybody, and I wish everybody well. So I think we're all beloved children of God. So I don't have the hatreds that you and Jonah seem to have in Nurture. Yeah, you can't go too soon with Helen Keller.
You can't.
I actually this doesn't make me unusual.
But I I'm not crazy about Eleanor Roosevelt.
That's good.
I like it, not crazy. And I heard a great story one it's very moving story of my friend who a wonderful writer names Bob Samd's a wonderful writer, very funny guy, and he grew up in New Jersey and in the he's older. He's an older guy, so I don't hold he is now he's old to me and he grew up in He got a got a great nineteen fifties kind of vibe, early sixties vibe to him growing up. And he had a very hard childhood in a lot of ways. His father was a kind of a
difficult guide. But his mother died when he was very young, went not very like eleven or twelve, so like a really important time, and he absolutely depressed. And his older sister lived in New York City. He went through months and months and months of his sort of glum depression, and his father was no help. And his father instantly remarried, like within a month, and did this thing where he brought this woman home and said call her mom now. Like it was like from a bad novel, right, but
it's real. And his sister said, want you to come into the city tomorrow, and said They came in the city, and he took the train in and walked around when New York City was a black and white city, and they went down to NYU to see a panel or some presentation of something with Elwen or Roosevelt. And she was very old at that point. And there's a big and they're big up at a front row. They're watching
this thing unfold, ik foret what it was. And Roosevelt was in the on the dais and and she started to she fell asleep, started asleep, and her head lolled to one side, and her tongue came out, and there's this huge stream of drool came out of her mouth as she was asleep during the speeches, and then she started to snort and snore, and no one could wake up Eleanor Roosevelt. And he started to laugh, and they started to laugh in the front row, and he laughed
and they laughed. It couldn't stop laughing. And it was said it was the first time he'd laughed in almost a year, and and he felt much better after that after laughing at an elderly, disgusting, snoring, drooling Elander Roosevelt.
So so I'm one. I'm wondering because Rob, you're a You're you're a token, uh wasp, careful guy here right? Well, no, just like in popular culture, uh I when you said you don't like Eleanor Roosevelt, which I'm totally sympathetic to, I immediately went to the grand the matriarch in the Christopher Walkens fa family and wedding crashers Oh yeah, who talked about how F g R was just a doll and a sweet man. But I'm just quoting a movie here, people.
But Eleanor Roosevelt was a big, dumb dyke, useless rug muncher. That's when they put a bed wondering if maybe there's this this, this, this, this digital wasp thing about uh uh Ellen Rose.
Also, we were crazy about Franklin either, let's get you know Eleanor's collateral damage.
Well that's the thing.
Yeah, it was a trader in general, just sort of an American enterprise.
Yeah, I go with media figures. Edward comes immediately to mind. All the worst he the A lot of the pomposity relates to his use after his death and the idea that he represented the finest and greatest and noblest of American traditions.
He himself was I think a more mixed and amusing figure.
You know, he used to do these interviews with people with this giant television screen, and he was much more pop and he was, you know, Christian amanpour pompous. I mean, he is a sort of like a big TV star, and he played himself as a big TV star. But then in the wake of his relatively early death. He then became this totemic example of the glories of CBS News and that kind of thing. And so though I don't like, but like, who the hell was he? I understand he was in He was in World War Two.
So we're hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of reporters who don't get the credit that he gets. But I'm trying to think of like other I mean, there are you know, I feel very negatively about Bob Woodward, who, by the way, has just released a you know, is releasing a memoir in the Fall, in which he promises to name names of dead people who you know, gave him secrets he couldn't say until after they were dead.
I think he's a liar. I think he lied.
His book about Iran Contra features a climactic event I do not believe happened, and that I think he made up because he didn't have a sort of news hook for the book, because he didn't get anything.
And that's this supposed him.
Sneaking in too Bill Casey, the CIA Directors hospital, saying why did you do it? In Casey with his last breath saying I believed and then dying. That's made up right, And I do not believe that happened in Casey's family. Does I believe that happened. And I think a person who can do something like that is beneath contempt and so uh.
And of course you know they.
Don't like it.
You don't like people forget, he's not your cup of tea.
He's not my cup of tea.
I mean, there are many, many, many people who are not my there.
I think that's been established.
I think, I think if you look at the glop archives, I think that has been.
The list of people that are your cup of tea. These days, John is becoming ever more selective.
It is true. And I don't even like tea.
I don't like tea, so all right, But yeah, but pomposity is what archness, pomposity, self seriousness, that's those are the things that get under my.
But it can't be people who are famous for it. Can't be people who are famous for being arrogant. It has to be people who have a reputation of being salt of the earth, wonderful wise, faintly, saintly and.
Were decent or something. You know who I really hated, you know, I really hated Princess Diana.
I like that fay Ed guy.
I did.
Well. You know, he was just a guy in tight pants and a golden necklace trying to, you know, score with the babes. I remember when she died.
The morning she died, I could always tell I had these English friends I had in La, in La at the time, and you know, you come to La, you're kind of like un especially if you're English, you're kind of unconnected to the English social system, so you don't really know who's who.
Right when they're in La.
They're all driving around acting like they're from La, and you I could always tell me. You couldn't tell from their accents because like the upper class English people always adopt a kind of a slightly lower class accent, and so I could. I knew instantly which of my English friends were sort of aristocrats and which were not by
how they respond to the death. So the ones who were not aristocrats said things like, oh, what a tragedy people's princess, and the ones who were aristocrats said, thank god she's dead.
Mad as a brush, I've never heard that.
It isn't it good? I don't know what it.
Means, but it's us that is a fantastic phrase.
I wonder how I will tell you?
I will I know we want to move on to pop culture but tons British sounds.
A pound is obviously a really.
Down as a pound.
Uh yeah, well you know you steal steal them all from Woodhouse.
You know they're all great to all the ones in.
And now we're gonna take a short break because I want to tell you about a great new podcast. We hear a lot, especially online, about conservatives attacking other conservatives. Sometimes it even seems like conservatives are fighting each other more than they fight the left. And that is where this new podcast, Conservative Crossroads, with Henry Olsen, who is a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center
comes in. It doesn't shy away from these disputes. It leans into them by putting two conservatives who disagree about an important issue together to hash it out on the air in a civil and fun and interesting fashion. Every other week, Conservative Crossroads does what no other program does, and that is explore conservatives Conservatism's disagreements without name calling.
Conservative Crossroads is the podcast for conservatives who want to understand what's happening to the movement now and what might be happening down the line now. If you have listened to the Rickshire podcast, you already know Henry Olsen. He is a great, great guest. He's one of our favorite guests on that podcast. He always brings a lot of clarity and light and good humor and incredible depth of knowledge about politics and policy and voters and the great
sweep of American political history. He's a great guest and I'm thrilled that he is now the host of Conservative Crossroads. So if you, like me, have been hoping for someone to start a series like this, your hopes have been granted, so please check it out. Join Henry Olsen and his guests at Conservative Crossroads every other week as they hash out the ideas and principles that will decide the future of the right. Download Conservative Crossroads from our partner Ricochet
or any platform where you get your podcasts. Conservatism is at a crossroads, which is why all conservatives need Conservative Crossroads. Listen today. Before we move on, I just want to share a moment of my new life. I was in the library as i am and a fellow, a classmate, came up to me and they're.
Doing a little.
Comedy sketch show tonight, which I will not be I can't be there for it. But and he said to me, hey, so I'm just doing these lists of things. It's like in the style of the Jeff Fox where you may be a redneck if but it's like you may be a seminary and if it's kind it's a funny. And so he said, do you have any any any ideas you know? And he's like writing him down, you know, And so I gave him one and he said, oh, that's that's good.
That's good.
And then I gave him another and he said too wordy. I thought, go yourself. This is my job.
I always love that. I love that.
I love that when I have occasionally in my life been impressed into service by my wife or something like that to do a service life where could just help write a press release for this station. And then I write the press release and it's like, no, no, it's really good. I have some kind of note. I think one and I'm like and I'm like, do whatever the.
F you want.
Yeah, this is not this did not this is not me. And but I did not say this. So I'm going to say something that is a racial joke, and no, I'm gonna say something's a racist joke, but it's in context. So I'm hanging a lantern on it right now. A very good friend of mine's a wonderful writer, was driving in LA with his son and his son's friend, and his son was like, I don't know, eight or nine
or ten, you know, not a teenager look young. And they're driving on I think it's like Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica by a and they, you know, it's like there's a bunch of stores there, and they see a sort of large black guy carrying a flat screen TV. And my friend says, huh, I wonder who he stole that TV from. Yeah, and it's a joke, right, because that's the k And he sort of looks at the
very mirrorcause the kids are young enough. They're in the back seat and they're just a gas and his son says, Dad, you.
Can't say that, Dad, I can't believe you said that. And he pulls over and he has he's embarrassed.
By it, but he has like kind of a milk and he goes, oh, I can't Oh, Oh, do you like the house we live in? Do you like your swimming pool, doude, do you like that where we're driving now to the thing?
Do you like that?
Because that is all paid for by Dad's inability to stop himself from saying things like that.
And the kids looking back, you're like terrified.
Their eyes are wide, and he like gifts the car back and he like steams and he comes the next thing.
He tells us the story. He goes, right, am, I right am?
I right?
Like, well, you know you might want to tone it down in here too, by the way, you might want to tone it down, but like so, yeah, I get it, the same imphos in a box. Well that is that that is a very good detail. But I but the answer is no, because you had to know what it was. Well he was a just more like, excuse me.
That the person was black has nothing to do with the question of whether or not somebody.
Walking on it was a perfect setup. They where they it was a good setup.
Might very likely have taken it out of somebody's house and was walking into there.
Now maybe they were given it.
And I I think I've told this story that I did that once with somebody in the car, and I think it was at a bus stop I was like parked of the inner stopping in the intersection of red light and to the left at a at a bus bench, bus stop bench in la in the corner of Montana Avenue, and something there was a very enormous, enormous woman, I mean enormous. There was no room on the bench or anyone else. Put it out, a very very large woman
looking at her phone and sobbing uncontrollably. And you know, you're in the car and you both but notice this thing. And I went at it, and I said, she just read a text that says, I ate the roast beef sandwich that was in the refrigerator.
Williams poem about the.
Yeah, yeah, I hate the refrigerator that you were saving for your mid morning pre pre snack snack.
Yeah it was delicious.
I was at, ah, if we're going to tell these kinds of stories, I was at a thirty years ago now and I've matured. Yeah, better, I'm a better person. But uh, when I was early on, when I was a producer for doing PBS stuff, we were invited to this incredibly lavish press thing. Uh they you thing for a new super multicultural kid's television show. Cartoon with you know the kids. All the kids looked like America, let's just say, right in the cartoon, and they had different ethnicities.
And so at this big thing where they rented out a big space at Union Station, they had different stations of food representing the different cultures of the characters in the show. So Hispanic food for the Hispanic kid and whatever. And I remember turning to my friend, I'll just say, Scott, who we were. We're at the Native American table. Yeah,
let people figure it out. And we had the Native American table and for the cute little Native American kid, and they had some sort of tortilla thing that and I said, oh, Scott, you got to try the Native American and stuff. This food is great and like their land, it's free. And I apologize, I want to land acknowledgement. It's not free. Came a terrible suffering or whatever. But we have now used we referenced that moment for thirty years about.
Come on, these are the greatest moments of our lives. Let us are Let us not be pompous or you know, or apologetic. When you get that absolutely vivid soular plexus punch, you know, there's nothing better let's let's think it.
No, and you and you and also right, well, it's just a joke, man, Like, it's just a joke.
I think Louis c. K figured out a way to pick the lock on these problems pretty well, sort of at a pretty woke time.
He had that button maybe but maybe well.
No, he had this, he had this. I remember he had this running jokes about how racist he is. And he would say every time I see like a Chinese guy cross just walking down the street, I think I wonder what he's thinking. It must be something like bing bong bing ching chung ching chou jou. What a perfect topic for our last clop before we're in prison.
Yeah, the classic the classic thing about ethnic comedy and stereotypical ethnic comedy is that the ethnic groups themselves get enough of it.
Yeah, they love it.
Have you ever tried to watch a Tyler Perry movie, like your head explodes? It's like watching a bad eighth grade play.
Uh.
The acting is egregious, the writing is over delay like it's it's horrible, and it's all incredibly stereotypical, and the people who it is made for adore it.
It's it's like a representation there. That's actually fairly accurate. People tell me, you know, it's like a it's it's totally recognizable.
But even if it weren't like there was for Jews in the mid century, you know, like there were obviously, you know, there was wonderful writers and a great great intellectual tradition and nobility and Wroth and Almond and Bellow and you know, and such great things. And then there were these writers who wrote kind of like idle die Lil Didyle, Sam Levinson, and there was another guy named Harry Golden who wrote a book called Oldie in America
is always like missus lefk of it's black. Who bought those and you know, like commentary would publish pieces about how offensive these were, only in stereotypical and who bought those books in the millions?
Jews did.
Yeah, And one one of those Jews who bought that book only in America gave a copy of it, signed copy by Harry Golden to somebody in my family as a gift because I have read that book. It was on my parents bookshelf.
Right well, it sold like it was right next to the Torah.
Did God sign that?
No, I'm just kidding. Most we didn't have a tour in the house.
John, your mom no tours.
In the house.
You know what, if you had the Bible in your house, you have the tour in your house. My friend might drop first half. It's the first d.
More than the first half. It's the first to some of us.
Some of us do not think that sequels are better than the original, is all I'm saying. You know, yeah, Jonah, because I mentioned Dune is over your shoulder, So the trailer is out for Dune three. You are reading Dune or a fan of the first two movies, which I think we're really good. Dune three is coming. Dune three based on the second novel in the Dune series, Dune Messiah, and it's going to stink, because Dune Messiah stinks. Everything
that came after Dune stank. And we are now heading into a situation exactly like Wicked two, which is that Wicked two was the second act of the musical Wicked, and the first act of the musical Wicked, which was Wicked one, was actually pretty good, because the first act of Wicked is pretty good, and the second act of Wicked was terrible, and the movie based on it was terrible.
And now they're going to spend two hundred million dollars on this Dune three based on Done Messiah, and it is going to be terrible unless they change the plot, which of course they will not do. Do you agree with me that Doude Messiah is terrible? Skeptical?
I am. I am more hopeful than you in all things, really, but I uh, I think I think they will have sufficient license to deviate from the text where necessary. And so I don't know. All I know is from the trailer I did not like. I did not love doing Messiah. I like the fourth one God Emperor of Dude, and so uh, I think it just the amount of money alone is so important to the studio and to the franchise.
But maybe they will just say, let's just make a good movie, because, like the Dune fans, you've bought so much goodwill by managing to make even a say good dude movie, given how many times people have tried. I think that he might feel like he can take whatever license he needs to take. But I don't know.
I don't know either.
I'm just saying I think it's inferior, uh, inferior product and source material.
But you know, there are things that are bad books that lend themselves to good movies, right, I mean, so who knows?
Yeah, I think so well. I mean, honestly, I was not crazy about the book. I can't believe they even read it, Hail Mary.
No, I know why I read it.
I'm in a book club project, Hail Mary, and we all get to pick our books, and so someone picked Project Hill Mary.
Uh.
And I you know, it was like I suffered. I didn't suffer through it. I just thought it was kind of silly and it was a scary spider. But from all accounts, the movie is fantastic. I'm eager to see the movie.
And you know why the movie is fantastic. I don't know why, because it's a buddy comedy. Had we haven't had think of how long it's been since there's been a really good buddy comedy, like Wedding Crash Ago, which was twenty years.
Ago, the last really good buddy comedy, and like the buddy comedy was such a staple of our youth if you think about it.
Redford Newman, Butch Cassidy, The Sting, Sure.
Forty eight Hours, Lethal Weapon, the whole thing where the real relationship in the movie is between these two unlike men who come to love each other. Midnight run all that, and then somehow I just died.
Died away. Yeah.
Yeah, this is.
A theory that went on.
I mean, as we'll just say, it is a theory that people talk about, uh and never talk about it for attribution.
This is true.
I mean, I'm not even making a joke. It's a theory about what happened to comedy, especially that kind of comedy, and that is that the decision making executive suites in studios and TV networks, for a lot of really great reasons and fantastic outcomes, became more diverse in a gender way, meaning more women and just very different tastes in movies and very different tastes in comedy. And it's the comedy
that we're referencing here is not appealing. Why are you laughing, because if you'll laughing at the end of my career gets it.
No. I was just thinking that.
It's a very different kind of comedy because you can name literally two female writer directors in the history of motion pictures who have made funny comedies. Maybe three maybe three. Penny Marshall say, that's only because well, I was thinking writer, I was thinking of North Nancy Myers, but you could add Penny Marshall. And now, of course women didn't get that much chance to direct and all of that.
But you know, like the yeah, the thing about the there's a relationship comedies though, there's a relationship comedy, right, which are great, by the.
Way, not you know, but they're not the same thing as two dudes.
Yeah, rob a banging out. Yeah, yeah, they rob a bank. They're both cops, they're.
Both dodgeball anchorman, you know.
Yeah, and that island.
That's a buddy comedy.
I mean, so Project tail Mary just like in the sixties when the sitcom got stale, you ended up having sitcom families, but like one was a witch or they were they were were you know, Frankenstein's Monster and Dracula's daughter, you know, or something like that, like to freshen up. So Project Hill Mary is a buddy comedy about a guy alone in space who ends up finding himself in proximity to an alien. The single cutest piece of puppetry,
like is Yoda level. If you took Yoda and Elmo and you put them together, and you may character out of it because the character as you remember from the book, is a very able scientist who is actually hundreds of years older and vastly smarter than our hero the human, and is better at what he does and has to kind of be really patient with the human who is a bit of a adult.
And it is just delightful.
That's great.
I'm in it is. It is a delightful, delightful movie.
And I stud feel like sometimes movies can take, you know, the the ponderous narration that kind of gets on my nerves, the sort of indicating language that people use, and the bad, stupid, wry jokes that some novelists put in, thinking he's so clever, you know, you you you take all that out and you punch it up and it story just everything's elevated. I remember, like there's a great detective novelist, Lawrence Block,
and he's so good. But yeah, Matt scudder. But uh, but a lot of the a lot of the stuff around those books. In the books, the narration and the details are just so irritating. The the young black guy kid from the Deuce, who's his friend, and this is supposed to be contemporary, and it's like that's that's a fact. Jack it's like, oh God, please, no stop. And he's always going to the local bar and getting a Yarlsburg cheeseburger,
which is like, do not ever write those words. And and but on the other hand, the mysteries are really good.
And in the movie, I think that somebody made a movie.
At one I thought it was pretty good because.
Yeah, you just take out all that stuff and you and you end up with a really good story.
So uh.
But yeah, so anyway, that's that's a you really shouldn't see projects even if you don't like science fiction, because.
It is uh.
And and and by the way, eliminates the longers of the book, which are very extreme, because they are about these guys decoding this crisis, this like universal crisis where its sons are being attacked literally our son and other sons are being attacked by kind of virus and they have to figure out.
Yes, we should support it just for this reason alone. But it is about the imminent destruction of the earth, and it is not about climate change.
It isn't in fact, the climate change that is caused in the in the book and then the movie is freezing is this is an ice age?
But it's not because.
Because gases are being being because I'm on cold morning to let my car run for half an hour before I get in it.
That's it.
Put it the way, It's not my fault. That's one of the things I like about this Paradise thing. Although they do at one point finally have to Yeah, this.
Show I'm talking about, they.
Had to get a dig in a climate change, but for the most part it wasn't the climate change related apocalyptic event, and it was just like, Oh, that's just so refreshing to have the world.
And Interstellar was like that too.
Interstellar is a movie that has a lot of similarity, weird superficial similarities to Project Hill Mary, but Interstellar, which is about a same also a miss and to save the Earth from a bizarre blight like weather blight like yeah, essentially like a kind of bowl weavil plague that develops the Earth and they have to go off to try to figure out how to either how to save the
Earth or how to move somewhere else. And that was referred that was sort of like the Hidden Code that Christopher Nolan was not a comedy like it was the one.
Guy who was a kind of high tory.
We got in a hint of that from the plot of The Dark Knight Returns, which of course is essentially a kind of portrait of a radical terrorist taking over a radical leftist terrorist taking over a city and what Batman has to do to stop him. And then he made Interstellar, in which the villain is a climate scientist played by Matt Damon who and I don't.
I it's just a little too weird that his.
Name is doctor Mann, and doctor Man was the guy National review talking about the hockey Stick when National Reviews said his hockey stick portrait of how climate change worked was a fabrication.
Correct you on your characterization.
I'm sorry, I got it wrong. But the villain is named weirdly shares the same name as the as a client as a climate science activist in a movie that deliberately made the Apocalypse not about climate change. So Christopher Nolan now about to release The Odyssey, very interesting.
I also finally saw Sinners, which I have. Yeah, so I like, you know, it's difficult with all the hype about it. I think there's stuff because of it's such an impressive audio and visual assault on the senses. There are linear narrative things that are pretty badly written that you kind of overlook and so, but beyond that, it was just nice to see a like a particularly creative new take on a bunch of old themes. You know, I liked it.
Yeah, I saw it the night it open. I loved it. I was not expecting much from it. I didn't think it was going to be good because I'm not that and I'm not that crazy about now Oscar winning actor Michael B.
Jordan.
But you know, it starts and there is this setting that you've really never seen before in a movie, right, nineteen thirty two, Clarksburg, Mississippi. Right, And it looks a little LIKEO Brother We're out there though it's though it's much more documentarily like I think accurate, or feels that way. And the whole thing takes place in a day and it's about the opening of a juke joint. That's literally the story of the movie is a juke joint is
opening in this town. These two gangster brothers returned to town to get away from the Chicago mob and open a juke joint. And then it turns out that there are Irish vampires in town.
Right.
That's basically the plot of the movie. Except then it layers in the great mythos about Robert Johnson, the blues player, you know, who is said to have.
So in order to be the greatest.
The deep, the deep myth is that he didn't know how to play. That he played at a at a juke joint as a young man and was terrible and was laughed and who didn't And the girl he was chasing could have spurned him because he was no good. And then he went away for less than a year and came back and picked up the guitar and then astonished everybody. And that apparently that part the devil, that part is true. Maybe the actual the intervening months may
have been longer. But he was terrible, and then he came back and he was Robert Johnson, and and people could only attribute that to the devil.
And well, can we get a ruling from the seminary in here? Yeah? Sure? What did he sell us old to the devil? Is that the only way you can get really good at guitar? I mean, like this is the great like talk your book.
He almost certainly sold us sold to the devil. I'm ninety certain.
I've heard the Robert Johnson recordings and I know that Eric Clapton the greatest.
Well it's a thing he says he was the greatest.
And they all say it was the greatest.
It's like, eh, not for you, not your cup of tea.
Girl, It's it's not it's full your companee.
It's not like.
It's not like when you hear you know, I don't know, it's a Pelman play the violin and you're like, oh my god, this is the greatest thing I've ever.
Had to go to. Its Peerlman.
That had to be your example. You had to go to the Jew, had to be a Jew. It's not like when you hear Oscar Levant. I'll wait a minute.
His daughter is a friend of mine and might be listening to this, so I mentioned her.
Fine is that fair?
Yeah, because it's like Peerlman, isn't it isn't referenced enough in the music world. Yeah, okay, that's fine. Well, I could you know who's underrated. It's not chroman Is It's never been said. How about this, how about he's no Liberaci? Another baby showman.
There you go, and a master of tickling those ivories.
But by ivories you mean yes, that's for sure.
I am going to tell a story that you have told on this podcast maybe twice, but we've been doing this podcast for.
A well over decade.
What is the story?
Came up last night? It came up last night.
I was talking to somebody and I mentioned Paul Lynde and he said, this is weird that you're mentioning pauland because on Instagram or TikTok or something, for no reason that I can understand, I keep getting served up cut pieces of Paul Lynn's answers on the Hollywood Squares. Somebody is like going and like taking out the Paul Lynde answers on the Hollywood Squares. And he says, it's like it was like one of the joys of my day.
Like it just pops up and I get to watch thirty seconds of Paul in being hilarious on the Hollywood Squares.
And I remembered this your story.
Which I'm now going to tell because I'm stealing it from you, but I am giving you credit for.
Yeah, sure that.
One day you were watching the Phil Dona Hue show.
Oh yeah, I was not watching it. I heard this.
This is I was not seeing it. To be fair, I do not.
See you now now it's second.
But a producer on that on the Hollywood Squares was there in the studio at the time.
Okay, so Phil Donahue before he became the pre Opera just had a kind of local Chicago morning show and Paul Lynn was on the show. But he was doing the thing where he walked through the audience and had the audience ask questions with the wandering mic, and he stops at a woman and the woman says, Oh, mister Lynde, you're so charming, You're so delightful. Why hasn't a woman snapped you up and swept you up and taking you
off the market. And in Rob's telling, heard from somebody else, Paul nd said, have you been living under a rock?
Yeah? Yeah, no, well yeah, it's just.
The I mean, you know, yes, your version is because like you got to said, the joke needs attention, which is that it's the last. It was always a very complicated thing to take the stars of Hollywood Squares on a tour because they drank and they corroused. George Goebel was always getting drunk and not showing up, and Paul Inn was like, you know, it was.
Like basically like all of.
Judy Garland's husbands alcoholic.
Yeah, author like you know at four in the morning, that they'd be run out of town by the by you know, the by the parents of teenage boys carrying torches. Right, so like with with Paul, and so this was their last stop and they had gotten through it, and but Paul was a little drunk for Dona hughetting them. And the woman says this, and it's near the end of the show. And what he says is, you know how why is not why some some woman not scooped you up?
And there's this pose that everyone's breath is stopped because like we're almost home, and Paul says, where have you been living in a cave? There we go, and then she looks confused, and then one that's confused and then filled on.
He says, that's the.
Guest Hollywood Square, thank you very much.
And then it's like that's the end of the show and they all got go home. It needs, you know, it needs some setup in some theater around it.
John Baron, if I screwed it up, okay, But I do want to say that while I am happy that Metta lost this tour, unlike the Wall Street Journal, I am happy that Meta was found liable in this lawsuit involving Instagram and it's addictive and the addictive qualities of its efforts on the Internet toward children, because I think this is a very important moment in our cultural history.
Having said that, my experience of Instagram in the last couple of years has been nothing but delightful to me because all I get are snippets of great Hollywood dance numbers. I just saw yesterday from a movie I'd never heard of, a musical from the nineteen fifties, the dancer Russ Tamblin, who we if you know he is, you would know him from playing Riff in A West Side Story. And then later he was on Twin Peaks. But he was also in Sevenbrize for Some Brothers, and he was an
incredible acrobatic dancer. And he did a number in a movie, a black and white movie, in which he does a dance, a tap dance, standing on two shovels that he is hoisting himself up on and then tap dancing on. But of course in order to do that, he has to keep lifting the shovels while he is on the shovels. It's the damnedest thing I've ever seen. I'm sixty five years old. I'd never heard of this movie. I'd never
seen it. Instagram showed it to me. I get to see the Nicholas brothers do dances, Ray Bolger doing dances, and movies you've never heard of. You know, musical numbers from musicals of the eighties, seventies and nineties that are clipped and stuff like that. And I know it's bad for teenagers, and I know that it sets up all this depression and all that.
But for me, why can't you nothing but pleasure?
There's like somebody uploading every almost every single episode of Cheers called Cheers clips, and they're sort of now, like in the seventh season or eight season now, and so I basically I am reliving my career. I mean, it's amazing. And sometimes I'm like, oh, that's a that's a funny joke. Kind of forgot that. It's something to think, Oh my god, we let that go. Oh my god, what a how lovenly we were. But I think you should be able to sell or to share. I should say your algorithm like, okay,
I like I like what you're watching. I want to why am I not watching what you're watching. Oh well, here's a little bit of my algorithm for you, and then you should be able to set that for your kids.
Share it there on Spotify, right, people can playlist playlists and stuff like that. So, but of course you don't have control of your algorithm. You don't even know what your algorithm looks like. That's that's what they got on you.
Yeah, but I think I know yours looks like it's one hundred percent paul In in nineteen thirties movies.
It's not and cavalcadd Jews. I don't get the paul In.
I have, however, been getting getting a lot of because I have kids in college and kids and a kid in high school and all this, I've been getting immense numbers of private schools showing me the decisions that they're that they're well making about where they're going to college that I never even heard of. You know, some school in like Saint Louis and it's like, you know, Kevin Smith has committed to Boulder. You know, it's Colorado College. I'm like, why am I seeing this? What the hell
is happening? I think the algorithms aren't quite as perfect as they as they seem to be, but particularly given that Twitter is such a horrible, monstrous cesspool. I find that Instagram for me, you know, for a couple of minutes is like it's like us, It's like sorbet.
A little break. But you know what we should do. We should give We should give John Up the first annual Glop Culture Prize, because you know clearly this is the way you get what you want out of people is by giving them, you know.
I should we have a statue statue.
Can I can? I can I sign?
You can sign box?
Yes, but the pick your picture will be you at your desk, leaning forward in an imposing manner. You know, you know what what only we described as a parody of leadership.
I strongly believe that Trump deserves Trump. Kennedy Center named for him and after him for this reason, which is that as people as you Jonah and Rob, I'm sure you've been there. I've been there, as you may know. The Kennedy Center dedicated to the memory of John F.
Kenny Junior open I think in nineteen sixty nine. It's gigantic and ridiculous lobby, which is like it takes like two football fields long at the far end of it, there is a sculpture, a bust of John F. Kennedy that is the ugliest piece, is remarkably ugly of laboratory sculpture.
That you have ever.
Is it uglier than the one at the Kennedy Library, which is also kind of weird.
Yes, well, it is.
Thirty feet high and I'm now gonna it looks like it was molded out of dog.
No, that's how you know Helen Keller was real because she did that sculpture.
And Trump, if he wants this to share this name after the two years of renovations, there better be a bust of Trump right there next to Kennedy, also looking like dog like. That is the perfect tribute to his renaming the Kennedy Center after himself. Because no rational human being when they presented this idea for the sculpture of Kennedy to the Board of Community, why someone didn't say, are you out of your mind? Why would anyone want this to be the tribute that we are paying to this?
You know Martyred assassinated president.
Weird choices that people make, Yeah, but weird tastes in the past are their own weirdness, right, I mean like you. There there were people in the established art establishment, in the culture establishment, who looked at that and said, this is yes, yes, I know, and that is That's always the way it is.
That's always the way it is.
It's not somebody somebody thought that the okay, some.
People looked at Madison Square.
People looked at Madison Square Garden and thought, yes, a big round thing.
Yeah, come on. Is the premier example of a art form, aesthetic form, whatever you want to call it, where the practitioners care so little, if at all, actually have contempt for the taste of the public and only care about a very thin slice of avant garde peers and what they have to say about it. And like, I don't love all of Donald Trump's aesthetic castes, to be sure, but they are more mindful of like the everyman's taste about what a nice building looks like than the architects are.
The architects are in it for their own status group and not for the public.
But can I tell you when I look at him when he's in the Oval Office with all that gold leaf stuff that he in the Oval office, and I think about a couple of times that I was in the Oval office, which is a very big room, but it's not you know, a football field size room, and a lot of people end up in that room.
I am telling you that three or four times a day somebody is tearing is get punching a hole in their suit jacket because they lean up against one of those gold things that's protruding from the wall, and there's a little and then like a thousand dollars suit is ruined. I'm telling you it happened.
Probably not though, because I think those things glued to the wall are like styrofoam with the spray painted gold.
They're from home depot. I think Trump Trump trump ingram. You can't fait gold, and they're not from home depot. But he didn't get the joke, so it's entirely possibly are from home depot.
Yeah, you are right that that Trump's aesthetic more more precisely mimics, you know, the sort of classic aesthetic of the psychotic palace dweller. But I do have to say I he can do whatever he wants to with the Oval office, and whoever comes in next can remove what has done like it, just as he put the stuff up.
It's his office. I have stuff in my office that someone's gonna I have.
I have Al Jolson albums in my office, I assume behind me as you may see, and Elvis al Jolson.
That's just Youngeler.
Yeah, that's just your vote.
That's Asa Joelson, son of a Canter, uh, the plot of the jazz singer. But I have all this stuff, and when someone succeeds me, they will remove my ridiculous memorabilia.
But but I do.
He's sitting there talking about the war and stuff like that, and I can't get my eyes off this hideous, you know, golden eagles thing that's on his back. It's like, why why did you do this? Does that really make you happy? Like you were in the Oval Office like one of the grandest like spaces on earth, and you just like cluttered it up, Like but okay, it makes them happy.
What can I say?
You can't.
But whatever it is, it's not as ugly as the Obama Library, which is which may end up being the single ugliest building constructed.
It's like out of and Or, right, it looks like one of the buildings on and Or.
It's a very strange choice.
But in and Or they're more attractive because they're surrounded by flying ships and you know, and like, I don't even know what the hell this thing is supposed to be. It looks like a dental floss dispenser.
That GE's exactly my point. Nobody except a couple hundred architects and art critics think that, yeah, looks awesome.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
This is a tell about Barack and Michelle totally because that's their library and they said yes, And you know what that means. It means they have crap taste. And he may have brought he may have been the person who was going to make the oceans recede, and uh and and and and bring about the you know, the the harmonizing of the spheres. But I wonder what like his guest bedroom looks like, because if that's the building that he chose, I am not don't want to stay in his house, right that.
Is, I don't like I think that's going to have that invitations coming. I just I'm not sure, you know my feeling about that building. It looks like it looks like it's the It looks like they have the they had ground level on the wrong spot. It looks like it should be the first three the top four stories are really the first four stories that you can see from the ground. The rest of it is the basement with the parking garage and all that stuff. That's what it looks like to me, Like it's just oh oh
you oh, you built it wrong. All of this stuff is supposed to be underground. This is the archives, this is the the climate controlled area. This is not this is no the community center. That's just the little tippy top.
I mean, like, you know, a brutalist would go and show up, you know, brutalists from the forties, you know CORP would show up, stand there on on Garfield Boulevard in Chicago, look up at the building and go, well, this is too much.
Yeah, I mean pretty ugly. Yeah yeah yeah, Paul, can we can make it look nice? We can pretty it up a little bit.
Maybe you could you put like a people maybe maybe a cornice a little maybe.
A lattice, you know, Juliette balcony. So just to.
Just to anyway, So I think it is the final end of the the of of the Obama myth that this is how he will be remembered, uh by history, by this.
You know, I I think we're saying the same thing, but slightly differently. I think his it says less about his taste than a certain kind of intellectual insecurity about this stuff, where he allowed himself to be bullied into this. This will be recognized one hundred years from now as brilliant, pathbreaking architecture blah blah blah blah, and spoiler alert, it won't be. And I think that's that's the the issue.
It's like, I don't, I would not. My point is, I would not surprise me at all if Obama when he's alone and talking to some friends saying, man, that thing's ugly, but they tell me it's really smart, you know, or it's really cool, or it's.
Oh that that's a very generous way to look at it. I actually don't think he knows. I think he thinks he's internalized at all. And so and I think he thinks that, you know, I'm a I'm a better architect than my architect. I'm like, yeah, that's exactly what I wanted. It's gorgeous because I won fifty popular vote, which means I'm an architect too.
Well, that's just kind of I think people do that.
Celebrities do that all the time, you know, I years ago, there was a guy that's right, There was a guy, an actor, Michael Moriarty, who played I think I may have it wrong. He was on Law and Order, yes, during the Clinton years when lown Ora started and he was played the the DA It's a true attorney. Yeah, And that was during what Attorney General Janner Reno was trying to reduce the amount of violence on TV.
Was that was the big problem, the epidemic of violence and TV.
And he decided this is the first Amendment issue because he felt like for some reason Law and Order was going to get it, which was not what she meant, but whatever, and he uh demanded that the networks, et cetera, you know, stand up to her. And he had a bunch of meetings in which he he seemed to forget
that he didn't go to law school. He seemed to think that he was speaking as the you know, attorney general or the district attorney or and I think he said someone who's there said, he said a few points when I was in law school as a lawyer, and people kept saying, but you are a lawyer an actor.
You never went to law school, and he just it just didn't compute for him, and I think once you once you're a celebrity and people are telling you how great and smart you are, you just think, well, I'm I can do it at all.
Well, there's not a great history of lawyers who I mean, he convinced themselves of their economists, you know, Robert Reich a boring cast. Right, It's something we're going on back to.
Reminds me of the fact that nineteen ninety five, when the V chip was a subject, this was something people but there was a there was a proposal to put a computer chip in every television that would allow parents that would require a rating system, and parents could press a button and therefore their kids would not be able to watch a show that had violence on it or I guess sex, depending how we were going to set it.
But it was called the V chip, and.
I ended up in a debate at the Museum of Television with of all people, Dick Wolfe, who was the who was then just the guy who did Law and Order and is now thirty five years later, the guy who has done Law and Order for thirty five years and various other shows.
Not to be fair, was that a planet debate or are you just there and was.
Getting some lunch, and you just like, excuse me, yelled at me.
He yelled at me, rob I didn't yell at them, and you made sure I think I'm irascable. True, But there are yeah, there are six hundred episodes right of.
Law and Order. Yeah, fall in what we call a knowledge.
Literally not a beat.
There's literally not a plot, beat or a moment or something like that. That that is not you know, if you if you binge watch a show, well, I mean it was like a facewatcher, like.
We watched Suits.
We watched up to the Suits and right because it got bad, but we enjoyed its junk, but we called it.
We got a Blue Skies was the USA network Blue Skies, Right.
But you watch them in sequence, You're watching like two or three a day, and you cannot believe the tropes, how they how much they rely on tropes.
I know that's something you know.
But like for example, Harvey, the hero of Suits, someone comes in and says, look, if you don't settle this case right now, we're going to go to the jury and they're going to reward US seventy five million dollars in damages. So if you want to make an offer. You make an offer right now, and Harvey says, oh, I get it. You're saying I should do every single.
Episode You're out of order counseling.
Two people say, two people say, oh, I get it. And the other thing is that it begins with somebody walking through a glass door into somebody's office with a blue file and putting it on a table and saying, there's my brief. And the scene ends with somebody saying you better get right with this because we're going to lose this case, and then walks out the glass door. And so it's almost as though you could write it just watching.
There is a knowledge base that is that you know, you put it all in and you and you you,
that's exactly what happens. I know somebody who at the gym would start his workout on the treadmill watching Law and Order right at the top of the hour, which is always on in the middle of the day, like I don't know what you know, USA whatever, whatever, and knew that when they when they when they have the scene in the medical examiner's office, to get off the treadmill and then you can go do you know legs or arms or squats or something and tell the first
interrogation scene, and then you do something else, and then when you when it's in the trial, and then the reverse you you, and so the full workout was just simply timed by what was on Law and Order, because you could actually do that, and you could still do that, and there's nothing wrong with it. I mean, there's an old I mean, I mean then just to bring it
back to seminary and the Lord. But I mean, but this is good because but you like this part, you John, because it's Psalms, right, if you read the Psalms all the way through, right, and you know in the Book of Common Prayers there's also Assaulter. There's like they're divided up. So you could read a morning and eating, morning and eating, morning and eating. And if you do that thirty days, you've read all the Psalms. You know, it's like they all start the same way. Oh my god, I'm just
set by enemies. Everybody hates me. I'm just all my enemies are trying to destroy me. I've lost, I've lost, I've lost. And then at the end we're like God ha saved me. And God comes and saves me and takes me and brings me to a broad place and I'm now I'm happy, And then you start the next psalm and he's like, oh my god, I'm beset by enemies. Everybody hates me. And then that happens four or five times, and you have to ask yourself, what is happening between
the psalms? What are we not seeing this person do? Because like it's bad and then it's good and then it's bad.
What what what are you? What are you doing?
These are different? Taylor swift eras, Yeah, I guess.
You know, it's like one's the what you know, David had, you know, a lot of stuff going on. He was the psalms and you know, some of them was good. Some of it he was like his heartbroken by Travis Kelcey and you know, happy with Travis Kelcey.
All right, so we gotta go.
Yeah moly, this is why I have remained quiet. I don't want to feel any longer.
I will I will only I have nothing.
I have nothing to promote, but I do want to ask our listeners if we still have any at this point. I have this idea that what we should do is, like on the rest is history, have a glop club of like people who pay money and then they get extra stuff.
And one of the things I thought we should do is to have a book club.
And like read a book and then every month and I get together and trash the book.
It doesn't have to be a good book.
It could be a weird book. But a book an announce at the beginning and then do it. I don't know, but they.
Would require us more effort on our part, and then I think more.
I am not trying to laziness, but I'm going to plead laziness in terms of the fact that I'm trying to write a book right now, and uh perfect. I think movie club makes more sense. A movie club. Okay, that's a discrete amount of time watch some movie. Oh by the way, yeah, okay, bad movie. Tell you guys. The Turner Classic Movies Film Festival. They have asked me to come out and introduce a face and a crown.
Oh wow, okay, I'm so mad.
So it's not even a humble brag. I'm just like, what a great movie?
Too unfair?
This is so why I've been writing about movies for forty seven years. I wish I could say you're what Ben Mankowitz yeah, I've even like praised your podcast on Twitter.
This is the thanks I get that.
My dearest, my one of my dearest and closest friends, is gonna be like, well, you know, Bud Scholberg screenplay has many many interesting angles as a question of whether or not the this is a this is sophisticated I've been satire or is it actually more of a parody of Yahoo's by Hollywood's fistic kits.
Wow happened in May or May late later. I'm very happy for you.
I think it's like, well, you know, I I got to be when he when Ben called me up and asked me who I think should do it? But if I first saw it was Jonah, I guess it's because in twenty sixteen I got to be a guest. You know, they were you They have those guest ghost.
Things and I did it, sure, and the two movies you have to pick something that's in their archives, and so the two movies I picked. I can't imagine why twenty sixteen I would have these movies in mine and gave well, but that's not an archive, so right, So like I was saying about Network, but they didn't have that blah, blah blah, and so it came down to a Facing the Crowd, which I love and yes, and mister Smith goes to Washington. Oh yeah, so right, but anyway, everybody can say hi to everybody.
I wonder whether our listeners watching Face in the Crowd made in nineteen fifty seven, would they start debut performance by Andy Griffith, who was never anything remotely like what he is like in A Face in the Crowd ever again, because of course he became Andy Taylor and then America's beloved you know, widowed father and not a demagogic, psychopathic folk rapist folk singer, which is really the character he plays in A Face in the Crowd.
I wonder whether people would watch that and think this.
Is just liberal problem like attacking you know, nice conservative people all over again.
I wonder how it would play now. I loved it. I remember seeing it.
Oh it's great Walter mathat Walter Math and yeah, it's fascinating because Sick trans of Glory in Mundy it was actually like based on the story of.
The guy who was maybe the was sort.
Of like the I don't know what you call him, like the biggest non acting star of the television era. In the nineteen fifties, a guy named Arthur Godfrey, who was a hosted a kind of variety show and suddenly found himself having enormous power.
It sorted like Helen Keller.
Yeah, yeah, the loathsome Helen Keller, the egregious le Helen Keller.
You know, you know, you know how you know how Arthur Godfrey ended.
Up with a burn on his face and answering, Helen Keller.
Bader do you guys?
Hm?
That was great.
Invitation?
There do we go? How do we stop it?
How?
Uh you can just how do we stop it? I think I hold on, I just gotted.
To say, recording stuff. Let's not do anything until we see that. Otherwise we have to do all of this again. I know, all my joke