Joya Black

Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Nate. And I'm Mike. What are we smoking today, Nate? We are smoking. And now it looks like it was, it's been made by hand if my Spanish is legit still. And it's from Nicaragua and it's the joya black. Is it joya or is it joya? Well, if my Spanish is on point, it is totally joya. I'm just kidding. I'm fucking with you. It's probably joya. Okay. I don't know. I never took Spanish. Well, and I don't remember. I don't remember what Spanish for black is either.

Crayola has been getting, have you seen that Mike? Crayola on like social media, people have been calling out their black crayons because it has the Spanish translation of black, which I can't remember what it is. Crayola is like, no, no, that's a Spanish word for that color. It's not actually referring to people of a certain race. The really ironic thing about that is I believe those comments were actually directed at Ikea and answered by Crayola. So what are we going to talk about today?

Well, I thought we were going to talk about a modern classic, like one of the greatest films that I've ever seen. And it's strange because most of the great films I've seen are, you know, five, 10, 15, 20, 30 plus years old. And this one's like brand new just about and instant classic. Oh, you're talking about Oppenheimer? No, no, Mike. The other one. Barbie Barbie. Everything's pink. Everything is pink. I really like the style of the movie, by the way. The visuals were great.

Yeah, the visuals were great. There are a lot of actually good things about it, mostly like when the end credits rolled is then it was over. Oh, my. What are you pairing your cigar with today? Yes, I am pairing it with a Sierra Nevada Big Little Thing IPA, which matches that one Barbie we saw in the movie, the big Barbie. Yes, I had to I had to ask my Sarah if Barbie made a big Barbie. And she was like, no, they don't make a big Barbie. They actually did.

Mattel made a plus size Barbie a few years ago when I started rolling out their disabled Barbies as part of their inclusion. She wasn't really all that plus size like plus size models are not all that plus size, but she does exist. So you man's plane to your Sarah that there is no such thing as a plus size Barbie. No, I asked my Sarah if there was a plus size Barbie and she told me no. She told me no. OK, and no handicap Barbie either.

Well, no, that's the thing is, I remember when I was shopping for Barbies for myself that they have the wheelchair Barbies. OK, and I think they have like a Down syndrome Barbie and an autistic Barbie and even a vegan Barbie, if you can believe that a vegan Barbie. Oh, my. Well, the rest of the disabilities, right? So did you buy the wheelchair Barbie so you could throw it down the stairs? Yeah. Well, I got it so I could recreate the scene from Mac and me.

Well before we get too far into this, what do you think about the cigar first up front? And then we'll get back into Barbie and all things Barbie and what we liked and what we were so so on and what we didn't like. Well, this is very dark and spicy. I'm kind of excited. I'm excited too. Mine is dark and spicy as well. Like my soul, like this movie, like my sense of humor, sense of humor, soul, all the above. I don't know.

Should we do like a little rundown, a little mansplation of what the plot of this movie is? Sure, I can do that. I can do a quick synopsis. OK, yeah, yeah, yeah. Barbie and Israel, they have Barbie land and in Barbie land, Barbie is in charge and all the Barbies are in charge of everything. And there's Ken's. Yeah, I was going to say like Barbies in charge because at the very beginning, aren't they like Barbie is me and we're all Barbie?

And so there's like all these different Barbies, but all the Barbies are in charge, not necessarily the main Barbie. The movie follows. Right. Yeah, there's they have all the different kinds of Barbie. So they have astronaut Barbie and, you know, Nobel Prize winner Barbie. But anyway, Barbie does everything and all the cans are kind of their slaves who are homeless, who only exist to be accessories to the Barbie. You're jumping the gun here. I didn't think that they were there.

They're not slaves. They're not homeless. They never said they were homeless. We'll get into that because that's one of my bigger complaints about the film. OK, and they have a very important job, Mike. I'm beginning to think you didn't actually watch this movie because Ken's job is very clearly beach. Very clearly beach. Yes, he beaches. He's not a lifeguard.

But to your but to your point, and I guess like without we're trying to do like a not really colorful or non predisposed summary, there's Barbie land run by the Barbies. There are cans there. Cans generally want to help the Barbies. And what happens that what happens at the end of the first act to get us into the action and get us like what happens to Barbie to get her Barbie sorts of thoughts of death.

And they've talked to this weird Barbie who tells her that she has to go to the real world and help the little girl who's playing with her because apparently her negative thoughts are affecting Barbie and Barbie land. Yes. Then they go into the real world and hilarity ensues and Ken finds out about the patriarchy and he brings the patriarchy back to Barbie land. And then they have an epic battle and Barbies win the day. And Barbie land goes back to the old caste system that they had previously.

Yes. And I think what I liked was kind of the initial setup of Barbie land. And I loved that Barbie woke up showered in absolutely nothing. Like I mean no water. Right. And went and had breakfast that didn't actually exist. So it was all very clearly like the play, like make believe stuff that like a kid would do with Barbie. The thing I didn't like was how for the first 15 minutes, the only line of dialogue was Hi Barbie and then everybody in the same area had to say that line too.

And then she moved to like a new area of the set and had to re-greet everybody else. And so it was just kind of a lot of high Barbies. Yeah. I thought it was hilarious. I thought it gave a good tone to Barbie land and how this is my perception of how vapid and empty and soulless it is. So it's totally the kind of place you'd like to live, Mike. Oh, obviously.

Yeah. I mean, if I could live, if my job could be beach and I didn't actually have to go into the water because I was somehow physically unable to do so and then just had all these Barbies running around, like probably be OK. Yeah. I mean, the water is made out of cardboard. So yeah. So I wasn't a huge fan of the narration, but I'm very, very rarely fan of narration in films because I just don't like to hear people talking. So that's why we have a podcast. Right. It didn't bother me.

I thought it was good in its own way. Yeah. I mean, I think it's how her feet flattened. Yes, because earlier Barbie molds were only molded for high heels. Yes. I'm not sure if the new Barbie molds were do they have flat feet Barbie now or are they all high heel Barbie? I think they're flat feet. I think they probably just change the shoe design to accommodate a flat foot Barbie. Sure. That's 100 percent certain, though. They might still have like going to dinner party Barbie or something.

Oh, sure. Barbie stuck in the deep south or somewhere where Sharia law rules. Oh, Berka Barbie. That's my favorite. That's the one. My favorite Barbie of all time was teen pregnancy Barbie, which they actually talked about in the show or in the movie. Wasn't she the inspiration for teen mom? I did like that they had a lot of the older and discontinued Barbies like Sugar Daddy Barbie. And then they were like, no, no, no, I'm not actually a sugar daddy.

My dog's name is Sugar and I am sugar's daddy. So that was quite funny. I thought it was great. The deep the costume details were good, too. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. Like, I guess a couple of things. But like the first thing is I liked the scenes where Ken and or Barbie were throwing outfits out the window.

And then they would like kind of flutter there and be like, this is in the little name of the outfit would come up like this is Ken's going to the disco rave in 1978 jacket thing or whatever the names were. Yep. That was kind of funny. And that kind of made me reminded me a little bit about which they had they had to do something.

But they had I felt like they should have maybe worked a little harder to distinguish themselves from like Toy Story because Toy Story already already kind of did like the funniest bits of the Barbie Ken thing. Oh, sure. Yeah. So then you're going to come and make a two hour movie and try and outdo the super hyper condensed like Toy Story. Right. Yeah, this movie was not for children like Toy Story was. No. And I saw there was some complaints about parents, but it's rated PG-13. Right.

Yeah. PG-13 is for adults. Get a clue. Yeah. Right. It's not like, you know, our high schoolers. Right. Right. Yeah. Like, I don't know. I don't remember a little of a peep turn to take down the patriarchy in Toy Story. I don't recall that being a part of the storyline. I remember watching Ace Ventura when nature calls in middle school. Yes. I thought I was able to see a sweaty Jim Carrey break loose from a fake animatronic rhinoceros's asshole.

Yeah. I love the criticism of the Ace Ventura movies that they're transphobic. I appreciate that. Yeah. That's probably not something we should get into. Yeah. We're talking about light and happy and Barbie just has fun. Barbie does not run a matriarchy that keeps men down and treats them like indentured servitudes or slaves and everything is fine and happy. Yeah. Like the patriarchy who are homeless bums who live on the street. And also there was a transgender Barbie on the beach.

Yeah. They live on the beach. Did you notice the trans Barbie in this one? Yeah. No, they didn't call it. They didn't call. No, them out. No, I didn't realize that it was a transgender Barbie until probably three quarters of the way through the movie. I thought the transgender Barbie was very passable. Unless it's as obvious as Ace Ventura or Crocodile Dundee. If you remember that scene. Yes. Yeah, I do remember that scene. I'm just not going to know. Right.

No, and they didn't just they never I've respected the fact that it was never brought up as an issue. And if you weren't like looking and trying to really pay attention and or watching like news, easily it could pass you by. You know? Yeah. And I think that's kind of the restraint that I think this film needed more of or they need to lean into the ending harder.

But I think that's the two areas where they kind of kind of lost me by and large, because they sure like to throw the word patriarchy around. Oh, that it was. And but then to have like so I felt like I was being just smacked over the head with it. I mean, I understand this movie wasn't made for me, Mike, and it wasn't made for you. Right. And that's fine. There's a lot of movies that aren't made for me that are still well done. You know what I mean? See, I thought it was made for me.

And we can talk about it now. I I found the movie to be very nuanced and it had a lot of political subtext. Like when obese Barbie, who was apparently a lawyer, was talking in front of the Supreme Court and she said that corporations are not people and that giving them political rights in running campaigns is just a step toward fascism. I was like, holy shit, this is based. Yeah, I like that one, too. I like that. I liked a lot of the commentary. Yes. And I'm not I'm not saying that.

I think I just have to say what I have to say so that we can keep talking about this without having to like skirt around it. But to your point, when you were saying like all the Kens are homeless, that was the whole thing, Ken brought back the patriarchy because he went out into the real world with Barbie and everybody started actually seeing him, whereas none of the Barbies ever saw him. Right.

They kind of like peripherally saw them and they were like, hey, you know, you could really make Ken's day to day if you just looked at him and then Ken would be happy. Like, that's the bare minimum Barbie has to do to make Ken happy. Not that that Ken should have to need somebody to make him happy. Right. Which was one of the points at the end of the movie, which I thought was well done. Like, Ken, you got to go find out who Ken is. That was fine. Like, that was fine.

And so he wanted to bring back the patriarchy. But then they kept making Ken like he checked out all these books and he thought the patriarchy had a lot to do with horses and stuff, which was, I guess, fine. But then when so Barbie brings back this mother and daughter and it was actually the mother who was playing with her, who was depressed and sad and making all these other things. And she also happened just a strange coincidence happened to work at Mattel. Right.

So she comes back and Barbie is like, yeah, so this is my house. And she's like, well, where does Ken live? And she's like, Barbie goes, don't know. Never thought about it. And the movie just carries merrily along. And they didn't like they didn't walk that back.

And so I think like my biggest my biggest complaint about the entire movie was not was not the not the patriarchy bashing, but it was the fact that they had clearly set up a matriarchy that was just as bad as the patriarchy, except 180 degrees difference. Right. And they never acknowledged that. I thought they could have done a better job acknowledging that also. Yeah. I mean, they got themselves pretty deep in the weeds with this topic. Like it's a tough thing to portray on film.

And I think they did it mostly well. I agree. Kind of left. They left that unspoken where it was like, well, the matriarchy is just as bad as the patriarchy. And the and the bit that got me the most, I think, was when the one Ken was like, well, we want a space on the Supreme Court. And the Barbie president was like, oh, no, no, no, we can't do that. But you could be like a custodian or something like, you know, and I'm like, OK. Yeah, I thought it was great.

I thought it was a lot of nuance to the whole patriarchy talk when Ken tried to go get jobs in the real world and he was rejected because he didn't have any qualifications for it, including being a light guard. Yeah. No, I just beach. I just I just beach. They're like, you know, in the one talk where he was talking and he's like, I'm a man. Give me a job because he saw those men talking and the guy's like, we don't do that here. Like, you need qualifications. He's like, what are you telling me?

You messed up the patriarchy. You lost it. And the guy was like, no, we just got a lot better at hiding it. But then Ken never actually got the job. Right. You know what I mean? So I feel like there's a lot of ideas that they put into this film that they kind of left like half baked, you know?

And so like either Ken should have gotten the job or the guy should have been like, you know what, bud, the patriarchy only applies to rich, well-off men, like any class or below patriarchy doesn't benefit them at all. Everybody below like the upper one percent is just scraping shit. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. The patriarchy doesn't benefit you if you have a job that pays a salary. Right. You need stock option. Yeah. Stock options.

You need like a ton of rental properties in Hawaii after the land got really cheap for suddenly no reason. Yeah. Like Oprah, who is definitely a part of the patriarchy. Yeah. Well, there is. The patriarchy is like, it's kind of the same thing with the gender affirming stuff is it doesn't really have to do with the patriarchy versus the patriarchy. It has everything to do with if you make X amount of money, you can literally control everybody else on the planet. Right. Yeah. Money talks.

If you're a man. She set up a charity. Did you see that? She set up a charity. Are you saying Oprah is a man? Is that what I just heard? Oprah has to be a man because Oprah set up a charity where she was going to pledge $10 million to Hawaii, but it wasn't her 10 million. It was the poor's that were going to give her money that she was going to give to the ship to the whole. That's stone stone. Stonehenge guy wanted to get all that money on their video. Right. That's right.

Yeah. The rock and an Oprah weren't going to donate any money. They were going to donate the money that gave them. They were going to donate the money and write that money off on their taxes so they could just have an extra $10 million like tax windfall that year. I know it's weird. They just get $4 billion. That crazy bitch. Yeah. They want to buy up, she's got a lot of land on the islands. She wants more. Yes. The poor is further away from her pool.

Well, I mean, the patriarchy is keeping her down, so she's got to make a Oprah town style situation. We should all like, I don't know why she doesn't have a GoFundMe set up for this. Let's do it. Let's get her her land. Mm-hmm. Lots of Kool-Aid. Lots of Kool-Aid. So the other thing that really, really bothered me, Mike. Yes. And this is, you're going to go, you're going to probably say this is classic Nate.

Like Nate's the guy that's worried about the caramel apple vendor in fucking Hocus Pocus 2. Like why didn't he have enough caramel apples? Nobody knows. Yeah. Why is Nate so concerned about the blue tit milk in Star Wars? Who cares? Because the whole tit milk economy thing, like if it's only on this run remote planet, but we're not talking about Star Wars. We're talking about the matriarchy and we're talking about Barbie. So this film. Isn't Star Wars about the matriarchy?

The force is female, Nate. Anyway, so. The force is female. And everything's about the matriarchy nowadays. I can't get away from it. I just want to go and watch Die Hard and be left alone. I'm just kidding. But also kind of not. Anyway, so Mattel financed this movie. I'm sure they made a lot more than they put into it, but the Mattel logo popped up right away. Like right. The second logo, the second studio logo. And they're like, yeah, we got Mattel Studios now. Yeah, I'm sure you do.

Fantastic. I'll come down and tour them. I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of the morning. Anyway, so they show the Mattel offices and the Mattel offices look like the most soul sucking offices that I've ever seen since our office went with the new modern office layout. Right. So I was like, well, holy shit, like you guys are making this movie. Are you actively trying to tell us that you're bad and evil? And then you go up to the C suite, right?

You got all this, the CEO, the CFO, the COO, the other, whatever the other C's are, all men, of course, and all like really dumb. And so the question then is, I know they're trying to make a point about men not being as competent as everybody thinks men are or that men think they are, which is fine. But is by doing that, Mattel is saying that they're no different than the other companies, despite the fact that they're trying to push a Barbie product that empowers young women. Right.

But so they're saying they're they're not walking the walk, but they only talk the talk. So and then I got really fucking confused, man, like to the point of being angry because you've got Will Ferrell as the CEO and he's like, we got to get Barbie back. We got to get her back from from real world and put her back in the box. What's in the box? And then somebody's like, well, what about Ken? Ken's still out there. And he's like, we never cared about Ken.

Okay. One, is that a critique of the company just putting out a Ken product for the sake of having like an accessory for Barbie? Is that to because they also think Ken is dumb or like, what are they trying to say there? Are they trying to say that they are actually like pro-femininity or not pro-femininity? And so they end up going back and Ken comes up with his like super duper dojo casa house thing. Yes. And apparently at Mattel, they're like, holy shit, this thing's flying off the shelf.

This is our best selling product ever. And Wilfer is like, well, we have to stop this instantly. I only care about the bottom line and profits and money, but we have to go stop this right away. Then they go and stop it and switch everything back. And the mom from the real world is like, well, I've got an idea for, I don't know what it was, existential crisis Barbie or something. And Wilfer is like, absolutely not. And the other guy goes, well, that's going to sell really well.

And then Wilfer goes, well, okay, we'll do it then. So I'm confused. Like is Mattel supposed to be an evil corporation? Is it supposed to be a good corporation? Will Ferrell is asking people to call him mom. And then he wants to stop the all time best seller they've ever had with Ken's super duper Dojo Casa house. But then he won't do the existential crisis Barbie unless it sells. So I just, they were all over the map on like what their fucking motivations were.

I have no fucking idea what Mattel was trying to do with that. Like, shouldn't they have been a board of females and then said like, where are the only ones that are fighting the good fight? Like it's a fictional movie anyway, so you might as well just make shit up. And then why did they put in the founder and say, oh yeah, so she's a big tax evader, but she's got some really good advice on parenting. Right. Yeah. I thought I actually did research about her and she didn't owe that much money.

Like it clearly was probably an oversight because she was getting older basically because she ran Mattel for 40 years or 30 years or whatever it was. It was a really long time, you know, from the end of the second world war all the way into the seventies. So, yeah, yeah. So I was confused about the whole like Mattel, like especially when Mattel is the one making the movie. If we were watching like, what's that? What's that fat guy's name that does like a bull and a boll and a bind?

Michael Moore. I'm sorry. What's that plus size filmmakers name? What's that body positive filmmakers name? Anyway, like if it was him doing it, I can understand like trashing Mattel because that's what you do. Like if you're making a documentary or like a mostly fictional documentary or documentary with a huge fucking slant, then like you say what you want about the company.

But if you're financing the fucking movie, do you want your like are you getting street cred points for saying how evil you are or do you just not give a shit anymore? Right. And so that scattershot approach I thought was on purpose, which we'll talk about the news article at a later time.

But I assumed that it was on purpose made by competent people and that the scattershot was supposed to be a more palatable way for them to insert layers of nuance in the politics because all those things can be true at the same time. Right. In the Barbie world, they are all true at the same time, even though they're somewhat contradictory. Yeah. I see the confusion on where Mattel portrayed themselves with that part you're talking about where they're trying to put Barbie in the box.

And it's probably just something I'm making up. But it could be Mattel saying that the matriarchy exists and they can be in charge, but only within the limits of the patriarchy. So the Mattel itself is a patriarchy controlled completely by men selling stuff to women and little girls about women without actually knowing what the hell they're talking about.

Barbie gets out in the real world and what they're trying to do is shove her back into a box, back into a corner in the little world and space that they created for her that they're saying that's where you belong. That's the only place you belong. That's where you're supposed to be. You have to go back there.

When they were talking about Ken's super duper mojo casa house, dojo casa house, gulag, whatever the fuck it was, all they would have had to do to help clarify things and to give a little bit of grounding. So this is similar to in the live action remake of Aladdin when they have the Aladdin guy running around down the alleyways and the filmmakers now granted the filmmakers on that were nowhere near as competent as the filmmakers on Barbie.

Okay. So they decided to just in the Aladdin movie, is that Ezra Bridger that's running around Agrabah? Yes. Yeah. But he didn't have the force then. So we can't fault him.

They were having him run around the alleyways and they decided to not even bother with any of the basic film convention where you need somebody, if somebody's moving left to right in one shot, they have to move left to right in the next shot and the subsequent shot or you need to, you need to like slowly change the camera's perspective. You can't just change it every other shot.

You can do a drastic change for dramatic effect for sure, but you can't have a five minute running through the alleyway scene with 57 different perspectives. You know what I mean? Yeah. I think we talked about this. We did. Not on the show. Not on the show. Just to give a little grounding for the audience. The audience needs a little bit of something. So what would have made it better for me, a man, part of the patriarchy, I guess. I'm waiting for my patriarchy check.

That's like the tribal checks, right? Like I'm part of the tribe. So I get the casino royalties. Well, I had to sign my paperwork to get my man check. So you know, you see to send the stamp to for that. It's been redirected as reparations to the matriarchy. Thank you. Yeah. You have to go to judge Rosa, whoever. I went to the women's bathroom today at a bowling alley. I know that you're so brave, Mike. I know it was 31 minutes, gentlemen, before I brought up bowling.

But yeah, I went to the girls bathroom at a bowling alley today when it was closed before it was open. Nice. Along with a bunch of other men. Just to see what it was like, just to pee on the seat, leave all the seats up. Actually, I just needed some soap because the soap was out in the men's bathroom. Is that are you saying that men are cleaner than women because they'll actually wash their hands with soap? I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that the women have lots of soap and the men didn't.

So back to the Ken super duper dojo, super secret underground layer dojo casa house thing. Yes. You mean Ken's frat house? The coolest house in Barbie land. But if when they were doing the big CEO scene and things and the guy was like, Ken's Barbie house or Ken's house is out selling and we've never seen so much money or whatever, all they would have had to do is put in one little line of dialogue of like, you fool, we're going to lose our entire female base or something.

That's all you need to say. Then we know why they want to cancel the Ken thing because they show just for character motivation within the film, Will Ferrell's character only cares about money, bringing in money. So Ken's house is selling really well. Instead of saying, that's great. We can get some male customers. He's like, we got to shut this down. But he never says why they need to shut it down. Right.

If all he had to say was they're going to see through our sham and the women won't buy from us anymore. If this thing keeps selling, we got to stop it. Like, that's enough for me. Like, I don't need to know anymore. Yeah. The messaging wasn't like, I, like I say, I thought it was on purpose, but it clearly, it could have been, I'm just, you can do a lot of things on purpose, but I think at the end of the day, you have to remember you're also making a film. Right.

I think that had they allowed Ken's house, that would have given more power to the Kens within the Barbie world, which would have shifted the balance of the Barbie world. And Mattel knowing that that is the place they have shoved the women to be in charge, cannot change the balance of power. It was a power shift equivalent to the power shift like women going into the workforce during, was it World War II? But they started building in factories and they were told, you don't get to work anymore.

Your husbands are back home, take care of your kids, cleaning, cook and blah, blah, blah. And they said, no, we still want to work. And they were told, okay, well, you can work, but you can only be a secretary. You can only be a librarian. You can only be a teacher, which was the only profession they were really allowed prior to that. Or you can only be a nurse.

So you can have power within these limitations that we give you in just this little teeny tiny bit of power so you don't get full of yourselves, which is kind of what they were doing with Ken. They wanted to be on the Supreme Court and they said, well, let's not go too far. You can have this lower position and start there, which is what they did to women after they said, come and do the men's jobs because we need you.

And then when it was time for them to actually want to work and continue to be a part of the workforce, said, well, you can have this little teeny tiny role behind all of the men again. I wonder why women wanted to keep working after the men came back. If somebody told me I could stay home and not work, I would do that all day.

Which would be great if the person telling you, you could stay home and not work didn't also control every single aspect of your life and give you an allowance and tell you what you can and can't do with your money and your house and your kids when they're not the one they're helping. Yeah, that guy, he was a terrible president, wasn't he? Ruined everything. Fucking a-hole. Also, Nate, you're not supposed to respond to the voice of the matriarchy. FYI.

I'm not responding to the voice of the matriarchy. I have deep conflicted feelings down with him. You're definitely responding to the voice of goddess over here, sir. So yeah, you need to stop responding to the voice of the matriarchy and pretend that it doesn't exist. All right? Got to be Ken. Don't be Alan. Alan was kind of badass. I liked Alan. I thought Alan was good. I liked that they had all the set designs and the character development as far as having all the Barbie lore was perfect.

It was great. Yeah, I enjoyed that because I had never played with Barbie. I have two younger brothers. We never had Barbies in the house. Sure. I had one Barbie and my Ken. I had a Ken. Was it a bowling Barbie? No, it wasn't. I wish I had a bowling Barbie. No, I had cowboy Ken because my parents are older and they are big into Westerns. So I had a cowboy Ken so that he could like be a cowboy with my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Yeah. Yeah. And cowboy Ken, of course, made it into the movie.

And I was pretty excited about that. I never had a Barbie though. You know, that was definitely a patriarchy in my toy collection as a child. Yeah. And I guess like there's been some kind of backlash from people calling Barbie too woke. And the response from like Greta Gerwig, the director, whose other stuff I quite like and Whoopi Goldberg, I guess, chimed in and was like, it's just a movie.

And I'm kind of curious because sure, I get it in the grand patriarchy that exists outside of Oprah and Justine Maxwell, of course, and Hillary Clinton. Can women say things that are critical of society without being labeled woke?

Like on one hand, but on the other hand, like if you're going to make a film and you're calling out the patriarchy and how much it sucks ass, like all the terrible things about it and that these men can still control and put Barbie back in the box and do these other things, is it enough of a response when people are calling your stuff woke to say it's just a movie?

Well, see, and that's where I'm confused because that patriarchy talk was so overwhelming that to me it turned into like the Boogeyman and when Ken was getting rejected for jobs and the fact that the Kens are all homeless and the Kens, you know what I mean? Like Barbie land was clearly not ideal utopian society from the perspective of Ken. Right.

Yeah. So they had turned the patriarchy into like the Boogeyman and it was kind of pointing out how a lot of society's problems are probably not due to the patriarchy. They're probably due to other factors like greed and selfishness and inequality and things like that.

Yeah. I guess like the way that they set up the Barbie land in the very first like opening shots where they're like, hey, everything is beautiful and nothing hurt and everything's great and it's always sunny and we do the same stuff and every night's girls night, but every night doesn't have to be girls night.

You know, they set it up as like this idyllic place where it's like, this is the gold standard of places and they assume that the rest of the world looks just like Barbie land, which and why wouldn't they, you know, like they have no idea until they go out there and see it. And so I thought the movie was going to at the very end, show us what the ideal would actually be. I was hoping they would do that. Kind of like doubled down on the matriarchy. Right. I thought that was a weird.

I didn't sit very well with me as the ending of the movie. No, I didn't like it. Especially with the weird Mattel stuff. Right. I was kind of like, ah, did they go Chris Nolan on us with Tenet? And like they got so confused and like worked up about the patriarchy that they couldn't remember how to end the film or. Right.

Well, and some of the aspects of the real world were fantasy like too, where when they came rollerblading in and the guy slapped Barbie's ass and then she hit him back and they somehow arrested Barbie, even though he sexually assaulted her. That's not the real world. You know, you can't just if that situation were to happen, that guy would go to jail for sure. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, he would have been brought in too and they would have tried to resolve it at the station or something.

Right. Yeah, exactly. It wouldn't just be Barbie and Ken going to jail. It would have been. But how fucking fly were some of their outfits in the real world there? I know they were great. I love like the 80s rollerbladed outfits. You know, yeah, people were making fun of them. Also, it was very unrealistic when people were like talking to Ken. Like, I am a man in the real world and nobody fucking asked me for anything or shows me any amount of undue respect.

You know, like I'm pretty much invisible walking down the street as a fat white guy. You know, I get that too. Well, it's so interesting because we talked about this on the show before, but like when I'm out with the kids, people will come and talk to me, but not really to they think they're trying to make me feel good. Right. Like, wow, like you're out with both the kids, like you're babysitting or something or whatever. And it's like, dude, no, no, these are my kids.

Like I don't babysit my own kids. You don't babysit your own kids. It's not how that works. Like this is called just being like a present father, like a present parent, like gender of the parent doesn't matter. I'm being present with my children. I'm being active and engaged with my children. I'm not fucking babysitting them. Right. You know what I mean? So I guess like, fuck, I got to write the patriarchy because I need a couple bucks for that. I'm like deeply hurt by that.

And I want to talk about my feelings to somebody about that and also get my check for 1995. Right. Exactly. For having to have borne that offense. Well, I thought, and this is again in the real world, that a lady asked Ken what time it was and they were at a school and it made sense because they were like the waiting area and she didn't happen to have a watch. And it was like revolutionary to Ken that a woman would come up and ask Ken a question about anything because of Barbie land.

Ken is like an accessory who is just on the beach and wants to like hang out at the party, but Barbie kicks him out onto the street like an urchin every night so he can just survive with the coyotes or whatever is on the streets of Barbie land at night. It's very dramatic. The important thing with that interaction is, and this is one that they actually carried this through the entire movie. And so I have to give them like props for this.

Ken had unrealistic expectations for his relationship with Barbie. Like he felt like just because he was designed to be Barbie's like soulmate or accessory or handbag or whatever, indentured servitude or enslaved people or states rights assistant, that he felt like he's entitled to spend time with Barbie. He very clearly isn't, you know, and he's not entitled to that shit.

And that's that kind of like toxic romanticization stuff of like, well, I'm a man and that's a woman and that woman should like me. Like that's that incel stuff we were talking about. Oh, dude. And so at the end of the thing, they actually carried this one tiny little thread through, which was great. And I think it had a lot to do with Ryan Gosling because he chose this role because he saw how neglected his children's Kens were. And so he wanted to bring a voice to Ken within this thing.

And at the very end, when Barbie is like, Ken, I'm not your answer. I'm not what gives your life meaning. You need to find your own meaning. Right. And it's kind of like that thing that people say to people when people are like, oh, I hate my life. And you say, man, you got to love yourself before somebody else could love you. I mean, that's like not to be cliche, but exactly.

And like, you're not entitled to do all of these things, Ken, just because you are supposedly designed as Barbie's accessory. So I liked that aspect and I liked that they followed that through at the end. And I wish they would have had that same kind of focus to follow the rest of the threads they started. Yeah, I did appreciate that they carried that through because I think that's a thing that a lot of women do struggle with and not necessarily in that major.

So I but in general, because we are constantly made to feel that our job is to get married and have kids and we're asked, when are you getting married? Are you with this person? Are you going to get married? Are you long even together? Why aren't you married yet? Are you having kids? Why don't you want kids? No one ever asked a woman why she wants kids. But if you say you don't want kids, you're insane. I've actually had people say, what is wrong with you? Why don't you want kids?

Well, I don't have to explain myself to you. No man has to explain if he doesn't want kids. Why does a woman have to explain if she doesn't want kids? So that part of Ken relying on a relationship with Barbie to like make him a whole being is something a lot of women I think deal with throughout their lives because you're expected even in today's society, you're supposed to find somebody, get married, build a life, have kids. That's what you're supposed to do.

And if you don't, there's something wrong with you. I also want to go back and touch on you're talking about Ken being asked for the time and him being like shocked by it coming out of a world where women are in charge. And that makes sense. But speaking as a woman in today's society, and this is something that we see all the time, if I'm with my husband somewhere, he's going to be the one that they ask a question to. I assume that I have no idea what's going on. Go to a hardware store.

If I'm with my husband, he's the one they're going to approach. They're not going to come talk to me. They don't think I know what I'm doing in a hardware store. We went to a store the other day in town and bought some stuff. The guy in front of me was chit chatting with the guy. He handed him an ad said we're having a sale. I was in line at the same store buying stuff. Nobody said anything to me about a tool sale. Nobody offered me this ad on the sale.

Nobody had any further conversation with me about it. Asked what the clamp was for. There was an assumption that there was no need to. I was there to buy that thing, and that was all I could possibly need in that place. Maybe I'm stretching it a little far. Maybe not. But Ken being asked a question, in shock that he's being asked a question outside of Barbie, is not that out of the realm of what a lot of women deal with in society now.

Going back to what you said, Mike, about Ken being asked about the time, did you have another thought on that? Yeah. I just thought it was shocking. I thought it was illuminating, and they should have expanded on that a little bit, but they didn't. How is a man with no children in the school allowed to be on school property without going through a security checkpoint in California? Well, that's again, the real world was kind of a fantasy land too. Like I say, I thought it was really well done.

Unfortunately, the creator of the movie didn't come out and say that it was on purpose, which kind of sucks. But there were definitely, there's just so many fantasy elements to it. Yeah. And it's a lot of it is over the head, but a lot of it's also nuanced. And like I said, I just, I wish they would have followed a lot of those threads that kind of started and they felt like they had a lot of steam when they started a lot of these thoughts in the movie.

And then they were kind of like, well, we have Will Ferrell on set for like four days, so let's just let him do his thing. And then we'll pick up what we have time for at the end of the movie, I guess. Right. And Will Ferrell plays the Will Ferrell character that he always plays. So yeah.

And the other Will Ferrell connection is the path to get out of Barbie land and into the real world and back was way too similar to the path that Will Ferrell took to get out of the North Pole to New York City in Elf. That's probably on purpose. It might've been on purpose, but it was like, it wasn't quite enough of an homage to it to be as funny as how they did it in Elf. Sure. You know what I mean? Like, and then why would you want to make an homage to Elf in the first place?

Cause that's a man driven film. Like let's, I mean, make an homage to Alien then. Like, yeah, it's directed by a man, but main character is not a man. Or a Terminator or like any of these other like strong female characters that almost everybody loves. Like, why not reference some of those in the real world? You know, like, oh, you're a strong and empowering woman. Are you Sarah Connor? Right. Yeah. Are you Ripley? Are you, yeah. Like, no, none of that.

Why would you encourage a real world matriarchy? I did kind of like the kids' teardown of Mattel and Barbie when Barbie first went to go see her at the cafeteria. Oh yeah. Well that, I mean, it was mean, but it was mean. I thought that her portrayal was good because she was mean and unpleasant and she was also very woke and she came across to me as very unlikable and very teenage-like, you know, I thought that was on purpose. You know what I mean?

Like she's just kind of an unlikable, woke-schooled. Well for Nat, most teenagers are unlikable. Right. Yeah. Person with intellectual disabilities or whatever she said or a person with reality issues or some shit. Yeah. I don't remember the phrasing, but it was good. Yeah. It was good. Like she was so unlikable. And I did like the twist that it was the mom playing with the Barbie and not the kid. Very well done.

Yep. I recommend to everybody, if you're listening and you haven't seen the Barbie movie, you should go watch it. I think it's pretty good. My Sarah, who of course would never consent to coming on the show, said that she would like to- Wherever she may be. Wherever she may be. She said that she wants to buy the Barbie movie and own it at the house because she really enjoyed it. This is what I have told people.

We haven't talked about Oppenheimer on the podcast and I don't know if you saw it, Mike. I have not. But I'm only going to talk about it briefly because of the kind of dual marketing of Barbie and Oppenheimer. So I went and saw Oppenheimer first in theaters because I had a buddy that was like, hey, you want to come with me and some other friends to see Oppenheimer? I'm like, yeah, I really want to see it. Because Christopher Nolan outside of Tenant. Christopher Nolan is really good.

And I don't know what he was doing with Tenant. I don't think he knows what he was doing with Tenant. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about Oppenheimer. And we just sat in regular theater. We didn't go to IMAX, even though Christopher Nolan was like, oh, guys, if you want to see the best version of Oppenheimer, you got to go see it in IMAX. Please don't go see it in IMAX.

If you want to see 12 Angry Men in IMAX, like a courtroom drama in IMAX, everybody with like elongated heads, I guess knock yourself out. But this is not a movie that lends itself to IMAX. No, you should have an avatar. It's avatar. Yeah. Yeah. Anything other than Oppenheimer, which is like a talkie drama. Right. Yeah. Blue titties, blue titties on a big screen. That's what you want. Yeah. Tales intertwined larger than the patriarchal slogan. I am drooling.

Yes. I would say they're drooling, but I don't know. I guess anything's possible. Men can menstruate. And men can have children. I am trying to talk about Oppenheimer. God damn it. But Oppenheimer kind of walked the line in the middle and never really made a strong case one way or the other about the bomb and never really made a strong case one way or the other about if Oppenheimer was a good guy or a bad guy. Interesting. And it's like three hours long.

And so I was talking to one of my buddies, they're like, oh, you said Oppenheimer and Barbie. Like, what do you think? And I'm like, you know what? I would watch Barbie again before I would ever watch Oppenheimer again. Interesting. Not that I disliked Oppenheimer, but for a three hour movie that has nothing to say and no stunning visuals, the explosion looked like crap, dude. Like the big explosion, everyone is like all ready to shoot their wad over.

Yep. Or respectfully touch their private parts over in private for the matriarchy people. Like it wasn't that good. Like I've had better. I understand that the nuclear bomb being dropped is now politically controversial, right? But at the time it was not controversial.

So we're trying to take this controversial or the narrative at the time was that it wasn't usually controversial because I'm sure there are people and the movie goes on to try and say that a lot of people who made the bomb wanted to do a demonstration on some uninhabited place and just kind of let the Japanese be like, man, this is what we can do. It's time to be done fighting. Right, right. That's what the movie claimed.

Now I don't have any qualms personally about the bomb being dropped because my grandfather was stationed off the coast of Japan, getting ready for the invasion was told to tie up all of his affairs in life. And so he told me when they dropped the bomb, like everybody was just like there would have been way more loss of life had the invasion taken place. Now philosophically, we can talk all day long about philosophically, was that the right call or not the right call?

But I don't have any like real world problems with that because if my grandpa died, I wouldn't be here. You wouldn't be listening to nice ashes, which is the, I think most important thing, right? At least in the lives of the people listening. Yes. Or our lives. Right. But I think of the two movies and Christopher Nolan can make really good films, but I think Barbie is the better film of the two. Interesting. I agree with my issues with Barbie. Right.

The messaging, they needed to add more, not take away. They shouldn't have taken anything away. They should have made some more clarifying statements to make the edges a little sharper. Yeah. Sharper edges. I was more engaged in the Barbie storyline, even though I hated the narration mostly.

I can see at the very beginning, you kind of need the narration because Barbie like floats down from her upstairs bedroom and they were like, yeah, you know, kids play with Barbie, Barbie doesn't take the stairs, the toys don't even have stairs in them. They just float Barbie down. Like, it's kind of like the world setting. And so that's fine because it's probably the most efficient way to world set, right?

Or you have to do like a cut of a girl playing with Barbie and floating her down and then cut back to Barbie just floating down without the hands there, which you could do too. Like that's the whole thing with film is show, don't tell. And Barbie did a lot of telling and OpenHiber did like zero telling and zero showing. So it was kind of convoluted. Whereas Barbie at least had a consistent message of patriarchy is bad.

Okay. They didn't take it as far or they didn't point out enough of the things or they didn't stick to their guns on enough of the stuff, especially with post movie interviews and things like that where they're like, it's just a film. It's just a film. Like, I don't know why you're trying to cancel it. It's just a film. Like it's for women, like whatever.

And it's like, dude, you're making a huge like societal and governmental and corporation statement here with your film, like double down on it. Just stay strong with it.

I have a question for you because I found it very interesting and poignant, but really interesting that in the patriarchy of Ken, Ken land, when all the kids were in charge, the main thing the Ken's wanted to do, even though they are now in control of everything, was to sing love songs to the Barbies on the beach, on the beach, like even in Ken's ideal patriarchal society, the Ken's are still there just trying to like interact with Barbie full time.

They're not really doing anything other than that. The whole point is that they want to interact with Barbie. Yeah. And I think that was like, that scene was funny. Yes. And I liked it. And that was what like that had Barbie being like, Hey, I guess he could have come and hung out like every night didn't have to be girls night.

But then like the Ken wanting so badly to have that attention from Barbie to like, if he was in the real world doing that, he would have 15 restraining orders against him like instantly. Oh, for sure. And so, but that's what made that line at the very end where Barbie's like, Ken, you got to find out what Ken wants. Like you can't just do what you're programmed to do by Mattel or whatever, what have you, you know, right?

And it's kind of like, that's one of the subplots of Wally, you know, like he's programmed to clean up trash or whatever. So you know, fighting against your programming, whether it be mechanical or societal, right? Like fight against the programming, like find out what you want. You don't have to do the things you don't have to have a family. You don't have to have a partner. You don't have to have kids. You don't have to have all of these things.

You know, you can do whatever you want to do as long as it makes you happy. And as long as you don't harm somebody else in the process, basically. Right. I thought it was very interesting to the Barbies, even after they got brought back to their right mind so that they missed being like the Barbie in Ken land.

Yeah. And that's kind of interesting too, because there's been some, and we talked about this on one of our most recent, more recent episodes where, or maybe we just talked about when you and I were hanging out and not recording, it's tough to tell the lines blur between Mike and Nate land and the real world where there's been some women on Tik TOK or other things that have video stuff. And they're basically like in tears, like this is what we fought for. We fought for the right to work.

Like this sucks. Like, why did we do this? We could have just stayed at home and we could have been at home with our families. We could have been at home with our friends and now we fought so hard to go and fucking work and it's terrible. I don't know, life is pain. Yeah. But I mean, like, so I understood that as like the counterpoint maybe to the matriarchy, but I still wanted that ideal situation at the end that only Barbie land could have given us. It could have been, we're unified.

We're Mattel doll land or something, or we're Barbie and Ken land, or we're, you know, instead of, ah, we might be able to find a place for you somewhere lower down in the courts as a bailiff maybe, but not on the Supreme court for sure. You know, like if they would have just leaned into the, what's the ideal? Because so much of it is the reparation talk. So much of it is the, well, we've been held down for so long. Now it's our turn to hold you down.

And it's like, why does anybody have to be held down? Like, I understand you're upset. They missed an opportunity when the Barbies took back their constitution to not like making an equal society at that point in time. Yeah. Now Ken only has three fifths of a vote. Right. Exactly. Ken, go back to the beach. Go back to sleeping on your bench or whatever. Oh, such drama. Such drama. His cardboard wave. His cardboard. Yeah. Go sleep on the cardboard wave and drown your tears, freak.

If you cry enough, Ken, it'll be a real beach and he'll be a real boy. Yep. Go play volleyball beach Barbie Ken person. Did they have a boys are back in town playing beach volleyball all a top gun? I don't think they did. That would have been a great opportunity. They had, they had, that would have been a great opportunity. I don't think that that scene where the Kens are singing was really meant to be a romancing scene towards the Barbies. The choice of song spoke volumes.

It was the Kens crying out for attention and saying how depressed they are and it was a very passive aggressive way of telling Barbie that they didn't like the system and they wanted her attention, which sounds a lot like what women have been doing for a long time, which is probably going to get my feminist card revoked. But it's a very familiar thing and it was very generic. Every single Ken was doing the same song in the same place at the same time.

The only unique Ken was the one playing the drums. Everybody should watch the Barbie movie. We're not nearly done with my cigar. I still have three inches left. How about you? Yeah, me too. I've heard three inches is enough, but not sure. I guess I'd have to go ask Barbie. Depends on how you use your inches. So I heard Ben Shapiro freaked out over the Barbie movie, but she freaks out about everything. I was looking at that.

Well, then that guy's kind of, I don't know much about that guy other than every time I hear something of him, it's like the more ridiculous story than I could even possibly imagine in my head. Yeah, it's he's a ridiculous character. So I was trying to look up some of the backlash on Barbie, you know, and more importantly, not the backlash of the Barbie film because there was a lot of like backlash from parents like, well, this isn't a kid's movie, you know, and it's like, do you do diligence?

Like the internet is there. The rating is there for a reason. You can go online and find out why it's rated PG-13. If it's rated PG-13 for inciting people to French haircut, then maybe don't bring your kids. If it's rated PG-13 for, you know, they say fuck once, then maybe your kids okay going because you probably say it more in your home than the movie will, you know, but you can find out all these things.

So I wasn't so interested in like the parental things, but I want, and I wasn't so interested in the reasoning behind the backlash, you know, having seen the film, I was more interested in the filmmakers response to it because that has more to say about the film and the intent of the film in most cases than the actual film does sometimes. Right. And so I was kind of a little disappointed. Like we talked about that. They kind of walked it back to, well, this is just a fun movie.

It's a fun movie that has a lot of political subtext that I really appreciated, even though it was a little scattershot, but it was a little scattershot. Some of it was a little over, over, you know, like beating people over the head, but some people need that, you know, some people don't understand what's going on a lot of times. Right. And you know, but I just, I wish that they would have said like, well, if you don't get it, then it wasn't it. Like it wasn't a movie for you to watch.

Like go watch the latest Fast and Furious. Right. Yeah. Go watch Transformers. Like you don't have to make a statement. Your statement is, well, don't watch Barbie then go watch Fast and Furious. Right. Yeah. There's I'm sure I've only seen the first like four of those movies and they're up to 10 somehow and I don't understand it. And it's not a movie that appeals to me. Like I just, I watched, I can't remember how many Fast and Furious movies, like two maybe. I don't know.

I stopped watching them when I became an adult. So whenever, whatever number they were, when I was no longer a teenager, when you realize your car or your Barbie love interest doesn't define who you are as Ken. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Although Ken Summer was pretty sweet. I know. I know. I thought it was, I thought Kenland had a lot of cool shit in it to be honest with you.

I was like, and then I was very confused because they did the patriarchy flash scenes and it had Sylvester Stallone like three times. I was like, are they trying to call it Sylvester Stallone? Like Sylvester Stallone's awesome. And then somebody- Please buddies with our best bud, Arnold. I know. Right. Somebody said, oh, it's all about toxic masculinity. And I'm like, why is anything that men like toxic all of a sudden? You know?

Yeah. What I heard- Perhaps they didn't mean that everything that men like is toxic, but the approach of all of the macho things in Ken's mojo dojo was the toxic personality traits that are being drilled into little boys about how they have to be tough and love things like cowboys and macho frat houses and Sylvester Stallone. I don't know if I should respond, but the only people drilling little boys are the Catholic priests.

Also, I'm pretty sure that every man in some form is a Ken when it comes to their vehicle. I happen to know a man who spent a lot of extra money to trick out a vehicle that they're still very proud of that defines them in a way that they probably don't want to admit to because your car always in some way matches your personality. If you're able to afford a car, it does. And I think that buying a big truck with customized seats in it says a lot about your Ken personality.

I don't know anybody that has a truck with custom leather seats and added foam and contouring, but I do know that if they- We weren't talking about trucks. We were talking about toxic masculinity, and the most toxic thing about masculinity is the lack of masculinity, basically. Meaning that they need- Meaning somebody took your truck and backed it into another truck and destroyed the bumper and bent the fender.

Well, Ken needed the validation of Barbie to feel good about Ken, and that's not masculinity. That's the lack of masculinity. It's not really even about the gendering of the linearity or whatever, the entity. I don't know, femininity or masculinity. It's not even about the gendering. It's about the individuality. If as an individual, you need external validation to feel good about yourself, then you're toxic. Right.

Regardless of gender, which is what the Barbie movie could have done at the very end with the matriarchy bad, patriarchy bad. Horses, surprisingly, not that bad. Geese, bad. Yes. They could have had a goose shitting through a screen door and that could have been bad. Yeah, they could have done anything. Flocky geese descends on beach and Ken must defend beach. With big guns. Yeah. I like the fight scene because it was very silly. Because it was very silly.

Yeah, I don't know why the horses were... In filmmaking, there's only like three plots, right? It's like man versus man, man versus nature, or man versus... What was the other one? Man versus, I don't know, woman driving truck, something like that. Yeah, into stuff, damaging bumper and fender.

It's fascinating how the Barbie matriarchy survived for decades just fine and worked together and the Kens were in charge for what, 24 hours before they went to war with each other and they didn't even know why? That's amazing. It's like a great commentary of the patriarchy there. It's like a sewage backing up in the street though. Yeah, it's almost like an allegory for the war in Ukraine.

I'm sure you weren't talking about your Sarah, Mike, about the truck stuff that randomly appeared out of the blue. But my Sarah also backed my car, which I still have, into a light pole when I was trying to teach her how to drive manual. And we were in the middle of this parking lot. There wasn't a light pole for miles and she slammed it into reverse and bam, there's a light pole out of nowhere. I'm sure there was a patch of ice. And it was summertime. I remember it well.

The windows were down, the summer breeze blowing in our hair. Well, not my hair, but my chest hair. Your hair, your one hair? Yeah, my Sean Connery chest hair was being ruffled, tickled my nipples. But I still drive my car and we talked about this two episodes ago or three episodes ago or something like that. And Mike, you'll be glad to know I got brand new headlight casings. Did you really? They are so clear. And as soon as I ordered new bulbs too, I got all new bulbs for the front.

And once that happens, so I guess my personality, if my vehicle defines my personality, the 2004 Honda Civic Hybrid Manual means I can run on a lot of different things and I'm just going to keep going because I'm at almost 320,000 miles on this thing, rusted out, man, like rusted runs like a dream. So my sarcasm will never end. It will keep coming and coming and coming. I think it says a lot about you that you want society to stare at your nice new headlights on your old car.

Got the new casings and the new bulbs are all perky and bright now. I have no idea why boob jobs are a thing that has nothing to do with headlights. Why am I even talking about that? It doesn't make any sense. I, you know, I've never understood that trend either. I'm not like what is that? The fake boobs is like disturbing most of the time. Like you look like you're out of a like a circus show. You know what I mean? Are you talking about like biological women or like real women?

Well, the beautiful women of the world, I cannot criticize. I can only criticize the biological ones. So beautiful women. Hile of the patriarchy. Here's what I, here's what I wanted at the very end of Barbie was for Ken, one of the most famous men's, I don't care which one, to say Barbie Barbies, I want you Barbie to have the same size pockets as all of us. Ken's do in all of your outfits because us as Ken's are fine with you having the same size pockets as men.

We would love for you to have larger pockets. Barbie just wants a t-shirt made out of the same thickness of material as current that will last more than five minutes against a belt buckle. You know, I think that if Ken would have talked about the pockets, then they gave it to explain that they do make clothing that have proper pockets and thicknesses. You just have to buy like work clothes and not stylish clothes.

You know what's funny is all my stylish clothes have pockets big enough to fit my new phone, which is big. Right. Oh yeah. Even my suit. I can fit like a ham and cheese sandwich in the other pocket with like my cigar cutter lighter, five cigars and the fire extinguisher in case I get a little carried away with my cigars. I'd love to know the last time Mike actually went and looked at the work clothes versus casual or dress clothes made for women to get his information.

I think that some of the matriarchies conversation got cut off because I accidentally hit mute. Oh yeah. Accidentally. I think the matriarchies food is actually going to go up the patriarchy's ass. I think that I might've had to make a cough and I forgot that you were talking. But I have recently looked at men's work clothes. You have? When you were repairing all of your men's work clothes?

No, no, no. I guess I was repairing my men's work clothes and I was like, well, they're on sale at the store so I'm going to check them out and see if I can get a good deal. And they had only half off. And they were all thin ass, weak work pants. I'm like, these aren't work pants. These are like women's pants. They're not like that thick. I want like 15 weight, heavy duty, like canvas or denim. None of that matters, Mike. Were they farm fitting? They were. How did your ass look in them?

They are flex. That's all I care about. They're like flex technology, blah, blah, blah, which all that tells me is that now you have a pair of carpenter pants that are tight. You have to have an ass to know what it looks like in a pair of pants. I wear a god damn belt. So I wear a belt too, but people like to pants me for some reason. And then it's my fault. My dick is out. It's really shocking. I carry a bike while I carry a Leatherman everywhere. So it's a lot easier to carry on a belt.

Yeah. Carry things in my pocket. I wouldn't need a belt, but because I put things in my pockets, because I have big pockets because rah rah patriarchy, I need a belt. Right. When I was a kid, I took a lethal dose of no acetal. So now I need a belt pretty much all the time. I'm glad you recovered though, at least enough to be on the podcast from that.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was in the hospital for days, but I made a full, well, a semi recovery, but yeah, not a full cheek recovery, but You were released a couple of days before the full moon. That's right. Half moon at best. Well, you're not a plumber, so that doesn't really matter. No, and I don't know anybody who is a plumber who would be listening, but I know everything there is to know about plumbing. All right. Paychecks on Fridays, shit rolls downhill. Don't chew your fingernails.

I'm sure he's well qualified based on how his pants hang on his lack of ass to be a plumber. Also, Mike, I have to say this because he does listen. You know, he's a plumber, right? Of course I do. His child told me so, which was the cutest thing ever. I just didn't want to go Greta Gerwig on this podcast. I wanted to tie up that loose thread. Okay. Yeah. I thought my tone was intentioned well. Me as well, but I wanted to clarify because I know you better than some people who might be listening.

So yeah, I suppose so. I said to make fun because, you know, once upon a time I was an electrician and for whatever reason there's always like the fake competition between trades on sites. It's kind of goofy. I don't really know what the story is behind that, but. It's patriarchy, man. Horses do it too. It's weird. Horses do it too. Oh, geez. Yeah. I'm a draft horse. I'm a carriage horse. I'm a riding horse. I'm a horse's ass. Like they all fight. So are you relighting your cigar, Mike?

I am down to almost finger burning. This one was really good. I've never had the Hoya before. No, I've never had one either. The band, the inside of the band is really good. That's a lot of good information. It's like pretty modern with all the Facebook stuff and their website. Oh yeah, yeah. It says experience the patriarchy with us. Keep smoking our cigars. I'm just kidding. It doesn't say that. I do like the design of this one because it's like an arrow.

Does that label give tips on how to effectively use three inches? This label is not three inches long, but it does say for best use, stick it in the mouth. Yes. I think that it gave Bill Clinton like directions actually. Yeah. He didn't inhale though, but... He did not. He did not. I did see a Bill Clinton meme today. It was him standing, smiling with Monica and the caption was, back when presidents didn't care if you took a knee. I don't know what that means, but I'm sure it's something clever.

Yeah, yeah. I never understood why people were so upset about Monica Lewinsky and then they were fun over how she looked, which I thought she looked fine. That's patriarchy. That's weird stuff. I don't know that that's patriarchy. That's probably just like pure assholishness, yes. Sure. I like the meme you sent me with Princess Peach and Mario. Yeah. I thought that was great. I thought you sent me that one or did we send each other different ones? Maybe I did send it to you.

Maybe I did send it to you. We send back a lot of memes. I can't remember what happens, where they came from, who it got them from or who it sent them to. Yeah, where do they come from? Where do they go? Something, something, Katnai Joe. Yep. Katnai Joe Biden. Katnai Joe Biden. Corn pop. I agree with Mike's sentiments. If you haven't seen Barbie, it's not necessarily a movie for everybody, but it's not necessarily a movie solely for women.

I'd say it's a movie for individuals secure in themselves, regardless of male or female, because it kind of took jabs at how everything is. It made jabs at how things are. I just wish it had more statements on how things should be. Yeah. Yeah. That's the one thing I thought was kind of missing at the end, because they set up Barbie Land as being utopia, and then they found out it wasn't. And then they kind of went back to how it was at the beginning.

And so I just like watching this movie, I kept thinking like, man, I'd almost rather just watch Toy Story for the funny Barbie stuff. Like if it was being billed as purely a comedy, I don't know that it was that funny. Oh, I thought it was pretty funny. Some scenes are very funny. It's more of a social commentary though than it is funny. Whereas like, the accuracy is funny and a social commentary. Wow. That's danger zone.

I know some people that don't seem to think that Idiocracy is the brilliant documentary about what is happening to America in the future that I think it is. Yes. Go to your hot pink bathroom and cry a river. I kept thinking that like, if you want to see a movie where the system is broken and then they fix it, like Zootopia, like all day long. So I just wanted kind of a little bit more closure than the Barbie movie gave.

And maybe the Barbie movie intentionally didn't give closure because they wanted the viewers to go out and do closure, but they didn't really do a very strong call to action to get the viewers out of the movie theater and like making changes in their lives either because they kind of then relegated Ken back to where Ken was at the beginning with albeit slightly expanded rights or something.

You know, did they or did they encourage Ken to go and make the world for himself rather than relying on someone else to make it for him? They're encouraging the men to make the patriarchy for themselves. Never thought of that. Or maybe the matriarchy is encouraging equal partnership where everybody gets choices and power. The patriarchy encourages equal power too, but women just don't want to be sewer cleaners. It's weird. I don't know.

What I know is that until women have equal parity in all jobs, we're not an equal society. So I'm going to see equal number of women as plumbers and as ditch diggers and as morticians and as grave diggers and as corporate thieves and murderers and all those bad things. Maybe when the patriarchy starts taking women in those positions seriously, they'll see more of them. Oh, I think that women who are serial killers get taken pretty seriously.

But women teachers who sexually abuse their students do not get taken seriously. The matriarchy is going to respectfully decline commentary on this topic. I see. They have to talk about it enough with their husband and they're sick of it. It sounds to me like the matriarchy and Mike might have a post episode conversation. I tell I see enough journey workers who are ladies. I'm old enough to wear in the trades when I started it was journeymen. Then I saw the transition to journey worker.

In my profession, like 3% of electricians are women or something like that. It's like, really? You had to change the word for 3%. The matriarchy is going to throw your own words back at you. There was an earlier episode of your show where you discussed why there are so few women in journey positions, especially as an electrician with an apprentice. It's true. I hope the answer isn't hazing. Pretty sure the answer was hazing. It's true. It's true.

I have to take a little bit of a character for the Barbie movie because I'm not sure if the listeners have picked up, but we have the matriarchy and the patriarchy on the line. What am I, Mike? Am I just Ken? Am I beaching? Am I beaching right now? I think so. Okay. I think that you're... Because I can go inside and sleep in my own bed next to my wife tonight. We have a guest room downstairs though, Mike, which you've taken advantage of before. Yes. So you're always welcome.

I thought you were a Honda Civic that's a hybrid, Ken. Yeah. Yeah. That keeps going. I can't be kept down by anything. Can a woman do my job? Yes, they can. And they do it and they get paid better than I do because all my bosses are women. So I guess that the Barbie matriarchy kind of struck a little too close to home for me because I felt like I was just beaching.

I have a friend, you've met him and you know, you've met him too, who worked at a engineering firm and they had a parody between the men and the women and the women were making like 15% less than the men at this company. And they didn't look into the reasons why that was. They just automatically started every woman they hired at 7% higher than a male hire so that it would equalize out after like 10 years.

And as it turns out, a lot of the women were taking a lot of time off and they weren't advancing like in their careers much. You know, when they first got hired, they were young and they were having children and stuff. So they were just giving the women 7% more. And the fact that that is the answer and the fact that that was basically the ending of Barbie.

Like, that's why I wanted more from the Barbie movie because they took down all of these like constructs, these social constructs and system constructs and corporate constructs. But then they just kind of let it hang at the end instead of saying until Ken can also run for president, until Ken can also be a stay at home dad or until Ken can also do the same thing that us Barbies can do. Barbie land is in turmoil or something. Right. And because they already had it inverted.

So all they had to do was have Barbie say what they wanted the patriarchy to say. And that would have been a great ending. You know, yeah, it could have been starting. But the fact that we're even talking about like starting women or starting minorities or diversity hires at higher rates than this, let's just call it like cisgender white men, like at higher rates, because affirmative action just got struck down in colleges. You know what I mean?

So if that's if that's not the answer, then that shouldn't even be a solution on the table. We should figure out what will make everything equal. Like what will make everything equal? And you have a fantasy land and Barbie land and they could have they could have set forth any solution, literally any solution at all. I just feel like it was a little disingenuous for a film to take two hours or whatever it was and tear down everything.

And then just kind of revert back to well, this is kind of how we've always done it here. We're going to make a small consolation here with Ken, but otherwise it's still going to be Barbie land. We got our houses back. The Kens can still live on the beach and that's fine. We don't care. And maybe they can take on some bigger roles in society. But by and large, we don't care about the Kens. So I was like, what the patriarchy did to women. Pretty sure we talked about that earlier on.

Or I talked about it. Nobody listens. I was listening. I was just, we got to stick. We got to stick. You just killed it. I know. I'm breaking the fourth wall. I think we're on like the fifth or sixth wall at this point. I don't even know anymore. We found ourselves in Christopher Nolan's tenant and I don't know which way we're going in time at what's happening other than if you haven't seen Barbie, go see it. If you haven't smoked a Hoya Black, go smoke one.

Unless you don't like really strong, spicy, awesome cigars. FYI, the Barbie movie was written by a man. In conjunction with a woman. A woman who got onto the project like six years after the start. I did a lot of research on the movie. I was like, what is going on with this? The main writer was a man. The director was a woman. She did a really good job. She did a really good job. Yeah. The casting was great too. Yeah. Greta Gerwig is a really good director. Oh, she did a great job.

I mean, it should have been a little sharper in parts, I think, but whatever. And I almost wonder like how much of that might have been Mattel. You know, how much? Possibly. Yeah, thank you for bringing us into yourbecause we're really kind of grety. Interesting scene when Jon comes to us. I want you to 6 30 begin. Maybe you could switch a couple of frames for us and we'll show you how that goes? What's the scene? Right? I have to turn it, turn it off as soon as we get to the film.

Okay. There's a chick coming out to meet us, right? weeks here. That was my second time ever seeing Waterworld. And I remember enjoying the first time, fine, it was the theatrical version. And my sir was like, holy cow, this version is so great.

It's awesome. It explains like everything, like it's not trimmed down and all that stuff. But movies nowadays, no matter what stance they take, they always almost have to kind of like back them back out and kind of like undo everything they've done to let the viewer like assure the viewer that it's pure fantasy. And in Waterworld, Dennis Hopper, I'm blanking right now. Kevin Costner, the main guy. The main character. Comes onto his barge and he's like persisting, persisting,

persisting. Dennis Hopper's like, okay, well, I thought he was a little crazy at the beginning, but now I see he's just plain retarded or something. That's a line of dialogue you just will never get in any modern film. No. But they're not walking it back, you know? So if you're taking, I feel like, you know, to your point, but I don't know, Mattel did finance it. So maybe Mattel said, well, we can't have this like be realistic. So the real life stuff has to be fantasy and the fantasy

stuff has to be extra fantasy. And we can't really like, despite all the stuff you say, like you have to go back and say, well, the fantasy at the beginning was the best fantasy of all the fantasy we showed you, despite the fact that the fantasy in the real world closely mirrored like what's actually happening. But we don't want people to think too seriously about that. We just, it's a

Barbie movie. We want to sell Barbies. I don't, you know, like, I don't know. Like who knows? Maybe they felt if they gave you the ending you're talking about, they would be disappointed that they went from a society that was completely one way and magically after 24 hours in this one adventure by one Barbie and Ken, society completely turned around and it was entirely equal because it's not realistic. One Barbie can change the world. It's going to take a Barbie. I mean, and one, and one

can can fuck it up. Right. I mean, I don't know if you saw the Lauren Borbert tape, but that, you know, inspired me. Lauren, is she the new Budweiser spokesperson? No, no, no. She's a no. Did you hear about the Lauren Borbert stuff? Are you talking to me or you're no, you, you dispute later? No, no, you, Nate, civil, civil domestic conversation later. No, I haven't. So Lauren Burbert is a right wing Christian conservative congresswoman from her already.

Yes. And so there were rumors previously that she was a prostitute before she got married and she was on a high end escort site, but she of course blanketly denied. So now she's the one that had all the stuff leaked, right? Yeah. No, that, that one, she's running for Congress and she's a Democrat. The Lauren Burberts already in Congress. Oh, so she's in the middle of only like left wing pun tang or are they like nuts over right wing? I don't know how it is. Well, Lauren Borbert is a

hardcore right winger, but anyway, she's in the middle of a divorce. So she goes to the theater with her boyfriend, who also happens to be a bar owner. And the story that got reported was that she was drunk out of her mind. She was smoking in the theater and she gave her boyfriend a hand job in the theater. Yes, I remember that. And she denied it. And then the theater who filed a report on her, she leaked the videotape of her doing exactly what they said she was doing. And she was

wearing the outfit of a prostitute. I mean, I'm not saying she was a prostitute, but she does not dress like a right wing conservative Congresswoman. All right. She looked like the girlfriend of a sleazy bar owner who was going to the movie theater and giving hand jobs and smoking and being drunk. I saw that where it was like, uh, somebody, somebody like posted that in a comparison video of like, I don't know, here's the video of like a UFO or Bigfoot. And then here's a video of a, uh,

person in government giving a handy in a movie theater. And it's like, you can very clearly see, yeah. Oh, uh, you know, like all the police, like, have you seen this person? And it's like pixelated beyond imagination. And it's like, even if it was a picture of myself, I'd be like, who is that? Yep. In some like Colorado movie theater, they've got a video then you can clearly see what's going on. Clear as day, clear as day. You can see what's going on. The best, like I said,

the best part is she denied it. And it's like, what are you thinking? Who cares? Yeah. Like who, I mean, honestly, like who cares? Everybody's all spun up about pronouns and sexual identities and stuff. And so what if you gave a hand job to your boyfriend? That's, that's what you're supposed to do. And he's supposed to, you know, work it as well for you, you know, like that's not a big deal. Right. You're both adults consenting adults. That should be enough. It

shouldn't be a story. I'm not trying to defend her. Well, it's only a story because she's such a, well, she's so high profile and she denied it. She denied it. And she's supposed to be right wing Christian conservative lady. It's like, okay. I thought there was a thing in the, in the new Testament where, uh, how was it? Was it Peter or, um, I think it was, was it Judas? One of them was kissing Jesus or something, right? In the garden, they were like on a man date or something, like a

bro date and they're like kissing each other. And then the guards come in and break it up. And then all of a sudden, like Jesus is dead on a cross or something, but like, it doesn't get more religious than that. Like do what makes you happy, man. Like Roman guards be damned. Well, I know in Romans too, it said that when Vought is getting a divorce, you shout, go to the, go to the movie theater with your boyfriend and give them a hand job in front of a camera. Well, yeah. And it says, uh, any man

who lives with another man must be stoned. So of course it's 420 friendly. I mean, come on. Obviously it's not explicitly forbidden. I think the matriarchy should have gotten stoned before we did this. So anyway, I think this is spawning a spin-off series. It's going to be Mike versus the matriarchy. I'm not going to participate in that. So you're going to have to follow up with Mike when those episodes are going to drop. Yep. We had to break K-Fave eventually.

So it'll be kind of like Scott Pilgrim versus the world, but Mike versus the matriarchy. Hells yeah. Hells yeah. Take bets at the beginning of each episode. Is Mike sleeping on the couch at the end of this or is he not? Yeah. Is it couch, recliner or bed? There's a food dog. No, I sleep with the dog. Yes, I can. Yes, I can. There you go. I'm about done with my cigar. I think we've talked about Barbie. I don't know if it made anyone listening more

interested or less interested in watching it. I still think it's worth a watch. I don't think it's going on my top favorite films list anytime soon, but if I had to pick a clear winner between Oppenheimer and Barbie, I'd say Barbie. I haven't seen Oppenheimer, but I have seen a lot of television shows and movies that have been produced in the last couple of years. And it's easily better than Obi-Wan, right? It's easily better than a lot of the movies that have

come out. You know what I mean? Like it's better than Avatar 2, Free Willy or whatever. Mike is going to cry. He loved Avatar 2. I watched it in the theater too. That helps because the big screen and like, yeah, I didn't love it for this story. Mike didn't love it for this story. That's true. I loved it for the alien titties. I'm sorry. The alien headlights. The alien bright, clear, newly installed headlights. That's right. No touched up with CGI.

Why is this animated? They said this was live action. I can't get a boner over a cartoon character. I'm not a black pilled in cell. I think the anime category on Pornhub would beg to differ. Never been. So that's an interesting subreddit for the matriarchy to be visiting. But no judgment here because I'm just a Ken who likes to beach. I'm just a Ken who likes to have a truck that has a bumper and a recorder panel.

Let's just fight me Ken. The other thing I didn't like real quick about Barbie was they made of all movies, of all of the movies that they could have tried to drag through the mud. Why was it the Godfather of all things? Like they could have easily done Fast and Furious. They had to do Godfather because men really like the Godfather. And I think, well, these are high falutin people that wrote this story and made it. Like these are elites that made this movie.

They're not nobodies. So they're going to have to do, they probably didn't even have Fast and Furious in the radar. You know what I mean? Yeah. I just think with how dumb they made the Kens, and I'm not, I don't have a problem with that, with how dumb they made the Kens. I don't know that the Kens would have understood the Godfather. You know what I mean? And of course they're like, yeah, this man's going to talk through the Godfather. Like, Hey, what's this movie?

What's the movie you want to listen to? Well, you're slobbing on my balls. You know, like that kind of like man's planning through a movie, but you know, it could have been like the narration could have been, and all the Kens decided to pick this movie that they knew they should like, but had no idea why. And then explained it to the Barbies, you know, and that would have fit the bill of like how the Kens were portrayed a little bit better. And also let the Godfather

stand as a classic film and not be dragged through the mud. Well, it's like part of the zeitgeist. Not that you have to like the Godfather. No, but it's part of the zeitgeist now. You got to destroy all the things in the past that were good, you know? Well, now if they had done that and had the Kens explaining the movie to the Barbies, would that be mansplaining or Kensplaining? That's a good point. Would Kensplaining mansplaining to the matriarchy, oh, was it matriarchy?

Women's splaining to the man's trying to splain the Kensplaining, the man matriarchy, matriarchy, splaining movie to the, now I'm back to Christopher Nolan's Tenet. I have no idea what's going on. I like money. I like money and sex. A lot of this generation hasn't seen the Godfather. Let's just fucking go with that because nobody's going to sit down and watch that kind of movie. It's slow. It takes forever to go. I've only seen the Godfather once in full disclosure and I've

never seen the sequels. I've seen them all. I would like to watch them. I've seen them all. Apparently the matriarchy has not watched the Godfather and does not want to either. I didn't say that. I mean, that's fair. My Sarah enjoyed, except for the last season, enjoyed Boardwalk Empire, which is kind of the gangster. I heard that was a fantastic show. Everything was great except for the last season because they thought they were going to get

canceled and they, or they got canceled before they could finish the storyline. So they jumped ahead like 10 years in like film time, I guess, and didn't really explain why a lot of the characters that we had come to love were now dead or gone. Like, you know, like you just infer like, so kind of took the wind out of the sails of the last season just because they weren't given the time to do it. Sure. Was that because of Jesse Smollett? No, this was well before that. Oh, okay.

I believe. I don't know. Everything now seems like it was either yesterday or 27 years ago. So I have no idea. Yeah, I get some of that. I get some of that. So anyway, we are done with our cigars. Oh, I'm not. I still have a little bit left, but Nate is done. I have a little bit left, but I think we're done with the Barbie and being Matriarchy Splane 2. So let's just fucking call it, dude. Let's call it.

It's a long one. Have you been listening to Nice Ashes? And we took on the pink realm of Barbie, which we think you should see. I think that's across the board. It should be a film to add to your watch list. Absolutely. Be safe. Have fun. Thanks for listening.