Ep. 191: when chicago caught fire

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Marco Yas. [00:00:06] Speaker B: I've read three maritime history books this month, and you were dangerously close to having to sit through a cold open on shipwrecks on the Columbia river bar. [00:00:16] Speaker A: Which doesn't feel like it would be the first time I could do that. [00:00:20] Speaker B: Yeah. Listen, it may come around again. I'm not promising. [00:00:23] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. [00:00:24] Speaker B: That's not going to ever happen. But this week I am going to spare you from all of the many things that I learned in my maritime history books. I've been on a binge. I've been on a binge. But it's also wildfire season in North America, a thing I very much don't miss about living in southern California. Over the years, I've had countless occasions on which I have walked somewhere, like to school or whatever, and come home with a layer of ash over my hair. [00:00:55] Speaker A: Is that something that is kind of on the rise? Is it increasing in duration or intensity or scale? [00:01:03] Speaker B: Very much so. All of the above. All of the above. Every single thing you just said there. Absolutely. I once drove through a wall of fire when a flaming tree suddenly caught a gust of wind and swung across the freeway. [00:01:17] Speaker A: What were you listening to? What was on the stereo? Please. [00:01:21] Speaker B: Probably bayside. Usually bayside. Realistically, nearly every year there'd be at least one day. Smoke. [00:01:32] Speaker A: Loved up with Jesus when that happened, did you think it was the hand of God itself that had shunted you through the flames? [00:01:39] Speaker B: There is no point in my life that I would have thought that. Anyway, that's not that kind of evangelical as a, you know, keep it pretty, pretty logical. God is not paying that close attention. [00:01:53] Speaker A: I had plans for you, girl. [00:01:57] Speaker B: Yeah, no, not so much. But yeah. Nearly every year there'd be at least one day where smoke filled the sky and covered the sun. And everyone anxiously googled to make sure the fire was in the hills somewhere and not near any of our houses. Last year there was such a horrendous wildfire in Canada. A good chunk of the US was covered in yellow smoke for days. I was in Stanford, Connecticut at the time, and it was apocalyptic looking. All of my pictures from that are just yellow. [00:02:25] Speaker A: Yellow smoke, you say? Why is that? [00:02:27] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm not a smoke scientist. [00:02:30] Speaker A: Sulfur, is it sulfurous? Is it toxins? [00:02:33] Speaker B: So many toxins. Yeah, it's just deeply toxic air. Like, I was wearing a mask the whole time, like outside, everywhere, to try to not breathe it. And if you took it off, it was just like hacking. It's like just being, you know, if you held your face over a barbecue grill, it was terrible. Not too long ago, just north of where I spent my teenage years in northern California, there was a fire that raised a huge portion of the city of Santa Rosa. One of my high school besties house was on the one street in an entire housing development that didn't burn down. Everything else burned down around it except their little strip. And last year on Lahaina in Maui was destroyed by a deadly fire after authorities chose not to alert residents to the unfolding disaster in time. There are documentaries on the paradise fire and fires in Portugal, which wiped entire towns off the map and killed tons of people. And one of these days, I will get around to telling you the story of the great Hinckley fire of 1894, which is among the most horrifying things I've ever read in my life. And I do this show. [00:03:42] Speaker A: Just interesting little piece of synchronicity. Earlier on this week, I had calls to visit Leicester, a little part of Leicester, a little small town outside of Leicester called Hinckley. [00:03:54] Speaker B: Hey, was it ever on fire? [00:03:57] Speaker A: A little catch there? No. It is the home of one of the UK's biggest power stations, so. Oh, I don't think it has ever caught fire. [00:04:07] Speaker B: But, I mean, hopefully it never caught fire. [00:04:10] Speaker A: Potentially it could. I don't see why it couldn't. [00:04:12] Speaker B: You know, there are no rules. [00:04:15] Speaker A: It's possible. Yeah. [00:04:19] Speaker B: Well, good to know. And all of that. To say that fire is a huge part of the american experience. And one of the most famous examples of this is the great Chicago Fire. A devastating conflagration that permeated the public consciousness to the point that there's a jaunty little scout song about it. I sung it to you before, but would you like to hear it again, Mark? [00:04:40] Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes, yes. [00:04:41] Speaker B: Now, there's hand motions to this. Okay. So late last night, when we were all in bed, misses O'Leary hung a lantern in the shed. But when the cow kicked. I'm kicking it, kicked it over. She winked her eye and said, it's gonna be a hot time in the old town tonight. Fire. Fire. [00:04:59] Speaker A: Okay. [00:05:00] Speaker B: And as you sing the song, each time you sing it, you take out a word. So the next time I sing it, I go, late last night when we were one of those. [00:05:09] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. [00:05:09] Speaker B: And I just do the. I just do the thing. And then each time you take out another one of them until all year. [00:05:14] Speaker A: When are we talking here? Tell me when this was 1930s, did you say? [00:05:19] Speaker B: I did not say that. No. This happened in 1871, all right? [00:05:29] Speaker A: And you call it the granddaddy great Chicago fire. [00:05:31] Speaker B: The great Chicago fire. So what did you glean from the little song that I told you there? [00:05:37] Speaker A: Picket pieces. You know, you got your great Chicago fire, we've got a great fire of London, and I'm very curious to see how they stack up. [00:05:47] Speaker B: Well, sure. So the song, late last night we were all in bed. [00:05:51] Speaker A: Yep. Misses Lantern in the shed. [00:05:55] Speaker B: When the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said, be a hard time in the old town tonight. [00:06:00] Speaker A: Now, is that the song that Joker sings in Batman 1989? When he's. He's got his lethal electric hand buzzer on and he shocked the gang leader and he sings as the guy is burning to death and he sings, there'll be a hot one in the old town tonight. Is. Is that what he's singing, I wonder? [00:06:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I feel like it's probably. I don't know. I don't know. I will have to. [00:06:25] Speaker A: I know that I know that movie ridiculously well, and, of course, and have read the novelization, so I know very intimately. [00:06:32] Speaker B: Yeah. Probably only been like two or three months since the last time I watched that, but I don't remember thinking, oh, he's referencing the. [00:06:39] Speaker A: Do you happen to have any. The tale of the tape of your particular great Chicago fire? Do you have any stats? Do you have any numbers? [00:06:48] Speaker B: You think I'm not gonna tell you any of this stuff. [00:06:50] Speaker A: Of course you are. But. Good. Of course. Like, you wouldn't, but I'm gonna come armed. I'm gonna get me some stats about our great fire of London. [00:06:58] Speaker B: Sure. So, Mark, the city of Chicago went from a small frontier outpost to a bustling metropolis in a very short period of time. [00:07:10] Speaker A: Good friends of ours, the bouterols, I believe, are a Chicago family, born and brede. [00:07:16] Speaker B: Wait, are they? [00:07:17] Speaker A: Yes. [00:07:19] Speaker B: Is that so? Okay. [00:07:21] Speaker A: Oh, I'm confused about Chicago union guys, who is a. [00:07:25] Speaker B: Well, no, no. I believe he was a Pennsylvania union man, but he is. Yes, but he serves mean deep. [00:07:36] Speaker A: Sorry, I digress. [00:07:36] Speaker B: Has a New York accent. Yes. Right. He's a. He's been around, I guess, is. [00:07:42] Speaker A: That's what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:07:43] Speaker B: Yes. The storied butyrol family. So bustling metropolis in a short period of time. Like I said, it was a small frontier outpost. Before that, according to Chicago magazine, 1871 was just about 35 years out from that pioneer landscape, but had already become the commercial heart of the midwest, with a population of 300,000 people, largely german and irish immigrants. So it literally went from a couple thousand people to 300,000 over the course of three decades, it had become the fifth largest city in the United States. [00:08:20] Speaker A: Well, do you know what that is emblematic of? Just population boom in general, isn't it just within our lifetime, globally, we've gone from like four to 8 billion people. [00:08:32] Speaker B: Right. But that is, that's birth rate of. Right. Like it starts to become exponential after a while. That's not what we're talking about here. Those like 3000 people living here didn't have, you know, 100,000 babies or whatever. That's not how it were. 200,000 babies. That's not how Chicago got bigger. That was not it. It was, as the Atlantic explained, due in large part to the completion of transportation links such as the Illinois and Michigan Canal. This allowed for industry to proliferate, including railroads, lumber yards and stockyards. And the way that Chicago sprung up so fast was with wooden construction. Okay, it's not that they didn't understand the message of the three little pigs, but, you know, they knew they were building their city from sticks and that meant it was there for a good time and not a long time. But they weren't thinking of catastrophe. It was just that they were more concerned with its rapid growth and its durability. [00:09:34] Speaker A: Thinking of catastrophe or, I mean, should. [00:09:37] Speaker B: We now we do. Certainly, definitely not at that point. I mean, I think now when it comes to constructions in most places, like, obviously I lived in California for a long time and everything has been retrofitted. They've gone back and made it so that it won't fall down in an earthquake. And if they build anything, you know, they have to make sure that an earthquake isn't going to knock it all. [00:10:03] Speaker A: Down and crush everybody or catastrophe. [00:10:07] Speaker B: Right. Like that is, I think in a lot of places, especially, like as we face climate change and stuff like that, that is something that increasingly people are worried about. [00:10:17] Speaker A: Are people cottoning on to Joe Agruel, number one, are people trying to, people realize that you're not safe and trying to mitigate that somehow? I don't know. [00:10:25] Speaker B: Right. I remember even seeing like a few years ago someone who had built a big dome somewhere in hurricane country that was supposed to be able to withstand bajillion mile per hour winds and all of that kind of stuff so that no matter what happens, they're safe from the hurricanes. [00:10:48] Speaker A: It's always worked out well, hasn't it? When people have elected to build giant kind of dome structures, overpopulated areas, it's never not gone well. [00:10:57] Speaker B: It's not like a, not a dome over the area, just their own dome for them to live in. [00:11:04] Speaker A: Oh, I see. Like, okay. For your personal dome. All right, fine. Sorry. [00:11:07] Speaker B: Not a bio dome or anything like that. [00:11:10] Speaker A: No poly shore? [00:11:12] Speaker B: No, yeah, no, no polyshore. Just a dome that they lived in to try to avoid this. So, yeah, I think now we think more like that. Not to say that everyone does. They're still building houses on, like, cliffs and stuff in areas with tons of erosion and whatnot, and then they slide off all the time. But largely, I think we try not to build stuff so it'll burn down and whatnot. [00:11:38] Speaker A: I feel it. But they were much to announce that in a piece of programming which can only have been motivated by the death of, of Shelley Duval, the shining has just begun on tv. [00:11:52] Speaker B: I don't know where your head is right now. [00:11:54] Speaker A: The shining on BBC Two. Good on you, lads. Well done. [00:11:57] Speaker B: Good to know. [00:11:57] Speaker A: Well done, lads. [00:11:59] Speaker B: Anyways, so they're trying to build up Chicago really quickly, really cheaply, get the influx of people who are coming here. For all of the industry that is booming again, largely immigrants have them all come in. And so they build everything out of wooden. Even the pipes and the sidewalks were made of wood. Everything was wood. And they figured, you know, of course, this isn't going to last forever, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. [00:12:27] Speaker A: Sewerage and drain. [00:12:27] Speaker B: Yeah, like that. You're exactly all plumbing stuff. Your water, everything coming through wooden pipes. Wood is known for standing up to water. One of the things we always say about wooden. That said, fire was a reality at the time. Of course, as I explained, this is a country very well acquainted with it. And on the evening of October 8, 1871, Chicago's fire department had had their work cut out for them after a particularly dry spell. 22 days without rain that had left the place an absolute tinderbox. Over the course of the week, they'd already fought 20 fires understaffed and with shoddy equipment. They'd asked many times to have upgraded, but of course, the city was like, nah, you're fine. Don't worry about it. [00:13:14] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:13:16] Speaker B: According to american experience, their success relied on their getting to a fire quickly, stopping it before it got too out of hand for their equipment to be able to handle. That night, a fire began in the barn of the O'Leary family, irish immigrants who had been in America for about 20 years after fleeing the great famine. They had four kids and lived in an area of town considered to be the wrong side of the tracks. Chicago Evening Post reporter Joseph Edgar Chamberlain said of it at the time. [00:13:48] Speaker A: That neighborhood had always been a terra incognita, the respectable Chicagoans. And during a residence of three years in the city, I had never visited it. The land was thickly studded with one story frame. Dwellings, cow stables, pig sties, corn cribs, sheds, innumerable, every wretched building within 4ft of its neighbor, and everything of wood, not a brick or a stone in the whole area. [00:14:23] Speaker B: Perfect. We can't be entirely sure what happened to start the fire in the barn. The popular story, the one that appears in the barn, is that a lantern was hung and then kicked over by one of their milk cows. Another theory goes that that was just sort of a cover, and the fire had been started during a night of partying in the barn, with lots of drinking and smoking and gambling. [00:14:44] Speaker A: Smoking, drinking moonshine. [00:14:47] Speaker B: This is not prohibition era, so they were probably just drinking regular alcohol, just like regular stuff. Regular whiskey. [00:14:58] Speaker A: Store bought. [00:15:00] Speaker B: Store bought whiskey, yes. Now, like I said, this was the bad side of town, allegedly. So while this could be true, it's also worth noting that this is exactly the kind of rumor people start about what those dirty, poor immigrants are up to. So could just be run of the mill prejudice. But the fire definitely did start in that barn. We do know that one way or another. And a watchman spotted it, but made a grave error. Considering getting to a fire quickly was the only way for the fire brigade to get a handle on it. The watchman said that the fire was near canal, port and halstead, but it was actually at DeKoven and Jefferson streets. When he realized this error, he tried to correct it, but the telegraph dispatcher wasn't having it. He figured that changing the location would cause confusion. At the same time, a storekeeper had pulled one of the city's brand new fire alarms. Yep, but it didn't work. [00:15:59] Speaker A: Son of a bitch. [00:16:01] Speaker B: So the firefighters were dispatched to the wrong place, and they didn't arrive until the blaze had been going for nearly 90 minutes. 90 minutes burning through a tightly packed wood neighborhood. There was also a strong, gusty wind that night, only aiding in spreading the fire across the city's wooden structures. And by 11:30 p.m. 3 hours after the start of the fire, it had leapt the Chicago river, igniting the waste and oil floating on the surface of the river. And as it hopped over, using river trash as fuel, it went ahead and ate up the many other wooden structures along the river, including lumberyards and dry goods warehouses. If you wanted to create a city dry goods. Dry goods. If you wanted to create a city that the fire would eat like pyrotechnic dominoes. This is exactly the city you would have build. It was just completely full of fuel everywhere. Horace White, editor in chief of the Chicago Tribune. [00:17:05] Speaker A: The dogs of hell were upon the housetops of La Salle and Wells street just south of Adams. Bounding from one to another, a column of flame would shoot up from a burning building, catch the force of the wind, and strike the next one, which in turn would perform the same direful office for its neighborhood. [00:17:23] Speaker B: Just vivid. Sometime around midnight, the city gasworks exploded, which not only, of course, fed the fire, it also knocked the lights out. For most of the city, this was unquestionably too big for the city's 185 firefighters. The fire had become an unstoppable force. By 03:00 a.m. the waterworks was ablaze, destroying the city's primary source of drinking water and the water that the firefighters were using to put it out. All gone. [00:17:58] Speaker A: What, they ran out of water? [00:18:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:18:00] Speaker A: Oh, shit. [00:18:01] Speaker B: Pretty much, yeah. [00:18:02] Speaker A: This was the one thing they didn't. [00:18:04] Speaker B: Want to happen, right? City engineer DeWitt Cregier wrote, oh, me. [00:18:13] Speaker A: The whole neighborhood for blocks around became a sea of fire. The pumping works became an utter wreck. Nothing but the naked walls of the building and the broken and blackened skeletons of three engines were left to mark the spot from whence only a few hours before flowed millions of gallons of pure water. [00:18:30] Speaker B: And Chicago Board of Public Works president William H. Carter explained that whole squares were vanishing as though they were gossamer. Men, women and children rushing frantically in all directions to save their lives, some away, but others into traps and places where they were soon surrounded and no retreat. Left. Left. That's terrifying. [00:18:50] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:18:52] Speaker B: The fire was so all encompassing, it was nearly impossible to know which way you should go to escape it. [00:18:58] Speaker A: You know how you can't crush deaths? Set you off. Yeah. You can't handle crush deaths. Drowning deaths. How are you with drowning? [00:19:06] Speaker B: I mean, I don't like it. Of course. I listened to some very in depth descriptions of the process of drowning. In what book did I just read yesterday? The perfect storm. But are you someone crushing death? [00:19:22] Speaker A: Will you hold your breath along with the character in a movie when they're underwater, will you time yourself to see if, hypothetically, you could have survived? [00:19:32] Speaker B: I don't time it. I just do it automatically just to. [00:19:36] Speaker A: See if you could have managed it. [00:19:39] Speaker B: No, I've never thought about it that way. [00:19:41] Speaker A: You will know. [00:19:42] Speaker B: I just do it. You know, an interesting fact that, though I learned in the perfect storm, is when you are drowning. You have basically a certain amount of time that you can hold your breath before your body automatically takes one. And it's like something like. I mean, depending, obviously, on, you know, if you are great at holding your breath or whatever, things like that. Like, I think for, like, a normal person who is not, like, trained to do it, it's like 90 seconds or something like that, that you will. If you have not taken a breath, your body will automatically just reason out that, like, no, we should try it. [00:20:25] Speaker A: It might not shock you to hear that. I consider myself to have excellent lung capacity and the ability to hold my breath for a very long period of time. [00:20:34] Speaker B: Like, I think I could not take a breath. [00:20:37] Speaker A: No, not indefinitely. I'm not saying, like, they would even. I say at some point I would have to breathe. Yes. I'd give you that, granted. But I believe myself to have an extra, you know, a really good length of time that I could. I could beat you. Let's put it like that. I reckon I could beat you. [00:20:58] Speaker B: I'm a swimmer. Why would you be able to beat me? [00:21:01] Speaker A: Well, I. Let's just. I won't talk about any further on the cast. Let's just do it in private. Let's just do it in private. [00:21:07] Speaker B: Right. We'll try. Yeah. [00:21:09] Speaker A: Well, have a think now. Right now. Listener. [00:21:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:13] Speaker A: Who can hold their breath longer, me or Corrie? Because I know my money's on. Sorry. [00:21:19] Speaker B: Get your votes in. Why do you think you can hold your breath so long? Like, do you do. This is this thing that you just do while you're sitting on your couch? [00:21:26] Speaker A: It's. Surely, you know, when you're driving. Surely there are landmarks when you're driving that you have to kind of hold your breath as you go past. Yeah, exactly. Um, I always try and extend that. So when I'm driving past the same landmark, I try and get further and further and further each time, and I don't have to breathe until I'm a good kind of quarter of a mile into Wales now. I always kind of hold my breath at the border and hang on to it for as long as I possibly fucking can. And. [00:21:59] Speaker B: Interesting. [00:22:00] Speaker A: Yeah, I'll just put it like that. [00:22:02] Speaker B: Okay, fair enough. Well, I thought it was fascinating that this is just something that no matter, you can't. So if you are drowning, you can't hold your breath until you drown. Do you know what I mean? Like, you will eventually take that breath. [00:22:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:18] Speaker B: Which is interesting, isn't it? [00:22:20] Speaker A: Almost. [00:22:21] Speaker B: Well, it's kind of. Yeah, I think, you know, in the book. It was saying, it's kind of posited that, like, you're. Your body is doing some sort of math here of figuring out, like, I can't do this forever, so maybe it would be better to just try to get some air in and so you can't fight that point. Yeah, let's just. Let's just do this. So, you know, some people will kind of immediately, you know, go into choking on water mode. But, yeah, there's a certain point at which you won't. You will never hold your breath until you die. Your body will try to breathe at some point, and at that point, then you will fill with. Yeah, you will fill with the water, or someone pulls you out and gets it out of your lungs. But I thought that was interesting. I'd always kind of assumed you could do that, but you cannot. [00:23:15] Speaker A: You will always die with water in. [00:23:16] Speaker B: Your lungs, pretty much, unless you die quickly. [00:23:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:20] Speaker B: Which was the case with another guy in this, that it was just like, the way he hit the water or whatever. He, like, never, never inhaled. He was dead before he got a chance to even do that. Drowning is really interesting. If you're interested in the process of it. Read the perfect storm, because it's. I mean, it is a long chapter on all of the bodily processes of drowning. [00:23:43] Speaker A: I would love to, actually, I would love to read that because, I mean, much like beheading, it's a process. One can only know one particular way. There's only one way of knowing what drowning is like. [00:23:53] Speaker B: Well, no, but I mean, it's not, though, right? Like, because a lot of people almost drown, and that's why we know so much about drowning, is because. But to drown and be death, right? You can drown to death and be resuscitated. And so that's what makes drowning interesting, is we know the whole process. That's like saying exactly what it feels like. [00:24:16] Speaker A: Quick smoking whilst continuing to smoke, isn't it? You can't drone to death, and yet. [00:24:22] Speaker B: You can drown to death. Your heart can stop, and people can bring you back to life. [00:24:27] Speaker A: You almost died. You died. By definition, no. [00:24:32] Speaker B: People die and are resuscitated all the time. This is not unusual. [00:24:37] Speaker A: I. Look, it's semantic, and I know it's wordplay, but if you died and were resuscitating, you almost died. [00:24:47] Speaker B: But you did, and then you were brought back. You physiologically died, and then you are brought back from being dead. [00:24:56] Speaker A: I think being dead or not, it's a very. It's an interesting question. Look, we know. We know, of course, that it's not a binary, it's a process. [00:25:04] Speaker B: Right? [00:25:04] Speaker A: Yeah, but on paper, if you died and brought. Were brought back, you didn't really die. [00:25:08] Speaker B: Did you disagree? But that is to say that, though, with drowning, you go through the entire process of death and you can still survive. So we have more information than a lot of other ways of dying about what the process is, because we can read what people's brains were doing. We can ask them what they thought about all that kind of stuff. [00:25:31] Speaker A: Do you remember that fantastic Netflix air quotes documentary about surviving death and the air quote, science of near death experiences? Just not even the slightest total garbage journalistic rigor in any way at all. It was just absolute fluid. Horrible stuff. [00:25:53] Speaker B: Yes, and that's not what I'm talking about here, for the record, just the actual physiological process of drowning, which has nothing to do with the great Chicago fire, and I don't know why we're talking about it. [00:26:06] Speaker A: Yeah, my phone. My phone. [00:26:09] Speaker B: Nonetheless. So let's see. The gas works exploded. The waterworks exploded. Exploded. Where are we? So all these people are trying to leave, and they keep on going, like, the wrong way and getting trapped. And there's some pretty harrowing descriptions because we have a lot of witness accounts of what happened here, of people going to the river and trying to flee there and waiting there with all their stuff. As the flames are getting closer and closer to them. And as we know it jumped the river, there's flames on the water. So the thing that people thought would be the safest place, place to go was, in fact, also on fire. And lots of story of people, you know, just having the heat pressing against them and all of this stuff. Like you would basically. Anywhere in the city where this burning was safe, it's just smoke and fire. You would be, you know, being choked by smoke and feeling the heat of the fire all over the city. The wind caused what are scientifically known as convection spirals. [00:27:18] Speaker A: I know that. [00:27:19] Speaker B: Do you? [00:27:20] Speaker A: Yes, I do. That's that. [00:27:21] Speaker B: Do you know what they're colloquially called? [00:27:25] Speaker A: Uh, whirly burns. [00:27:28] Speaker B: No. Maybe in. In the UK. That does sound like something you call it. [00:27:35] Speaker A: Now say yours and know that mine was better. [00:27:39] Speaker B: I'm not gonna deny it. They call them fire devils. [00:27:42] Speaker A: No, that was good. Yeah. [00:27:44] Speaker B: Which is. I mean, do you guys have dust devils or dirt devils? [00:27:48] Speaker A: Nope. [00:27:49] Speaker B: You don't. You don't have that. So, like, if you look into, like, if you're driving through a particular, like, barren sort of farmland or something like that, where nothing's planted or whatever, and there's a lot of dirt. A lot of times when it gets really windy, you'll see what looks like a tiny little tornado in the field. And it's not like it's not gonna suck you into it or anything like that. It's just the wind blowing these little spiral. And people call them dirt devils. So a fire devil is, you know, a dirt devil only with fire? Yeah, yeah. Basically giant dust devils made of fire that spin around and spit burning debris every which way, lighting more shit. [00:28:28] Speaker A: Twist is three. I guarantee you. I guarantee you twist is three. It's gonna be fire devil. [00:28:36] Speaker B: Fire devil. That's a separate. Listen, here's one of my complaints about twisters is because, you know, like, ten years ago, we got into the storm, which introduced us to the fire nado, which is a real phenomenon. And twisters had the opportunity to show us a Firenado because a tornado comes and destroys a, like, huge, like, fiery oil building or something like that. And they whisked out. They didn't give us a firenado. The fuck. [00:29:06] Speaker A: Saving it. Saving it for the threequel. [00:29:10] Speaker B: God, I hate it so much. But anyways, so, yeah. Fire devils are also throwing flaming debris all over the place, lighting stuff that wasn't already on fire. On fire. By 830 in the morning, the city was a ruin. Reporters noted that there were no signs of life. Not even the streetcars that usually even ran on the sabbaths and holidays. Those were completely gone too. The only thing left to do to stave off any further destruction was for the army to literally blow up any buildings that were still in the path of the fire, just trying to keep there from being anything for the fire to jump to. They were like, if we don't want it to keep coming here, we'll just blow up the buildings that are in between and stop it. Yeah, smart. But a bummer because a lot of people as such just had to stand there and watch their houses be blown up right in front of them. And a thing that I didn't write in here but that I read that was wild is that, like, a lot of people had insurance, but because the insurance burned up, nobody honored the insurance, motherfucker. Right? Like, just sorry you don't have papers is gone. Your vapor went up in flame in your wooden house. So sorry about your insurance. So crazy. And so all these people are watching their houses blow up, and they're not gonna. They're not gonna get anything back for that. So even still, many people were sure that the wind would change and their homes would be fine. Not fleeing until the absolute last minute, if at all. And fleeing was circuitous. People would head to one spot, and then that would catch fire, and then they'd go somewhere else and the fire would catch up with them there. People and horses were all exhausted, and soon they were shedding the belongings they had with them because they were too damn tired to drag them along. One mother recounted, I had to wake the children up, and we had to run again and leave everything to burn this time. We felt heat on our backs, and when we ran, like when one stands with the back to a great fire, which is like great g r a t e, like if you were standing against a fireplace. Finally, the second night, merciful rain fell on Chicago, extinguishing the remaining fires. When the smoke cleared, people found the charred bodies of humans and animals in the river and in the wreckage of homes. All told, 73. Here's your stats, Mark. 73 miles of streets and 17,450 buildings had been destroyed, and a third of the population was left homeless. 300 people died, but only 120 bodies were ever recovered. The rest were just charred beyond recognition. Now, an official inquiry found that the fire had resulted from shoddy construction, lax building inspection, and a poorly equipped fire department. Matthias Benner, who had been third assistant fire marshal, said. [00:32:17] Speaker A: I hate to say things unpleasant to anybody, but if Chicago had done her duty, the flames would have been checked at Taylor street. The engine had no steam on when she left her quarters and could do nothing when she reached the fire. When the company returned from the Saturday night fire, they were utterly exhausted, and when they housed their engine and cart, they dragged themselves to their bunk room. The captain went home. The slumber of the men was shortly broken by the alarm for the big fire, and they were indeed caught napping. Their engine was uncleaned after her rough experience. There was no fire in the firebox. Everything was as was, as it should not be. [00:32:54] Speaker B: The one defense the city had against such a horrific event was an overtaxed fire department that was so exhausted. Yeah, they didn't even have the energy to put their engine away properly so it'd be ready for the next fire, a thing the city knew and did nothing about. So, Mark, who do you think everyone blamed? [00:33:19] Speaker A: Oh, the firemen, obviously. [00:33:22] Speaker B: Not quite. [00:33:22] Speaker A: Okay. [00:33:23] Speaker B: They blamed misses o fucking Leary. [00:33:27] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, well, obviously putting a fucking lamp on the shed, the silly bitch. [00:33:33] Speaker B: The press made her and by extension the Irish into the villain of the story. Despite the fact that we can categorically say she was in bed that night. And whatever happened, she was not at all responsible for it. But beyond that, if the city hadn't been hastily built up with no regard for safety and then the fire department denied the resources they needed, a fire in some irish broad's barn wouldn't have raised an entire city. [00:34:01] Speaker A: Hmm. [00:34:01] Speaker B: She spent the next 24 years of her life basically a recluse because everyone hated her for torching Chicago. But in the nineties, the city formally declared she'd done nothing wrong. Some cold comfort to the matter that was Catherine O'Leary. [00:34:17] Speaker A: Surely we should go back and amend the song. [00:34:21] Speaker B: Well, sure, yeah, you would think, you know, but I don't think most people know that she was absolved. [00:34:30] Speaker A: A little bit of restorative justice for her. [00:34:32] Speaker B: Justice, yeah. Yeah. But obviously this is just deeply on brand for America to see a structural problem and immediately find a way to make it the immigrants fault. And as is the case with pretty much every horrible and preventable tragedy I tell you about, the Chicago fire led to a host of new laws and regulations. Although National Geographic noted that some of the rebuilding began before architects and engineers had even had a chance to finish the designs. They hadn't learned all of their lessons. They were still rushing it. But the new buildings had to be made with materials like brick, stone, and marble so that they would be more fireproof. And the unfortunate side effect of that was that using these materials was much more expensive than wood. So many people were pushed out of the city because they simply couldn't afford to rebuild their homes or their businesses. [00:35:23] Speaker A: For that, you survived, but you're fucked, you know. You will never financially recover from. [00:35:27] Speaker B: Yeah. You're gonna have to move to Wisconsin. [00:35:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hit the bricks. [00:35:32] Speaker B: Pretty much, yeah. And terracotta became the preferred building material throughout the city, making Chicago actually one of the most fireproof cities in the nation. By the mid 1880s, according to National Geographic, the city rebuilt, and by 1893, they even had a whole ass world's fair there, which we mostly know now for Hh Holmes and his murder spree. But it gave us a lot of things, like the Ferris wheel, for example. And now, over a century later, the memory of the great Chicago fire, for many Americans, is just a cute little song about some poor lady's cow. [00:36:13] Speaker A: You're so goofy. That was very funny. Well, there were all the murders, but it did give to the Ferris wheel, for example. [00:36:24] Speaker B: Well, you gotta balance things out, you know? Some people were shoved into a kiln and burned alive, but on the other hand, goofy and unserious. [00:36:34] Speaker A: That's what you are. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may? [00:36:40] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:36:42] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:36:45] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said mise en scene in such a horny way before. [00:36:49] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal receiver. [00:36:52] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst, Mark, I'm willing to guillotine you for science. [00:36:56] Speaker A: Thank you. That's really, really sweet. It's cold outside, but my pancreas is talking to me. I'm fucking. I'm gonna leg it. [00:37:02] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark. [00:37:04] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. Uh, yes. Purely along for the ride this week. [00:37:12] Speaker B: Yes. [00:37:13] Speaker A: You know, purely here to fulfill obligations. I'm just here to just make you. Just to make your evening fun and to deliver you friends. Another wonderful episode of your award winning podcast, Jack of all Graves. [00:37:28] Speaker B: Yes, many awards happening all the time, constantly won. [00:37:33] Speaker A: Just this last week, in fact, a big one. Big one, right? [00:37:36] Speaker B: Yes, of course. [00:37:37] Speaker A: Was a big award in LA. The World Podcast Championships were held in LA this week. And your boys here, jack of all graves, we walked away with the gold medal. [00:37:50] Speaker B: The gold medal of the podcast. What was it? [00:37:53] Speaker A: The World Podcast Championships. [00:37:56] Speaker B: Championships. [00:37:58] Speaker A: Just crone. [00:38:00] Speaker B: Notably, the only competition going on this week. So everybody was watching it. [00:38:05] Speaker A: Did big numbers, mate. [00:38:07] Speaker B: Big numbers. Mark, what happened to your face? [00:38:10] Speaker A: Right, what's going on here? So you've noticed that. Okay, so it's an audio. It's an audio medium. So I'll just paint a picture. Well, you paint a picture, Corrigan, what do you see? What do you see? [00:38:21] Speaker B: Your mid nose is sliced. You've got a slice of bloody looking slice on your nose. [00:38:28] Speaker A: What you are describing there is an impact injury, right? All I can do is. All I can do is lay it out for you. As it happened to me, I'm just gonna describe the chain of events as they happened. Right? So after work Friday, I drove to London to meet a good friend and to go and see band. Go and see alkaline tree or grape band. [00:38:45] Speaker B: Nice. [00:38:46] Speaker A: Yep. [00:38:46] Speaker B: Always good time. [00:38:49] Speaker A: You will know it's been a long couple of weeks, work wise. Friday was a long day. It was a long drive to London. Traffic was awful. Got there. And a combination of fatigue and it being a hot ass room and maybe not having eaten as well as I could have been. So I stood up, right, and I was surrounded by loads of people. It was the support band. And, you know, I knew that I was gonna gray out, right? I knew that I was gonna hit the deck, right? [00:39:17] Speaker B: Oh, man. [00:39:19] Speaker A: There was a kind of a tingling in my extremities in my fingers. [00:39:22] Speaker B: Oh, no. [00:39:23] Speaker A: And I knew, you know, your body, you know, and I knew. Right. I'm gonna hit the deck here. I didn't realize. I really did, right. I come to on the ground holding my hands in front of my face. My hands are being pitta patter, pitta patter, covered in blood from my nose. Right. [00:39:43] Speaker B: Do you know how long it had been? I can only imagine immediately. [00:39:48] Speaker A: Okay. But again, I don't know. Sure. It feels as though there's a lot of blood pouring out onto my hands. Right? [00:39:56] Speaker B: Yep. [00:39:57] Speaker A: I'm then helped by a few people out. I feel as though we went outside, we sat on a wall outside, and some guys checked me over, some guys in high viscose. I don't know if they were local security or if they were St. John's ambulance or. I don't know who they were, but they checked me out, checked my nose out, shone a torch in my eyes, chatted to me. Somebody got me some water to clean blood off me. That's nice. Yes. I was checked out, deemed all right. Felt okay. I'd come back to, you know, snap back to reality. I was then given a really nice seat to the side just off the front of the stage and enough water to last me through the night. And it turned out, you know, to have a fantastic view of a fantastic show. But I. [00:40:49] Speaker B: Did your friend get to sit with you, too? [00:40:51] Speaker A: Unfortunately not. I was separated, but it was for my own good. I wasn't right for a while. I wasn't right for a while. It was very disorienting. It was hugely disorienting to grey out for four or 5 seconds, I guess, and to give yourself a proper fucking smash on the front of the face. [00:41:14] Speaker B: Honestly, what are the odds even you're in a whole concert and you manage to find a table to smash your. [00:41:21] Speaker A: Face just, you know, inches lower. It would have been my teeth. That would have caved my teeth in. [00:41:26] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:27] Speaker A: Not. Not good. So, as it is, yes, I have a crack across the bridge of the nose. I don't know. Is it a little bit Jason Statham perhaps? Is it a little bit sexy? [00:41:38] Speaker B: Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, it does look hard. You know, you look tough. [00:41:43] Speaker A: There you go. [00:41:43] Speaker B: If you don't know that, you just maybe didn't eat enough snacks, fell over at a concert. [00:41:51] Speaker A: Yes. [00:41:52] Speaker B: If you come up with a better story than that, I, knowing you, you were probably wearing black, so at least you didn't have blood. [00:42:00] Speaker A: I was, yeah, exactly. This black top stuff. Yeah. No problems there at all. But. But there were. There was lots of concern. I did find my way to the gents to kind of wash my face off. One guy was like, what happened, mate? What happened, mate? I was like, don't worry, it's cool. It was no violence. It was all me. [00:42:16] Speaker B: Like, it was not. [00:42:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:17] Speaker B: Yeah, I did it myself. [00:42:19] Speaker A: Yeah, all good. Clean himself off. Had a. Had a seat for the rest of. [00:42:24] Speaker B: The gig, which is always nice. [00:42:27] Speaker A: Listen, hey, I love a seat. I would have. I would have liked to have not smashed my face. [00:42:32] Speaker B: Right? [00:42:33] Speaker A: Get it? [00:42:33] Speaker B: Like, maybe next time, pay for vip instead of, you know, falling over vip. [00:42:38] Speaker A: One way or the other. Whatever it takes. [00:42:40] Speaker B: Whatever it takes. You're gonna get that goddamn seat. I'm glad you didn't get concussed or break your nose or anything like that. [00:42:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. Look, Corrie, it's tender, right. [00:42:51] Speaker B: I was gonna ask. I mean, I wasn't gonna use that word, but, yeah, I was gonna ask. [00:42:55] Speaker A: What would you have used? Just out of curiosity. [00:42:58] Speaker B: I don't know. I'm not sure. Sore. Yeah, this is sore, probably. [00:43:03] Speaker A: It is. It is tended to palpate. [00:43:07] Speaker B: Yeah. You don't need to palpate it. I believe you. [00:43:09] Speaker A: Okay. Just. Well, you know, just if you didn't. There it is. [00:43:14] Speaker B: Let me just show you. This action that I'm doing, actually is quite painful to endure. [00:43:20] Speaker A: And like I said, and upsetting, you know, emotionally quite upsetting to have that happen. [00:43:24] Speaker B: Well, right, yeah, that's a little bit horrifying. But, you know, that's. I think we were talking earlier about, like, that's your. That's your sign from the universe, if you were a white girl, to, you know, pay a little more attention to what your body's asking for. [00:43:39] Speaker A: I'm generally quite in tune with the universe. I think that I believe in karma. Honest. [00:43:45] Speaker B: Right, of course. [00:43:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:43:47] Speaker B: Everything comes back around to you. [00:43:48] Speaker A: Exactly. What you put out there, the energy you put out there, honey, is what you get back. [00:43:52] Speaker B: You only get what you give. [00:43:54] Speaker A: Da da da da na. And that was a sign from the cosmos telling me, maybe take a bit of back. Care of yourself for a bit. [00:44:03] Speaker B: Sometimes you really need that. Just punch upside the face as a reminder. [00:44:10] Speaker A: Yeah. And to anybody who might have been sat on that table, that I delivered, apparently a convincing diving facial headbutt, too. [00:44:21] Speaker B: You are. I mean, that is now, you know, you are part of many people's story of that night. Like, there are people who got onto social media and were like, you will not believe what happened at this concert. Dove into a table at the previous. [00:44:38] Speaker A: Most messy gig I ever attended, Washington Nin with Alan in Cornwall a few years back. And that. That. [00:44:45] Speaker B: Boy, I was surprised. [00:44:48] Speaker A: I got a message from an unknown on Twitter, as it was formerly known then. [00:44:54] Speaker B: Yep. [00:44:55] Speaker A: Remember Twitter? [00:44:56] Speaker B: Yeah. I have a vague recollection. [00:44:59] Speaker A: Aguza sent me a photo. Mate, is this you? Ha. We met you that I die. Good luck. And it was. It was me having at the point of the night before it turned to at the point of the night where it was still friendly and nice. [00:45:10] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, that was. I was unsure of whether you and Al were going to make it home because it had reached the point at that particular show where you were both calling me and leaving unintelligible messages. Anyway, so, you know, at least this. [00:45:27] Speaker A: Time you don't want to hear about that audience. [00:45:31] Speaker B: My loves to. Good stuff. Glad you're all right, Mark. Oh, I am. [00:45:37] Speaker A: Of course. I'm unkillable. No, I would. I want to go on record as having said that. I cannot just be. [00:45:45] Speaker B: Don't like when you say things like this, you know, that activates my superstitious. [00:45:51] Speaker A: You cannot kill me in any way that matters. [00:45:55] Speaker B: That's fine. Let's. Let's go with that. [00:45:58] Speaker A: Did you say four years today or something? It's four years, this episode. [00:46:01] Speaker B: No, I didn't. I didn't say that. No. What actually happened was you didn't open up garageband. Just like every week you don't open up garageband to record this. And I said four years, Mark. [00:46:13] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, I see. [00:46:16] Speaker B: But it will be in like a month, I think. It's August 30, I think. Is Joe Ag somewhere in that this year? Yeah, we are. Yeah, about to be four years, which, you know, early on I tried to convince you to get a tattoo and you said, not until five years. I hold that because you will be here just after four years. That is in the fifth year, and that counts. [00:46:44] Speaker A: Oh, that's moving the goalpost somewhat. [00:46:47] Speaker B: I don't think it is. [00:46:48] Speaker A: Oh, all right, fine. Okay. I'll get a tattoo then, if you don't think it is perfect. [00:46:53] Speaker B: Yes. Okay. [00:46:54] Speaker A: It's not the record. I was. I didn't mean that. [00:47:01] Speaker B: I don't know. I don't know. I just think it's time. That's all I'm saying. And hey, if friends, you are gonna come along on that journey, bring a tattoo kit. [00:47:14] Speaker A: I'll only do it if someone brings their own tattoo kit and does it for me. I'm not paying anymore. [00:47:18] Speaker B: It might just happen. My friend Vic did that's. How I ended up with this guy and how nine of my friends, including my husband, all have that as well. My friend Vic brought a shoe gun to a party. Someone did. [00:47:29] Speaker A: You are kidding me. [00:47:31] Speaker B: I kid you not. No. [00:47:33] Speaker A: That is absurd. Which one? Your goldfish. [00:47:36] Speaker B: The goldfish? [00:47:36] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. Okay. [00:47:38] Speaker B: Yeah. My dear friend Vic, she did this at a party, and it was a grand old time. But yes, if you are coming in New York, a, bring your tattoo gun, and b, make sure that you get onto our discord, because I've been emailing everybody the info packet with all the things you need to know for when you come here, what we're doing, where we're going, times, apps that you need, all the stuff, everything that you need to know about coming here for this meetup is in a little info packet. So get on our discord, give me your email address, and I will send that to you so you can join the shindig. It's already a good sized posse and we're gonna have so much fun. [00:48:20] Speaker A: It is a good sized posse, isn't it? I am living for it. I'm not gonna lie to you. [00:48:25] Speaker B: You pretty stoked on this? [00:48:26] Speaker A: Yes, I am. I am absolutely living for it. Our discord, incidentally, which is. Which was the site of another very fun watch along last night. Indeed, whoever mentioned or championed or voted for or just breathed the name hackers, which got it in front of us last night, well done. Because it perfectly met the brief in every sense. [00:48:46] Speaker B: It did. [00:48:47] Speaker A: It was a load of fun. And just the box that I didn't really even know, the one that I wanted ticked was the one that it ticked. It was better than it could have been. Well done. Well done. [00:48:57] Speaker B: I had no idea you'd never seen it before, too, so I wish that I'd known that at the beginning. [00:49:02] Speaker A: Just the most idiotic film. Such fun. [00:49:05] Speaker B: It is. It's so much fun. And I feel like you would have been very into it at the time, too. So I'm glad that now you've gotten to see it. It is not hackers. Did we even say it was hackers? Hackers was the movie we watched. And hackers is not a good movie, but, boy, is it a vibe. Does it nail its moments. [00:49:24] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. [00:49:30] Speaker B: So we had a great time. Thanks to everyone for coming along to our watch along as always. Hopefully we can get one in next month. I think it needs to be New York based if that's our last one. [00:49:41] Speaker A: Before it becomes Joag USA. I r L. Yes. Can you believe that? [00:49:47] Speaker B: By the way, I know, right? At which point we will watch a movie right here in my backyard with our listeners. [00:49:55] Speaker A: Can you reserve the screen at the library? Can you bring them and put it on hold? [00:49:59] Speaker B: So apparently I can't. I can't reserve it until it's closer. So I'm just gonna be very on top of it. I mean I have my own. For the record, no matter what, we are watching a movie in the backyard. But they have a 20 foot one at the library and so I'm working to try to get that 20 foot screen into my backyard. [00:50:17] Speaker A: That won't fit in your garden surely. For fuck's sake. A 20 foot screen. [00:50:22] Speaker B: It'll fit in my. You're coming to America, Mark. Get ready for american sized yards. And so hopefully we'll be able to do that and it'll be very fun. But either way we're gonna watch something oh so cool. But for next month's watch along, I think we need for it be something New York based. I don't know if we need a theme beyond that, but it's gotta be New York based. [00:50:44] Speaker A: Yep. New York core. [00:50:47] Speaker B: New York core coming through. Which is a lot of horror movies. A lot of them come from especially eighties and nineties seedy New York City. [00:50:56] Speaker A: That's automatically the vibe you go for, isn't it? It's your driller killer kind of, right Henry? I don't even know if Henry ported facility killer was set in New York. It feels like it was. Yep. That would be amazing. Thanks again for everybody who came last night and continues to come into our watchalongs. They're the best and remain a highlight of our monthly calendar. So thank you as always. [00:51:21] Speaker B: Indeed. Now Mark, there's just one thing before we get into the watch along that I want to bring up to you. So last week. Oh thank you. I appreciate that. I have your consent to bring something up to you. Last week before we started recording, you and I had a conversation about sports and anyone who listens to this. One of my favorite moments on here, of many favorite moments on jack of all graves, but a great one was when you said something along the lines of, and we're not sports people. It's like, whoa, hold on. I am very much a sports person. I just don't talk about it with. [00:52:03] Speaker A: You because apologies for. I didn't want to kind of speak for you and I'm not a sports. [00:52:09] Speaker B: But it was funny because. Yeah, it was. You know, you're so not a sports person that I had just never brought up sports with you, there's no reason to. But I love. I love sports. I'm a big sports person. I like playing them. I like watching them. I'm into it. And we were talking before last week's episode that, you know, I was like, you. You're not completely against the idea of sports because you watch pro wrestling. Obviously it's fixed. Obviously there's storylines, things like that. But, like, it's athletic feats, you know? [00:52:39] Speaker A: Oh, look. [00:52:40] Speaker B: And you. [00:52:40] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Feats of human potential and achievement are always thrilling to watch. Right. [00:52:47] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:52:47] Speaker A: When I say I don't like sports, just for clarity, what I'm really saying is I can't abide the. The tribalism that comes with it and. [00:52:58] Speaker B: Right. [00:52:59] Speaker A: How closely? Intrinsically? Yes, exactly. It's linked with thuggery and the lowest form of expression. Go on. [00:53:09] Speaker B: So I think I found the sport for you. [00:53:11] Speaker A: Great. [00:53:12] Speaker B: This is the one. [00:53:14] Speaker A: But I've got pro wrestling, though. I'm not on the lookout. [00:53:16] Speaker B: You've got pro wrestling, don't get me wrong, but, like, there's a part of me that just feels like, you know, if I were to, like, if I were to come over, you know, let's say I come. I come to England and I'm staying in your guest room, and I'm like, I'd like to watch a sports with Mark. [00:53:29] Speaker A: Oh. [00:53:30] Speaker B: I could put this on and I think we could have a fun time together. [00:53:34] Speaker A: Okay. [00:53:35] Speaker B: It is women's rugby sevens. [00:53:39] Speaker A: Okay. All right. [00:53:41] Speaker B: Why not? [00:53:41] Speaker A: Yeah, why not? Brawny stint. Yep. [00:53:45] Speaker B: Right. You had a stint as a rugby player, so you, like, generally very brief, but, like, you generally understand what rugby is, how it works. [00:53:54] Speaker A: Right. [00:53:55] Speaker B: You don't have to know everything. [00:53:55] Speaker A: I have a working understanding of the sport of rugby. [00:53:57] Speaker B: I have a working understanding of the sport of rugby. Right. You love a bulky woman. [00:54:04] Speaker A: It cannot be denied. [00:54:06] Speaker B: It cannot be denied. So it's teams of women with powerful. All of them having thighs that they could crush your head. [00:54:14] Speaker A: There you go with. [00:54:15] Speaker B: Right. Like, powerful, powerful thighs doing insane feats of athleticism. I mean, the kind of stuff you see in wrestling, you know, jumping and rolling and all of that kind of stuff. Grappling. Like they're. Yeah, grappling with each other. All of that kind of stuff. Right. Yeah. Lots of. There's so much graps going on in sevens. Sevens? Rugby. [00:54:38] Speaker A: Why is it sevens? What sevens? [00:54:40] Speaker B: I was about to explain it to you. [00:54:41] Speaker A: Okay, thanks. Thanks. Thanks. [00:54:42] Speaker B: So normal rugby, as you probably know, has 15 people to a side. Sevens. Rugby has seven to a side. And each game is 14 minutes. So you don't have to sit there and watch for. Right. Hours and hours and hours of it. [00:55:02] Speaker A: Quite intense. [00:55:03] Speaker B: 14 minutes, I should imagine. [00:55:04] Speaker A: 14 minutes of absolute mayhem. [00:55:07] Speaker B: 14 minutes, which. It's high scoring. Right. It's not like soccer where it's like, you watch however many minutes soccer is, and, like, there's two goals at the end of the game. Right. This is constant, you know, constant scoring over the course of 14 minutes. And on top of that, because it's like a 14 minutes match, usually there's, like, a bunch of them. Right. [00:55:30] Speaker A: Okay. [00:55:31] Speaker B: And if you're only attached to one team, then, like, you're what? You're gonna watch a 14 minutes match and then leave? Nah, you just get cheering on everything. [00:55:41] Speaker A: Early in the day. [00:55:43] Speaker B: Right. Exactly. Like you would. You would be like, okay, I guess I'm going home. I only like the Black Ferns. I only like the Eagles. Whatever. I watch one thing and I'm gone. That's not how sevens are. You are in it for everybody. So the tribalism, not a thing. Yes. People come in there, like, countries, whatever, but a lot of people don't. A lot of people come in stupid costumes, like, ridiculous stuff dressed as bananas. [00:56:10] Speaker A: And hot dogs that I have no issues with. Bring that on. [00:56:12] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. So it's not tribal. It's the best vibes. When I. The last time that I went to the sevens, I used to go to the sevens every year in Vegas. [00:56:21] Speaker A: There you go. Nice. [00:56:22] Speaker B: Yeah. And the last time that I went, there was, like, a group of Canadians behind us and I overheard that it was one of their birthdays, so I ordered them a round of Molsons. You know, it's just like. It's chill. Nobody is concerned about, like, what team you're rooting for or anything like that. Everyone sits together. It's a grand time. Mark. Women's. That is a boring seven. [00:56:45] Speaker A: All right. Thank you. Thank you. [00:56:48] Speaker B: You're very welcome. You know, pop it on the. Pop it on the Olympics or whatever. At some point you'll, you know. [00:56:54] Speaker A: Yeah. Interesting. The Olympics. Get a fun eyeball. Well, again, France continues to justify my love. I enjoy France. [00:57:03] Speaker B: Oh, I hate France. And they continue to back that up with most things about them. [00:57:09] Speaker A: Oh, fair enough. Okay, well, I'll keep it brief then. I quite like their temperament, their perceived temperament. I quite enjoy how they take very little shit and I don't really know who's responsible for it, but I know that they aren't sure gonna let the Olympics pass without incident. [00:57:28] Speaker B: Right. [00:57:29] Speaker A: You know, yes, sure. [00:57:30] Speaker B: Riled a few people. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I enjoyed the, you know, bringing in the metal to the opening ceremonies. [00:57:39] Speaker A: Oh, fucking. Hey. Gojira are a phenomenal band. They are among. They're one of these. Look, these gojira, one of the bands that elevate what metal can be and can achieve. They're fucking great. [00:57:53] Speaker B: Just I randomly saw. I was on a bus from the Netherlands to Belgium, okay. And randomly saw, like, this small truck. So it wasn't like a tour bus or anything like that. It wasn't even really big enough to carry gear. I have no idea why. Just this small truck with, like, a boxy back on it that was adorned with, like, Gojira's latest album or whatever. So, like, it was like, advertising it or something. Yeah. Like the street team. I was like, I don't know why. [00:58:22] Speaker A: This is, but okay, look, maybe in with a little bit of thought. Perfect for an Olympics opening ceremony, be it as they, you know, as they produce long, groovy, fucking atmospheric. Groovy building, building atmospheric metal epics. Yeah. 4567 minute songs that just build and build and build and then deliver this absolute heavy as fuck climax. So perfect for a ceremony like this and great to see metal representing, isn't it? Isn't it? [00:58:56] Speaker B: It is. Yes. I liked the metal stuff. Was a very queer ceremony. Lots of drag and all kinds of things there. It's also extremely boring for the most part. I did. I watched it yesterday. This is the weird thing. So I have not been to Paris. I've been to Toulouse. Right. And I have seen various Paris things yesterday. And part of this is it was raining, but it looks very ugly. Like, the scent is hideous. And I always thought it was going to be a lot prettier. And then watching this, I was like, that's a really cool. [00:59:30] Speaker A: Sharks. Of course you've got the. [00:59:32] Speaker B: Yeah, and the sharks. Obviously, that's a recent development. I do know a lot of people were shitting in the river in protest. [00:59:39] Speaker A: Oh, great. [00:59:40] Speaker B: Of the Olympics. [00:59:41] Speaker A: Yes. You know, it does smell a little bit in my. [00:59:45] Speaker B: I've always. Everyone I know, my sister spent like a month. [00:59:48] Speaker A: That's my recollection. [00:59:49] Speaker B: And it's just. Yeah. Everyone I know has always said it reeks. Yeah. It's not one of those, like, it's a place I feel obligated to go, but not like, it's not. [01:00:00] Speaker A: I've been through it and around it more than I've spent any kind of time in it. Sure. [01:00:05] Speaker B: Yeah, indeed. I loved Toulouse, though. Toulouse was gorgeous. I just feel like I have not been super impressed by the showing of Paris that I have seen. But anyway, Gojira was fun. [01:00:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And again, all I'll say is that you just love to see it. [01:00:25] Speaker B: Yep. You really do. It angered christians deeply way, which is always a fun time, you know, which is wild, which always gives me a thing that every now and again I like to post when christians are being super weird, is that demons aren't real. It's just sometimes it has to be said because my facebook is what a. [01:00:45] Speaker A: Demon would say, isn't it? [01:00:46] Speaker B: I mean, what is exactly what a demon would say? I'm sure that's what they're thinking. Like, oh, man, they got her, too. Yeah. My Facebook was full of people that I went to college with talking about how demonic the opening ceremonies were, and. [01:00:58] Speaker A: I was like, very good to hear. [01:00:59] Speaker B: Oh, you sweet summer children. There is no such thing as demons. Calm the fuck down. It's like, on top of it is just the idea that every time there's something that people don't like, christians don't like, they call it demonic and think that people are worshipping Satan and stuff. And I'm like, nobody thinks about demons or Satan. Nobody's worshipping Satan. Nobody is thinking about Satan. Only you are the. You need to bring it down a thousand notches. [01:01:29] Speaker A: The early days of the show when you kind of socialized what a lot of Americans feel about demons and that they're actual physical little beasties. Big. That was a big watershed moment for me. That was a big light bulb moment. [01:01:45] Speaker B: Yeah. We actually believe in that shit here. [01:01:48] Speaker A: A lot fell into place then. It was. A lot was built from then. [01:01:53] Speaker B: That's when anyone asks you, like, little. [01:01:55] Speaker A: Critters, like ghoulies, like ghoulies. [01:01:57] Speaker B: Just be like they. They think demons are real. And then you go, oh, okay. That's why America's like that. [01:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:02:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So anyway, on that note, fascinating. Shall we talk about what we watched? [01:02:11] Speaker A: Yeah, let's just recap ghoulies, because I think the cast went, fuck. He didn't last week. [01:02:14] Speaker B: Um, yes, indeed. [01:02:16] Speaker A: In what becomes clear to me now is a very keenly observed and uncompromising gaze into America's evangelical obsession with the occult and physical manifestations of arcane beings through ritual. The, you know, demons are made flesh. Little bastards riding that fucking gremlins wave of little critter corps, along with, of course, critters and gremlins. This had a stab at it. Fuck it. Why not us? And the first film, the first film was a nice, easy three stars for me because it was a load of fun. Right. [01:02:55] Speaker B: Yeah. It is one of the. You get what you pay for when you watch ghoulies. It is video shop. [01:03:00] Speaker A: Video shop. Video shop. [01:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's such a weird movie. I think, like, that's comedic. Works for the eighties, kind of. [01:03:08] Speaker A: It. [01:03:09] Speaker B: Like, one part of the storyline kind of takes itself very seriously. [01:03:12] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:03:12] Speaker B: But then it's offset by everything else being deeply weird and goofy. [01:03:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:03:18] Speaker B: And it works. [01:03:21] Speaker A: It's an easy film to like ghoulies. It's an easy. If that's what you want, that's what it'll fucking give you. Right. Ghoulies is a great laugh, which is all the more disappointing when, with the best of intentions, I decide I'm gonna try and animate. In this trilogy, ghoulies two makes it effectively impossible to continue that through to completion because it's awful. Uh, it abandons all of the interesting occult bits and just becomes, uh, you know, a degrade. Uh, it. Yeah, it's. It's like what critters five became in. [01:03:57] Speaker B: It did. [01:03:57] Speaker A: It covered a lot of ground in a short time. It abandoned all of the interesting stuff in favor of less interesting stuff. And I'm not even going to bother with three because I I actually remember that I've seen it and. [01:04:09] Speaker B: Oh, really? [01:04:10] Speaker A: Yes. [01:04:10] Speaker B: Wait, you'd never seen the first one, but you'd seen the third one? [01:04:13] Speaker A: Yeah. Weirdly, I can't explain why. And I remember some of the choices it makes. It's still your chief cast of ghoulies, but they're bigger. They're about four foot high, and they talk, and it just makes terrible choices. And I'm not doing that. I'm not putting myself through that because life's short, isn't it? [01:04:31] Speaker B: I wonder. You know what's funny is that I always thought I'd seen ghoulies until we watched it, I was like, not seen ghoulies. Okay, what you just said sounds familiar. Maybe I have also seen ghoulies. [01:04:43] Speaker A: Ghoulies go to college. [01:04:44] Speaker B: Weird. Like, were they. Was that on tv or more or something? I don't know. That's very odd. [01:04:50] Speaker A: They speak and they're essentially. They're Abbott and Costello, you know? [01:04:53] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay, fascinating. Now, part of me kind of wants to watch to find out if. That's what I thought. [01:05:00] Speaker A: We've got no ideas. Right? If we have nothing, literally, if we watch everything else, we'll watch it. [01:05:07] Speaker B: Yeah. We'll do coolies. Three. It'll be a grand old time. We are coolies. Go to college. I'm sorry, I need to talk. Call it by its christian name. But we are going to. We have plenty of things to watch for a while, though, because we have been talking for ko fi, figuring out for snacks. I had this idea since we watched hackers and I had recently just watched Running man, which I'll talk about in a sec, but that we should do a series on our ko fi where we watch a tech dystopia movie and we talk about what they got wrong, what they got right, all of that kind of stuff. Maybe what we wish they had gotten right. You know, just the whole. [01:05:50] Speaker A: You sent me this idea via text earlier on and I was all over it because this is just legitimate fucking podcast content, right? This is so. Such a legit idea. And a semi regular series on our snacks that we do every month. Firstly, it's an excuse for me to watch all of those fucking beautiful dystopian classics again. [01:06:11] Speaker B: Always a fun time. [01:06:12] Speaker A: You know, it taps into loads of stuff. I love tech, old history, science. Let's chew them over. [01:06:19] Speaker B: Yeah. So we're gonna be doing that. And I think we're gonna start with the running man because Mark has seen it recently and I watched it the other day and boy, that is a treasure trove. It's great, isn't it, of things, if you've never seen the running man. It is an Arnold Schwarzenegger flick in which he plays a wrongfully accused cop, I guess who. [01:06:44] Speaker A: Yeah, soldier. [01:06:45] Speaker B: He's like. Yeah, like a military, right? Like something military. But I don't think he's paramilitary. I think he's like actively part of the government. [01:06:55] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. [01:06:56] Speaker B: But he is framed for killing a whole bunch of people that he did not kill and ends up being sort of drafted into this television game show in which prisoners can try to win a commutation of their sentence by battling to the death with these sort of american gladiators on steroids. Characters that come out all while a cast, delighted audience watches and bets on it. Yeah, cast is incredible. [01:07:32] Speaker A: So Stephen King source material, one of his that I've not read. [01:07:36] Speaker B: I've never read it either. [01:07:37] Speaker A: I haven't read the long walk, I believe it's called under his pseudonym. I haven't read it. [01:07:41] Speaker B: Er, it was always on my shelf growing up. Yes, my mom read them all, but I never read it. [01:07:48] Speaker A: One of only. Yeah, I think. I think I'm in the majority. I've read most of his books. There's still a chunk of his left to go, but I've readdeveloped, I think, comfortably, a majority of them. [01:07:57] Speaker B: Yeah, you're very good at keeping up with them. I always like, you know, I get them from the library and stuff like that. And I have one right behind me. In fact, Holly. Holly is right behind me, which I got from a lady who was giving away books on our local buy nothing group on Facebook. [01:08:16] Speaker A: Awesome. [01:08:19] Speaker B: But, yeah, it is a very good time. I was shocked by, I mean, I love watching game show network. I think you do this when you're on vacation too. [01:08:27] Speaker A: Like, if there's a us game show channel on. Yeah, it will be on in the background the whole ass time. [01:08:33] Speaker B: Right. [01:08:34] Speaker A: Family feud, as I think you call it. [01:08:37] Speaker B: Yes, Family feud. What do you call it now? [01:08:39] Speaker A: Ah. If you were over here, it isn't on anymore, but it ran for fucking decades. And if you were to sit down over here, you'd be watching family fortunes. [01:08:51] Speaker B: Oh, see, that feels like it would get confused with Wheel of Fortune, which I did watch with you in Birmingham, where you have more rules to your wheel of fortune than ours does. But, yeah, Family feud match game is a favorite of mine. And Richard Dawson, an actual game show host of those old shows, is the game show host villain in running man. And I was shocked at how good he is in it. He is incredible. [01:09:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Growing up, one always wondered, as a Brit kid growing up with running man, one always wondered if he was somebody who came from that realm of entertainment because he was that good at it. [01:09:42] Speaker B: Yeah, incredible. So obviously he plays the game show host well because he's an actual game show host, but the character is so good. And I was shocked by that. I just kept kind of nudging keel. I'm like, can you believe that's Richard Dawson? That's wild. So, yeah, we'll talk about that and it'll be fun. But watched Running man this week and had a blast with it. That is just a super fun movie. Probably Arnold's worst one liners of all time are in this one, and I'm including the Batman ones. [01:10:15] Speaker A: Well, what do you mean by worst? Are you really saying best? Is that really what you're saying? [01:10:20] Speaker B: No, like, genuinely worst. Like, as in they're kind of non sequiturs and like, very low effort kinds of one liners where you're like, were they just letting him make them up on the spot? These are deeply bad in other watches. [01:10:37] Speaker A: So I. I've seen Deadpool and Wolverine, right? But not on first attempt. I tried to get Peter along, okay? I tried to get Peter into seat, and they fucking turned us away. They demanded id for Peter, which, getting back home, and thinking about it, I probably could have finessed something or tried to bullshit something, but like what? Well, I don't know. But I've maybe given him my bank card and tried to get him to pass that off as his. I don't fucking know. [01:11:08] Speaker B: I mean, how old are you supposed to be? [01:11:10] Speaker A: 1515? Yeah. [01:11:12] Speaker B: Yeah. It's a hard sell. He does not look like a 15 year old. [01:11:15] Speaker A: I think Peter. I think. Well, exactly. He does. And this was our play, right? I loaded him up with the snacks and I had the ticket on my phone. So I take point and act. Got the QR code. [01:11:34] Speaker B: Whoosh. [01:11:35] Speaker A: Just peels off behind me, waiting for. [01:11:39] Speaker B: You on the other side. [01:11:40] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly, exactly. And I thought maybe that would be enough. It wasn't enough. They called Peter back. [01:11:46] Speaker B: Too savvy. [01:11:47] Speaker A: Yeah, they'd seen it all before. They saw me coming as soon as we walked through the door, Corrie. As soon as we came in the joint, they had us fucking. Hello. Here's another fucking. So we have to. [01:11:58] Speaker B: People have been doing this all day, buddy. [01:12:02] Speaker A: So we have to leave with our popcorn and our large cokes, walk through town, walk of shame, you know? Families walking by, at least one family walking past us clearly saw the situation and gave us a little chore. So Pete's been hankering for a while to watch scream. [01:12:21] Speaker B: Okay, nice. [01:12:23] Speaker A: So we got home, had a movie time in the house while Laura and Owen were out, drew the curtains, watch scream. It was great. Really good. I mean, it's a four star movie. There's no way of saying it isn't. I hate what scream became. You know, this. It became fucking a monster. Horrible. [01:12:38] Speaker B: Don't think it's a fair assessment because you have not seen the other movies, but we're not going to go through this every single time series this comes up. [01:12:46] Speaker A: But the original remains a four star movie, and Pete enjoyed it, too. Great, great, great stuff. [01:12:53] Speaker B: Beautiful. I'm very happy. [01:12:54] Speaker A: Yes. [01:12:55] Speaker B: Here that. I love his journey. [01:12:56] Speaker A: Um, I put, you know, I gave him a little, talked a little bit of dad nerd shit about, where's Craven? About Elm street and whatnot. Um, he picked up on a few elm street jokes in it. I said, you could probably handle. You went, well, I can only just handle this, dad, to be fair. So it was. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:13:12] Speaker B: How cute is he? I never would have said that. It would have been like, yes, I am very much not afraid of anything. And I am loving this. It would have stood straight up lied. [01:13:23] Speaker A: Look, he's just the purest, most wonderful expression of everything, you know, wholesome. [01:13:29] Speaker B: Well, and just like, also like, you know, you gotta give the emotional intelligence props, too, because that's the thing, is, most of us would have ignored the fact that, like, yeah, that's gonna give us nightmares and things like that and just powered through. And he's like, I don't think I want that experience communicating. I'll wait. [01:13:50] Speaker A: You know what I mean? Communication always on point. Great. [01:13:53] Speaker B: Yep. [01:13:55] Speaker A: But was. Yeah. What I'm saying is I was undeterred and went back for Deadpool today. [01:14:00] Speaker B: Beautiful. [01:14:00] Speaker A: I wasn't gonna be. [01:14:01] Speaker B: What do you think? [01:14:02] Speaker A: Well, it was a great laugh, wasn't it? Great fun. Yeah. I I don't think Pete missed out on anything, having been turned away. I mean, I have no qualms about letting him see it as soon as it's streamable. [01:14:16] Speaker B: Sure. [01:14:16] Speaker A: But I think it was probably more aimed at me than it was him. [01:14:20] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, bringing back. I don't want to, I don't want to, like, spoil, but there are things that are brought back in this. Callbacks, things like that, that are obviously gonna be more interesting to you if you are a elder, millennial or giant. Yeah. [01:14:39] Speaker A: Pete hasn't seen, I don't think people have seen a single property that they're referencing. They went in heavily on a few properties that. [01:14:47] Speaker B: Yeah. He would not get any frame of reference. Why these things are funny. Yeah. [01:14:52] Speaker A: I. However. Yeah. It was like, ho, ho, chortling away. It's a very funny film in and of itself. [01:14:58] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:59] Speaker A: You know, it's. It's a. You're gonna get from it exactly what you want from it. Otherwise you wouldn't be going to see it. You know, exactly what it is, and it's that. [01:15:07] Speaker B: Right. [01:15:07] Speaker A: Yeah, but I think. Yeah, it's, it's not, it's not for a 15 year old. I don't think. Just. Why would they give a shit about things their dad has seen? [01:15:18] Speaker B: Right. Yeah, exactly. It's like, unless they're, like, really well versed on all of the. Both MCU and Sony Box, Sony Fox. [01:15:29] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's. Yes. Things my dad has seen. [01:15:33] Speaker B: Mm hmm. Yeah, exactly. I think it's what's fun about Deadpool and Deadpool and Wolverine is that, like, the meta stuff is built into the comics. Right. It's not just the, like, one of the problems with the MCU in general is kind of being too aware, and that can get kind of that can wear on you after a while, that it feels like these people know they're in a movie and they're always quipping and all these kinds of things. You're like, okay, let's tone that back a little. But Deadpool, fucking go for it. So it's totally fine that there's like a ton of fan service, that it's winking at us. All of these kinds of things. Because it comes from a property that does that when you're reading it too. And it's what you go for, you know, you don't go into Deadpool and be like, oh, man, they pulled out a stupid thing from like an old property that was just because, just to please the fans full. Of course they dead. [01:16:24] Speaker A: When I say it's everything you want it to be, that I mean that as a compliment. You know, to feast. Every frame is packed full of shit to consume and move on from. You know, there's, there's an absolute hell of a lot going on. [01:16:36] Speaker B: Yep. [01:16:39] Speaker A: I know we're not spoiling, but I have to say welsh pool, and don't say you didn't notice it. [01:16:43] Speaker B: Yes, well, of course I noticed it. [01:16:45] Speaker A: Just given pride of place, just given absolute, such spotlight, lots of screen time. Just a Welsh Deadpool variant. Really cool. [01:16:53] Speaker B: And for those of you who are welcome to Wrexham fans, when Welsh, you won't know this in the movie. This isn't a spoiler because literally there's no way of you knowing this. Welsh pool is Paul Mullen from Wrexham, the football club, who is like the superstar, amazing dude who just, yeah, love that best. Everyone loves Paul Mullen. So it was very cool when the credits rolled and I saw Welshpool, Paul Mullen. I was like, oh, did they call. [01:17:18] Speaker A: Him welsh pool in the credits? Yeah, yeah, they do call him welsh pool. [01:17:22] Speaker B: It's the obvious name. You know, he's Welshpool. So, yeah, lots of fun with that movie. I do want to revisit one other thing that we talked about that got lost last week only because of like a funny little thing that we noticed about this. I went and saw Maxine last week. [01:17:44] Speaker A: Okay. [01:17:44] Speaker B: And you did not like Maxine. I watched both Maxine and long legs last week. And your prediction had been that you had liked long legs and not liked Maxine. [01:17:54] Speaker A: Yes. [01:17:55] Speaker B: You thought I would reverse that. [01:17:56] Speaker A: Yes. [01:17:57] Speaker B: I did not reverse that. I also liked long legs and didn't like Maxine, although I was vibing with it for a time until it kinda imploded on itself. But the thing that we discovered last week that I think is very funny is that basically you did not understand the movie because you remembered nothing. You did not realize she was the character from x. Yeah. [01:18:20] Speaker A: It was after seeing, I'll admit it was after seeing Maxine. It was after leaving Maxine that my brain finally my synapse is connected in the right way and I was able to visualize its place as a trilogy. I went through all of Maxine not really knowing what this girl's deal was. [01:18:35] Speaker B: Yeah. And we did talk about it. Like, I was like, yeah, that's this. And you were like, oh, okay. [01:18:41] Speaker A: Yeah. And. [01:18:41] Speaker B: Yup. [01:18:41] Speaker A: That helps, I'm certain, upon a second viewing with all of these pieces now finally in place. [01:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah. In many ways, change things a little. [01:18:48] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, the puzzle of the movie kind of worked on me over time and now I'm able to kind of put it together. I'm sure I'll have a little more fun with it second time around. But my fundamental problem, there's some things I'll stand by. I think, you know, it. I don't think it does work very well in and of itself. Gets extra points for mentioning Psycho two. I don't know if that was salvaged last week. [01:19:09] Speaker B: Yep. [01:19:10] Speaker A: No psycho two. If you haven't seen Psycho two, sort that out for yourself. Give yourself a little treat. Yes. Easily the equal, if not better than the original. A wonderful sequel. [01:19:21] Speaker B: And I hear great things about the third one. I forgot we have to. You and I have to watch that as well. [01:19:25] Speaker A: We're gonna do that this week. Yes. Yes, please. [01:19:28] Speaker B: That's. This week's watch is psycho three because I keep hearing beautiful, directed by Anthony Perkins, I think. Yes, exactly. So that should be a fun time. But, yeah, Maxine, I think, you know, the vibes were good. I was really enjoying it. But I think it kind of ultimately got very dumb and sort of. [01:19:51] Speaker A: But you did like long legs, which is balmed my soul. [01:19:55] Speaker B: Yes, I did like long legs a lot. I had a great time with that one. And that's one again. I don't want to spoil anything about it because people haven't gotten to it. I know people have kids and other reasons that they don't go to see flakes right away. And I think it benefits so much from it. [01:20:10] Speaker A: Does you? [01:20:11] Speaker B: Nothing knowing anything, going into it. So we will not spoil it. But say, I really enjoyed. [01:20:17] Speaker A: I do know it's something I think I've become very good at. I'm quietly proud of how good I've become at shielding myself from the details, knowing I intend to see. I've got my own personal kind of bio filter set up just perfectly that I don't let in info that I don't want to know about movies. So go. Me? [01:20:39] Speaker B: Yeah. I think I often benefit from two things. One, when I go to the movies, usually I look at my phone during the trailers instead of watching them. And two, that I don't process visual information very well. [01:20:52] Speaker A: Speak no evil. [01:20:53] Speaker B: I often have no idea what the movie is about. [01:20:57] Speaker A: Speak no evil. That Danish? I think it was danish horror that's getting a Blumhouse remake soon. They're not going to keep the same ending, right? They can't. [01:21:05] Speaker B: They have to. They have to. Come on. That's like, the one thing about that movie is how it ends. But they give away that I will say, like, so I talked about it on the show. I hate the original. And not because it's too brutal or whatever, I just think it's dumb and annoying. But the remake of it, I don't. I don't remember if you loved it. [01:21:27] Speaker A: I don't feel like you remember. I seem to remember really liking it. I seem to remember loving the ending. [01:21:32] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, the ending's fine or whatever. I mean, I was fine with the ending because I hated those people so much. I was like, fuck em up, man. Do it. That's not my problem with it. This is just the most annoying movie I have ever seen. And this one, they, like, give away huge plot points in the trailer. Yeah. Like the kid with the cutoff tongue and stuff like that. Like, that's three. That's a late separate shot, three separate occasions. [01:22:03] Speaker A: They really spouted. [01:22:05] Speaker B: Did you miss it before? Here's the tongue, kid, the movie. Here's him acting out, cutting off the tongue in case you miss that he doesn't have the tongue. And like, even just that, like, the way that the parents get so crazy and stuff like that over the course of the movie, like, part of watching that movie is the unraveling. Right? Like, so if you already know where it's going to, I can only imagine it's even more annoying than the process of watching it, not knowing, like, okay, so we know what's going to happen here. Why are these people still staying in this stupid house? [01:22:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:22:43] Speaker B: Yeah. I'll probably still watch it because I love that cast so much, though. And then I'm going to be really mad at myself for watching it. But if you're going to put James McAvoy and Scoot McNary in something and think, I'm not going to watch it. Get real scoot. Real scoot. Loves me some scoot. I can take or leave it I want. Yeah, right. I watched a weird welsh movie this week. It's called the passing in English. And it's a welsh language movie, of course, starring Mark Lewis Jones, because all welsh things star Mark Lewis Jones. But it's this. It's a very slow burn movie. And I kind of. I thought it was horror. It's not a horror movie. It's more of a drama. What is this? You're gonna sneeze? [01:23:36] Speaker A: Yes, sorry. [01:23:41] Speaker B: I apologize if I forget to take that out of this. [01:23:44] Speaker A: Let me tell you, we went for a walk over National Trust property earlier on, and the pollen is relentless and remorseless this year. Fucking hell. Sorry, you were saying? Weird welsh movie. I don't think I talked about the feast on here, did I? Did I talk about the feast? [01:23:58] Speaker B: You didn't talk about the feast. No. Let me talk about mine. [01:24:00] Speaker A: Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. [01:24:01] Speaker B: The feast. Both welsh language movies and the passing is this story in which we open basically on this couple who have gotten into a car accident in a river. And so the woman has been knocked out. The man's trying to find help or figure out how to get them out of there, things like that. And meanwhile, this kind of weird middle aged guy wanders up, very quiet dude, Mark Lewis Jones, who brings them into his house and starts trying to sort of nurse them back to health and whatnot. But there is certainly something in this couple's past that they are running from and trying to keep out of the sight of people. And they, over the course of this movie, sort of start talking. Like somehow they are going to take over this man's house and live there and live happily ever after. But you're like, what are you going to do about the guy who lives here? There are two twists in this movie. Is it recent? It is 2015. I think so. Like at 910 years old, somewhere in that vicinity, there's two twists in the movie, one of which you could ostensibly see coming. The other one. Nope. Really threw me for a loop that this was where the movie was going. And I will say, bold. Freaking bold choice. Yeah. I'm not sure whether I recommend the passing or not. It's interesting. It's pretty. It's well shot, well acted, and, you know, watching it, I just kept, like, repeating every line out loud afterwards to practice my well, which was very fun. But, yeah. Weird movie. Yeah. If you're interested in a pretty slow burn with a twist that's gonna really squeak you out. This is. This is the movie. [01:26:14] Speaker A: All right, let me see. Do I got anything else? No, I don't. [01:26:21] Speaker B: Okay. The only other things I have is with screamin chat. The other night, we watched a movie called Monster Mash, which sounds like it would be a really good time. Loopy craziness starring Michael Madsen. [01:26:35] Speaker A: Nice. [01:26:36] Speaker B: It is not a loopy good time. It is just all talking, the whole movie. Just like all the universal monsters gathered together, just talking with no real action. [01:26:49] Speaker A: Oh, but it is about the universal monsters. It is about Wolf man. [01:26:52] Speaker B: Yes. It's like Dracula and. Yeah, all that kind of stuff. [01:26:55] Speaker A: Just chatting, just having a fucking. [01:26:57] Speaker B: Just catching up, just talking. There's like, the problem is, like, there's like, it's plot. You know, like, there's a deep plot going on here, but it's all talked out. You never, like. It's not moved along by any form of action. So, like, trying to follow the plot means you have to, like, pay attention to just long conversations. Yeah. There's very little mashing to speak of in monster Mash. [01:27:25] Speaker A: Too much monster, not enough mash. [01:27:27] Speaker B: It definitely feels like it's a. I think Colin was like, oh, God, he had a really good name for it. Something that's like alimony movies or things like that. But basically, you know, twelve angry monsters, clearly. It's clearly someone trying to, like, Michael Madsen is trying to pay off some bills or whatever, and so they. He's like, yeah, I'll just, like, sit here in your movie. Why not? He sits down for pretty much the entire movie. I was like, is he like, is this, like, a Bruce Willis situation in real life? Is he, like, sick? Or did they just not pay him enough to stand up? Is that what's happening here? Minimum effort, so minimum effort film. But on a maximum effort note, I also watched Starship troopers last night. [01:28:17] Speaker A: Good choice. [01:28:17] Speaker B: Which is always fun. My thing with starship troopers is it's like 20 minutes too long. There's always, like, a point in it where I'm like. [01:28:25] Speaker A: And you can lose a lot, I think, from the first 3rd. Let's get straight to Klendathu. Let's get straight to the fucking mayhem. [01:28:31] Speaker B: Right, sure. I mean, obviously that's where a lot of the fun satire comes from, though. Is that like, the openings of it with the very over the top militarism and nationalism and all of that kind of stuff, and, you know, very fun. Denise Richards just. She's at her peak when she is playing someone really vapid. Yeah. And she's so much fun in this. And you get all that, but there gets to be a point where I find. [01:28:58] Speaker A: I get the joke quickly. [01:29:00] Speaker B: Right? Yeah, it goes on. Yeah. After a while, you're kind of like, okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. I get what we're doing here. We're good. But that said, it's still such a fun movie with, like, just incredible effects in it. I mean, that is a goopy. [01:29:16] Speaker A: Listen, it's been a while, but the bugs hold up. [01:29:21] Speaker B: Yeah, they really do, you know? Yep. And just, you know the ways in which they kill people, you know? [01:29:27] Speaker A: Oh, God. [01:29:27] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:29:28] Speaker A: And you got Michael Ironside being amazing. [01:29:30] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. [01:29:31] Speaker A: You've got this secret fucking agency of nazi fucking mind bug research. [01:29:36] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a lot, really. I mean, you know, what's it Neil Patrick Harris in that moment between when he was, like, still kind of Doogie howser, you know, he hadn't, like, turned into, like, a little sort of rob. Yeah. So he's like, very, you know, very fun to watch in it. It's just starship troopers. [01:29:58] Speaker A: A lot of fun. [01:29:59] Speaker B: Listen, you can do a lot worse. It's a good time. [01:30:02] Speaker A: Very nice. I think that's it for me. [01:30:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's everything. Now, you said you had a question. [01:30:08] Speaker A: You wanted to ask, so. Right, yes, I do. And I turn to you as my kind of. You're excellent at relaying concepts to me in ways that I understand. Right. You're somebody I find exceptionally well informed. You're an excellent cultural barometer, and, you know, we've spoken daily now for years. Right? [01:30:30] Speaker B: Yes. [01:30:30] Speaker A: Long way that continue. So in that spirit, I come to you to ask, what is project 25? Please lay it out for me. [01:30:38] Speaker B: I mean, it's like a. I guess it's a document in which sort of the architects of. [01:30:46] Speaker A: Written by who? A document by who? [01:30:49] Speaker B: So various political assholes who are involved in the Trump campaign. There's lots of them, like, from what I understand, we're talking about dozens of figures who have their hands on this thing, and it's basically their, like, plan for what they want to accomplish once Trump is president. And of course, it's just fascism, basically. There's lots of details and things like that that you can find everywhere, but when it comes down to it, it's just very much like abolishing choice and weird things. I think in there, you've got stuff about divorce, making it harder on women to divorce, and all kinds of crazy fascist bullshit that they want to accomplish once they get Trump into office, most of which is so deeply illegal. That the idea that no one would push back against it is deeply insane. I think a lot of people really, and I don't want to minimize people's fears because obviously a Trump presidency is awful and terrible and all these kinds of things, but the one thing that you can say when Trump was in office compared to Biden and things like that is that people really kind of circled, circled the wagons and were like, we have to stop things from happening. And a lot of people, I think, think that he's just gonna immediately call in the National Guard and hold us all at gunpoint and throw everybody in camp so no one will have any way to fight back against anything. And I find that, you know, highly unlikely. There's. It's gonna be very difficult for them to implement a whole bunch of, like, just deeply unconstitutional shit. [01:32:31] Speaker A: Yes. Which is in line with my understanding of what it was anyway. That's kind of what I thought it was. It's almost like a manifesto of. No, nothing so detailed. [01:32:40] Speaker B: But I mean, I think it's pretty detailed. I think this is like over a thousand pages. Like, I think there's a lot to. [01:32:47] Speaker A: This, but a lot spurious. Butting up against the law, possibly not legal, wide reaching, not really realistic. I would ask. My question is, right, you're running for office, you're on the ticket, you're campaigning. What's yours? What's your. Equally ridiculous but maybe flipped on its head, more positive. Project 25. What do you just do out there? [01:33:16] Speaker B: Yes, full abolition of capitalism. [01:33:17] Speaker A: Okay. [01:33:19] Speaker B: That's my project, 2025. We're going pie in the skyd. Things the constitution would never allow to happen, but I think should. Down with capitalism any more. [01:33:28] Speaker A: Idiosyncratic everywhere. [01:33:31] Speaker B: Idiosyncratic detail. Hmm. It's a good question. I haven't really thought about. I haven't given a lot of if I ruled the world thoughts, because it's just, you know, not in my. Not in my wheelhouse, I guess. [01:33:46] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. Well, good, good. You're far more nuanced. [01:33:52] Speaker B: What would you do if you ruled Britain? What's your jesus? [01:33:58] Speaker A: I think I'd have to start small. Right. I think there are certain things you could do which would be easy to implement, but would have an instant and quantifiable benefit to the well being of the public at large. The mental and physical well being of the public at large. Things on the level of disabling right out the box, automatically disabling the external speaker for music on a phone. [01:34:26] Speaker B: Ooh, love that. [01:34:27] Speaker A: Right? [01:34:28] Speaker B: Yep. Into it. [01:34:29] Speaker A: Maybe when it when it detects that you're in public, you can. You can use it in your home, but you can't use in public to let stop those fucking. [01:34:36] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like a good. Like how, you know, you can't. Like, in China, you can't have a camera sound, phone shutter sound turned off. Right. Like, sometimes for the public good. [01:34:45] Speaker A: Yes. [01:34:46] Speaker B: You got it like that. [01:34:47] Speaker A: You know, you can't be using that shit in public. You absolute dweeb. Like that stuff on that kind of level. When you're opening a pack of bacon or cheese, you. That little tab, the little peel up, little corner of the pack, would be far more accessible, far easier, far more efficient. It would just work. I would be aiming at that level stuff which generally it, like, it annoys you, causes a little kind of tick on the needle, on the kind of Geiger counter of annoyance for your day, but it's still background annoyance. And I think if we tackle a lot of that level of stuff and. [01:35:22] Speaker B: You'Ve made everyone's lives better by tackling the annoyances. [01:35:26] Speaker A: Exactly. We start off with incremental gains, outliers, just little bits like that that we can just square away. And I think that would be a great place to start. [01:35:34] Speaker B: Yep. Then you've got everybody's trust, because look at it. Look at what he's fixed for us. [01:35:38] Speaker A: Exactly. Ex. [01:35:39] Speaker B: And then. [01:35:40] Speaker A: Exactly. Exactly. [01:35:41] Speaker B: And that's when abolition of capitalism. [01:35:43] Speaker A: Yes. That's when we start limiting birth rates. [01:35:47] Speaker B: Okay. No eugenics, Mark. No eugenics. [01:35:52] Speaker A: Certain conditions, that's gone. Forget that. By and then, within a couple of generations, we've reduced the population. That's when the real fund. [01:36:02] Speaker B: And it will have made no difference to the. [01:36:04] Speaker A: That's when phase two begins. [01:36:05] Speaker B: Exactly the same. Oh, my dear ego fascist friend. And all of you listening at home, we are, all of you, so happy, so happy that you're here for this. This ride. Anything that we have to ask of them, anything that we want to. Well, I guess the question is, what's in your manifesto? Well, what's your project? 2025, of course. [01:36:33] Speaker A: Oh, do think about it as you're going about your life this week, please. [01:36:35] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:36:36] Speaker A: What would you please tell us? [01:36:37] Speaker B: What's your thing? Do you go big like me, or do you incremental annoyances like mark? Do you have a whole other plan? Do we just go to the moon? What is your manifesto? [01:36:49] Speaker A: To know it. But if you come into New York and it seems like a lot of you are, do please check out the discord, check out Corey's info package. Because it's fucking what I'd have document put together with love. And I can't wait to see you all there. [01:37:03] Speaker B: So much love. [01:37:04] Speaker A: And stay spooky in the meantime, please. Moi? Moi.