#2. Welcome to the New Sub-Beacon!
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
A short (~10 minute) stinger, the first piece of Patreon-exclusive content, with no main film. The whole bit is JVL trying to sell Sonny and Vic on the three of them hiking an 80-mile section of the Appalachian Trail together — an idea both flatly reject. Sonny's position is that humanity invented houses, hotels, and cars for a reason and anyone who hikes the AT is "a deranged person," while the hygiene-obsessed Vic recoils mainly at the mud. Along the way JVL rants that Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods doesn't count because Bryson only section-hiked, riffs on trail names (Sonny Bunch already sounds like one; Vic would be "Big Head"), and details the 45-pound pack and thunderbox logistics. Sonny pivots to raving about Matthew McConaughey's memoir Greenlights, admiring McConaughey as a gloriously weird film-school kid who just wanted to watch Die Hard. It closes on Vic's signature "I'm sure it's fine."
From the show notes
Here's the stinger from this week's show as you first all-new Super-Premium, Platinum, Champaign Room Sub-Beacon content. Remember: Get enough people signed up for the show and we'll be able to make JVL's idea come true.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Sonny, did you freeze again? No, no, I'm so good. He didn't freeze. He's just a lot. Oh, he's just right. Yeah, I'm just I'm just very drunk. I've been drinking all night. Okay. All right. All right. All right.
JVL00:00:20So my, my wife and my girls are away this week, and I have been on my own with the boys. And I have made the decision. I think I want to go hike part of the Appalachian Trail. Oh, God. No, I have been reading Daniel Daniel David Miller's book about this a wall on the at the Bill Bryson book. So I've read that years and years and years. ago. And I it made me so angry. I hated it. Really? Because he didn't actually through hike. He section hiked. You know what? It doesn't count. Okay, I'm sure it counts if you're going to section hike the the at. But it doesn't count if you're gonna write a book called a walk in the woods about it. If you're gonna write a whole fucking book about it. You walk the damn thing in one piece. And that's not what he did.
Vic00:01:11That's good to know. So I can talk about it. Pretend that. Okay, go ahead.
JVL00:01:15So here's what I was thinking. The three of us should go do it together. No. Okay. Short section, a short section, that's weird. Oh, really? Like 80 miles together, something like that.
Sonny00:01:27Here's, here's, here's my promise to the listeners of sub beacon.com who are here now listening to this. Is it if we if we get up to like, I don't know, some insane amount of money. If we if we're if we're generating like 200 grand a year on this thing, I will gladly go to the Appalachian Trail and bitch about it. For for, you know, 80 miles with with
JVL00:01:54material, the material of the three of us. I think I think
Sonny00:02:02this is this is this is 100% of mistake. It's a trail name. It's it's a misunderstanding of what people come to the show for the people don't come to the show for us being in nature. We all hate nature.
JVL00:02:18I don't like none of us. None of us. None of us want to go. Oh, I love it. Oh, yeah. I have to pack my antihistamines. Go swim. Go go do your surfing off the coast of North Carolina. Let me tell you something. So you get trail names when you're hiking the A.T. and I was wondering what your trend is. Sonny, you are your name. Your actual real name is a trail name. Yeah. Sonny Bunch. It's like Sonny Bunch. Vic clearly would be called Big Head. Right. I mean, it's obvious they'd be named Big Head. I don't know what they would. Call me. I was wondering about how many pounds worth of gear I would need to pack for a four day hike. And I think it'd probably be at least 45 pounds. I don't think I could do it with a pack that was under 45 because I'd need, you know, a hand pump espresso machine, obviously. Right. A toilet. Full stove. A thunderbox as they use it. Do you know? What's a thunderbox? A thunderbox is a British name for a portable field toilet, which I guess one of the Evelyn Waugh books has like a whole thing about the thunder. Anyway, unimportant. Vic, are you frozen or are you just?
Vic00:03:35No, I'm like, I just thought about it because after Blair Witch, I had decided I'm never going to do this. But go ahead.
JVL00:03:43There's this great scene in the David Miller book where he gets the runs while he's out and he runs out of toilet paper. Well, and so he is reduced to like, you know, so you got to hike like 80 yards off the trail every time you got to take it, take a dump. And he's ripping pages out of his guidebook to wipe his ass with. And then you're like, he's runs out of pages in his guidebook. And so he's casting around, picking up rocks that look reasonably smooth. Anyway, I think we should do this. I'm going to do it because I am so into this sort of thing. I think it'd be a tremendous amount of fun. Vic, we could get some dehydrated cordon bleu type food that we could make on our little camp stoves. It really does.
Sonny00:04:32It does literally sound like the worst thing that anyone could ever do.
Vic00:04:38As somebody who's big on hygiene, I hate mud. I love the difference between me and Sonny, of course, is I love sand. I don't mind sand at all. But mud, I have such a thing about mud. I just I just.
Sonny00:04:50I just don't know when it's dry. I don't understand why anybody would spend any extended period of time outdoors when we have houses. Now we have houses, we have hotels, we have shacks, we have we have motels. We have literally literally a million types of things that we can live in with a roof over our heads and protected from the elements. Why would anyone want to hike the Appalachian Trail? We we we have we have progressed beyond that. We have cars, we can drive the Appalachian Trail, we have we have planes, we can fly across the country, fly over and get away from the Appalachian Trail. Anybody who walks the Appalachian Trail is a deranged person. And I don't I mean this in all respect.
Vic00:05:36You're out there and I know I bet it's scary.
Sonny00:05:39I bet it's like Barry Lyndon. You remember you guys have seen Barry Lyndon, of course, Stanley Kubrick. Watch for us. Yeah.
Vic00:05:50Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sonny00:05:51There's there's the scene in there's the scene in Barry Lyndon where what's his name? The lead, Barry Lyndon, whatever, comes across the the the the ruffians and he's like, let me pass. And they're like, no. And that's that's what I assume the Appalachian Trail is like all the time. It's just just ruffians everywhere. Why would I want to expose myself to that?
JVL00:06:16It's a bunch of hippies. No, it's a bunch of. It's a bunch of assholes is what it is out there, you know, smoking up and enjoying nature.
Sonny00:06:26And oh, yeah, you're going to you're going to be doing trail magic, trail magic. You're going to be doing that, JBL. You're going to be out there smoking the dope with them.
JVL00:06:34Here's here's maybe Bickle meet some trail angels.
Sonny00:06:37Here's who I was.
JVL00:06:38These are all real things. These are only the Margaret Qualley in Margaret Qualley. That's basically what what they all look like.
Sonny00:06:47The only person I would want to meet. The only person I would want to meet on the Appalachian Trail is Matthew McConaughey, whose whose memoir I have just read and I'm planning on reviewing at the at my my my newsletter for the screen time. But it is fantastic. And he is he is a deeply insane person. He's an like he is his his whole modus operandi is very weird and unusual. But like, I find it deeply appealing in the sense that he just does what he wants to do. He just does what he wants to do, does what he wants to do. And he's like, I'm going to do it.
Vic00:07:23I think it's part of it is I think it's because he can. And I always wonder about these. You know, you hear crazy stories about how wacky these these celebrities are and these actors are. And you want, you know, were they when they started out in the business, were they normal or were they always like that? Now they're just unleashed. You know, they become that or they become that.
Sonny00:07:45It's very it's very interesting reading this book because he comes from a. Kind of like, I don't even know if it's lower middle class, but it's like lower middle class, basically background, Texas. Yeah, Texas, Texas is his parents were working class. His parents are working class and he like he, you know, makes it through high school. He does really well. He gets good grades. He's attractive. He's, you know, like on the on the court, the homecoming court, whatever. And then he goes to college and he. He is like, oh, I'm just going to go to film school, but then he becomes like the king of film school because he's not a fucking nerd like all the film school people. Right. He's not like, oh, I'm going to go to the I got it. I have to go to the, you know, the the awful, you know, terrible 30s, 40s, 50s movies. He's like, no, I want to go see Die Hard.
JVL00:08:43He doesn't even know what masking is. He doesn't know what a Mary Sue is. He doesn't. He doesn't care about that.
Sonny00:08:50He doesn't care about any of that. He wants to. He literally wants to just go see Die Hard. And and and and then he goes to Hollywood and he like immediately becomes a giant success. It's amazing. It's like he he you know, he's doing his he's he's like acting in Austin and he is in. Fuck. He's the best.
JVL00:09:13Anyway, what I'm saying is, Vic, that out on the trail, you could just be Matthew McConaughey for 40. You get all the craziness. You just nobody will know. So just like, hey, that's that crazy big head guy from the trail.
Vic00:09:29Do I say I'm sure it's fine? I forget. Are we doing that? Yeah, yeah, I'm doing it.
JVL00:09:33Do it right now, Vic. I'm sure it's fine.
Spot something wrong in this episode? Suggest a correction →
Comments
Loading…