#144. 'Black Adam'
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With Vic recovering from having his "Gabriel tooth" (and, allegedly, a second skull's worth of Gabriel mass) surgically removed, longtime listener Ben Parker steps in as guest host for a review of Dwayne Johnson's Black Adam (2022), which topped the box office at $67 million. Sonny delivers the big-boy review, arguing the film is buried under studio notes — nobody explains why Amanda Waller (an "idiot Nick Fury") is running the Justice Society, Hawkman and Doctor Fate's powers and backstory go unexplained, and the teenage sidekicks exist only to seed spinoffs — yet he still enjoyed it as the most aesthetically and philosophically Zack Snyder-esque DC movie since Snyder got the boot, loving its gleeful slow-motion brutality and wondering how it scored a PG-13. JVL agrees the script needed to clear away subplots to give Johnson more screen time, and digs into the film's confused "anti-colonialist" politics, likening its half-formed ideas to Woodrow Wilson at the Paris Peace Conference and Jeane Kirkpatrick-style double standards, while also recounting watching the theatrical Justice League cut and taking his son G Money to see Black Adam itself. Ben, mostly talked over and occasionally told to "sit in his hole," reveals he did not care for the movie at all, having seen it alone at the reviled Regal Gallery Place and failing to understand the appeal of solo weekday moviegoing that Sonny and JVL love. The long opening stretch covers JVL's saga of buying a new Bosch 800-series dishwasher (debating the merits of the $700 towel-bar handle and outsmarting a PC Richards salesman) opposite Sonny's shoulder pain from his rotating collection of Saddleback leather bags, Sonny's chaotic week nursing a kid through pink eye and rescuing a daughter forgotten on a half-day, and a three-night Lord of the Rings extended-edition 4K marathon that has him marveling at the trilogy's back-to-back production gamble. They close with quick takes on She-Hulk's tonal whiplash and Elon Musk's forced Twitter purchase before running through the rest of the box office (Ticket to Paradise, Smile, and a surging Terrifier 2).
From the show notes
Special guest host Ben Parker—longtime listener, first time host—fills in for Vic, who is recovering from his Gabriel extraction. The guys talk dishwashers and shoulder bags and Lord of the Rings on 4K before getting to the big movie of the week: Black Adam .
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00This loose cannon needs to be locked down before innocent people start getting hurt. He's been asleep for 5,000 years. If you find us a cell that can hold him, we'll take care of the rest. Who's on the team? I didn't bring a passport. We don't need passports. We're the Justice Society. We're not on our side. We need to stay calm. Black Adam. We're here to negotiate your peaceful surrender. I'm not peaceful. Nor do I surrender.
Sonny00:00:58Hello and welcome to another edition of The Sub-Beacon. I'm Sonny Bunch filling in for Victor Matus who had the Gabriel tooth removed from his mouth. He had his twin excised. We'll give you a Vic update here in a second. Let you know how he's doing. He's fine. Mostly. I don't know if you guys are ready for the update here, but we're going to give it to you. It's gory. JVL is also here. We got special guest host, Ben Parker. Long time listener, first time guest host. Just a reminder. The Sub-Beacon is now available through Patreon. Go to subbeacon.com. You'll easily find us. If you got friends who are trying to listen, they keep signing up and Patreon is shooting them down. Apparently, that's been happening a lot lately, but just do it from your desktop. It usually works better. Please subscribe. Tell your friends. Don't forget about the Sub-Beacon merchandise store at tpublic.com. Gentlemen, how are we? Ben, introduce yourself to the people. Hi, everybody. It's great to be here. It's very honored to be sitting in for Vic. It's big headphones to fill, especially since they're Vic's. Nobody could fill Vic's headphones possibly. Size 37 headphones. So, tell everybody a little bit about yourself. Just let folks know who you are and what your deal is and what we're going to be talking about. I've been listening to the Sub-Beacon so long that I remember when it used to have a little fake intro by Bill. Yeah. Yeah. Those were fun. They were good. It was a different one every time, remember? When we were able to get him to come into the studio and tape one, it was great. Yeah. And now I work at the Bulwark, so I get to hear Bill say pretend mean things about his colleagues all the time. It's wonderful. Pretend. Put that in air quotes. Throw that one up in air quotes.
JVL00:02:49Ben, the reason you're here is because you are the greatest ever guest host. You're guest host on the SSEU pod, and that's a pretty tall order because the I mean, some of the great guest hosts ever include Timothy Miller, myself, Lara Mason, Laura was an amazing guest host on the show and three regulars, our buddy, Tomasin, I don't know how to pronounce his name. He's finished. He and Ryan and Chris are very, very funny guys, but when you were on that show, it goes to a different level. It goes to 11. Well, it goes to 11. That thing you guys were doing about twins the other day, and you know, we got to send them to the Ukraine to fight the Russians. See, didn't I just kill that guy? I almost drove off the road. It was so funny.
Sonny00:03:50That's very kind of you to say, but now I feel like I've been called up to the majors. So you know, I'll have to see if I can keep it up. Yeah. I don't understand any of those references. That's okay.
JVL00:03:59So I don't listen to podcasts. Well, but I, I listened to the SSEU it's my favorite show. Um, yeah.
Sonny00:04:05So anything you want to share, what's going on in your life, what happened on your week? Tell us, tell, give us a story.
JVL00:04:11How was your weekend, Ben? Did you do something middle-aged? Did you, does, do, does some part of your body that didn't use to hurt, hurt now? Uh, did you get volunteer stuff at the kids' school? Did you do a home improvement project? A wood shop? I, I have a list. Have you coached any teams? I have not coached any teams.
Sonny00:04:31I do have a list of home improvement projects I need to do. Uh, and, uh, does, does any, I've been getting this weird shoulder pain lately because, uh, you know, I, I have this, this, what is it like a satchel bag, I guess you'd call it that I carry all my stuff around in? A messenger bag. A messenger bag. A man purse? No, no. Do you have a man purse? It's, it's, it's much larger than a man purse. It's, it's, it's man sized. Um, and you know how it has the little, um, where the, the, the shoulder strap hooks into the side of the bags with a little swivel joint and it just wore straight through. So that doesn't, that doesn't work anymore. So instead of slinging it over my shoulder, I've been carrying it around just by the little, you know, handles and. Like a farmer. Like a farmer. Yeah. Or as if it's like an old fashioned, like rigid sided briefcase where you just have to carry it around by the handles and that's making my shoulder hurt, but it's the opposite shoulder. So if you can explain that one to me. JVO, you're almost a doctor. I can because you're no, I, I can, I can, I can explain that to you. You're, you're overcompensating. You're, you're. Those are fighting words. Because that, because you're, you're what, what is happening is you're carrying it awkwardly on one shoulder. So you're like moving your body to carry it properly with the other one. And it's, it's, it's messing up your whole cheat. Trust me. I've, I've fought this battle before. It's why I now own like three different saddleback leather bags. Cause I keep buying them cause they never break and they're amazing. And I just need like different sized ones for different occasions.
JVL00:05:56You, you keep buying them even though they never break.
Sonny00:05:58I keep buying them even though they never break because I need different sized ones for every, everything that I do. Um, uh, I got, I got a briefcase sized one that also had like a, it's basically like a messenger bag, but, but, uh, kind of more rigid, like a cow, basically a whole cow. Um, and I also got a doctor's bag one. That's very big. I can fit a ton of stuff. I can fit like a change of clothes in there. If I'm, if I'm or a bowling, one bowling ball or one change of clothes. One or the other. But I also just recently they, they introduced a, uh, a relatively cheap for saddleback leather, like a $130 laptop bag. And I, and I bought it because it's like, it's like the, it's very light. It's the perfect size. If I'm just running up to the Starbucks, I need to, to, to do like 30, 40 minutes of work. Uh, I just throw my, I throw my, my laptop in there, throw, you know, I can put a book in there, whatever. It's fantastic.
JVL00:06:53Can you share a link? My new go-to for that. Is, uh, my, my, my buddy who is a brand ambassador for, for hyper light mountain gear, uh, sent me a little hyper light backpack, which has a laptop sleeve in it. And this thing is, you could take it like 400 feet under water and no water is going to get inside. And it's, it's amazing. So I do not take fancy saddleback leather things when I'm running to the coffee shop. I take the hyper light.
Sonny00:07:24Hmm. I don't know anything about hyper light, but I do know about, uh, saddleback and let me tell you, uh, I will, Ben, I will send you a link to this bag that I most recently bought because it is like, it is the perfect light laptop bag. It's got, it's got a great little strap on it. Let's just send him one Sonny. No, no, no, no, no. I'm not just sending him one. Don't send me the link. I want the underwater one. I'll send it. The next time. No, no. No, I want the underwater one. That way if I ever find myself 400 feet underwater. Underwater one. I can relax. If I ever find myself 400 feet. You can use your, you can use your watch. Cause you will die. Underwater one.
JVL00:07:54You can keep time with your watch and your laptop will be safe.
Sonny00:07:58Isn't that reassuring? Isn't that reassuring? Yeah. It's what we're all looking for in life is just a little bit of assurance that we're not going to drown under 300 feet of water at any given moment. We will drown, but the watch and the laptop will be safe. Other things will be okay.
JVL00:08:11Uh, guys, I got big news, big news, big news. I, uh, did some shopping today. Did you buy a new dishwasher? What was wrong with the bot?
Sonny00:08:23Dishwasher.
JVL00:08:24Uh, so the, when we moved to this house, it has a Bosch, but it's a very, very old Bosch and it's before Bosch really became the luxury brand that it is now. And so very subpar construction, not a full stainless steel tub, plastic tub, no third rack in the, the way the time configuration is on this thing. I, I feel like I run it. I've done it on average two and a half times a day. Oh, that's just a waste of time. Cause you just can't, you can't fish fit stuff inside it. So I, uh, I bought a new one. How quiet is it? And, uh, well, it's gonna be pretty good. It's a rated out of 42 decibels. So I wanted the mid pri so the, the, the only Bosch is worth having are the 300 series, the 500 series and the 800 series. Now the 300 series are okay. But the truth is like, I, I have needs in the 300 series. Can't satisfy them anymore. So I needed 500 and 800 and I was gonna go 500. I was gonna, I was gonna trying to be fiscally responsible.
Sonny00:09:36You were gonna settle.
JVL00:09:37I was gonna settle for a 500 and I talked myself into why I could live with a 500. I was all prepared to do it. Uh, but the 500 series ones are sold out everywhere to like March. So you can't get the 500 series unless you really wait. And I can't wait anymore. I resent the one, the one I have now, like I just, I kick it every time I walk past it. Cuz I, it just makes me angry the way the time set up is inside it. And uh, and so I, I went and I, I ordered an 800. Now I, I shopped around a little bit, I went to, yeah, go ahead.
Sonny00:10:11Wouldn't it, couldn't you just get a different thing in the bottom to change the time set up? Isn't, isn't, could you not get a different kind of like, you could buy a new bottom rack,
JVL00:10:22I suppose, but that's not gonna fix the problem that it only has two racks instead of three.
Sonny00:10:28Do you have your, the one that you're getting has like three pull out rows. Is the one on top, is the one on top like a very small one where you just put like,
JVL00:10:37no, it's so useful size one silverware, uh, like the container tops, like those things that stick. It's fantastic. Third rack. Have you, you've never had a third rack.
Sonny00:10:47It will change your life. Well, I have a third. So the one that I have that was in my house has like a. You know, full pull out rack with like the silverware thing on the side. And then the second one, there's like a, another rack that you pull out, you put like cups and stuff up there. And then there's a third one, but it's very flat. It's like, you can put, you can put long flat things in that this is I'm sorry. It's not, it's not like that.
JVL00:11:08It's a rack that you can pull out when Bosch first did a third rack. That's what they did just, uh, but the new one, it has wings and it pops down. You can move it up or, or, but it's amazing. Can it fly? Amazing.
Sonny00:11:22Yeah.
JVL00:11:23So, uh, those wings, but like Hawkman, so I wound up buying it from PC Richards, which is a local appliance chain store, not, uh, not best buy, not home Depot. No fucking way. I was going back to Lowe's and, uh, and I went into PC Richards and like a lot of local appliance stores, they have like, you know, salesmen who can, I'm not in that store for 10 seconds.
Guest00:11:47Salesman is like, Oh, what do you want? I'll help you. Oh, this one, this was good.
JVL00:11:52And I'm like, dude, you best step off. Cause I know what the fuck I'm doing here. I bought like seven Bosch dishwashers over the last decade of my life, seven years. I am down with this.
Sonny00:12:04How many of those were for you and how many were for other people?
JVL00:12:07I, you know, I'm a giver. You know that about me, Sonny, I like giving things to people and to give Ben a hyperlight backpack as soon as we're off the show and, uh, and I, I left, I feel very bad about this. I feel very bad cause salesman work on commission. He's like, you know, gave me his card and all that. And uh, I just came home and I ordered it from PC Richards over the internet because I didn't, I just didn't want to talk to him. Is that wrong? Like why was he talking to me? Why wouldn't he shut up?
Sonny00:12:38Why would I wouldn't say it's wrong? Exactly. It's not, it's not wrong because at least you went to PC Richards.com. You didn't go to like Amazon, right? And get like, you, you, you didn't tr the worst, the worst thing that people do is when they treat like a Best Buy or something like that as a showroom for, to get it cheaper or Amazon discount, right. Or Amazon or whatever. Like as long as you use, um, I would say that you could have just, you could have just, I mean, you could have just said, Hey, Hey, stop talking slick. And then bought it from him. You should, you could have given him the, uh, the, the heat, like Tom, can I, can you
JVL00:13:17do that? I mean, I was trying to buy it. I was not like, I wasn't wearing a red dress. And asking for it when I was not my body language and demeanor was not encouraging him to keep talking to me. I thought that the vibes I was giving off was very, you know, step off.
Sonny00:13:33But maybe not what you should have done was, was, was inverted the power dynamic in the situation by asking him such an esoteric question about the 800 model that he, he, he couldn't possibly know. And he would immediately recognize that, you know, more about dishwashers and he will ever know. And then he really does. That's all I have to say to you.
JVL00:13:52I've forgotten more about dishwasher. So here's, here's the other, here's the other question though. So in general with dishwashers, you have, uh, two kinds of front panels, right? I mean, if you're not gonna do the custom front panel, you have the front panels where, uh, you can pull it out because it's, it's pure flat and you can sort of reach in and there's like a niche, right? Like a drawer pull. And then they have ones where there's a bar, right? Where you pull the bar out in the bar. Is I think once you no longer have very small children who run the risk of treating the bar like a piece of gymnastics equipment, uh, the bar is very useful cause you can hang a towel from it, but because more people like the bar is supply and demand. It's more expensive, even though like manufacturing wise, there's no difference. So here's my question. How much more should you be willing to pay to get the. The bar pull as opposed to the niche pull on a dishwash zero.
Sonny00:14:56The bar pull is a trap because if you put a towel on there, you gotta take the towel off every time you wanna open it or the towel drags on the ground, then you gotta wash it. The towel on the bar pull is, is not actually useful. It's a, it gets in your way. They should be charging more for the, the, the, the, the underhandle that doesn't have this obnoxious inconvenience. Really you're getting a steal sunny. I mean, if you want. If you want the bar pool, that's what you, we're talking about what you personally want. You want the bar pool.
JVL00:15:26Right? I think it's, it's more convenient because now you don't have to like mount a towel rack somewhere on the wall in your kitchen. It's just there for you.
Sonny00:15:36$700.
JVL00:15:37$700 extra.
Sonny00:15:38That's what I think it's worth. $700 extra.
JVL00:15:40More than the, okay.
Sonny00:15:42Wait, how much does the actual thing cost? The whole thing? Uh, you know, I'm not, I'm not comfortable saying, well, I know, I mean, I look, you know what? If it's what you want, then just get it. I don't like it. I didn't.
JVL00:15:54It was too much money. It was $300 more though.
Sonny00:15:57That is a lot.
JVL00:15:58It was $300 more. If it had been a hundred dollars more, I would have bam. I mean, that's don't think don't blink that, that, that is a lot.
Sonny00:16:05And frankly, I'm with Ben on the, the whole towel situation. I don't put towels on my towel rack. I just have it. I haven't. I want, I want to be able to just grab the rack and open it up. I don't want my hands to be slipping off because I could reach for it and slip and like fall and hit my head on the thing and die. Do you want to die? Cause that's how, that's how people die in their, in their kitchens.
JVL00:16:25It could happen.
Sonny00:16:27It could happen. It happens all the time. I just quickly looked up seven stories about that. I just quickly looked up the Bosch, uh, 800 series because you refuse to say, and I'm just going to say of all the results Google gave me, the most expensive was Lowe's.
JVL00:16:42I didn't go to Lowe's. No, I know.
Sonny00:16:44The Lowe's is terrible.
?00:16:45What's the point?
JVL00:16:46I really think that I, I've made a lot of progress in, in my acquisitiveness. And this, and what I've been trying to do is like, you know, as Jesus says, we, we have to empty ourselves as people, right. As we turn towards the Lord. And uh, I found out something when I just, you know, everyone, when I have to do a purchase like this, I don't want to assume that all of my knowledge is still current. Bosch has introduced a new level, the benchmark series, which is above the 800.
Sonny00:17:17It's they didn't even, they didn't even go with the T 1000 model.
JVL00:17:20The, the benchmark. And this thing looks amazing, but I said, nope, nope, I don't need that. I can live with a 500. I can, I can just strap it on and to be a good family man who is, is denying him self. The pleasures in life, the things that he wants, the things that he needs to be happy. I, uh, I, I can do this and I got in touch with, hold on. Sorry. I got a prop here carrot top. I got in touch with myself by reading this book. How did you even, is that a real thing by Dr. Tobias Funke, which was sent to me the other day.
Sonny00:18:05Did you just print that out?
JVL00:18:08One of our friends, one of our friends sent it to me.
Sonny00:18:10Is there, is that an actual book or is it, it is a book, it's a, it's a, it's a journal.
JVL00:18:14No. So it's a journal, just a blank blank journal, but the cover and the design is. Dr. Tobias Funke is the man inside me.
Sonny00:18:23I'm going to need you to send me the name of that person so I can report them to the government for copyright infringement, trademark abuse.
JVL00:18:31That's all. That was a long way around the barn to get to that joke. I hope you guys appreciate that. That was a Vic like Santino. How are you buddy? You've had a great week, right? Everything's been super easy, no problems.
Sonny00:18:42It's been great. Uh, it's, it's been very fun. So we, uh, uh, my, my wife has been, uh, out of town. Uh, she was gone Monday through Thursday basically. Um, she got back Thursday before the kids got home from school, uh, which was nice. But, uh, it, it was, it's been, it's been, it's been a couple, it's been a couple days. It's been a couple days on, on Tuesday. Uh, the, I, I get the, I get the kids all ready for school. We're off school, we're doing school things and I get down to, I started eating my eggs cause I don't eat breakfast until they're gone. And I get a text message from my wife who says that my youngest son's school has called, he has pink eye. And I was like, what? That can't be true. I just dropped him off.
JVL00:19:29I just had him.
Sonny00:19:30His, his eyes weren't, weren't one shade more pink than usual. And I went to the school and got him, I was like, ah, fuck that. Those eyes are very pink.
JVL00:19:38They're pink. And there's crust. What probably just happened between when you dropped him off. And there's crust in there.
Sonny00:19:42He had the double? And, uh, I don't, well, one, one, it was definitely one more than the other, but the other one was like getting there, but luckily it was like, it was like. Day, day, like one quarter of pink guy.
JVL00:19:55So we got the guy dropped pink guy, the onset, it can happen in minutes.
Sonny00:19:58I mean, it, this is what happened to me. I dropped him off and he, it was like a, it doesn't creep up slowly.
JVL00:20:05It just bam.
Sonny00:20:07So anyway, they taught me that in medical school, that was, that was, that was class number two of, uh, the first seventh of metal school medical school. Uh, so the, uh, anyway, um, uh, I, so I ended up having. He, he ends up being, uh, at home all day on Tuesday, which messed up my work schedule because I had been planning on seeing a movie on Tuesday, uh, midday, cuz those are apparently that's the only day that they show midday movies anymore. I don't know if you know this cuz theaters are dying, but like the, the 11:00 AM showing is basically going extinct. Uh, and the only day I could find a showing of ticket to paradise, which was one of the movies I'm writing about this week was, uh, 11:00 AM. On a Tuesday and I couldn't go. So I ended up, anyway, I ended up having to see it today. It doesn't matter. We're taping on Thursday, um, uh, and then, uh, so Tuesday he is home, but he, good news is he can go back in 24 hours. So I get him back to school Wednesday, uh, at, at 9:31 or like literally like one minute after I had taken him out the, the day before I'm like, he's your problem again. You got him now. Uh, so then I go and I start, I start doing, I start doing, you know, I go, I go, I do work. I get ready. I write stories. I'm doing podcasts and reading books for podcasts and, um, all of a sudden I get, uh, uh, it's like 1:15 in the afternoon, I get a call on my cell phone and the, the name is my daughter's teacher's name. I'm like, oh, this can't be good. So I answer that. She says, hi, Mr. Bunch, uh, Katie says that she might not have told you that today is a half day. And I was like, you know what? She didn't, she did not tell me that. Uh, and it's like, it's been in, in like their school, they're they all week. It's been a thing where they have like Western day was one day spirit day was another. So I've been like getting her outfits every morning. I've been like making lunches and like, I'm on top of, I'm not, I feel like I'm on top of the world. I got this down pat, I'm doing it. And nope, one 15 on a Wednesday, your kid is here all by herself. You gotta come get her idiot. I'm like, all right, well, I was like, all right, great. Perfect. I'll be, I'll be right there. Luckily. I'm luckily I'm literally like two minutes from the school. So I just, I ran down there and got her. So that was fine. Uh, so anyway, it's been, it's been like, it's been one thing after another like that for, uh, for, for the whole thing. The good news is the good news is I was able to. Uh, use my free evenings to get through almost all of the, uh, recent 4k release of the Lord of the rings extended additions. I bought the box set like two months ago. I haven't had a chance to watch any of them because you know, and I, I got through a fellowship of the ring on Tuesday night or I'm sorry, on Monday night. And I got through, uh, the two towers on, on Tuesday night. And then on Wednesday I got through one half of return of the King cause that movie is four hours long. It's the extended, the extended edition is like four hours and 11 minutes or some ridiculous amount of, of time. So I'm, I'm, I'll probably finish that up tonight after we get done with the show here. Uh, but it just reminds me like watching them all back to back like this, it reminds me of like how, like how weird and how kind of ballsy it was that new line decided to make all three of these movies back to back, uh, all, all without having any returns on one of them. $300 million, which is like not a lot of money, I guess, by today's, you know, standards,
JVL00:23:54but they spent 300 million prey movie.
Sonny00:23:56It's it's, it's literally like the, the budgets, the budgets for all three of them was the cost of Avengers end game. Basically. Um, I don't know, man, it like it, but what, what struck me is watching them all back to back to back is that it basically is like the initial iteration of prestige TV. This is like, I'm watching a 10 hour season of television basically. Uh,
JVL00:24:19Yeah.
Sonny00:24:20With stars. With no, with no stars. I mean like, I mean, kind of, I, I guess you could say that Elijah Wood was kind of a star
JVL00:24:27maybe. No, Elijah Wood was a known actor. Like he, he was an experienced veteran actor. They had all mo not all, mostly veteran actors. Miranda Otto was not Carl urban was not, um, but you know, like Ian McKellen was the closest thing there was to a star and he was just this, you know, national treasure.
Sonny00:24:45And that was before he was, I mean, that was before he was, I guess. I guess. X-Men came out the summer before, but, um, he probably filmed, he probably filmed Lord
JVL00:24:58of the Rings first.
Sonny00:24:59Well, I mean like the people, the people, the guy that people most recognized from that was, was probably, but Lee Ian McKellen, obviously, but also, um, what's his name? Elroy? Uh, no, no, no, no, uh, Hugo weaving, Hugo weaving who was in the, of course the matrix in 1999. And then, uh, in 2002, 2003, when the two. Eight hours and return of the King were coming out.
JVL00:25:20He was also in, uh, I mean, what they really recognize him from is Priscilla queen of the desert.
Sonny00:25:25Let's be honest. Or, uh, two Wong Fu wasn't he in that?
JVL00:25:28No, he was not in two Wong Fu. He was, uh, Priscilla, two Wong Fu was Wesley Snipes. Damn it.
Sonny00:25:34And like, and, um, what's his name? Patrick Swayze. Patrick Swayze. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so anyway, it's been, it's been a, it's been a fun week, been a fun week. I will say that, that I will say that that 4k set of Lord of the Rings looks amazing. See if you were a fan, if you're into that sort of thing, check it out sickos. If you're, if you're a pervert like me, you want to watch 10 hours of orcs and dwarves and elves. I got a set for you.
JVL00:26:00Are there any Adams in there? Black Adams? Speaking of trying to throw a transition, uh, all right.
Sonny00:26:09So this week we're talking about black Adam, which was, uh, the number one movie at the box office, uh, the rock big star, big star. DC comics, big, huge amount of money, $67 million, uh, earned by black Adam, which, uh, I will say 67 million is not a terrible number considering black Adam is a tertiary villain of a tertiary hero, but like whatever, um, uh, and the number ticked up all week. It, it had been, it had been looking like it was maybe about a $60 million opening after Thursday night. Um, and that ticked up to 62 on Friday and then 67. Uh, by the end of the weekend. So like word of mouth, obviously not as terrible as the B plus cinema score would suggest. I, I'm surprised it was that low. The theater, I saw the movie in killed the audiences. I were shockingly into it. The audience I saw with was shockingly into it, which I have not, I have not, which part I was the whole, the whole thing. They were all, they were like cheering when Dr. Fate showed up.
JVL00:27:12I was like, what is going on in this nerds or kids or normies? What, what was your audience?
Sonny00:27:17I mean, it was, I mean, it was a, it was a preview. Audience. So I saw it with a preview audience. So it was people who were like prime to, to love it. Um, but they were, but they were all like, they were more into it than most of the preview audiences I have seen, uh, these, these sorts of movies with anyway, uh, they were, they were super number two at the box office tickets, paradise, 16.5 million, about a hundred million worldwide. Uh, rom-coms are back baby, big, big winner of the summer smile, 8.4 million, a drop of 32%, um, from the weekend before it is made a hundred. $170 million worldwide on a $17 million budget. Uh, you know, people are, people are into, people love horror movies. I don't know if you guys know this. Another big winner last weekend was terrifier two, uh, which is that movie, uh, basically doubled the box office from the previous weekend. Um, it, it is grossed about $5 million now, uh, and, and it's adding a thousand screens this weekend. It's gonna be in 1500 screens in North America and, uh, I guess America. You, the United States and Canada. Um, so, uh, people, people love art, the clown horror, horror is huge. Yeah. Are we gonna do a terrifier two episode?
JVL00:28:28No.
Sonny00:28:29JVL.
JVL00:28:30Do you wanna do a, I didn't even know there was a terrifier one.
Sonny00:28:33You didn't know there was a terrifier one, no terrifier one. The famous scene, the famous scene in that movie is, uh, a guy, uh, a clown, an evil clown in, you know, white grease paint paint. He's like kind of my mesh. He doesn't, he doesn't talk at all. He just does like the big facial gestures. Uh, he, he ties a woman upside down and then cuts her in half with a chainsaw. You see it all.
JVL00:28:56You see everything. Top to bottom or bottom to top?
Sonny00:28:58Uh, well, he turns her upside down and then her bottom to her top. So he starts with the JJ and then, yeah, more, uh, yeah, if, if I remember correctly, that's
JVL00:29:09how it goes. You know, it's funny that something like that similar happens at the end of black Adam. Except that's top to bottom.
Sonny00:29:15It no, totally. Totally. But that's like, yeah, that's. Yeah. That's at the top. Can we, uh, all right, so let's, let's talk about me to do the big boy review for you
JVL00:29:23since you're hosting or do you want to do the big boy review, please do the big boy
Sonny00:29:26review.
JVL00:29:27That'd be great. Black Adam is a movie about a DC character villain. It is part of the DC Shazam microverse Shazam verse. The Shazam verse, uh, the central character is actually not named black Adam. It's named, his name is Tef Adam and the movie then changes his name. To black Adam by having his young sidekick, nickname him black Adam for no reason other than he thinks it sounds cool. This sidekick is a 11 or 12 year old boy who skateboards everywhere and says things like cool dude or your mom, like any nineties character would. He's basically short round, uh, he is short round mixed with like 5% Katniss. Everdeen and, uh, and the, the, the plot of it is we, we are in this far away, middle Eastern ish city state called Kandak and Kandak used to be ruled by a king and the king had this magical mineral that he turned into a crown that would turn him into a demon champion. But then one of the people who he had enslaved to dig up his mineral, uh, got grabbed by the Shazam wizard and turned into one of the Shazam characters. And uh, and so he defeated the king and that none of this matters, none of the, nobody cares about any of this. All that anybody cares about is that the rock is finally in a superhero movie and he gets to do rock shit. And we have most of the conflict being the way it is in all good Avengers movies as the conflict between heroes, right? The, all of the events. The secret sauce of Avengers is that you make the heroes fight them, fight each other, right? The fighting villains is boring cuz you know who's gonna win all of the dramatic tension comes from fighting each other cuz you don't know, well, what are they gonna learn? Who's gonna win, et cetera, et cetera. And so this movie brings in Amanda Waller and a new Hawk man who is essentially like iron man. I guess he's super rich, like Tony Stark. And despite the fact that Hawk man is only like 32 years old, he has a decades long friend ship with Pierce Brosnan's doctor fate who is a hundred years old. And then there's these two teenage children heroes who are brought along for literally no reason. Oh, oh, there's a reason the, this entire movie is just a gigantic collection of studio notes and I feel bad for Dwayne Johnson because Dwayne Johnson has fought for this project for like a dozen years. And he wanted to, he wanted to play black Adam and you can see the movie that he wanted to make in here and it is buried under Warner Brothers shit that was clearly shoveled onto
Sonny00:32:30it. It's a fascinating movie from an IP perspective because the, the, as you mentioned, so like Dwayne Johnson was first approached to play Shazam back in like 2006 or something like long, 15, 16 years ago, something like that. And. The rock was like. Like, no, I don't wanna be Shazam, but I am interested in this villain character, black Adam. He is, that's an interesting character to me. I would prefer to play him. And so like, all right, well we'll do a, we'll do a Shazam movie and you'll be the villain and we'll find somebody else to play Shazam. And then the Shazam of it all fell away. Uh, and it was like, we're just gonna do a black Adam movie. And he was like, yes, we should do a black Adam movie. That would be awesome. And that languished in, you know, development hell for like a decade. And then finally in 2021, I guess. Or 2020, they start shooting at, they're like, all right, we're gonna do this. We're gonna plug it into the DCEU. And you're right. There's just notes. I mean, like I, I'm, I'm gonna crib something from my across the movie aisle intro, but like, um, I have, I have so many questions about this movie, like for instance, why is Amanda Waller in charge of the justice society? What I, I, I literally thought that I literally thought that she was, I thought it was a suicide squad mission. I thought she, I thought I was like, oh. I, I had heard that justice society was in this, but I, I guess it's actually just decided
JVL00:33:50that she's Nick Fury. They've taken, she's no longer Amanda Waller. She's just, she's Nick Fury.
Sonny00:33:56But it's fascinating because she's like the inverse of Nick Fury, cuz Nick Fury spends all of these movies. Like Nick Fury is the guy who pulls the teams together to solve problems. And her role in every single movie that she shows up in is to introduce the problem. Her role is to be the like actual, she's like the actual mastermind, except an idiot. And like bumbling through everything, like in suicides in the first suicide squad, remember they have to go rescue her from the city that the like evil demon thing is tearing up, uh, in the second suicide squad movie, she is, uh, she is like, they're trying to get Intel about how America, you know, uh, got Starro into Cuba or something, whatever, whatever nonsense is going on there. Um, and then in the peacemaker show, she is like, once again, like trying to cover up the alien, whatever is, is happening. There. So she's like, she's like idiot, Nick fury, um, which is, which is kind of weirdly amusing to me. I don't know why. Uh, all right. So I like, all right. So let's set, let's set that aside. I have like so many questions about justice society just itself. Like I, like who are any of these people? It's like we missed a whole movie. We just, it's like, it's like we missed it. It's like we missed a whole movie introducing them. And like all of a sudden we're like, oh yeah, Hawk man, I don't even, I don't even know from this movie. If he is, uh, an alien, like he is in some of the comic books, is he, I mean, it doesn't,
JVL00:35:23it doesn't make any sense what he is because he, is he a dude in armor or does he have magic? Right. Cause he's, he's, he is much more powered than he is in the comic book. None of this makes any sense. It feels like somebody somewhere said, don't worry, we'll do a web series. We'll do a, we'll do a, uh, you remember those, right? Sunny. We'll do webisodes to introduce the concept of the justice society a year before we do this. And then at some point people just stopped doing webisodes. They said, well, don't worry about it. Right. The whole idea of just society doesn't need to be in this movie. Uh, the, certainly the two kids don't need to be in the movie. They have nothing to do, uh, the, the, the child who, you know, who is, who becomes the locus of all of the, the McGuffin is this, the short round kid. Um, and, uh, and the, the, the problem with all of this is that it takes black Adam himself and pushes him to the side and he's not in the movie enough and the tension doesn't center enough around him. There are too many tertiary characters and he, it, it winds up being a justice society movie and nobody gives a fuck about the justice society and he's just, he's just too powerful
Sonny00:36:43for the movie. I mean, like it's, it's powerful. Yeah. And then they introduce this idea that he can be injured by a turnium cause he gets, he gets hit by that one rock and he's like, ow, that actually finally something finally hurt me. And he punches the crown. Remember? He's like, ow, my hand hurts cause I punched this crown. And then they just do nothing with that. They do. There, there's like, no, there's, there's nothing. Anyway. Um, uh, who is Dr. Fate from another planet and where, where is this alien plan? I guess, I guess we don't, we don't care anymore because he's gone to introduce a
JVL00:37:16character who supposedly has a hundred years of backstory only to kill him after 90 minutes without ever explaining the, it's just a, it's amazing gobsmacking. Uh, but of course what, what the movie needs is just to let Dwayne Johnson be Dwayne Johnson. Cause that's when it works. When the movie works is when he's just doing rock shit.
Sonny00:37:38So that's very, well, there's one exception and here's, here's, so here's, I'm sorry, Ben, we'll get to you once.
JVL00:37:43One second. You sit there and be quiet.
Sonny00:37:45Hold on, Benjamin, sit in your hole, sit in your hole. You be quiet. All right. No, I, my, my one last thing is I will say that I actually still set aside all the nitpicking. I actually still really enjoyed this movie because it is, it is the most aesthetically, uh, and philosophically like a Zack Snyder movie that they've made since they kicked him to the curb. Like this very easily could have been a Zack Snyder movie. It is a movie that is, it is preoccupied with the idea of what would happen if gods came to earth. And in this movie, the idea is what would happen? If, uh, if a colonized oppressed people were all of a sudden just given a god with Superman like powers, how would they respond to it? And they would respond to it with gleeful brutality. They would be like, yes, rip our enemies limb from limb. This is awesome. And, and it's, it's again, it is a, it's a fascinating little, uh, uh, avenue that these movies have done a very good job of exploring, or at least did up through, through, uh, justice league. And I, I, I appreciate that. I also appreciate the like loving slow-mo murder sequence, like, because this is just a, this is a movie where black Adam kills like 50 people on screen in, in like very intense and sometimes occasionally grotesque, but almost always designed to be like funny and pleasing ways. I have no idea how this movie got a PG 13. You would ask me if you should bring G money to it. G did you think I made the right call by telling you not to?
JVL00:39:12So two things I've been, I'm sorry, you're gonna have to wait another two minutes. Yeah. Two minutes here. Um, first of all, by coincidence, I watched justice league the day before I went to see black Adam. Uh, I was watching it with G money. So we did not watch the Snyder cut because it's R rated. Sorry.
Sonny00:39:31Uh, we watched the other one showing your children. You're ruining your children.
JVL00:39:34Well, no, he believed me. He loved the trash Joss Whedon version. Um, but black Adam absolutely feels more like a Snyder movie than, than the justice league that was released. Uh, so here is one of the things I find interesting about this movie is the politics, because it is a neoliberal movie in that it believes that, uh, despotism is bad and colonialism is bad. And so the only good is just freedom, but it then stops thinking about anything that comes after that. It's it's really Samantha power. The politics of Samantha power.
Sonny00:40:17Ben, let's, let's get you in. No, hold on. Wait, wait, wait.
JVL00:40:20I have G money.
Sonny00:40:21Cause you asked about the sit in your hole.
JVL00:40:22Still go back to your hole. We will tell you when to be funny, Ben. So, uh, you asked me whether or not I, I thought it would be bad for G money and I went without him cause he's been looking forward to this movie for months and I actually think it'll be fine. And I went to talk to him about it. And when I, I was, uh, you know, talking through some prep him for it and I said, and the thing about Adam is he's not really a hero. And G says, why not? I said, well, cause he kills a lot of people and G says, why are they bad people? I said, well, yeah, they're all bad guys. And he goes, then he is a hero cause he's doing the right thing. I said, well, no, no heroes, heroes, arrest people. They've, you know, just do process the rule of law. And Jesus, no dad, did you ever notice that all of the bad guys who get arrested break out and then they go and they hurt people again, all of the good guys should just kill them that way. They can't hurt anybody else ever again. That's what the heroes should do. I think that's actually a line from the movie to be fair.
Sonny00:41:24Sometimes you have to leave them alive long enough to torture them for information. Sometimes that's what you, that's what heroes have to do. Sometimes you have to leave them alive long enough to break their minds and get the information
JVL00:41:36that you. So on your question about where the murder scenes too intense for G money, he and I are going out to see it Friday night and the thing he is most looking forward to. Are the scenes in which all the bad guys are murdered. He will not be disappointed.
Sonny00:41:49The politics, the politics of this movie are fascinating because it is like it is facially an anti-colonialist film, but it is also like essentially neoconservative. Like it is, it is 100% a movie about arming the moderate rebels to topple a dictatorship in the advance of human rights. Am I wrong? Yeah. Am I wrong? Yes. Yes. And this movie is full of. It's sort of the first halves and second halves of thoughts and not just in its politics. Like the weird Western theme they try to do that doesn't work. A lot of the jokes that Dwayne Johnson could have made funny are just not, they just kind of don't land. And the politics are like almost exactly what happened to Woodrow Wilson at the Paris peace conference where he's like, everyone should have self-determination and then gets there and is like, holy fuck, we're all these people I never heard about. Like that's almost exactly what happens. In this movie is that like it's, it's, it's, yeah, it's not, it doesn't make, it's not neoliberal. It's not neoconservative. It's sort of just, I don't know, like everyone should be, have freedom. But also sometimes it's, it's, it's partially Jean Kirkpatrick, you know, double dictatorships and double standards like, oh, well if he's an anti-colonialist awful murderer, then that's okay because he's our anti-colonialist awful murderer. And uh, and it doesn't make sense only on a political level, but just, it's feels like it has. First half of a moral point to make that it just never resolves because Dwayne D. Rock Johnson isn't, isn't on screen long enough for you to actually see his moral transformation where he decides to become a hero that all kind of quite isn't explained and earned. So it's almost just like a deus ex machina, like, oh, well he's good now because I don't know, something changed the end, well, but the, the, the whole setup of the film, the whole reason that the justice society is there is because of this speech from Amanda Waller where she's like, black Adam is going to upset the world power balance. You know, we're, we need stability. We need global stability. And if global stability means having a gangster regime invade another country and take all
JVL00:43:58of it. Regime named insta gang, right.
Sonny00:44:02Or inter gang inter gang, which they're invaded just by mercenaries who by definition work for someone else, but they don't say who again, well, all of, all of this is designed to avoid alienating anybody. You can't have them invaded by America. You can't have them invaded by Russia. So it's like, here's a gang of, here's just getting a national international mercenaries who are running a mining mining company then, no, but I mean, like I, you Waller's position is explicitly like isolationist paleo con, like we need global stability at the expense of everything else. And it doesn't matter if this, a gangster regime goes in there and. Takes all the stuff. That's fine. So long as we keep the, everything stays stable and that we're not upsetting the international order. I think that's, again, I think it's like kind of interesting. It is, it is, as you say, half an idea, they don't do a ton with it, but it is interesting.
JVL00:45:01I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's Stephen Walton rock transformation. Yeah. Your point about the unearned rock transformation is exactly right, but what this script needed to do was clear. Away a whole bunch of other stuff to just give us more Dwayne Johnson. We just need more time with the character. He needs more stuff to do. He, his arc needs to be better defined and better explored. Uh, and I think he's perfectly entertaining to watch in this role. Did you think it was funny? Parts of it were funny.
Sonny00:45:37Yeah. That's I thought it was funny enough. There were a couple of times when I guess my lip curled slightly, but there were a bunch of jokes that I, I, I felt not landing at a bunch of Dwayne Johnson moments that I thought like, oh, that was supposed to be a joke and the timing was wrong. The tone shifted to suddenly didn't work. The short round stuff didn't work for me, but the, the, the stuff with the rock typically did work for me. Like when he, when he does his, when he does his catchphrase, like three seconds too late, like after he's already let the guy fall or whatever, like I was like, oh, that's actually a, that's a very, that's very like, I thought a lot of the stuff like that worked. Um, and I thought the stuff with the two teenage justice society characters was like mostly fine. Like the, uh, like Hawkman, you know, being like, I'm gonna talk to you about this later when he's smashing up the statues. I like, I thought most of that was fine again. I wish I knew more about what any of these characters actually, well, you will, cause we're going to get a, uh, Adam crusher and a whirlwind, whatever movie in a year. And we're going to be sitting here. We're talking about, or you will be sitting here talking about those two characters in their own failing standalone movies. That's why they're there.
JVL00:46:52I mean, the only reason those characters exist, we're going so deep into the DC archives that at some point I suspect we're going to get uncle Sam to remember Sam Sonny uncle Sam was the putative leader of the, the justice society. And his power was that when there was some guy who worked. In Philadelphia as a security guard, we're at the museum where the Liberty well was. And when he sensed that uncle Sam needed it, he would ring the Liberty bell and the vibrations from the Liberty bell would like wherever uncle Sam was in the world would imbue him with like Superman. So it was like the version of Hulkamania, you know, when, when Hulk Hogan would Hulk out and you know, there, there was, there's a DC comics character where the, there's a guy in a tank, a haunted tank and the tank is haunted. And by the ghost of Jeb Stewart, the Confederate soldier, I don't think you'd be able to, I
Sonny00:47:49don't think you could do that.
JVL00:47:50It was a good guy.
Sonny00:47:51This is, this is where I don't think that would work.
JVL00:47:53This is where all of this is headed and it's gonna be, it's gonna be garbage. I was surprised that they did this on earth one. Were you at all surprised about that? Cuz the justice site is an earth two thing and I was a little bit surprised that they
Sonny00:48:08didn't pull a multiverse sort of thing that they, they had it so tightly wound into. Well, I mean, to the extent that I was genuinely, again, I was genuinely surprised when Amanda Waller came on the screen.
JVL00:48:18I was like, oh wait, it, well, you could be have Amanda Waller's on both earths, but you can't have Henry Cavill on both earths.
Sonny00:48:25Well, why not?
JVL00:48:27Because it's different, right?
Sonny00:48:28He has, he's a different, well, I guess that's, well, he did look different at, at the end of this though. He got the, he had the little spit curl. Oh, well, maybe the suit was a little bit lighter. Maybe this was earth two.
JVL00:48:38Maybe this is all earth two. I don't know.
Sonny00:48:40Oh, the thing, the weirdest thing about it though, Ben has no idea what we're talking
JVL00:48:43about.
Sonny00:48:44It's so funny. The weirdest, the weirdest thing about all this is that it's a Shazam movie. Literally he, his pow, he gets the powers of Shazam by saying Shazam. It's a Shazam movie. Shazam is nowhere, anywhere, like totally uninvolved with any of this. There's nothing, there is nothing Shazam about this movie at all.
JVL00:49:03It is entirely, and totally it's different from the Shazam totally. It's different from the Shazam versus the is, is the happy go lucky comedy.
Sonny00:49:13Generally, it, this is very, this is a, like in the direct, this is a direct lineage of like man of steel or Batman versus Superman or the first suicide squad or no, not even, no, not birds of prey. Birds of prey is, but like, uh, fantastic. Or the first wonder woman even it's like, it's like kind of in that, in that range of ideas and tones and all that, but it is, but okay. This movie tries to do so many different things. Uh, one of which is. It tries to have by, it tries to tell this story arc of, of Teth Adam by telling this sort of sad heartstring tugging story about his family who died and came back or whatever. And the, the most emotionally laden line in this little sub story here that is being remembered later on is when one character says to another Shazam. And I don't know who looked and thought, oh yeah, that'll land. That won't sound ridiculous and too light at all. That'll make everyone in the, in the, in the audience really shed a tear because this moment of love is, is, uh, marked with a Shazam. I mean, come on. Did not work. I don't even know what you're talking about. Is that when they save, when they say, when the son saves the father. Yeah. And then, and then when, yeah, yeah. When the son saves the father. They say it together.
JVL00:50:40Yeah. They say it together.
Sonny00:50:42Benjamin. Yeah. That made me, that made me cry. Sonny, you don't cry. In my theater. You've never cried. I was tears. Tears were pouring down my, this, the sacrifice, familial sacrifice. It was great. It was not great.
JVL00:50:53It was great. Much like the sacrifice Sonny made sending his kid with pink eye off to school just to get rid of him for a couple hours.
Sonny00:50:59No, at first, hey, he had, he had gotten six rounds of eye drops. He was fine. Mm. It was not, not contagious anymore.
JVL00:51:07Sonny brought him close and said, Shazam, get, get out of the car, go to school.
Sonny00:51:12Get in there. I got things to do.
JVL00:51:14So, Ben, did you, did you, so I take it you didn't enjoy it, Benjamin?
Sonny00:51:18Uh, no, not really. I also, I, I, I've been meaning to bring this up with you guys. I've heard you talk so much about how you love seeing a movie by yourself in the middle of the day. And I just don't get it. Mm. I just, it did nothing for me. I went and saw it. Well, were there other people around you? Where'd you go? I went to the, uh, to the Regal. That's right next to the, not anymore the Verizon Center. Wow. And I saw a, a news show. You went to the Regal Gallery Place? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. That's, that's the worst theater in Washington DC and like the surrounding environs. I mean, no wonder you didn't have a good time. It's, it's a, that's a garbage fire of a theater. Well, that's, that's where they were having a showing that I could see, uh. Should have gone to the AMC in Georgetown. They didn't have a showing that I could see. Should have gone to the Alamo. I don't even know where that is. They might not, I don't know. I looked on Fandango. There's an Alamo in DC now.
?00:52:08Where?
Sonny00:52:09It's, uh, on Rhode Island, I think. I looked on Fandango. And this was the showing that I could fit into my schedule and it was, it was not great. I don't know. I don't know what the big deal is.
JVL00:52:19So, you know, up is down, black is white. And I caught again with G Money, the first episode of She-Hulk this afternoon. It was fantastic. It's a sitcom.
Sonny00:52:36Yeah. The first, the first two episodes of that show are very annoying to me because they, it, that sh maybe we can do a whole episode on this at some point, but I watched the whole series. I watched, I watched the whole season. I watched the whole season. Cause I will like, actually I mostly enjoyed it. It was one of these shows where I enjoy like 90% of it, but the 10% a female character. Well this is, well, that's part of the 10% that's part of the, you know, that's part of the, no, the problem, the problem with the movie is that it's like, it's like a funny sitcom with like, like some, like, you know, fun legal stuff and fun superheroes. And it's like, it's a 30 minute sitcom. It's great. But then there's always like two minutes of like, here's the lesson of today. And it's that sexism is bad and let's, let's do, let's do, here's a montage of all the mean tweets that she Hulk is getting that that's the thing that actually happens in the second episode. You'll see it JBL. It's just like a montage of her getting mean tweets from incels and it's like, okay, come on.
JVL00:53:38Well, you know, now that Elon Musk owns Twitter, you're not gonna have that anymore.
Sonny00:53:41It's gonna be great. I can't. I, first of all, who was right about Elon buying Twitter on this show?
JVL00:53:48I mean, I guess he's only buying it because the Chancery Court of Delaware has forced him to, I feel like that's a, that's not a technicality.
Sonny00:53:56That's how the law works.
JVL00:53:58That's just how did you think that it was gonna wind up that he was gonna be forced by a judge to, to buy it?
Sonny00:54:05I just, I just looked at, I looked at it with, I looked at it through my eyes, uh, as a guy with many decades of mergers and acquisitions. Experience. And I saw the deal that had been signed. I was like, he's not getting out of this. He's not, he's gonna own Twitter at the end of all this. It's gonna be great.
JVL00:54:21So I can't wait for it. Here's my secret hope. My secret hope is that Musk makes Twitter basically uninhabitable so that journalists no longer feel like they have to be on it. That honestly would be a tremendous public service that would be doing good for the world. America would be a better place if journalists didn't go on Twitter.
Sonny00:54:41He should shut Twitter down and bring back Google reader. That's that's what would actually improve the world.
JVL00:54:48Uh, and he should make every podcast available on Stitcher.
Sonny00:54:53No, fuck Stitcher. Fucking Stitcher. I hate that site so much.
JVL00:54:58All right, Benjamin, you got anything else, buddy?
Sonny00:55:00Uh, no, that's it for me.
JVL00:55:04Uh, say the things, Sonny, say the thing.
Sonny00:55:09I got it. Oh God, I gotta pull up my screen. Let me pull up my script here. Uh, oh, we should tell people that Vic is okay, right?
JVL00:55:15Oh yeah. Wait, we didn't get our fix.
Sonny00:55:17Are we gonna say that for outtakes? Well, let's save that for outtakes. Unless you have an outtake JVL.
JVL00:55:21Do you have an outtake? No, I don't.
Sonny00:55:23I uh, Ben, do you have an outtake?
JVL00:55:25Drinking fizzy water.
Sonny00:55:26Well, I'm, I'm, I'm getting to that, uh, spirit of the week, correction, shout outs, JVL. What was your spirit of the week?
JVL00:55:33Uh, fizzy water.
?00:55:34That's all.
Sonny00:55:35I don't know what that is. Is that a thing? Is that like an actual thing?
JVL00:55:38It's it's yes, it's a class of a class of drink.
Sonny00:55:41I have a, I have a diet Dr. Pepper here.
JVL00:55:44That's what I drink.
Sonny00:55:45Mm. I have a tall glass of refrigerator water. Ben, what do you drink there? Ugh, gross. Like out of the dispenser in your refrigerator? Yeah, actually, actually I, I have a dishwasher update for, uh, for outtakes so we can talk about that. Ooh. Okay. All right. Uh, all right. That's all the time we are giving to this episode questions, comments, tweet us at Sonny Bunch at Penn Barker. It's P E N N B A R K E R. Just that's where you can find Ben on Twitter. Uh, be sure to subscribe to us on Patreon, go to subbeacon.com. We are there. Tell your friends until next time. Uh, so we should tell people that, uh, again, once again, Vic is fine.
JVL00:56:33Uh, that may be overstating it. He came through surgery.
Sonny00:56:36He came through surgery. They removed the Gabriel tooth. Yeah. And they found more Gabriel mass. Ooh. Are we allowed to tell people about this? I don't even know.
JVL00:56:46I think we should let this be his story to tell.
Sonny00:56:47Should we let? Okay. Well, anyway, there's, they, they were doing the surgery and they pulled back his head and there was a whole second head back there. That actually does explain a lot. I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it was, uh, it was, it was just like the movie malignant. It was, uh, they pulled back his skull and they, and the little quaddo head came out
Guest00:57:06and was like.
Sonny00:57:11Give me vodka and oysters. So I don't know, man. I maybe he'll be back. Can't say for sure, but it's not fine. Ben, what was your dishwasher? Uh, you go, you guys both lived in Alexandria at one point, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Okay. Did you have the hardest water anyone has ever seen or is that just me? Okay. Mm. No, it was my water was okay. All right. Ours is crazy hard. Which is why I drink the water out of the fridge. Cause it's got a filter, right? That's how I get. It's not crazy. Hard water. And it's what I cook with and everything. And, um, our water was so hard that I had to get the, uh, the, I had to get a new intake valve on our, on our dishwasher because the calcium deposits had built up and it was just jammed open and flooding everywhere. So, uh, I, uh, so, so that, that was, that was fun though. Dishwasher is so old that the tines are coming off the, uh, the bottom rack, but it's got a new intake valve. So there's life in her yet.
JVL00:58:08How much did you pay to replace the intake valve? I think it was parts and labor, $270. What is wrong with you? What is wrong? Why would you do that for a dying dishwasher? Why? That is one third of the price of a Bosch 100 series, one fourth of the price of a nice 500 series. If you could get it like the, I don't understand that.
Sonny00:58:39Nothing else is wrong with the dishwasher. Except for it's got a missing time bendy. Do you own, do you own the place where the house in which the, the place, the place where you live? So it's, it's not like you would be replacing somebody else. It's mine. You'd be replacing your own dishwasher.
JVL00:58:57That's not fine.
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