Talking Simpsons - Talk To The Audience?!? - October 2024

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

Happy day after Election Day! We've reached the beginning of the month, which means it's once again time for another installment of our community podcast! Join us we discuss the first four episodes of season 36, the new Sideshow Bob-based short, Simpsons Movie sequel news, and more. And, as always, we read and respond to your questions and comments from the most recent round of episodes. It's all happening on this month's Talk to the Audience, the podcast that's chock-full of heady goodness!

I hardly endorse this event or product. ["Sympathy for Death", by The Bachelorette plays.] Ahoy, hoi everybody, and welcome to Talk to the Audience, where this is always death. I am one of your hosts, the man who is always confused by a White Lotus parody, Bob Mackie, and who is here with me today as always... Henry Gilbert, who is currently five years younger than Homer Simpson. And yes welcome to Talk to the Audience. This is our monthly community podcast that launches at the end of the month on Patreon, at the beginning of the month on the free feed, and in this podcast

we talk about what's happening in the Simpsons world and in our world and then we respond to your questions and comments from the last month's worth of episodes. And there's not a lot of news this month but it's a big month for The Simpsons because season 35 kicked off with a bang, and we have four new episodes to talk about, all of which I watched this morning on the elliptical machine. So they're all running together in my head. Probably binging all of them together at once is for the best. It lets you, it lets them all kind of meld together.

And if a bad joke happens, you're onto the next joke. So you're not even thinking about, I'm guessing I'm saying it lowers the averages of it. Yeah, I think so. I was impressed by the series, or excuse me, season premiere, series finale, Bart's birthday. I do feel like the show is getting a little too self-obsessed at times because I feel

like they're now too drawn to the Simpsons discourse and they're pulling from it a lot, but I like this in concept. The concept is Conan O'Brien is presenting the last episode of The Simpsons. It's written by AI and Bart throughout the course of this fake episode realizes that's the series finale and he has to find some way to stop it. Yeah it's I thought it was a very clever concept episode of like it's a parody of series finales though the most of the series finales it's doing we're the ones like before the year 2000. There's a lot of parodies of the Cheers finale. Yeah, specifically that one, it's very strange.

But no, I liked it in concept. Well, and to hear, we probably could have guessed it, but to hear Matt Selman say the reason they wanted to do it was because every interview he does, and still even after, I saw a new one after this episode came out, and he still and still even after, I saw a new one after this episode came out and he still got asked the question, what would the series finale of The Simpsons be like?

And so it's just, this was him and his team finally responding to like, stop fucking asking us. Like here, this is the series finale right here and we're still gonna keep going. Yeah, I did enjoy this. I also noticed that they were making a lot of jokes about Fox, but in my head, I'm thinking, you guys are a Disney show now.

I know Fox is technically the Simpsons steward, or whatever you wanna call it, but I just, I wonder when the Disney jokes will start, or if they will over start. I'm a broken record about this, but it's weird, like, you guys are still making fun of Fox now? I'm watching you on Disney Plus. You are making shorts for Disney.

Fox is kind of irrelevant at this point, right? Conan should be saying that Bob Iger forced them to do a new episode, or a final episode, and end the series. Though I guess that's not reflective of reality, though. And another strange thing about watching it is that everybody, how to put this, like when they have a cavalcade of guest stars and they just draw them in there There's some voices that are actually there too

But when it's full of guest stars who look like they're you know 20 to 30 year old designs it then makes the Not as good current the not as good current designs of say John Cena look even worse when you see how they used to, how Ron Howard in season 10 looks so much more accurate to Ron Howard than John Cena of that new episode. Yeah, and the Joel McHale caricature was not great. I feel like there are skilled artists doing these, but I feel like they have to flatter the guests more.

That's just been my theory. So you often get a lot of caricatures that don't really look like the celebrities because they're not allowed to accentuate certain features. Though I was glad that Mark Proch, or Porcher, however it's mispronounced jokingly in things, that he was the voice of the AI, so now he's finally been on The Simpsons.

Yeah, I saw his name in the credits, and I thought, who the hell was he? And yeah, he was the voice of the AI box on stage. And I always like any joke about how Bart has turned to 10 many times over and over again, and it doesn't make sense like that. And conceptually, I like that the way that Bart broke the AI was by making Homer strangle him,

which is not allowed anymore, and that's what makes it crash. And that they got Silverman to draw a classic Bart being strangled drawing but a good opening to the season I think it was my favorite of the four new episodes I think. It was mine too I think this the front part of seasons 36 is very parody heavy in a way where I just felt like just tell a story about the characters after I reached episode four of this broadcast season. But there is also the yellow lotus,

which is a white lotus parody. Henry can tell me if this is successful or not because Henry has seen the white lotus and I've only heard about it through Henry. Yeah, I would say as a parody of the white lotus, it is pretty good because it is laid out like, so basically, and this is not, I'm not spoiling what happens in either season of White Lotus,

but from the very first scene of both episodes, you start with a flash forward to basically, the season is seven episodes, it's a week of time. Each episode is a day, but they start with a flash forward of the last day and a death has happened but you don't know who died and so it creates a tension for the whole season of like who's gonna die who's gonna so somebody will and so as parody in this episode say when dr. Hibbert and his wife are looking at each

other and you're like who's go he's it's it's implied like he might kill her and then he does it because and it's um it's usually how you don't expect it, but, uh, and also Jennifer Coolidge is a big part of what people love on the show. And so they got Chloe Feynman from SNL to do her perfect Jennifer Coolidge parody to play the wife of sideshow Bob. And she also has a bad, uh, Jennifer Coolidge's character in the white lotus has a bad husband as well. Oh yeah, I completely buried the lead here.

This is a Sideshow Bob episode kind of. It's not really a Sideshow Bob episode. He's on it as a potential threat where I guess the Simpsons are allowed to stay at this resort because they're blackmailing him. Yeah, he gets to stay. He lets them stay in the extra room of the Jennifer Coolidge type, and also, I guess, light spoilers for this episode, but they kind of cheat.

Basically, they do kill off a character who isn't new, who technically is from the classic era of season nine, but I had to read the like, no, that's an old character, the guy they killed. I found out after the fact oh so this is the guy from realty bites right he is the Baldwin type who I think is unnamed in the episode he might have a name I think he does have a name because he's like oh I'm blank blank the bestseller or whatever like I think they they have but honestly I can't remember his name but he's the one they kill in this, so technically they did kill a previously established

Simpsons character who had appeared once before. He's joining Larry in heaven right now, in Simpsons heaven. Too much backing in and out of hedges in this episode. I'm really getting sick of them reusing that joke. I think they have done it three times this season, and I feel, I, woe to whoever told them that that was big and Disney learned about how big it is

because like it's been on shoes. It has been so merchandise and done so much. It was part of James L. Brooks's Disney Legends Award short. They did that too. And now they're selling like a frigging Chia Pet homer going through. It's a real thing apparently, unless I was tricked by AI. I contributed to the backing through Hedges industrial

complex because I have Homer backing through the Hedges socks, I have the socks version of that. Look it's fun but the Simpsons need to know that if they constantly, I allowed them one, one or two, but I think by my count this is six within the show. They need to find a new classic joke to mine. I am getting tired of seeing this It's ruining the original when we get to the original again when we cover Whatever that Oh Homer loves Flanders, which is coming up. Yeah, honestly pretty soon

You'll hear us complain about the overuse of it. So stay tuned for that We also have desperately seeking Lisa Henry wrote down it's a parody of After Hours. I can see that being an inspiration, but it seems to be a parody of something I've never seen because there's very specific music and very specific black and white photography in this that feels like it is directly parading

or homaging something, but I don't know what it is. I would say 30% of it is an After Hours parody. And I definitely, I also saw, I think it was Tim Long, the writer of the episode, on Twitter, brought up After Hours, and plus the guy, Griffin Dunn, the star of After Hours, plays Gregor Somsa in the Metamorphosis parody, or stage production that's in the episode. Plus everybody chasing her and the signs up, like that part,

so I would say a third of this episode is an after hours parody, but in general it just feels like an 80s, an 80s stress movie parody too. But you're right, the black and white photos thing, that's not from after hours. I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't know what that's from, and it feels like it's from something.

Patrons, people in the comments, let us know. And finally we have Shoddy Heat, which is a parody of 80s neo-noir movies like Body Heat. It's set in the mythical year of 1982 where Homer is five and Abe is our age and he's solving mysteries with a partner and we also have young Agnes. It's a very strange episode that reveals why Mr. Burns

never actually could fire Homer. Okay, that way they have promoted it, which was all Al Jean, this is an Al Jean show run one. And Al Jean's job on Twitter is to promote episodes. Like that's why he does it. So I'm not even saying like, oh, this is a promotion, That's a lie. But he was promoting this for over a week with this episode is going to reveal a 30 plus year old secret of the Simpsons were finally going to reveal that I was like, wow, what could this be? And when it's like, oh, because Burns

made a deal with Abe to never fire Homer, that one bugged me at the end because I was like one he has fired Homer dozens of times. It is a plot of many episodes. I saw somebody point out, just starting with Homer's Odyssey, the first written episode, Homer is fired. Yeah, he has been fired. And it is funny, I mean, this is all, this is complaining for no reason, but it's funny to think that Abe and Burns fought together in World War II and that we're seeing them in the 80s as much younger men. Yeah, and that, again, Homer, but also, yeah,

we're gonna be whining about stuff like, Homer being five and 82 would make him 47 now, but we both agree with, like, Homer should be 39 forever. He should not be in his late 40s, but they wanted, but obviously for this plot, for this plot to work, Homer has to be alive for Burns to then make his pledge to never fire him. So he has to be five, but then it's like okay then set it in 1988, but they wanted it to be specifically the early 80s and they, and

I get it, okay call you a shot, say say this is 1982 two years after Bart was born Yeah, I just we can't get used to it and we know that They have to play with the timeline I'd rather they just make this a treehouse of horror style like what if this happened kind of episode then to say well This is canon now, you know, and it's interesting that like now it's a throwback to the intentional noir throwbacks of the 80s where whenever like Lawrence Kasdan who directed Body Heat or Brian De Palma or those type of directors like I'm going to make my noir movie except they're going to fuck hard in it and they're just they're such horny old movies now.

They weren't allowed to do this in the 40s. In my version of the postman always rings twice. You getting you're getting like full-on humping on lots of lots of powerful thrusting Yes, yeah So that is the new collection of episodes that have been out so far all four of them no There was a lot. Yeah, they're supposed to be two tree houses, and they're both coming after Halloween. This is insanity I don't approve of that there. There was room for them on the schedule. I don't know what's going on, but we'll cover those next month on Talk to the Audience.

So yeah, I'm looking forward to the two tree houses. It just, we are on the cusp of them premiering as of this recording. Oh yeah, by the way, it is election night for everyone on the free feed. A fine mahaak to you all. Best of luck. Yeah, we don't know what's gonna happen.

So there was also a new Disney Plus short called The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, and my wife called it because she saw the promo image and all the Simpsons were bound and gagged, and she said, oh, that's so they don't have to pay the voice actors to do any of these voices, and I said, you're right, that's totally right, because obviously it's only Bart and Kelsey

and then a gaggle of people doing Disney villain voices, correct? Yes, yeah, yeah, it's just Nancy, Nancy threatens Sideshow Bob and then it just turns into like yeah, Kelsey Grammer sings with the Disney villains but you know, my biggest positive on this of the Disney plus shorts is it when we say short it's short like this is the shortest one yet it feels like it's 90 seconds long before credits and

it's it's it's fine I'm really tired of what if the character X and character Y were in the same shot I don't care about that anymore it just that Kelsey Grammer when he started singing I thought like oh is he sick? Can he no longer sing anymore? What's going on? Then I get watch the the white lotus parody episode. He's singing fine I thought maybe like that he was he not just into this what did they get him at a bad time that he record the Entire episode he didn't really feel like we're doing a short I don't know, but it seems like he wasn't giving it his all. So when all the other characters join in to sing, it's a lot better, but he sounds a bit off in the singing in this.

Yeah, you're right. On Yellow Lotus, he did sound a bit better. I think it could just be they didn't retake it or it was a bad day or he's like, you get 10 minutes for me or like 15 extra minutes. You're not paying me enough to do this I I don't really know but they the best honestly in this election season the less we hear from Kelsey Grammer The better I say yes. Hey Sideshow Bob would have voted for Trump. I'm sorry to say this folks He loves him. He loves those guys and he's probably been to Mar-a-Lago many times And I guess I was meeting Sideshow Bob when I said that, but I would assume Kelsey Grammer as well.

I would think so. He golfs. He's got a golf. Look at that body. Yes. It's a perfect golfer's body. So at New York Comic Con, they also revealed there's going to be a 35th anniversary Disney Plus double-length episode.

It's called Oh Come On, All Ye Faithfulful written and sure run by Carolyn Omini. This is going to guest star the acapella group Pentatonix and also Patti LaBelle plus in real life mentalist Darren Brown who hypnotizes Homer to have a good holiday season. So this is what they the news that hit a few months ago where there's going to be four episodes for Disney Plus but they're actually production season 35 episodes but they're not going to be airing on TV or presumably on Hulu they won't be on Hulu either. Yeah cuz I guess they're Disney Plus first so you gotta if you have Hulu you have to also have Disney Plus to do it which I feel like they up the price on that every three

months. I think that they had teased this before at the last panel They did or that I mean they said this is one of this many specials were doing But this gives it the date and the name and and the episode writer too. But yeah, I think I Wonder we've wondered before about this But you know you threw out there the good point that thanks to the strike a lot of episodes got delayed So they just have a surplus of episodes But is this was it a surplus of episodes that then conveniently gets put on Disney Plus or are they using the surplus to try to? Test first run episodes on Disney Plus hmm in any case they're really leaning into Christmas lately

It felt weird that they went so long without doing another Christmas episode and then it seems to be an annual thing now. There is so much Christmas and I would I wouldn't put it past them to also do another Disney Plus Christmas short assuming that there is another friend of the Disney Company who has a Christmas album to sell. Begin the thawing of David Silverman. Poor guy. Give that man a break. Also at New York Comic Con, there was a little quote from Matt Selman who said, This isn't an announcement. There will probably be another Simpsons movie. Matt Selman saying the obvious, but someone had to say it,

I just want to know, when is the right time for this? I really don't know. And also, will it be 2D? I'm scared. I think it's got to be 3D. I think Disney would know and also will it be 2D? I'm scared. I think it's gotta be 3D. I think Disney would not let them make it be 2D I think. I mean though you know Al Jean previously he had said, one of the last things heard about it was he said it depends on how good Inside Out 2 does and Inside Out 2 is the most popular highest grossing animated thing of all time. Yeah, it's funny, when I read that quote, I thought, well yeah, good luck with that, Al. This movie, it's a Pixar movie, it's gonna do okay.

It's not gonna break records. And it broke every record, so what do we know? I don't think anyone saw that coming. I would guess that would mean it'd be a 3D movie as well. But I think by now, maybe it's just because we just did Hotel Transylvania. But I would like to see by now maybe it's just because we just did Hotel, Transylvania but I would like to see what a Likely David Silverman directed or at least that kind of style if they could actually get fun

poses in Simpsons in 3d instead of having a be very locked in and stayed Like that would be kind of fun. We'll see what happens We'll be there on the ground floor to cover it whenever this launches. Probably the same time when we're covering The Simpsons movie for our podcast. I bet it'll take five years. I bet you. Yes. And this just in from the stealing our bit files.

Vulture Fest is stealing our bits because at Vulture Fest, if you go there on November 16th, they are doing a live oral history of Lisa on Ice with Mike Scully, David Merkin, David Silverman, plus Nancy and Yardley discussing the episode on its 30th anniversary. So it's gonna be like a little podcast with people who actually worked on the show. I say good idea, don't keep doing that. We need to do this for a living.

Or hey, Vulture Fest, you got our number, don't ya? Come on. Yes. Why aren't we irritating talking heads on documentaries? That's what I wanna know. But yeah, I thought it was funny. It was interesting news to read when I was looking for Simpsons News

and this Vulture Fest thing was one of it. And my first thought was, oh, that sounds kinda cool. I hope they release it and it's not just for the live attendees. But then I also thought, we just, and we've done this many times before, but we just did this with Bill Oakley in Portland. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. I guess it kind of was an oral history of the Itchy and Scratchy and Poochie Show that we did with Bill. Though I doubt whoever's running this Vulture Fest one is gonna be asking Mike Scully about Mac tonight. Yeah, will they have clips of Cheesasaurus Rex? I don't think so.

Although I wonder, will Dave Merkin let other people get any words in, I wonder. He's gonna have a lot of fun on stage. And that's what's happening in The Simpsons world. Let's talk about us and our schedules. So here's what's happening on the What a Cartoon schedule for November. We missed the Halloween season,

but it's coming at an even scarier time, election season, because November's What a Cartoon podcast is going to be all about the Beetlejuice cartoon. The episode is Mr. Beetlejuice Goes to Town, and yes, it's an election-focused episode that will launch a day before election day on Patreon. So if you want to listen before there's a new president, presumably, I assume nothing bad will happen, and don't use words against me if they do,. You wanna get on the Patreon at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons and sign up for the $5 level to get this Election Day Eve.

Or, yeah, I think that's it, or like, whatever. You'll have 36 hours to hear it before we find out what's gonna happen, if we do. Listen to it while you're in the early voting line, or? Play it, play it for everyone No, it's it's a really fun episode of the b-man that is him getting elected and it's a very available series online too, which

And we also you get to hear us talk about the second beetle juice movie a little bit too and compare and contrast It between that and the cartoon of our childhoods and compare and contrast between that and the cartoon of our childhoods. So yeah, Beetlejuice is coming in early November to what a cartoon. Also, for $5 on our patrons at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, we have our normal miniseries episodes. For Talking Futurama, we're covering Lethal Inspection.

It's a lore episode about Benders and Hermes and their secret connection to each other. It was better than I remembered. about Bender's and Hermes and their secret connection to each other? It was better than I remembered. I really like seeing Hermes and Bender bro down in an episode as Bender. Also, maybe it's because I'm definitely more thinking about mortality, my own mortality, than I was in 2010. So seeing Bender have to deal with the episode touches me differently than when I was a mere 28 watching that episode.

And then we have on Talk King of the Hill, we're covering the season three finale, As Old as the Hills. We just recorded that, it's a lot of fun. This is a great two-parter. It's really more of a three-parter if you think about it, but it sets up what's gonna happen in season four. There's a tragic skydiving accident in the last 30 seconds.

You know what happens, but before that, it is a very observational look at a marriage in minor crisis, and that, I mean, everybody involved is just very bored. It's also fun, you know, now seeing it in Lethal Inspection back to back in this month, I'm like, oh, they're both about realizing your mortality kind of storyline, too. like, oh, they're both about realizing your mortality kind of

storyline too. Yeah, that is true. And on what a cartoon movie, that is for $10 on our patrons, we are covering the Adam Sandler vehicle Eight Crazy Nights. Yes, last time we covered the good side of Sandler, this time we're covering the dark side of Sandler with a movie nobody likes that's very inexplicable, gross, and just a real product of the early aughts, but it contains some stunning character animation. Too good for the source material, and we're going to have a lot of fun looking at this

just in time for the holiday season. Although this movie isn't that concerned with holidays, but there's a lot of snow everywhere. It is like the dying gasp of an era of 2D theatrical animation and there's a very interesting history to it and we even have a surprise guest in it too for a history of the 8 Crazy Nights. That's true. It's a charming movie about an alcoholic who abuses a disabled senior citizen for 70 minutes. And it does some, you know what, I was just watching the deleted scenes today. They cut meaner things he does to Whitey in that. I can't wait, and I bet you guys can't wait either,

and that's at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, so check it out there. Now it's time to talk about what we've been playing and watching that's not related to podcasting, and I can tell you, I have been obsessed with a little game called Metaphori Fantasio. Hello, it's a me. It's not Italian at all. There are reasons the game is called that. But it is really secretly a new Persona game and

I was not aware of this. I just bought it because, oh these screenshots look cool, it's by the Persona 3, 4, 5 director, I like his style. And then as I play more and more of the game I realize, oh it's just fantasy Persona made with a ton of hindsight as to what people like and don't like about the series, but it's got all the stuff you like. It's got the calendar system, it's got chapters where there's one main dungeon you can kind of pick away at as you do other things on a daily schedule, it's got everything you like, the character links, but instead of it being in a contemporary setting it's in a fantasy setting and I think they're having a lot of fun with that. So if you love those Persona games,

and I actually skipped five because a lot of things were going on in my life then, I definitely recommend this, and it is a slim 80 hours. It's not 130 hours like Persona 5. They got it down to a slim 80. I am just having so much fun. I played like 25 hours of it so far, and it's great. Man, that's great.

Well, not to skip ahead too much into mine, but I've been so deep into Persona 3 Reload that that's why I am not playing Metaphor or Refantazio right now. But I played the demo of it and I got like three hours into that. And it is really interesting. I mean, what pulled me in hearing about it is like,

Persona now has a job system. Like that sounds so awesome. Yeah, instead of having different summons, you have different jobs and there's like, the jobs work together and that they can unlock special attacks. It's so cool. There's so much going on.

And it gave me, it's scratching my Persona itch and I might eventually play five next year. I know it's a big undertaking, but can't recommend it enough. It seems like everybody is in love with the game and the characters and everything like that. So definitely recommend Metaphor Re-Fantazio. Also, I'm playing the new Legend of Zelda game, The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom. And it is a very fun top-down Zelda game where you play as Zelda, but the focus is not combat, although there is enemies. Basically, if there is anything you see on the screen,

you can learn how to replicate it. And in replicating things, you solve puzzles, you get from point A to point B, you defeat enemies, and the entire game is based around you creating objects. Beds, tables, torches, even other enemies. It's a really cool system, and they're getting a lot out of it. Combat is kind of weird in that you don't directly fight enemies, you just summon other enemies to fight them. And the only downside of this game, where

it's really cool Zelda starring in a game for the first time, I don't count the other ones because Nintendo didn't make them, but they still have a button where, oh do you want to turn into the boy and fight things with your sword? Well fill up your boy meter to become boy and then you can hit things. I feel like that's a shortcoming of the game because they couldn't figure out a way for her to attack enemies in a way that makes it fun for the player. But other than that, it's been really fun.

The puzzles are just hard enough to be satisfying and not frustrating, and I don't need to sell everyone on a Legend of Zelda game, but this one is very good. And it's what, it's on the Link's Awakening engine, or it looks like the Link's Awakening remake? It looks like the Link's Awakening remake? Yeah, it feels like it's built off of that same structure. It's the same graphical style, it's very, very nice, but lots of fun dungeons, lots of fun puzzles.

If you were looking for basically the kind of Zelda game they used to release on portable consoles, but now there aren't any, they just made one for the Switch. It's an entirely new game and it's great. I've been enjoying the game from afar via our pal Maddie Kops. Many funny comics about her experience playing it. Yes, her comics have been great. So check that out.

So in terms of watching stuff, I've watched a lot of movies. I don't know, 20 movies this month. We're watching a lot of horror movies. Although a great experience for me is watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre for the first time when I was in Portland with Henry for our Portland show I made sure to see a lot of the sites. One of those is the Hollywood theater I've been there a few times but not in like seven or eight years and I love old theaters and This is a great old one. And yeah I saw this movie for the first time with an audience and it's one of those

movies where I saw all the parodies and I thought I don't need to see this now I'm getting over that as I get older I should see the movies that have been parodied I'm sure they're fine and yes I can see the appeal of this film but also like Bart says if you've seen Friday the 13th part one it's so tame in comparison to let's say terrifier three or whatever the hell is out now. I mean, yeah, seeing that guy, seeing the murders that happened on screen back then, very shocking, and the, you know, the seats,

the couch made of bones and skin and all that, like, it's shocking stuff, though. His body count is pretty low by movie standards. It's pretty low. Only one person is killed with a chainsaw to be fair Although I kept thinking of it in video game terms Like it was a survival horror game because everyone who went to the house They could never get past the second room because that's where leather face was so they got into the foyer And then they immediately go into the leather face room and get killed

I'm like no you got to explore get more items build up your your experience points find some weapons But no these guys are dumb I mean, it's it's amazing to I haven't seen it in a while and not in a theater So that probably has to be extra fun, but like yeah, it's the it's the first of That type of movie really like it's the first like final girl It's the first like like even even Halloween which really you know It got ripped off a bunch like it is in the shadow of Texas Chainsaw Massacre So yeah, if you find the title distasteful, it's a lot of fun

And it's important to see where all of these tropes came from so yeah, I did enjoy that I also saw because of my wife the movie ravenous I'm having a real Jeffrey Jones month over here because I just saw Sleepy Hollow in the theater last night. He's in this as well. But I don't know if you've seen Ravenous, Henry, it's great. No, I haven't. I always heard it had a cool knife fight in it. Oh, there's lots of cool stuff happening in it.

It's basically saying what if cannibals were vampires and then building an entire fun frontier story based on that. The tone is all over the place. Sometimes it feels like it's trying to be a comedy because there is a David Arquette frontier stoner character in the movie and I'm like, what the hell is this? Yes, that part is very strange.

And he disappears quickly, but you're gonna see a lot of things you don't think you would see before and you're gonna hear a great soundtrack. So I definitely recommend Ravenous. Watch it this Thanksgiving, it's about eating people, it's fun. Well I guess it's, well no, it's not set in the Mayfly,

it's in the past of America but not like the Pilgrim times. No, it's more like, I forget when it takes place but it is like conquering the West, so I think it's like the 1800s, that's pretty broad but I think that's when it takes place like mid 19th century maybe okay and I also saw the fairly short 50 60 minutes anime film look back it is based on a one-shot manga by the creator of chainsaw man and it was in theaters for a very brief run recently and it is about two female manga creators and their

friendly rivalry and collaboration and their their basically career together as they grow through the industry with some surprising twists and turns. It's very heartfelt, it feels like a non horny version of Bakuman that knows how to write female characters and the animation great, and the music is very great as well. I'm not sure where this is going to end up, but our theater was way fuller than I expected, so people are really getting in watching this. I think it's because Chainsaw Man,

that we're in the period, the fallow season between the first season and the movie, which will make a part of the second season, so people are looking for more work from this guy, and they adapted this, and it's great. I have been tempted to watch it and it actually is still in theaters for the rest of this week in my neighborhood so I have been considering it because yeah everybody says it's great and that I just watched all of Chainsaw Man in this last year so but I

haven't read the comic or this comic. I didn't even know it was from the Chainsaw Man guy. I had heard, yeah, the heartfelt thing of it. I was like, boy, am I ready for a lot of feelings right now? I don't know. It might be a good antidote to going online and seeing nothing but stuff about the election, I think. It's nice.

It's like, oh, people can love each other and art is beautiful. All right, you know what? Maybe tomorrow while I have some free time in the afternoon, I'll go, especially if it's just an hour or so. Yeah, it's not a big commitment. And yeah, those are the three movies I saw.

I've been seeing a lot of stuff. I saw Sleepy Hollow in the theater. I saw Dracula. I almost said Dracula, dead and loving it, sorry. Bram Stoker's Dracula I saw for the first time in a theater and it blew me away. I didn't have time to watch it before we recorded that Treehouse of Horror, but I'm so glad I saw it.

It is so great to see in a completely dark room with strangers. I also regret not popping open my 4K before we did that recording too. But yeah, I think, I mean, we, you know, I never promote this enough either, but me and you both, we're active Letterboxx people, you a little more than me, but like,

if people wanna hear all of our movie thoughts on everything we see, they definitely should follow us on Letterboxx. Yeah, yeah, I'm Bob Servo, are you Henry G? I am H-E-N-E-R-E-Y-G on Letterboxx as well, yes. Yeah, I mean, if anyone out there misses my writing, I just kinda do it for homework now on Goodreads and Letterboxd and that's

kind of it. So that's where it all ends up for me. Twitter is no good of a place to say to say movie opinions these days in my so that's where all my all my movie thoughts go to Letterboxd now. And in terms of TV, because of my wife, I'm glad she did this. She wanted me to see Stranger Things for the first time. So I saw Str stranger things season one and my response was homers. I can see why this is popular It's I think the season one's the best season and having seen it all yes Yeah, I did like it I feel like it's a real like B minus to B show, but I felt like it didn't waste my time

Some of the plotting was a bit sloppy. I'm just, maybe I'm just very cynical, but I feel like if you show up at a government, very lockdown installation where they're doing interdimensional experiments, you're getting a bullet in the back of the head and dissolved in acid the second you walk through the door. They don't let you show up twice. Yes, not in Reagan's America even.

No, no. Hey, maybe things were more permissive back in Reagan's America, I don't know. But a few things like that, I was like, mm, I don't quite buy this. But it was a fun, goony-style adventure full of homages to lots of things, but still doing its own thing.

And I don't need to tell you about Stranger Things, but old man Mackie finally watched it and probably will see more of this show, although I know the episodes eventually get to be like three hours long because they have no self control towards the later seasons. Well, you know, the Stranger Things season one as well, when I watched it, I watched it some years ago because both my husband and also Nina saying like, no, no, give it a chance. I gave it a chance and did enjoy it. But then when I watched ET for the retronauts about ET,

that was the first time I'd seen ET in forever. I was like, wow, they even start with playing D&D together in this, like literally everything in Stranger Things is from something else. And when the kid, I believe his name is Mike, the main kid, has to go to school and leave Eleven at home, I thought, is she gonna walk around in a flannel shirt and drink beer?

You're right, yes. That's Finn Wolfhard, one of our hottest stars. Not really. He's not. I'm sure he's okay. Doing okay today. So yeah, I saw that. I also started watching Dandadan, which is a very nice anime.

I actually read a few volumes of the manga because my friends Nick and Chris told me it was very funny and has great art, and it does. It's basically like X-Files if Mulder and Scully were teens that's the best way I can sell it and the animation is done by a group called Science Saru who does very cool experimental animation for TV. It is just a very good-looking show to the point where we watched episode 1 with the sub and I told my wife I really want to watch the dub because I just want to look at everything, and I feel like I'm looking away at the words too much, even though I'm a quick reader.

So it's that good that I just want to watch the dub to take in all of the great animation and artwork. Well, I had heard people talking it up, but then, this is the first I have heard that it was Science Saru, because yeah, they did the Scott Pilgrim anime, which looked great too. I completely forgot that was them.

Yeah, they're very famous for producing short, but very nice looking shows and this is great. So I'm happy people are digging this. And I started my long journey through Twin Peaks The Return, although I've only seen one episode. I wanna let everyone know that I have started it. And it is such a vanity

Project but I like that David Lynch made Showtime waste a lot of money on letting him do whatever he wants and that's great. That's that's awesome I I'll be there in probably two years or so because yes I I am currently watching for the first time twin peak season 2 so I I am currently watching for the first time Twin Peaks Season Two. So I'm waiting on the return. I have a giant box set of the Blu-ray of HD of all. And it's everything except for Fire Walk with me,

but I already have the criterion of that, which I also haven't seen before. So I'm working my way. I'd watched all of Twin Peaks Season One a long time ago. And I was like, yeah, I like this. But I didn't love it. And then everybody told me, oh, don't watch season two with Pat or I just heard not good things.

But now I'm really enjoying season two and I look forward to someday checking out the return. Yeah, two is worth the ride. Where are you in season two, by the way? I'm just curious. I am three episodes into season two. Okay, yeah. Don't let anyone else map out for you how to watch it.

Just watch the whole thing. There are some plot lines that are just insane in bad, but It's worth watching the entire way through and I thought oh did David Lynch leave or said the popular theory I heard is David Lynch left then then he shows up about halfway through season 2 as a character in the show and you realize Oh, he didn't leave He didn't go anywhere. That's awesome, man No, I I mean, yeah I love Well the things that I feel like maybe some people fall like oh this season two is getting weirder as it goes

And I'm just like but I like that I'm liking how weird it is All the weird stuff people reference is basically in season two It feels like I listen I haven't seen season two in a few years But I listen to the blank check on it and they're doing a good job of pointing that out where it is the most reference Stuff in Twin Peaks all the weird stuff is in season 2 though after I watched season 1 with my husband and the the first The first time he dreams of the room and when he wakes up with his hair in that specific Curl then I pulled up the who shot mr. Burns part two to show Darren like, see, this is why they did it

on The Simpsons. But no, I'm glad you're on the return now. We're both staying in Twin Peaks right now. I won't be done with it until the end of the year. I thought maybe if we started it, I'd get it done before I go to Japan in mid-November, but that's not gonna happen. But I definitely am looking forward

to 18 hour-long episodes of that that show and just some other minor stuff We haven't really talked to you folks about being in Portland yet, and that was a lot of fun I was there for Portland retro gaming expo always a great time if you love video games Make sure you go to Portland retro gaming expo. I can't recommend it enough and I had a huge turnout for my panel It was the history of Bowser. So thanks for coming to that if you were at the panel I really appreciate it. It went so great. And of course, we had our live show with Bill Oakley, sold out crowd, very, very fun.

You know, our 10th anniversary as a podcast is coming up in June, and I feel like that might be the next time we do a show, because I guess we can say we're not gonna be at Sketch Fest this year in the Bay Area. So. Yeah, yeah, not, we're breaking the pattern there, but I think we've, the 10th anniversary feels like a good time to do something, though.

We haven't, plans haven't fully come together yet, but yes, I like that idea, too. Yeah, yeah, it won't be until the summer. So if you're still waiting to see us, you're gonna have to wait a little longer. But the show with Bill was so great. We had, it was a much longer show than we normally did. It was a two hour show.

Can you believe we did one hour shows, then we ended up to 90 minutes last year for Marge vs. the Monreel, then we're like, no, we're gonna do two hours. Soon we're gonna be doing Who Framed Roger Rabbit length podcast on stage. And I'm not talking about an hour and 40 minutes, the length of Who Framed Roger Rabbit,

I'm talking about six and a half hours, the length of our Who Framed Roger Rabbit podcast. And no bathroom breaks allowed. No, I like, Bill was totally up for it. When he suggested Pucci, I think we said to him, you know, well, we could easily go two hours on this. He's like, however long it takes. And like, and he, Bill, I mean, you listeners heard it, Bill came with multiple things he wanted, like large digressions he was ready to make. And we had so much fun with those.

I was shocked by some of those digressions. Yes, it's all, I mean we've been doing this for so long that it is rare to hear new stories about an episode and a lot of them were new. In fact, I feel like most of what he was saying were things I had never heard before. And it was great that Bill made the time for us with that too, because he had just narrowly avoided

a hurricane on a live show Mission Hill trip and had to drive from Texas to Atlanta instead of flying that during a hurricane. Yeah, obviously a lot of other people had much worse things than hurricanes. I hope you're all doing better. But Bill made time for us after all of that, like on a Wednesday night.

And yeah, I'm with you Bob, Portland rules, I wish I had come down a little earlier after all. Like even though I had just been there on another small trip with my husband, like I wanted to soak up even more of the Portland. Oh yeah, and I called out the Hollywood Theater. I also want to call out Movie Madness, which you also went to, Henry.

It is a great rental store that is also just a museum of film props. If I lived in Portland, I would be renting there frequently. Unfortunately, we had a cool rental store, much smaller than that, in Vancouver, but it closed down right before I moved, and I would definitely have been there all the time if they opened it. But it was really fun to look around and wish I could have rented at something from there.

And I also went to, right by the convention center in Portland, the spookiest, deadest mall I've ever been to, to the point where when I walked into it with my wife, I thought, are we trespassing? Because the mall, all the limbs of the mall are dead, but around the heart is where all of the shops can still operate. So you'll walk through just a long abandoned wing

of nothing, two floors of nothing, until you get to an ice skating rink in the center and you realize, oh, there's people here. And the spokes are all dead, but around the hub, there's like a Barnes and Noble, there's a really cool comic book store, amazing food court in that there's a lot of storefronts but they're all abandoned and there's maybe like

three operating food court restaurants. So there's like a, let's say like a Sbarro's that's nothing but like the counter and abandoned pizza ovens and stuff. Like people just fled this food court at one point. But if you wanna be in a spooky mall with some cool stuff at the center, and you're not worried about your own safety,

go to the Lloyd Center Mall in Portland. I just went to Portland after starting a new game of Dead Rising, and I was getting serious Dead Rising vibes just being in there and not seeing a soul until we ventured in like 10 more minutes and saw that skating rink and realized, okay, we're allowed to be here. Man, now that's gonna be on my,

at least for the comic book store, that's gonna be on my list for next time I visit. I did love Movie Men, too. Once I saw your pics from it, I was like, we gotta go out and do this, too. And yeah, it was like this, I wanted to, like an old man, tell the young people working behind the register register you are so lucky

To work here I would have killed to work at this video store like this would have been my dream job and I would have I would have Never started a podcast or tried to work on a website I would have been like I don't care if I'm paid minimum wage for the rest of my life I want to work at this video store forever like that I had the youth is wasted on the young is what I shook my fist at them. Not really. I'm sure the owner is also 42.

Oh yes, yeah. Man, and all the, it's worth just going there just to see all of the very real movie memorabilia there. It was also crazy, Bill Oakley said he'd never even been there and he lives there. Wow, wow, he should definitely take a trip. It's so cool. By the way, the comic store in the Lloyd Center mall is called floating world comics really great comic book store

They're definitely taking advantage of the cheap real estate. It was nice to just go into an operating Barnes & Noble It is like a curiosity in a novelty for me because I spent so much of the mid 90s to late aughts hanging out in big box bookstores And it was just a fully functioning Barnes & Noble with a Starbucks inside, just in the heart of this absolutely dead mall. It was fascinating. That's very, I didn't know those still were around out there. But especially in a town full of great book stores

like Powell's in Portland, that Barnes and Noble would also still be so healthy. Teens need somewhere to hang out and drink their sugary coffees. But that's it for me in my personal life Well, so yes, I have been playing persona 3 reload. It's still on game pass So I was like, I mean is I let's let's do this and I am over 70 hours into it To give you if you're a persona 3 player I'm in November right now in the game if I don't know how much longer that means I have to play but I'm loving every second of it

it's great and it's I Was just saying this I I'm on a next Lander podcast this this month folks I'm talking about tree house of horror with with Alex Brad and Vinnie And I was telling them that I felt like I'm not a gamer anymore because there's all these new games to come out I don't play them, but then I remembered I have played three different games for 100 hours this year. And that's why my number of played games is kind of low. Yeah, I mean, I found it helps to really break it up,

especially if I'm coming off of a 100 hour game, I have to find, okay, what's a two hour game? What's a five hour game? What's a 10 hour game? I just need to have different experiences or else I really will get burnt out, which is why I played Final Fantasy VII Rebirth at the beginning of the year,

and now at the end of the year, I'm like, okay, I have time for this other giant RPG, which is still gonna be 30 hours shorter than FF7 Rebirth. Well, and this month I did take a couple breaks to fit in two short-ish games. One was the final Alan Wake 2dlc the lake house, or I think they're promoting it as the final one

It's kind of because this month they also announced a sequel to control or a spin-off of control That is a first-person game and this This stars characters from control So I think it's meant as sort of one of those, like, you know, passing the torch DLC, one to the next, but it's really neat DLC, it's really scary. I actually, once while playing it went, ah! And like, she screamed, like something actually

shocked scared me in it. Did you turn the lights on? I, this was when I was playing with the lights off, and also trying to be quiet, because my husband was taking a nap while I was playing this particular scene off and also trying to be quiet because my husband was taking a nap while I was playing this particular scene and I woke him up with my screen. Oh Jesus.

Though it also, no spoilers, but I also like about the Lake House, it has a great bit of anti-AI writing, AI generative writing section in it, which is really fun. Yeah, I gotta get around to playing The Core Alan Wake 2. I've had it for a while because it came with my PC, maybe this holiday season,

because we're taking a tiny bit of time off like we normally do. Well, they just made an update for it that's like all of the, there's general smoothing out of a couple of the edges of the game, as well as they added some stuff, which is like, hey, do you want this to just be easy and you can't die and you never run out of bullets

and you just want the story? They put that in there too. And the other thing, yes, I played, it was Dead Rising Deluxe Remaster, but I did that for a podcast, but I mention it because, for retronauts, but I did that for, being done with that in like seven hours to get to the true ending achievement.

I was like, wow, this was an afternoon of Persona 3. Yeah, it feels good. Yeah, look forward to that podcast. If you're listening to this on the free feed, that RetroNauts will be out on the RetroNauts Patreon, but it's coming very soon if you're listening to this episode on our Patreon. We did a whole Dead Rising episode

just about the first game. As for movies, for me, there were two big ones I actually ended up I was gonna see venom this weekend but honestly, we were so tuckered out from a Our big Halloween party we went to and dressing up my my husband Went if you can see it on Twitter he went as the beast from the X-Men, specifically the one from the 92 cartoon, and he fully blued his face and arms and legs, and that

does take forever to do, even as a two-person job of me helping. Is the tub still blue? You know, we did a little, we put a little elbow grease in this weekend, and so the blue, the blue is mostly gone everywhere. But so we didn't see Venom the last dance, but I did see The Wild Robot, the new DreamWorks movie, and it was DreamWorks Animation, but it was nuts, nuts, to watch that within a week of when we did B-movie,

because I know all we're talking about is B-movie on this podcast now is the negative example, but it should be it should be This this was a DreamWorks movie that like oh and you know, this is Dean Dubois producing and Chris Sims directing and this is like so much more imaginative and like it's not even like the most amazing One I've ever seen but as far as like a found family kind of story and you know, it's a pro geese movie. It's a pro environment one. It also has a really funny concept of, you know, like how in Bambi or The Lion King we

question why don't these animals eat each other when they're hanging out? The Wild Robot has a lot more fun with that idea than a lot of cartoons do. I do want to see that. I feel like by the time I get around to watching in theaters it will be streaming somewhere, but we have a lot of movie tickets we've accumulated through this program and that was on my radar for sure. The trailer looked nice and I was like, oh, a robot being nice to a bird, you've sold me on this.

No, and I almost in my review wrote like, oh, it's like the Miyazaki Castle in the Sky robot meets Bambi and I was like, no, no, no, this is the Fleischer Superman robot that got ripped off by Hayao Miyazaki. I give it a thumbs up. I think it's my favorite animated feature I've seen in theaters this year, I wanna say.

I think it is. And then I also saw Saturday Night, which it was partial hate watch, but also we were getting to go, one of my husband's coworkers, he had said like, hey, let's all go out as a group and watch this because he used to work as an NBC page and he'd walked the halls of 30 Rocks. So it was fun to just, after watching the movie, like, oh, you've been in that hallway,

you've been in that, that, it was a fun thing to watch with an experienced person. But it's really just a long sloppy kiss to Lorne Michaels? Yes, yes it is. experienced person. But it's really just a long, sloppy kiss to Lorne Michaels? Yes, yes it is. 1,000% is. Well, so the clever concept is that the film is in real time of the 90 minutes before the first episode of Saturday Night Live begins.

But of course, if you're a hardcore SNL fan who read Live from New York, you know that what happens in the movie happens in a month basically and then they squish that month down into this happened in the 90 minutes before the episode went live and yeah it's not it but the corniest thing there's good acting in it it actually is kind of tense and exciting in other parts and the impersonators do a good job. Though the guy playing Lorne Michaels doesn't say shoe enough.

Only a couple. They should have just had Mike Myers in, and then like the aged him. But the worst part, I mean yes, the most self aggrandizing stuff, like they're like, no this changed television. It was all these musty old comedy things, and this was like lightning in a bottle

that changed TV, and blah, blah, blah, and it's, but the worst scene is, it is a scene with Gilda Radner and John Belushi, where basically the characters are both saying like, boy, I hope I don't die young, is what they should just be saying over and over again. And then Gilda has a very suspicious cough. Yeah, and then, and then this is happening

at the 30 Rock ice skating rink, you know, the famous one, and somebody, then Belushi asks Lorne Michaels, hey, who's that a statue of anyway, the character over it? And Lorne Michael says, that's Prometheus. He brought science and magic and knowledge from the gods down to humanity. I was like, oh fuck you movie so Him giving us SNL was like stealing fire from the heavens. Yes. Yeah, and we thank him very much. Yeah So that that part that yeah I would say watch it if you're an SNL mega fan who wants to nudge their spouse and say, you know

Actually that happened a week beforehand. And you know, George Carlin, he wouldn't do that sketch the, in the preceding days, it wasn't 30 minutes before air. Then fine, you'll have a good time. But, uh, uh, and yes, season, uh, season two of twin peaks, other TV. I've been watching the Marvel in DC serious shows that are pretty all right. Agatha all along still enjoying enjoying that, a good show. And The Penguin, which I really have been enjoying.

It's full of great acting and great actors and fun stories, though it also does feel like they put into generative AI, like what's a thing like Sopranos? What is the aesthetics of Sopranos? The Bat-Pranos. There's so much Sopranos like every time it happens I pointed the screen to my husband like that's the exact drink that Tony Soprano would eat. This is the exact scene he'd have with his mom. This is the exact kind of

therapist office they built the Sopranos. Except in the Sopranos I keep saying to him in this scene in the Sopranos this I keep saying to him, in this scene in The Sopranos, this character in The Mafia would have set a slur towards an ethnicity, and instead, this is The Mafia where no one's racist. The WeHit Movies guys seem to like this show, which surprised me, because that's their, they have a series called Too Old for This Shit, and that's their new series,

what they're looking at for this series, that is. It is, I would say, it is maybe the best of these in the universe. I like it more than the Peacemaker Show, and I liked the Peacemaker Show. It actually does aspire to be a great TV show. It doesn't always get there, and Christina Maladi, I believe, the female lead of the show, I think she does an amazing job. But every time I look at the penguin in it who's doing a great job acting,

I just think like James Gandolfini's of today don't get this role that James Gandolfini got 25 years ago because they can just put Colin Farrell in a fat suit. I can't not think that. He earned that penguin body, James Gandolfini. He did. It's why he's not acting in things right now. He's doing a lot of laying down. Had you seen that, I just retweeted it

and I missed it before, had you seen that picture before of Gandolfini wearing a Homer Simpson mask? Yeah, it's horrifying. It's horrifying, yes, it's horrifying. And sorry, the last thing I watched was a thing for babies, but the Lego Marvel Mission Demolition is the name of it. Right, and you're pointing out that you like Demolition Man or he's a obscure,

I've never heard of this D-Man? Yes, sometimes he's Demolition Man, sometimes he's D-Man. He was created in the 80s, he's Demolition Man, sometimes he's D-Man. He was created in the 80s. He's a silly character. Basically, he's a quasi homeless guy who likes getting into fights, and he's like, Captain America, I can help you.

And he's a fun joke character. And you know I have an affection for these joke characters. Like, I love Spider-Ham. Deadpool was fun before everybody knew who Deadpool was. And now Demolition Man's the next guy who's getting it. But though also in the last 10 years, they've also had Demolition Man come out of the closet. So he's a gay goofball joke character,

and he's an ex-wrestler. So it's like all these things I love about him. And he'd never been in anything before, and now he's in the Lego Marvel thing. This is like the Henry demographic they're tapping into. It was made for me. He was created in the 80s, a pro wrestler who's gay. And he's, yeah. So wait, so this is a Disney movie or Disney show for kids,

and they have a gay, openly gay character in it? Well, well, look. You got some explainingaining to do. So it's a special on Disney Plus. Oh, okay. It's just a 40 minute thing. And yes, Demolition Man in it, he isn't written to be straight,

but it is a kid's show, so basically he just has like, he has a male character who's like, oh, this guy, I'm friendly with this guy, but I knew he wasn't gonna be gay, I knew that. But the special is full of jokes for the old fans, which literally a couple times are said out loud by She-Hulk in Deadpool, and She-Hulk says,

enough of these jokes for old fans. Like. They've got your number. And also early in the show, there is a voice in it that I'm like, boy, that's a bad voice actor. Oh, it's Kevin Smith. Like, Kevin Smith is voicing this guy. Hey, when he's not promoting the 430 movie,

he's gotta do something. He just is a Marvel regular now. But hey, if you love old, old 80s Marvel comics, it is not a bad time. And especially if you're a parent who loved that stuff, this is literally made for you to watch with your kid and hopefully then buy the toy set of Legos afterwards. And lastly, other fun stuff I did after leaving Portland, Oregon, I flew with my husband to Denver and we went to Casa Bonita. We did it. We saw Casa Bonita. We got on the list.

It was because we had heard Scott Gerdner on a podcast, The Ride, say it was really that awesome and that much fun. And so we put our names on the list and we got in. We got in. It's looked like a lot of fun. You said you spent three or four hours not eating there. Just going around looking at different things.

And you know, I have been told the food, I was like, I don't get your hopes up too much for the food. And I've had strip mall Mexican food, and really it's, and when I say Mexican food, I mean American style Mexican food. And I would say this is a little slightly above that. So I didn't think, I had heard like, oh, this will be worse than that.

They didn't improve the food that much. But when I had my big stack, my big pile of chorizo nachos, I was like, it's pretty good. These are pretty good. I'm sure the atmosphere helps sell it a lot. If you were just eating that on a bench in a white room, you'd be like, mm, you could do better. Oh yeah, no.

The atmosphere is awesome. The performers are great. You could do better. Oh yeah, no. The atmosphere is awesome. The performers are great. And also, right after we left, like a couple weeks later, that's when the performers are like pushing to become a fully recognized union, and I hope they get that. But yeah, it is a great time.

If you're a local, get your name on the list. But it's worth flying in for. And we did other stuff in Denver too for three days there. We went to this really cool tiki place called Hell or High Water that was full of Beetlejuice style stuff. You left it off your notes here, Henry,

but you also went to Mile High Comics. Yes, shit, thank you, yes, I did do that. I was thinking of where I went when I went to Denver. We had a fun weekend in Denver a few years ago, and yeah, that was one of the highlights. Very good beer city, by the way, if you wanna get some good beer. You don't have to fly to Denver for it,

but if you're there and you like beer, it's all there. Yeah, we went to Mile High and then straight to Casa Bonita afterwards. It was really great. The Mile High into, yeah, Mile High was so awesome. It is just a gigantic warehouse full of comic books like in toys and everything. I bought a Simpsons toy there to the vacation Smithers on card unopened. Yeah it was just it was my i comics was great. Yes. Thank you Bob for reminding me that.

And and yeah Casamo Nida. One last funny thing I learned about it was that there was, I could have gone when I was a kid because there was a branch in Little Rock, Arkansas that I could have gone to but I never knew it existed. And then later when I asked my dad about this, he actually said, oh yeah, I went there once. Like he went without his family he just went one time. That's crazy that reminds me we told we were hanging out with Jeremy Parrish of Retronauts at PAX before we went to Denver we told him about Denver he had he had he's a watch South Park he

doesn't know about Casa Bonita and he's like oh you know I only went to Denver once as a teen there's this restaurants called Casa Bonita and he's like, oh, you know, I only went to Denver once as a teen. There's this restaurant called Casa Bonita, it's pretty fun, you should go there. And we're thinking, you don't, it's. That's funny. At this part it was being, it was shut down and being renovated and stuff, but it was just funny how he's like, yeah, this little restaurant

called Casa Bonita, maybe it's still there, I don't know. It was kinda neat. Well, and after going there, it was also fun to watch the new documentary, Casamo, Nina Miamor, which is about their renovation of it, though, as I've said many times, they try to act like they're gonna be ruined by it because it costs like $40 million or whatever

for them to renovate, and it's like, they just made a deal for $934 million for South Park, and that's just the newest deal. In their restaurant management sim, they put in the money cheat code. Yeah, though again, I don't wanna be too mean to them because I wish rich assholes would just waste money on a stupid fun restaurant from their childhood

instead of the many more evil things out there. What if Elon Musk was doing that and not appearing next to President Trump and doing the jumping in the air, making the X logo? That'd be much more fun. What if instead of estranging himself from all of his family that he just built he found an old restaurant he went to in like 1982 and rebuilt that what if he just did that? But yeah so that that's all I did this month with a very full month of October for us

It's been a very big October for us Let's move on to questions and comments starting with Talking Simpsons the episode Homer goes to college And we'll kick things off with Vance Jericho who says Another quick bit of trivia if the George Meyers script files are accurate Conan was on his way to the record for Bart's inner child when he got the call for late night, Monday, April 26, 1993. This is also Mike Scully's first day at the Simpsons. He remembers shaking hands with Conan right before Conan left to take the phone call. I didn't know that actually, Vince. Mike Scully was on the ground floor of late night with Conan O'Brien history.

That is incredible that like his, I'm going gonna remember this when we get to Lisa's rival because it's a Conan pitch they gave to Scully as his first writing job on The Simpsons. But yeah, that Bart's Inner Child was the one they were recording that day. That's incredible. It's great to know that. What a surreal experience for Mike Scullo to be like, oh, working with Conan O'Brien, I heard he's funny. Oh, he's leaving forever. Okay What the guy just met this morning is on every headline in a newspaper today

Well, I also on Homer goes to college Brian Benelli says for more information about snigglets and Rich Hall check out previous guests Pop arenas video about the barely seen slash remembered Nickelodeon pilot, Rich Hall's TV dinner party. Yeah. It's linked to it in the comments. Yeah. Uh, definitely check this out.

Uh, Paparina as always did an amazing job uncovering this in describing it and explaining why it didn't work. But once you see Rich Hall, you realize this is not a face children should be looking at because he is the real life Moe the bartender. But just this weird, aggressive comedy special, just the idea of Rich Hall being a regular children's entertainer is funny in and of itself. So yeah, check that out on the Pop Arena channel.

It's part of the Nick Nack series, and we're a big fan of those. Yeah, Rich Hall and Dave Coulier, very different vibes. Not surprising why one was more successful on Nick than the other. Yeah, the Rich Hall and Dave Coulier, very different vibes. Not surprising why one was more successful on Nick than the other. Yeah, absolutely. Moving on to the H.E. and Scratchy and Poochy Show live. Joe Hodgson says, always a joy to hear from Bill. And this is probably the episode he oversaw with Josh most deserving of this format.

Since Bill didn't say anything about it, I was always curious if the Christmas ape joke was a riff on a Christmas story, since its only theatrical sequel arrived in 1994 and was basically Ralphie Goes to Summer Camp. It was released as it runs in the family, but changed for home video to My Summer Story. It had such a small and low profile release that I could see the writers not even being aware of it. It's also possible that there have been other Christmas stories with Summer Camp follow-ups, though I can't recall any off the top of my head. Thank you, Joe. I'm gonna say there probably is no connection there,

but it feels like if you have a character who had a Christmas special, the next place to send him is summer camp, which is another very generic setting for a kid's story, but I'm explaining the joke here, but it's funny how he loses the one interesting thing about him when he does that. But I was like, so I explained that on stage, it's like once you get to Halloween as Grinch Knight, what are you doing? Right, yeah.

I feel like that is probably more of an inspiration for that than the Christmas Story sequel. Yeah, I think so too. That Christmas Story sequel, I think I saw that, I have watched a Christmas Story eight million times. It's my mom's favorite thing to put on the TV every Christmas. It's the background noise of TNT. I've watched it a million times. But my summer story, I didn't see until many years later in just a random airing on television, I hear the the narrator's voice I was like, holy crap that wait

Is this a sequel with none of the actors? Yeah, it's about Ralphie as a teen trying to get a car I believe that that's how it goes and then there are there are other I think there are other Christmas Story sequels Beyond that it's a weird. It's a weird little it's sort of like the national lampoon vacation series where there different cousin eddie side stories Though the the most recent christmas story sequel actually did get Many of the actors back were alive and not retired. Yes Uh, that that was uh, when was that was that like 2022?

It definitely was after covid because I remember watching it at the Christmas time at home with my mom. I've watched two of those spiritual, well, I watched that one at Christmas with her in a heartwarming way. And we also watched the Neil Patrick Harris one about getting an NES that I can't remember the name for. I think it's like 8-bit Christmas, I want to say.

That sounds right, yeah. Yeah, it turns out there was a direct-to-video Christmas Story 2 in 2012, and then Christmas Story Christmas was released on HBO Max back when it was called that in 2022. Okay, that's the one I have seen. I have not seen that 2012 one. Also on our Itchy and Scratchy and Poochy Show Live,

Joshua Marchant says, The short-lived San Francisco Giants mascot Crazy Crab was an ugly parody of bad mascots designed to draw the ire of the fans and distract from the team's terrible performance. Pucci could have served a similar role in a show with waiting popularity. Roger Meyer's new audiences were hungry to see this obnoxious character die, but rather than write him off They should have taunted the audience by bringing him back each week only to butcher him in new and inventive ways Pucci was unintentionally the perfect addition to the itchy and scratchy show. Yeah, this could have been a long con Yeah, it could have been the same like that once they see the big The big ratings they got for killing Poochie, then

they would be like, well, let's bring him back to kill him again. That's what's popular about him. I looked at this crazy crab. He looks like a Sid and Marty Croft style creation, which is floppy and nightmarish. I hate all of their designs. I hate their aesthetic. I would hate this thing. Wow. I had no clue about this crazy crap guy because once I first went to San Francisco Giant Games as a Bay Area resident, it was Lou Seal, the loose seal from the, you know,

because there's a ton of seals on the wharf, at Fisherman's Wharf, so it's a loose seal from it, but he's Lou L-O-U-S-E-A-L. I thought they were just ripping off that Arrested Development joke. Boy what came fr- you know I guess it is ripping that off as well too. I think that's intentional but Lou Seal is fine enough. He's an unobjectionable seal.

He's not trying to be too cool. So moving on to the President War Pearls and Blake R says, I feel like I was one of the few who saw Moore's Fahrenheit 119 movies in theaters in fall of 2018, two years after the fatal election. It was a sparse crowd and it definitely did not meet the success of Fahrenheit 9-11 at the box office, as I feel everyone at the time was resigned to and exhausted by living in a Trump presidency, but it was a movie that surprised me and should have been seen more.

It has some of the Trump is an orange man jokes but is also very frank about just how badly the Obama administration and Hillary's campaign screwed the pooch in key areas that would set the stage for Trump gaining a lot of attentive followers. It came out at a time when most Democrats wanted to stick their fingers in their ears and post hashtag resist memes instead of admitting their own faults well here we are at another neck-and-neck election with old Donnie three elections in a row though I wouldn't mind seeing an Android Lloyd Webber musical about him and yes Blake are it is it is weird how history feels like it's repeating itself and I pray for good election results so I saw

back to the future all three movies in a theater in San Francisco in 2016. It was October of 2016 and the attitude about Trump was, yeah right, this is not going to happen. This is funny, we're having fun with this and it's not going to happen. Every time Biff as Trump in Back to the Future 2 appeared on the screen, people were howling with laughter. They were just getting out all of their energy like like can you imagine if this guy was in charge? What a joker.

I saw Back to the Future one and two as part of a double feature with an audience here in Vancouver. You could hear a pin drop every time Biff as Trump was on the screen. People do not wanna see this image, they find nothing funny about it. It is strange to see that eight years later,

we're still, we're going through the same thing again, but this time people just have no, they don't wanna do the jokes, they're just like, please, just make it end, make it end. It does, I mean, yeah, we're all feeling so, so exhausted that like, God, what if he does win again? And then if he loses, then this has to be the last time he runs. It has to be.

I did skip Fahrenheit 11.9 as well. Even when I read that comment, my first thought was like, I just transposed the numbers. I was like, well, they're talking about Fahrenheit 9.11. But no, I mean, it was clever on Michael Moore's part to realize, oh yeah, this falls on 11.9. Isn't that interesting that that was the election day of 2016? But I think definitely to this day, people don't want to hear that Hillary or

Obama or any Democrat made mistakes and left an opening for Trump. They don't want to hear these things. Democrats, Democrats don't make mistakes. And Michael Moore right now is being in a critical as well from again his very Michigan position because that's his home state and Michigan is going to be very important at this this year as well though also on that Andrew Lloyd Webber thing that's also funny because Chapo Trap House just posted the Vic Burgers Phantom of Mar-a-Lago which is amazing I don't know if you watch that Bob I haven't had a chance to yet, but I was looking forward to that because I miss Vic burgers video edits

I don't see them as much as I used to it's 25 minute Vic burger epic Which mainly it is what's interesting about it is I have not bothered to watch Trump looks silly Clips in a long time because like you said it kind of gets old But this one is full of the main point of it is this guy loves the Phantom of the Opera so much Donald Trump so it's all these clips of that and also it is clips of him at Mar-a-Lago absolutely miserable being surrounded by his hog like fans. It seems like he it seems like he doesn't want to win it seems like the other side doesn't

really want to win either nobody actually wants the other side doesn't really want to win either. Nobody actually wants to be president. But some, so yeah, I also get sick of seeing, isn't Donald Trump ridiculous? It just, I'm just tired of seeing the man. But I have been enjoying the new thing of, he's at his rallies and he just kind of shuffles around

on stage for a very long time while they play songs he likes. Yes. He doesn't want, oh God. I mean, there's a million, yeah. I also feel like, yeah, if he is going through senility and his brain is dying, don't make him drop out like Biden did. Biden needed to drop out because that's bad,

but if a guy is senile and will likely lose, let that man be Donald Trump. Just glad he's not driving. He's not allowed to. No, no. So we only have one comment for the Aveda episode. I'm just going to move on to the next one, and I'll read the first one here, Henry.

Oh, and by the way, a special no prize to Alex Irish, who pointed out that the ADR line that we were trying to identify was Lisa in Brush with Greatness. I believe the line is, oh sorry dad, but it takes a while to properly sugar coat a response. When Homer asks, am I just a tiniest bit overweight? I think that's the question.

Yes, yeah, thank you very much Alex for spotting that. It was the first reply, Alex was straight to it. So yes, a big Marvel style no prize for you for getting that one. And moving on, Slothislegend says, interestingly, I committed most of this one to memory based on the syndicated version. So one joke was fucked up for me for the longest time.

After Homer says, Moldy, old, I'm gonna get something to eat and runs off, the syndicated version cuts right to the sequence with the football and the aquarium. So it looks like Homer runs off to get something to eat upstairs. I was like, I guess he has an upstairs snack stash or something.

Sounds risky, but the actual version has the robot bear bit in the middle. So there's that time jump where when you're back on Homer upstairs, my dumb ass walked around bothered by that for so long. And thank you Sloth is legend. Yes, I forgot that sometimes those continuity or sorry, those syndication cuts can disrupt continuity

and cause characters to jump around in space and time because the joke they're removing Was put in place so things could be happening in other stories that it plays in Without the cutaway to the bear the robot bear scene Homer running off screen clearly to the kitchen which is right next to the bear, the robot bear scene, Homer running off screen, clearly to the kitchen, which is right next to the couch to gorge himself there. If he's then upstairs in the very next shot, yeah, you're thinking that the time has not properly moved forward for you thanks to that, but that they, those syndicated cuts, it can mess with your brain.

If, if, if that's why you have to re-watch the DVD or Disney Plus versions enough time to reset in your brain your memories. I feel like those syndicated versions are seen very seldomly now that we all have the DVDs or Disney Plus. I'm sure somebody's still watching it on FX and I don't know how much is being cut out,

but now the original versions are plentiful and easy to find. You know, from watching the Twin Peaks Blu-rays, which have so many bonuses in it, including old commercials, it makes me go like, man, I wish the Simpsons had also saved all the old commercials too, and put those on the DVDs. If they only had two seasons, I'm sure maybe they would have.

That's true. There's a lot of commercials. So also on that episode of Mike Lawrence, Purple Comet says, Nell Scoville wrote about her brief friendship with Ann Coulter back in 2001 before 9-11, and says that Ann Coulter doesn't understand that just insulting someone isn't funny.

Hearing Mike say that Ann thought their jokes were too mean is confusing, but as Nell concludes, maybe she just doesn't have a sense of humor. I tried to read this article, but it was behind a paywall, this Daily Beast article. Oh yeah, I didn't check it either.

I mean, it's nice, I was glad to know that it was written before 9-11 because I do feel like that is the kind of article you have less shame about writing than of like befriending Ann Coulter, which only Bill Maher would do now. Yes, for ulterior motives. Yeah, and I stand by what I said in that episode, which is Ann Coulter's getting left behind at the racism factory.

She didn't even get to show up at the Nazi rally this weekend. That's true, that's true. And I found that, just thinking about it, she used to have her own little hatred corner where you would have to knock on the door and go visit if you Wanted to hear the worst take possible just made to troll someone but now that's that's front and center Though those takes are front and center you can't avoid them

So I guess she was a pioneer and being hateful, but she is being left behind like like many pioneers I think she can't like could you imagine her going to the stupid thing where you sit in a chair? And then another person rushes to debate you in bullshit like those dumb videos now. She wouldn't do that. Oh yeah. I'm only vaguely familiar with what you're talking about, Henry, and I avoided that like the play. I'm a little tired. Like guys, we all hate Ben Shapiro. He sucks. The only time I want to read his name in a headline is an obituary. I don't give a fuck if he gets dunked on. He is a very rich man because he loves to be humiliated by you people. Fuck it, stop.

Yeah, I don't want him to become a meme used out of context because that's what happens to, that's what happened to Steven Crowder with the, here's my belief, change my mind, and he's sitting at the little table. It's like, no, you're platforming this horrible person by putting like, I think Super Mario Bros. 2 was the best Super Mario It's like, no, you're platforming this horrible person by putting like, I think Super Mario Brothers 2 was the best Super Mario Brothers.

Change my mind, you're just posting an image of Steven Crowder in my timeline. I'm like, no, please. There are other ways to communicate this information. So up next we have, what a cartoon all about B-movie. We know you loved it, we certainly didn't. And up next we have Melissa Long who says, and by the way, this is a very long response Melissa wrote

that I really enjoyed, but I only excerpted a little bit of it here. And Melissa says, if you've seen the original concept art, you'll notice how unique original B-movie was going to be before it collapsed under the weight of its own script. It's a genuine shame because the crew was incredibly excited to work with Jerry and there was a lot of hope that he could counteract a lot of Katzenberg's tyranny, but ultimately we were just swapping one man's hubris for another's. This was my first big job in the entertainment industry and I couldn't ask for a better vertical slice of it than B-movie. It was utter insanity. I have so many stories I wish I could share about interactions with just about every cast and crew member involved and of course Jerry himself. Where everybody came from,

what they thought of this production while it was happening, and where they went after never ceases to fascinate me. I can't imagine why you'd ever want to follow up on this movie, but if you want any more insight into the worst era of DreamWorks animation, I'd be happy to chat. So thanks again to Melissa. Melissa was our secret undercover correspondent. We really appreciate her contribution to that episode. And yeah, she is right. If you look at the original arts, you'll realize, oh, this could have been kind of charming. And then when you watch a movie

that seems like it should be much worse like 8 Crazy Nights, the good animation and good 2D artwork elevates a hateful, awful movie that I should not enjoy at any level. Yeah, I bet we'll be saying more of this when we do the full thing on that. But that 8 Crazy Nights, I feel we'll be saying more of this when we do the full thing on that, but that eight crazy nights, I feel like Adam Sandler was not going to so meticulously fuck around with this movie and make it worse like it and got out of the way of the animators to a degree.

It's funny to hear the counteracting a lot of Katzenberg's tyranny, which they're like, but you just create, you just replaced the fascist with a different fascist of comedy. I'm sure Adam Sandler, they showed him his pictures, he's like, oh cool, I'm a cartoon anyways, goodbye. Show that, oh that guy's butt's real hairy, huh? That's funny, all right, gotta go film Daddy's Home, or what, no, that's Big Daddy.

Big Daddy, yeah. Mr. Deeds, I gotta record Mr. Deeds DVD commentary. Oh yeah, when you do Stranger Things, now you got to see why Winona Ryder got to make her comeback and why there wouldn't be a Beetlejuice 2 without Stranger Things. I'm proud of her. Guy Incognito also said about B-movie,

regarding the question of B-human intimacy, I direct you to Avengers, volume three, issue 71. Henry may already know what I'm talking about. And yes, the second I saw the word Avengers after the preceding words, I knew the exact issue you're talking about. Bob, have you looked this up yet? No, I was waiting for you to jump on this.

Well, so basically, from the beginning, in two of the founding members of the Avengers are Ant-Man and the Wasp, AKA Giant Man and the Wasp. And so these characters have been in and out of relationships for years. In this run, and this was in the mid aughts written by Jeff Johns, he got them back together and they remarried. They go on a honeymoon. And in issue 71, there is a page that has never been reprinted since the original publishing because it went too far where basically you are seeing solo on the page, only the Wasp, the woman in the throes of passion in a hotel room bed, and then after she relaxes,

then a naked little man of Ant-Man walks out from under the covers between her boobs and says, okay babe, my turn now. What is this, the savage dragon? This kind of filth? This kind of fetishy filth? I could make a really dirty joke, and I would have 10 years ago, but I'm just going to not do that at this point.

But it was a filthy, filthy page that Marvel, I think, instantly regretted because it made too many headlines of like, oh, so now we know for sure they shrink down and do stuff in each other's genital regions with their superpowers. So, but then I think it turned into sort of a Streisand effect because by not republishing it

in any of the reprints, which are only for the hard cores anyway who already know this page exists, it just makes people look for it more because they're like, oh, the censored page, Marvel doesn't want you to see. I'm sure it's a very easy Google image search away, right? Absolutely, if you put in Avengers Volume 3, number 71, that will be the first image you see and you'll see that whole page but great but yes and so just imagine it when you read that page then replace it with Barry B Benson and Vanessa? Vanessa Vanessa okay there we go

I think maybe Sasha Baron Cohen was just thinking of Old Adventures comics. Oh, that fucking guy, man. We're not big fans of him lately. Nope. Let's move on to our Rocko's Modern Life episode, our podcast, all about Tehekenback and Sansabar. It was kind of Halloween themed because Heffer went to hell. And John Charles Holmes says in regards to Joe Murray's other series Camp Lazlo, Camp Lazlo isn't bad per se but it does come as a bit of a hard

recommendation for hardcore Rocco fans. It's got a lot of the same parts as Rocco's, a lot of the same cast, nearly identical character designs, that same Pomo 60s meets 90s nostalgia, but it somehow doesn't come together quite the same. Perhaps it's the camp setting and the children characters holding it back, which may explain why many of the episodes eventually centered on the Ed Bighead-esque setmaster Smithers pair, both played by Tom Kenny. It could still make for an interesting what-a-cartoon at some point if not only to catch up on Murray's later career, but to also study how the show serves as this weird primordial ooze of modern

era cartoon network. You've got future alumni like Thurup von Orman and J.G. Quintel getting their starts here and a lot of cross pollination from previous SpongeBob artists that would later go on to define the humor and show and feel of shows like Chowder, Adventure Time and Regular Show. Uh, thank you, John. I watched, uh, John Charles. I'd watched a little tiny bit of Camp Lazlo.

It's the, the show started airing when I was 22 and I was living at home and going to school. So I think I watched like 10 episodes and I wasn't really feeling it, but I loved how it looked and it is a really good looking show and I think I want a ton of Emmys too. So maybe one of these days we'll get around to exploring just what Camp Laszlo is and what it means to us. Yeah, it's a bunch of very interesting credits on it and yeah, I definitely have come up in previous research too, like this person's first show or this interesting credits on it. And yeah, I definitely have come up in previous research to like this person's first show or this person's last show.

And after we posted this episode, at least one person replied to me on social media with, hey, watch the final episode of Camp Lazlo has a very clever way of sneakily connecting it to Rocco's modern life. And in a way I won't spoil for people out there. I didn't know about this. Interesting.

And also on that, that Komorowski, our good pal and animation historian says, Rocco is definitely the Ren and Stimpy we all crave without the baggage and mental illness, whereas SpongeBob is what Nick always wanted Ren and Stimpy to be. I'm sort of happy with Static Cling being a one-off, one Nick was clearly uncomfortable with, giving that it was on the shelf for ages. Because it showed that while they could recapture everything, I'd say it was better drawn than the original, actually. That was when they were putting their all into a one-shot. As has been opined talking about Ren and Stimpy, today's industry could not accommodate a show like Rocko.

One of my favorite bits is during Tom Kenny's freak out as the tour guide with Heffer slowly backing away, shaking his head. It's a level of detail in the acting no one wants to bother with anymore. Thank you, Thad. I don't think I've ever heard Thad's take on Rocko, but he's absolutely correct. Yeah, to know that Static Cling was that good because they could focus on one film and it lets them do all their big ideas instead of just, you know, like, oh, well you have to stretch this over 13 episodes and spread this out and how do we make this long term?

Instead it's like, it leaves them, the Static Cling does end with like, we could do more, you know, but it was just a bunch of old friends getting together who still had their, could still do it. Like not just, you know, Joel, Joel Murray, but also Joe Murray, but also Doug Lawrence and, and all the voice actors. And we pointed out on the podcast, we have an entire episode of what a cartoon movie about static cling on the $10 level at patreon.com slash talking symptoms. We did that like right after it came out.

I think it's September of 2019 or something. Also it's funny with that SpongeBob thing because that was in the news lately too with the Krabby Patty, you can buy it at Wendy's. And people are bringing up that like Stephen Hillenburg literally said he didn't want this. And they're like, well, he's dead now, can't stop him. Oh boy, well, we're gonna move on to talking Futurama the episode was the da Vinci code and guess what Peter Abenzino

Supervising director of Futurama since the Comedy Central era that's right He's a patron of ours, and maybe you'll hear us talk to him at some point soon But he is on our patreon leaving comments, so we're getting some insight into the creation of these episodes. So Peter says, couple of things I remember about the making of this episode. For the squid fight in the Trevi Fountain, the script called out for all of those action beats, and Remy, the director, suggested doing it in stills.

Animating squid tentacles never comes out good, so we pitched it and they accepted the idea. We thought it looked anime, I guess not, based on your questions about it. The building on the planet Vinci with the four by four numbered rooms is just supposed to be one of those sliding number games where you slide the tiles and try to put them in order.

And I remember the script just saying that several items fit together to form the spaceship. Remy and his assistant Alden Baroza figured out all of that Rube Goldberg stuff. It was way, way more than they were expecting. Thank you, Peter. I think we might have called out Ani-Bay, but we weren't sure if there was a more specific reference

going on with the Bender Squid Vibe. I think it looked very good. Yeah, no, I also thought it looked really great. And now to know that it was partially out of practicality of that tentacles are always hard to animate, and that they never come out good, so use them in quick stills instead. Like it made a punch here.

I liked it. Meanwhile, I see Wiener says on the episode regarding Rome, I wouldn't worry about looking like a tourist to the locals. It was the most touristy city I've ever visited primarily because while a lot of cities have a ton of tourist attractions, Rome has all of them centralized. Also, the pizza wasn't significantly different from American pizza outside of the dough they used. I am an old building freak.

I love old buildings, old movie theaters, and it makes you realize I've never actually been to Europe, really, truly. And so if I was at a place like Rome, very old buildings, very old. It's not like a movie theater from 1920. I realized I should see older buildings. I remember when I was in high school, there was a story of a, and this is in St. Augustine, Florida,

that it was on a school field trip to St. Augustine, which is the oldest city in America. Like, it was, you know, the conquistadors got there in the 1600s, I believe, or 1500s even. And when we were so impressed with that, but there was an exchange student from Italy with us, and he was just laughing of like, that's every house in my neighborhood is older than that.

Hey, they had it figured out. But I like to know that they're all like closely linked to each other. So if you go to Roma, you'll be, it's a easy walking of just like, oh, I turn the corner, I'm at the next place that I wanted to be here. One of these days international trip

will be something other than Japan, but for now I'll be in Japan soon. We're such horrible weebs, we just are like, well, I could spend the money to go to Europe, but that would take me back to Japan again. I'm not learning Europe-ese, I'm learning Japanese. You're outscoring me on, you're doing so good on that right now, and your XP each day is usually double or triple mine. Thank you.

I'm spending about half an hour a day doing the Japan Duolingo course. And it's mostly, a good chunk of my learning is just getting all the characters down because I want to be able to read everything outside of all the kanji. Forget about that. That's when I asked my wife, what is that?

What's that say? Kanji I'm getting better with, but I gotta say the kanji is tough for a person with poor eyesight. It's really tough, but. Kanji's ableist, we're saying it. Currently I am learning the, I just learned how to ask a pro soccer player how their job is.

What is the job of a pro soccer player? It's good, I know how to ask if people are Brazilian. I don't know when that will come up, but I'm gonna ask everyone I see. What about your job as a soccer player? Hodgson says, in baseball lingo chin music isn't beaning or direction to pitch high, it's a tactic employed by pitchers to throw near but not at the batter's head in a bid to back them away from the plate and just generally make them scared to step back into the box. It's referred to as chin music because it gets them to move their feet like they're dancing, sort of like the old cowboy bit where you shoot at a guy's feet. And yes, no catching the ball with your hat for an out, nor can you throw your glove at the ball.

You can catch the ball bare handed and have it count as an out, but that's obviously much harder and more painful. And corking a wooden bat for added oomph is one of those myths that's been debunked over the years, though it's still illegal to do in Major League Baseball. Thank you, Joe Hodgson. I put it on the episode,

we both have a sports knowledge deficit, and you're filling it with your knowledge, so thank you. Yes, thank you. That Chin Music thing, I had not heard that phrase before and obviously I was bringing in my pro wrestling knowledge of Chin Music, but once you compare it to like dance, bang, bang, bang, like that kind of thing, like oh, now it makes sense.

You've compared it to an old Westie type thing. And also I guess it was up to the umpire on that day, who was Boomhauer. He called it a fair out, so it's up to, you know, Thaderton needs to take it up with the city of Commie-ersts. As always, we defer to Boomhauer for these decisions. And finally, Ron Sterling says on that same episode, baking tip, if you want a more buttery cookie,

don't do what Bobby Don't does. Butter has a significant amount of water emulsified into it. Doubling it will likely result in a very thin, oily cookie. Your best bet is either brown the butter or use ghee, AKA Indian butter. Both will have a rich, nuttier flavor. It also helps to rest the dough for two to three days in the fridge.

This lets the other flavors in it meld in the butter fats, enhancing the taste. Thank you, Ron Sterling. This is the first time we've gotten baking tips in our comments section. I'm gonna follow these. Yeah, it's fun. We get baseball and baking tips

from both parts of this episode. Even the sound of the double butter cookies though, even though it makes the cookie more oily, probably still better than those waxy and stale Girl Scout cookies. I saw it, Bob, you had a little of support. You had some support in there in the comments of your anti-Girl Scout cookies.

Well, somebody in there said they almost quit the Patreon and then I made fun of something they didn't like and they were back on board. Yes, I did see that. No, I, yeah, that, man, again, in Portland, I said it on the episode, but that was the butteriest cookies I've ever had that felt like it was a stick of butter that tasted like a cookie.

But apparently it wasn't because they put double butter in it, maybe they did some of the stuff that's in here. They found some new, maybe less harmful cookie agent. But now it's funny hearing these baking tips about Bobby giving the leaked screenshot from the new season and his cooking background. Yeah, yeah, I hope we see more of that as we get towards the end of 2024.

But that is it for this episode of Talk to the Audience. Again, we have a big November coming up for you. We have the we have the season finale, King of the Hill. We're covering a very important episode of Futurama. We are also covering the Beetlejuice cartoon for the very first time. And through no demand by our audience, we are covering A Crazy Nights, a holiday ish movie that sort of covers the gamut. And we've got some cool guests coming up

on Talking Simpsons as well. And you know what, I mentioned that I'm, I did the Next Liner podcast. I also think this month, maybe a thing we teased a while back that we recorded some months ago, I think is gonna get released this month, I think. Yes, I randomly remember that we did some months ago, I think is gonna get released this month, I think. Yes, I randomly remember that we did that in July,

and I'm like, oh right, okay, cool. This is still going to surprise people. So yes, give that a watch, but know that if it comes out after the election, I think it should be obvious it was recorded before the election because one of the hosts jokes about how Trump was just recently shot. That'll really put it in time but that has been another episode of Talk to

the Audience. We'll see you again next week for another episode of Talking Simpsons and another month for an episode of Talk to the Audience. Thanks for listening and we'll see you then. Wow, infotainment.