Guest00:00:00Gus March-Phillips, I have a mission I want you to lead. Thank you, Sergeant. What's the plan? To neutralize the German U-Boats in the North Atlantic. We're losing the war. Hitler is not playing by the rules, so neither are we. We both know that I'm not very popular with the administration. The reason they find you unattractive is the very reason I find you attractive.
Mike00:00:44Welcome to the Sub-Beacon podcast. I am your co-host, Mike Warren, and I'm joined, as always, by my two co-hosts. The reason most of you find them unattractive is the very reason I find them attractive. Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch, join us over at Sub-Beacon.com. Tell your friends and family, join the conversation at Sub-Beacon.com, comment, get episodes every Friday morning, become a part of the Sub-Beacon community at Sub-Beacon.com. We are going to be talking about the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare later on in the show. But first, let's see how everyone is doing. JVL, you're a bit under the weather, aren't you?
JVL00:01:33Yeah. Under the weather. Coming back though, already feeling better than I was yesterday. Hell yeah. We're on day six. No, it's day seven. What is this? It's just some cold. Kid. He has child. Sinusy cold that then settles into the chest.
Sonny00:01:46Yeah, those are awesome. I love those.
JVL00:01:48Everybody knows what that is. So anyway, that's what we're going to be talking about. Michael, I have to report. I'm interested in you and then we'll just make Sonny go last unless that messes up your
Mike00:02:02transition. No, it doesn't. I have no transition. Michael, how are you? I'm fine with it. It's been a lot.
JVL00:02:08Spencer Strider out for the season.
Mike00:02:10Are you okay with that? Pitching is not great. But the bats are there. So much like my nine year olds team. That's kind of the situation we're in in Little League. So it's been a lot of baseball and it's that amount of baseball that for me where I sort of I can't always know in every given moment if I'm at a practice or a game and for who I am there like it's very it's very it just all runs together. But so we've had some lows and we've had some highs. We had a game we had. I love this. Then I had back to back games for the the coach pitch team that I am assisting on. And then immediately we go into the triple A minors game for kid pitch all in the same at the same park because we have three parks in our little league that we can go to. And this was miraculously one after the other at the same park. And so literally the last kid from the coach pitch team is leaving. My head coach was gone. So I was sort of de facto head coach. So I'm saying goodbye to everybody, got the family looking around, kind of take a breath. And who do I see coming over the ridge to start batting practice an hour before the game is our triple A coach. So it was just like, all right, just like slot them in. Here we go. Like, it would keep going. And so I was at the ballpark from like eleven forty five to five thirty that day. And you know, it's just it's it's great in many ways, but it messes with your brain. A little bit. But we had we had an OK coach pitch game. We had a heartbreaking triple A game, and it's one of those things where I could see what was going to happen. And I was, of course, powerless to stop it, even if I wanted to. We are up the entire game. My nine year old's team is we're leading. We're the visiting team and we're leading the whole game. So we're at. Five run limit per inning, two hour limit for the game. So if the if we hit two hours, we finish that inning and then we and then we go and ball is live completely. So stealing home is a part of this level to cover home.
JVL00:04:48Exactly.
Mike00:04:49Pitch has got to cover home. So we are up in our bats are just I don't know where. Now they woke up, but they woke up and we are just alive and we score, I want to say like we hold incredibly, we hold them quite a bit and we're scoring the five runs almost every inning and but we get to that last inning and they're keeping up with us and we only score four runs. Oh, OK. It is 20 to 16, something like that. And you could just see it's their home team. They're coming out. It's like I could I could just sense like they're about to score five runs and not trade
JVL00:05:41trade outs for runs, trade outs for runs for chanting that to the kids.
Mike00:05:47No, it was just it was it was like watching. It was like watching a condemned man walking to the gallows. Like nothing you could do. And oh, it was heartbreaking because it wasn't like, OK, the kid hit some incredible, you know, triple to run to two runners in and and like it was a lot of ring around the rosy past balls, kids stealing home kind of thing. And it's just it was just crushing.
JVL00:06:21And do you think about pulling your left fielder? And having him stand behind the catcher at the backstop and saying, well, we're going to play without we're going to play without a left fielder, we're going to dare him to go the opposite way on us so we have somebody here to pick up past balls and hold the runner coming from third.
Mike00:06:41Now, nothing, nothing against the nothing against the that I go outside the box, Michael. Yeah, exactly. But again, I'm not coaching this team. I'm literally just a scorekeeper for this team. So I just had to watch it happen. But some lessons, I think I will say my kid, while he he didn't get a hit in this game and he had not gotten a hit all season, he made a terrific out a foul ball. He was playing first base foul ball, snagged it in the air. That's awesome. That's good. That's all Monday's practice is all about covering the plate.
JVL00:07:23It's got to be ready to run. Totally, totally. I quick baseball thing. I saw something this this week on John Boy that I'd never seen before. Well, do you guys like do you guys like John Boy?
Sonny00:07:33Love John Boy. I don't know what that is.
JVL00:07:35What is John Boy? John Boy is a YouTube channel baseball guy who who breaks down stuff from baseball. He's very, very good. But he alternates between serious and question less serious.
Sonny00:07:48Yes. Why is he named after that character from that show?
Mike00:07:51John Boy? No idea. No, it's John Boy.
Sonny00:07:54J-O-M-B-O-Y. J-O-M-B-O-I-O-Y, J-O-M-B-O-Y-Y as in you.
Mike00:08:02Correct. So just to give some context, it's like like something kind of wacky or unreal happens in a baseball game, in a professional baseball game. Like he does a sort of you might say like a Straussian reading of what happened.
JVL00:08:18Like it breaks down from every lip reading, camera angle and he caught this this week at a Yankees game. One of the funniest things I've ever seen in baseball where the first batter in the first inning and there is a there is a call which Aaron Boone, the Yankees manager, does not like. He yells out from the dugout, comes out to talk. Did you see this, Mike? Oh, yeah.
Sonny00:08:45And I saw I saw this on Twitter. I did see this.
JVL00:08:47Oh, you did. And anyway, the point is that the the umpire system behind home plays is one more word and you're out of here. And Booney is like, fine. And he goes back. It's sitting behind home, playing the stands, yells at the ump. The ump thinks it's Boone and he throws him out. And it's the funny. And then the guy in the stands just do do do do do, sitting there pretending he didn't do nothing.
Mike00:09:09And it was I mean, he's literally sitting in like three or four rows behind where Aaron Boone is standing in the dugout. So it's like the sound is coming from that direction and Boone is like, I didn't say
JVL00:09:25anything. Anyway. So you did see this. Okay.
Sonny00:09:29Well, then I'm. I have a question. I have a question because I can't tell. So this is this is like a very real social media bubble thing. And I can't tell. I can't tell if it's just a function of what the algorithm is force feeding me or what. But I get the sense that umpiring has been spectacularly bad this year because I am being I like Elon Musk is holding me down and prying my eyes open a clockwork orange style and showing me. Showing me every pitch that Angel Hernandez is calling. And it's like and it's like I'm getting angrier and angrier. I joked on Twitter. But this is kind of true. I like kind of under I understand a better now how the the January 6th stuff happened because I like want to rush the field. I want to find where Angel Hernandez is and I want to rush the field and scream in his face and say those are balls. You can't call that a strike because it's but but I can't tell. But and so this is just a part of that, right? Like. This is the thing that I have now I've now seen this in my Twitter feed 100 times because it's funny, but also like also it is like indicative of umpires being shitty and like aggressive and I feel like it is worse this year, but I can't tell if it's actually worse
JVL00:10:40or. OK, I'm sorry if what's funny about this is because Aaron Boone is a prick and of course he deserves it. If this happened to Tony La Russa or somebody Tony La Russa, also a prick. He's not. Let's not. Let's not. I'm trying to think who is who is a summer child. This happened to Dusty Baker. Yeah. I was a dusty.
Sonny00:11:04Right. Dusty Baker. Also a prick. All these guys are pricks. You'd have to get there. I don't think somebody like I don't even know. I don't even know who like a nice baseball manager is at this point.
Mike00:11:12How about Brian Snicker? Brian Snicker. Sure.
JVL00:11:15For the Braves. Yeah. OK. Yeah. So it's fine. Here's my conspiracy theory. Are you ready? Yes. Yes. I believe that Major League Baseball is desperate to move to robot arms. I further believe that in order to do that, they have decided they need to minimize the backlash by stoking outrage against the arms. So you're so I think they are you think possibly paying umps to make bad calls, paying them off to have it be like a seed disaster season or paying paying off the Facebook or companies or Twitter companies to really surface all the stuff to stoke popular outrage like Vladimir Putin in Ukraine or like he is looking at Rob Manfred is looking for a cautious belly to remove the human umpires from what you're saying is they're pulling a they're pulling
Sonny00:12:11a Zack Snyder here. They're they're getting the bot farms to flood the Internet with that one. They want to relate release, release the robot umpire cut of Major League Baseball desperate
Mike00:12:23for robot arms. I will say I will say this like Angel Hernandez is like is if you built an umpire designed to stoke social media outrage in a lab like you would come out with Angel Hernandez like there is something here of like the sort of it's all meeting together right and like right you're seeing more of it because Angel Hernandez is sort of what he's well known as a shitty
JVL00:12:50umpire exactly but it's like we love baseball we love the fact that there is an Angel Hernandez and it would be bad if 50% of the umpires were Angel Hernandez but they aren't and having one Angel Hernandez in there that everyone knows is just like a villain a heel it's another part of the rich pageantry of baseball I don't want perfect baseball I don't want I do not want baseball to be a spreadsheet I don't want it to be a spreadsheet.
Sonny00:13:16I totally agree with this and this is why I'm opposed to robot umps even though I watch very little actual like minute-to-minute baseball anymore because I I do I do think that you know part of it part of it is just complaining about shit if you take away one of the things that people complain about is it baseball no this is why characters right
JVL00:13:35the umps in baseball part of the story in the same way that like Earl Hebner was part of the story in the WWE or you know I think not so much in the NBA but in the NFL who's the jacked NFL right Hockley right there's the who's the guy who sounds like the ladies in the NFL like it's like their personalities and they're probably like oh that's a that's the guy we got on our tour today I love it I love it and I'm gonna be mad when they because
Mike00:14:07they will do it they will do it they will do it well yes so I will let me let me wrap up my week in baseball here just so we can move on because I need to tell I told you about the low and I now need to tell you about the high which is we're taping this on Thursday night we had another triple-a game after a Monday practice that was spent a lot of time
Sonny00:14:32working on you have to stop saying triple-a game because it makes me think that you're taking the kids to the minor league park sorry and watching the little league game little
Mike00:14:39league game but I have to distinguish between my two little league teams I don't you don't
Sonny00:14:43you don't actually have to it does it okay it's not that triple-a is just what 11 you
Mike00:14:46uh correct correct um so it uh so a little bit of context here which is that my son is nine he's an old or older side of third grade like he's a september birthday but he's nine um he is let's be honest like he's playing up a level from his ability I think um I think he could have used another season at sorry sorry sonny double a little league ball um but here he is and the coach that wanted him was coaching at this higher level so that's where he is um I think it's good in many ways like it's it's sort of like you want to you want to have the lowest valued house on your street like you want to be kind of at this at this point like you want to be for him at least he wants to be among kids who are playing against kids who are better to sort of hopefully kind of lift him up but it's been a struggle this season he hadn't gotten a hit all season um some good defensive plays but otherwise he's just been walked and that's the and in the second in his second at-bat rips a ball to the outfield for his first hit of the game of the season which was great uh but it was all part of a just incredible performance by this team that they have not had all season um the pitcher JVL our pitcher in the first inning threw 16 pitches in the second inning through 10 pitches wow it was unreal it was unreal the first the first scoreless innings we've played all season were these first two innings so it was terrific um my son also nabbed a pop fly a perfectly caught pop fly when he was out playing left field it's fun
JVL00:16:49when it starts looking like real baseball for flashes exactly is this a larger field for him was this jump up in age a jump in field size yes um so it's a slightly larger field for triple a
Mike00:17:02they actually their their game on saturday they got to play on the majors field which they never got to play before but that's got a real just full size right full size it's got a real scoreboard
JVL00:17:11um were the pitchers able to get the ball over the plate sorry it's not the first time you go
Mike00:17:17to 60 feet six inches it's like it's sorry sorry sorry it's not it's not full size in that way i'm it's the same size as the minor league fields it is not like the juniors and seniors level like high school level um it's really the outfield that's bigger on the majors oh gotcha um so anyway uh they ended up winning their game the first game they won this season it was great but uh uh there was a moment where they had been practicing uh at practice the catchers if there's a passed ball that goes like directly behind you uh and and there's a runner on third how to turn around slide on your slide on your uh shin guards get the ball and flip it to the pitcher uh uh to to make the tag out and there was a moment where uh the catcher had an opportunity to do the thing that they practiced at practice for like an hour straight um and he got up on his feet went over grabbed it pitched it over to the pitcher and it was too late yeah and their head coach just looked at me and just goes why do we even practice why do we why do we even practice and i'm like the kids can hear you it's called quiet down so it was uh it was good it was funny they need to hear that
JVL00:18:35they need you to hear that they didn't it's sunny you look like you are ready to die have you had
Sonny00:18:41enough child baseball talk i mean i just don't i don't care about any of this is the thing i like that it's okay it's fine you got you guys are having a nice chat i like i like listening to you guys talk it's fine i'm i feel like a listener myself right now it's sunny driving in a car just listen how are you doing sunny children's baseball discussion tell us about quentin tarantino's 10th movie no that was uh i didn't write that piece that was bill right that was bill ryan i assumed you commissioned it i did well i it's not happening right now because he's he was gonna he was gonna do a thing and then he decided not to do a thing and lots of it's a shame that
JVL00:19:17once upon a time in hollywood wasn't his 10th movie because that is the perfect that's the
Sonny00:19:21movie he should have ended his career with it is his 10th movie there are two kill bills and he counts them as one and that is his 10th movie and like all of this is just uh all of this is in his own head what has happened and look i i i don't i i find all of the discussion about oh he's gonna make this oh he's not gonna make this one of the things that came out this week was uh uh there there had been it was reported it was people reported this that paul walter hauser um who folks might remember from uh uh the uh richard jewell movie uh a few and from i think you should leave and from i think you should leave and from uh i tanya like i like he's a good actor but people would report oh he'd been offered the lead he'd been offered the lead in this movie um and today or this week on uh on instagram he put up a post was like i have never talked to quentin tarantino in my life outside of like one party i was not offered this nobody has any idea what they're talking about so like all the discussion about this movie was entirely theoretical like it's it's uh more movies do not get made than do get made and focusing on like the the the abandoned things of even a great filmmaker even a very intentional filmmaker a guy like tarantino is foolish i don't think anybody should i i like i just the whole the whole story about it is dumb also he should just make more than 10 movies this whole self-mythologizing like i'm only gonna make 10 i don't want to get old and make bad movies if that's the case and you he should stop now because you're right jim once upon a time in hollywood is a perfect film to end his career on it's a great movie it's maybe his best movie i think it's maybe his i think it's his best movie i don't i mean i i i can not his most influential but his best i could make a very strong case for pulp fiction being his best or for uh or for inglorious bastards being his best um or even or like jackie brown is like a favorite you know kind of underrated best but like uh i i think you could make a very strong case for it not only being his best movie but like the perfect way to end it and i think it's because it combines so many of his different obsessions whatever neither here nor there um
Mike00:21:31yeah i don't know how do we get you want how are you so we want to know how you're doing what do
Sonny00:21:35you want to talk about oh i'm fine uh i want to talk about what happened to me at target the oh that's right so i i i went i need to set a a tiny bit of background here i was i was going to target after dropping uh one of my kids off at her music class it's 30 minutes long the target is literally like right across the street so like it's an it's an easy trip and i try and stretch it to fit exactly like 27 minutes so i get right back to her uh when when her class is over uh but the uh so i i like go i i it was a very basic run picking up bananas and apples uh and like a rotisserie chicken for dinner and rotisserie chicken the capitalism's possibly greatest creation like a whole chicken for five dollars cooked right there it's hot you just eat it fantastic um it's right up there with the mcdouble in terms of the one dollar mcdouble as in but the mcdouble is not a dollar i know i was gonna say i don't think that's that's true um anyway uh i i go through the store i pick up all the things i go to the checkout and i've i've like timed this perfectly i mean i'm gonna get out of here i'm gonna get through this checkout line i'm gonna get out of here i'll i'll get back to her with like two minutes to spare it's perfect and the guy starts checking everything out and it's fine it's checking things out and he gets to the fruit and he puts the fruit on the little you know you like he puts it on the scanner and he kind of looks at it and he's like he pulls up the number he's like punching in what i'm sorry you didn't do self-checkout well no i didn't because the the self-checkouts were all closed for some reason i like i usually do self-checkout i will stand in line for self-checkout rather than walk up to an aisle with 100 100 and i think so many people have been doing this i don't know if this is true at your target but they put signs out that said you have a 10 there's a 10 item limit now at the self-checkout in mind but it's i i should be i frequently should be i frequently just ignore that uh that rule does not apply to me because fuck you target if you want if you want if you want me to use a regular checkout line then you need to have more than two uh checkout lines in operation when you have eight self-checkout lanes and i'm i'm sorry i'm not standing in line for five minutes waiting to check out when there's there there's just the the self-checkout is but it wasn't it wasn't open or so it was closed anyway so i'm i'm like waiting i'm checking out the guy the guy takes the the the fruit takes the bag of apples and he puts it on the thing and he kind of he kind of frowns at it and he punches in what i what i assume is the plu number like maybe it didn't scan he's got a and and um i'm like not really paying attention you know i'm just like i've got like the homer simpson monkey in my head like banging the symbols like i'm just i'm i'm just you know kind of standing there being a lump on the face of the earth um and he and he like punches in some numbers and moves on to the next thing and so this happens again he takes the bag he puts it on the scale and he's like kind of like frowns at it he like picks it up and like holds it in his hand and he puts it back down on the scale i'm like okay and then he pulls up the same screen again and again i thought he was punching in the plu number the the you know uh eight three two eight or whatever the number is for uh honey crisp apples and i look at i realize that's not what he's doing what he's doing is he's manually entering the weight and i like i like my eyes go wide like if if if this was a tarantino movie this the camera would have zoomed in on my eyes and i just blurred it out probably too loudly are you just guessing the weight because that's what he was doing guys he was just guessing the way he was holding the bag and he and he and he like looked at me he was caught he like looked at me he was like ah the scale it needs to be reset i don't want to do that while you're checking out i'm like that's probably the right call but you can't just guess the weight and he was like no no i'm pretty
Mike00:25:24close i was like i'm well known around carnivals around the state i was like yeah you are pretty
Sonny00:25:30close it's probably about three and a half pounds but like it also might be three pounds you could be taking dollars out of my pocket i didn't say all this but this was going through my head um so i like i'm like i'm like whatever it's fine what's the per pound price for honey crisp apples i think it's like it's like two dollars a pound it's like two dollars a pound so maybe he might have taken
JVL00:25:51a full two dollars extra from you yeah that's
Sonny00:25:54right but that's another pound that's another that's another pound of apples but because i called him out on it he the next thing were the bananas and i know i it was about five pounds of bananas i know about how much my bananas weigh i get about five pounds of bananas that's i get a lot of bananas about five pounds worth and he puts they were they came in two separate bunches he put the first one on the scale and he was like he was like looking at me as he was punching the number and he was like one pound and i was like yeah that's right that's one pound of bananas and the next one he put on there and he's like a pound and a half i was like yeah that's fine that's whatever but it was just like i was just like i was flabbergasted i was like you can't just guess the numbers we have a system here this is chaos you're inviting chaos into our lives
Mike00:26:39sonny i feel like you flipped the script a little bit here and you're you're like you're like the the mobster coming in and and and like demanding no i'm not i'm an aggrieved customer i'm an
Sonny00:26:50aggrieved i and so that was a pound and a half this is this is my question this is my question for you guys all right so if this had happened to you a would you have said anything you see him punching the numbers like holding the bags in his hand as you say michael like he's a fucking carny like he's like he's trying to like he's trying to how old is this gentleman is he a teenager he's a 20s young young 20 he could be anywhere he's half your age he could he could be anywhere from the age of 15 he's a child who is they're all they all look the same possibly still living at home possible it's i would say it's likely he's still living at possibly still in high school possible i again i think he's probably i think
JVL00:27:35he's probably like 22 or 23 so michael i don't know about you but i in fact just this week at whole foods as i was doing self-checkout the machine was like something wrong with scale reset the scale so i hit the button to reset the scale and five seconds later it was done i would have just said to him just reset the scale
Sonny00:27:54oh man it's a button push but i apparently it's not it's like a whole thing oh a target they they use quantum scales they got he's got they've got to like call a manager over to reset the whole
JVL00:28:06thing yeah and then they've got to go down to the to the particle accelerator in the basement he goes down he go they actually have neutrinos the neutrinos on this scale they have to they
Sonny00:28:16have to pull out the the there's a drawer underneath and they pull it out and uh they have to smack the monkey on the head who's guessing who's actually the one doing that there's actually a monkey under there and like however far down it
Mike00:28:29goes he's like three pounds and he's got like like on the flintstones but you have it's a living
Sonny00:28:35exactly but you have to but but you uh you have to have a a paid monkey trainer to do that you can't just have you can't just trust the kid at the the counter to start smacking the monkey to start spanking the monkey in the in the line at target you can't do that that's not
JVL00:28:52the monkey that's i wouldn't
Sonny00:28:54i don't want that 22 year old spanking the monkey in front of all of everybody who's there who knows what could go wrong so the the point is i again here's my question for you what would you guys would you have said anything or would you have just been like i would have laughed with him
JVL00:29:09about it i would have been like just reset the thing and if he said no we can't because of the neutrinos i would have been like yeah all right do what you gotta do man i would not here's here's
Mike00:29:19the truth i would not have noticed what he was doing and i would have just gone about my
Sonny00:29:24day he would have he would have gotten away with it he would have taken money right away with it yes yes he would have taken money right out of your pocket he would have he would have he would have stolen out of your literally out of your children's mouths the bananas and the apples that they are going to be eating and you just don't you don't have a problem with that here's
Mike00:29:45here's the thing i would almost certainly not be at target for my groceries so that's that's
Sonny00:29:51the actual answer i don't do like the full tar i don't do a full grocery run at target that's insane that's that's not a that's no way to live you can't you can't live like that okay but like i was just i was just popping because i needed i would just needed some fruit there's a poppin
Mike00:30:02there's a poppin i wanted rotisserie chicken and some fruit produce from target though i don't even
Sonny00:30:07know if i would go that far it's fine it's it's it's all it all comes from a bin gets shipped up from california or whatever i don't know i don't know where apples where do apples come from oregon
Mike00:30:21china washington state washington state yeah sometimes do you
Sonny00:30:24york but um all right fascinated by apples i feel like apples are really the the apple diversity
JVL00:30:31has exploded in yeah i like that you're into the honeycrisp the cadillac of apples they're they're
Sonny00:30:36man that's a good apple that is a that's a cosmic crisp that's a cosmic crisp i'm very into the
Mike00:30:42cosmic i haven't tried cosmic crisp it's a little tart to go with the sweet correct cosmic crisp is a hybrid created from honeycrisp and something else but the like here's what here's what like i need to read a new yorker style deep dive into the apple john mcfee yeah like john mcfee written
Sonny00:31:03exactly somebody has to have this has to exist because it is i mean like again like i compare i compare the apple i i compare i compare like what grocery stores were like when i was a kid where you had like you had like red and green and sometimes yellow you had those mealy yellow apples disgusting trash apple yeah it was red and granny smith yeah red but you had red delicious and granny smith that was it that was like it and now it's like you go to the grocery store you go to a proper grocery store not target but even target has like four or five different kinds of apples oh yeah you go to a grocery store it's like pink lady honey jazz jazz oh macintosh i like the jab i like the jazz apples uh and then like there's just so many different kinds and they all have a different flavor like they're actually different i'm i i want to know how this happened but there's there's got to be some like interesting
Mike00:31:54explanation like some kind of like tax credit or uh some you know some person at washington state university like spearheadings what's that patty murray this is what patty murray brought
JVL00:32:08home for washington state i have no idea it's like somebody like there was an appropriations
Sonny00:32:14bill in 1990 does or like does monsanto ho own like the patents on all these is like is there like is there like a is there like
JVL00:32:24an apple patent or maybe like maybe it's the opposite maybe it is something like the deregulation which created the grass brewing i i think maybe it may so maybe it's something big like monsanto owns all of this and has been doing franken lab stuff or maybe it's the opposite of it where there's been deregulation and uh you have small operators i want to know where somebody somebody
Sonny00:32:49must have written that piece already if you are a listener and you know about this piece that has about the explosion of apple diversity in the grocery store send it to us so i can read it i'm fascinated by this topic i could google it but i i don't have time and if it's an eight part like podcasts don't send me that do not send me that do not send that do not want a podcast series
JVL00:33:11about this i want a new yorker piece i want 20 000 words exactly all right yeah now anyway that's so
Sonny00:33:17that's that's what's been going on i've been tormenting 20 year old target employees that's
Mike00:33:24all right excellent well from apples to the box office i have no good transition uh to take us from there but let's talk about apples to oranges sure number one of the box office this weekend civil war uh maintaining or actually uh yeah maintaining its number one uh level there at 11 million dollars uh just behind it abigail another one of these horror films i'm guessing
Sonny00:33:50um it's funny that you put it that way because there's there's some discussion on the internet uh where all discussion happens about whether or not there's too much horror is there too much horror right now so some people say there's too much horror uh and i just think that what what says sonny bunch yeah i think there there probably have been too many horror movies released in like basically back-to-back-to-back weekends i mean you've had this uh abigail you had the first omen and immaculate which were like the same exact movie
JVL00:34:17it's the only things you see of trailers for you go to a movie unless unless you're seeing an even if you are seeing a pg or a pg-13 comic book movie from marvel i would say at least two thirds of the trailers are horror and if you're seeing a grown-up movie then three quarters of
Mike00:34:38the trailers are horror that must be hard for you jbl it's a little annoying how about that how about that spider movie that spider horror movie i've seen uh sting sting yeah i've seen ads i don't
Sonny00:34:49know i haven't anyway uh so there i i don't know if there's too much horror but there has been a lot of in all kind of jammed up together so because the economics make sense no kind of kind of but they only make sense if you're grossing 20 to 30 million dollars on each of these you need you need to make about 50 million bucks on these movies for them for them to work and these these movies are not you don't need stars you don't need stars but you do need but they're still they're still more expensive i think abigail costs somewhere between 20 and 30 million dollars it's like it's not a it's not a cheap movie right
JVL00:35:24um and as you said there's a lot of marketing uh there's a lot of marketing let me let me let me throw an idea at you sonny yeah horror is now what the tentpole movie was in the 1990s which is to say this is where high concept lives horror movies succeed entirely on concept right now in the same way that in the 90s it would be like it's a twister die hard on a boat or it's uh die hard with a tornado right or right and you stars you don't like throw hell and hunt it whatever uh it's fine um we're gonna do uh dinosaurs dinosaurs come back to life right just and that's what horror is right now you don't need stars you can have first-time directors whatever you just need a concept that sounds creepy enough yeah plus franchises right like
Mike00:36:18plus like right the whatever they're called yeah all right uh all right well uh moving on number three was godzilla x kong the new empire and number four x is silent just godzilla kong i i re okay the godzilla kong the new empire godzilla kong the new empire number three thank you thank you godzilla godzilla x kong that's my favorite uh
Sonny00:36:44my question is is the x silent on the number five entry spy x family well that's a good question is it is it just spy family code white i don't know what what
Mike00:36:54is spy x family it's some anime thing i didn't i don't know what is it country role why do these why do these names for anime make absolutely no sense why are you so old mike i can't help it it's just who i am all right well number four i i mean you can't hurt me
Sonny00:37:16that's how that's how the kids think though they're like you're you're questioning our anime you must be old you're an old person and they're right i'm i am old and i don't want to watch their darn what are you doing with those apples are you are you laying them with your hands japanese animation where are the robots where are the robots coming together making the bigger robot i don't know what this is chainsaw man with his he's got a head it's a chainsaw i can't watch this this is dirty why did you all become old
Mike00:37:51women i don't understand that all right uh number four four though at the box office is the movie that we saw in the theater this week the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare number four bringing in just under nine million dollars uh actually pretty good average uh uh you know uh bring in four per theater not in as many theaters as some of these other movies um but but not a great showing right i don't think so sonny i would say it's i would
Sonny00:38:17say it's about right in line what you would expect from a movie that is advertised as a guy richie this is this is not this is not out of line uh with like wrath of man or uh the um the covenant or uh what was the one with uh the gentleman or the the one that was with jason statham recent operation fortune ruse together he he like he if you advertise a thing as a guy richie movie and it does not have another hook to it like aladdin or sherlock holmes or whatever um he has a fairly
Mike00:38:54range all right well should we talk about the movie itself the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare
Sonny00:39:00sonny give us that big boy review the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare directed by guy richie uh is out this weekend so uh this is a there there are a couple different ways to think about this uh film one is as a sort of real life and glorious bastards or dirty dozen type story right so this is based on a true-ish true-ish tale uh of um a euro a british operation to uh cripple the u-boat fleet in the atlantic which would allow american soldiers to come across to prepare for d-day uh and it was put together by uh this this kind of uh gentlemanly scoundrel uh who working with winston churchill assembled a team blah blah a spanish uh island colony and uh they were going to sink the supply boats they ended up uh i guess spoilers i don't know they ended up having to steal them everybody they they succeed everybody wins blah blah this was only declassified in the last 10 years or so yeah it's it's it's a it's a it's a relatively untold story except the somebody wrote a book about it it's supposed to be pretty good i haven't read it um books uh but the so so there that's one way to look at this movie as like a kind of true life again true life and glorious bastards the second way to look at it uh is as guy ritchie saying to uh barber broccoli who is the head of eon which is the company that owns half of james bond alongside um amazon which owns the other half now uh it's it's guy ritchie saying to barber broccoli look at me i can be trusted to make a very good james bond movie because uh this is a the it is like kind of a real life james bond story ian fleming the author of james bond books is one of the characters he was working in british intelligence at the time um the the the lead character in this film is played by henry cavill is supposedly the one of the bases of uh the uh james bond character from the books um it is uh it it and it and it kind of unfolds like uh like a james bond movie there are disguises there's subterfuge there's intrigue there's bureaucratic diplomatic you know bickering and infighting and uh in in that regard i think it's fine the movie as a whole the movie the movie as a whole i found to be like weirdly straightforward and subdued for a guy ritchie movie um which i didn't like but everybody i saw it with the theater i saw it with loved this movie it fucking killed i mean it like people were clapping in the right places they were laughing in the right places they loved it um so i'm kind of curious to see how it holds uh guy again is saying like look i can make i can make a straightforward period action spy type movie you can you can let me make james bond the next james bond come on i want to do it and and that's the fascinating thing about guy ritchie to me is that he does have this mode of filmmaking where he just is like i just want to make some blockbusters i just want i want to make the sherlock holmes with robert downey jr i want to make aladdin i'm fine doing that they don't all have to be the gentleman or snatch or lock stock and two smoking barrels i want to i want to do big things i want to do big uh big things um and serious things like the covenant and serious things like it's interesting because the covenant and wrath of man are two uh are both also not in that kind of traditional what we think of as guy ritchie's style right they're not exuberant uh crime movies they're they're more serious and like darker and and a little uh and different um but this is this is this is a different tenor from those movies as well this is just like this is just like this is like a movie that you see on tnt at 3 p.m on a saturday afternoon sometime in the early 2000s or late 1990s right this is like the sort of movie that defines basic cable classic i like i liked it fine i didn't love it i didn't love it because again i when i see a guy richie movie i want the i want the style and the the verve um but alan richson is wonderful as the like mountainous dane who you know goes around cutting out nazi and that sort of thing um isaac gonzalez and gay he's both both psychotic and gay uh the isaac gonzalez who plays the like female femme fatale um uh who seduces the local nazi who's played by um uh the guy from inglorious bastards uh what's his name um i forget i forget uh but uh she's she's great i love her she's been in she's been in a bunch of stuff recently that i you know what she is she's very attractive and nice to look at on the screen and that's that's all i'm looking for
JVL00:44:03she wears the hell out of the cleopatra costume she's in she she's very she does that successfully
Sonny00:44:09in this movie and in ambulance um she's she's very good in that and the first godzilla kong
JVL00:44:15movie she was like uh anyway she's no her best her best role is as the girlfriend in because i or whatever that that utter horror movie that we did remember with the about the custodianship i don't remember oh you absolutely remember it i care a lot uh is the name of the movie and it's it's the rosamund pike she's a lawyer oh yeah yeah it's like an utterly terrifying movie the one about conservatorship conservatorship i care and she she plays rosamund pike's lesbian
Sonny00:44:54girlfriend at that yeah great man great she should that's her best role she should be in more things that's that's all i have i don't think she's in everything and she should be in more things she's she's wonderful i like i like her a little bit inert whatever whatever
Mike00:45:07well well okay sonny thank you what jvl what did you make of the movie in toto you know i
JVL00:45:15i was a little disappointed i like sunny i i liked it fine and it didn't have it wasn't sexy enough for me and it didn't have the crackling energy that i wanted it to have which is what richie's best movies have i mean his his movies just they feel really alive and vibrant and this felt a little you know there's some flourish to it but it feels like he's really trying to tell a straight story and i think because he wanted it to be you know faithful to the i think it's a little too faithful to his historical record like it needs it could stand to have been embellished some more and given more and i don't know if it's the direction or the writing or the acting but with the exception of alan richson and henry cavill who finally played charming the way i've been waiting for him to play charming his whole life had he been able to do this level of acting in the man from uncle and that movie would have been 10 times better but the problem was he didn't act he wasn't able to actually be charming and the man from uncle and so he was miscast like he and army hammer should have been swapped yeah but here he's he's debonair and charming and he plays basically a by dnd character trait we would say that he is chaotic unlawful good which is like the rarest character archetype and that he he has no interest in rules or anything like that and he takes real genuine sensual pleasure from killing nazis yeah there's that there's one moment where you get a reaction scene to him where he's gunning down a bunch of nazis in a hut and he's got his tongue out and his eyes are wide and it's it's he's just having fun he's casually shooting shooting nazis and he's just having fun doing it no there's no moral complication for him right no he lets one nazi get away he's like clearly a 13 year old or something which made me think actually of a jojo rabbit a little like he's you know he's like yeah okay whatever um but everything else he's like yeah no we're here to kill these
Sonny00:47:47fuckers can i can i ask you guys a question did did everything they do strike you as way too easy oh my god like too easy every yes every every mission they're on they just start shooting people and like successfully shoot everyone yeah and just and just never get shot themselves except for like yeah like i think like one person gets shot in the shoulder or something but like the the this is and this is my big problem with the movie is that there's no tension to anything that happens there's never there's never a moment where i'm like they're not gonna make it it's not like inglorious bastards or the the dirty dozen in the sense that like none of them actually ever feel they're in danger they're there was never a moment where i was like they might die they might not
Mike00:48:27succeed the only the only one for whom that is not true is is the woman is uh and and that was that storyline was the least interesting to me it was interesting for other reasons but it was not
Sonny00:48:42interesting no but even even there she i i i agree i agree with both those points that she's the only one who ever looks like she's in real danger and that is not like a super interesting plot line but even her plot line like she just get they just kind of she just leaves she just she just leaves with the guy in a car and then they shoot the guy and she's like all right let's go let's go home
JVL00:49:04can we talk for a minute about the character uh apple year so the the guy who who's the other real real life character is uh it's henry cavill's best mate who they break out from a nazi prison to this absolute genius and mastermind right gotta have him gotta have his grandmaster in chess and he always has the answers to everything and whatnot and we pick him up and he adds absolutely fuck all to the story and the actor who plays him uh alex pettifer is just i mean just wholly inert on screen wholly inert barely reacts to anything going on around him yeah and so many like you know uh henry golding is in this and i think a made-up part yes and is given no bit for there i mean we know henry golden can act but he isn't given any business to do and so i you know it's a it's a crew heist movie but the crew is mostly not super interesting like the other freddy fox is there i think he's not great uh i like babs oh don't make me say his name you know all the sudden yeah him him babs my buddy babs uh he's he's great to watch and he does interesting stuff but it's weird because guy ritchie's movies are normally filled with really good actors doing really interesting work which is part of what makes them crackle and this you know with the exception of like the the two leads and then right here like the character actors are just not
Sonny00:50:53up to what's going on well i i think that i mean i think that's a writing problem as much as anything else they're not they're not given anything to do and and again i i do think that there is an element of like you say jvl uh them wanting to guy ritchie wants to hue very close to the story here he is he's telling a real story and he wants to tell it i think as accurately as possible and you know look accuracy is overrated frankly in movies accuracy is not what we are here for we are here for more exciting things than that so i don't mike what did you think of this what did you did you did you love it because i will say the again the audience i saw it with a paying audience on thursday night and they were they were rolling in the aisles flash and they were supposed to laugh flash thought it was great they they were they were cheering it they were clapping at the end it's the first time i've heard people clap at the end of a movie that there wasn't some dumb comic book shit that i was there for a preview for in a long time it was i was like fascinated by how into it they were so so your question for me is are you like the idiotic you're the man of the people uh and i i i need to know how you feel about this so okay so i i as i'm watching the movie and uh when it ends
Mike00:52:13i really enjoyed it and i loved it um it was like giving me everything i wanted at the in that moment say that in the hours and days after seeing it i share jvl's disappointment not because it doesn't do thing it doesn't do things well but i just wanted more i wanted like i wanted more movie than what i felt like we got which in some ways i guess is a compliment right like like hey like i wanted you know what was the the line of showbiz show business right you want to leave them wanting more but it felt like it felt like there was they that that guy richie left stuff on the field to mix all the metaphors here and and that was a little disappointing so the reason i was primed to love this movie is the trailer sells the idea so well to have henry cavill and carrie elwes like like talking in this received pronunciation uh very uh you know sort of uh chippy dialogue about killing nazis and getting a team together to do it like i think i texted you guys i know i texted a group of my friends that's like i will watch two hours of that of just those two talking like that about the about the mission like i i loved it um and every time that that sort of element of the movie was was going on i was just like give me more of this this is so great it's it's it's it it is like if i feel like if guy richie had leaned more into that at the expense of telling every sort of element of the story truth you know truthfully um you know it would have given me a lot of what i
JVL00:54:07was looking for we needed more business with the original crew of guys like as they're on the ship sailing down the average we needed to have another another adventure adventure with them after they break apple year out of the now maybe they didn't have another adventure in real life okay we'll make one up it's a movie you can just deliver you want the by the way the the breakout
Mike00:54:30of in the from the nazi prison like it was it was terrific it was everything i wanted it to be right like the the sort of cheeky responses to alan richson like bow and arrowing uh all the nazis like one by one just picking them off it was great it's like oh this is so much fun it just it felt like it felt like it was a a bunch of setup and the payoff was like bare minimum there's just no there's no tension
Sonny00:55:01that's right i guess that's what you're getting they just they just kill everybody they they literally and like there's something to be said for the pleasure of watching people kill nazis on screen that's been a mainstay of the american film industry for the last 80 years i'm not opposed to that precisely but it but it is just like it's just like a sequence of them walking around and uh bow and arrowing people and then and then they leave and that's that's it that's that's like to the extent that like they're just walking around the camp and like a guy keeps looking out the window and we keep expecting him to see him and he doesn't see him he doesn't see him he doesn't see him it's just like yeah what is what is like it's it's uh i don't know it's just inert
JVL00:55:49but you can then play for laughs right if you're not going to do that then you have to play these laughs and then you're leaning more on the style right and it seems like you didn't want to do that i don't would you guys care to rank the guy richie movies oh the guy which you would be
Mike00:56:07ranking i i haven't seen them all so it's okay how about this just top five i can do sure go
Sonny00:56:14ahead sonny you start jbl from from which position from the fifth position you start from five and i don't understand this i start at one and they go up to nobody wants nobody's waiting talk about
Mike00:56:29no tension talk about no tension all right give me a minute you brought this up i know but i didn't have it ready hold on hold on hold on hold on i will i will i will do a very quick ranking of the guy richie movies okay number five i'm gonna say the first sherlock holmes um i i somebody looks but i haven't seen all the guy richie movies so i haven't seen the man from uncle i haven't seen like the ones he released a few years ago so i like the first sherlock holmes uh number four i'm gonna say i'm gonna say this one i'm gonna say the ministry of ungentlemanly warfare because i did like it i liked what i saw on screen i just wanted more of it and i i agree with you sonny i wanted more attention uh number three uh i'd have to say the covenant um just a very kind of moving movie number two um
Sonny00:57:23number two snatch and number one lock stock all right uh i'll go i'll go next because i just i i this is a gut feeling i've just banged this out in 30 seconds because jbl sprung it on us uh but i'm gonna go number five rock and roll a totally underrated great movie uh number four the covenant uh number three lock stock and two smoking barrels number two wrath of man which i think is like genuinely one of the the great movies of the last five years or so does not get enough play uh number one is snatch snatch is his best i'm sorry number two is what the peak of number number two is wrath of man wrath of man okay well this is interesting this first time
JVL00:58:03we've ever had three totally different rankings uh here's the correct order number five aladdin uh it is not only the best but i would say the only successful disney live action reinvention of a classic animated film uh it is superior to the original in every single way uh and it's this is i believe guy ritchie doing straight story at his best he really has made himself invisible in it and uh and yet it has style and panache it just doesn't have the things you would expect from him it's great number four snatch uh clearly this is like the 2.0 version of lock stock two smoking barrels where but it's better you know it's uh it's not the worse it was him perfecting that thing that he was doing number three sherlock holmes uh the best buddy cop comedy since the original lethal weapons series period the end because that's what it is it's it's buddy rush hour it's right it's it's those things but it's better and it's the funniest maybe the funniest buddy cop comedy ever ever made uh number two the gentleman which when i and upon re-watching it i just like it more and more every time it's a it's a really really fun british gangster movie and it is the british gangster movie that i think is closest in spirit to uh to layer cake which is the greatest movie of our time and number one is chad king arthur and i will stand i will stand by this i will die on this hill his worst chad king arthur top-to-bottom perfect it's a perfect movie and it is it is your worst bit it's not a bit and here's the thing everybody who i have who i have taken off the street kidnapped tied up and made to watch chad king arthur uh they all say oh yeah that movie's great if if you have not watched this film and you just like they're trying to get out of your dungeon yeah that movie's
Sonny01:00:23great yeah i love this movie i'll tell everyone how great it is i'm telling you i'll tell everyone
JVL01:00:26how great it is just let me out it is absolutely breaking my toes it's the best the best tentpole epic that we've had since is it better than than uh fellowship of the ring quite possibly quite possibly that's the level it's operating on because it's funny it's it's you know how do you how do you get gold from a viking well you roll from a viking everything nobody knows the
Sonny01:00:53nobody knows the i have no idea what you're talking about i've no i i could you couldn't pay me to re-watch that movie which i saw in theaters i have no interest in ever seeing it
JVL01:01:02again it's bad it is it is not bad it's fan-fucking-tastic and uh and those are the correct top five guy ritchie movies all right well you know it's interesting to me that you
Sonny01:01:17had you had sherlock holmes and aladdin and chav king arthur in there because those are
JVL01:01:23did any of us pick the man from uncle no because i haven't seen it so i don't i you know so to me i like the man from uncle except i just can't it's it's like seeing a beautiful woman with like a gigantic like mayonnaise on her face that she doesn't realize is there or something and and the problem with it is that uh the two leads are cast wrong yeah they're backwards and the you want to like say to say to the woman like you you got a thing there do you want to wipe do you want to wipe that off right and i just want to like touch the screen and say the guy richie don't know but you like yeah they should opposite right you you see that don't you they should because it's so fucking clear i don't understand how everybody associated with that production didn't see it and nobody said anything so have you ever seen something like that in
Mike01:02:16movies before not that i not off the top of my head i mean imagine that mark hamill
JVL01:02:23had been cast as han solo right harrison ford had been cast as luke right and you like the
Mike01:02:29first day of shooting you would have been like i you know let's try the scene with you guys reading the opposite roles just say i just see what happens technique it's a it's an acting right yeah just see what happens you know so okay but but granted i have not seen the live action a lot but you're telling me and am i right in saying jvl that you hated robin williams is that just like in general like you're not a robin williams fan because i very much like robin williams but
JVL01:02:57but but aladdin the animated film with uh i i like robin williams as the genie is is improved by will smith uh i think his so i think the robin williams genie is the only thing that works about the original aladdin it's the only thing that matters in the original you know everything else doesn't work the music sucks uh the plot doesn't make any sense to the extent that movie succeeds it's purely because of robin williams and i'm saying that will smith does the almost impossible job of taking that character and just making it his own thing without disrespecting like there he walks the very thin line of homage and doing his own thing and he makes that work and then on top of it the music is better they add a real song that's a good song uh and they do enough of the they fix the plot enough that the movie now makes sense in ways that the original may be if you poke at it for two seconds it's like wait hold on wait a minute none of this makes any sense
Sonny01:04:04what do you mean it doesn't make any sense uh let's not really sorry we don't need a line we
Mike01:04:10don't have time for that all right all right okay any any other final thoughts then about the
JVL01:04:14ministry of ungentlemanly warfare i will say this it is at once one of the best movie titles i've because it's a great movie title and it's like oh of course it's perfect right and but then you were like a movie with that title could not possibly succeed financially yeah i i did enjoy
Mike01:04:34pointing at the screen as i always do when somebody says the movie title um in the movie you know uh so when at the very end when you did the leo point hey hey it's it's that i i recognize that line it's from the poster uh but can i say here's my final thing and then we'll go uh i could not decide if the winston churchill was the best or worst winston churchill i've ever seen in in a movie because there were times where i was like oh that sounds that sounds just like winnie it sounds just like him and then other times it's like what is this is this is like me doing a winston churchill impression it was bad it was bad it was it was interesting in that it was
Sonny01:05:17very clearly not it was not like a gary oldman style like they were not making him look exactly like winston churchill uh it was definitely just like here's an actor it felt like the
JVL01:05:28rick flair in iron claw yeah that that's how it felt to me yes yeah yeah all right all right well
Mike01:05:37that is all the time we are going to give to this episode join us over at subbeacon.com where you can leave uh your comment underneath this and uh join the conversation and we will talk to you next time
?01:05:51you
Guest01:05:53do you guys have anything
Mike01:05:59more apple talk oh oh i know what i was going to say i i thought i couldn't decide in the movie if all of the winks and nods to like casablanca were like two on the nose or or like nice and like you know like the uh the beginning of a beautiful friendship and like this the whole idea that like this is like you know casablanca in the gulf of guinea or whatever but like it was throughout that and like the the little sort of shibboleth about the where she says she speaks in yiddish she sings in yiddish instead of in german like which is like obviously you know uh what is uh not dirty dozen um inglorious bastards and all like were the references too referential or were they like nice little nods and and winks like something about them felt a little lazy to me thoughts no
Sonny01:06:53Eh, I'm sure it was fine.
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