Ep. 229: a palace of pebbles & deaths in a crowd

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Oh, look, let's. We'll just pick up right where we left off last week, right? We'll just. [00:00:08] Speaker B: I'm into it. [00:00:08] Speaker A: Let's go right the fuck in on where we split last week. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is permanent. The very idea that somebody might think something is permanent is fucking laughable. Absolutely laughable. [00:00:24] Speaker B: Raising your hand again. You need to work on your gestures here. [00:00:30] Speaker A: Asking me to not speak with gestures is futility. Absolute futility in itself. [00:00:36] Speaker B: The voice turn off gestures on your zoom. [00:00:39] Speaker A: It is not enough. I must embody my dialogue. I must live every fucking syllable right. [00:00:44] Speaker B: To your friends at home. Mark, as you know, is a very active speaker and as such, he's constantly causing the hand raising thing to come up on zoom or balloons or thumbs ups or thumbs downs or all kinds of things like that. [00:00:57] Speaker A: I'll ask. I'll just simply ask you a question. Would you like to change me? Do you want me to change for zoom? [00:01:03] Speaker B: I would like to change your zoom settings, yes. [00:01:06] Speaker A: Well, not. [00:01:07] Speaker B: But anyway, go on. Let's. Let's get back to where we were. [00:01:11] Speaker A: But let me tell you, you'll know I am very enamored with those who seek to try. Those who seek to achieve something that outlasts their fucking flesh and bones. The more eccentric, the better. The more personality you can put into your futile attempts at kicking back against the inevitable. God, I find that endearing. Fucking hell, I find that endearing. So endearing. Not for the first time. Plenty of times on this podcast I've said, you know, do it. Do the thing. If you've got a fucking stupid idea that you think nobody else will get, but that you can't just. You can't tear yourself away from, just fucking do it. Because that might be the thing. [00:01:58] Speaker B: Unless it's like a. Like a Franz Reichelt type situation, in which case maybe don't do that. Maybe don't build a makeshift parachute and jump off of the Eiffel Tower. But it had panache, I'll tell you that. [00:02:15] Speaker A: Exactly this. It had joie de vivre, right? [00:02:19] Speaker B: Joie de mort. [00:02:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, true. My go to example is that of Frank Sidebottom, British comedian, songwriter, comic, artist, performance outsider artist. [00:02:38] Speaker B: I can't think of a more British last name than Sidebottom. [00:02:41] Speaker A: Well, his real name is Chris Seavey, but he adopted this character called Frank Sidebottom. Just. And everybody. If you know about Frank, then you fucking love him. It's just. [00:02:52] Speaker B: Oh, Frank. [00:02:53] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Frank Cybotom. [00:02:55] Speaker B: How many times have I. In fact, Keough was watching that movie a couple days ago and I just from downstairs heard the like. El Madrid. It's nice to see ya. It's really nice. [00:03:05] Speaker A: The movie has very little in common with Chris. Evie's actually act. It was. [00:03:10] Speaker B: I love Frank. [00:03:12] Speaker A: I'll talk more of him in a future episode. Right. Because. [00:03:15] Speaker B: Okay, into it. [00:03:17] Speaker A: His. The reality of Chris, Evie is, is far. Just it, it just it, it touches me in a, in a very specific place in my soul and I just love it. You could, if, if you were to try to describe Frank Sidebottom and what he did and what he was, you. It would make no sense. But if you, if you got it, you got it. It's so good. So good. Anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway, in that. [00:03:39] Speaker B: And for those who have no idea what we're talking about, guy who had like a. You would recognize the big paper mache, papier mache head. [00:03:46] Speaker A: His little puppet, little Frank, he drew comics for a comic magazine called Oink that I. That I used to read when I was a kid. You know, the guy was, There was, There was never and has never been anyone remotely like him. Just a beautiful, beautiful spark of lunacy. That man. Fucking amazing. And in a, in a, in a similar vein, but on a different scale entirely. Oh, listen, am I gonna mangle some accents this week? [00:04:16] Speaker B: Oh, boy, oh boy. [00:04:18] Speaker A: Oh, am I gonna. [00:04:19] Speaker B: What a treat. [00:04:20] Speaker A: Am I gonna offend some non Brits this week? Oh, man. [00:04:25] Speaker B: Wonderful. [00:04:27] Speaker A: It, it, look, there have been accusations leveled at me, right, that when I talk about historical events, I can, I can, yeah, play a little fast and loose with the research, Corrigan. [00:04:39] Speaker B: Maybe it has been said, maybe a. [00:04:42] Speaker A: Little light on the factual veracity of my reportage. Yeah. But not here, not here. [00:04:50] Speaker B: Okay, great. [00:04:51] Speaker A: The case I'm talking to you about right now is verifiable in that what this man built stands today. [00:04:59] Speaker B: Oh, amazing. [00:05:00] Speaker A: And can be visited and has become known as quite the artistic endeavor. We're going to France this week, my friends, my loves. And we're discussing the life and work of one Ferdinand Cheval. [00:05:19] Speaker B: Alrighty. [00:05:20] Speaker A: Yes, indeed, he became known as Factor Chevalier A. Well, we'll go back to the 1800s, right? We'll just talk about his life super briefly. 1836, born in a very small region of France known as Charme sur le Bach. A son of a farming family, very limited education. Left school at 13, became an apprentice to a baker. And this, you know, there's nothing, nothing, nothing really leaps out about this man's early life or indeed his adult life. And every man. Okay, after leaving the baker's apprentice. He became a mail carrier. Right. A postie. Nice. Right? Hence that, that nickname factor. Cheval means mail carrier. Chevalier. Okay, now, so prosaic. So everyday, such a normal, unremarkable life. [00:06:30] Speaker B: I feel like if you were just to, like, think of, like, what is the most average guy kind of like, profession, it would be mail carrier. Like, just like, what's like a thing that pays well and then you go home to your family and you get exercise. [00:06:44] Speaker A: You're outdoors. [00:06:45] Speaker B: Right. [00:06:46] Speaker A: Get to see the world around you. [00:06:47] Speaker B: Yes. [00:06:50] Speaker A: Cheval, he married a couple of times. He had a few kids, one of whom died just after. After being alive a year. Died in 1865. His first wife passed away. He remarried some years later. Part of the. I guess you'd call it a dowry in his second marriage included a small piece of land. Right. Which is significant. He had a daughter with his second wife who also died at the age of 15. The daughter, not the wife. [00:07:27] Speaker B: Oh, God. Yeah, I hope so. [00:07:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, listen, Chaval was a good guy, right? [00:07:34] Speaker B: He's a. Yeah, sounds like it. [00:07:37] Speaker A: And, yeah, my heart, he's. He's won my heart. You might characterize him, whether this is to, you know, part of the legacy of having children dying and having a wife dying characterize him perhaps as a loner, you know, somebody maybe. Perhaps misunderstood. You will see him described as having a deep kind of connection with the landscape, with, you know, his, His. His postal route would often lead him to walk like 30 kilometers in a day. [00:08:11] Speaker B: It's like the. The pin cushion gal that you talked about. [00:08:14] Speaker A: Exactly. This. [00:08:16] Speaker B: Incredible amounts of space covered. [00:08:19] Speaker A: Yes. So where this all begins is during his postal route in the late 1800s. All right, we're in 1879. And at 43 years old, he starts on his postal route collecting stones. [00:08:43] Speaker B: Okay. [00:08:44] Speaker A: All right. He starts collecting stones. He stumbles initially upon an unusually shaped stone which captures his imagination. Puts it in his pocket and, you know, he's described as having. Being captivated by the unique form of the stone. He wrote a memoir in which he described this first stone as a standstill. A sandstone shaped by water, hardened by the power of time. A sculpture so strange that it is impossible for man to imitate. [00:09:14] Speaker B: I relate to this already because I. I mean, I think a lot of kids are fixated on stones. You know, going to any gift shop at a museum, and they have all the. The shiny stones. [00:09:27] Speaker A: Oh, for sure. [00:09:27] Speaker B: A little bag of. And stuff like that. [00:09:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:29] Speaker B: When I was a kid, a driveway made of pebbles and I Thought they were, like, such riches that I literally set up a table at the end of my driveway and would sell them to passersby. Oh, that's beautiful. Look at this one. This is like a really nice, white, smooth stone, like. And people would buy them from me because people are sweet. Now I'm like, those are junk. But I thought they were treasure. And my husband started rockhounding a few years ago. You know, we bought a tumbler was going, and he went to Arkansas and went to this place where people are known for, like, you know, getting. Finding diamonds and stuff like that and filled our sink with rocks and tumbled all these rocks and stuff. But they're. I mean, they're fascinating. They show, you know, millions of years of history, things like that, to become these incredible. But, like he's saying, these little sculptures. [00:10:22] Speaker A: Yep. And this fascination grew and grew and grew in cheval. Right. Filling his pockets, which then graduated to a bag. He would go. He would go for miles and miles and miles outside of his postal route, gathering, collecting rocks. He would. He. He graduated to a barrow, a wheelbarrow. [00:10:47] Speaker B: On his postal route. [00:10:48] Speaker A: On his postal route. Right. [00:10:50] Speaker B: Wow. [00:10:53] Speaker A: A solitary endeavor on his own. Gathering fascinating rocks which gathered. Which grasped his attention. As part of his postal route. He would deliver, you know, postcards and illustrated kind of magazines, glossy magazines from around the world. And these changed him somehow, changed his perspective. Cause, you know, seized his imagination and fueled what was becoming an absolutely undeniable creative vision. Because these rocks on this plot of land that he had, he started to build a fucking. A palace. [00:11:41] Speaker B: What? [00:11:42] Speaker A: A structure without any architectural or stone turning or. Or, you know, any masonry kind of experience. [00:11:53] Speaker B: Right. No Internet to just be like, how do I build a palace out of pebbles? [00:11:59] Speaker A: None at all. But he started to build kind of a cement mixture on his property using limestone and just found materials, and started to exhibit this kind of didactic kind of skill, this innate sort of talent in architecture and building. And it became something which came to be known as the Palais Ideal. [00:12:32] Speaker B: Okay. [00:12:33] Speaker A: His ideal palace. [00:12:34] Speaker B: Sure. Did he call it that or did other people call it that? [00:12:39] Speaker A: I believe he called it that. Built of various rooms, chambers, grottoes, as they are described. [00:12:48] Speaker B: Wow. [00:12:49] Speaker A: With the most intricate kind of frontage with. With kind of. In kind of. What's the word I'm looking for inscriptions in the cement of various passages, almost poetic kind of passages of writing carved into the masonry. And the sculpture. [00:13:12] Speaker B: Wow. [00:13:13] Speaker A: Incredible. Again, to quote from his biography, since nature is willing to do the sculpture, I will do the masonry and the architecture. He Kind of his vision, his dreams. This dream of constructing a palace, a castle or caves. Captivated by the kind of, the natural, unique form of the stone. He described it as, like I said, sandstone shaped by water, hardened by the power of time. A sculpture so strange it is impossible for man to imitate completely self taught architecture. Right? No, like I say, no formal training. And he spent Corrigan fucking 33 years building this thing. Wow. [00:13:57] Speaker B: I was gonna say, like if you're just collecting rocks to build something like this, that's gotta take forever. [00:14:03] Speaker A: Like I say, 33 years. Right? From 1879 all the way through to 1912. No better way to sum it up than to quote an inscription, his own inscription, inside in the concrete. 10,000 days, 93,000 hours, 33 years of struggle. Let those who think they can do better try. How sick is this guy? [00:14:28] Speaker B: That's wild. [00:14:29] Speaker A: Absolutely incredible. [00:14:31] Speaker B: Was it, did he live in it or was it just for show? [00:14:35] Speaker A: It's, it's just a kind of an effigy, just a folly, like a monument. [00:14:39] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. Just a facade. It's just the outside of something and. [00:14:43] Speaker A: It is still there. It is still fucking there now, right? He developed his own kind of form of concrete, like I say, on the site. He used metal wire that he would twist into shapes like a frame and then pour that cement over them and embed his fossils, shells, pebbles, tree bark in for texture. Like I say, so slow, so painstaking. Twenty years he spent just building the outer walls. [00:15:14] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:15] Speaker A: And by the time he'd finished, this fucker was 12 meters high and 26 meters long. [00:15:22] Speaker B: Have you prepared a. So that's 3012 meters high, you said 12 meters high? Yes, it's like 36ft high. And what was it the other day? [00:15:34] Speaker A: Thereabouts. And 26 meters long. [00:15:40] Speaker B: And 6,072ft, if. [00:15:45] Speaker A: You want to crunch the numbers. Yeah, sure. [00:15:47] Speaker B: Huge. It's very big. [00:15:52] Speaker A: And lacking this kind of. Lacking any formal training. [00:15:55] Speaker B: One less foot than I'm supposed to. I was very off. But anyway, sorry, go ahead. [00:15:59] Speaker A: Very impressive though, your, your scratch mass there. Very, very impressive. [00:16:03] Speaker B: It wasn't because I, I did it by two instead of three, I think. Anyways, go ahead. [00:16:09] Speaker A: On his own, he managed to anticipate kind of upcoming advancements in construction technology. He worked out himself that was to come in the construction industry later on, you know. [00:16:25] Speaker B: Wow. [00:16:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:16:26] Speaker B: He just low key, pioneered absolutely right ways of building. [00:16:31] Speaker A: And you can't. So many people have tried to categorize the Palais idl, right? The, the style of it it's been described as having elements of medieval castles, Hindu temples, mosques, you know, Swiss kind of fucking mountain chalets. And, you know, a lot of it is said to have been absorbed by him through the kind of pictures he was delivering in his post round, through the kind of postcards he was seeing. [00:17:04] Speaker B: I just looked it up. [00:17:06] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. [00:17:08] Speaker B: It's wild. It's got like. Yeah. As you look at it, each part of it feels like something else. And this is so much more ornate than I was expecting it to be. It kind of looks like if you combine like, you know, a Hindu temple with like, you know, the Sagrada Familia, like, you know, like a Gaudi kind of thing going like, with, gosh, like so many different things here. It. It's really fascinating little. There's like a spiral staircase on it. It's so ornate. I was really not expecting this. [00:17:44] Speaker A: And this was from a guy. [00:17:45] Speaker B: It's huge. [00:17:45] Speaker A: Who didn't. He hadn't traveled. This was from a guy who. [00:17:49] Speaker B: Right. Just looking at postcards. [00:17:50] Speaker A: Yes, yes. [00:17:53] Speaker B: Incredible stuff. And a grotto is a really good description, I think, of this thing. It has that. That vibe to it. [00:18:00] Speaker A: Incredible, incredible stuff. And obviously, you know, the amount of time that took him, he came up against such a lot of skepticism and misunderstanding and, you know, there are like, people. Yes. Statues. There's a statue. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Archimedes is in there. Julius Caesar is in there. [00:18:23] Speaker B: Wow. [00:18:24] Speaker A: One man's fucking work. One man's toil. [00:18:29] Speaker B: Incredible. [00:18:31] Speaker A: Absolutely wild. And the bigger it got and the longer it took him and the more word traveled, it began to attract public interest, wider notoriety. He himself got ahead of TripAdvisor and he opened it up to visitors in 1905, while still being built. [00:18:55] Speaker B: Wow. [00:18:55] Speaker A: And he. He got visits from fucking Picasso came to see it. Max Ernst, the surrealist artist, and A Nin, the writer Marcel Duchamp. He, He. He became celebrated and visited by fucking all the lads of the time, you. [00:19:14] Speaker B: Know, I wonder if Gaudi ever went to see. [00:19:18] Speaker A: Is not out of the realm of possibility. [00:19:22] Speaker B: That's crazy. [00:19:25] Speaker A: It was classified as an historical monument by the French government in 1969. It attracts over 200,000 visitors a year to that very site. [00:19:39] Speaker B: 200,000. [00:19:40] Speaker A: 200,000 people a year come and see this. [00:19:43] Speaker B: Wow. [00:19:44] Speaker A: And in 2020, the French. It was ranked second in the French people's. The people of France's favorite monuments in 2020. [00:19:54] Speaker B: Wow. [00:19:55] Speaker A: We never hear of this. [00:19:57] Speaker B: I know, right? Like, this is. This is pretty bonkers. I mean, I don't know exactly What. Where it is, but it feels like. Yeah. Something you would have at least heard of. It's the French. The favorite tourist spot of the second. [00:20:11] Speaker A: French tourist spot of the French. The. The French Minister of culture. In 1969, Andre Maro declared it a cultural landmark and historical monument and gave it kind of official government protection and preservation. And it still stands to this day. Now at 75, Cheval started to express his own desire to be buried within it. [00:20:39] Speaker B: Sure did. I mean, hey, listen. [00:20:40] Speaker A: No, that ain't happening. [00:20:43] Speaker B: He wasn't allowed to be buried in his own. [00:20:45] Speaker A: No, he was. The French authorities denied this. [00:20:49] Speaker B: Aw, boo. French authorities. [00:20:52] Speaker A: It's the law. You can't. You can't be buried within a private dwelling. So I guess he was living in there, but, you know, in a. In a nearby cemetery. At 78. At 70 fucking 8, he started construction of his own mausoleum. [00:21:07] Speaker B: Nice. Of course he did. Come on, gent. [00:21:10] Speaker A: Yes. What a fucking guy. That took him another eight years and never one to understate his own work, he named it the Tomb of Silence and Endless Rest. I fucking. I feel. I feel I would. We would have got on big time. [00:21:28] Speaker B: And it speaks to what you were saying at the end of last week's episode about, you know, you were saying you would like to, when you are going to die, have time to prepare, right. And to really sort of come to terms with it and get ready in this way. And to spend eight years so deeply enmeshed in your own death. Right to. You are daily building your resting place for when you die. And that. That's a passion project, you know, and that he. What did he call it? The Tomb of. Of silence. [00:22:02] Speaker A: Silence and endless rest, I think. [00:22:03] Speaker B: And endless rest. [00:22:05] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:22:05] Speaker B: Like he has spent third now nearly 40 years or over 40 years at this point, building this palace and this tomb. And now he can rest like that is incredible. So good. It's so good, isn't it? [00:22:20] Speaker A: Isn't it cool? So, yes, look, like all things, the Palais Ideal will fall to dust, sure. As will I. You will too. I will too. [00:22:32] Speaker B: Yep. [00:22:34] Speaker A: But fucking hell, if you're gonna have a crack at achieving permanence, just do it in. In that Joag style, you know? Do it fucking right. Let me quote directly from my notes, if I may. [00:22:45] Speaker B: Yes, please do. [00:22:47] Speaker A: Fucking look at these nerds. Oh, mise en scene. [00:22:50] Speaker B: I don't think anyone has ever said measles said in such a horny way before. [00:22:54] Speaker A: The way I whispered the word sex. Cannibal received. [00:22:57] Speaker B: Worst comes to worst. Mark. I'm Willing to guillotine you for science. [00:23:01] 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. [00:23:07] Speaker B: You know how I feel about that, Mark? [00:23:09] Speaker A: I think you feel great about it. I could take us in. I mean, you could. [00:23:18] Speaker B: It's a thing you could consider. [00:23:19] Speaker A: We could just. Should we just sit here in silence? Let's just do a little bit. Let's just see how long we can. [00:23:24] Speaker B: This is the tomb of silence. [00:23:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jack of all graves. The tomb of silence and endless rest. Nah. Is it? Fuck. This is the tool of yapping and being stressed. The tomb of yapping and endless stress. That's what this is. And we welcome you within our cold, echoing chamber. Where there's dust in the air. Yeah. And there are bones on the floor and rat shit. Oh, the further you go. The further you go, the further the light recedes behind you. There's no breeze anymore. There's no warmth anymore. The little drip of water in the dim distance. The echoes of the people outside fade to nothing. But on you go. You go further, don't you? Until you can't see your hand in front of your face. You don't know if you're about to stumble or trip or fall. The battery on your phone has run out. You can't cast a light anywhere. And yet on you walk you get. You keep walking onwards. By now, you don't even know if your eyes are open or closed. You're just blind and alone. [00:24:33] Speaker B: I feel like I'm playing a text game right now. [00:24:35] Speaker A: That's what it is. [00:24:36] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:24:36] Speaker A: Kill. Jester. Welcome. [00:24:39] Speaker B: Did I tell you about. When I. I know I told you about. So I went on. Pardon me. The dust is indeed in this here tomb. I told you about how. I went on, like, a catacombs tour in Italy. But what I told you mostly about was, like, obviously the place that stood out was the one with all the bones. [00:24:59] Speaker A: Sure. Bone church. [00:25:00] Speaker B: Yeah, the room of pelvises. All that shit. Yeah, Right. But another one of the catacombs we went to was, like, less remarkable in that way, but. But it was very much like you described. And it was, you know, underground. And when you walked into it, at first it was like the first big room you came into was like the room of the popes. And it was like the first 15 popes or whatever are all buried in this place. And then as you go back, it becomes like that. Just like these. What would, like, obviously put in 15. [00:25:33] Speaker A: Popes all the way back to the first pope. [00:25:36] Speaker B: Yeah, they're all in this thing. Obviously. We don't have, like, you can barely read whatever labeling is on them and stuff like that at this point. It's however many hundreds of years it's been since the first pope, I don't know, a thousand years, whatever, since the first pope. 1700s, I'm gonna say. I think it was longer ago than that. Nope, I'm gonna go out on that. [00:25:58] Speaker A: Not until I proved otherwise. [00:26:00] Speaker B: But what was bananas about this place was that, like I said, obviously they've put in lights and things like that, but when they would have built this, like, you were going into this, like, labyrinthine set of tunnels that would have been absolutely pitch black. All you'd have is whatever lantern or whatever you had with you to see, and then these, like, stacks. So most of the bodies in this place were like deathly bunk beds. You know, they're just holes in the wall. [00:26:33] Speaker A: Just trying to maximize the space. The real estate. [00:26:35] Speaker B: Exactly. Squeeze them in. And over the years, like, because it's been there for so long, there's just no remains at this point, Right. Like, the bones have disintegrated. There's like nothing left of anybody in here. You know what I mean? There are things that, of course, right? They're in the air, you're breathing them. They are part of that place at this point. But there was like a few of the, like, more recent burials that were within the past couple hundred years or whatever. And they had, like one room where you could go in and just like, see the bones of somebody that actually were left over from those times. Otherwise, like, nothing there. But it was fascinating that this thing had been built, you know, and people had gone in and drawn things on the walls. Like there's basically ancient graffiti and stuff like that in there. But it was just this dark, cavernous place that, like, if you're. If your lantern went out, you, bro, you're screwed. [00:27:35] Speaker A: I don't particularly enjoy kind of underground attractions. I don't particularly enjoy being below ground level. He's. He's not so much anymore. He's grown into a very resourceful and confident young man. But in his single figure years, Peter was quite a nervy kid, right? He was quite an anxious child. And we went on one such tourist attraction on a holiday, I think we might have been on the Isle of Wight. Can't remember. And it wasn't even underground, right. It was like a cave that goes like into a cliff for about 30, 40ft. [00:28:10] Speaker B: Sure, yeah, right. [00:28:11] Speaker A: You're not even underground. [00:28:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:15] Speaker A: And about 10 paces in, Peter starts, like, clutching our hands. And the tour guide talks about how, well, this used to be a quarry and when it was open, when it was a working quarry, used to have children working down here. Points at Peter and goes, oh, no. Kids your age would be working down here with hammers and pickaxes, chipping away the stone. And the color drains from his face. Even in this kind of half light. He goes fucking white. And somehow gets it into his head that they were gonna make him work down there. [00:28:51] Speaker B: Oh, no. [00:28:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:28:54] Speaker B: This shall be my fate. [00:28:55] Speaker A: And we're out of there. You know what I mean? [00:28:56] Speaker B: Aw. I do not like things like this either, famously, you know, even just like, lava tubes in Hawaii and all kinds of stuff like that. I don't like it. I don't like being closed spaces, tubes of anything. And I may have said this before, but one of my favorite, like, memories that I found out was, like, wrong later on, which is a great example of the fact that our memories are just like, of course, flashes of whatever. They're not real memories of memories. Yes. I went. My uncle took us to a submarine. He took us to the Queen Mary in Long beach. And there's a submarine next to a Russian submarine that you could go and tour. And my memory of this was getting to the submarine, you know, walking into it, realizing that I was in a cave, essentially, and bolting from one end of the submarine to the other. Wasn't until a few. [00:29:54] Speaker A: Yeah, even though you're kind of super into the, you know, the blue yonder, you wouldn't go into a subway. [00:29:59] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't want to go in it. No. I like looking at it. I like learning about it. [00:30:03] Speaker A: Yes. [00:30:04] Speaker B: Don't want to be inside of it. And so, yeah, my memory of that was like, I bolted. I did not want to be in there. It wasn't until I was talking to my uncle like, three years ago that I was like, yeah, I remember that time you took us on this submarine. And I, like, bolted through there. And he was like, that is not what happened. I was like, what happened? And he was like. We walked in and you went blank. You said no words. You walked through the thing wide eyed, unspeaking all the way through. Never turned and looked at anything. Just walked through this, went straight back up the other end. So I. [00:30:46] Speaker A: You had the shining, mate. You. You got in touch with the fucking crew. I. [00:30:51] Speaker B: Right, I went to another dimension during this Danny Torrens. So my brain remembered it as basically entering and exiting. And he was like, do you know? You walked through. [00:31:05] Speaker A: Oh, that's cool. [00:31:05] Speaker B: You just. Yeah. Went to another planet. [00:31:09] Speaker A: Fugue state. [00:31:10] Speaker B: Total fugue state. I was so scared, I blacked out the entire experience and manufactured a different memory of it. [00:31:18] Speaker A: Love that for you. I've never. Anyway, I'd love to go into a fugue state. Just get so stressed out that you just disassociate completely. [00:31:31] Speaker B: Well, it's not that interesting, clearly. I just forgot what happened as a result. Just beginning and end and I just filled in the beginning, the middle part of it. Well, I don't know if other people have been in a fugue state that was more interesting than mine. [00:31:48] Speaker A: Look, somebody has. One of you. [00:31:49] Speaker B: Must somebody ask? [00:31:50] Speaker A: One of you fuckers has got into a fugue state. Let us know how it was. [00:31:54] Speaker B: Yeah, let us know what happened when you did. How you doing, Mark? [00:31:58] Speaker A: Ditto. I'm doing great, Corrigan, thank you for asking. I'm doing fucking great. Well, I've. I've come to really, really appreciate days when I feel good. Do you know what I mean by that? Do you know what I'm saying? Yes, absolutely. I really, really appreciate days when things feel like they're functioning well and my memory is working fine and I'm alert and awake and I feel like I can be capable, you know, and that's a role that I'm on currently. I'm exercising plenty. Work is going okay. I'm functioning all right. I'm productive and healthy parent and husband and worker, you know. I feel like I'm doing all right. Thank you. [00:32:45] Speaker B: Good. Very glad to hear that and hope that is the same for all of you. Just feel like capable and, you know, on top of things and like you love being alive. [00:32:57] Speaker A: Let's not, you know. [00:33:01] Speaker B: Am I overstating it? [00:33:03] Speaker A: I'm doing. I mean, I'm doing good. [00:33:07] Speaker B: Well, I hope they love being alive. Even if maybe that's not like quite. That's the. Let's make that the aspiration because what I think I'm looking at anywhere in the vicinity. It's good. [00:33:19] Speaker A: I'm just gonna describe what I'm looking at on the TV right now. [00:33:21] Speaker B: Oh, no. [00:33:23] Speaker A: Black uniformed, fucking helmet wearing, visors down. [00:33:29] Speaker B: I. [00:33:29] Speaker A: You. You speak the Spanish, don't you? [00:33:32] Speaker B: Sure. [00:33:32] Speaker A: What is Najera? [00:33:34] Speaker B: Spell it. [00:33:35] Speaker A: N, A J, E, R A Naira. [00:33:40] Speaker B: I don't know. Why, what's it. What's the context? [00:33:43] Speaker A: That word is emblazoned across the back of these stormtrooper looking fucks. [00:33:48] Speaker B: Oh, okay. [00:33:49] Speaker A: Batons. [00:33:50] Speaker B: It's probably something military related. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:33:54] Speaker A: And they are advancing on a crowd of people bearing placards. This is LA today. This is LA right now. [00:34:02] Speaker B: Wait, why are. Why are they wearing things in Spanish if it's in la? [00:34:08] Speaker A: I have no clue. Nahira, nahera. I'll just look it up. Hang on. [00:34:16] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm so confused by this. [00:34:21] Speaker A: And I hear it is a town in Spain. [00:34:23] Speaker B: Yep. [00:34:24] Speaker A: Is it their name perhaps? Is it a name badge? [00:34:27] Speaker B: Yeah. Were all of them wearing that or was the one person wearing. [00:34:31] Speaker A: I just saw one guy. [00:34:33] Speaker B: Okay, so maybe it was a name. Yeah, maybe that could be why. [00:34:38] Speaker A: That would make a lot more sense. [00:34:39] Speaker B: I was like, hold on, it's la. I understand there's clearly a lot of Spanish speakers there, but I don't know why our officials would be wearing Spanish. [00:34:47] Speaker A: But things are certainly getting heated. So fill us in on what is happening here, please. [00:34:52] Speaker B: Oh, boy. Yeah. Which is, you know, honestly a good question because one of the things that I found out through people on the interwebs is that, like, our news is not really covering what's going on here. So people are looking at BBC and stuff like that to find out what's happening. Someone put on like Fox News, cnn, MSNBC and BBC last night in like a four picture in picture thing. And they all. Only one that was talking about this was BBC, which is disturbing, isn't it? [00:35:24] Speaker A: And it's been on rolling news, it's been on BBC News, as it should. [00:35:28] Speaker B: Be, because basically pretty much consistently over. [00:35:31] Speaker A: The last 24 hours. [00:35:33] Speaker B: Yeah. We have the Gestapo coming through and trying to kidnap people from their homes. ICE is coming through and doing illegal raids and trying to snatch people to traffic them to El Salvador and whatnot. But the people of Los Angeles are especially hardy folk. This is who they are, through and through. [00:35:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:56] Speaker B: Have put their bodies on the line and stood in front of that. And the response from ICE has been to, you know, hit them with non lethal ammunitions or munitions, I should say, which are. Can be very much lethal and do tons of damage to people's bodies. Especially fired at as close range as these people tend to shoot them. [00:36:15] Speaker A: I've seen slow motion gas footage of somebody getting hit in the head with what is known charmingly as a beanbag round. [00:36:23] Speaker B: Yes, right. It sounds fine. It is not. [00:36:27] Speaker A: Who doesn't love a beanbag? Comfortable, right. Fuck. It ruins your head. [00:36:33] Speaker B: Yeah. I can't remember what her name was, but there was a woman named Linda something who was a journalist who got hit with Either a beanbag round or a rubber bullet and was blinded. And then basically over the course of like a couple years, she ended up dying sort of slowly from her injuries. It gave her, like, seizures and all kinds of stuff like that. They're like fucking awful. They're not non lethal, just not maybe not immediately lethal. Right, yeah. And so, you know, the. They've been doing that, shooting tear gas, basically gassing people's homes. So the whole neighborhoods, the houses are filled with tear gas. They're, you know. Yeah. All of that is happening, but the people of LA have been, you know, standing in the way to keep them from being able to actually accomplish their mission. [00:37:23] Speaker A: Question I had for you just before we hit record this week, which is one that maybe I think might be interesting to touch on for our UK contingent, of which many millions and millions of UK listeners often. You'll hear reference in culture to the National Guard. [00:37:42] Speaker B: Right? Yes. [00:37:43] Speaker A: What is that? I don't. [00:37:45] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good question. I'm sure you get a sense that, like, it's not good. Yeah. [00:37:51] Speaker A: They don't get deployed in good. In peace, you know, in fun times, do they? They don't like the. [00:37:55] Speaker B: Right, yeah, exactly. The National Guard is basically at home, military. That's kind of the best way that I can describe it. It's the people who are deployed. Most of the time when we see the National Guard deployed in the United States, it is for, like, disasters. Right. So they go out and they, you know, in. Right. You know, if there's. I mean, we don't usually have earthquakes big enough to require. The National Guard hasn't been an earthquake that big since 1994, I think. But, you know, hurricanes and, you know, tornadoes and things like that, they might go out and assist and stuff like. But 9 11s, I'm sure the National Guard was deployed for that. But they can be deployed as a force like a peacekeeping, for lack of a better word force, when there are things like riots and stuff like that as well. There's a lot of rules to being able to deploy them, but none of those are being followed here because they are being called out in this case. But they're. The protests are peaceful. There's nobody. There's no looting, there's no rioting or anything like that. People are basically just standing in the way, maybe throwing a tear gas canister back, things like that. But it's certainly not like we're not at war, at least not on the civilian side of things. And so there's no reason for them to be deployed against U.S. citizens. I mean, like, it can get very bad. Famously, one of the biggest things people think of when it comes to the National Guard is the Kent State massacre, where they were deployed on peaceful protesters in Texas at a university and ended up killing, like, six students in cold blood. Like, none of them were armed or anything like that. They just murdered a handful of students. This was so. [00:39:51] Speaker A: This is in recent memory. This was. [00:39:53] Speaker B: That was the 60s. [00:39:54] Speaker A: Okay. [00:39:55] Speaker B: Okay, okay, yeah, 19, like, late 60s, I think. But that's just to say, like, that's how bad things can get when you call the National Guard on peaceful protesters is they will use any reason. [00:40:07] Speaker A: Looking at this rolling footage, it is so interesting to me, so interesting that this isn't, like, on every fucking screen in the States. [00:40:17] Speaker B: Like, imagine if it were happening anywhere else, realistically. You know, like, we have had a lot of footage of Ukraine's attack on Russia. [00:40:25] Speaker A: Sure. [00:40:25] Speaker B: This past week. Right. Like, there's been constant footage of that, and Zelensky being on our tv, being interviewed by Martha Raddatz about it and all this kind of stuff. But, like, there's nothing about what's going on in our own country that that self. [00:40:41] Speaker A: Same attack has invoked the specter of nuclear war once again. [00:40:47] Speaker B: Right. [00:40:48] Speaker A: Which, you know, fucking always, always makes me very, very anxious and freaked out. [00:40:54] Speaker B: I always wonder if this is maybe, like, I don't know, the. We're not hugely far apart in age, but you're kind of on the. The Gen X cusp, where I am firmly millennial, and I think Gen Xers have a lot more nuclear nervousness from the, like, Cold War era and the media around it and things like that than millennials do. [00:41:22] Speaker A: It's an interesting point. I mean, I. I don't really know anything about the Cold War. You'd be astounded to learn. You know what I mean? So I don't think that's. [00:41:29] Speaker B: But you've seen threads. [00:41:31] Speaker A: I have seen threads, and I've seen. It's when the Wind Blows that is my go to nuclear dystopia. I both read the picture book in school, and I've seen the movie many a time. When the Wind Blows is as devastating and heartbreaking a portrayal of nuclear conflict as you could ever wish to see. It is like. What's that? Art Spiegelman's mouse? It's one of those. It's one of those that subverts its format. You know, you think you're reading something, and you're really not. You're reading something entirely different, and it get it slips between your fucking ribs like a switchblade. It's really, really powerful. [00:42:12] Speaker B: And I bet you that someone seven years younger than you, like me. [00:42:17] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:18] Speaker B: Would not have seen that. Yeah, I guess would not have that, like, buried in their mind. So, to me, I kind of like, the Cold War is history to me. Right. Like, it was over by the time I was 4 or 5 years old or whatever. And the way that I look back on it tends to be, you know. Well, there were many times when there were, you know, almost oopsies and things like that. But at the end of the day, the guys in control of these things don't really want to die. And mutual assured destruction is the central thing that happens with nuclear warfare. Right. If you nuke somebody, they will nuke you back. We all die. So the only way that anyone is going to deploy nukes is if they are so far backed into a corner that their death is assured, then they might do it. [00:43:11] Speaker A: I think that makes a lot of assumptions. [00:43:15] Speaker B: It's. I mean, it's 60, 70 years of history. [00:43:18] Speaker A: Well, yes, of course, of course, of course. But, I mean, Ukraine, in and of itself, doesn't have nuclear weapons, so you'd be relying on NATO. NATO is not what it was. I don't know if. I don't know if Russia's leader thinks along those what seem to us logical pathways of thinking. [00:43:40] Speaker B: I don't think he thinks logically, but I think he wants to live. There's one thing Vladimir Putin wants, and that's to live. That's, you know, that's pretty high on the top, you know, is I want to live and I want to be the most powerful man in the world or whatever. If he dies, he can't be the most powerful man in the world. So I think that there's always that sort of mitigating factor to it. Certainly all of these men who are in charge are wild cards. Right. Like, they can do all kinds of crazy stuff. But I just think, you know, we had 70 years of wild cards as well, who managed to, you know, in various ways, avert these kinds of disasters. So it doesn't, to me, it doesn't feel. Feel as like pressing, I think, as. As it does to you. [00:44:29] Speaker A: Yes. [00:44:30] Speaker B: There's plenty of other things to worry about. Don't get me wrong, the nuke thing. [00:44:34] Speaker A: Doesn'T, as I spoke about at the start of this conflict, it isn't that I'm worried that it will happen. It's that it feels like a reality shift. It feels like a shift into a very dark arena that it gets talked about in the media as often as it does. One worries about self fulfilling prophecies, One worries about, you know, what that will herald. You know, that the media shapes discussion, the media shapes reality. As, you know, we've spoken about recently when it comes to the fucking public perception of trans people, for fuck's sake. [00:45:10] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah, exactly. Was it, Xander, we don't have as good a media as we did during the Cold War, realistically. [00:45:17] Speaker A: Yes, exactly. [00:45:17] Speaker B: We have a much worse media landscape than we did at that point. That's a really valid point. [00:45:24] Speaker A: 25, 30 years ago, no one gave a fuck about trans people. They certainly weren't. [00:45:29] Speaker B: No. If you knew a trans person, it was like some quirky. [00:45:31] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [00:45:32] Speaker B: Kind of weird, whatever that was. Like the most you thought about it. [00:45:35] Speaker A: But you know, you can put a fucking pin in the number of stories being written about trans people going absolutely rocketing skyward. [00:45:44] Speaker B: Yeah. Someone posted a statistic about it the other day that was like truly beyond comprehension Again. [00:45:51] Speaker A: The book I've recently read by Ash Sarkar talks about this exact topic about how, you know, identity politics have convinced us that it's. It's our fucking neighbors that are the enemy. [00:46:03] Speaker B: Right, exactly. [00:46:04] Speaker A: You know, not capitalism. [00:46:07] Speaker B: Right, exactly. The enemy is very obvious. [00:46:10] Speaker A: Yes. [00:46:11] Speaker B: You know, and when it comes down to it, when people talk about the things that affect them, they know in their hearts that's the problem. It's propaganda is so strong. [00:46:21] Speaker A: That is. That is exactly what it is. It's propaganda and driven by those who stand to benefit from it. [00:46:27] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I get, I get what you're saying there about that being that making a. A considerable difference in the landscape of things than it did, you know, in the 60s, 70s, 80s. But. Well, we're still here for now. [00:46:45] Speaker A: For now. [00:46:46] Speaker B: Listen, and in the meantime, listen, Joag is trying to keep you entertained and anxious, but also entertained. [00:46:53] Speaker A: Well, there's an Internet. Right. [00:46:55] Speaker B: Well, there's an Internet While. [00:46:56] Speaker A: There's an Internet. And while. Even if I'm meeting fucking, you know, roach paste for dinner with, you know, my second mouth on the side of my head. Of course, yeah, they'll be Jack of. [00:47:11] Speaker B: All graves if you could like pick a weird sci fi radiation side effect. Do you have like a favorite one that you'd be like? I'd kind of enjoy that. [00:47:21] Speaker A: Another cock. [00:47:23] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense. Yeah. Would that not be like burdensome? [00:47:29] Speaker A: I'd be wearing loincloths by then. [00:47:32] Speaker B: I was thinking like more on a practical Level, like, imagine, like double the morning wood. Or, you know, like, you can't. Can you read? Really use two. [00:47:42] Speaker A: That was. Look, I haven't thought about it in depth, but if you. If you. If you were to push me right. [00:47:47] Speaker B: Now, if pressed, that's the first thing that comes to mind. I should have seen that. Kevin. [00:47:51] Speaker A: Yes. I'm frankly disappointed that you asked. [00:47:57] Speaker B: Listen, this is. This is me being a woman. It didn't even cross my mind. I would never be like, I would like two vaginas, please. Can I have another one of these? That would really improve my life. [00:48:09] Speaker A: Maybe you haven't given it enough thought. [00:48:10] Speaker B: Maybe not. Maybe I'm not thinking through the possibilities here. Friends, what do you think? Am I selling the second vagina short? [00:48:21] Speaker A: I think this. There's more to this topic, though. I mean, what are we. Are you talking about just, like, where would I want a tumor? Or are we talking superpowers? [00:48:31] Speaker B: I was thinking more like a mutation. Like a Judge Dredd style thing. Like, if you were that kind of thing. Not like a power. [00:48:39] Speaker A: Another cockpit, you know? [00:48:41] Speaker B: Yeah, okay. I'll take it. [00:48:42] Speaker A: Yep. [00:48:45] Speaker B: So, friends Unrelated. We're gonna do a Pride watch along this, actually. I mean, yeah, no, it's unrelated. Wait, the movie? No, no, I don't think it's related at all. I was gonna try to make a connection. [00:49:01] Speaker A: Stop. [00:49:01] Speaker B: I couldn't make it work. I think it's best if we just start over. Pride watch along, June 28th. [00:49:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:49:08] Speaker B: Mark it on your calendars. I posted on our Facebook and on our blue sky some pride wrecks that people might enjoy. If you're looking for some cool queer horror to watch, that's a little off the beaten path. Not the things people are recommending to you all the time. You can check those out. And we're gonna watch the movie Fresh Kill, which is like a lesbian cyberpunk experimental film from 1994. Yeah. As soon as I saw the trailer for it, I was like, oh, man, our posse is gonna have a good time with this. [00:49:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I'm down. I also Wonder. [00:49:45] Speaker B: Fresh kill, June 28th. Yeah, go ahead. [00:49:46] Speaker A: I also wondered if we could do a let's play let's Gay. I'm sure there's some gay video game I could drag up from somewhere. [00:49:53] Speaker B: Great idea. [00:49:56] Speaker A: I know there are a couple of very gay chapters in the Last of Us with Ellie and Dina. Yeah. [00:50:00] Speaker B: Oh, for sure. [00:50:01] Speaker A: I think life is strange. That's pretty gay. [00:50:03] Speaker B: I was gonna say life is strange. For sure. Yeah. If you have a suggestion for our let's gay this month. Please do, because I love this idea. [00:50:13] Speaker A: Yeah, why not? [00:50:13] Speaker B: Big fan of it. We are. This is. Joag is our allies friends. [00:50:23] Speaker A: Joag is for the gays. Right? It's for the gays. [00:50:26] Speaker B: We are the straightest podcast for the gays out there, let me tell you. Because we're all. [00:50:33] Speaker A: We're all, you know, we're all on the same trajectory, aren't we? [00:50:37] Speaker B: Well, it's true. That's a really good point. [00:50:38] Speaker A: The graph only points in one direction. It doesn't fucking matter how you turn. [00:50:42] Speaker B: Did you see that one? God, what's her name? The terrible American politician who said I was gonna die. [00:50:50] Speaker A: Narrows it down. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we all gotta die. [00:50:53] Speaker B: We're all gonna die. Yeah, great point. Who needs Medicare, lady? But yes, we are all gonna die. So that said, you know, let's love each other on the way there. [00:51:04] Speaker A: She. She wasn't lying. [00:51:07] Speaker B: She wasn't lying. Also, book club this month is June 21st. Have marked it in my calendar. We're reading this Wretched Valley by Jenny Keefer. [00:51:17] Speaker A: Is it gay? [00:51:17] Speaker B: Looks really cool. I don't. I never. Honestly, with a lot of the books, I don't know until we start them, but like, I would say probably like 70% of the books we read turn out to be gay. [00:51:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I get that impression. Yes. [00:51:32] Speaker B: It's just what we like, as it turns out. So, you know, there you go. And then on the Fan Cave this Thursday, Kristen and I, it's not. It's not queer enough, this one. We're just watching Cabin in the Woods. It's a pretty straight movie. [00:51:48] Speaker A: Oh, it's very hetero, actually. Cabin in the Woods. Yes. [00:51:51] Speaker B: Yeah, There is nothing prideful about that movie. But we are watching Cabin in the Woods. [00:51:59] Speaker A: And when are you doing that? [00:52:01] Speaker B: Huh? [00:52:02] Speaker A: When are you doing that? Can I come? [00:52:03] Speaker B: Thursday? Oh, that's right. I forgot we were gonna have you come. Maybe we can do a different day and make it work for you because you did say you wanted to join us to talk about this one. [00:52:12] Speaker A: Or I could just watch Cabin in the Woods. I mean, I don't really need an invitation, do I? [00:52:16] Speaker B: Well, it would be fun to be. [00:52:18] Speaker A: Lovely to see Chris discuss with you. [00:52:19] Speaker B: So we'll see if we reschedule or not. One way or another. But it's coming. Fan cave. Cabin in the Woods. Gonna be a good time. [00:52:25] Speaker A: Nice. [00:52:27] Speaker B: Shall we talk about what we watched this week? You've been a busy little beaver. [00:52:30] Speaker A: Well, I've had some time to myself, you see. And I've put that to very good use. Just fucking absolutely reaming movies this week. Some good, some terrible. One or two will tussle over. Let's just go right in with the Toxic Avenger, right? [00:52:52] Speaker B: Yep. [00:52:53] Speaker A: Listen, why do you hate this film? [00:52:57] Speaker B: This is. I mean, this is a movie I've probably seen like four times in the past several years. And every time that I watch it, I hate it more than the last time that I watched it, I think. I don't. I. Okay, if this relates to my rant about Eli Roth's little crowdfunding thing, right? The idea of like, oh, what if white men pushed the boundaries? Right? And what does that always mean? You get something that's extremely racist, you get something that's extremely misogynist, you get something that's extremely ableist. It's never like, they pushed the boundaries. And now we have some sort of like incredible progressive text. Like, no, they push the boundaries and they, you know, did a bunch of shit that was really offensive to people. And so I have like a very like the whole trauma mindset and stuff like that is just white men going, what if we pushed it? And making racist, ableist, misogynistic shit. And I said to you while we were watching it, I was like, there are things. I don't find it funny. I'm not, I'm not a teen boy. I don't find it funny, but there are things in it that's. It is very much like it is a sense of humor that you cultivate as a teen boy, right? And thus like, maybe it reminding you of being a teen boy makes it still funny, but it's not a type of humor that women develop. Weird. This is not our thing, right? And the thing about it is that there's like, things about it I like that people complain about. Like, I think the over the top acting is really fun. Fun in it. I really like the guy who's like always in like roid rage mode and stuff like that. Like, I think stuff like that, you know, is. Is an interesting thing to watch and, you know, whatever, but at the end of the day, it is a movie that ostensibly, you know, is about like the little guy getting revenge on these awful people or whatever, but, you know, largely kills brown folks, you know, is on the side of the police is, you know, the, the people like, who really do the worst things don't get the worst comeuppance in it. You know, two of the. The white tormentors survive, one dies off screen. Like, you know, they're not the ones who get the most brutal deaths in this. Those are reserved for people who. [00:55:34] Speaker A: Classified. Yeah. [00:55:36] Speaker B: Just incidental time and that are pretty much exclusively people of color. Like, you know, it's got, it's obviously got a lot of slurs in it and things like that. And so there's just not a lot that is redeeming to me. [00:55:51] Speaker A: Okay. [00:55:52] Speaker B: About the, you know, the mindset behind it that's, it's the mindset behind the movie that I find repulsive. [00:56:01] Speaker A: I see. All right, well, I found it. I find. I find Toxic Avenger both fun and funny. Right. While one, I cannot defend the slurs and I cannot defend really it against anything you've said. Right. [00:56:22] Speaker B: This is why you're like, we'll have a tiff about it. I was like, no, I think you're gonna get why I don't like it. [00:56:27] Speaker A: I simply cannot put up any kind of defense against what you've just leveled at the Toxic Avenger. Right. And about a third of the way through, I remember saying to you, well, it is only the bad characters that are using slurs that proves not to be true. [00:56:44] Speaker B: No. [00:56:45] Speaker A: Toxie himself drops in some slurs during the movie. [00:56:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:56:48] Speaker A: Thus completely validating everything you've just said. It is not a pleasant film ideologically, by any means. Yeah. I am tempted to try and view it through the lens of 1984. I am, was even 85. I don't know. One or the other. [00:57:09] Speaker B: I think it's 84. I think you're right. [00:57:11] Speaker A: I am tempted. I'm tempted to cut. To try and cut it slack on that score because it is not a serious film. [00:57:21] Speaker B: No. Certainly not. [00:57:23] Speaker A: At no point do any. Does anyone, anyone in this film act like a real person, right? [00:57:29] Speaker B: No, definitely not. [00:57:30] Speaker A: So I am tempted to view it all as a bit. But on the other hand, I'm also tempted to, I, I'm, I'm minded to give Toxic Avengers slack simply because I enjoy it so much. [00:57:43] Speaker B: Right. [00:57:44] Speaker A: I am, I was a teenage boy. I am in many ways still one. And the, the comedy is right up my street. I, I, I, the comedy is fucking as fuck. It just, it just makes me properly laugh. Some of the dialogue is so fucking stupid, so clinically moronic that it, it bypasses the kind of taste synapse and goes right to my lizard brain and just really, really makes me laugh. Some of the slapstick is great. Just, just in the, in the first 10 minutes when, you know, Melvin fucking dives through a window and lands in a barrel of toxic waste, it's fucking brilliant. It just works for me. And let's not sell the work that that film does in terms of gore and makeup for 1984. [00:58:37] Speaker B: Yeah, the. Like, again, it's like the thing where I was saying, like, you know, there's a lot of sort of technical elements of this and stuff like that that I think is really well done. And obviously the effects are hugely impressive. [00:58:52] Speaker A: Oh, the. The makeup and the gore and the kills are unfucking real, considering what they were working with and when they were doing it, like, genuinely impressive. Like, how the fuck. That's the entire budget there in. [00:59:04] Speaker B: Right. In some of those. [00:59:06] Speaker A: Some of those kills and some of those scenes. Obviously, it's a horrible piece of shit film, right? [00:59:13] Speaker B: Yes. And I think, you know, one of those things that is always, like, annoying to me. This is. I said to you at the beginning, when we started watching it, that I was like, I feel like there has to be a level of. You've seen a movie at a different time. [00:59:29] Speaker A: Yes. [00:59:29] Speaker B: For you to like a movie like this. Because I think if I had randomly picked this and you'd never heard of it for one of our, like, movie nights, you'd been like, another Corrigan stage stinker, and it would not have hit for you the way that it did, you know, because you have context to this movie. [00:59:47] Speaker A: I hadn't seen it, like, since I'd been cataloging films, so I hadn't seen it in 15 years. [00:59:52] Speaker B: But I think. I mean, it takes you back to a time when this was something you would have not thought about with a critical lens or anything like that, you know, when you were more starved for something like this, you know, and it wasn't available to you in other ways is. Yeah. I think, you know, it does some interesting things that way. But at the end of the day, like, you normally don't like movies that try to be bad, try to be so bad they're good. That's true. [01:00:21] Speaker A: But I don't think that's what this is, though. I don't think that's what this is at all. I. In fact, quite the opposite. [01:00:25] Speaker B: You don't think this is trying to be bad? [01:00:28] Speaker A: Not for a second. I really don't. [01:00:31] Speaker B: Really. [01:00:31] Speaker A: I really don't. That's interesting. One of the things that I respond to so well in this film is that I. I find it perfectly authentic. I think that's exactly the film they wanted to make. [01:00:41] Speaker B: Well, it is, but they wanted to make a bad movie. [01:00:45] Speaker A: When I. When I think of a movie, I. [01:00:48] Speaker B: Think that, like, they genuinely Were like, oh, you know, bad. Like putting this weird black voice that's out of sync with this character over. It was like, they didn't know that was a bad choice. They were like, this is actually. [01:01:01] Speaker A: I don't think that was. No, I don't think that was ersatz or foe in any way. I think that was what. What was the right choice for that fucking movie. And it was funny when. When Toxie emerges fully as a character and he's got this new fucking strong baritone leading man voice, I think that's funny as fuck. That's not done with a wink. Oh, let's do this. It'll be so bad. It's good. I don't think at all that's what they were going for. [01:01:25] Speaker B: Sure. [01:01:25] Speaker A: When I just, for clarity, when I use that phrase, I hate movies that are bad on purpose, I'm thinking of things like Planet Terror, Machete. That kind of. Okay, you know what I mean? That kind of. What are you. What are you referring to here? What are you referencing exactly? Fuck off. But I think Toxie is. [01:01:48] Speaker B: I don't think those are bad on purpose, though. I think those are, like, meant to be good movies. They're just bad. I think they're meant to be camp. They're referencing, like, camp things, but it's not necessarily meant to be bad, per se. So when I think of a movie that is intending to be bad, I think of this, like. I think of something like this where it's like, oh, what if we, like, made a movie like, movies that are bad, but we knew we were doing that? [01:02:17] Speaker A: So my question then, like, the only. The only thing, the only reason that that doesn't really work for me is what are they? What is Toxic Avenger trying to pastiche? What is that an homage to the other. [01:02:32] Speaker B: Well, I don't think it's an homage. I think it's like other bad 80s horror movies. [01:02:38] Speaker A: No, I don't think so. I don't think so. I think it doesn't. I don't think it's referring to anything else in particular. I think it's a piece in and of itself. And I don't think it's. I think that's the. The Toxic Avenger, I think, is the result of everyone's best efforts. [01:02:54] Speaker B: Perhaps so. I don't know. Again, I think that this is one that, if I showed it to you now, you would have, like, a totally different reaction to it than you do having, like, that background. [01:03:06] Speaker A: Interesting. It's just so enamored. Was I with Toxic Avenger that I thought I could animat in TM this series. And I went straight in on Toxic Avengers 2. I think Toxic Avenger 2 is everything you think Toxic Avenger is. [01:03:20] Speaker B: Right. [01:03:20] Speaker A: Fucking dreadful. Half a star. Fucking awful, awful shit. Just leans into slapstick and comedy sound effects and fight scenes that go on for literally kind of 10, 12 minutes. Just repetitive. Also, even more wildly racist than the original, with most of the film taking place in Japan. So you can imagine how that's a hotbed of, you know, stereotypes and outright racism. [01:03:49] Speaker B: Just thankfully, I have not had the displeasure of seeing that one. [01:03:52] Speaker A: No one's attempting Toxic Avenger. None at all. Because there it is. I think what I respond to about Toxic Avenger, I find a charming film. [01:04:02] Speaker B: Right. Just certainly not something I would refer to it as. But what I did say was I was like, whatever, like, charm or things like that that I can at least understand people pulling from it, I cannot imagine doing. Again, there's no way to take whatever authenticity does exist in that initial movie and then make like, four more that aren't just like, well, this. I think it's the idea that what people liked about it. [01:04:34] Speaker A: Yes. [01:04:35] Speaker B: Was exactly the racism and, you know, like, all that kind of stuff. Taking out that and I think even the existence of those things as part of, you know, it's hard for me to give them any credit for the first when that was how they interpreted the success of it and leveraged it into other ones. So, yeah, my, my 80s faves are usually a little less. Yeah. Trying to offend these kinds of ones. I don't have. I think part of it, too, is just like, you know, when you grow up, like, the only black kid in white classes all the time. [01:05:12] Speaker A: Yes. [01:05:12] Speaker B: You're, like, so used to just, like, this kind of stuff all the time. Right. So there's like, I think a, a bit of just, like, weariness I have. [01:05:22] Speaker A: Of like, I get it. I hear it loud and clear. [01:05:25] Speaker B: But like I said, I knew this was not gonna be one we'd tussle over because it's just. [01:05:30] Speaker A: I don't disagree with the word you're saying. [01:05:32] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. It just hits differently when you watch, that's all. You see the charm, but I don't. [01:05:38] Speaker A: Yes. Understood. And I, I, I'm just gonna crack on here. Right. Because I have to roll on. So the year is 2025, and finally, finally Friends. The Predator is getting the respect it deserves. The Yautja is back in more powerful and more and more just awesome and badass than it's ever been right. With Prey last year and with Predator Badlands coming later this year and this week, seeing Predator Killer of Killers. [01:06:21] Speaker B: I didn't even know this was like happening. I had no idea this was a thing. [01:06:25] Speaker A: I knew it was coming, but I didn't realize it was coming so soon. I didn't know it was. It was imminent. So imagine my delight then earlier this week when I've got a fucking afternoon off work. Not only is there a fucking animated Predator movie, but it's actually sick as fuck as well. [01:06:40] Speaker B: I've heard great things about it. I haven't had a chance to watch it myself, but I. I've heard it's really good. [01:06:46] Speaker A: Oh, it's stunning. So takes the form of three individual tales at different periods of human history. And right after Prey, Right. Everybody all over social media was like, ah, they should do Predator. In this period of time, they should do Predator. [01:07:03] Speaker B: Why are you doing that voice? I think you said the same thing. [01:07:06] Speaker A: Yeah, but I didn't say it like that. I wasn't irritating with it. Every cunt rocked up with like their favorite historical people. Well, that's what this film does. It picks. Okay, you've got. [01:07:18] Speaker B: It's Predator. [01:07:19] Speaker A: What if it is Predator. What if you've got Viking Predator, You've got Samurai Predator and you've got World War Dogfight Predator and they're all awesome. The third one is the weakest, but it then wraps it all up. It's got surprises in there. It's got, you know, it's got just nods. You aren't expecting it. It expands and goes into Predator law. We end up on the Predator home planet. It's fucking beautiful. And one suspects that it'll lead directly into Badlands later this year. [01:07:57] Speaker B: Excellent. [01:07:58] Speaker A: It's so validating to watch that this week. [01:08:00] Speaker B: I'm looking forward to it. [01:08:01] Speaker A: It's so validating to have beloved properties, get the dust blown off them and yeah, to get the fucking respect. And not respect is maybe the wrong word because, you know, it's silly, but sure. What's the word? The loving treatment to have their potential realized. The potential that you always knew was there. [01:08:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:08:21] Speaker A: You know, just to know that others see it. Predator, killer, killers is fucking great. And it's broad, you know, it's in that kind of low frame rate animation style that is on vogue right now. The spider verse kind of Ninja Turtles. [01:08:37] Speaker B: Yeah, you. [01:08:39] Speaker A: But the violence, and there is much violence is super kind of weighty and heavy and there's loads of gore and fucking bad language and Predator tech. And just sick awesomeness. Just a great time. Great fucking time into it. [01:08:56] Speaker B: Yeah, man, I'm there. [01:08:57] Speaker A: Yep. Have you watched any films this week? Because I could just keep going. [01:09:00] Speaker B: I have. I've gotten through through some, but mostly re watches. I rewatched the Black Phone the other day. I think I was talking to Kyo about something and it like instantly like just made me want to watch it, I think about something 70s related or whatever. And I was like. I was like, I want to watch the Black Phone. And I think I liked it even more than before. Watching it now. I just really love the Black Phone. I'm stoked to see what I mean. Hopefully the sequel is going to be interesting, but it won't be loved this one. Well, we'll see. We'll see. I like this one so much, but I forgot how good the little girl in the black Phone. [01:09:41] Speaker A: All the kids in the black phone are fantastic. [01:09:43] Speaker B: Yeah, they're all phenomenal, that girl. [01:09:45] Speaker A: Which isn't something you say often, is it? [01:09:47] Speaker B: No. Kids are usually the weakest part of something. I almost never want to see children in a movie. But that is not the case in this one. So strong. I rewatched your next, which I hadn't watched in years but was like one of my favorites at the time it came out in 2013 or 2014. Home invasion flick about a girl who comes home with her fiance to his rich family and all hell breaks loose in the home. And you know, I don't love it as much as I did at the time. I was surprised because I think there's a lot of movies that have come out so since you're next that have done similar things better. And so it's kind of got that very like. Well, it feels like it's the 2010s. And so, you know, I still like it. It's just not like mind blowing like it was when I saw it in 2013. Still has the best final girl ever though. You cannot do better than the final girl from your next. She's so good. [01:10:46] Speaker A: Listen. I was listening to that. But just off topic, have you been keeping up to with what's going on with Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Currently? [01:10:57] Speaker B: No. [01:10:57] Speaker A: The rights are in the middle of a very heated bidding war. Right. [01:11:02] Speaker B: Oh, someone. I did see a poll about this on YouTube last. [01:11:06] Speaker A: Some of the fucking people who are. [01:11:08] Speaker B: Trying to get their hands on Texas neon. [01:11:10] Speaker A: A24 wants a crack. Who's that guy you hate from Twisters? [01:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah, Glenn Powell. [01:11:17] Speaker A: Oz Perkins. [01:11:19] Speaker B: Oz Perkins. [01:11:20] Speaker A: Jordan Peele. [01:11:21] Speaker B: Jordan Peele. [01:11:22] Speaker A: So you know, whatever happens to Texas. [01:11:24] Speaker B: Next, it's in big hands. [01:11:27] Speaker A: Yeah. It's gonna be huge. It's gonna be, you know. [01:11:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Such huge tonal differences between those, like, studios and people too. Just please fucking God, not Glenn Powell. [01:11:38] Speaker A: Yeah. But I'd be happy with any of those names. Neon, A24, Jordan Peel, Oz Perkins would be my pick, obviously. [01:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah. I think that's what I said in the poll. As Oz Perkins, I was like, yeah, I would be interested to see what. [01:11:51] Speaker A: He would do with Where's Freddy? Where is Freddy? [01:11:53] Speaker B: Anyway, it'll happen. I also, you know, rewatched Rope as one of our pride films that I was recommending, which is known for its sort of gay innuendo at a time when you could not sort of be open with that kind of thing. And was based on the real life serial killers Leopold and Loeb. You know, the two spoiled rich boys who thought that they had committed the perfect crime and could totally get away with it, but it was very stupid and they were caught. But there's, you know, a lot of speculation about them being gay and whatnot. And so this movie kind of plays off of that. You get some great Jimmy Stewart in this. [01:12:35] Speaker A: Is it stupid as your perfect murder plan? Poison. All right, thanks. Thanks for coming. Poison? [01:12:44] Speaker B: You mean the one that the exact expert said I would get away with? [01:12:48] Speaker A: Whatever. [01:12:50] Speaker B: If you've never seen Rope, Alfred Hitchcock, you gotta watch it. It's about two idiot assholes who kill a guy. [01:12:59] Speaker A: Idiot assholes. [01:13:03] Speaker B: Oh, no. And then they put him in a trunk, which they then have a dinner party on top of. But one of them invites Jimmy Stewart, who is a little bit of a busybody Sherlock Holmes type. And they are trying to hide it from him as he's increasingly figuring out they have done something terrible. Great flick. [01:13:25] Speaker A: Speaking of busybody Sherlock Holmes types. Right? Since that horseshit that Natasha Leone spouted this week about what David lynch may. [01:13:35] Speaker B: Or may not have been on a roll. [01:13:36] Speaker A: Man, I can't watch Poker Face anymore. I tried. [01:13:39] Speaker B: No, same. I'm finding her very annoying on it as a result of her real life bullshit. [01:13:46] Speaker A: I. Yeah, I tried watching episode six of Poker Face earlier on. I just turned it off halfway through. I've completely lost interest since. [01:13:53] Speaker B: Same. [01:13:54] Speaker A: You don't. He's not. He's barely cold in the fucking ground. Like in your fucking. [01:13:58] Speaker B: For those who are not very online, Natasha Lyonne claimed that David lynch encouraged her use of AI before he died. [01:14:08] Speaker A: And all to add legitimacy to this bullshit AI studio that she's. [01:14:12] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:14:12] Speaker A: Trying to get off the ground. [01:14:15] Speaker B: Yeah, sure, sure, lady. That sounds like a thing. [01:14:19] Speaker A: David Lynch. You want us. You want us with a straight face. You want us to believe that David lynch endorsed the use of AI in the creative process. You. Did he, Natasha. Did he? [01:14:31] Speaker B: Did he really? [01:14:32] Speaker A: Did he. [01:14:33] Speaker B: Someone pointed out that, I guess he did do an NFT with some band at some point. But, like, also, David lynch was old, so there's also a part of me that thinks that, like, he just didn't understand it. I mean, no one understands NFTs, but. [01:14:50] Speaker A: Like, I think they're gonna be. [01:14:52] Speaker B: You know what I mean? It's gonna be huge. Gonna be next big thing. But I'm like, my two sort of things about. This is like a. He probably had no fucking idea what AI really is. Like, what, What. At what point was David lynch sitting there like, oh, better look into AI. That's gonna be really useful for me. [01:15:09] Speaker A: I'll at least put you back. Come on. [01:15:14] Speaker B: That's. The voice would have. While talking about. [01:15:17] Speaker A: AI is gonna be great. [01:15:21] Speaker B: That's pretty good. But also, the entire anecdote she told sounded like when someone is trying to be polite to you because they like you, but they think you're an idiot, it's like, sure, I think you misread the situation here, babe. But, yeah, I've had the same issue with Poker Face as a result. [01:15:43] Speaker A: Killed it. Killed it. Dead. [01:15:44] Speaker B: I think it's. Yeah, it's over. [01:15:46] Speaker A: Tangentially related. No, I actually feel quite guilty that I didn't invite you to watch the Surfer with me. I'm sorry. [01:15:53] Speaker B: I was a little surprised to see that on there and to have not received an invitation. [01:15:58] Speaker A: I was being opportunistic. I had a couple hours in front of me, so I thought, right, let's bang this on. I apologize. I think maybe it was early in the day, maybe. I don't know, but it's great. [01:16:08] Speaker B: Okay. [01:16:09] Speaker A: Sorry about that. [01:16:10] Speaker B: I mean, I want to see it. [01:16:10] Speaker A: It's terrific. It's. It's. It's you. Much like we had the discussion about Sinners, right? You might. You might have seen the trailer for this, for the Surfer a lot of times, but you don't know what it is. [01:16:22] Speaker B: Oh, great. [01:16:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what you. What you probably do know is that Nic Cage is gonna turn the fuck up. [01:16:29] Speaker B: Of course. [01:16:30] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:16:30] Speaker B: Yes. That's what I'm looking for. [01:16:31] Speaker A: You know, you got all the flavors of Cage. You've got leading man Cage. You've got like, you know, you've got crazy Cage. You've Got horror, Cage, you got action movie Cage, Crime lord Cage, sure. Alcoholic Cage, drug addict Cage. You get about 6 of those in this one movie. He transitions between eras of Cage. [01:16:53] Speaker B: Excellent. [01:16:53] Speaker A: It's fantastic. It makes some plot decisions that don't really hang together for me, that don't really pass the sniff test. So I knocked off half a star. But all three and a half of the stars it gets are well earned. It's. Ah, man. Can I talk about it? Because it's quite new. Can I, can I. [01:17:15] Speaker B: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I haven't seen it. Okay, okay, Goober. [01:17:21] Speaker A: We'll come back to it then. Let's please come back and discuss the Surfer a little more. Beautiful film. Beautiful, beautiful film. Beautifully soundtracked, just over saturated, beautiful color. It is a hot kind of oppressive, smelly kind of film. Just angsty, very tense. You know, things get worse when you don't think they can get worse. There's another, there's always another gear of worseness to this film. You will be very anxious. I think you particularly will watch the sofa with a growing sense of dread. [01:17:57] Speaker B: Great. [01:17:58] Speaker A: It is though. It is. It's a really, really fun, fun film. He good. Fucking hell, man. What a run he is on. [01:18:06] Speaker B: Yeah, it's true, isn't it? He's out of his, his bankruptcy era, you know, where he was just kind of making whatever the fuck because he, he needed to pay bills. It's like now he's in the prestige era of, of Nick Cage. [01:18:21] Speaker A: Ah, I could not agree more. And the surfer, right, is very low in terms of scale. It all takes place in like a, you know, maybe a half a kilometer worth of sure of estate. It is a, in terms of its breadth, it's a very narrow movie. But within that kind of narrow setup. I think that helps with the tension because you know, you never see what's outside of the scope of this very tight movie. And things are building and building and bubbling and bubbling. It's really good. [01:18:55] Speaker B: I'm in. [01:18:55] Speaker A: Yeah, you'd love it for it. [01:18:57] Speaker B: I. There was. Oh, I watched. Every now and again I'll open up like Peacock or Hulu or something like that and there'll be things on there. Peacock more than Hulu. Hulu kind of sucks, but on Peacock every now and again it's like, huh, there's like a. They have a fair amount of kind of low budget horrors that are kind of indie as opposed to like Hulu produces their own horror movies, right. And so they're all like of a kind and they're all extremely mid where Peacock like distributes a lot of stuff made by other people. [01:19:31] Speaker A: Was it Hulu who were behind that shit as fuck? Short lived mobile first video content. [01:19:40] Speaker B: You mean Quibi Query. [01:19:41] Speaker A: I'm sure Hulu were the finances behind that. [01:19:44] Speaker B: I don't think so. I think that was like a bunch of venture capital bros like that. I don't think it was connected to anybody. [01:19:50] Speaker A: Okay, okay. [01:19:51] Speaker B: But no Hulu, you know, they just, they have their own kind of stuff that they make or whatever. One of my friends who's an actress, she like came to me with like something from Hulu that she had been, you know, they were like, do you want to be in this movie? And I was like looking at. I was like, don't do that. I was like, this is, this is gonna be terrible. It's not. I wouldn't do that. She was like, okay, cool. I needed to know from someone who watches horror movies. [01:20:18] Speaker A: Just before he died, David lynch actually texted me and said, Marco, Quibby is gonna be great. Gonna be the next big thing. You see what he said to me before he died? [01:20:28] Speaker B: It's like half David lynch and half Newsy. [01:20:33] Speaker A: Marco. The movies on phones. [01:20:36] Speaker B: That's the future Mark. [01:20:38] Speaker A: Because he was famously in phone. [01:20:39] Speaker B: I was, yeah. I was on Peacock the other day and noticed that there was a new movie with. Does she. Does she go by Susie Izard? Is that like the, the name now? [01:20:54] Speaker A: Oh, I don't know. [01:20:55] Speaker B: I'm like, I don't know. She should go by the same last name. Susie is her first name. [01:20:58] Speaker A: Okay. [01:20:59] Speaker B: I assume the same last name. But anyway, she's in movie called Dr. Jekyll which is exactly what you think it is. It's just a new take on Jekyll and Hyde. And it's, you know, it's not. It's a Hammer movie. And so it has that kind of campiness to it. And it's not like great, but I think it's like a good enough time that it's worth watching. [01:21:24] Speaker A: This is like the forced Hammer have tried to reinvent themselves though, isn't it? This is like that studio name. Yeah. [01:21:31] Speaker B: They will not die worth much. No, but it's like it's a no budget movie, you know. But she is clearly having a good time. You know my biggest complaint in it is that there's just like not enough difference between the Jekyll and Hyde halves of her in it. But nonetheless I think it's really fun. And the guy who plays kind of the lead role in it, basically the story being that he has just gotten out of jail. He's like a young guy who's like in his early 20s, just been released from jail and needs to get a job because his, you know, he's got a baby mama and a baby. The baby mama, as we find out, is like a meth addict. But he, he wants to get his daughter back who he's never met and he needs to have like a job in order to do that. And he ends up getting hired on by Dr. Jekyll to like work basically as her assistant. And in the meantime, this meth addict mama realizes, hey, if you let me inside, I could rob this woman and you know, we'd be set right, one last score, which leads to all kinds of crazy things or whatever. And it's, you know, he's really good. So the acting is pretty, pretty solid in it. And it's just, it's not something to like dedicate a whole lot of brain power to. But if you're just sitting there and like, I just feel like putting something on Dr. Jekyll on Peacock is a fun time. [01:23:13] Speaker A: Nice. Okay, okay, look, I, I enjoy that. Hammer is still out there. It's. [01:23:18] Speaker B: Yeah, right, Keep on keeping on, you know, it's probably not winners for the most part, but I appreciate just putting this low budge stuff out and doing the best they can. [01:23:30] Speaker A: My very, very, very early horror memories are Hammer movies. [01:23:35] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. [01:23:37] Speaker A: Just Christopher Lee's Dracula, Peter Cushing, and a fascinating old Hammer movie called the Ghoul, which very vague memories of, but like an old country house and somebody had like Vic's son in a cupboard, you know. [01:23:56] Speaker B: Nice. Yeah, good, Love it. [01:23:58] Speaker A: Very good. Shit. I will speak briefly of. Look, so I'm in the middle of a book right now called the Last Action Heroes. [01:24:06] Speaker B: Okay, Right, yeah, you mentioned. [01:24:09] Speaker A: Written by, what's his name? Just lean over here. Written by Nick, Nick Dissemin, who is the editor of Empire magazine. British. [01:24:23] Speaker B: Okay. [01:24:24] Speaker A: Absolute, just British cornerstone of film journalism. Empire, right. It's been going as long as I can remember and is, you know, it's, it's the, the name that you immediately think of when you think of film journalism in the uk. Empire, sight and sound, they are, they are the big hitters. And he's written a book all about the kind of the, the key players in action cinema of the 80s and 90s. So Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan, Bruce Willis, Dolph Lundgren, that lot and talks about a lot of the tales are apocryphal from, you know, readers, you Know really factually rigorous accounts, but you know who the key players, writers, what, what the early years of Stallone, Schwarzenegger's lives were like, fascinating stuff. And he's got me on an 80s action binge. So, having loved First Blood as much as I did, a few weeks back, I watched First Blood Part two. [01:25:19] Speaker B: Nice. All right. [01:25:23] Speaker A: It's a good movie. [01:25:23] Speaker B: It's good, good, good stuff. [01:25:25] Speaker A: Listen, it's. It's a good fucking movie. [01:25:29] Speaker B: Nice. [01:25:29] Speaker A: I won't hear shit. [01:25:30] Speaker B: I saw. I was watching something the other day and I don't know exactly what it was, but it showed clips from the most recent Rambo, the one from like 2018 or whatever. The one that's like, just called Rambo. [01:25:50] Speaker A: John Rumbo. [01:25:51] Speaker B: It was a YouTube. It's called YouTube video. Yeah, I think it's. I think it's just called Rambo. Maybe this is a British versus American, possibly title thing, but I think it was just called rambo because the YouTube video I was talking about was talking about the absurd naming conventions. [01:26:05] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [01:26:05] Speaker B: Of Rambo. And so the fact that that one is called Rambo, but it's not then, but it's not before Rambo. First Blood Part 2 is confusing. Anyway, point is, the most recent Rambo, the, like, violence in that, unhinged. I thought it was like Tropic Thunder level where I was like, is this a serious movie? [01:26:28] Speaker A: I think there might be one more Ramble than you think, you know? [01:26:32] Speaker B: Oh, is that the case? [01:26:33] Speaker A: Maybe that's why there's Rambo 3. Then there's Rambo from 2008. Ah. And then there's Last Blood from 2019. [01:26:41] Speaker B: Now that must be the one. Rambo, Last blood. [01:26:44] Speaker A: Rambo from 2008 is also fucking great, right? And it's. I'm pointing to it right there on my Blu Ray shelf. I own a physical copy of Rambo 2008 because it's that fucking good. And that's the one that goes Tropic Thunder. It dials the fucking violence up to absurd levels. [01:27:02] Speaker B: Okay, maybe that's what it was. I was just like, this is not a serious movie. I thought it was a joke. [01:27:07] Speaker A: The last one does as well. Rambo 2019, that does too. But you're right about the naming convention. It's complete gibberish. But this, what this book does is it throws up a lot of alt timeline, fascinating kind of alt universe scenarios. I had no idea that James Cameron came really close to making Rambo 2. And you can see that he's, he's, he's still co credited as a co writer of the movie. Yes, he is. Even though apparently the. The script that made it to screen doesn't really have a lot in common with Cameron's version. [01:27:40] Speaker B: Sure. [01:27:41] Speaker A: But he's got a co writing credit on it. [01:27:42] Speaker B: But if there's pages. Exactly. [01:27:44] Speaker A: And came very close to having directed the movie, which is fascinating to me. [01:27:47] Speaker B: Interesting. [01:27:48] Speaker A: Sliding doors, baby. [01:27:50] Speaker B: Sliding doors. Perfect. The only one thing that I just wanted to. Oh, go ahead. [01:27:55] Speaker A: No, please. [01:27:57] Speaker B: I just want to mention one more thing, just as a side. I watched the TV series Sirens on Netflix and please, if anyone else has watched this, just post in the Facebook or on the Discord or something about this show because it is the. One of the weirdest shows, shows I have ever seen tonally in my life. And it's not doing that on purpose. It is a. A show that starts by like seeming to be about a girl who realizes her sister's in a cult and tries to break her out of it, and then quickly abandons that storyline altogether and then becomes about like. Every episode seems to shift what the conflict is between these people until the final episode ends somewhere where you're like, this was not at all the show that was on the box. Like, what is this at all? I just watched the whole series. Like I was grading, so it was just, you know, binge watch kind of thing. And I was like, I don't. I don't understand anything. It was like also like, it got really like slapstick and funny in like the second to last episode where it had been a drama the entire time. [01:29:18] Speaker A: Is that intentional, though? Is it done with intentionality or. [01:29:22] Speaker B: I think it's just half. Yeah, is what it is. The actors are great and it has Megan Fahey and Julianne Moore and stuff like that Kevin Bacon. Great cast. It's. It's much like Perfect Getaway, I think the one that Liev Schreiber and Nicole Kidman where it's like they put together the cast and then we're like, I guess we have to build a show around this and it's fucking unhinged. So if you've watched Sirens, please talk to me about Sirens. That's the only reason I wanted to bring it up. I just need someone to discuss Sirens with. [01:29:55] Speaker A: I'll. I'll close out this movie, chat with Trouble every day. Is that a movie you've heard of? [01:30:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I've heard the name. I don't know what it's about. [01:30:03] Speaker A: Okay, Corrigan, I cannot stress this enough. [01:30:06] Speaker B: For you personally when you say my name like that. I just want to be like Margathan. We'll go there. [01:30:16] Speaker A: Do not watch this film. [01:30:18] Speaker B: Oh no. Okay. [01:30:19] Speaker A: Just you personally, I, I, I, it was too bad myself. Lots to like about it, but sure. You don't like Draculas, do you? [01:30:29] Speaker B: No, not particularly. [01:30:30] Speaker A: Okay, okay, what about a movie about Draculas with really, really graphic bitey violence? [01:30:36] Speaker B: Oh no, not so much. [01:30:37] Speaker A: Okay, okay. [01:30:38] Speaker B: Necks and wrists. [01:30:39] Speaker A: Okay, what about a movie about Dracula's with really bitey, graphic, rapey violence? You'd enjoy that, wouldn't you? No, sir. [01:30:48] Speaker B: Yeah, no, not so much. [01:30:49] Speaker A: Oh, oh. And it's French. [01:30:52] Speaker B: Oh God. This is a movie built specifically to repel me. [01:30:58] Speaker A: There you go. [01:30:59] Speaker B: Okay, noted. But what did you think of it as? Not me. [01:31:05] Speaker A: I hate, I hate like getting, I hate fucking describing films in the context of other directors, right? Particularly Cronenberg. But it feels so influenced by early Cronenberg films. Medical settings, vampirism as a disease. Cold. Such a cold, cold, cold film. No emotion to it at all. Almost, almost documentarian in its setup. Very graphic in its. It's got one of the best vampire kills I've ever, ever seen in it. [01:31:40] Speaker B: Okay. [01:31:41] Speaker A: In that look, the reality of someone having their skin and neck bitten and their fucking blood drank would be grim as fuck. Screaming and pain and blood everywhere. But, but you know, I don't know. I'm sure there's loads of reasons, but, but Draculas are often just really, really linked to erotic fucking po faced, you know, dead ass eroticism. And this film leans right into that. It, okay. You know, it's vampirism as a, as a, as a framing device for sexual abuse and power dynamics and whatever. [01:32:23] Speaker B: Okay. [01:32:24] Speaker A: You wouldn't like it, but I gave it a couple stars. It was a good laugh. [01:32:27] Speaker B: So you would recommend it to people who are not me if you don't have my specific hang ups? [01:32:33] Speaker A: If you like what I've just described. Yeah. [01:32:36] Speaker B: Okay. Imagine it's good at doing that thing. [01:32:38] Speaker A: It's doing exactly the best. You didn't like bones and all either, did you? [01:32:42] Speaker B: No, I did not. [01:32:43] Speaker A: There you go. It add it add shades of that for me as well. Way more extreme and way more French. [01:32:49] Speaker B: Okay, fair enough. [01:32:51] Speaker A: All right. [01:32:53] Speaker B: So this week we kind of are returning a little bit to last week's topic and let me explain why or my cold open last week. It's somewhat related and what happened was each week we usually try to not tell the other person what we're talking about. But ask have you we discussed this or are you familiar? [01:33:16] Speaker A: Allude. [01:33:17] Speaker B: Don't we with this, right? Yes. And so I asked something along the lines of like, you know, are we. Have we done NASCAR deaths? Or something along those lines? And then your response was something like, no, but there's something. Because you did not realize what I was hinting at here. So you were like, no, but there's something in the idea of like, deaths that have happened in front of an audience, you know, and we've talked about Owen Hart before. You know, we did a one on wrestling deaths with my dear friend Duncan a few years ago and talked about stuff like that. So we've kind of broached the topic before, but, you know, because this was a thing that came up, we're like, hey, yeah, let's do that next week. Let's talk about this. So we're gonna give you more grisly public death. [01:34:08] Speaker A: The angle here for me. [01:34:09] Speaker B: Talk about. Yeah, go ahead. [01:34:14] Speaker A: You ever seen a dead body. [01:34:17] Speaker B: In real life? [01:34:18] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:19] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, I've been to a funeral, a couple funerals. [01:34:22] Speaker A: Horrible, isn't it? Seeing it. Seeing a dead person. [01:34:25] Speaker B: Yeah. No, I don't like it. [01:34:27] Speaker A: It's. It's horrible. [01:34:29] Speaker B: Yeah. It's all the. Just like the life missing from that is exactly it. [01:34:35] Speaker A: It is missing. It's. [01:34:37] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like it. That's the thing that I think of is just. [01:34:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:34:41] Speaker B: The. You're looking at a thing and the life is gone. [01:34:44] Speaker A: Yeah. And while it might even. Even though it physically resembles what you remember it as, it's not. It's. The features are wrong and there's nothing there. It's missing. [01:34:56] Speaker B: So I. I went to one of my friend's funeral, like 10 years ago now, I think, because it came up in Facebook memories, so it's great. Hey, remember that time your friend died? Good job, Zuck. You've really nailed this algorithm. But that was like. I'd been to a different funeral before for like one of Kio's aunt or something like that, you know, open casket sort of situation. So they had an open casket at his. And I was like, I don't. That was the thing where I was like, I don't want to see the like, without life version. [01:35:31] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:35:31] Speaker B: Of him. I was like, that does not appeal to me. I'm just gonna sit this one. [01:35:35] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. It. It leaves you changed somehow. [01:35:39] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. [01:35:40] Speaker A: It isn't something that you can forget easily. It isn't something that you. You walk away from the same as you were before. Right. So I think there's something all together, nastier at having that foisted upon you. [01:35:56] Speaker B: Mmm, yeah. [01:35:57] Speaker A: And seeing the before and the after and watching something as fucking heartrending as that when. As when for all you knew you were going to see a concert. [01:36:07] Speaker B: Right. Unexpectedly. Yes. No reason for you to think you would see something like this. Because one of the things that I said too was, you know, when we talk about people dying in front of a crowd, one of the things that we were thinking is that surprise factor. So like when you think of something horrible happening that's like, you don't expect that unless you're at like a bull fight. Yeah, that's like always a possibility. It doesn't happen all the time. But you like, you go knowing you could see someone gorged. [01:36:36] Speaker A: Yes. [01:36:37] Speaker B: And so the things that we were. What we kind of wanted to look at was that like the shocking changes, you kind of incident where you were completely unaware that you were going to see something like this. [01:36:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Or even not even in some cases just to see it, but to be involved in it, to be a part of the sequence of events, the unexpected bolt out of the blue, tragedy that leaves people dead or otherwise changed when. Fuck me. That was the absolute. It was the one thing you didn't want to happen, right? [01:37:09] Speaker B: Yes. Swear. Do you want to start? [01:37:14] Speaker A: I will, I will. I mean, look, I got video here too, you'd be shocked to hear. When, when you think of wrestling deaths, obviously you straight away go to Owen Hart. [01:37:27] Speaker B: Yes, yes. And in fact I sent you on Facebook, like a conversation people were having on Facebook who of like guys who had been there. Which was another interesting thing about memory too because there was a lot of arguments, oh, this person must be lying because they remember it differently. And it's like you saw someone die. [01:37:46] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:37:47] Speaker B: Your memory is gonna be a little fucked. [01:37:49] Speaker A: Yes. But I mean there is a far more recent example of an in ring death which, which you know, because it was at an indie show in Mexico. Absolutely no power for anyone to shut down because it wasn't kind of televised live. But it was immediately spread like absolute wildfire through footage of the event, through phone footage. I'll tell you the story of Pero Aguayo Jr. Nice. How did I do? [01:38:26] Speaker B: Close. [01:38:27] Speaker A: Pero Aguayo Jr. [01:38:31] Speaker B: Pero Aguayo Jr Pero. [01:38:33] Speaker A: Aguayo Jr. A luchador born into a wrestling family, long, you know, comparatively long career. He, he was active for 20 years across all of the major Mexican promotions. He was in CMLL for a long time. He was in Triple A. And as you'd expect, what this case brings Home to me, right, is if you think about people like Soraya and if you think about people like Bryan Danielson, if you think of people like Edge who come back after extended periods of what at the time were considered career ending neck issues. Right. Pero had accumulated neck injuries throughout his career. Right. Dating back to like 2011. He had time off with herniated discs with, you know, cervical strain. Eid. It, it's. It's. It's a. It's a horrible reality of that business that you work through muscular and skeletal issues. [01:39:48] Speaker B: Right. [01:39:51] Speaker A: So in 2012, for this. No, not in 2012. Sorry. My apologies. 2015, March 20, 2015, in what was an indie show, but a quite a high profile indie show because it featured one Rey Mysterio Jr. Right. [01:40:07] Speaker B: Okay. Yeah. [01:40:08] Speaker A: Rey Mysterio, who had recently left the big leagues. He was in one of the periods where he had left wwe and this was one of his first ever indie bookings. [01:40:18] Speaker B: Okay. [01:40:18] Speaker A: So for an indie big show and I'm gonna fuck it. Do you know what? I'll just send you the video. Video. I'll just send you a video. [01:40:28] Speaker B: Right, okay. To warn me ahead how I will like, let me copy. Yeah. How violent am I about? [01:40:36] Speaker A: Listen, it isn't violent at all, but you are about to see a guy die. Okay, Maybe cut this bit out while I'm sending you the video. You won't cut it out. I know you won't. You never do. [01:40:44] Speaker B: Probably not. No. [01:40:45] Speaker A: Realistically, never do. [01:40:49] Speaker B: Listen, I try. It's just, you know, we talk for a long time. It's hard to remember. All right. [01:40:55] Speaker A: Okay. So yes, full crowd. You see the. A lot of people in there, a lot of kids. I would like you to go to. Let's see if you scrub forward to go to say, five minutes 20. [01:41:17] Speaker B: All right, 5:20. We got, you know, people being tossed around as. [01:41:23] Speaker A: Guy in the black T shirt. Guy in the black T shirt is Pero. Okay. [01:41:27] Speaker B: All right. [01:41:28] Speaker A: Rey hits him with a head scissors. Hurricane Rana throws him out of the ring. [01:41:31] Speaker B: Out of the ring, rolled back in. [01:41:33] Speaker A: Okay. [01:41:35] Speaker B: And bam. [01:41:36] Speaker A: Hits him. That drop kick. That drop kick right there. [01:41:40] Speaker B: Oh, and he's just. So basically he was drop kicked. [01:41:45] Speaker A: He's set up for the 619. And you'll notice he is not moving. [01:41:49] Speaker B: He's not moving. He is. So he got sort of kicked into the. Oh, my God. Kicked into the ropes. And so he. But the way he landed, his arms were draped over the middle ropes. [01:42:00] Speaker A: Right. That setup is classic for Rey Mysterio's finishing move. The six' one nine, right? [01:42:06] Speaker B: Yeah. It's one I've seen plenty of times. I wouldn't have thought. [01:42:09] Speaker A: It's the most ridiculous finishing move in all of wrestling. Because it depends on your opponent being a very specific, specific position and not moving until you execute the right. [01:42:17] Speaker B: Exactly. So he is set up in something. Yeah. That. [01:42:19] Speaker A: Go back a little bit to me, if you don't mind to say. 5 minutes 50. Little bit further. No, let's go. 5 minutes 30. [01:42:27] Speaker B: Okay. [01:42:28] Speaker A: The head. Scissors. He goes out the ring. [01:42:31] Speaker B: Right. [01:42:32] Speaker A: He rolls back in. [01:42:34] Speaker B: Yep. [01:42:35] Speaker A: Bang. That drop kick there. [01:42:37] Speaker B: Yep. [01:42:38] Speaker A: That drop kick there is regarded as being the one which fractured his C1, C2 vertebra as he fell into the ropes. That severed his spinal cord. [01:42:53] Speaker B: Oh, Jesus Christ. [01:42:55] Speaker A: Causing. [01:42:56] Speaker B: He's draped there. [01:42:57] Speaker A: Yep. [01:42:57] Speaker B: And you know, you see, you know, another guy kind of go up and he's, like, checking on him. And then you see almost, you know, another move being performed above his head. Yeah. And then he sorts. Sort of. [01:43:11] Speaker A: He's dead. The guy's dead. [01:43:13] Speaker B: He's clearly dead. He dropped. He drops onto the lower rope. And the other guys kind of. Basically, they kick one guy out of the ring so that he can attend to him. It looks like as he's just kind of. Yeah, he's. He's gone. He's draped over that bottom rope. Completely gone. [01:43:35] Speaker A: A combination of that drop kick and him hitting the rope in that particular. Particular angle. [01:43:40] Speaker B: Just the perfect combination of things. [01:43:42] Speaker A: And such a pedestrian move that he would have done 50 fucking times that night alone. [01:43:48] Speaker B: I mean, when people say, you know, wrestling is fake or whatever, like, this is where, like, it's not. The man was really kicked. Right. Like, it was, you know, pulled. You know, he clearly wasn't going to get, like, in a normal situation, he was going to get really injured. But he received a blow. And because of his previous injuries. [01:44:10] Speaker A: Exactly. Made that specific area super vulnerable, super weak. [01:44:15] Speaker B: Right. [01:44:15] Speaker A: And severed his spinal cord. And he's dead. He's dead right there. [01:44:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:44:20] Speaker A: And right there. I vividly remember the days after this happening and of the toxic fucking shithole that is the Internet wrestling community. Rey Mysterio killed the guy with the 619. He killed the guy with his fucking finishing move. Fuck off. No, he did not. [01:44:36] Speaker B: No, he didn't. [01:44:38] Speaker A: A history of neck injury and neck trauma exacerbated by a fucking journeyman move which any wrestler. Any. Any Lucha wrestler, no one would have thought anything 50 fucking times a night just tweaked his neck, killed him. [01:44:53] Speaker B: I mean, this is like you said with other wrestlers who have come back from neck injuries like Saraya and whatnot. Like, a lot of times they'll play an angle of, you know, another wrestler acting like they are, you know, punishing that person's neck or whatever to, you know, scare us in the audience. And it. It works because I'm like, fuck, if you do that wrong, you can just kill a person in the ring like that. And they know what they're doing. You know, this is a freak accident, but it is. It's a terrifying element of the sport. [01:45:26] Speaker A: It is. It is utterly terrifying. More so the. You know, for. It just brings home to me how these performers who come back afterwards, it. It could happen at any point, right? [01:45:42] Speaker B: Yeah. They're taking their lives in their hands when they get in the ring. [01:45:47] Speaker A: Yes. [01:45:47] Speaker B: Yes, for sure. [01:45:48] Speaker A: And in the days, I'll tell you what you didn't see in that video is them immediately stopping the match. [01:45:57] Speaker B: No. Yeah. They just kept on going. [01:46:00] Speaker A: Yes. [01:46:01] Speaker B: Much like a NASCAR race. [01:46:03] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, Great point. Great point. [01:46:06] Speaker B: That's. Yeah, that's. That's rough. It's, you know, one of those ones that I'm sure everyone. Because, you know, he's facing one side of the audience, too, that everyone. [01:46:15] Speaker A: Audience full of kids. [01:46:16] Speaker B: Watched the light go out. Yeah. [01:46:17] Speaker A: Waving their foam fingers. [01:46:20] Speaker B: Yep. A lot of parents had to say he fell asleep or something that day. I'm sure. One of the ones that I decided to visit is one that probably a good chunk of our listeners remember. I'm sure you do, Mark. I was in high school when it happened, and despite having little context for the people involved, it was a huge story. This was the murder of founding member. [01:46:48] Speaker A: Of Pennbag, Dimebag, Daryl Poor one. [01:46:51] Speaker B: The even more violent aftermath. [01:46:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:46:56] Speaker B: Now it'll come as no surprise to most metal fans that Pantera was, you know, a little toxic. And in 2003, yeah, they experienced an explosive and vitriolic breakup with everyone pretty much leaving the band hating each other. And in an interview with the magazine Metal Hammer lead singer Phil Anselmo even said, dimebag deserves to be beaten severely. And at least one fan took that shit to heart. In December of 2004, Dimebag and his brother Vinnie Paul, who had been the band's drummer, were on tour to support their album with their new band, Damage Plan. [01:47:38] Speaker A: I'll just super quickly interject on Phil Anselmo. Right? [01:47:41] Speaker B: Do it. Yeah. [01:47:45] Speaker A: Phil Anselmo is dead to me. Absolutely dead to me in a way that you'll know that past a certain point, I'll just Cut a fucking artist the fuck off. [01:47:55] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. [01:47:56] Speaker A: And he, he reached that point when I think it was. It was. It must have been 10 years ago by now, when clearly drunk at a gig after the band had gone off, after his set had finished, there's footage clear, crystal fucking clear as day. Footage of Anselmo walking to the front of the stage, having a dialogue with some of the fucking idiots in the crowd, throwing the biggest and most out and proud Nazi salute of all and shouting white power before walking off. Just repugnant. Absolutely repugnant. Despite what he has said since and despite the, you know, the, the Weasley ass attempts he's made to play it down and to justify it and to, you know, draw on his good character and whatever. I think I. I think I even said previously on this cast, if you're a Nazi, right, just own it. [01:48:56] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. All right, Take that fan base. Those are yours now. And listen, there's a lot of people who will forgive it anyway. [01:49:02] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. But, you know, hearing him fucking twist and contort and fucking hide about it afterwards was just repulsive. So, yeah, just excuses. And Pantera's vulgar display of power was the first album I ever purchased with my own money ever. [01:49:22] Speaker B: So that's saying something. [01:49:23] Speaker A: Yep. Yeah. Bought it on tape from a music shop in Merthyr Tydville. First ever fucking album I owned. [01:49:31] Speaker B: Tarnished by big time white supremacy. [01:49:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like so many things, I think that's. [01:49:35] Speaker B: A good line, you know, I think that's a solid line to, to take no white supremacy. And also maybe don't talk in a magazine about how your, you know, bandmate should be beaten severely. I think that's a good rule of thumb as well. So, like I said, they were on tour to support their new album with their band Damage, and they were in Columbus, Ohio on the third to last show of the tour. They were about to two more shows. They were going to go home for Christmas break. Super happy, excited about things. But 30 minutes into the show, 25 year old Nathan Gale rushed the stage yelling, you killed Pantera. You ruined my life. What about Phil? He needs money to buy heroin. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue like Uranus. Those were his words. What a manifesto ran on stage. Yeah, it was, it was a manifesto, not a, not a quippy little saying here. He then shot and killed dimebag with a 9 millimeter Beretta 92FS. Chaos ensued as people tried to disarm Gale. Like I said, this is 30 minutes into the show full crowd here. So now it's a panic. What are people all supposed to do? And naturally, in these situations, people try to help. They try to stop this from. From continuing. So multiple people tried to disarm him. And in that fracas, the band's head of security, Jeffrey Mayhem Thompson, a fan named Nathan Bray, and roadie Aaron Hulk were all murdered trying to get the gun away from him before the police arrived and found Gale holding a hostage. [01:51:20] Speaker A: Good God. [01:51:22] Speaker B: Yeah. One of the officers was able to take him out with a single shot. [01:51:26] Speaker A: I didn't realize it was that messy, man. I didn't know he took out so many others and took a hostage, a. [01:51:30] Speaker B: Lot of bystanders and took a hostage in the meantime. Crazy. The part about a cop taking him out with a single shot also stresses me out because he had a gun to the person's head. And I'm like, I do not trust a cop to take proper aim and not end up with two dead people there. But it worked out, and they did manage to kill him. But this was a huge, huge thing. Like, I. At that point, you know, I listened to mostly Christian metal and not a lot of the. You know, my older brother would have listened to Pantera. I had no real frame of reference for them at the time, but it was, you know, such a huge thing that had happened. I mean, it was kind of a. Like, that moment, too. You know, I think the. The Great White Tragedy happened somewhere in that same vicinity as well, when the place burned down and killed all the fans and the stampede and whatnot. So it was like a rough moment for these, like, rock shows and whatnot. [01:52:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Remember it vividly from school. Absolutely. Remember Dimebag getting. Getting camped. [01:52:35] Speaker B: Yeah. So that was a. That was a rough one for the people who were in attendance at that particular performance, because everyone saw it. I mean, just right on stage. [01:52:47] Speaker A: Well, yeah, and there's very clear video of it, isn't it? [01:52:51] Speaker B: I think there is. I actually didn't look for this one. I only looked at video for one of the things that I was. Well, I looked up. I tried to look for one of the other ones, but there wasn't any. But, yeah, I do think there was footage of this. In fact, I think I remember seeing it on the news at the time. You know, blurry footage of, you know, the fan rushing the stage and all of that kind of stuff. So there's that. [01:53:16] Speaker A: I'm gonna end on my next one, so do. Please. [01:53:18] Speaker B: All right, let me tell you my. My other ones before we get there, then. One which we do not have video for because it was October of 1988 in an African village, so, you know, not exactly streaming on esp. Espn at that moment was a time when two Congolese football teams were in the middle of a match which was currently tied at one to one. And at that moment, lightning struck the field. This whole thing, this is one of those ones. Yeah, I. The, like, visual, for lack of a better word. We know I don't picture things, but the idea of this one really is, like, kind of horrifying to me. But players and spectators alike hit the ground immediately, suffering from burns and other injuries from the strike. But then none of the members of the visiting team got back up. While 30 people had been injured, all 11 of the visiting team had died. [01:54:26] Speaker A: On the spot from one lightning strike. [01:54:29] Speaker B: One lightning strike on the ground. Not a direct strike on them or anything like that. Just lightning hit the ground. [01:54:36] Speaker A: Rule number one. [01:54:37] Speaker B: And all 11. Yeah, deeply not safe. Right. But on top of that, right, you're not safe. All of them drop dead. But the other team was on the field, too. Not one of them was injured. All of them were fine. [01:54:56] Speaker A: You've got to ask questions, haven't you? [01:54:59] Speaker B: Right, yeah. So I was. Well, here's the thing. So obviously we have talked on here about how a lot of African cultures believe in things like witchcraft and stuff like that, Right. So it was obviously so bizarre that people were convinced that someone had actually hexed the other team or put some form of, of course, on them. Right. They were like, this can't. They can't have just died. This must be, you know, some sort of actual curse. And according to the BBC, a similar strike had actually happened in Johannesburg the same week, but half the players from both teams had dropped to the ground holding their ears and eyes. No one was killed in that case. But it also seemed to affect everyone equally. Right. It was just basically half the people on each of the teams suffered from, you know, some impact to their eyes and ears as a result of this. So to this day, no one knows why the lightning wiped out one Congolese team and left the other one without so much of a. As a headache. Just. [01:56:14] Speaker A: My God. And you say there was a similar lightning strike incident, though, similar lightning the same week? [01:56:19] Speaker B: Yeah, same week that this had happened. It was like, that was during the weekend, and this was during the week that this had happened to two different soccer teams. And these articles were from the Seattle Times and the BBC that I used for this. So this isn't like, you know, some, you know, Superstitious thing or anything like that. Like this definitely did happen and no one, no one is sure why that occurred. Just for some reason. I mean, I would. If you were to go back in time, you know, maybe it had something to do with something they were wearing. Something on the uniforms or something that they didn't check out, you know, like was there metal? Were they all wearing a necklace on one team or something like that? Like, yeah, there may be some like environmental reason that you can explain this, but nobody knows now whatever evidence there would have been. [01:57:10] Speaker A: But imagine being there. [01:57:13] Speaker B: Yeah, like that's the thing is like I'm just much like that one you just showed me of him sort of slumped over the ropes in this very casual sort of way. Like all these people, you know, the 30 spectators and these 11 people all dropped to the ground and then these ones on the field never got back up. Like that is a haunting image. You know, I saw some pictures that I think were like recreations. I don't think they were actually film from this, but that showed people just kind of like slumped over, kind of on their knees or whatever, like heads down or whatever. And like that would be like that's just such a terrifying visual to me. These people just kind of slumped over where they had once stood a second before. And just by some weird luck just being wiped out of existence right before it. Everyone's eyes. [01:58:08] Speaker A: There is so much that that would leave behind survivor's guilt, you know. [01:58:13] Speaker B: Right. [01:58:14] Speaker A: And yeah, to a crowd who may be given to superstition anyway. [01:58:20] Speaker B: Right. [01:58:20] Speaker A: That's. That's life changing. [01:58:23] Speaker B: Exactly like that is. That's what hits me with so much of this is just kind of like IM what do you do with yourself once you have seen something like this occur in front of you, you know, which leads to my, my final one, which I am sure that you have seen the video of before. I'm not gonna post this. Go find it yourself if you're really interested because it is truly horrific. Let's see here. I'm gonna hit that. And it's short, so you don't have to skip to anything. You can just look at it straight as an app appears. [01:59:01] Speaker A: Okay. Oh yeah. So we got a hockey game in mid flight. Red versus whites. We got. Oh yeah, someone's taking us. [01:59:20] Speaker B: It happens so fast. [01:59:22] Speaker A: It really does. [01:59:22] Speaker B: It comes out of understand what occurs in this video, which is one of the reasons this video exists. [01:59:30] Speaker A: Honestly, watching this over and over again, you can't see the injury happen. You can't see the moment of Impact so fast. Fuck me. Describe. Describe the case here, Corry, because this is crazy. [01:59:44] Speaker B: All right, so this is another one that listeners might remember and might even have had the misfortune to have seen for themselves. It was October 28, 2023, in Sheffield, England. The Nottingham Panthers were playing the Sheffield Steelers. 29 year old Adam Johnson was an American former NHL player who was now playing for Nottingham. In the second period, Johnson had the puck and moved into the opposing team's defensive zone, which is what you see happening there. A Sheffield defenseman was approaching him, but somehow ended up making contact with another Panthers player, which caused him to fall. As he did, his left leg rose in the air. I mean, if you've ever seen someone fall on the ice, you know how ungraceful that is. Your limbs end up everywhere. And the blade of his skate hit Johnson in the neck. And this didn't just happen in front of the crowd in that rink, in that arena. This happened in front of a TV audience. This was being filmed and broadcast. And hockey being a violent sport, you can tell that no one quite realized the extent of what had happened here. You can see how confusing this scene is. One of the announcers, if you turn that up, it's really hard to hear, but one of the announcers just says something like, oh my goodness. Like something really, you know, almost silly in hindsight. Blood is pouring over the ice and as you can see in there, he's. He's able to get up on his feet and skate off the ice, like with assistance. Right. So you're seeing him kind of holding his neck as his jersey is covered in blood and the ice. He's leaving this huge trail of blood behind him. But there's a lot of blood in hockey. You know, people bleed and no one totally recognized this. If they had realized that they were showing this guy die on tv, they certainly would have panned away from it. Right? Like anytime this kind of thing happens, they would cut away as much as possible and be like, you know, you'd see the, the anchors, the announcers or whatever talking amongst. Oh, that looked really bad or things like that. Clearly they just thought this was another hockey injury and they kept the camera on it as he was taken off the ice because of all that, this being on TV and whatnot and them not panning away. The clip freely circulated on social media, so you could just be hanging out on your Twitter timeline and bamo, this poor hockey player bleeding out before you. So a lot of people saw this who were not expecting to see this. [02:02:27] Speaker A: And this guy died. [02:02:29] Speaker B: Yes, this guy died. [02:02:32] Speaker A: When you mentioned that this was going to be a hockey story, my. My question to you was, I thought the guy walked it off because I. The case that I thought you were referring to was one entirely different that I'm sending you now. Ping. If you'll check your video, this is a very similar piece of footage of a guy by the name of Clint Malachuk, who is with us. Still go to 20 seconds in. [02:03:01] Speaker B: Okay. All right, we're there. We just got a regular hockey game going on. [02:03:06] Speaker A: He's a goalie. [02:03:08] Speaker B: He's the goalie. [02:03:09] Speaker A: Yep. [02:03:10] Speaker B: Oh, yep. He's fallen over and. Ooh. Spraying. Oh. Oh, God. Spraying all over the ice. Jesus Christ. [02:03:17] Speaker A: Whereas this guy survived. [02:03:19] Speaker B: Oh, and see, in this case, you hear. Even though they are not panning away, you hear the announcers going, please take the camera off. Don't show this. Like, they are aware that something horrific has just happened there, as opposed to. In this case. And unlike many of the race car deaths or the wrestling one that we just watched, they did not continue this game. They cleared the entire arena. And then the player whose skate killed Johnson was actually arrested for involuntary manslaughter, which is nutty. Apparently the definition of manslaughter is, quote, when an unlawful killing has taken place, but there was no intention to kill or to cause grievous bodily harm. I don't know how you could frame that as an unlawful killing unless falling down is unlawful. But it wasn't until a little over a month ago, at the end of April of this year, that that player, Matt Petgrave, was officially cleared of these charges. Worth noting, Petgrave is black. And racists all over were quick to attribute what happened to his being an aggressive black man. Comparing him to George Floyd, calling him the N word and saying that the mainstream media was protecting him because he was a typical murderous black man. Hard to argue, though, that a guy who spent two years in and out of jail fighting manslaughter charges was protected from anything. In fact, I'd argue it's likely it would have been seen as the freak accident it was from the outset had he been a white man, and in fact, it was that he was black. That's the reason that he faced charges for two years for this. [02:05:06] Speaker A: I mean, there's no evidence of any kind of aggression in that fucking clip. It is. [02:05:10] Speaker B: No, it's so clear. Just. Yeah, right. Yeah. There's no way that. It's not even one of those things where it's like, you know, I could see if Someone like tackled someone in some way. Like we've said, hockey is violent. You know, people get into fights and stuff like that. If they'd been in a fight and he accidentally, you know, slit his throat during this, then I can see how he could make a case for involuntary manslaughter, but there's simply no way. But this is a case in which anyone there would have plainly seen, you know, this guy bleeding out in front of them. And again, just deeply horrific in ways that I think it would be impossible to forget. You know, this is the kind of thing that would haunt you. I would see that trying to fall asleep at night. [02:06:00] Speaker A: You're not safe. You're never safe. You're never safe from harm. You're never safe from witnessing harm, from the effects of harm. Much like I did last week. I'm gonna deliver my. The. [02:06:16] Speaker B: The final piece, your final one as. [02:06:18] Speaker A: A cold opener, as an opener next week because. Needs a little bit of breathing, it needs a little bit of discussion. [02:06:25] Speaker B: Okay. [02:06:25] Speaker A: The, the piece I'm going to about, talk about at the start of next week is one that has, for the people involved, left long, long term trauma, long term scars. It's. It's still remembered deeply in the community that it took place in and in the sport that it took place in. In particular, it's another football disaster, but one on a. On a. On a scale second only to Hillsborough in how damaging and, and completely out of nowhere it came to those who had to go through it. So I'll save it for next week. [02:07:01] Speaker B: They kind of felt like one. That the way you've been talking about. You even watched a documentary? [02:07:05] Speaker A: I did. [02:07:05] Speaker B: I watched like that on it. It felt like something that needs more time to simmer than the way that we're just doing a survey of These. [02:07:11] Speaker A: Things, a 90 minute BBC documentary about it earlier on. And it's fucking wild. [02:07:15] Speaker B: Yeah, so we'll get that. So, good news, everyone. Three weeks of horrible public death. [02:07:19] Speaker A: Yay. [02:07:21] Speaker B: You know, it's a unofficial theme for us. [02:07:24] Speaker A: It's a little capsule, little series that we're doing, isn't it? [02:07:27] Speaker B: Yeah. There you go. Friends again. What. What have I asked people today? Are two dicks useful? What would you. [02:07:36] Speaker A: What would you do with a second cop? Or. [02:07:38] Speaker B: Yeah, is it. Is it. Am I underselling a second vagina? What would you pick as your mutant feature? Yep, I know I asked other things. Oh, did you watch Sirens? [02:07:51] Speaker A: Yep. [02:07:51] Speaker B: Let's talk about Sirens. I think there were other things in there. It's on you to remember what I'VE asked you this week. [02:08:00] Speaker A: No, no, no, no. Have you ever been underground? [02:08:04] Speaker B: Have you ever been underground? Yes. Yeah. Hit us up on the Facebook. [02:08:12] Speaker A: This is gonna be one of the worst outro of our entire podcasting career. This is awful. [02:08:17] Speaker B: I don't know. I don't know. We've got. I think we've got stiff competition in that area. Just stop. Cut it. Cut it. [02:08:27] Speaker A: We're done salvage. We're done here without dignity. Stay spooky. [02:08:31] Speaker B: Stay spooky.