The Dogg Zzone by 1900HOTDOG - Dogg Zzone 9000 - Episode 209, Airline Safety with Daniel O'Brien

Episode Date: January 8, 2025

Seanbaby & Robert Brockway, welcome back special guest, Daniel O'Brien to the DOGGZZONE! Airline safety videos from 2015 would not stop singing and dancing directly at you. Passive aggressive digs at your intelligence and wildly inappropriate twerking tots and agonizing ear worms will leave you hoping your flight never makes its destination!

1-900-HOT-DAUGHT 1-900-HOT-DAUGHT Our podcast slams with maximum hype Say hot dog podcast, word Yeah When you taste that nitrate power You're in the dog zone for an hour Come on

You know the number 1-900 1-900-HOT-DAUGHT Welcome to the Dog Zone 9000, the official podcast of 1-900-Hotdog, America's final comedy website. Come support us at patreon.com slash 1-900-Hotdog if you like this podcast, if you want to hear hundreds of bonus episodes, if you like our other more successful podcasts, I don't know why I'm plugging it here, Bigfeet's, or if you just want to read new daily comedy articles by the last living comedy writers before they are no longer living. You can check out our store at 1900hotdog.com or watch our animated Dog Zone episodes and

our video Big Feets episodes featuring our real actual human faces on YouTube at 1900hotdog. Any way you choose to support us is great. I'm Robert Brockway, and if this podcast is an airplane musical, I'm probably the non-speaking biker who gets judo thrown by a stewardess. And with me is my comedy partner and judo stewardess, Sean Baby. I'm Sean Baby, here with the Brockway FACT. He's a terrific guy, and I'm glad he's back. No follow-up questions! Are you lying? You fuck, I need that one question. And our guest, multiple Emmy Award-winning writer, comedian, and backwards-running little hand-dancing spider freak, it's Daniel O'Brien!

Hello! Thank you so much for having me. Sorry, I'm a little bit farther from the mic. Let me do my preferred method of transportation. Ah, there we go. Here I am. Much, much better. Excellent, excellent foley work there. Before we delve into this, much, much better. Excellent Foley work there. Before we delve into this, Dan, where can people find more from you? You could find more from me on the podcast Quick Question that I do with Sorin Bowie, a writer for American Dad and a former cracked

expat like myself, like all of us. We release one episode a week on, I wanna say podcast apps and release a bonus episode every other week for our Patreon subscribers. We talk about you know how you'll listen to the intro of this podcast and it's a couple of white comedy mates just like shooting the shit for a little while until they get into the meat of the episode they have a thing they're gonna talk about

and that becomes the show. Quick question wonders what if the whole show was just the bullshitting whites in the beginning and we are taking it to its logical conclusion which will which will be our inevitable cancellation but in the meantime two comedy writers and best friends talk on the phone once a week and let you listen to it. I think as we've established the logical conclusion of the two whites on a podcast just kind of shooting the shit is a far right collapse of the government. Yeah, that's that's well, there are a couple of avenues open to us now we can self cancel when we realize that the world

doesn't need two more whites talking into a microphone, or we could pivot into the easiest grift in America, become far right podcasters, and then who knows, maybe one of us will be like Secretary of Transportation next year. We don't know. For a week. Well, we have Jordan Peterson's book next week and Brock and I are gonna sit around and just say, wow, that sounds really interesting to all the fucking crazy dingbat shit he says. And I think that'll go pretty well.

That's all it takes. Doesn't matter what else you've said, we're going. This is not a great intro. This is not, I promise, this is not what the podcast is about. The podcast, you're not gonna believe me when I tell you what the podcast is about. But today we're talking about a Virgin Airlines musical safety video from 2010. That's really, that's really what we're talking about. I know we often

cover cursed artifacts from beyond this dimension here. And I swear to God, it doesn't sound like one. It's definitely one. They should never have made this. There's a universe where this makes sense, but it's not ours.. Dan actually wrote about this from the site, but there's a lot more to explore here. I sincerely appreciate you guys letting me write an astonishing 4,000 words on this airline safety video. Didn't even scratch the surface. Truly didn't scratch the surface. truly didn't scratch the surface. And when I pitched it to you guys, like in true lazy pitching fashion, where I, in the back of my mind was like,

at the end of the day, I just wanna talk about this video until I'm tired. I'm sure I'll have some kind of thesis. I'm sure I'll like lock onto something. And I just truly didn't. The pitch was like, here's a bullet points of things that I think will form the arc of this piece and then once I started writing it I was like well I gotta throw out that entire outline because I know I I'm worried I'm gonna fuck up a bit you're

doing okay for the listeners uh Daniel's pitch was 10 to 20 times better than any pitch we've ever gotten on the site ever. It was so detailed. It was almost a full article. I mean, like it needed to get fleshed out, of course, but like it was very detailed. It was the easiest yes ever. Like it was like, yeah, yes, dude, this is fantastic. Normally a pitch comes in, it's like, I think there was a cartoon in the 90s where they merged into one panda.

Anyway, if I can find it, how about that? Where it got away from me is I think what I was outlining the pitch for you guys, there was like one bullet point that was going to be I summarize what happens in the music video. And then another bullet point would be here are some behind the scene stuff. And then a third bullet point would be here are some like broader thoughts about airline safety videos. It's that first bullet point of summarizing the video that completely got away from me because there's so

much stimulation every frame of this fucking thing. And I realized that I was 3000 plus words into this article and I was still just summarizing what happened in the video for the readers. I was like, I don't think I'm going to get into my broader points at all. I think I have just completely abandoned that. I think we should maybe follow your gut on that initial format. And like, we'll start off, my format pitch for this is we'll start off talking and describing the actual video and what happens in it. And then at the end, we'll get into the several crimes that took place in and around it. Like puppet rules, it's puppet rules.

This is maybe the first podcast I've done for us where I have no notes for this part. Like this came out when I was living in San Francisco and working in LA and also I was single, so I was pursuing relationships in several other locations. And I saw this probably two to 10 times a week, every week for at least a year. Yeah, I saw it so many times when I lived in LA

and was traveling a lot. I wanna say I was also pursuing relationships in different states, like a cool guy. I was probably going to like- You don't think that's a dirt bag? You think that's a cool guy? I thought, should I say this that way? No, I was going to Calgary's version of Comic-Con. That's why I was flying back and forth so much.

I was fucking my way across the country. You know, not cool guy stuff. I saw this once and it was my first time on Virgin Airlines, which is a very, was a very different vibe, at least back in, I don't know, when they did like 2013 or something. I had never taken it before and I got on. They have like all of their weird mood lighting and then they still have their like slick uniforms. I'm like, I feel as is everybody going to fuck on this plane? Is this like a swinger's plane? And then that video came on and like, this is this is the flight safety video.

I'm on the orgy plane for sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's Richard Branson's company, and he definitely wanted it to be like this is the plane that fucks and the plane for people who fuck they that spirit didn't really expand beyond floor and ceiling lights on the plane. And this one safety video. Yeah. And I would say you can tell they want it's like it's like going to an actual like sex club. Everybody there wants to fuck, but they're not gonna.

Yeah. They're not gonna. The people actually fucking are somewhere else. Always. It starts off with some sexy stewardesses catwalking the concourse, and it has like immediately, you know you're in trouble because it's got like that fake overly saccharine 50s doo-wop throwback we did for a couple a couple of years after amy winehouse died we're like yeah let's ruin that

this had a big part ruining that play a little sample i got some safety tips that you gotta know and trust me it's something that you wanna hear. So honey zip your lips and enjoy the show before we move into the stratosphere. Yeah that sucks. Here's what might be controversial and that I try to address in the article as well that like if you're having a good time listening to that song, it's okay.

I had a great time in it. Like, I'm not too proud to say I enjoyed this music. I still question its existence because every time I flew Virgin and they played this and I got to the end of the song and the end like really gets you pumped up, you're still getting pumped up to sit quietly for like six hours. It's not a, it's like,

I don't love ending the safety video hard as a rock and ready to party. And they're like, all right, now don't forget, don't move and say change to your seat unless it's an emergency. I think I've mentioned on the podcast before that I kind of hate sharing big positive moments with strangers, like at concerts or shows or whatever. Like I just don't trust random assholes with my vulnerability.

And that's my thing. I got to deal with that. But like, in addition to that, right, you'll never catch me crankier than when I just went through multiple lines and all these Gestapo checkpoints just to cram into a seat, made to hold two thirds of me high, I'm doing a 90s standup bit, Jamie, we can cut all this. But like, the point is, and this fucking song came on

and it like builds to this big show-stopping finish, I hated it so much. It like clawed at my soul. Yeah. Obviously it's like really competent, but not entertaining or good. Correct. And it's really cringy, but like not hard enough to be funny.

And and so when there's this huge emotional climax, it's it just pisses me off. It's like, so I don't know. You say you enjoy it, but I think if I caught someone enjoying this in the seat next to me and I didn't know him, I'd snap their neck, put a hat on him. I'd tell the robot dancing to flight attendant. I'd say, do me a favor, don't stun my friend, he's dead tired. Exactly how that would go down.

If I caught you tapping a toe, neck snap. Man, I'm glad we're running the full gamut of opinions here from hate, hate, and kind of like. Yeah, and I'm glad that when Sean and I both lived on the West Coast, we had completely different agendas with our flights because God help me if I sat next to him, but luckily we were going to very different places. It's just a sitcom seat arrangement, the two of you. That ends in myr- of course, one of those sitcoms.

Dan's up there sighing, here's the next snap, he's like, God damn it Sean. All right, the guy that you heard singing there, that's Todrick Hall, and he's sort of the spearhead of at least the musical part of this. He's named like a Skyrim produce merchant, but he was a semi-finalist on American Idol in 2010? And this was filmed in 2013, so that's the kind of star power that comes with succeeding I think he became like a gay icon. Like I think he did okay on Instagram. Like he's good on the internet. He's got a YouTube channel out of this for what that's worth. And apparently it's worth a lot.

And we'll get to that in a minute. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy.

I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he's a good guy. I think he did okay on Instagram. Like he's good on the internet. He's got a YouTube channel out of this for what that's worth. And apparently it's worth a lot. And we'll get to the crimes that that led to eventually.

Jesus. Nobody else did the more thorough research on this. I did not. I didn't do any. Dan started to touch on it. Yeah. Okay. We'll get there. First here's this crime. So, won't you buckle your seatbelt, pull it down tight, and keep your hook in that chair until we turn off that light.

Turn your electrical devices off as fast as you can. Here's a question. They self-censored ass, I'm assuming. Cause it says, so keep your, you don't hear what he would say. And they all go, whoo, in that chair. Right. He could have, the word could have just been butt.

I think they're lame enough they were self-censoring butt. You think they were self-censoring butt? OK. Yes. I think that's a very kind read of the situation. I thought butt is G rated. If they wanted to say butt, they could have said butt. If they self-censor, that implies

that they are covering up ass. That ass is the word in the lyrics that we're not allowed to hear because that's too adult for flyers. And that seemed like a very strange move to me. But I was going to say for iambic pentameter, dripping hog is the right number of syllables to slide in there.

So I always thought it was dripping hog. According, well, according to the Jason Pargin mandate, anytime they censor a word and don't specify what that is, it's cum. Yeah. Oh, okay. Keep your cum in the chair. Keep your cum in the chair. That makes sense.

That's how I get to Burbank. At the end, you can hear it a little bit, at the end of that clip, they're talking about the electronic devices, and for that, all the stewardesses crowd around a nun who doesn't want to turn off her phone, and it just, it really lets you know early what the vibe of this video is going to be. It feels like one of those robot puns. Like it's got elements of the setup and sort of the cadence of a joke, but it's definitely not. The nun is an insane, insane throwback joke, you're right. Because as soon as, because it's not like the whole plane is full of

archetypes as broad as none, as like single serving one panel comic visual of a nun in terms of clarity. And as soon as you see her, it's a grandma in an Adam Sandlin movie. You see the nun on the plane, you're like, I bet that nun's gonna do something pretty un-nun like, I bet. And sure enough, the nun shimmies, as a burlesque dancer would shimmy their- Full titty shake.

Their titties, yeah. The nun does that. It's like completely delivering on the fifth-grader premise that you expect when you see a nun on a plane. But they're not quite landing on it. Because it's like the nun would do something. I'll give you the titty shake. That's what the nun should do, right?

But they use her to be like, oh, she loves her phone so much. But then they cast a hot nun. So you're like, why would why would a young nun not use a phone? Like, that's not that's not in the Bible. I've seen them use phones. That's fine. I don't know what you're doing here. It's like, they're picking up the exploded shrapnel of a joke and trying to put together what used to be that joke. It's uh, anyway, it reminds me of these 10 nun puns from the AI monsteria.com. God fucking damn it. Aren't you glad to have me back?

I take it back. You said something so nice and sincere and here's my answer to that. Why did the nun join the army? To pray as they shoot. Oh my god. shoot. Oh my god. I love Daniel's like decades of keen comedy writing skills and how like they're going to shatter against the wall of this robots best guess at what a pun might be. I bet the wheels were turning like okay, none army that's good. And then just like no no there's no foundation. Yeah, I

Was really think like is the is the the joke gonna go dark enough that it's like the nun Hoping this will bring them to God sooner, right? I was like, that's that's that's too dark and it's not even a joke yet And then Brockway comes in with I don't want to call it a punchline And then Brockway comes in with, I don't want to call it a punchline. It's the most coherent the robot can be, but it's definitely forgot to make upon it, forgot to make a joke.

It's just like, yeah, nuns are there to pray as young men kill each other. Next joke, please. Feed souls to her husband. And that's not quite there yet, but like in that direction, I feel like. And still somehow darker than going to war to see God sooner.

Cause then it's just like the nuns are just like, I don't know, maybe in the future, that's a that's a function that they'll have to go to war and just like pray on the sidelines because none of this is good. Why don't nuns tan? They prefer to keep their bodies holy, not holy tan. Oh, shit. Fuck you. Oh, my God. God, I feel like some the the language center my brain unraveling. Like I, ugh.

That's what it is. It's spaghettification. It's when you go into a black hole and you're just pulled into little tiny strands. That's what it does to any sense of comedy as you like try to grab onto something. There are some, and I hate to shit on other writers, so I won't name any, but back in the crack.com days as an editor, we had to punch up a lot of articles that came in. And sometimes it's just like a quick polish.

And sometimes it was like top to bottom rewrite. And you wanted to preserve the original writer's work as much as possible. We didn't want every article to preserve the original writer's work as much as possible. We didn't want every article to sound the same and we didn't want to... We like our writers. We wanted them to learn and we wanted them to be able to point to an article and say, this is what I did. And there were some of them that would come in where an entry or a paragraph would be so fucking bad that I actually had to delete it wholly and just like strip it down to like what are the the the links and the sources and facts in this article because having the old words there were too distracting that my comedy brain wouldn't come out. Like I need to get rid

of these because the comedy it doesn't feel safe to my brain right now. So it's hiding. And that's how I feel about these none jokes where it's like, I can't, my mind is not going to do any creative work under these conditions where words are treated so carelessly. Daniel, do you remember when you took over as the editor of all the columns, you asked me to punch up a new columnist's work. And you said, just let me know what you change as you go through. And I'm like, and I took that as like, you can't be serious.

But then I just did it. And I think I sent you a document that was maybe 2000 words of every little thing I did. It was almost sarcastic, but I feel like you got the spirit it was intended in. And I think you thought it was fun. I don't know if you remember that. But yeah. I don't remember it, but I feel like you got the spirit it was intended in and I think you thought it was funny. I don't know if you remember that. But yeah.

I don't remember it, but it all sounds like, yeah, I actually don't remember a second of that. Huh. I mean, folks gotta remember this was 2015. We were all on so much fucking Coke back then. Oh my God, the cocaine flowed. Speaking of, what do you call a nun who is always on a diet?

A semi-convent? God damn it. What could that possibly mean? I just like that it allowed me to get away with a totally nonsensical transition. Did you say nonsensical transition? Motherfucker, did you just say nunsensical? No, but that would have been great. No, you're looking, that's your brain looking for puns

because now it's, because it's, you didn't want puns, but now that you're being actively denied them, your brain is going, give me. I distinctly heard it. This is how AI succeeds, not by being better than us, but by destroying our brains. Like if you feed me enough of these, my brain is gonna go, I don't know, maybe that was a pun.

I don't know, maybe that's what puns are. And then if we all get a little bit dumber, then AI will seem really impressive to us. Okay, so Daniel's exactly right, because I actually kind of like the next one. Let's see it. Two nuns were in a bath. One asks the other, where's the soap?

The other replies, it's nun-ya business. I was just about to say nun-ya business. I almost interrupted to say nun-ya business. So it made the pun and also implied that nuns are hiding soap in their vaginas. Yeah, I'm glad that we're all on the same page there. That's not just you. That's the only place it can go.

Wow. I'm honestly a little proud of the robot for that one. That's the last time that's gonna happen. Here's the next one. Why was the nun always singing? Because her mother was a chant. So she's like a Gregorian monk now. She's the next one. Why was the nun always singing? Because her mother was a chant. So she's like a Gregorian monk now. She's no longer a nun. She like... Her mother was a chant? Her mother was a chant. Like a... I'm trying to like... I'm so generous that I'm trying to figure

out where the robot... I can follow the Family Circus Robot Trail. Okay, let's do it. So she's not the robot knows nuns have something to do with monks and monks chant, some monks do anyway. There you go. The robot's now... Okay, so it's not a Family Circus like lying throughout the cartoon. It's two dashes and then it stops. Two dashes and then it hits a wall, goes to the hospital. It wakes up and says some gibberish and they say, little family circus boy, you were dead for eight minutes.

And... Um... What do you call a nun who likes motorcycles? Sister Harley. Okay. That's a c... Sure. It's not a pun, it's not a joke,

but like it has enough ingredients to it that I understand it that way. I think that's actually what you would just call that. Like, yeah, that's probably what they do. 7 out of 10 nickname. Here's another great one. Why couldn't the bicycle stand up by itself? It was too tired and the nun didn't want to get involved.

So, are you... Hey, are you fucking with me? I'm not Traces of the previous one remained it like said hey, we're doing we're doing bike puns, right? Wait, no shit nun puns The robot panics and this this happens all the time the robot will steal a joke from just you know Crawling the internet and it will be a legible joke and then'll be like, oh wait, that doesn't have anything to do with nuns. Here's something to do with nuns, and it just puts it on the end of the sentence. Sometimes it'll just be the word none at the end of a sentence, and it'll be like, that fulfilled my duty. The poor machines know that every punchline could be none of your business if they want it.

They could go to that well as many times they want. Be a hack robot, that's fine. You don't have pride to get hurt. I wish it did. Just like in The Shining, but the page is just none your business all the way down. Here's where it gets weird, because I usually pick these when I go to pick these. I just stick to the very top section because these pages will have 800 puns. And the top section is like, here's the editor's picks. And I find that especially funny because there's absolutely no editor and they're the worst ones. So these are from the editor's picks at the

top of the page. It did this all on its own. Why did the nun refuse to fly? She didn't trust the flying buttress. Isn't there like famously a flying nun? There's a kind of flying nun. Yeah, there is. Also heaven, angels wings, there's a lot to play with there, but it went for architecture? Goddamn it. However, here's the next one. What do you call a nun in a wheelchair? Virgin Mobile. Oh. Hey! Hold on a second. Wait, no. Hold on a second. I award that one actual real joke. The highest award I can give a robot in peacetime.

Can I ask you, is a nun in a wheelchair more mobile than a nun not in a wheelchair? Oh, it's half a point now. We thought about it too long. It's unraveling. It was as close as it gets to a joke, but here's the crazy thing. We thought about it too long. It's unraveling. It was as close as it gets to a joke, but here's the crazy thing. There's only, I picked 10 out of like, I don't know, 15 of these. And three of them, the next one does too, have to do with airlines and one specifically with the company Virgin.

It's like when you talk about a product and then you start getting ads for that product and you're like, you shouldn't be listening. The robot's listening. Your final airport joke and the final AI pun. Why did the nun go to the airport with a suitcase full of carrots? Just let me think about it. Just let me think about it for a second. None of your business would work. Because fuck you, these are my carrots. You don't need to know. Why did the nun go to the airport with a suitcase full of carrots?

Rabbits like carrots. Rabbits don't fly. Easter is a religious holiday. Easter bunny flying. They wanted to make sure the Easter bunny followed them. It's not a joke or a pun, but there's... Are you trying to decode the robot's thinking? Yeah. This is why I don't usually give you time to think, because it just leads to human error messages all the way down. And you're never gonna beat the robot's failure. You're never gonna fail as hard as the robot.

So why did the nun go to the airport with a suitcase full of carrots? She heard her flight was boarding with air caratoral. Whoa. What? That was, I mean, in my own defense, that was gonna be my next guess. Yeah, you would have got there. Just a few more seconds. You would have got there. Right after the Easter bunny, cholesterol, carrots, air carrot, air caratoral. That was the best the robots can do, and somehow we are losing.

I do wonder, so these robots, the AI robots are self-trained on what we have fed them, essentially, correct? Like they're trolling the internet for every joke that's ever been written and trying to learn from that. Is that correct? Theoretically. Roughly? Yes. I am very curious how much more creative or what it would unlock in my brain

if I retrained myself to write jokes in this specific manner because it seems like it would unlock a new skill set. There's a chance that it would just completely destroy my brain forever, but Julie Wiener, shout out Julie, one of the greatest joke, like straight up set up punchline joke writers I've ever met in my entire fucking life. Before she, we worked together at Last Week Tonight and she knew she wanted a job in late night comedy. She would watch like every late night comedic show and go to the monologues and pause it after the setup of every single joke and then write what she thinks the punchlines were going to be and give herself like four alts for each punchline and then write what she thinks the punchlines were going to be and give herself like four alts for each punchline and then play and see like how accurate she was

to like learn in different voices and learn about joke writing like a joke maniac. I wonder what would happen to me if I just tried to do that with nun puns where you just feed me if I just tried to do that with nun puns where you just feed me setups. If I would eventually figure out the robot patterns and then I would start to line up and anticipate what they were going to say. I don't know if it would make me a better writer, but it would unveil a new speed that's previously been inaccessible to me. I feel like it could only harm, but it would access, like there's an inhuman kind of absurdity. Like we all kind of grew up with the same alt comedy.

And so we have like a safe area of like, here's where you say something very silly that doesn't make any sense, but like it makes sense. Like, you know, whereas the robot's just like, I am not constrained by these rules. I will fucking take a case of carrots to the caterer at all. You're like, whoa. I would certainly get fired at work if I came in

and I turn in a script to John Oliver. And he was like, hey, what's this about? He was flying on air a caratol? And I was like, yeah, that sounds like a joke to me. Yeah, it's good. You're going to have to sell the performance. Like, you're a fucking, damn it. It, that sounds like a joke to me. Yeah, it's good. You're gonna have to sell the performance like you're a fucking, damn it. It kind of looks like a joke.

I mean, don't look at it, but it kind of looks like a joke. I think if you ever take yourself up on that experiment and you actually do come up with something as bad as she heard her flight was boarding with Air Caratural, I would snap your neck and put a hat on you. All right, let's get back to the video now that I've thoroughly derailed your copy brains. Try to make jokes now, you fuckers. Back to the video, we pan across a series of passengers who are contorting themselves into sickening

shapes, and then at the end a boring businessman is looking at them in confusion with his seatbelt buckled, and that's to visually illustrate the following passive-aggressive seatbelt instructions. For the bleep, zero zero one percent of you who have never operated a seatbelt before, really? I mean, it works like this. Insert the metal end into the buckle until it clicks, and pull on the loose end to tighten, making sure it fits low and tight across your left. I love that the safety video is immediately condescending to people who might need help with safety instructions.

I think it's an incredible way to start. Yeah. If anyone doesn't know how to work a seatbelt, really, you fucking idiot? And people are sitting there, it's like, well, first of all, I didn't ask for the safety video to be put on. Second of all, it's my first time flying and not for nothing. These seatbelts are different than the seatbelts that are in cars. So

yes, it's kind of a new experience. And third, like, fuck am I gonna ask for help now? Yeah, I feel like after the once you break the seal of sarcasm on this type of thing, in the airport, where they just like took your toothpaste away because they think it's a terrorist bomb, it's like, no, no, no, you're not allowed to like fucking know what shit is now, you dumb assholes. Like, we're all playing this sort of theatrical game of,

of, you know, safety. Right. I emptied my water bottle out in 2024, because in 2006, one person tried to sneak poison in a water bottle onto a plane. It's completely insane. And you are not allowed to joke there. You can't, like, if they say,

Hey, did you pack your own bags? You can't say, Oh no, I was running late. So I fucking let a shadowy intruder into my home. Really? I don't know what they put in there, but like they seem friendly. Speaking from a place of experience. My problem with this is how wrong they get

the visual metaphor because they show us these contorting passengers and in order, it's a attractive, well-dressed young black man and a very quirky, also attractive young woman who are contorting themselves. And at the end, the guy obeying is the boring white businessman who's like, visual shorthand is, this is the man. You don't want to be like the man. You want to be free like these people. And then they're like, yeah. They put on their safety belts, they stop contorting, and they sit perfectly still, as though the souls have been drained from their bodies.

For our listeners who haven't read the article or watched the video, Rockaway is very serious about these. These are like highly skilled contortionists. We're not just making fun of bendy people. These are probably professional contortionists who just do this in circuses or wherever you book contortionists these days. They're very good at it. And it highlights something that is very clear about the production of this whole film, which seems like they just held open auditions for people who can do impressive physical things and picked their favorites and just decided we're going to find a place for your weird physical skill

in this five and a half minute long airline safety video. There's no actual reason for contortionists to be in this video. It's not like they're doing just gun to my fucking comedy head, contorting themselves to fit in the bin over the seats, which is a funny visual that you would do if your assignment was I have a contortionist and I'm making an airline safety video. What's the most reasonable thing I could do with them? Bend them up and put them in the thing or put them in a suitcase.

They don't do that. They serve no function other than being impressive to anyone who is watching the video. Yeah, they're just, their arms are on backwards while they're in a chair. It's very strange. I was gonna say this came out around the same time as the show called So You Think You Can Dance, which is just American Idol for Dancing. And it was almost the exact same vibe and the exact same like casting

call of dancers. Like clearly the show is like, oh, we need one of these weird bone breaker guys, we need somebody who can run around on their wrists on their tummy. Yeah. And so when this came out, I'm like, oh, somebody watches that show. It was just so clearly lifted directly. Yeah. And it's just about as soulless as Mario Lopez, who hosted that show. Oh, god. It all comes together. Anyway, let's get to the sexualized little girl rap,

because there is a sexualized little girl rap. Because there is a sexualized little girl rap. Yo, yo, now that you're bopping your head to the rap scene, now that your eyes are glued to the flat screen, it's a cabin precious change. And you know that we won't be leaving you hanging. Pull your mask down first. Don't worry. Oxygen flows. Tighten the straps after placing on your mouth and your nose.

If you're traveling with someone, like a child for instance, put your mask on first before you offer assistance. Thank you for cutting off before the robots. That is a little girl lip syncing to an adult voice about making sure you don't pass out on a plane in the event of an emergency. Yes, with very precocious body rolls. Yeah.

I don't think I'm a prude exactly, but I wish you didn't do that. Yeah. Yeah. And also, it's kind of, it's again, back to like, back to sort of basic filmmaking, it's like the first thing a character does is usually supposed to tell you something big about that character, and the first thing this very young child does is like, Hulk kick a plane in half and then start gyrating like Shakira. And you're just like, all right, I don't want to see any more of that.

She got reverse bigged, I hope. Yeah. Well, this is real fucking weird. That's your best case. Best case scenario was a reverse big. And Dan pointed this out in the article, but it's weird that she, that the child delivers the message that you should help yourself before helping the kid.

Like that just makes it feel really dark when like she's looking straight at you making hard eye contact going like, do not save me should I suffocate? Yeah, there was a real tendency in the article to lean on the usefulness of this video as like an effective safety preparation film. And I didn't want to lean into it too much just because it felt like I didn't want to be a pearl clutching square and be like, but, but, but, but, but, but I don't even feel safe after watching this video.

But this felt like a moment where you really can point out the strange directorial decision to have the save yourself first and the child if there's time bit delivered by an actual child. I have seen so many thousands of safety videos. There's no fucking way in the world I am putting the mask on myself

before I put it on my daughter. It's just the stupidest like thing to try to train a parent to do. It's just no chance. What if your daughter looks right at you and says, allow me to suffocate, should that happen? No, here's your mask. I can hold my breath for 11 more seconds.

Papa, no, Papa. Papa, recall our training, Papa. But that's the other thing, is if it was really this vital, which I don't think it is, I think they could have, you could do something really haunting where like the father puts the mask on the child first and then dies and the child's like shaking their dead

body. That would stick with you. That wouldn't, that would get that training drilled into you. Right. I think the conventional wisdom is like just acknowledge that if the pilot came back to the plane and realized that it was full of dead adults and panicking, breathing children. You understand why that's bad for the greater good, right? And like on some level I do, but I also feel like if the pilot came back there and it was a bunch of breathing and now miserable adults next to child corpses, that's also not helping anyone.

None of it's great. Neither are ideal situations. We cut next to some suited men in sunglasses robot dancing and I don't really want to dwell on this section. It has the energy of a Will Smith Grammy sketch and I don't like it. That's a good way to put it. That's all I got to say about it. There's another thing that we haven't mentioned yet is that these songs are really infectious and you are stuck on a plane with hundreds of people who have probably very weak wills,

and they'll start singing this after the song is done. The flight attendants have heard it 800 times each day for weeks, so they'll be singing it. And so it just kind of haunts the rest of the flight, the fucking words from this song. Under your seat, there's a life vest. You'll hear that so many times. Which like, it makes you almost think that like,

that makes it an effective safety video. But the parts that stick in your head aren't like useful. No. It's not, oh, here's what I do. You're like, Rr, rr, rr, rr. It's just that. It's just the guys going,

Rr, rr, rr, rr. Over and over in my fucking head. What do I do with that? The part that sticks in my head the most is like the chorus at the end where they're like, fly away with me, fly away with me. That if like the plane was going down, it was like, okay, remember your safety training.

Fly away with me. Nope. Which was, what was the, was there anything catchy about the oxygen mask? Oh no, that was a freestyle rap from a sexy child for some reason. That didn't stick in my head. Yep, my brain rejected that. Next come the sultry stewardess gang who are really horny for the evacuation plans,

which is an interesting choice. Like they come out all hip wiggles and catwalks. And then the lead one, yeah, the lead one wristlocks like a biker passenger for no reason and just flips him away. Like it should have been tied to something, like the contortionist in the bin. Like if you don't think you can handle the duties of the exit aisle and then she fucking flips him or something. Like it's easy to put that somewhere, but to put it nowhere is, it's insane. I'm glad that you mentioned how sexy they are because I feel comfortable saying this in a podcast more than I did writing it because like, you know, if this were 15 years ago and I was writing for crack and there was a commercial with an attractive woman on it,

that's enough in those days to be the entire article. But now it's it's it's less helpful to just be like, and let's talk about how fucking hot everyone is in this video. But now that it's come up organically, it's not just a horny video. It's like wall to wall, the sexiest adult I've ever seen in one space collected ever. It's like an insane, a casting call that was like, we need you either to be really good at terrifying dances and crawling on the floor like a weird spider monster,

or just the hottest person I've ever seen who is capable of wearing a flight attendant outfit. Yeah, and you pointed this out in the article where our boy Todrick comes out and grabs the hottest one and starts humping on her, looking directly into camera with like this smug ownership on his face. Like, like, like he just took your girl. Yeah, Mr. Stewart girl slides in and wants you to feel bad about it. And like, I do. It's effective filmmaking.

I don't like it at all. And all of that. I like how jarring they're like, this gets powerfully sexy here and like, these people are clearly like, short hand for fucking right now. And then we abruptly cut to the backwards running spider freaks. To be like, oh, as you head to the exit, you will be pursued by backwards hand running spider freaks. And let's, let's mention that he is also, this man is famously gay.

He's not doing it because he wants it. He's doing it to hurt you. Right. Yeah. Okay, well, there's the Toan Locke little boy that does the smoking announcements. Okay, so this one's important for all you smokers out there. It's never allowed here, so don't you forget.

Don't forget. Federal law prohibits tampering, destroying, disabling, smoke detectors, so don't touch that cigarette. Don't you do it. It's a tiny boy with an afro and sunglasses and a full suit and it looks very funny to hear the deep man voice coming out of the little boy voice. I feel like this is where the video shows its strings as one that is made by, uh, perhaps not, uh, uh, comedy snob. Because they do, they, the move of, uh, a voice coming out of a body that does not match,

they do that move three times in this video. Yeah. And I'm not just talking about like someone else's lip syncing. It's like the little girl who raps with an adult girl voice, the little boy who speaks with a tone-low voice, and then later they'll have an adult kind of bigger black man lip syncing to like an opera-trained female presenting voice.

That is like, it's a joke to a lot of people. It's not a formal joke or anything like that. But it's like an AI nun comedy book level of jokesmanship really, where it's like, voice coming out of place you wouldn't expect it. That's comedy, right? That works in the school yard, right? Plus there's that dog that pops his head up and says, kill the makers of this video, kill them now. That's right. You guys saw the dog, right? I saw the dog when it was weird.

It was only on the third time that I watched it. Okay, right. I'm not sure how they did that. That was really impressive. Of all everything else they did wrong, that was really good filmmaking. And to give it my mother's face, what? Mine said play the video again. I don't know what you guys, I thought that was just... filmmaking and to give it my mother's face what mine said play the video again, I don't know Like like Dan said it's the shape of a joke where they have like the little kid and he's got the tone low voice

Yeah, whatever Looney Tunes did this kind of shit all the time What what they didn't have to do was they had him during that whole segment? Teleporting rapidly into the laps of attractive women who look at him with a mix of intrigue and lust. Yeah. Like, just an unforced error right there. Like, if you sexualize one child in your flight safety video, okay, that could happen to anybody. But two, that's a pattern. If you're familiar with music tropes, the deep-voiced talk breakdown is like a staple in early R&B fuck jams. So this is your...

You're using the tropes and language of sexy time, because everybody knows what it means in the middle of your R&B song. And after all the great tenors have been singing that someone comes in and it's like, now I just want to talk to all you ladies out there. You know, it's like, oh, now it's time to get wet. I'm listening. Mixing that on purpose with once again, like a 10-year-old boy as the deliverer of that message. And it's like, why are you conflating these two things? It's a it's a bridge farther than little boy with adult man voice.

It's specifically little boy with sexy time bedroom adult man voice. It's a troubling choice. And it's the second time they do it. Yeah. You didn't have to do it once. It's a flight safety video. You really got to work. You got to work to make that one. We kind of come together for the final cabin check, which in this terrible universe that should not be means

like everyone comes together for the musical finale and all the tropes are- And we per the video's instructions, we come together and we leave that come in our seats. Where it belongs. One character walks dramatically toward the screen, kind of talk singing their speech. Another drops in behind to support them, like you can picture this from every musical. The music swells, we cut to the passengers who are all like showing their solidarity for this moment by standing up and swinging around, rising as one. Like you do on Up Flight.

Yeah, the direct opposite of what they were just told to do by the safety video. And I'll just play, Dan's right, the last part is pretty catchy. I'm gonna play the last part. Tonight, you're ready to fly. We're gonna fly. Cause we're gonna live it on up in the sky. Virgin America knows all the places you wanna be. Fly away with me, fly away with me.

Tonight, you're ready to fly. Cause we're gonna live it on up in the sky. We're gonna live it on up in the sky. Tonight, you're ready to fly. Cause we're gonna live it on up in the sky. Tonight, you're ready to fly. Cause we're gonna live it on up in the sky. Tonight, you're ready to fly.

Tonight, you're ready to fly. Tonight, you're ready to fly. Tonight, you're ready to fly. Tonight, you're ready to fly. Cause we're gonna live it on up in the sky. Tonight, you're ready to fly. Tonight, you're ready to fly. Tonight, fly away with me tonight. If you're ready to fly, cause we're gonna live it on up in the sky. We're gonna live it, you know, all the places you wanna be.

Fly away with me, fly away with me, yeah. Here is something for which I am so grateful. This is, it's never been more important to be on a podcast that doesn't film me. It would destroy my career if people saw video evidence of what I did just now during the end of this song. Oh no. Which like some very serious dancing and also like I know all these lyrics. It's not even not even close. I could I could paint this video from memory

and I'm singing along as I would to my favorite song because hey, maybe I am. Maybe that's exactly what I'm doing right now. Did you do the little hand plane when the plane flies away? I did the little hand plane. You fucking did. I did. Hell yeah. I knew you did.

I was holding both headphones, eyes closed, just belting it out like I'm recording a Cheerios commercial, like, my God. Oh shit, so that's the big finale, all of our beloved characters. It's so rousing and so useless. Like that was what, 30 seconds long, and none of it had anything to do with safety.

That was just a big climax to like seatbelts, sexy kids. It was fucking crazy. If anything, it undoes everything they just did because everybody's just going fucking nuts. Like they're just running all over the place, dancing, swinging their arms wildly. Right after they said,

now it's time to sit still and put your tray tables up and buckle your seatbelt and do nothing. And then everybody goes nuts like, like you said the special word of the day. That's it. It's subjectively, I will say that's probably the most quote-unquote fun flight safety video of all time. Objectively, it has to be the worst to ever do it. Yeah. I don't know about that. The Delta airline video, I think might be worse at safety. For now, yes.

Okay, for now, it's the worst. We'll get to that one in the bonus episode. Now for the crimes, a little background info. Like I mentioned earlier, the music, at least the music part of this, there was a different director, John Chu. The music part was spearheaded by Todrick Hall, the American Idol semi-finalist, also alleged fraud and sex pest. His previous assistant, which, incredible that he warrants that that level of fame warrants an assistant.

His previous assistant has documents, he says, and accused him of like serial harassment of basically everyone he ever worked with and sexual misconduct. You're right, Brockway. The assistant part is what's weird about that. Well, to me, like I have found historically, every time there's a piece of art that's bad enough and I dig into it, there's always crime. Yes.

It's always illegal. So I'm not very surprised. Anyway, I don't know if all the allegations are true, but also several of his previous collaborators all insist he just never paid them. So he did have to settle with that, and he had to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit. And he was also sued for unpaid rent. So again, the success that being a semi-finalist on American Idol will get you. The big one, his collaborator for this song was Noemi del Rio. She is the voice of the sexualized little girl, which why would you take credit for that unless you had been forced to? She says she never gave permission to use her voice in this, which I would also say if I saw the video,

and that she was also not paid for this. Daniel made such a funny point in the article about how the fuck would that be possible? To record that song having no idea what it would be used for while you sing about overhead lights and cigarettes. What did you think you were doing that day? Right. I think she maybe was like, okay, well, I'll make the song

and they'll do a little fun little safety video. And then she saw it and they gave her voice to the sexualized little girl. And she's like, I did not. I revoke consent. I revoke the invitation. The vampire must flee out the window. But the lyrics are, I'm 10 years old, body roll, body roll, here's how a seatbelt works.

You had to know what this was going to be for. Todrick sold this song to Virgin Airline for, this article says $3,000, which I hope is a series of typos. Otherwise, it's really funny. That seems like a fine deal, right? Like, if you would have said a million, I'd be like, fuck you, $3,000? Like, yeah, that's like a contract rate for this type of gig. That titty shaking none alone costs three grand, I promise.

Well, yeah, that's a two nation to get those titties to knock together right. That's three grand. Now, is it saying, cause I came across that article at some point too, but I don't have it in front of me. Is it saying that he sold them the song rights or the whole video was sold to Virgin America for $3000?

Well it words it vaguely, but in watching the behind the scenes for it, it definitely had a different director named John Chu and they definitely said that Virgin put together the whole production and it seemed to allude that Todrick was the one responsible for the song and he definitely was responsible for large parts if not the whole. Because he says the music, the everything, the choreography came to him together in one piece. So I'm assuming they meant just the song part for 3000, which is still really funny to me. The idea of it coming from him and not like Virgin America has a contest come up with a Virgin America flight song or video or that Virgin America has like a stable of creatives that they're reaching out to.

The idea that it's just him who was like, it came to me in a vision, a creative musical extravaganza, Virgin America safety video, I have it all in my head and I've written a rough draft of the song. That is bonkers. That is an insane, like dreaming up a music video for a safety video for an airline, a thing that didn't exist until he made it.

It's not like he's dreaming up a sitcom. They could have given him 50 bucks. And if he says, no, no, no, I want 3000, they're like, okay, well, sell it to someone else. Or did you make it specifically? Or is this the one time you'll ever be able to sell this thing that you made? Whatever the case was, he was at least appropriately punished for this because he sold the music for $3000 and Virgin America eventually settled with the rapping little girl with Noemi Del Rio for $200,000. So she made 66 times more than the composer. Okay.

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The Supremes Aaron Crosston Adrian H Aiden Moat Alex Nolenberg is right, there's nothing in the rulebook that says your robot cannot have a giant chainsaw cock. AlphaScience's Jabo, Unant, Armando Nava, Bim Talzer, Brendan Garnock, Brian Salem, Burrito, Cero, Cheddar Wolf is also right, there's still nothing in the rulebook saying you can't have a giant chainsaw cock. Common Sense is right too. There remains nothing in the rulebook against giant chainsaw cocks. Craig Lemoine, I guess that's right. There's... look, it takes time to print new rulebooks. Let's just say...

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