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The Talk Show

110: ‘Rats in the Lobby’ With Guest Merlin Mann

 

00:00:00   You still there?

00:00:01   Oh yeah.

00:00:02   You know what I did?

00:00:03   Oh, you sound so much better.

00:00:04   You know what I did?

00:00:05   I plugged it into a different USB port.

00:00:07   I think this is probably the last episode I'll record using this old Air.

00:00:13   Oh, are you going to go to the new iMac?

00:00:16   No, well yeah, I guess I should.

00:00:18   I don't know why I don't record using the iMac.

00:00:20   I don't know.

00:00:21   Yeah.

00:00:22   The Air is powerful enough to do that?

00:00:25   It's probably why the show sounds like shit.

00:00:27   No, you know what? And I actually know that this this old MacBook Air that I've used I I do it because I'm in some ways I'm a sentimental idiot and I think I've recorded like every episode of the talk show for I don't know at least the last three four years using that air so I want to keep doing

00:00:45   doing. Yeah, I mean you said... It makes no technical sense. No, none at all, but you said not too long ago

00:00:51   how in baseball, as baseball fans, there are people who are into the numbers and people who are into the story

00:00:56   and that you're a story guy. Right. Right. And yeah, you know, the MacPulgaras got a story. When I stopped

00:01:02   using my Rode, I was pretty nervous because I was like, I've been using this since 43 folders, MacBreak Weekly,

00:01:07   like, you know, it's so dumb. I'm just changing to a better mic. Why would that matter? It shouldn't, but I

00:01:14   I felt like a little bit disloyal.

00:01:16   What did you switch to?

00:01:18   Well, I tried a couple of things.

00:01:19   I'm using a Shure SM7B now.

00:01:24   It's super annoying because I got to go through this PreSonus

00:01:28   thing.

00:01:29   Oh, I don't want that.

00:01:31   I think Marco was telling me about that.

00:01:33   I don't want to do that.

00:01:35   You know, I think I just listen to too much rock music.

00:01:38   When people have these conversations about stuff,

00:01:40   I just don't hear it.

00:01:42   I don't hear what they're talking about.

00:01:43   And it makes me feel like a charlatan.

00:01:46   Like I don't, I mean I can notice in production values

00:01:50   like when like the public radio show with a budget

00:01:52   sounds different than three guys talking about Linux.

00:01:55   But like I don't notice that much about mics and stuff.

00:01:58   Do you?

00:01:59   - No, I don't.

00:02:00   - Yeah, you don't listen to a lot of podcasts though.

00:02:02   - Oh, I mean I don't listen to a lot,

00:02:04   but I listen to enough.

00:02:05   But when I do, I'm listening with earbuds.

00:02:08   So I don't think, and a lot of times I would say

00:02:13   easily 85% of the time I'm listening to podcasts I'm walking through the city so

00:02:20   there's so much noise you know it's the quality of the mic I mean I hope you

00:02:26   know I I understand why people make it sound as good as they can but I could

00:02:30   never hear the difference between microphones did you uh never get your

00:02:35   driver's license back I didn't lose my driver's license today you probably

00:02:41   don't remember it was on an episode of the talk show with Dan and you had the holiday party.

00:02:45   It's my favorite episode of the talk show and you talked about how they took your license away.

00:02:52   You don't remember you probably don't remember that. It was the holiday season. It's a lot to

00:02:55   remember. Yeah I don't remember. Why did they take my license away? Oh I made it up. I made it up.

00:03:01   That's right now I remember. Oh God now I remember. Because you had so many points.

00:03:07   Right I had so many points. And you refused to go to traffic school and Dan you know to Dan's credit

00:03:11   He played the entire episode straight. It was really funny. Oh, that was a good that was HR HR

00:03:16   fluffy puff, you know and I got I

00:03:20   Should write that down for the show notes. I got I

00:03:23   Think most people got it, but I definitely got a fair amount of email from listeners who were telling me. Hey, you know

00:03:29   Maybe you ought to get some help

00:03:33   So, you know, that's not funny. It's not funny racking up all those points, you know

00:03:39   You know how that hurts the government?

00:03:41   - Well, they're like, you're gonna learn a lesson

00:03:44   when you hit a kid crossing the street or something.

00:03:46   - For Christ's sakes, John, you got a kid.

00:03:48   Jesus Christ.

00:03:49   I'm so tired of words.

00:03:52   I'm just gonna stop saying things.

00:03:54   It's just, I give up.

00:03:56   I give up, I'm just gonna make grunts

00:03:57   and maybe sing a humble little tune.

00:03:59   But no matter what you say,

00:04:02   I made a crack last night on the Twitter

00:04:03   about how I wish Netflix, in streaming five seasons of MASH,

00:04:08   the five good seasons of mesh,

00:04:09   how I wish they would have it without the laugh track.

00:04:13   And oh my God, I got so many responses from people,

00:04:16   on the one hand telling me how that's physically impossible

00:04:19   since it's hard coded.

00:04:20   And then other people going,

00:04:22   "Sir, did you know that you could err the DVD tracks?"

00:04:25   I was like, yeah, you know what?

00:04:26   I know all of that, I know all of that.

00:04:28   I was just making a joke.

00:04:29   It's just, it's an ephemeral comment.

00:04:31   It's okay, everything's gonna be fine.

00:04:33   You must get that like to the 10th power,

00:04:35   especially like when you're being jokey about

00:04:37   sports, technology. You must get so many

00:04:41   wackadoodle responses from people.

00:04:44   It goes and flows. I can never predict though.

00:04:46   Like I'll

00:04:47   post some kind of, you know, absurd tweet and I think, "Oh God, I'm gonna get so many

00:04:51   people who take this seriously."

00:04:53   And then there's nothing. And then I throw one out that I'm not even worried about and

00:04:56   everybody, you know. Jon, there is absolutely no way

00:05:00   to know.

00:05:01   I make a lot of news-related "Your Mother" jokes and every time I expect

00:05:06   incredible blowback. Nothing. That's fine. That's awesome. I make one crack about

00:05:10   Mash having a laugh track and like the entire peanut gallery rises as one. But

00:05:15   you know it's it's good. I'm just tired of words.

00:05:18   What was the deal with Mash's laugh track? The way I recall it is season one

00:05:22   there was no laugh track and it was a ratings it was it was precipitous that

00:05:28   it was like the ratings were so bad that it was on the border of not coming back

00:05:32   for another season and that they one of the one of the changes they made between

00:05:36   season one season two is they added a laugh track yeah I don't I remember

00:05:41   having read because you know it most people who enjoy the mass show it's a

00:05:46   pretty hot topic because you can on the DVDs I don't own the DVDs I hate DVDs I

00:05:52   hate physical media I don't want them in my house I mean that's me that's my

00:05:55   Court of Last Resort like I've got I've got all the James Bond films like

00:05:58   everybody you know I bought that hundred dollar blu-ray package I got that I got

00:06:03   the Godfather and then I think I got a Dora or something like that but that's about it

00:06:07   and but yeah they had an alternate track where you could have the audio without the laugh

00:06:12   track I don't remember exactly how it happened except I mean think about the time what is

00:06:16   that 72 73 something like that where every every like three camera sitcom had a live

00:06:23   audience like you got your all in the families and stuff and I think you know it probably

00:06:29   seemed a little dead to people and some of the humor is probably was probably a

00:06:33   little bit dry it's just that it suddenly became not very dry when

00:06:37   there's a very obvious laugh on it I just I really hate laugh tracks yeah

00:06:40   they just they drive me crazy and you can actually go and you know if you know

00:06:44   where to go I know you don't do these things but you can find copies of it and

00:06:48   it is actually a pretty different experience you go watch my favorite

00:06:51   episode Abyssinia Henry the one where Henry leaves you remember that episode

00:06:56   It's the end of season three.

00:06:58   I'm sure that it's...

00:07:00   It's the one where he dies, he gets shot out of the air, and it's the episode right before Trapper leaves.

00:07:06   It's the end of the season, and it's got that amazing scene at the end where Radar walks into the operating room and reads the notice that Henry's dead.

00:07:14   It's incredibly moving. And watching that episode without the laugh track is a real different thing, because it's one of the great episodes of TV.

00:07:21   and you know you know it's good maybe in a way that people at that time wouldn't

00:07:26   know it's good so it feels a little insulting you know to have to put all of

00:07:30   that on it's not super loud like on some shows like 90 shows where the left track

00:07:35   got so loud but yeah but it always felt to me even as a kid and and growing up

00:07:41   in an era when all sitcoms had laugh tracks or as live studio audience and

00:07:46   even though one's at live studio audience you know that they were the

00:07:48   the laughter pretty loud sometimes yeah it always seemed incongruous because it

00:07:54   clearly was not shot in front of the live studio audience it was shot on real

00:07:58   you know like a soundstage yeah like you know in that case of mash it's like

00:08:03   they're shooting it outdoors there's not people on bleachers there right and the

00:08:07   production values were always such I mean clearly in hindsight I mean

00:08:10   everybody knew it was a smash hit eventually it became a smash hit you

00:08:13   know after a couple seasons and it was you know like it was always like I think

00:08:18   it was always like number one or number two was 60 minutes you know it was

00:08:21   always like a fight which was gonna be the top-rated show of the week and at a

00:08:24   time. 60 minutes man that was a juggernaut remember that was just like almost always

00:08:27   it was it was 60 minutes or something else for a little while it was always 60

00:08:31   minutes. It was always number one or number two it felt like your civic

00:08:34   obligation as an American was Sunday night at 7 everybody you know from 7 to

00:08:39   70 would sit down and watch 60 minutes. Mm-hmm yeah the other thing that's funny

00:08:44   about mash is and this is you know it sounds nasty I don't mean it to be but

00:08:48   it's funny the that you know like three of the stars of that show left because

00:08:55   they wanted a better deal or they wanted more attention you know Wayne Rogers as

00:08:59   trapper mclean Stevenson you know he was done with it and later on Larry Linville

00:09:03   had decided he was done with the Frank Burns character and you know none of them

00:09:08   ever found anything approaching that again it's such a bummer oh what was the

00:09:13   guy who replaced Frank Burns Winchester right yeah he was yeah and he was there

00:09:19   was tough it was a tough one because what you could tell Winchester was

00:09:21   actually a good surgeon yes we knew Frank was a you know it was a good show

00:09:30   it was good that your it is interesting it's interesting in so many ways it was

00:09:34   a good movie that started it and then they you know didn't have any of the

00:09:38   any of the same actors from the movie come.

00:09:41   - We had Gary Burghoff was in the movie.

00:09:44   - Oh, Radar.

00:09:45   - Radar, yeah.

00:09:46   And the first season is much closer

00:09:49   in the kind of anarchic spirit.

00:09:52   - Yeah.

00:09:53   - It's much closer to the film.

00:09:55   But yeah, it got, you know, like anything though,

00:09:57   I think they kind of, they started this great thing.

00:10:00   There was a great episode where Hawkeye writes to his dad.

00:10:03   There's an episode called Dear Dad.

00:10:04   - I remember that one, I remember that.

00:10:05   - It was really good.

00:10:06   It's from like, I don't know, first second season.

00:10:08   And but then they did like, remember then they had like,

00:10:10   Dear Peg, and then they had Dear Father Mulcahy writes

00:10:15   and eventually, Alan Arbus, remember the psychiatrist,

00:10:19   he's writing to Sigmund Freud at some point,

00:10:22   like an open letter or something, it got really bananas.

00:10:25   But it was a good show, I mean, it was really of its time.

00:10:28   But by the end, it was just, it was so insufferable.

00:10:31   Even as a flaming liberal, I can't watch that show.

00:10:33   It's such a pantomime of, you know, politics.

00:10:36   - I haven't seen it in a long time.

00:10:37   I don't remember it petering out at toward the end and I remember the last episode was oh man was a tobacco with the chicken

00:10:44   Oh, it's just and Hawkeye still haunts me still haunts me committed or something and yeah cuz the chicken chicken

00:10:51   I don't know. I was always obsessed. That's another like lifelong obsession obsession for me and like a minor one is

00:10:57   Final episodes of shows I'll watch the last episode of a show that I've never even watched just to see how they you know

00:11:03   I like a last episode

00:11:04   Yeah, and I I watched mash I you know, I watched it I watched the reruns, you know

00:11:10   It was a staple in our household like flipping through the stations like waiting for dinner to be ready

00:11:15   Everybody could agree we'd watch mash, you know, and the reruns were you know, like 530 or something like that. So it was

00:11:21   You know and the reruns were still were on while the show was still wrapping up I think and absolutely absolutely

00:11:27   Yeah, and I think their last episode for a long time was the highest rated like non

00:11:34   Bowl type yeah definitely was yeah yeah it was like a national event and

00:11:39   everybody was like what the hell was that kind of went on yeah how does it

00:11:46   play now like watching any of those episodes with Jamie farce character what

00:11:53   was his name clinger clinger clinger how could I forget that so clear for anybody

00:11:58   who isn't familiar clinger was played by Jamie far and he did not want to serve

00:12:03   in the army this is who doesn't know he was drafted he was drafted with these

00:12:08   kids and he knew that there was something that you could get if you were

00:12:11   mentally unsound to serve in the army you could get a dis get a section 8 or

00:12:16   something section 8 so he's always angling for section 8 so how do you

00:12:19   convince the army that you're crazy you dress like Carmen Miranda you're women's

00:12:23   clothes right so he wore a woman's women's clothing all the time and you

00:12:28   know it didn't work everybody knew what his stick was but he never let up on it

00:12:33   so he still he still did his job that's the right he showed up just like a nurse

00:12:37   but then he was a pretty good nurse that's part of the problem you guys I

00:12:40   think you should undermine the basic task that you're doing or do them in it's

00:12:44   such a bananas way that it's clear that you're crazy you know what I'm saying

00:12:47   right hey you know it's it's okay I think the earlier seasons are better you

00:12:52   know it's so funny with TV shows it always takes them a few episodes or a

00:12:55   season to find their legs and then you know things kind of seem to go for a

00:12:59   while I can't imagine doing a TV show it just seems so exhausting. Oh totally of

00:13:04   any kind. Yeah. Whether it's you know like like like well like the this very day

00:13:11   like yes last night was as we record yesterday was the day Jon Stewart

00:13:15   announced that he was going to step down from the Daily Show and then it's like

00:13:20   he said something during the show did you watch I watched and it was like no

00:13:23   what'd you say I think he said he's been doing it for 17 years and I looked at I

00:13:26   I was watching with Amy and I was like, "Well, that can't be." And then I was like thinking about it. I was like, "Holy shit."

00:13:30   And then I'm like, "Well, of course he's gonna step down. He's been doing this show four days a week for 17 years."

00:13:36   Yeah, and I know, I mean talking to in particular Hodgman and Rob Corddry about it, people

00:13:43   I know who've been on that show and work with him all say the same thing.

00:13:46   Which is that, first of all, he's a very nice guy and you know,

00:13:49   he's a good guy, but also that he is one of the hardest, he's the hardest working person in the building.

00:13:56   So when Hajim will go on there he would have like kind of a prepared bit and then I mean, you know

00:14:00   He's I don't think he was the showrunner, but he he was involved in like every rewrite up until camp

00:14:06   I mean like he was making everybody in the room better on every episode

00:14:10   Can you imagine doing that for over 15 years like what that would take out of you?

00:14:13   No, and I think that I have trouble ordering groceries and and this guy is doing that every single night

00:14:17   I

00:14:19   think it's very clear to that he you know and

00:14:25   it put it in sports ball terms he's a good he was like a good passer in

00:14:29   basketball like he was not concerned obviously he's the host of the show he's

00:14:33   you know the one who does the whole first half single-handedly on on air at

00:14:37   least obviously with the help of writers but as soon as anybody else is on

00:14:42   whether it's a bit at the desk like a Hodgman thing or anything else it's he

00:14:47   is so a hundred percent concentrated on making that other person look as good as

00:14:53   as they possibly can and make sure that they get

00:14:56   as many of the laughs as they possibly can.

00:14:59   - I totally agree and I mean, you can look to our hero

00:15:02   as like the paragon of that.

00:15:03   I mean, Carson was so good, whoever that was,

00:15:08   like whether that was Burt Reynolds

00:15:10   or whether that was some grandmother

00:15:12   that had done something crazy, he was so generous.

00:15:15   I mean, I think even if he wasn't loving,

00:15:17   I think Fred de Cordova would be the one

00:15:19   who kind of stepped in and go,

00:15:20   "Okay, we're ready to go to commercial."

00:15:22   Carson would sometimes give him the hand signal.

00:15:24   But he was there and fully committed

00:15:28   to whatever was happening

00:15:29   and wanted to make that person look good

00:15:31   and it made everybody look good.

00:15:32   - Yeah, exactly.

00:15:34   So I was surprised, I have to say,

00:15:36   just to commit to that the whole late night shuffling,

00:15:39   I was a little surprised when Letterman announced

00:15:42   his retirement that Jon Stewart didn't get that,

00:15:47   or maybe he didn't want it.

00:15:50   if he was thinking about stepping down from this,

00:15:53   you know, on a daily basis,

00:15:54   maybe that's just it, he didn't wanna, you know,

00:15:56   he just didn't wanna do a daily show anymore.

00:15:58   I always thought that Jon Stewart would be an excellent,

00:16:01   you know, like Letterman's style show host.

00:16:06   - Yeah, yeah, I agree.

00:16:08   And, you know, it's funny to think about

00:16:09   like what the world was like when Letterman started

00:16:11   and it would be impossible to explain to somebody today,

00:16:15   probably in the same way that Steve Allen,

00:16:17   like to us, Steve Allen seems like an old guy.

00:16:19   But Steve Allen's show broke the mold.

00:16:22   I mean, there'd never been anybody on TV

00:16:24   quite like Steve Allen, who was so kind of, you know,

00:16:26   cultural and witty and smart,

00:16:29   but also would do such crazy stunts

00:16:32   and that had a huge influence on Letterman.

00:16:34   And then Letterman comes along and, you know,

00:16:36   they had that crazy deal with Carson.

00:16:38   You know about all this, right?

00:16:39   Like, they had a guy from Carson's production team there

00:16:44   who basically made sure that he's like,

00:16:47   "Okay, here's your show, here's the rules.

00:16:48   Like you can't book anybody who's like one of Johnny's regulars.

00:16:52   You know Johnny gets the first bite of any of these particular apples.

00:16:55   There's all kinds of rules but that was a constraint that he worked and brought in Larry

00:16:59   Budd Millman or he brought in Chris Elliott and that made the show so much more fun and

00:17:04   so much weirder than if that awkward young David Letterman was trying to interview you

00:17:08   know Madonna.

00:17:09   Yeah I think most famously there were restrictions on the length of the monologue and so.

00:17:15   Oh because that's Johnny's thing.

00:17:16   it was Johnny's thing and so like on the old Letterman show

00:17:19   Letterman would come out and do three jokes and they were so perfunctory like the the bit was almost like his complete disdain for the

00:17:27   Monologue he would just come out and do three

00:17:29   Really clipped perfunctory jokes and then it was on to the desk and the rest

00:17:35   And you know the part that made it the part that made it funny every night was how terrible he made it seem like he thought

00:17:41   It was like that was a terrible joke and him adjusting his tie and like the kind of face

00:17:46   You know, that's what made it funny, right? So like they took the restrictions from Carson productions on the monologue and

00:17:51   And I think eventually like I think once it settled in and it was very clear

00:17:56   I didn't I don't think it took long for Carson and his people to realize that Letterman was no threat to Carson

00:18:02   Like there was no way that that Letterman was ever going to steal his job, right?

00:18:08   Right, like it's just not that type of person and you know, he was fine

00:18:11   You know, I think you know, I famously he wanted it and when when the time came in when Johnny retired

00:18:16   But he was never going to backstab him if his ratings had you know, they fight he's never seen

00:18:22   He's never seen anything like completely grateful

00:18:24   Like when he tells the story and I guess the first time he was on and got called over to the couch

00:18:29   Like he honestly he still sounds like a kid like what a what a moving moment that was for him to get to do that

00:18:35   Yeah, so I think that eventually I don't think it took long where if if he had wanted to do longer monologues

00:18:40   I don't really think that the phone was going to ring in the Carson people were going to say hey,

00:18:44   you know, you were, you know, you know, you're only supposed to do two minutes of monologue

00:18:47   and you did 230 last night. But I think that they just embraced that anti monologue, you know,

00:18:53   that that just became part of the signature of the show. Oh, yeah. And I mean, that's a beat it

00:18:57   to death. But I think about the stuff that I remember, when I would hear somebody was going

00:19:01   to be on, I would get so excited. And certainly there's famous scenes where like Drew Barrymore

00:19:06   acted all crazy or Crispin Glover was all you know nuts that one time and tried to

00:19:10   think he was gonna kick him those are famous but what do you really remember

00:19:13   from the first three years I mean you you remember people like Harvey Pekar

00:19:17   you remember people like Charles Grodin you remember you remember people being

00:19:21   on there who or like Jeff Jeff Altman I love Jeff Altman like he would be so

00:19:27   very 20-pound butt steak you know and that's what made the show and then like

00:19:33   the prancing fluids and all that stuff that was the product of that probation

00:19:38   like is what made the show good it would not have lasted as long if it had been

00:19:41   just another show Harvey P car I haven't thought about him in maybe 20 years so

00:19:46   Charles Grodin it was a bit yeah whenever Charles Grodin was on Carson or

00:19:50   lettering you got that it was kind of a bit but Harvey P car genuinely seemed to

00:19:53   hate Dave and hate the idea of being on the show at all right and was just a

00:19:58   miserable person quite frankly it was not very attractive either so it wasn't

00:20:02   really like you know people like looking at him and so I think any normal talk

00:20:07   show would be like I don't know who booked him but they're fired and make

00:20:11   sure we never have him back again whereas the letterman people like let's

00:20:13   have this guy back on every couple months. Oh absolutely and it was true

00:20:17   for I mean I think Jeff Altman is you know one of his great repeat guests I

00:20:22   mean he would he loved having Jeff Altman on partly because I think I you

00:20:25   know I have to tell you if you don't already know about this I'm cribbing

00:20:28   some of this from a podcast have you heard the podcast the Carson podcast? No.

00:20:32   Oh, you should know about this.

00:20:33   There's a show this guy in LA does, this comedian in LA.

00:20:36   I think it's called the Carson Podcast.

00:20:37   And the whole podcast is him interviewing

00:20:40   people who have some kind of an interesting relationship

00:20:42   with the Carson show.

00:20:43   Oh, shit.

00:20:44   Yeah, it was great.

00:20:45   So people like Jeff Altman, people like Bob Einstein,

00:20:49   Super Dave, just all kinds of people.

00:20:52   And then George Carlin's daughter was on.

00:20:54   But it's a great insight into what you and I know,

00:20:58   which is what an inscrutable person he was.

00:21:01   everybody says the same thing.

00:21:02   It was great, it was the greatest honor you ever had,

00:21:04   but nobody, it was like two or three people

00:21:06   who ever felt like they legitimately knew Johnny Carson.

00:21:09   - Yeah, did you read the biography that is--

00:21:11   - No, I saw that, we talked about that,

00:21:12   I think one time we talked about that PBS show.

00:21:14   - Oh, that was great, the PBS Masters episode.

00:21:17   - That was terrific, yeah.

00:21:19   - That was the best thing,

00:21:20   and they didn't really try to get to the person.

00:21:24   I mean, they acknowledged it,

00:21:25   and they talked to so many people.

00:21:29   was such a great thing the PBS master thing but it was kind of like almost

00:21:33   like Citizen Kane where everybody like knew you know had the same regard for

00:21:37   this purse but never really felt like they knew what made him tick you know

00:21:41   and so anyway you might check out that podcast it's it's uh it's pretty good

00:21:45   the book I forget is Henry something let me look it up here Carson biography

00:21:52   Carson Henry let's see sounds like he'd you know he'd wrapped the show he Henry

00:21:58   Michigan

00:21:59   Okay, there we go

00:22:01   And it's something he would never talk before the show there would be just a little bit right?

00:22:05   It was just nobody he would not talk to the guests

00:22:07   I mean he would get in the car and drive away and that was it. Yeah

00:22:09   The the Henry Bush Kim book is uncomfortable to me because clearly it's a betrayal of

00:22:18   Trust like there's no way he should be telling you store. I mean, it's unauthorized. Oh, yeah, definitely

00:22:25   It's I mean, how could it be authorized? I mean Carson's dead

00:22:28   But I mean, I don't think his family would have wanted it and I think if you had asked Johnny while he was alive

00:22:32   Would you like Henry Bushkin to you know, write a book?

00:22:35   Certainly not right, but on the other hand he did write it

00:22:38   So I read it, you know, but I kind of felt I did I felt a little icky the whole time

00:22:42   But there's some crazy stories in there. There's one story where I

00:22:45   Forget if it was his wife or it was just a girlfriend

00:22:50   But I think I might have been his wife and he Johnny thought is one of his you know

00:22:54   Earlier wives this is when the show was still in New York and he lived in New York

00:22:56   He figured out his wife was running around on him and he wanted to break into the

00:23:01   Apartment it was her apartment, but he was paying for it. So he said it so it's got to be Lee

00:23:06   I'm paying for it

00:23:07   so it's legal we're breaking in and he got Henry but his took his lawyer with him and like two guys who could only really

00:23:14   Be described as toughs

00:23:16   thugs yeah and like and Henry Bushkin says in the book that the one guy even had a gun tucked in his belt and

00:23:23   They go over there and like break into the place and find you know find evidence that she was running around on him and God

00:23:29   But you know, it's like stories that you know, you don't expect your lawyer to write a book about that

00:23:33   That's why you take your look. It's his lawyer that wrote the book. Yeah, it's his law. Oh my god

00:23:39   That's that's not cricket man

00:23:43   No, it's a good read. It's a good quick read, but it's

00:23:46   Requesting from the library right now. Yeah, this is a guy, you know who needed some money, I think

00:23:52   - Sure.

00:23:54   - But he was, you know, but I guess the thing

00:23:56   that made me think about it is that he was obviously,

00:23:58   he was more than just his lawyer though.

00:24:00   He became as close a friend as anybody could to him.

00:24:03   They played tennis together, they were both tennis nuts.

00:24:06   And they used to travel to, I remember that Johnny did this

00:24:10   'cause I remember I used to watch tennis on TV sometimes.

00:24:12   But Johnny would always, like for years,

00:24:14   had an annual trip where he would go to Wimbledon.

00:24:16   And Henry Bushkin and his wife went with him.

00:24:18   It was, you know, like Johnny and his wife

00:24:20   Henry Bushkin and his wife every year for like 15 years they went to England

00:24:25   for like two or three weeks so I mean they were definitely close but even then

00:24:29   even being that close that you vacationed with Johnny Carson for a

00:24:33   couple of weeks every year it's like he still clearly didn't really know him that

00:24:36   well and it yeah totally I think Pat McCormick the comic Pat McCormick who I

00:24:39   think it worked on the show and was on a lot also was another one but even in

00:24:44   interviews I think Pat McCormick I think was on that podcast but it's a lot like

00:24:48   when you hear people talk about Sinatra you know where they're all talking about

00:24:51   mr. Sinatra and like this deference like he'll come back from the grave and get

00:24:54   you whacked like this there's still a lot of deference to Johnny and a desire

00:24:59   to keep his legacy you know clean to the extent possible yeah I almost feel I

00:25:03   mean you know not having ever seen the guy in person but my impression is maybe

00:25:08   that like he just had was like a one in a one in a billion freak where the real

00:25:14   Johnny Carson was the one who was on for 60 minutes in front of a camera sitting

00:25:19   at a desk like that really was him and that it was the other 23 hours of his

00:25:23   life where there was it was just nothing oh yeah I mean he's like he's like a

00:25:27   comic book character right I mean you know where it's almost like Bruce Wayne

00:25:31   is the secret I you know what I mean it's like Batman is the real guy in some

00:25:35   ways and breathing is yeah exactly right and I feel like that might have been

00:25:39   Johnny Carson and I feel like you know that's what made him so inscrutable and

00:25:44   and off you know off camera yeah let's take a break I'll take a break and I'm

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00:28:12   really cool I'm really proud of that guy and envious and I kind of hate him a

00:28:16   little bit our friend Matt Alexander yeah what he's what he's doing is

00:28:20   amazing like what he's done in such a short period of time I think he's about

00:28:24   14 years old and he's half English so he's gotten past that and it's

00:28:30   still astonishing to me like what that guy has managed to do that you know when

00:28:35   he first described these projects to me and it just seems like there's more and

00:28:38   more coming out all the time you know I was like well that's you know it's kind

00:28:41   of cool it kind of sounds like a store like a small store but it's been a big

00:28:47   hit it's it's really frustrating yeah and you wish you could do something like

00:28:51   I do because I feel like I don't know I like it because it's real I feel I the

00:28:59   things that impressed me as people come up with new ideas for businesses and and

00:29:03   you know I like the ones that have something that you can touch the way we

00:29:09   gotta buy a by film for your virtual camera I think it drives you nuts though

00:29:15   right like that's not really that's not really a company I would say I would to

00:29:20   actually say that the spectrum of the things that I tend to be most interested

00:29:24   in are on the one side are real physical things like somebody who's making iPhone

00:29:29   docks out of blocks of wood right I mean not all of them I don't like them all

00:29:33   but I mean you know something like that where you're making a real thing and

00:29:38   you're doing it real way and then the ones I like least would have to be the

00:29:41   virtual fake real-world constraints you know the some of the some of the kinds

00:29:47   services that are out there are so weird as I get more and more cynical about

00:29:54   everything and a little bit more frisky about things like privacy like I you

00:29:58   just see stuff coming down the lane you're like really like that's there's

00:30:01   this thing remember every block remember did you get that sure that was Stephen

00:30:06   Johnson and Wilson I think Wilson minor worked on that but it was a really

00:30:09   amazing service super clean beautiful website that would basically aggregate

00:30:14   all kinds of mostly public information about things like police activity, safety,

00:30:19   I mean anything that you you couldn't care less for any neighborhood except

00:30:23   your own but in your neighborhood you really care and it's incredible like I

00:30:26   went in and I saw one time I called the cops about something and I could find

00:30:29   that on the website it was really really cool but I think they contracted to be

00:30:33   in only a few contracted as in like kind of sucked down to be just in a few

00:30:37   cities now these other ones cropping up my wife got me to get on this one in our

00:30:41   neighborhood. It's just it's so annoying. It's one of those things where you you

00:30:46   sign up and you got to like give them tons of information. They want your phone

00:30:50   number. They want to send a postcard to your house to verify that you you're you

00:30:53   fine and then they automatically put your address on the website and then

00:30:57   every page you're on there are call to actions and pop-ups telling you to go

00:31:02   invite more people. It asks you to like you know bring in all of your on the one

00:31:06   hand they're real careful about making sure who you are but then it's one of

00:31:09   those remember like path kind of thing where they're like now don't you want to

00:31:12   install and bring in all of your contacts and your Facebook people and

00:31:14   it's like I am increasingly super uncomfortable with that as a business

00:31:18   model it's gross as soon as they asked me for it I had just closed the window I

00:31:23   immediately think well that's your business model and then I'm grossed out

00:31:26   yeah yeah and I mean there's some kinds of things like say what you will about

00:31:29   Google I mean like opening that Google app especially like when I'm out of town

00:31:33   I was out of town last week it still kind of blows my mind how smart Google

00:31:37   is, I know they're Google, but if there's anybody out there who is providing some value

00:31:42   for the nonsense they do, you gotta give them credit. Like, "Here's the city you're traveling

00:31:45   to. There's the temperature. Hey, here's your flight that just came in via email." That

00:31:50   kind of stuff, I wish they were better with the privacy stuff in some ways, but that's

00:31:55   a real value. They've done something very innovative to be able to do that at scale.

00:31:59   But you can just feel on some of these websites where you just tell that they're young, it's

00:32:02   a new company and it's all about building the user base and then leveraging as much

00:32:08   personal information as possible. I don't know, it's kind of a boring thing to get into,

00:32:11   but I find that really kind of gross and frustrating. I feel like enough of my stuff is out there.

00:32:16   I don't need to go sign up for free services that are going to do that.

00:32:22   you see there was an article I forget the guy's name a couple weeks ago on on

00:32:33   Google the the the trade-off between if you if you give Google everything they

00:32:39   want to know about you and buy into their stuff you get a tremendous

00:32:44   experience out of it like if you've got an Android phone and you use the whole

00:32:49   ecosystem and the apps right that kind of thing right like you know and like

00:32:53   you said like and it definitely works I mean I don't buy into this it's

00:32:57   certainly come a long way right but it's cool stuff like if you're using Gmail

00:33:05   and you let you know then then you get your flight stuff into your Gmail and

00:33:09   then they already know you have a flight because they've already parsed the email

00:33:12   from your airline that says you're doing it and then your today view already has

00:33:17   like you said, has the weather for San Francisco

00:33:20   because that's where I'm flying.

00:33:21   - Right.

00:33:22   Or like I just got a pop up yesterday,

00:33:23   it's like this shirt that you ordered for,

00:33:25   a short order for my kid, they're like,

00:33:27   it just shipped, here's the FedEx number.

00:33:28   Like that's actually pretty useful.

00:33:30   - Yeah, that's pretty awesome.

00:33:32   So I mean, but it's like you said though,

00:33:36   like I'm a little wary of it,

00:33:41   but at least with Google, the exchange is very clear.

00:33:46   it's okay you're gonna give up some of your privacy

00:33:48   and they're gonna send you targeted ads.

00:33:51   And that makes me a little uncomfortable.

00:33:53   But in exchange, there's a very clear value proposition

00:33:56   though, it's we're gonna give you stuff

00:33:59   that you need to know, like your weather

00:34:00   and reminders of things that you didn't even ask

00:34:03   to be reminded of but that you would need to.

00:34:06   And I think that's pretty interesting.

00:34:07   Whereas with a lot of these startups,

00:34:09   it's like they want the information

00:34:11   and you know they're gonna sell it out

00:34:13   and it's like I have no idea,

00:34:14   Why would I give this to you?

00:34:16   - Right, right, right, right.

00:34:18   Yeah, absolutely.

00:34:19   And yeah, anyway, it's probably kind of a thistle

00:34:21   to get into, but then you look at something like Uber,

00:34:24   where did you see the thing where they're lost and found?

00:34:27   Database was like an unprotected spreadsheet

00:34:29   on the internet with people's names and phone numbers in it.

00:34:32   - No, I did not.

00:34:34   - It's like, wow, that's pretty rough.

00:34:36   The sharing economy thing is super interesting to me

00:34:42   because I'm kind of surprised,

00:34:44   really, especially in San Francisco,

00:34:45   I am very surprised this stuff has gotten as far as it has.

00:34:48   You know, you asked me 10 years ago,

00:34:50   I mean, I live in a neighborhood

00:34:50   where it's very difficult to get a cab anytime.

00:34:53   And I've cursed the cab companies forever

00:34:55   'cause they don't give a fig, they don't need to.

00:34:57   They can just drive up and down Polk Street

00:34:59   and make all the money in the world, drive to the airport.

00:35:01   There's, you know what I mean?

00:35:02   That's how it works in a city.

00:35:04   But I never would have guessed

00:35:06   that they would get away with that here.

00:35:07   You know what I mean?

00:35:08   It's such a strong kind of union town in some ways.

00:35:10   such a strong town for like people who are protected.

00:35:13   Uh, you know, interest like with the medallions and stuff kind of amazed that stuff has gotten

00:35:18   as far as it has.

00:35:19   I am too.

00:35:20   I didn't know.

00:35:21   I didn't realize that.

00:35:22   Um, I don't know if you saw my tweet.

00:35:24   I don't know a week or two ago.

00:35:26   Um, there was an article like like lift start just started here in Philly and the article

00:35:31   about lift was about how the whole thing like all the uber all the ubers in Philly are illegal.

00:35:38   There's they're not supposed to be operating in Philly.

00:35:40   It's like news to me, I've been using Uber and Philly for like two years. I had no idea.

00:35:44   Isn't that kind of mind-blowing? It just seems like one low-level government functionary could

00:35:49   walk into that office and just shut off the lights. But like so they, I mean black cars are obviously

00:35:55   legal but not based on you know not through the Uber interface. But they're regulated.

00:35:59   I mean I guess I don't know what it is but there's something like and we have UberX now too so we

00:36:04   have the you know the amateur cab driver version. You meet some very interesting people with UberX.

00:36:10   And the whole thing was about how Lyft, you know, Lyft's got the pink mustaches on the cars,

00:36:15   which makes them so easy to identify. So, like, because they're illegal, like the...

00:36:20   But it's not enforced by the police. It's enforced by the parking authority.

00:36:24   The long arm of the parking authority.

00:36:26   Right.

00:36:28   But I've heard stories, I don't know if these are true, but I've heard anecdotes where people

00:36:31   are like, "Okay, fist bump. Get in. Now put your bag in the trunk. We're friends. We've

00:36:35   We've known each other since college.

00:36:38   Because the Lyft experience is still a little on the bubble.

00:36:44   Yeah, I'm not comfortable with it, really.

00:36:46   Yeah.

00:36:47   Yeah.

00:36:48   Yeah, I'm not either.

00:36:49   But out here, there's an article in the paper a week or two ago

00:36:54   about how--

00:36:56   I mean, I find this totally plausible.

00:36:58   Uber drivers are making something like, on average,

00:37:00   $10 an hour more than taxi drivers.

00:37:03   there's been a utter diaspora of people leaving

00:37:07   these taxi companies to go work for Uber,

00:37:09   'cause there's just smart deal in it.

00:37:11   - Yeah, I've done that, and when I first started using Uber,

00:37:14   it was in San Francisco, because it was early days

00:37:17   when Uber was new, and I don't know where the,

00:37:19   maybe that was the only place

00:37:20   where they were operating at first,

00:37:21   but I remember thinking, well, this sounds weird, right?

00:37:25   This sounds weird, but I'll try it,

00:37:27   and I remember the first couple of times I got in an Uber,

00:37:29   I would ask the driver, I was like,

00:37:31   so how do you like this, do you like this?

00:37:33   And two of never, never was the answer anything other than I love it. This is you know, this is great

00:37:38   Oh, absolutely. And whereas if I get a cab ride, I've said this story elsewhere, but I recent last month

00:37:44   I got a cab ride home from a gig and

00:37:46   The entire time the guy had his right arm on the seat turning around facing me the entire trip screaming

00:37:52   He's like an uber anti uber activist, but the entire ride like I'm you know

00:37:57   three sheets to the wind and just trying to put my headphones on and nod and he really wants to talk about uber and and

00:38:02   And it's the battle lines have been drawn.

00:38:05   I tried using that app, but you know, curb, do you have that there?

00:38:08   No, I don't think we do.

00:38:09   There's an app, at least in San Francisco, that is the go-to app for ordering a cab in

00:38:15   an Uber-like way.

00:38:16   I've tried it three times and waiting 10 minutes, I've never even gotten a response that a cab

00:38:22   would even be available.

00:38:23   But just because I live out in kind of a crazy part of town.

00:38:26   So I mean, it's, I don't love using it either and they kind of seem like dicks.

00:38:30   I mean, no offense to Uber,

00:38:33   but there's some pretty crazy decisions going on.

00:38:37   - Yeah, I'll send you a link.

00:38:37   Here's what we've got.

00:38:39   This is our new thing is 215, get a cab.

00:38:43   - Okay.

00:38:43   - And it's clearly like,

00:38:46   like the various cab companies have colluded to get,

00:38:52   I mean, I'm not colluded in any legal way,

00:38:54   but it's not just one. - Collaborated.

00:38:55   - Yeah, it's in response to Uber.

00:39:00   - It's just no doubt about it.

00:39:01   It is in response to Uber

00:39:03   and they've got it plastered all over all of their--

00:39:06   - I'll bet.

00:39:07   - All of their vehicles, two and five.

00:39:11   - Remember that time and--

00:39:12   - So I feel like the thing that's funny to me though

00:39:13   is they want you to get the app, right?

00:39:15   - Yep. - Get the app.

00:39:16   And the app sees-- - Have the app,

00:39:17   have the app before it occurs to you that you need a cab

00:39:20   because you're drunk in an alley somewhere,

00:39:22   like what are you gonna do, download an app?

00:39:24   Like you need to have it on your phone already probably.

00:39:26   - And it's a new thing,

00:39:27   but they've come up with the name is a phone number.

00:39:29   Like it's still the 80s and you've got to go over, you know, does anybody have a quarter?

00:39:34   Give me a quarter, I got a call to get a cab.

00:39:36   - Right, you can just imagine the meeting where like,

00:39:38   all right, we'll do the app,

00:39:40   but it's gotta be the phone number.

00:39:42   - Right, and so their website is 215getacab.com.

00:39:47   - For some reason I'm reminded of,

00:39:50   I wanna say like in the early 2000s,

00:39:52   when, you know, the dotcoms had already started,

00:39:54   the dotcom like retail.coms, thepets.com and all,

00:39:57   it was clearly like things were a little rocky,

00:39:58   But there are more and more places that wanted to look like

00:40:01   an e-business.

00:40:02   And I think a lot of them were basically just like a CGI

00:40:05   or a Perl script that sends something to a fax machine.

00:40:08   You go in and you fill out a form.

00:40:10   You do not have any sense that anything electronic

00:40:12   was happening at all.

00:40:13   You know what I mean?

00:40:14   Not like today where you can like track things

00:40:15   and stuff like that.

00:40:16   I think it used to be pretty Rube Goldberg

00:40:18   to start a company like that.

00:40:19   - Right, yeah, I like the idea though that,

00:40:21   I think it was probably was true though

00:40:23   that a lot of places where you could order online,

00:40:25   it would generate a fax.

00:40:26   - Oh, that's how it works now.

00:40:28   If you order a lot of food online, all it does is print something out.

00:40:30   I mean, obviously, that's the installed base.

00:40:34   It just prints something out next to the cash register.

00:40:37   I don't know, man.

00:40:39   Should we talk about vaccines?

00:40:44   Oh, come on!

00:40:47   Oh, man!

00:40:51   Well if we end up, I was telling a friend of mine what our nominal topic for today was,

00:40:56   which I'm very excited about.

00:40:57   And my friend responded by saying,

00:40:59   you are gonna get so much email.

00:41:02   - Oh, we probably are.

00:41:02   - So we might as well jam it all into one episode.

00:41:05   Yeah, vaccines.

00:41:07   - So the thing that got me about the vaccines

00:41:09   with it being back in the news again

00:41:12   is like, it's everywhere now, right?

00:41:16   It's percolated up to like the national consciousness

00:41:20   and it's on the news every day now and all that stuff.

00:41:22   And I was like, why?

00:41:23   Why all of a sudden?

00:41:24   I mean, this is not a new thing.

00:41:25   I mean, this is only a story if there's a controversy, right? That's that's the thing. I couldn't just go these people are dumbasses

00:41:31   I will have to say well, there's still a couple scientists that haven't definitely decided on this

00:41:36   It's and I realized it's obvious. It's all because actual people got actual measles at Disneyland and

00:41:43   I didn't really put I saw this story and I thought well

00:41:47   Of course

00:41:48   They are did because there's a bunch of dopes who aren't getting there's so many people

00:41:52   Who aren't getting their kids immunized? Of course, there's an outbreak of I wasn't I was so unsurprised right that there was an outbreak of measles

00:41:58   It's Disneyland that I it seems like a perfect place for there to be a measles outbreak given the conditions

00:42:04   I I couldn't believe that it was news, you know

00:42:07   Whereas it's clearly is like the eye-opener for a lot of people like oh my god

00:42:12   You know if you don't get your kid in it just seems like that's a big part of the conversation is

00:42:16   Holy shit, if millions of people don't immunize their kids these kids can get measles

00:42:20   like that seems to be our national conversation yeah it's really

00:42:27   frustrating it's yeah I don't know what to say I also saw I saw an interesting

00:42:34   poll on on by by age whether you support mandatory immunization and it drops off

00:42:41   so precipitously it's like 70 year olds it's like almost universal support 60

00:42:45   year olds very high 50 40 kind of high and then when you well like once you

00:42:49   get in her 40s and 30s it's lower and then you talk to kids in their 20s and

00:42:53   it's like they you know it's like 15% support mandatory that doesn't mean that

00:42:58   they don't think people should do it they're just saying it shouldn't be

00:43:00   mandatory but I think that the reason that it's age it's like it's like

00:43:04   reading to your kid that's one of the things it's a good idea but yeah I don't

00:43:07   really technically have to do that that's the idea like yeah you don't have

00:43:10   to do that I don't have to give my kid a measles shot well the reason it's age

00:43:13   specific though is so obvious it's because older people remember what it's

00:43:17   like when your neighbor had polio right are they remember parents age who made

00:43:21   it through the depression and watched a neighbor on one side of them lose three

00:43:26   kids right or a sibling even right I mean we said my grandmother lost a

00:43:31   sibling - it flew in the I think you know right right around World War one

00:43:36   right so they've saw and then all of a sudden big scientists come out with just

00:43:42   a shot that makes your arms sore for a day and then you'll never get polio of

00:43:47   of course they support it. Yeah I don't know I'm trying so hard to grow as a

00:43:53   person John I'm trying really hard to be sympathetic and understand everybody's

00:43:58   position but it it's one of the things I think we talked years ago about the

00:44:03   thing remember the you told me this remember that there was that poll that

00:44:05   something was what was the percentage of people who were thoroughly convinced

00:44:09   that Obama is not eligible to be president even late late late in that

00:44:15   in that rumor, it was still like 40% or something ridiculous of people. And it's like there's the

00:44:21   thing is there's a you know there's there's a I've been reading this book that I'll apparently

00:44:29   mention on every podcast called the wisdom of insecurity by Alan Watts and he makes a

00:44:33   distinction in that book that really hit me. It makes a distinction between faith and belief,

00:44:36   which I found very persuasive with the idea that you know faith is a thing that we all have. Yeah

00:44:42   or sight unseen things that we, there's some part of us that has faith that these kinds of things

00:44:48   could happen, that there might be a heaven or whatever. Which is really different from belief,

00:44:51   because belief is a kind of a more dangerous thing. Because belief is where, you know,

00:44:55   there's not really that much to even discuss. Like, I've decided that this is how things are,

00:45:01   and nothing is going to talk me out of this because now it's become part of who I am.

00:45:04   Now I am a person who believes this about vaccines, or believes this about Obama.

00:45:08   And, you know, I think that can become very internalized. You and I probably have things

00:45:12   like that that we're not even aware of but you know that's the dangerous part

00:45:15   and there's no what we dumb liberals don't understand is there's no way there

00:45:20   are never gonna be enough infographics Venn diagrams or horrifying maps to

00:45:24   convince people of anything different I mean Jesus Christ we had George W Bush

00:45:28   in the White House for eight years people will believe anything well one of

00:45:32   the things that's interesting about the I think the whole immunization thing is

00:45:36   very sad and for anybody who's listening I do have enough listeners I'm sure that

00:45:39   there's got to be some of you who should stick to computers. Yeah, stick to computers who have

00:45:44   children who've chosen not to immunize. I do. I think one of the things that's I so I wanted to

00:45:50   I want to be a big person. I want to be as I don't want to be insulting, but I think one of the

00:45:56   things that's fascinating about it is that it has no traditional political divide. It's not a liberal

00:46:01   thing or a Republican thing or a conservative thing or a rural thing. It's like all over the map.

00:46:08   it's you know it's like when they poll i saw one poll that was like exactly 50 50 where like

00:46:12   they talked to i don't know however poll sample size number of parents who chose not to immunize

00:46:19   their children and who did you vote for in the last election and it was like 50 50 split really

00:46:24   yeah i had no do you think the reasons why they differ are different would they agree on the

00:46:30   reason why they decide not to do that i you know i don't know but i remember one of the big reasons

00:46:37   that it really caught on was I remember reading the article it was Robert F

00:46:42   Kennedy jr. wrote like a feature magazine length article I don't know if

00:46:45   it was for the Atlantic or one of those magazines like that you know back when

00:46:52   there was that one ingredient in the I mean you know that they were yeah I

00:46:56   thought we worried we worried about that I'll be honest with you yeah well Jonas

00:47:00   was around that age I mean it was at the height of it it was I think when Jonas

00:47:04   was he just turned 11 so I think when Jonas was getting that's like his first

00:47:09   year immunizations was before I think it was before that one paper in Britain had

00:47:17   been debunked oh the Lancet article right I think it was before it was

00:47:21   debunked so it was definitely you know it was a thing I don't know we were a

00:47:25   little you know I I didn't really put creeds into it but I you know I was it

00:47:30   I just remember it being a thing. We talked about it.

00:47:33   We ask a lot of questions, for sure. And they were very sober about it and actually

00:47:39   like oddly patient, like you have to be with a new parent. Because we pretty much knew we were just

00:47:43   going to have the one kid. It's like we don't get a lot of shots at this, so to speak. And we,

00:47:48   it was important to us to know that kind of stuff. I don't feel dumb for asking those questions

00:47:53   because they were very, the doctor was very straightforward about it. It's the same thing that

00:48:00   a lot of sensible people understand, which is like there's risks to everything in life,

00:48:03   but what we can tell you is the risks associated with vaccination are nothing compared with the

00:48:10   very demonstrable risks of not vaccinating. Yeah, as an individual, I think in terms of risk

00:48:15   analysis or cost benefit, it's not even a comparison. Right, and then I, you know,

00:48:21   especially when it comes to your kid, I think it's almost human instinct, at least in our modern

00:48:26   world where we're very as parents we're very selfish about our children that we

00:48:31   want will do anything for our kids and you know if you could prove that your

00:48:37   kid might be better off without as an individual would be better off without

00:48:41   immunizations versus the whole civic responsibility the herd you know the

00:48:46   herd meant the herd advantage of getting everybody immunized I can see it and I

00:48:52   think that's the basic thinking that's going on behind the people who chose not

00:48:55   to immunize their children that they're they value you know that they believe

00:48:59   some kind of bad thing can happen from the immunization right and regardless of

00:49:03   what it means but that's a sticky idea that's a very durable idea whether or

00:49:07   not it's true or accurate I can certainly understand why it's something

00:49:11   that that I mean I don't agree with it but I get why that's something that

00:49:15   people feel is a big risk you know but think about this I mean this is

00:49:19   something where I think we all have a I feel like I have a lot in common with

00:49:23   other people which is you know I've grown so I'm skeptical so cynical about

00:49:28   all the turns out announcements about what's dangerous and you know there's

00:49:32   been numerous you know articles over the years talking about the crazy history of

00:49:36   stuff like the the food pyramid right the USDA's food pyramid you're not USDA

00:49:41   so what it is what's the one that puts out the food pyramid like in the 70s

00:49:44   we'd like make sure you have tons and tons of bread and you know what I mean

00:49:47   and then it was so USDA you I but it was very much apparently very much formed by

00:49:53   these different industries not to be like a nut or something but your body

00:49:57   was never meant to handle this much corn my god no one's supposed to jam this

00:50:01   much corn into their hole it's nuts and then what happens to be old fats the

00:50:05   enemy okay so quit eating eggs all right so now fast the enemy so let's have

00:50:09   snack wells so everyone sits around and eats fat-free brownies with three cups

00:50:12   of sugar in it oh wait a minute no it turns out sugar is actually the enemy

00:50:15   and so forth look no further back than in the last decade look at fucking water

00:50:19   bottles. Do you follow this at all? No. Like what used to be you're like oh you're

00:50:24   killing the environment with all these cups so for God's sakes go out and buy a

00:50:27   Nalgene bottle and you had to have a Nalgene bottle. Where's your Nalgene

00:50:30   bottle? Those stupid plastic bottles. Oh no guess what? Turns out phthalates. Oh my

00:50:35   gosh you're gonna die because you're doing the right thing. So now you should

00:50:38   go and buy this kind of and now people are saying maybe those aluminum ones

00:50:41   that we used to replace the Nalgene bottles are bad. You know what the trouble

00:50:44   is it doesn't it kind of doesn't matter what is actually true accurate accurate

00:50:48   or known. What matters is we are scared to hurt ourselves and our kids and we're always going to

00:50:53   try and have the most recent information that we can find about what we should do about it.

00:50:57   I mean you're not even supposed to put plastic in the microwave anymore. Like what do you put

00:51:01   in the microwave? You know like throw the goddamn thing out if you can't put plastic in it. It's

00:51:05   useless. Who doesn't? I'm not going to make a bowl to warm something up. I'm not a fucking monster.

00:51:10   I remember coaching Little League a couple years ago. I am familiar with the whole water bottle

00:51:17   thing now and it had something to do with I think it was phthalates and I don't know.

00:51:21   I know baby remember baby bottles and phthalates.

00:51:23   I it's like it made me feel like time traveling dad from the 1950s you know like I'm just trying

00:51:31   to make sure none of these kids get hit in the mouth with a baseball right number one I don't

00:51:37   want anybody getting hit in the head with a baseball it's a constant fear you've got 12 kids

00:51:42   and at some point at least two of the 12 invariably are not paying attention to the game

00:51:47   and therefore are at risk of getting hit in the head with a baseball, which is bad.

00:51:51   So it's, you know, every game...

00:51:52   We can all agree on that.

00:51:54   Every game is two hours of non-stop. 95% of my attention is don't let any of these kids get

00:51:59   hit by a baseball. And then 5% of my attention is let's, you know, try to score some runs and

00:52:04   get some outs and maybe win the game. And in the meantime, there's this whole thing with the other,

00:52:08   all the other, I mean, not just moms either. It's moms and dads, and they're all talking about like,

00:52:12   "Oh, you got to get rid of that bottle. That bottle, you can't drink out of that."

00:52:15   Everybody's an expert.

00:52:17   And I'm just like, just give the kids some goddamn water.

00:52:20   I don't know.

00:52:20   When I was a kid, we'd finish each game

00:52:23   with 50 of those little--

00:52:26   Conical juice boxes.

00:52:27   Oh, sure, the water cups.

00:52:29   Yeah.

00:52:30   The conical paper cups.

00:52:31   You just leave them on the field.

00:52:32   Let the Indian clean them up.

00:52:34   Exactly.

00:52:35   You didn't even have to clean them up.

00:52:37   Yeah, totally.

00:52:38   Totally.

00:52:39   And I mean, it is funny, given how you and I already

00:52:42   come from a pampered generation in so many ways.

00:52:46   We're probably the last generation that has a chance of doing better than our parents in life.

00:52:50   But, um, for a while anyway.

00:52:52   But, you know, I mentioned this a lot, but like some of my, I'm not, okay guys, I'm not advocating for this,

00:52:58   but I have such, I wrote a thing about this one time.

00:53:00   Just having this memory of our old green Pontiac, my dad driving around, smoking a butt with the windows down,

00:53:08   and me like standing on the seat, like, or you could just stick your head out the window.

00:53:12   You would just do all this crazy stuff.

00:53:13   Seatbelts? You've got to be kidding me.

00:53:14   Do we even have seatbelts?

00:53:15   And now today my daughter doesn't do anything without a helmet.

00:53:18   I mean, that's on me.

00:53:20   I want to protect her head.

00:53:21   But it is pretty wild how many people manage to survive that.

00:53:26   Now at the same time, I was trying to explain to the best of my amateur ability

00:53:31   what the world population is and how it works.

00:53:34   I was saying to my kid, OK, I think there's like what?

00:53:36   Coming up on 7 billion people, something like that.

00:53:38   I was like, can you guess why that keeps going up?

00:53:41   And my hints were, well, one of them is when mommies and daddies get together,

00:53:44   what happens?" She goes, "Well, they have babies." I'm like, "Yeah, and when those babies grow up,

00:53:48   and they become mommies and daddies, what happens?" And they have like three kids. And she's like,

00:53:51   "Oh, I have seven more kids." And I was like, "But the other thing is, to our credit, I think,

00:53:56   people die of less completely preventable random shit than when I was a kid." I've got to stipulate,

00:54:04   thank God, for seat belts. They've made the road safer, the cars are safer, it's all safer.

00:54:08   Everybody knew somebody that had died in a car accident when I was a kid. It was just a thing.

00:54:13   It was cancer and car accidents killed and lung disease like killed everybody when I was a kid and they're all at least partially preventable

00:54:20   Right a huge to a huge swath of car accidents are preventable. Well in addition to seat belts. There's the whole

00:54:26   Have you seen the footage you had to that the difference in the crumple zones of like an old car in a new car?

00:54:32   It's it's almost farcical

00:54:35   Yeah, oh man those drivers ed movies. I still think about them. I've never unbuckled a dead man

00:54:40   My mom took our Pontiac to the dealership. She took it to a mechanic and said, "Look,

00:54:48   we bought this $8,000 car and it beeps when we sit in it if we don't put on the seat belt.

00:54:53   Can you turn that off?" And he said, "Yes, I will turn that off for you."

00:54:55   All right.

00:54:56   Or you just leave it fastened all the time.

00:55:01   My sister and I were not allowed to use the seat belts because we would mess them up.

00:55:05   Like, you know what I mean? Like they wouldn't retract right anymore or that, you know,

00:55:11   you get them twisted around.

00:55:12   It used to be pretty basic the way that it would retract. You could like get it off the runner,

00:55:17   like off the spool and it wouldn't go back in right.

00:55:19   Right. So at some point one of us had gotten one of the ones in the backseat twisted in the,

00:55:25   you know, the actual belt was twisted in the, what would you call it?

00:55:29   That little cartridge kind of thing.

00:55:30   Yeah, the cartridge that would slide to make it adjustable.

00:55:32   - I know exactly what you mean.

00:55:33   They were really primitive.

00:55:35   They didn't snap into place very well.

00:55:36   And it was very easy when feeding it back.

00:55:38   It would be like a roller blind,

00:55:42   getting slightly off track at the beginning

00:55:43   and then being way off track by the time it got to the end.

00:55:45   - It's a lot, the only thing that's similar to it anymore

00:55:47   are airplane seat belts.

00:55:49   But it was a lot,

00:55:50   the buckling connection was a lot more primitive.

00:55:52   But the way that you could slide it on the belt,

00:55:54   well, we'd gotten it twisted up

00:55:56   and it took my mom a long time to unfix it.

00:55:58   And so from then on, we weren't allowed to use seat belts.

00:56:02   just let them go.

00:56:03   It took her 15 minutes to get them untangled.

00:56:08   So then that was it, no more seat belts.

00:56:10   - What do you think is gonna happen with the vaccine stuff?

00:56:13   Do you think it'll take a generation?

00:56:15   Or does it take event generation

00:56:17   or does it take a measles 9/11?

00:56:19   Like what do you think will change and how

00:56:22   in the next however many end years?

00:56:24   - I've been thinking about, I don't think,

00:56:26   I don't think there's any way to go back on it.

00:56:27   And part of it is what we were saying a couple of minutes ago

00:56:31   where you can't, you can come at them,

00:56:33   like they've done studies that you go at them

00:56:35   with the most factual, statistical approach

00:56:38   of the relative safety of immunizations

00:56:41   and the fact that, you know, how horrible it is,

00:56:45   you know, measles can make you blind, kill people.

00:56:49   I think they said, I think just 46 people a day

00:56:53   die from measles around the world.

00:56:55   Something like that, around the world.

00:56:57   And you give them these facts,

00:57:00   and the people who don't want to vaccinate their kids

00:57:02   get the facts and they come out of it more convinced.

00:57:05   - I heard this, I did hear that.

00:57:07   But you know, facts are slippery things.

00:57:09   And I mean, if somebody that you didn't trust,

00:57:11   let's be honest, if somebody you didn't trust

00:57:13   that you considered to be a mouthpiece for an organization,

00:57:17   some kind of like the Laramie cigarettes guys

00:57:19   on The Simpsons, if somebody came to you

00:57:21   with some information and you knew

00:57:23   that they were compromised,

00:57:25   even if they gave you what they presented as facts,

00:57:27   you wouldn't listen to them.

00:57:29   or you probably wouldn't go look

00:57:30   at the primary research, right?

00:57:31   I'm the same way, I know what I believe,

00:57:34   I know what I think is BS.

00:57:36   It's just that, right back to that,

00:57:37   I think we've talked about this every time,

00:57:38   that Lakoff book, "Don't Think of an Elephant."

00:57:40   If you have a certain mental model for how reality works

00:57:44   and what relationships are

00:57:45   and how you determine what's real

00:57:47   and that overrides or supersedes new information

00:57:51   by an order of magnitude, right?

00:57:52   I mean, it's gotta, I mean,

00:57:54   the way that you have conducted yourself in the world

00:57:56   for however many end 30 some years whatever is likely to have such

00:58:01   I totally buy that you know and what your family believes

00:58:04   and what the people around you believe what the people your church believe it's

00:58:07   constantly being reinforced because that's part of your tribe that's

00:58:10   what your tribe believes and there's no reason not to i mean we've all got

00:58:13   tribal things like that right yeah like you like the stupid you like the

00:58:16   dallas cowboys you've got problems of your own

00:58:19   that's part of the problem though is that there's there is a sort of tribal

00:58:22   behavior where the the kids who are not immunized tend to be clustered because it spreads and you

00:58:30   become friends you know i mean we're not like super buddy buddy with any of the other parents

00:58:33   at school but you talk to them and you know and it's like it becomes like a thing where like now

00:58:39   like i forget what the the percentage is in marin county but it's just ridiculous marin's got a lot

00:58:44   of weird outliers marin also has a used to have as far as i know like a improbably high rate of

00:58:50   breast cancer. And I imagine there's ways that you could come up with why that is that don't involve,

00:58:56   you know, high power lines or something. It could be that they're getting detection better or

00:58:59   something. I don't know. But yeah, Marin's a thing. I remember Scott Simpson said something

00:59:07   made me laugh a long time ago when he had a kid and I didn't at the time have a kid. I think it

00:59:10   was a toot he had back in the Fevard days. He said something like there's two kinds of parents.

00:59:18   Like there's the helicopter parents that are more protective than me and I hate them.

00:59:23   And then there's the parents who are totally careless with their kids and I hate them too.

00:59:26   The way you evaluate everything is based on what you think. Everybody else is either too permissive

00:59:32   or too strict.

00:59:33   >> It's so totally true.

00:59:34   >> It's true, they're just a bunch of assholes.

00:59:36   >> Right.

00:59:37   Their kid's an asshole, he doesn't even know how to tie his shoes.

00:59:42   And then there's the other kid who's reckless.

00:59:44   >> Look at that guy.

00:59:45   >> What's wrong with these parents? They're maniacs, their kid's a menace.

00:59:47   Geez, come on kid, it's a jungle gym, let the kid play. Oh my God, I can't believe you let him get

00:59:52   on the jungle gym. Or even with what we want to talk about later, like with movies, like I cannot

01:00:02   believe they let their kid watch that. Or I can't believe that they don't want us to let him watch

01:00:06   Harry Potter. Oh, this is what makes it. I texted you about this this morning. I know we're not

01:00:12   getting into it just now, but the way I tried to phrase this to my daughter, and we'll come back to

01:00:16   this was like, you know, it's not just a matter of like, you know me, I like a facet. I like,

01:00:21   as they say in academics, I like problematizing. I like taking something that seems obvious and

01:00:24   figuring out how it's actually a mess. And so like with kids in media, it's not just like,

01:00:29   what do you show your kids? It's like, hmm, it's like, well, what kinds of stuff do you

01:00:33   show your particular kid at what point in their life, in what context, et cetera, et cetera, et

01:00:40   cetera, because we all know every kid's really different. I mean, anybody with two kids,

01:00:44   There's a kind of people who say,

01:00:45   Google's this kind of company,

01:00:46   Apple's this kind of company.

01:00:48   If you said to them, your three kids are identical,

01:00:50   they'd hit you in the face.

01:00:51   (laughs)

01:00:52   'Cause all their kids are special flowers.

01:00:54   So I know we'll come back to that,

01:00:55   but oh, we're gonna get so much email.

01:00:57   - We're gonna get a lot of email.

01:00:58   Let me take a break.

01:00:59   Let's take a break and thank another one of our sponsors,

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01:01:06   They're the people who make top-notch men's shaving stuff.

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01:01:26   that they looked at the market for razors and shaving stuff

01:01:30   and saw that it was a mess.

01:01:32   It's stuff that's ugly, it's stuff that's overpriced,

01:01:35   it's stuff that's a pain in the ass to buy because--

01:01:37   - You gotta go hit a button and ask somebody

01:01:39   to come over with a key to let you please,

01:01:41   if I could, could I please have some razor blades?

01:01:44   - It's like when you remember when the compact disc stores

01:01:47   used to lock the CD.

01:01:49   - Oh yes.

01:01:49   You know what I love?

01:01:50   I go to my Walgreens seven times a day

01:01:52   and when I go there to buy some goddamn razor blades,

01:01:54   and I am a Harry's user now, to be honest,

01:01:56   but when I go in there to get like,

01:01:57   if I'm traveling and I wanna bring

01:01:59   this particular razor with me,

01:02:00   I go there and it's the same dingus kid

01:02:03   that I see seven times a day and I say,

01:02:05   "Oh, could I please have the,

01:02:06   "this and such, $75 worth of blades please?"

01:02:09   He's like, "Are you ready to check out now?"

01:02:10   I'm like, no, I wanna walk around the store

01:02:12   and steal stuff for a while.

01:02:13   No, he's got to walk me.

01:02:16   - Right.

01:02:16   - The assistant manager wants to walk me to the counter

01:02:19   so that I don't steal his precious Gillette's.

01:02:21   No offense.

01:02:22   Oh, it's the worst.

01:02:24   - I, one time I had to, I was at your neck of the woods.

01:02:28   I was in San Francisco for one of these Apple events

01:02:30   or something like that, and oh, I forgot my toothbrush.

01:02:33   Well, that's the sort of thing, I cannot,

01:02:37   I think not brushing your teeth for two or three days.

01:02:40   your mouth would feel horrible. You gotta take care of it. I guess I probably should have just

01:02:43   called down the front desk at the hotel and seen if they could do it. But I thought, well,

01:02:46   I gotta go out anyway. And I went on right there on Market Street to, I don't know, what is it?

01:02:50   Is it a, yeah, like a CVS or Walgreens? Yeah, I forget what they get, you know, but I go in there

01:02:55   and the goddamn toothbrushes were locked behind those. What? Yeah. Because I guess people steal

01:03:00   toothbrushes. I ran out of deodorant. I went to buy deodorant yesterday. All the deodorant was

01:03:05   under lock and key. So I got to call some kid to come over and unlock a little deodorant jail

01:03:10   to open it up for me and then walk me to the counter like an animal.

01:03:13   PAUL Right. And they wonder why we're buying all our stuff from Amazon. Well, anyway,

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01:03:22   So if you haven't checked them out in a while, go there. They have a new line, limited edition

01:03:27   razors, the Jimmy Chin line. They're inspired by Jimmy Chin, who's a – I'd never heard him before,

01:03:34   but he's an explorer and photographer. There's some pretty cool photos from him, but it's a new

01:03:40   limited edition line of razors. Really, really cool looking. They have great stuff. They also

01:03:45   have, they have these subscriptions. I don't know. They call them shave plans. You go there

01:03:50   and you tell them how often you shave. Do you shave every day? Do you shave once a week? Tell

01:03:55   them how often you shave and then you get a plan that will just have new stuff show up on a regular

01:04:01   basis right when you need it and you can cancel anytime you want to grow a beard

01:04:06   you want to stop shaving you want to switch to another brand you can just

01:04:08   cancel at any time it's like Tonks for for razors really so I mean like for

01:04:14   example I I've bought coffee like once in the last year because there was like

01:04:19   one stretch where I'd gotten ahead of my Tonks and needed to go buy it I don't

01:04:25   buy razors anymore I don't have to buy shaving cream anymore it just shows up

01:04:28   on a regular basis from Harry's really great stuff and they have a special deal

01:04:34   for listeners of the show the code is talk show just ta lk sh ow and that will

01:04:43   save you five bucks on your first order so it's only good for people who are

01:04:49   making their first order if you're already a Harry's customer just go and

01:04:52   renew and sign up for a plan sorry but if you're new if you haven't used it yet

01:04:56   use the code talk show know the and you'll save five bucks and you can get a

01:05:01   kit for like 15 bucks so you'd only cost you like 10 so for 10 bucks you can

01:05:05   totally upgrade your your shave good people at Harry's yeah great service you

01:05:12   know what make a great code good offer code what would make a good I will never

01:05:17   buy anything from assholes who paid John Gruber for sponsorships that was that

01:05:25   from our friend Dave over at man he was looking through his refers his refers

01:05:32   over at mad.com they sponsored a whole slew I love their sponsorships oh my god

01:05:38   that was the best sponsors ever I said still blows me away what they did with

01:05:42   the Darren fireballs like the four oh didn't do like a was like a 404 page or

01:05:45   something they once the one way they did like three straight weeks and the one

01:05:48   was a was a it was a typo and they wanted a typo into URL so it went to a

01:05:53   a 404 page. And so they got one referral, it looks like a Google Analytics screenshot they

01:05:59   posted. Right, they had one that was just the title of the link was an ellipse. It's

01:06:06   just three dots and then it just said the message that only went in the feed it just said in this

01:06:11   week before Christmas we thought it'd be nice to take our daring fireball sponsorship and not pitch

01:06:15   you on anything enjoy the holidays meh. And they didn't have a link it didn't it they signed it meh

01:06:20   but they didn't link to their website there was no there was no URL it just

01:06:24   went nowhere and then the week before was the one where they had the the ASCII

01:06:29   art of a guy flipping a table right that said Amazon upside down like with those

01:06:37   crazy Unicode characters that were happy holidays right which only made sense

01:06:42   which is cool because it only made sense if you knew the backstory yeah that

01:06:46   relationship yeah that they had started woot the same guys who did woot

01:06:50   and they sold the Amazon and you ever read that story like Paul kafasa sleep

01:06:57   oh yeah I think I think I did it it sounds like it was not ideal yeah it was

01:07:00   like Amazon bought them and they didn't do well they weren't happy it didn't see

01:07:04   my gam is uncared and and the founder had like a breakfast with Jeff Bezos

01:07:12   Bezos yeah he's oh so whatever and you know basis is going on and on about

01:07:17   whatever and he's like well look can I ask you a question he was like why did

01:07:20   you buy whoo and it was like he just like stared at his like breakfast and

01:07:25   there was like this one weird thing on his you know breakfast platter like a

01:07:29   some weird vegetable he was like your thing was like this this piece of weird

01:07:35   lettuce I didn't understand it so I wanted to buy it I didn't get it so I

01:07:41   just wanted to buy it what a psycho yeah it seems like a real nut job he does he

01:07:46   seems easy and like the whole story of like the Amazon the fire phone it just

01:07:50   sounds nuts yeah that was some great reporting I forget if I talked about

01:07:55   this on the show or if I just linked it up on during fireball but Austin Carr

01:07:58   wrote that for a fast company and really really top-notch like if you want to

01:08:05   bemoan the lack of actual reporting that goes on today man that's a great

01:08:09   counter example because he really did the legwork he clearly got people who

01:08:13   worked on that phone to talk and Bezos sounds like basically Bezos like it was his passion project. He

01:08:18   dove in with both feet and I don't say micromanaged, but he like he had would not. He would not go off

01:08:25   his decisions at any point, right? Like he was very decisive about exactly how this thing was

01:08:30   going to work. It wasn't listening to anybody. Yeah, yeah, I think long story short. Well,

01:08:35   how did the fire phone come to be? I would say long story short, based on Austin cards reporting.

01:08:40   it was something to the effect of we should do a phone if we do a phone should it should either be

01:08:47   really cheap or it should be asked if it's not really cheap then it has to compete with the

01:08:52   iphone oh and the 3d it's got to do 3d right well that become like a thing that was the thing like

01:08:57   so then the next step bezos was like well i want to compete with the iphone and because i think he

01:09:01   wanted to make a phone that he would actually use right so like what's the point of like them making

01:09:05   a cheap phone if they themselves are also going to use iphone so they wanted to they're going to go

01:09:08   go high-end. Then the next step in the logical chain is well then we have

01:09:12   to have a hook, right? There has to be something. If we're gonna sell a phone

01:09:15   that's like four or five hundred bucks, there has to be something that is

01:09:19   compelling about it. And Bezos latched on to this 3D thing, you know, everybody

01:09:25   knows the basic, you know, that there's 3D interface that using accelerometers

01:09:28   and four cameras on the front, you know, that it can, without any special

01:09:33   glasses it makes like a fake 3d effect on the flat surface of the phone and

01:09:40   there was like no budging him off that that's you know that's like our Siri

01:09:44   that's our hook that we can advertise everybody's gonna go nuts for it and

01:09:48   there was apparently a lot of internal skepticism that this would have any

01:09:52   actual appeal like well what's the point it's a niche the gist of a lot of the

01:09:56   people seem to think well it is a neat trick but what is the point and then the

01:10:00   phone shipped and everybody said well it's a neat trick but what's the point

01:10:03   but he stuck with it right well he printed up a lot of cardboard boxes that

01:10:09   said buy a fire phone that was so weird the first time I got an Amazon box with

01:10:13   that that on the tape I was like what I was like somebody sent me an Amazon

01:10:18   fire phone I thought the same thing I thought the same thing because every you

01:10:21   know and I thought it was believable for me because nobody's ever sent me a phone

01:10:27   Like no company but like I do get some equipment to try you weren't in a sprint program back in the day

01:10:33   No, I was in some well

01:10:35   I've gotten I got the G1 from Google HTC was nice enough to send me that I remember that that was fun

01:10:41   And but I was in this thing where Sprint would just they were sending bloggers like new phones every few months like in the days

01:10:47   Before I wrote because it was around the time of the iPhone and I finally got this totally crazy looking one

01:10:53   where it had screens on both sides and it was kind of meant to look like an

01:10:57   iPhone but you would do stuff you would need to flip the phone around and use

01:11:00   different keyboards and a touchscreen was totally crazy well but it's not

01:11:04   outlandish to know that that somebody would send me a firefight and that's

01:11:07   what I thought it was and it was a box it was a box that was about the size

01:11:10   that a phone might come in I was like I cannot believe somebody sent me a

01:11:13   fire phone and I opened it up and it was I don't know toothpaste so great all

01:11:20   - All right.

01:11:20   Should we do it?

01:11:24   - Well, let's do one more thing and then we'll do it.

01:11:26   Here's the other thing.

01:11:27   I wanna go circle back on the vaccinations.

01:11:30   - Oh, Jesus.

01:11:31   - Well, not the vaccinations in particular,

01:11:33   but to me, it's a product of the internet age.

01:11:36   This is why I'm a little pessimistic about it getting fixed

01:11:39   because I think pre-internet,

01:11:42   there just wasn't enough information for people to do that.

01:11:46   Like, your best source of information

01:11:48   the health of your kid was what your pediatrician told you and if your pediatrician said we

01:11:52   recommend these immunizations on this schedule well you know you're.

01:11:58   And maybe you might rely on your family too.

01:12:01   Right yeah.

01:12:02   Think about like the things you hear about brand loyalty and how people who are pampers

01:12:06   you know the mom used pampers so they use pampers and we're a Heinz ketchup family and

01:12:10   so forth like you know I think a lot of people especially at a young and impressionable age

01:12:14   having a kid take a lot of that from from what their family would say they'd be like

01:12:17   Are you kidding me? You know, you know aunt Linda died because she wasn't vaccinated. Of course, you're gonna vaccinate your kids

01:12:23   And it's you know that now though, you know

01:12:26   Not that I'm not trying to say that pre-internet that nobody questioned their doctor, of course

01:12:30   I mean, you know the second opinion is part of our vernacular, you know, of course people might question their doctor

01:12:36   Especially if you know the recommendation was surgery or something like that

01:12:41   But now it's so easy for people to just find what they want to find whereas you couldn't do that before and there's that

01:12:48   Stencil it's a spray-painted stencil. It's all you know, you can't go anywhere without seeing it, but you see it everywhere

01:12:53   This the saying stop making stupid people famous

01:12:56   Right, which is trite, but it's true

01:13:00   It is absolutely the problem of the modern age is that we've made a lot of stupid people very famous and not but I also feel

01:13:07   think about something like WebMD and I don't think any of us can say we've

01:13:11   never looked at WebMD when we're pretty sure we have cancer. Like you know there

01:13:15   is also the the internet has empowered us to believe that we we can learn a lot

01:13:21   on our own. I guess this is kind of what you're already saying but you know now

01:13:24   we feel like there's this resource in the same way that we might not go spend

01:13:27   several weeks at the library you know looking up carcinoma. Now today like

01:13:31   we'll keep keep looking until we find the thing that makes sense to us. Yeah and

01:13:36   And it's, you know, yeah, again,

01:13:38   the worst thing you can possibly do

01:13:39   when you have some kind of health problem is Google it.

01:13:41   And it's, of course, the first thing that we all do.

01:13:43   I mean, you can't help but do it,

01:13:45   but it's the worst thing you can do.

01:13:47   - Totally.

01:13:48   - It's 'cause it's just gonna,

01:13:49   now you have whatever your problem is

01:13:51   and now you've got terrible anxiety about it

01:13:53   because you've proven that you have, you know,

01:13:56   something incurable.

01:13:57   - Have you ever gone into a doctor's office

01:13:58   with a printout?

01:13:59   - No, I have not.

01:14:02   - They do not like that.

01:14:03   - Nope, but I'm not saying I wouldn't, though.

01:14:06   I'm not saying I wouldn't I'm just saying I haven't.

01:14:08   - I could see Amy doing a lot of research.

01:14:11   I could see her being a very well informed

01:14:13   with the kid stuff.

01:14:14   I could see her being a very well informed parent

01:14:16   on that stuff.

01:14:17   - Yeah, I think she's very, she's hyper informed.

01:14:20   - And hyper vigilant, right?

01:14:23   Like she's got that EpiPen,

01:14:25   she's like Marshall Dillon with that thing, right?

01:14:27   - Yeah, and she does, she really does know

01:14:29   an awful lot about it.

01:14:31   Again, I think she'd be the first to tell you

01:14:33   that she does not know more than our Jonas's allergist does,

01:14:37   but she certainly knows a lot more than she used to.

01:14:40   But I do think that that's, I don't know,

01:14:44   I feel like that's a big part of the problem

01:14:46   of the modern age is that you can,

01:14:48   there's a, it's easy for anybody to have a soapbox

01:14:52   and get more than just the people who can,

01:14:59   in the old days if you were a lunatic,

01:15:02   only the people within earshot could hear you.

01:15:05   Now anybody can listen.

01:15:07   - Yeah, it's funny.

01:15:07   There's all these little,

01:15:08   setting aside the dark web or the dark net or whatever,

01:15:11   there's this one funny sort of source of information

01:15:16   that's been around for a long time

01:15:17   but still remains largely hidden from plain sight,

01:15:20   which is forums or fora, I guess.

01:15:23   There are so many places where if you Google

01:15:25   for certain kinds of information,

01:15:27   all kinds of certain kinds of information,

01:15:29   you are very likely to,

01:15:32   Somebody suggested for example, yesterday I was talking,

01:15:35   I think yesterday I'm back to work talking about how I'm trying not to drink too much coffee.

01:15:38   You know, I don't want to be too spazzy and somebody had recommended this stuff called L-theanamine or something like that,

01:15:44   which is like a green tea extract or something.

01:15:46   And so I went in and I googled it.

01:15:48   And like so many results on forums where people are like saying the most outlandish things.

01:15:54   But like I kept reading it.

01:15:56   I immediately felt like, you know, I got to take all this with a grain of salt,

01:16:00   but I still kept reading looking for somebody who sounded like they knew what they were talking about and I have no way of knowing if anybody's knows what they're talking about.

01:16:06   I think it's a very common thing.

01:16:08   Do you find that as I'm getting older and I find that I'm getting a lot more sensitive to things like having drunk too much coffee.

01:16:16   Oh, absolutely.

01:16:18   I don't think it's like I think it's actually more of like a self-awareness though than like not that I used to be able to metabolize more.

01:16:24   more it's that I would drink too much coffee and wouldn't even notice whereas

01:16:30   now I'm like wow my brain is bananas right now oh yeah I I talk about this a

01:16:35   lot on the show with Dan I mean I have to be very circumspect about something

01:16:40   that sounds unbelievable to me now which is that I have to be very careful about

01:16:45   how much caffeine or stimulants in general I put in my body after about 12

01:16:49   for one because they say the half-life or like that's mostly out of your body

01:16:53   in like eight hours and that's not true for me.

01:16:55   I'll just be laying, if I have a coffee at two,

01:16:57   I'll just be laying there in bed with my heart beating.

01:16:59   And so, and also, another thing I said other places,

01:17:03   is I feel like I don't always get the same positive effects

01:17:05   that I used to get, but I definitely still get

01:17:07   all the negative effects.

01:17:09   You know what I mean?

01:17:10   Where I don't, it used to be where I was like,

01:17:12   I'm young and virile and I can have Thai food and coffee

01:17:15   at 11 at night, whoosh.

01:17:16   And now today, like, that's just,

01:17:18   that's a terrible idea for me.

01:17:20   So yeah, the sensitivity, for real.

01:17:21   yeah there's lots of stuff like that foods too I mean I

01:17:25   anyway I make the same amount of coffee every day

01:17:28   and I think it's you know it's like the right dose for me but then like

01:17:32   I used to I don't really do anymore like sometimes I just get bored at four in the

01:17:35   afternoon and think well I have another

01:17:36   I'll you know go make one of these. I've done that my whole life that's exactly what I would do

01:17:39   some people eat at three o'clock and I'm like I want to have a coffee

01:17:43   I'll go make one I'll make one cup with the AeroPress and then I'll you know

01:17:46   taste a little better

01:17:47   and and then I'm you know at like six

01:17:51   PM, I'm like, wait, I've been trying to read this 800 word article for half an hour.

01:17:56   And instead, I've got 20 other tabs here. I really wanted to read this article. What happened to it?

01:18:01   I totally had that this morning. I had two cups of coffee.

01:18:03   Yeah.

01:18:05   Well, and then I'm like, that's a freaking coffee. I should not have had that extra coffee.

01:18:10   I did that this morning. I had two cups of coffee and I sat down to read the entire Wikipedia page

01:18:15   on the history of the MPAA rating system, which doesn't seem that hard. It's pretty standard

01:18:20   English I got like I got like two headings in and I was like let's ride

01:18:23   bikes I you know I couldn't even concentrate so I'm slightly prepped but

01:18:28   all right let me do one more sponsor okay and that is our good friends at

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01:20:36   All right, here's the idea

01:20:41   What do you want to do out you you you mentioned it because it was actually your idea at first no

01:20:45   You know, you can go ahead. Well the basic idea not to turn it into a parenting podcast, but it's it's

01:20:50   the

01:20:52   overarching dilemma of what movies

01:20:55   Do you let your kids watch when like what age like where do you balance this and I have found it to be?

01:21:02   Oh

01:21:05   For the you know from the get-go right from when he was Jonas was old enough to just sit in front of a TV

01:21:10   It's a vexing dilemma, and I never totally a moving target. I

01:21:15   Totally and I never anticipated it being difficult. I

01:21:19   Just always thought before I had a kid that at any given moment

01:21:23   You could give me any movie or TV show and I could instantly tell you whether it was age-appropriate or not

01:21:28   But it ends up being I think devilishly tricky. Well exactly right

01:21:31   So, I mean the only thing I would want to establish is that you know, we went to college and stuff

01:21:35   We understand that there are things like ratings. I think that the part that makes this so challenging

01:21:40   is how different every kid is in terms of what they are sensitive to.

01:21:45   What's likely to be problematic or you know to cause troubles and nightmares.

01:21:51   It's not as simple. I would postulate it's not nearly as simple as

01:21:56   just saying I'm gonna trust the MPAA because there are plenty of g-rated

01:21:59   movies with stuff in it that a three-year-old, some three-year-olds, right?

01:22:02   A given three-year-old should not see and if the parents know that like you

01:22:07   know it's really good to avoid that I mean one that comes up a lot it's like

01:22:11   scary music a genre of what's just called scary music like boom cellos we're

01:22:15   going into the woods some kids that could watch somebody be decapitated

01:22:19   freak out my daughter things jumping into and out of frame completely freak

01:22:24   her out real oh yeah you know like in like a horror movie kind of thing like

01:22:27   we're so I know you yeah like in the background pops up even in in any kind

01:22:32   of a movie no matter how innocuous it can kind of freak her out so yeah

01:22:36   - Yeah, exactly, it's not, the thing is it's,

01:22:38   and then on the other hand there are some kids

01:22:40   where like if you fast forward through this one scene

01:22:43   or this other scene, they would be totally fine

01:22:45   watching some PG-13 movies.

01:22:47   And it's just, I think it's,

01:22:49   I'm sure we both have some horror stories

01:22:51   about terrible decisions, but also just,

01:22:54   I think it's interesting to talk about

01:22:55   'cause I think everybody wants to look like

01:22:57   they're real smart about it,

01:22:58   and I think almost everybody who lets their kid

01:23:00   watch movies worries about it.

01:23:03   Worries about getting the mix wrong.

01:23:05   Yeah, and I'll give you one example from Jonas when he was young.

01:23:11   And we, I would say on the grand scheme of things, we are relatively permissive and always

01:23:16   have been.

01:23:17   But I don't –

01:23:18   You think?

01:23:19   I do.

01:23:20   I'm laughing because I used to shake my head when you would tell me things that you would

01:23:25   let him do and now I do the same stuff.

01:23:28   But also I really feel like a big part of that though was knowing what he was good with

01:23:33   and he was good. I think with relatively advanced like violence in movies, you know he watched Star

01:23:41   Wars very very young and you know I don't think that there I watched it when I was in kindergarten

01:23:46   too. That was my thinking. I don't know. I was in kindergarten when it came out. I turned out all

01:23:49   right. But I remember but you never know though there's always little things so one of the we

01:23:55   let him watch the Pirates of the Caribbean movies at a very early age. And I think that those are

01:24:01   PG I don't think they're PG-13 I don't know man they got some pretty spooky stuff well he didn't

01:24:05   but the point is he didn't mind it no not at all except for one scene which is and I don't remember

01:24:11   which one of them it's in but there's one scene where uh uh it must have been the first one where

01:24:19   they're going after the gold that if you stole the gold you became a ghost or whatever and you had to

01:24:22   drop a piece of blood and they cut somebody somebody takes a knife and just puts like a little

01:24:27   like a PG rated cut on the palm of somebody's hand. Oh, yeah, and

01:24:31   He it just flipped him out and he had like a fit and he was like we're like, what's wrong?

01:24:37   What's wrong?

01:24:38   And he just was holding his hand and he said like I can feel it I can feel it and he's just screaming

01:24:43   Like it made him feel as though his hand had been cut but my kid will come

01:24:48   Compulsively I was the word I'm looking for

01:24:51   Well, like automatically like violently turn away from the screen whenever there's blood like, you know

01:24:55   like a cut or something like that or like a wound. She absolutely turns away.

01:24:59   RL Yeah, and so we –

01:25:00   CB And so, it was like middle of the day, noon,

01:25:04   me working at home like probably five, six years ago. And we both looked at each other like we just

01:25:13   gave each other this look like, "Oh my God, what have we done? We've wrecked this poor child's mind

01:25:17   by letting him watch this movie that we should have known he was too young to watch." But you just

01:25:23   just never know. And then and and he would be good. He wouldn't

01:25:26   refuse to watch that movie, but I'll tell you what he had it

01:25:29   down stone. He knew exactly when that scene was coming up

01:25:33   and he would run out and he would say what he used to say.

01:25:36   He'd call it past past forward. My daughter would say fast over

01:25:41   past. She says that he passed over that yeah anytime when

01:25:45   they got to the point where in Toy Story two when Buzz has to

01:25:48   at the beginning in the video game when he has to walk out

01:25:50   across the floating disks.

01:25:52   - Oh yeah, yeah. - Should I say daddy fast over?

01:25:55   - Fast over, I like that one too.

01:25:57   They're both good.

01:25:58   Pass forward.

01:25:59   - Oh my God, it's--

01:26:01   - Jonas's list included the Wampa, no Wampa.

01:26:06   - Oh, see, and that's a good, that's another example

01:26:08   of a jumping into frame thing.

01:26:10   - Yeah, you know what, that's it, yeah.

01:26:12   'Cause, you know, and the suspense, right?

01:26:16   It's 'cause the Wampa, the first time you see him,

01:26:21   it's the shock air, right?

01:26:23   Like Luke is like looking for comets or whatever

01:26:25   to hit the ground and all of a sudden, boom,

01:26:28   the Wampa jumps into frame and makes a terrible noise.

01:26:31   So you've got that, right?

01:26:33   That, and yeah, that, Jonas didn't like that.

01:26:36   And Jonas wanted that whole, the whole thing skipped though

01:26:38   because he also could not bear the suspense of Luke.

01:26:42   - Hanging there like a side of beef.

01:26:44   - Yeah, and not, you know, it's like the first time

01:26:46   he's ever even tried to use the force to get a lightsaber

01:26:49   and it's just sitting there jiggling, you know.

01:26:51   It's like film school 101, you know,

01:26:53   like how to build a little suspense, you know,

01:26:55   jiggle the lightsaber, do this, the mute, you know,

01:26:58   perfect, of course, John Williams score for the moment,

01:27:01   which furthers the suspense, couldn't take it.

01:27:04   It would just have like an aneurysm.

01:27:06   - What about one that I was scared of

01:27:08   and my kid was scared of, what about in episode four

01:27:11   when Luke's looking through the binoculars

01:27:13   and the Tuscan Raider goes, "Rrrr!"

01:27:16   - No. - Not at all.

01:27:17   - Even though, to me, it's actually just,

01:27:19   it's the same thing, right? - Yeah, totally.

01:27:20   - No, yeah, it didn't bother him, nope.

01:27:23   - That's so weird.

01:27:24   See, this is what I'm talking about.

01:27:25   - Right, the Wampa, terrifying.

01:27:27   The Tuscan Raider who does the exact same thing. (laughs)

01:27:32   - You know, but you know, here's, but you get,

01:27:34   I remember talking to Matt Howey about this

01:27:35   and about how his daughter, he felt like his daughter was,

01:27:38   you know, very sensitive to certain kinds of things.

01:27:40   She's a really sweet kid, and is like relationship things,

01:27:42   and some people are very sensitive to almost everything

01:27:44   and other people, it's virtually impossible to tell.

01:27:47   My daughter has seen some really grisly shit in movies.

01:27:50   Like she saw Deadpool putting his head back on

01:27:52   at the end of an X-Men.

01:27:53   I didn't show her the whole movie.

01:27:54   I was just like, you gotta see the scene

01:27:55   where Deadpool puts his head back on.

01:27:57   It's pretty great.

01:27:58   A terrible movie.

01:27:58   But there are some things where I can't guess.

01:28:01   Okay, so for example, she's watched a ton of Doctor Who,

01:28:03   a little scared by the Daleks.

01:28:05   She's watched pretty much almost every Marvel movie

01:28:09   except for a few.

01:28:11   And all the Star Wars movies numerous times.

01:28:14   But then you know what we watch?

01:28:15   Did you ever see that show on Cartoon Network

01:28:18   from last year called Over the Garden Wall?

01:28:20   - No, never heard of it.

01:28:21   - It's kind of like, it's an Adventure Timey thing

01:28:23   about these two little boys who are brothers

01:28:25   having these like kind of fairytale adventures

01:28:27   combined with like a Silly Symphonies cartoon feel.

01:28:29   It's a really great show,

01:28:31   but it is like a fairytale kind of show

01:28:35   where there's scary stuff that's not exactly explained.

01:28:39   But it's a kids show.

01:28:40   It's like it is in the same way as Adventure Time, kind of.

01:28:42   It's kind of a kids show.

01:28:44   And that is the one stuck with her,

01:28:46   this creature on there called the Beast.

01:28:48   And I didn't find out for weeks

01:28:49   that she thought the Beast was under her bed.

01:28:51   She was scared to even say anything.

01:28:53   And I was like, "Oh honey, I am so sorry."

01:28:54   And mom, of course, gives me the eyes.

01:28:57   It's like, "See, see, see?

01:28:58   "I knew this was gonna happen."

01:28:59   But again, would you guess?

01:29:01   I mean, she didn't mind people's faces melting off

01:29:03   in Raiders of the Lost Ark,

01:29:05   But the idea of like a black bee,

01:29:07   this kind of cartoon bear in the forest is terrifying.

01:29:11   Who knows?

01:29:12   - Yeah, I remember I had a friend growing up who,

01:29:15   I missed, I don't know how,

01:29:18   but I missed Raiders of the Lost Ark

01:29:20   when it was in the theaters.

01:29:22   So I didn't see it.

01:29:23   But it always bothered me.

01:29:25   - How old were you?

01:29:26   I was about 13, 14.

01:29:28   - I was eight.

01:29:29   So, you know, or nine, eight?

01:29:32   I think it was 1981, so I was eight.

01:29:34   But I desperately wanted to see it,

01:29:37   couldn't understand how I missed it.

01:29:39   Seemed like something I could've got my dad to take me to.

01:29:41   Somehow I missed it, but then, of course,

01:29:43   once it was out of theaters, there was no chance to see it.

01:29:45   But I knew the basic story,

01:29:47   and I just knew that there was something about it

01:29:49   at the end, everybody's faces melted.

01:29:51   And my one friend growing up

01:29:52   was completely freaked out about it.

01:29:55   He had gone to see it and came out crying,

01:29:57   embarrassed himself, like his mom came out

01:30:00   of the movie theater. - Poor kid, oh no.

01:30:02   just cry and he wasn't the type of scary because it isn't just that like haha

01:30:06   little skin melts off it's like a full-on Ray Harry housing thing we're

01:30:09   like their entire head like it's a horrifying really effective effect yeah

01:30:15   yeah but he was freaked out and he was the type of kid who just would not you

01:30:19   know he wasn't like a sense you wouldn't call him a sensitive kid you really

01:30:23   wouldn't you know it's just a normal boy who's going to see what should be and

01:30:27   that just was happened to be his thing yeah I get just touched a nerve what

01:30:31   What about, have you seen either the trailer or the movie for Paddington?

01:30:36   That's probably Little Young for Jonas.

01:30:38   Yeah, no.

01:30:39   But you've seen the trailer, right?

01:30:40   I've seen the trailer.

01:30:41   Okay.

01:30:42   The trailer, I have heard from friends that the movie is, well, it's one of those movies,

01:30:46   one of those rare movies where the movie is actually way better than the trailer looks,

01:30:49   which I'm very glad to hear.

01:30:50   But you've seen the trailer.

01:30:51   There's a scene where he's in the bathroom.

01:30:53   I don't, I'm going to, someday my daughter's going to hear this.

01:30:55   I'm going to be in so much trouble.

01:30:56   There's a scene in the bathroom where he's like interacting with what it is to be a bear

01:31:00   using the bathroom and he takes a toothbrush and sticks it in his ear and pulls out this giant wad

01:31:06   of totally disgusting looking earwax. It's a dumb shot. It's about three seconds and if I say the

01:31:14   word Paddington my kid gets freaked out. She cannot stop thinking about the disgusting earwax. She

01:31:18   will hear nothing about going to see that movie because of this one scene with earwax. Remember

01:31:23   she's seen Deadpool put his head back on but the earwax thing put her off her beer. Yeah it's

01:31:28   inexplicable. Can I toss out one more axis in bad parenting is the balance, weighing the balance.

01:31:37   Okay, so let's take an extreme example. Let's take a kid who's like a classic introduction to movies

01:31:46   age of like five. Would you show your kid the third X-Men movie if they're five years old?

01:31:55   See now me, I'm gonna go, "You know what? I'm not because it's not a very good movie.

01:32:01   There is a lot of inside words in it as we say in our house. There is some violence in it,

01:32:06   but you know what? It's just not worth it because whatever she sees in it, it's not worth it because

01:32:09   the movie is not that good. Would you hesitate to show your kid Toy Story 2? Oh my gosh, no.

01:32:14   It's got scary things in it, a little bit, but it's so worth it." Right? So isn't that part of

01:32:20   the balance though? It isn't like you're making your kids sit there and watch Castle Freak or

01:32:23   or something like you're thinking like oh this is a perfect is this the perfect age

01:32:28   to introduce this wonderful story to this kid yeah that's a very good point um it has

01:32:35   to be you know the the quality of the movie factors because i mean in my own defense i'm

01:32:39   sitting there with her watching the movie like what you know except in the case of mulan

01:32:42   too when i'm on my ipad like i am there watching the movie with her we're talking about the

01:32:47   movie not that it's like you know freaking harvard or something but just to be clear

01:32:50   Like I it's got to be a movie. I like it's got to be good and it's got to be appropriate

01:32:54   given what I can know or guess I

01:32:56   Totally agree with that. I think you know what else had Jonah seen early

01:33:04   I mean he saw the Bond movies back when Dan and I were talking about him

01:33:07   I mean, you know, I don't know if you watched all of them with me

01:33:09   but he sat through a bunch of them with me and

01:33:11   that was weird on two levels because it also in addition to the fact that it's kind of violent for a

01:33:17   a kid who was probably six or seven at the time.

01:33:20   There's the anachronisms, right?

01:33:25   I mean, I think Dan and I spent like half an hour

01:33:27   just talking about-- - I got you on the pacing.

01:33:29   And this is one that blew me out of the water.

01:33:30   I sent you that picture of my kid

01:33:31   punching Goldfinger in the face at a casino.

01:33:34   Here's the thing, I knew this one was gonna be

01:33:37   a long shot. - Look, people are gonna think

01:33:39   that that was like a total Merlin euphemism,

01:33:42   but you literally sent me a text

01:33:44   with a picture of your daughter

01:33:46   next to a picture of Goldfinger.

01:33:48   - An unlicensed mural of James Bond characters.

01:33:51   Punching our Goldfinger in the face.

01:33:54   Okay, so, okay, and this one,

01:33:58   I barely, barely, barely got this one past the censors.

01:34:00   My wife was pretty iffy about this.

01:34:03   'Cause if it's one where we're really worried,

01:34:04   I will watch the entire movie through again to be sure.

01:34:07   I definitely, we have to find time

01:34:09   to talk about '80s movies

01:34:10   and how, what completely weird animals '80s movies are.

01:34:13   'Cause you never know when some boobies

01:34:15   are gonna show up in an '80s movie.

01:34:16   It's crazy.

01:34:17   But Goldfinger, I was like,

01:34:18   "Oh, it really is the best James Bond movie."

01:34:22   And it's got this kind of a silly plot,

01:34:25   but it's not that hard to follow.

01:34:26   But you know what my main thing was?

01:34:28   I was like, "She is going to watch,

01:34:32   "she'll watch up to when he takes off the scuba thing

01:34:34   "and have his tux on."

01:34:35   That's pretty funny.

01:34:36   But I was like, "The pacing of this movie

01:34:38   "by her standards is so glacial,

01:34:40   "there's no way she's gonna watch more than 20 minutes."

01:34:42   And then it became the movie that she demanded to watch.

01:34:45   It was completely perplexing.

01:34:46   She's watching a thing where people are sitting

01:34:47   and drinking mint juleps in Kentucky

01:34:49   and talking about contaminating gold.

01:34:51   I was blown away.

01:34:52   So again, I had no idea that ended up being one

01:34:55   that she really likes.

01:34:55   And also when the laser almost cuts him in the penis,

01:34:57   she turns and goes, "It's gonna cut him in the penis."

01:34:59   (laughing)

01:35:01   - We did it in 2011.

01:35:03   So Jonas was seven when I let him watch.

01:35:05   - Same here with her.

01:35:06   - Yeah, seven.

01:35:07   - Right.

01:35:08   (laughing)

01:35:09   - Seven year.

01:35:10   - I don't think I watched it.

01:35:10   - I watched it when I was seven.

01:35:11   It was on TV once a year.

01:35:13   I think the same way I don't know I mean you know one thing too with the violence

01:35:19   I know and I know a lot of the you know there's what are the big three there's

01:35:23   violence language and sex right I mean that's it's the big three like concerns

01:35:30   you got smoking got sass mouth but I would say violent scariness scariness is

01:35:35   I would say scariness is probably the top issue because I really do think that

01:35:39   that a truly scary movie can upset a kid for days.

01:35:44   I do realize, I absolutely realize that there are some kids,

01:35:49   a lot of times boys, who if they see a movie

01:35:52   where there's a lot of shooting action,

01:35:55   even in a sort of cartoony way like Star Wars,

01:35:58   that it gets the kid all amped up

01:36:00   and then the kid starts jumping around the house

01:36:02   smashing things, right?

01:36:03   And it's like--

01:36:04   - Or like I've shown her bits,

01:36:06   I've shown her YouTube videos of Bruce Lee,

01:36:08   like a best of Bruce Lee or something like that.

01:36:10   And she just wants to kick everything after that.

01:36:13   - Well, or worse, that kids wanna kick other kids

01:36:16   or something like that. - Yeah, right, right.

01:36:17   - Well, Jonas has never ever been like that.

01:36:18   Jonas is a very gentle kid,

01:36:20   and anything that he sees in a movie

01:36:22   does not alter his behavior in the real world.

01:36:26   So I mean, I think it allowed us to be a little permissive

01:36:29   in that way.

01:36:30   But I think most kids are actually pretty good that way.

01:36:32   I think it's kind of rare.

01:36:34   So the violence we've always, I don't know,

01:36:37   a little liberal on? It depends on the violence. It depends on, I mean, you know, the thing is there

01:36:42   are phrases that I would hear people use before I had a child and I would just, I would want to

01:36:47   strangle the person. The phrase, a phrase I used to sneer at "imitative behavior," you know, that's

01:36:53   sometimes in these reviews you'll see, well, it contains, you know, sass mouth and "imitative

01:36:57   behavior," meaning, you know, the three stooges, right? That's a good example. Like, if you watch

01:37:01   enough Three Stooges, you're probably gonna want to hit somebody on the head, you know, Maggie

01:37:04   Simpson with the mallet or whatever but I think I think there's also I have

01:37:09   fun this is really where I don't know I'm out on a limb but I think there are

01:37:13   differences there's different kinds of violence I think stormtroopers getting

01:37:17   bloodlessly shot with comic book violence is really different from

01:37:20   Hellraiser and war or like the like saw I think there is a really big difference

01:37:26   in degree and the personal miss of it so like there are some things and again we

01:37:30   You gotta talk about 70s and 80s movies.

01:37:32   There is so much completely random weird nudity and sex

01:37:36   in 70s and 80s movies, especially 80s movies,

01:37:38   but there's also some extremely personal violence

01:37:41   in those kinds of movies.

01:37:43   So the idea of holding somebody

01:37:44   with a knife to their throat and cutting them,

01:37:47   I think of that as a different kind of animal

01:37:48   than a storm trooper getting shot personally.

01:37:51   - Yeah, I do too, or even with just sticking to guns with,

01:37:54   like when Bond, especially in the older ones,

01:37:57   when Bond shoots somebody,

01:37:58   It's practically like shooting a stormtrooper.

01:38:00   I mean, it's like, you know, like the squib,

01:38:03   the squib in the chest was just like a puff of smoke

01:38:05   and the guy just, you know, falls into, you know,

01:38:10   sharks with lasers pit.

01:38:11   Whereas I think the more visceral violence

01:38:18   and the more recent ones, like the Craig ones, you know,

01:38:21   is a little different.

01:38:22   - Oh my gosh.

01:38:24   Oh no, no, no.

01:38:25   I mean, this-- - Well, a lot different.

01:38:26   - Yeah, yeah.

01:38:27   I mean, I'm sorry, I didn't mean for some beef jerky.

01:38:29   I thought I could pull it off.

01:38:31   (laughing)

01:38:33   How's it going?

01:38:35   - What do you think about the actual ratings?

01:38:38   I still think it was a mistake

01:38:40   to introduce the rating PG-13.

01:38:42   - I find it, well, it certainly was easier at one time

01:38:48   to understand, everybody knew what R-rated meant.

01:38:51   R-rated meant you could expect some serious nudity

01:38:55   and simulated sex.

01:38:57   You could expect some shits and fucks,

01:38:59   and you could expect smoking and drugs

01:39:02   and French connection.

01:39:03   That's an R-rated movie.

01:39:04   That was easy to understand.

01:39:06   Now, when, per that article I one-tenth read today,

01:39:09   1984 comes along, you've got, was it "Temple of Doom?"

01:39:12   No. - Yep.

01:39:13   "Temple of Doom" prompted-- - And "Gremlins"

01:39:15   were two movies that people were just like,

01:39:17   "This is just..."

01:39:18   Now, "Gremlins," I think I could see "Gremlins"

01:39:19   freaking my kid out, personally.

01:39:22   And so it's kind of a weird movie.

01:39:24   - Yeah, it is a weird movie.

01:39:25   We just rewatched it, not recently,

01:39:27   but maybe like last Christmas,

01:39:28   'cause it's sort of a Christmas movie.

01:39:30   - Yeah, it is. - So like about a year ago.

01:39:32   - But even something like a movie we all love,

01:39:34   it's, take a movie like "Groundhog Day."

01:39:37   If "Groundhog Day" had just the smallest bit of editing,

01:39:42   it would be maybe a canonical family movie.

01:39:45   It's so close to being a, "Ghostbusters."

01:39:48   You know how much nookie there is in "Ghostbusters"?

01:39:51   You got a fake blowjob.

01:39:52   You got, remember that?

01:39:55   Remember that? Where Dan Aykroyd gets the ghost blowjob?

01:39:57   I do.

01:39:58   And it's like, what's this doing in this movie?

01:40:00   This is a movie for kids.

01:40:04   Or just, you know, there's all these movies. This is still true today.

01:40:07   I know with the Marvel movies, they're usually pretty good with the salty language until like the last act.

01:40:12   And that's when all the shits and fucks come out.

01:40:15   It's always like, what is the rule? Isn't there kind of like a standard for how many you're allowed in a PG-13 movie?

01:40:20   Yeah, I think there's some kind of...

01:40:22   And I think they'd like to really load him up in the back too for when the closing action

01:40:25   but I'm just saying like that's the part that's perplexing is there like are you gonna tell

01:40:29   me Ghostbusters is not right for kids oh here we go Back to the Future like there's some

01:40:33   stuff in Back Back to the Future is a great a great family movie that still has some stuff

01:40:37   in it that's a little edgy I mean you know he's in his underwear I guess that's not a

01:40:42   big deal but you know it's straight Oh Home Alone I mean would you Home Alone that's a

01:40:47   kids movie right yeah we've watched him yeah he gets an iron in the face

01:40:50   that's that's worse than Wolverine I don't know I don't know the violence in

01:41:00   Home Alone is kind of weird because it's on the one hand it's like they're kind

01:41:03   of going for that Three Stooges thing and then the other hand there's like

01:41:06   actual acid like walking up the steps in bare feet and you see the nail sticking

01:41:13   out of the step and you're like this is the most horrific thing that I've ever

01:41:16   seen he's because every kid's terrified your parents get you terrified about

01:41:19   I get tetanus from a nail right and he steps on in like a three inch exposed like nail

01:41:25   right it it is

01:41:27   it's an interesting movie because it

01:41:30   It does though bit like his

01:41:33   What's his name Kevin young Kevin's mastery of these two buffoon criminals is?

01:41:39   established cinematically such that you kind of get the sense that the kids gonna come out on top that he's you know,

01:41:47   And that therefore his mastery of these two criminals, the way that he prolongs their stuff,

01:41:52   it really does kind of in a sense, it's a little bit more like torture than self-defense.

01:41:56   [Crosstalk]

01:41:56   Jared: It is, it's like Grand Guignol. It's like he's deliberately making this as awful as he can.

01:42:01   Pete: Yeah, it's less self-defense and more torture. He's kind of enjoying it.

01:42:05   [Laughter]

01:42:06   Jared; Oh man.

01:42:08   Pete; Actually, I think there's a couple of scenes where like one of his, you know,

01:42:11   traps works and he just flat out like high fives himself.

01:42:14   Yes, that's why I gotta pick that up, which does the like her

01:42:18   fist out and pumps it in goes yes. Fuller go easy on the

01:42:23   Pepsi. I love that movie, but I don't know. I'm just saying

01:42:28   okay now how about this? Alright PG-13 so they they I

01:42:31   think it was a mistake cuz I think that the old way was G.

01:42:35   That's a kid's movie. That's for everybody. PG is it's in

01:42:42   and R is for adults and doesn't matter why it doesn't matter if it's my PGP

01:42:47   says it all PG PG says like your mileage may vary like yeah you know it basically

01:42:51   it almost kind of says like you need to like watch this before your kids do

01:42:57   practically or like or like be advised right yeah be advised think about it you

01:43:02   know if your kid is younger and if your kid is over 10 it's probably probably

01:43:06   good yeah you know yeah I don't know but it's again that could to me the hard

01:43:10   part is this sensitive, I sent you a link to this website that I look at a lot and I'm

01:43:16   somewhat ambivalent about it and yet I find it extremely useful. I cannot believe I'm

01:43:19   saying this. Have you seen, did you just look at that link, Kids in Mind? It's a very interesting

01:43:23   idea because they go out and they review these movies, but it's very funny. So the none of

01:43:28   it is they come up with these three numbers, not numerals because there's a 10. But how

01:43:36   How much sex and nudity is there from zero to 10?

01:43:40   How much violence and gore from zero to 10?

01:43:42   How much profanity from zero to 10?

01:43:44   Which I think it's a great, at least a fast glance.

01:43:48   I mean, sometimes I use this to go like,

01:43:49   okay, we're thinking about these two different movies,

01:43:51   like which one of these looks better on the face of it?

01:43:54   And sometimes, you know what I mean?

01:43:54   It's a quick sniff test.

01:43:56   But then did you go in and look at the actual page

01:44:00   at like how it's like porn,

01:44:02   where they describe all the stuff that's actually in it?

01:44:05   No I didn't I'm looking at it now.

01:44:07   Sponge and the way they describe it it's hilarious I want to meet the person who writes this.

01:44:12   Spongebob movie which I absolutely do not want to see.

01:44:15   Sex and nudity you get it too.

01:44:16   We see many human men on the beach with bare chests.

01:44:19   Many women wear skimpy bikinis and reveal cleavage.

01:44:22   A sponge accidentally pulls the shorts partially down from a starfish's waist and we see the

01:44:25   upper buttocks and buttock cleavage.

01:44:28   I've got one here from Mordecai.

01:44:30   Husband and his wife attempt to kiss several times in different scenes, but his moustache makes her gag

01:44:36   And he gags in reflex. Oh my god

01:44:40   Please see the violence and gore category for more details on the gagging

01:44:44   It's but it doesn't it read like something like a Japanese man would buy for porn

01:44:48   American sniper profanity gets a 10 about a hundred and fifteen f-words and its derivatives ten sexual references 32

01:44:56   Gotta logical terms, 20 anatomical terms,

01:44:58   12 mild obscenities, name calling,

01:45:00   including sunshine, quitter, nuts, old man,

01:45:02   hotbox, arrogant, self-centered, sitting ducks, legend.

01:45:05   - See, why count all--

01:45:07   - Somebody wrote all of those down, Jon.

01:45:09   - Why count all 115 fucks?

01:45:12   Because clearly, I mean, how long is the movie?

01:45:15   Even if it's three hours.

01:45:16   - Right, right, right.

01:45:17   - You're on the border--

01:45:18   - Two hours and 12 minutes.

01:45:20   - So it's roughly one a minute.

01:45:23   - You gotta fuck a minute.

01:45:25   Right, unless there's like a burst at the end. It's, you know, I think you only have to go about

01:45:32   two or three movies or minutes into this movie and you can just check off 10 on a profanity.

01:45:36   Some of these. Oh my god.

01:45:38   All right, it's like this. Like, if you're like the inspector for a hotel,

01:45:42   like you don't have to count the bugs.

01:45:45   Oh, like once you see five rats in the lobby.

01:45:47   Yeah.

01:45:48   New dealer.

01:45:49   You just check that off. You just check it off. You don't have to count them.

01:45:52   Right.

01:45:52   You don't have to count them.

01:45:54   1998 film a lot of people a lot of families have enjoyed called the big Lebowski profanity. They give it a 10 about 240 f-words

01:46:01   Many scatological references many anatomical references many mild obscenities here to fix Dinah Kabul

01:46:10   This is great. I I I love this but I know that I'm gonna lose a lot of time on this site

01:46:17   Like oh, I know but the things I can't show it to my wife

01:46:20   Oh, I mean, I'm gonna say can't she's a grown-ass woman

01:46:22   But you know it makes it when you read when you read it in this clinical way

01:46:26   It makes it sound so much worse when they say a starfish is

01:46:30   Swimsuit is pulled down reveals buttocks guys. That's Patrick. It's Patrick's but he's a goddamn cartoon character. It's okay if we see his butt

01:46:38   All right. I looked up fantastic. Mr. Fox which is actually I was just talking to do I just watched it. I love it

01:46:44   I

01:46:46   Kottke called it. Oh, I when I linked to a picture from it and he said it's underrated

01:46:51   I think it's my favorite Wes Anderson

01:46:52   It's it's it's one of my all-time favorite movies let alone one of our families like there's two movies

01:46:58   Yeah, if we can't decide on anything and it comes to blows it's either the Incredibles or mr. Fox. That's it. Yeah, that's

01:47:03   Those are yeah, those are two good ones to leave at the top of the queue. All right, so

01:47:12   For sex and nudity. It's only ranked a one out of ten which meshes with my memory

01:47:17   Here's what we've got. We've got a person in a swimsuit

01:47:21   husband and a wife kissing

01:47:23   Fox kissing hug a teen boy and a teen girl Fox flirt in a couple of scenes

01:47:29   I do remember that you're supposed to be my lab partner. I know it number. No, you're not you're disloyal

01:47:34   Number two a rat refers to a fox's wife as the quote town tart

01:47:41   (laughing)

01:47:43   - Right, yeah, I never--

01:47:46   - A fox wife tells her fox husband that she is pregnant.

01:47:50   So that counts for a one on the sex nudity scale

01:47:53   on pregnant? - While they're in a cage.

01:47:56   Oh man, yeah, but again, you know what this is though?

01:47:59   Okay, so I just gotta say,

01:48:00   this is actually really helpful though,

01:48:02   'cause like you say, this is the rats in the lobby title.

01:48:04   It's like you can see, like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah,

01:48:07   no, no, no, no, no, no, Big Lebowski's not gonna be great

01:48:09   to watch with the kids, am I wrong?

01:48:10   No, we're gonna skip this one.

01:48:12   But it is also good that you can go through

01:48:14   and look for like the stuff is like a trigger for your kids.

01:48:17   - 27 exclamation, this is for profanity,

01:48:20   27 exclamations.

01:48:21   - What the cuss?

01:48:22   - Cuss word.

01:48:23   - Cussing with me?

01:48:24   - What the cuss?

01:48:25   (laughing)

01:48:26   - They count that as a cuss word?

01:48:28   - Yeah.

01:48:28   - Cuss is a cuss word?

01:48:30   - Cluster cuss.

01:48:31   (laughing)

01:48:36   They have a scatological terms glossary.

01:48:40   You got F word derivatives,

01:48:43   which all have little asterisks in them.

01:48:44   Scatological terms, religious profanities, mild obscenities.

01:48:48   Friggin' would be counted as a mild obscenity.

01:48:51   - All right. - Derogatory terms.

01:48:53   Wow.

01:48:54   But you know, I still, I gotta say,

01:48:56   no, no, let me ask you if you remember this.

01:48:57   Do you remember?

01:48:59   I'm gonna say circa mid to late 90s.

01:49:02   Do you remember a service

01:49:04   that was actually kind of like what became Netflix,

01:49:07   where you could get edited movies.

01:49:10   I think it might have been

01:49:11   a somewhat overtly Christian place,

01:49:14   but you could get like a PG movie

01:49:16   that had all of the stuff a certain kind of religious person

01:49:19   would find offensive cut out of it.

01:49:20   Do you remember that at all?

01:49:21   - I do remember hearing about it.

01:49:22   - I remember hearing about it.

01:49:24   I don't know where it went or what it did,

01:49:25   but isn't that, especially now in the digital age,

01:49:27   that's a very interesting idea.

01:49:29   - Yeah, 'cause it would be,

01:49:30   you could do it without losing fidelity.

01:49:32   - I mean, you need just some basic metadata

01:49:34   on like, well, you know, you could go in, it'd be so great.

01:49:37   'Cause if you could go in and say,

01:49:39   you know what, my family is observant

01:49:40   and we don't want any god-dams.

01:49:42   Could you, just with audio, blip out the god-dams,

01:49:46   but leave in the horrific violence or whatever.

01:49:48   Let's say you wanna show your kids Passion of the Christ.

01:49:50   Let's go see what Passion of the Christ looks like.

01:49:53   But you know what I mean?

01:49:53   'Cause I gotta say, I might find that,

01:49:56   it kinda goes against some of my values

01:50:00   about censorship or something,

01:50:01   but that's what I'm asking for, you know?

01:50:03   There are some movies I am much more likely

01:50:05   to have my daughter watch in a hotel room

01:50:08   because I know they've been edited down.

01:50:10   They've taken out the really cool.

01:50:11   We watched Highlander in a hotel room

01:50:13   and she thought it was a riot.

01:50:14   I would never show that to her at home, unedited.

01:50:17   (laughing)

01:50:18   - I never thought about that, about looking for a hotel edit.

01:50:22   (laughing)

01:50:22   - I love a hotel edit.

01:50:24   - The director's cut and then there's Hilton's cut.

01:50:27   - Wow, this is an unusual statistical spread

01:50:31   on Passion of the Christ.

01:50:32   Sex and nudity, it gets a one.

01:50:34   Profanity, it gets a one.

01:50:36   Violence and gore, full 10.

01:50:39   Oh my goo.

01:50:40   (laughing)

01:50:43   Let her dance, dance, let her dance, dance.

01:50:48   - I've been, now I'm looking for movies

01:50:50   that I have let Jonah see

01:50:51   that they don't even bother to list

01:50:53   because I don't think any-- - It would be so inappropriate.

01:50:55   - Right, The Shining is not listed.

01:50:57   - Oh, come on.

01:50:59   Are you kidding me?

01:51:00   - That I've let him see it?

01:51:01   - Yeah.

01:51:02   Yeah.

01:51:03   - Wow.

01:51:04   - I think that's the only Kubrick movie he's seen.

01:51:05   - You're Batman.

01:51:07   Wow.

01:51:08   She's never seen any Kubrick.

01:51:11   - That was recent though.

01:51:12   That was within the last year.

01:51:13   - Okay, yeah, well.

01:51:14   - I think it was like last year.

01:51:15   - You're gonna say Clockwork Orange

01:51:15   till he's like 12 probably, right?

01:51:17   - Yeah, Clockwork Orange is gonna have to wait.

01:51:19   - Mm-hmm.

01:51:20   - 'Cause, you know.

01:51:21   - But there are some things.

01:51:22   Oh, you know what, I'm not gonna tell you.

01:51:24   I'll tell you when we're offline.

01:51:26   But there's a movie that she has been dying to see

01:51:29   for like a year.

01:51:30   And we've read some of the book.

01:51:32   We've told, I've told her the entire story.

01:51:34   She really wants to see "Hunger Games."

01:51:37   And I'm like, it's, she's seven.

01:51:40   Like that's, it just, and again,

01:51:41   why too much personal violence?

01:51:44   Like that, the violence in "Hunger Games,"

01:51:46   I'm gonna tell you, I don't care.

01:51:47   I'm a 48 year old man.

01:51:49   I'm gonna say it, I love "The Hunger Games."

01:51:50   I thought it was a great movie.

01:51:51   I thought it was a lot of fun.

01:51:52   I thought it was very well done.

01:51:53   And I just, I really liked it.

01:51:55   And I cannot wait.

01:51:58   It's one of those movies like,

01:51:59   that I'm constantly saying to her,

01:51:59   "Oh honey, I cannot wait

01:52:01   until you're old enough to watch this with me.

01:52:03   Like that one, Blade Runner.

01:52:05   What about Blade Runner?

01:52:07   Has he seen Blade Runner?

01:52:09   - No.

01:52:09   - Yeah, that's pretty-- - Let me think about that.

01:52:12   - Yeah.

01:52:13   - Huh, there's the Daryl Hannah character.

01:52:16   - You got the eye, you got the replicants

01:52:18   doing some pretty bad.

01:52:20   Oh, you got Leon, you got Leon.

01:52:22   There's some pretty bad stuff in that.

01:52:25   - I would probably let him watch it now though.

01:52:26   He's 11, I would probably let him watch it.

01:52:28   - Yeah.

01:52:29   - I'm worried how much did they play up

01:52:30   that Daryl Hannah is a prostitute.

01:52:32   (laughing)

01:52:33   - That worries you.

01:52:35   - A little.

01:52:36   - Okay.

01:52:36   You afraid it's gonna be imitative behavior?

01:52:38   - Well, I don't know.

01:52:39   I would probably-- - He's gonna wanna go out

01:52:40   and get a skin job, if you know what I mean?

01:52:41   - Yeah, but I would say only within like the last year or so

01:52:44   I would say Blade Runner. - Oh, sure, sure, sure.

01:52:45   - Probably.

01:52:46   Well, was Blade Runner rated?

01:52:47   It must have been rated R, right?

01:52:49   - I think it's gotta be rated R, yeah.

01:52:50   - Yeah.

01:52:51   - Some of them are amazing though, I'm telling you.

01:52:52   There's something about '80s movies

01:52:54   that seems completely random.

01:52:56   Movies that in my head I think of as being,

01:52:59   like maybe 'cause I saw them when I was a young teenager.

01:53:02   Like I'm so blown away,

01:53:03   there's just be boobs out of nowhere in the movie.

01:53:05   You're like, "Whoa, where did that come from?"

01:53:07   - We just watched over Christmas,

01:53:09   we watched "Weekend at Bernie's" and...

01:53:12   (laughing)

01:53:13   - How'd that go over?

01:53:15   - He loved it, he absolutely loved it.

01:53:18   But there were a couple of surprising '80s sort of boobies.

01:53:22   - Yeah. - Yeah.

01:53:23   I don't know how else to describe it.

01:53:25   - Well, and the thing was that it was so egregious.

01:53:27   I think a lot of the movies I'm thinking of,

01:53:29   It was by the time you had theatrical,

01:53:33   VHS or beta cable,

01:53:37   and certainly get it ready for distribution on TV.

01:53:40   And if you think about something like Caddyshack,

01:53:42   or you think about, Caddyshack obviously way too much.

01:53:44   But, can't wait till I can watch that with her.

01:53:47   But, oh my God, I love it so much.

01:53:49   - We thought about it.

01:53:50   We thought about it and then we were like running it

01:53:51   through our heads and there's so much of it that's good.

01:53:54   But then, you know, like--

01:53:55   - He'll appreciate it more later.

01:53:56   I showed her some scenes.

01:53:57   showed her Carl finding the candy bar in the pool I I don't know what we're gonna

01:54:01   have the talk about what abortion is but it's not gonna be so that waitress has a

01:54:07   baby but wasn't gonna say about oh so so but what's funny though cuz like I think

01:54:14   about like how like egregious and unnecessary so many of the boobies are

01:54:18   where like you could tell they made it to be easy to cut out where it'll just

01:54:22   be like hey it's a shot of a girl taking her shirt off me like what was that but

01:54:25   like you had to have that in every 80s movie early 80s movie think about like

01:54:29   stripes you know I'm these movies that are like kind of mostly okay in some

01:54:33   ways but then are like super inappropriate in other ways but yeah

01:54:37   there's got to be this had to be like a scene where there were 23 year old like

01:54:42   having a petrified at a party I heard yeah with feathered hair and they're

01:54:45   either getting a hose down or having a pillow fight well an awful lot of

01:54:54   actresses got hosed down or suds up in in completely mainstream Hollywood

01:55:00   movies in the 1980s let's have a car wash to save the orphanage but there's

01:55:06   no orphanage in the plot sponges are soft right so what are we gonna tell

01:55:10   people how do we help people with this John there are new parents out there

01:55:13   people are having babies like crazy people how do we help people with this I

01:55:19   don't know I feel like you I feel like you got to have faith in your kid I feel

01:55:23   like because I don't know I just remember when I was a kid when I was not allowed to watch

01:55:28   certain movies it was a constant source of frustration for me.

01:55:31   And you felt didn't you feel like a pariah?

01:55:33   I did and we had a neighborhood movie theater and it was so great I think I had to have talked about

01:55:41   this on the show at some point but it's probably years ago probably with like Dan but and it was

01:55:45   I didn't even have to cross the street it was cata corner like a like up and around the block from my

01:55:50   my parents' house.

01:55:51   So I didn't even have to cross the street.

01:55:53   And it was called The Majestic.

01:55:55   And it was an old time vaudeville theater

01:55:58   that at some point in the 40s or 50s

01:56:00   was turned into a movie theater.

01:56:02   And it was connected to the fire company.

01:56:06   So half the building was fire trucks,

01:56:07   the other half was a movie theater.

01:56:09   And it was just right out of central casting

01:56:12   of old time matinee movie theater.

01:56:15   Velvet seats.

01:56:18   - Wow.

01:56:19   a balcony, a big balcony, like you would go around the side. And it was run by a family.

01:56:26   The guy who owned it was Mr. Dieter. Dieter or Dietrich? Dieter, I think. And he was probably

01:56:32   around 50. And his dad was the projectionist and the ticket taker at the front door. His

01:56:38   dad, he must have been 75. But to our eyes as like eight, nine year olds, he was ancient.

01:56:44   was older than God. He was older than the Earth. And then the kids, his ne'er-do-well

01:56:53   teenage son would sometimes be working, and it was such a great place. Oh my God.

01:56:57   Oh, could you sometimes get away with it?

01:57:00   Well, what you could sometimes get away with is if the kid was behind... They had great popcorn,

01:57:04   like the best popcorn in the universe. And they had... Because it was like a little movie theater,

01:57:11   They never got movies when they were new they got movies right after they were new so like

01:57:15   Empire Strikes Back would come out and it would play for three months at the multiplex

01:57:20   All right, and then the majestic would get it for like, you know, however many weeks they wanted

01:57:25   And they would sometimes have like two movies at the same time even though it was just you know

01:57:31   It wasn't a multiplex one screen

01:57:32   But like in the afternoon they might show like a kids movie like Peter Pan and then at nighttime

01:57:37   There was a you know, John Travolta movie or something, right? I don't know

01:57:40   And they would also show rock movies like concert films from like the

01:57:46   movies kind of thing. Yeah like though I like just concert movies of like the

01:57:50   Stones and Led Zeppelin and stuff like that my parents always get mad because

01:57:53   when they showed those like our backyard would get trashed. Kids

01:57:57   coming out of movie theater were like cut through like and and you know leave

01:58:01   beer cans and stuff but it was such a great place but I remember we used to go

01:58:05   as a kid, any Saturday, where it was if it was winter, or if it

01:58:10   was rainy, or whatever, we would just go to the majestic, we

01:58:13   would just go there because it was like $1 $1 matinee, your

01:58:15   parent, your mom wouldn't mind giving you the money, you'd be

01:58:18   out of their hair. But every once in a while, I remember one

01:58:20   time specifically, I wasn't allowed to all my friends were

01:58:22   going. And they didn't give it like one thing about Mr. Dieters,

01:58:25   he didn't give two shits. How old you are, if you had your

01:58:27   dollar, you could go see. So that the Saturday matinee was

01:58:31   Kujo. This is my this whole story is my saying I was not

01:58:34   allowed my mom checked and I knew she wouldn't let me see it so I hope I just

01:58:38   said can I go to the Majestic and she said what's playing I said I don't know

01:58:41   she goes well let me look and she looks you know in the newspaper of course and

01:58:46   there it is Kujo rated R and now she could tell you if it well I don't know I

01:58:51   can't remember if I got because you would just sometimes go and see what's

01:58:53   there yeah and we would often go if they had the same movie two weeks in a row

01:58:57   we'd go see it twice in a row and if we if we sat in the balcony last time we'll

01:59:01   Sit up in the front row this time and you know half the time on the balcony

01:59:04   We would just sit up there and throw popcorn on teenagers who were making out down below, you know in the back

01:59:09   They're like little kids up in the front row little kids on the balcony and then like teenagers making out and like the back row

01:59:16   We would like try to throw popcorn on them. Oh

01:59:18   The great thing they had video games in the lobby, you know coin up

01:59:23   It's like a little mini arcade in the lobby and you could play them

01:59:27   And so I said that the old man's dad was the projectionist

01:59:30   where the projection booth was up in the balcony

01:59:32   and it took him, I swear, no joke,

01:59:34   like five minutes to walk up the steps.

01:59:37   Like he was seriously old.

01:59:39   And he was so old that he would take the steps

01:59:41   like left foot and then the right foot

01:59:43   would be in the same step.

01:59:44   - Oh no. - Left foot, right foot.

01:59:46   So it was like a last call for video games.

01:59:48   Like when his dad started going up the steps,

01:59:51   you knew you had time for,

01:59:52   you could still get one more game in.

01:59:54   Without missing it.

01:59:56   What a place but I couldn't get into I couldn't get in to see Kujo and I remember Blue Lagoon

02:00:01   I remember missing out on the blue blue

02:00:03   I remember seeing that on cable Oh brother

02:00:06   But all my friends my friends parents just did my they just didn't check. I think I don't think anybody's I

02:00:12   Was probably around eight or nine at the time

02:00:14   I don't think anybody in their right mind would let their eight or nine year old see Kujo

02:00:17   But here's the thing too, I remember thinking I would be fine

02:00:22   I was not I've never once was upset by a movie in my entire life as a kid. I was you know, I think

02:00:28   Pretty naturally mature I could have I and my friend so cujo and they were fine. Yeah. Yeah, yeah

02:00:35   Including my friend Dave who is the kid who got freaked out by Raiders of the Lost Ark

02:00:40   He went to see cujo thought it was a cool movie. Yeah, if you know what you're in for, you know, yeah

02:00:47   I never tell my Blade Runner story. No, I hung out with older kids a lot of the time and I went back

02:00:53   From Florida to visit my friends in Ohio

02:00:55   Whatever that summer was some Blade Runner was out and they were all older than me and they could pass and I looked like I

02:01:01   Was four. Oh, I'm just never forget we walk up there and they buy their tickets and my hand of God

02:01:07   I walked up to the counter. I think I was holding an unlit cigarette

02:01:10   Maybe they'd given me I woke up to the counter and I go one adult for Blade Runner

02:01:15   How old are you I was 13 and like really one adult

02:01:20   Superman -

02:01:26   Did you ever do that as a teenager like like in your in your like teenage years

02:01:32   Did you ever do the thing where you'd buy a ticket for one that you know?

02:01:36   They'd sell you and then try to sneak in - I never that never occurred to me. It's such that's such a smart trick

02:01:42   I was scared to do anything. I was always scared to buy beer

02:01:44   beer I was scared to go to R-rated movies I was just I was so I was such a

02:01:48   good kid I you know like a good kid like I did not want to disappoint anybody in

02:01:53   authority I was scared I was scared no I was a scammer like the rise of the

02:01:59   multiplex and then like once I was old enough those things that the whole point

02:02:03   is those things make money because they're so understaffed they got like

02:02:06   one kid that walks around and sweeps up popcorn once they know what he's paying

02:02:08   the attention to who's going in those theaters you go and sit somewhere near

02:02:11   an adult, you're good to go. Yeah, like, I think a bunch of

02:02:15   Schwarzenegger's 80s movies were r rated. Oh, yeah. You know, it

02:02:20   was all those. It's just always shooting people up and blowing

02:02:23   things up. But we've got, you know, we would just go and buy

02:02:25   tickets for, I don't know, whatever we thought we could get

02:02:27   into. And you can always sneak in there was just always one guy,

02:02:30   like, who would make sure you had a ticket. There is no money

02:02:33   in pursuing that. No, I mean, there's money in running and

02:02:36   selling, you know, goobers and popcorn. There's no money in

02:02:40   monitoring those theaters I remember one time my friend Ethan and I went to a

02:02:44   multiplex to I forget was there girls involved there might have it might it

02:02:51   wasn't a date because I wasn't you know wasn't lucky enough to have dates but it

02:02:55   might have been like us it was like a teenage situation over there were girls

02:02:58   involved and so I could kind of pretend like maybe it would be a day and we

02:03:03   wanted to see an r-rated movie but we were it was we weren't like 13 anymore

02:03:07   We were maybe more like 15 or 16 and so we didn't think it'd be a problem

02:03:11   And we asked for the R-rated movie and she said no, you know

02:03:16   Do you have ID and we're like no and she was and she's like a 17 and we're like, of course

02:03:20   And she's like no you're not and then we're like well give us two tickets for you know

02:03:25   Whatever it was PG and she's like no. Oh no shit and with my friend Ethan's brother had

02:03:31   Had driven us and dropped us off nice enough. He was like two or three years older

02:03:36   So he was like 17 or 18 and he hadn't gone yet. He was still was there

02:03:40   You know, we ran and got him and he he bought us our ticket. Oh, you're kidding

02:03:44   Yeah, he bought us to it, but it was like but I still don't know how that got around

02:03:47   I have no I have no respect for people who buy beer for underage kids

02:03:51   But people who buy I said the guy who drinks a lot but but but somebody buying movie tickets for kids. That's pretty cool

02:03:57   Yeah, but I don't know why she fell for that. She wouldn't fall for our will just buy the PG but she somehow fell for

02:04:05   Apparently once there's a 17 year old involved you can get anybody in there show the ID they they can't say anything. That's the law, right?

02:04:12   One adult I think we told her do that he was our parent

02:04:19   Two years old walking in my dad holding a finger under your nose

02:04:23   My dad says it's okay

02:04:27   Blade Runner, I'll tell you what Blade Runner is a damn borderline movie for 10 10 years 11 year

02:04:33   You know, there's again that that Hunger Games Die Hard

02:04:38   There's so many movies where I'm like you so can't see this yet, but I really I cannot wait so my kid can see Die Hard

02:04:43   Yeah, I remember

02:04:45   My was not allowed to read

02:04:48   The Catcher in the Rye and I don't even know why I wanted to at some point

02:04:53   I'd you know, I had become a you know, a fairly

02:04:56   avid reader and

02:04:59   My mom, you know, definitely my mom encouraged it and you know would would I could buy books?

02:05:05   We get books at library and at some point

02:05:07   I wanted to read to catch her in the ride because I'd heard it was a cool book or whatever and

02:05:10   She thought about I could tell she was really thoughtful and she was like, you know, it's a great book

02:05:14   I can't wait for you to read it, but you're not you're not old enough yet and

02:05:17   And I would ask like every six months. Can I read catch her?

02:05:21   I can't read catch and right and eventually she let me and I forget I don't know how old I was but you know

02:05:25   maybe like 12 or 13 and I read it and

02:05:29   I was expecting it because it had been so set up by her not allowing me to be like Lolita or something

02:05:34   Yeah, I thought it was gonna be like and this is gonna be some great stuff and I just remember being bored to tears

02:05:39   I was like what the hell it's just a kid walking around. I appreciated that both so much more when I got older

02:05:44   Oh, yeah, you know what and I wish that's what my mom had said to me

02:05:47   I wish she hadn't made she was thinking too much about some of the content and some of the ideas and I really really

02:05:53   fundamentally it was more like

02:05:55   You're you you shouldn't bother reading it now. You won't appreciate it, right? Okay. I was just the trade-off

02:06:01   That's kind of the trade-off we were talking about. It's a truly great book, but you're not ready for it yet

02:06:05   Well, I'll give you and I'll tell you where I'm going with this is

02:06:08   Movie wise it's actually rated G content wise. It's not that bad

02:06:13   but I won't let Jonas watch 2001 right because I

02:06:18   Strongly suspect he'll be bored to tears and I don't want him to get it

02:06:21   his head that this movie is born. Or like or I mean watching the uh the ape stuff at the beginning

02:06:27   going like oh that is so fake. I wonder if he would think it's fake some of it some of the back

02:06:32   the the the staging looks fake I think the apes themselves are still I think they stand up.

02:06:36   They look better than you'd expect that's that's for sure but no I'm with you that would be

02:06:39   something that's kind of like me with James Bond and her like I was amazed that she could

02:06:43   tolerate the pacing to watch Goldfinger like three times now it's it's crazy.

02:06:48   There really is a scene in goldfinger where they just sit on a porch and drink mentula

02:06:52   Just it goes on and on and then they have some discussions about whether they should go in or let james bond

02:06:57   Keep doing his thing. James bond's in the cell. He's out of the cell

02:07:00   He's in that he's in the he's in the world's craziest. He's hiding under the world's craziest rec room. My god

02:07:05   What's that guy's name? Ken kurtis. What's the guy's name? Ken adams. Oh my god that that room

02:07:11   I love that room so much

02:07:14   And every time we watch it, when Goldfinger leaves to go make his deal with the guy who wants his money back,

02:07:19   I always do the same stupid joke. I go, "Hey, we wanted to play billiards!"

02:07:23   She laughs a little.

02:07:25   Hey, I should go. I gotta try to get to this dry cleaner by six.

02:07:28   What are we gonna do to help people here? I mean, your mileage may vary. What do we say?

02:07:32   What do we say? I don't care about the people who think we're nuts, but like,

02:07:35   what would you say as a good piece of advice? I would say one is, if it's a movie you consider

02:07:40   a classic, you think your kid is almost ready for, watch it yourself.

02:07:42   Yeah.

02:07:43   with them not there yeah and also I would not be afraid to fast over yeah

02:07:49   yeah pass pass forward fast over yeah yeah you got to watch it with them yeah

02:07:55   yeah that's what I think still gonna hold off on Die Hard though I think we

02:07:59   just got into Die Hard this year we have this was the first year so that

02:08:03   beautiful Christmas movie 10 10 years that's just about a perfect movie yeah I

02:08:08   don't know I don't know why I had it filed away as something he could watch

02:08:11   when he was 10 yeah yeah well thanks thanks for having me on man it's always

02:08:15   a pleasure oh it is we should just do this every week and not put it out no

02:08:21   wouldn't it be good for us to be good for us I think we should start our own

02:08:24   version of this kids in mind and we'll do our own we'll do our own version

02:08:28   we're not gonna count the F words yeah just tell you if they swear no no no

02:08:31   we'll make it look no ours is our our sites gonna be called rats in the lobby

02:08:34   and we're just gonna let you know if you're if your kids are real punk or

02:08:36   pussy just skip it skip it oh god that's the end that's it