#341. 'Cool Runnings'
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This episode's movie is Cool Runnings, the 1993 John Candy underdog classic about the Jamaican bobsled team, and all three hosts are fans: Sonny calls it one of his favorite John Candy movies and a "perfectly charming" underdog sports story, though he needles it for exaggerating how legit the real 1988 team's on-track performance was (they actually crashed due to bad steering, not equipment failure, and finished dead last in every heat); JVL is surprised it works at all, since it was scripted as a straight sports drama and only became half-comedy in production, landing in an odd tonal middle ground between Dodgeball and Miracle; and Mike, who's been living in a Cool Runnings fog thanks to a Pinewood Derby car and a Cub Scout den meeting built around the film, praises it as a rare kids' sports movie where the heroes lose and that's the whole point. They dig into trivia (director John Turtletaub, producer Chris Meledandri going on to found Illumination, the Hans Zimmer score) and lament that Disney no longer makes mid-budget live-action family movies like this one. The front third is a long hang: Sonny recounts his dog's scary pancreatitis hospitalization (possibly Ozempic-triggered, JVL jokes) and a detour into "frame-mogging" internet slang; JVL shows off his newly modded pinball machine (stadium lights, a replaced fan) and fantasizes about becoming a Stern pinball brand ambassador with Sonny as his hype man; and Mike and Sonny swap dueling Pinewood Derby war stories, plus box-office chat about the Kevin James rom-com Solo Mio and Zootopia's continued dominance over Avatar: Fire and Ash. The episode closes with a bonus JVL rant reconsidering Miracle from the Soviet team's perspective, which Sonny gleefully refuses to entertain ("America number one, baby").
From the show notes
Derby cars and bobsleds and pinball, the three great sports.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Walt Disney Pictures presents
Guest00:00:01I am feeling very Olympic today.
Vic00:00:03a story for anyone who dares to stand out in a crowd
Guest00:00:06I didn't come up here to forget who I am and where I come from.
Vic00:00:09and everyone with the courage
Guest00:00:12Cool Runnings! Yes!
Vic00:00:14to stand up for their dreams How will I know if I'm enough? When you cross that finish line Where did these guys come from? Joe Haycock! You'll know. Cool Runnings
Mike00:00:30Welcome to the Sub-Beacon Podcast. I'm your co-host, Mike Warren. Joining me, as always, are my two co-hosts, who feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme. Get on up, it's bobsled time. Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Join us over at subbeacon.com. subbeacon.com is where you can find new episodes every Friday morning.
JVL00:00:54Kiss the egg, Michael! Kiss it!
Mike00:00:58We're all going to be doing our Jamaican accents. This is going to go great, this show.
Sonny00:01:01I will not be doing that, for the record. I just want to be very clear. I only do Japanese accents.
Mike00:01:07There we go. Well, you could do a Swiss accent, too. Acai. All right, it's my favorite beer, or Lidstripe. Okay, where was I? Tell your friends and family to go to subbeacon.com if they want to listen to the show, and check us out on Instagram and all that other oddly fun stuff. We're going to be talking about Cool Runnings later on in the show, but first- Mon. Cool Runnings, Mon, later on the show. But first, let's find out what's going on. Sonny, let's start with you.
Sonny00:01:42What is happening in your neck of the woods? Start with me? I don't know. Nobody wants
Mike00:01:47to start with me. I try to change it up, you know?
Sonny00:01:49Nobody. Things are fine. Update on my dog. My dog, my dog who was sick last week, remember? We had to give her an IV. Oh, no. And she had to go overnight to the dog hospital. But she's better now, which is good. Oh, my goodness. Oh, that's good. Did they fear what was wrong? Pancreatitis. Pancreatitis. Basically, her pancreas shut down, and she wouldn't eat. That's bad. Got inflamed. What happened? It's not ideal, and it was acute. It came on very quickly. It's the sort of thing that she could, theoretically, have died from if we had not- Treated it pretty quick.
JVL00:02:30Can you manage that with medication going forward?
Sonny00:02:33No, it's not even medication. It's just diet. She just has to eat. Basically, what happens is her pancreas kind of shuts down, and she stops eating and stops going to the bathroom and starts throwing up, can't keep anything down, doesn't want to lay down, doesn't want to sleep. So they basically gave her a combination of fluids to rehydrate and a nausea medicine to get her to stop throwing up. And then once she had kind of rebalanced, she could start eating again. It's like when your kid won't stop throwing up and eventually they prescribe Zofran. It was basically that for dogs, except they had to do it via IV.
JVL00:03:19Now, is this because you have her on Ozempic? Because one of the side effects of Ozempic is pancreatitis. Oh, see, that's good to know. Trigger pancreatitis.
Sonny00:03:30Pancreatitis. And then 10 years from now, everybody's eyeballs fall out of their head.
JVL00:03:36It'll be worth it. Everyone looks so good. Nobody will be able to see anybody else.
Sonny00:03:42It's a real Greek curse sort of thing. You get 10 years of beauty and then everybody goes blind.
JVL00:03:49Like clavicular.
Sonny00:03:52Just like clavicular.
Mike00:03:52Do not podmog me. Do not podmog me.
Sonny00:03:56I had no idea. So I didn't even realize this while I was reading Will's piece on this. Will Summers' piece on this. But frame-mogging. You know the term frame-mogging?
Mike00:04:08I know of it.
Sonny00:04:09That you've seen or heard this term frame-mogging. I had always assumed that frame-mogging was like somebody is giving an interview or something and then you get in the frame with them and you take over the attention. That is frame-mogging to my... That was how I viewed it. You take the frame of the image over and you dominate it and you make the person that you have mogged look like a little bitch. But apparently that's not what frame-mogging is. That's not what frame-mogging is. Frame-mogging is showing up with a better frame, like your body frame. You got a guy who's jacked and then you show up and you're even more jacked. That's what frame-mogging is. Did you guys know that? Have I taught you something today?
JVL00:04:57I mean, I knew it once I read the piece. I say that piece was lay bashing. That's very, I really, I thought to myself that is a tragedy that we do not live in a world where a magazine could have given Matt lay bash 20,000 words to
Sonny00:05:10follow clavicular. Yeah. Just spend, just spend six months following this kid around and writing.
Mike00:05:16It would be amazing. Um, yeah, the whole thing, the whole thing, like there was that tweet that was going around of like, it was like explaining right. What happened in some situation, you know, where he was like, well, the FOIA by the FOIA, the FOIA, the FOIA spiked
Sonny00:05:36his cortisol levels. And after, after his cortisol levels were spiked, somebody else came in and frame mogged him, which was a real, it was a series of very bad events for clavicular.
Mike00:05:48Right. And, and all I could think of when I was reading that tweet was like Jabberwocky, like it was just total nonsense to me. Absolutely nonsense. So anyway, yeah, it's, it's real.
Sonny00:05:59It really, we have really hit the, the portion of my life cycle where the culture shifts abruptly and radically in ways I don't understand. And I, uh, I'm just enjoying the ride. It's fun.
Mike00:06:13Good. All right. Uh, JBL, what is happening with you? Well, I mean, do you guys want more pinball
Sonny00:06:18talk or no? Yeah. I can't even see your pinball machine. You, you don't have it in frame. Hold on,
Mike00:06:24hold on. There you go. That's better. Let that, let that pinball machine frame. There we go. You
JVL00:06:29may notice that the play field is illuminated in a beautiful way because I installed stadium lights. And, uh, I also replaced the fan. People may recall that I said that I was really, I was bothered that the stock fan was too noisy. And so I ordered the, uh, pinball Zen replacement fan for the Stern spike two machines. And guys, I did all of this surgery myself. Like I had to take apart the power supply. Yeah. Uh, once you took about the power supply, you had to remove the fan and I wound up having to like snip the wires to disconnect the old fan because the, uh, they use an adhesive, which is also a thermal shield in it. And normally it's like a jelly, but this one they had used because it's a little older, a foam and that foam had hardened. And so I was worried about trying to chisel the foam to get the supply. But anyway, what's important is that I sat down and I just spent a couple hours, like worked in on the pinball machine and I did it and it all works. Everything you wire maxed. I did wire maxed it. Uh, the, you know, with the, the lights, which were very, very easy to install, but you did have to like figure out we're doing, you know, they're wired both to the GI interface for the lighting and into the shaker motor. Because when the, it gets signals to shake the lights
Mike00:07:58flash UV anyway, it's so satisfying getting to do this shit. You are getting satisfaction JVL out of this. How is the rest of the family doing on the satisfaction? Uh, love it. My mother-in-law
JVL00:08:12loves it. Perfect flash and G money. Love it. Favorite is, uh, she enjoys it, but she seems, she seems skeptical. She gets frustrated. She hasn't played it enough to get good. Um, we are getting good. So I would say when we first got the machine, like 4 million was like a pretty good game. You'd be like, okay, we got 4 million points and it turns out that the rule set is deep. And so if you actually look at the rule set for the game so that you understand how to play it, uh, again, so 4 million was a pretty good score. 10 million was like a good game. And now 200 million is a good game. Whoa, that's great. Last night flash went 304. Can I, can I, uh,
Sonny00:09:06can I level a complaint about pinball that I've always had about pinball pinball grade inflation? No, no. Well, there, there is that. No, my problem with pinball has always been exactly what you're talking about here, which is that the games themselves have rules that are not explained until you have played the game many times and can pick up on, I mean, like, I assume it's written down somewhere. It's like, do this. And then this happens and then this happens and then blah, blah, blah. But like, but when you just go to an arcade and you're playing, you're banging around on the pinball machine, like things happen and you're like, Ooh, that's nice. But you don't, there's no, there's no set progression. It's not like a side scroller or a fighting game where you have like a, you have like a series of steps that you're taking. It's just like, Ooh, this happened.
JVL00:09:51That's cool. And it turns out the games are programmed with progressions. So there is a progression for Deadpool and there is a way to play the games that you are taking. Oh, you know, you're defeating certain enemies. Then you're achieving certain quests. And then you, I mean, there is an end to most pinball games and the idea is to, you can win a pinball machine most of the time. Yeah. Because they, they have set stories. They are designed, I think, to be completely inaccessible to casual players. That's right. But the, the rub is Because they're supposed to be fun for casual players. And so that is the mark of a good machine is so that you can walk up to it, having, knowing nothing about the rules and have a really good time because the flow state, right? The shots feel good to make and like fun things happen when you make a shot the right way. Uh, but then the rule sets are there to reward the people who go and buy the machines, um, by provide like, so, you know, in a way that if, if there weren't deep rule get bored of it, cause you're like, oh, I'm just bashing and doing things. Um, anyway, I, uh, I think I have a dream. So, uh, you know, I am featured on a fairly large YouTube channel coming up on 2 million subscribers. Um, stuff we do drops, you know, half a million views basically is a ordinary thing. And I now have this beautiful stern pinball machine as my background. And I talk about it on my shows all the time, right? In the pinball influencer community, which is ex thing it exists, but it is so small that like the big guys get like 17,000 views for a video. And there is a program that stern runs where with their influencers, what they will do is they will just lend them games for like six months. And so stern will send you a game. You play it for six months. You have in your background, you talk about it a little bit and it is not payola. You do not get to keep it like you. Then they come and they take it back, but they bring you another one. I feel like this solves all of my marital problems because this way I get my second machine. Sure. It is always changing and I am not paying for it. So we are going to effort that with stern. We are going to, we are going to have a chat with stern. We are going to have Megan reach out to stern. We are reaching out to their senior VP of
Sonny00:12:28marketing, Matt. And, uh, if he ever wants to do a, you know, bulwark goes to Hollywood, wants to, wants to, you know, I'll, I'll help you out here. I don't even need a pinball machine. I'll just do it. Just do it for the, for the love of the game. I just feel like I could drop in on this
JVL00:12:42thing and I could be like the Teddy ball to say. Of pinball. You realize that this will cause,
Sonny00:12:48this will cause you to become hated within the pinball influencer community. You'll become a, well, no, not a seller. You'll just be, you'll be, you'll be frame logging all
JVL00:12:58of them with your loper as well. So I'll be showing up at this year's, uh, pins at the beach expo on, I'll be on some sort of panel discussion and they'll be looking at me. They'd be like, this guy sucks. He can't even play pinball. And I'll be like, Hey guys, I'm just here to be an ambassador for the sport. We're just all having fun here. It's just a game for the community. I'm just trying to help grow, grow this beautiful community that we have together. Some of us with more followers than others.
Mike00:13:27I mean, from, from, from a newbie on the, uh, what was it? Pin the pin head site, pin side, pin side from a newbie to, to a heel in like, in what, like eight weeks? Like, I gotta say some of the one, two, three kid of, uh, some of the pinfluencers who
JVL00:13:47I have watched on YouTube, I can promise you that they will lose their goddamn minds because, because it is, there is a, as I have said before, it's like, a comic book guy, kind of, not all of them. Many of them, many of them seem like great guys, but there is a subset which seems like very comic book guy. Are you high in Lewis? Because you're making me laugh.
Mike00:14:10Anyway, that's all I've got. All right. All right. Um, how are you, Michael? I'm fine. It's I, I will save the discussion of the movie itself for, uh, that section of the podcast, but I will say like, it's funny that I can't remember, maybe Sonny, was it you who suggested we do cool runnings because cool runnings has oddly been like dominant in my life for the past couple of weeks. Um, we, we watched the Olympics. Yeah. Well we watched it as a family. So family movie night has now become like a, uh, like a suicide pact with like between my wife and I and our kids. I'm just like, it's just like, we're constantly going like, trust us. You will like this movie that you do not want to watch. And they protest and they complain and we go, why are we even doing this? Why are we even doing a family movie night? If you're going to complain the whole time. And then we end up watching the movie and then they end up loving the movie and it happens again and again and again. And they never learned, do they, Michael? Who never, never assumed who never learns like that? Like maybe I'm the one not learning. Um, but regardless, uh, cool runnings. Yes. It was sort of in, we've been pitching this for several weeks. Um, and then like the, they were very excited to watch the Olympics and get into the spirit. So like, we kind of were like, look, this is an Olympic movie. And so we watched it and it was so inspiring to my oldest, my 11 year old that he, uh, he had been, uh, casting about for ideas for his cup scout, Pinewood Derby car design, uh, cool runnings. Well, he did after some nudging by me because, um, his idea for, uh, having a car that also had two other cars crashing on top of it for his design. And we were going to do this in 10 days with very minimal amount of tools and no real idea of like how to make that vision a reality. I like, I, after that, I sort of like pushed, I was like, Ooh, wouldn't a, wouldn't a, a bobsled shaped car with very minimal cutting be much better. And he was like, oh, that's great.
Sonny00:16:25So we did it. We wanted to build the Homer, uh,
Mike00:16:27I don't know what, I don't know what he wanted to build, but we, but it's in the past, uh, and, and we built a cool runnings. And, uh, and so that was fun. And we, and he did that and he didn't perform that well at the, uh, at the, uh, Pinewood Derby, but it's fine. He enjoyed it. And he enjoyed having that. And then, well, sorry, Sonny, you had a question.
Sonny00:16:46All right. No, I we'll come back. I'm going to circle back to the
Mike00:16:49Pinewood Derby in a second. Sure. Sure. Um, uh, and then after that, uh, uh, he had a, just this week, in fact, his final pack meeting, uh, or sorry, I should say den meeting, uh, as a Cub scout, because they are getting ready to bridge to the, to, to the boy Scouts, um, after this. And so it was sort of a celebratory thing. Uh, and the movie that they watched, uh, for their last dead meeting was cool runnings. And so like, it's just been lots of cool runnings and he like came home from the den meeting, like shouting, uh, lines from the movie. And it's just, it, I do feel vindicated that like, yes, this movie is something that like the kids like, and they talk about it all the time and they love it and all that stuff. So anyway, um, that's, that there's just been a lot of cool runnings in my life. So I love that. That's what I got. Uh, Sonny, what is your Pinewood Derby? Oh yeah. So,
Sonny00:17:44so you guys, I don't remember. Uh, I, we talked about this last year, my Pinewood Derby experience with my son, I believe, but the, uh, but it was, it was a disaster. It was like a waking nightmare. It was like, uh, To the extent that like we made, we made this thing and I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to like Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Boy Scouts stuff. Cause I was not in it. I'm no Mike Warren. So I like we, he, he want my, my son wanted it to look like a cyber truck. Remember? And like, we, we made a cyber truck size one, but we also, I also like, didn't realize that you were supposed to put weights and stuff on it to like, wait it down. And also I just construct, I like I, me, this is not my son's fault, constructed it very poorly. Like the wheels were all wobbly. And so it was, it was so badly made. It was so badly made that it would not even finish the like run down the track. Like it, it, it would, it stopped, it stopped, it stopped like, uh, you know, like six inches shy every time. Um, but the, but it happens a lot, but the problem was the problem was, uh, that last year that they couldn't, they couldn't figure out how to set the track up. Right. They kept like trying to set the track up. Right. So they kept having to run the opening race over and over again, as they were trying to set it up and who was in that first heat, but my son's cyber truck. So like 15 times, this thing goes down the track and does not finish any time. And I was like, I was like Mickey. I was like Mickey with a towel. I was like, stop the fight. Stop the fight. I just want, I like, I wanted to like run over there and knock everything down and just take it and like run out. Like, uh,
Mike00:19:31by the way, running that, like having a problem with the track at the beginning of the race, there's no bigger vibe killer at a Pima Derby than like, that's, that's terrible. Yeah, we were,
Sonny00:19:41we were all getting like, we were that last year was a nightmare. It was a nightmare because of that. But also just for me personally, it was, it was a real, it was a real disaster. So this year I like, we went to a friend's house who has got like a, he's got, you know, a jigsaw, like a bandsaw and we, we cut the thing a little smooth. We like sanded it down. We painted it. We put the weights on, we got the weights on. And I will say we went from last year from last year's disastrous, like 15 DNFs, uh, to, to this year. We, uh, my, my son was right in the middle of the pack,
JVL00:20:15right in the middle. Didn't come in, didn't come in first ever in any of the heats, but the way it
Sonny00:20:21works, I don't know. I assume this is how yours works as well, Mike, but they run the cars and the last, if you finish in the last two, twice, you're eliminated.
Mike00:20:32No, they, this is, it's not how we do it, but that's how you guys do it.
Sonny00:20:35That's how, that's how we do it anyway. So like you, if you, if you come, you, you run six cars at a time. If you, because there's so many kids in this fucking, we have so many kids in our den slash pack, whatever. Um, so you, you run, you just keep running them over and over again. And if you come in the last two, twice, you're eliminated. And there were probably 30 cars in his, uh, in, in his den or like 30 kids in, in his den. Um, and, uh, he w he came in like 14th or 15th, something like that. Like third, third, somewhere between 13th and 16th. I didn't keep
JVL00:21:09good track, but it was, it was a real big win. It was a real big win for me personally,
Sonny00:21:14for me personally, as the constructor of this goddamn thing.
JVL00:21:18So I have never done Pinewood Derby. Sure. Uh, is there a variance over different runs for a car? I mean, I would just assume that a car that is a 15.3 second car will be 15.3 seconds basically every time. No, is that not the case? That's not the case. So it dip, it depends
Mike00:21:41on a lot of factors. Um, one thing for, so the way we, our pack does it is we have the four, uh, lanes and each den, which is the different, uh, you know, age groups at a different, um, grade group groups. Uh, each den runs heats so that each car goes on all four rows, all four lanes, the lanes
JVL00:22:05themselves have a lot of variance. Correct. And, um, you know, it, there's so, I mean, at the end
Mike00:22:12of the day, like the cream does rise to the top and like the, the fastest cars do do in, um, and you know, in the average, but, uh, yeah, there can be, there can be quite a bit of variance.
JVL00:22:24And, uh, and I, I assume that the determination of what makes the car fast is primarily the wheels and the axles.
Mike00:22:34It is the, it is the reduction of friction on the wheels and axles. So ball bearings, you really want ball bearings. You can't, you can't use ball bearings. It's
Sonny00:22:43against the rules. There's just like a little nail in a wheel. It's a little nail that goes
Mike00:22:47into a slot. Um, I'm sure you could hide ball bearings in there somehow. Well, I mean, it's, it's, it is like, at least in our rules, it's explicitly stated. It's against the rules and they, they check for all that stuff. Oh, they, oh, they check it. Wow. Referee comes out. Uh, but you can add, you can add like dry graphite lubricant on, onto them. You can, you can, um, there's like these little notches on the nails that come with the kit that you can sand down. Um, I did a pretty poor job of doing that for, for my son's car. And so we just didn't, we finished every race, but we just didn't have the other, the other issue that we had was so the weight does matter too. Like you want to just weight matters a lot to the back. Are the tires standardized? Yes. They're all, they're all the same plastic. So the tires are stock. Okay. Yes. Can you do stuff to the tires? You can't, there's, there are little bits of, um, plastic on the inside of the tire, where that, the, the, the sleeve that goes onto the nail and you can do a little, um, you can do a little sanding of that kind of. Excess plastic off to, again, to help with the friction. But again, I think every Pinewood Derby is different, but in our Derby, um, you cannot, uh, shave off the wheels themselves to give you like a different, different angle. Um, and that has to do with, um, there are, there are tracks in the past where you try to like ride the ride, the rail basically. Um, and, and, and you can sort of get an advantage in your car by like riding against the side of it, of the, of the lane. And th they're, they, they don't allow that. And so there's all kinds of ways to try to, to try to stop those kinds of ways of, of gaming the system. Um, final question,
JVL00:24:40is there a national champion for this? So is it like little league where every town, every club Scott pack has there and they just keep like, or the spelling bee, like they just keep pushing
Mike00:24:49them up, pushing them up. So there are national final, there are council. So like each, each scout pack is in a council, which is a regional council. So there are council competitions. I don't know if it, you can go from the council to a national competition. There's I'm sure somebody in our, in our listenership will know the answer to that, but I do know like council, uh,
Sonny00:25:13level competitions are a big deal. And there's a, there's a secret, there's a secret offshore, uh, illegal Derby car race for the real winners. They go to, you know, it's actually,
JVL00:25:26in Thailand and, uh, it's like a Kumite. Yeah. Yeah. The, um, his mother was a mother.
Sonny00:25:32Did the, um, did the, did the, did the Pinewood Derby used to have like real cars, like kids in real cars? I feel like that's a, that's a soap box. That's a soap box Derby.
Mike00:25:42That's what I'm that's totally different. Yeah. Totally different. Um, that's not boy scouts. That's just a, yeah, I don't think maybe, maybe some, some scouts do that, but, but the Pinewood Derby is a, is a cup scout classic. We did it when I was a cup scout, when I was a kid, and, um, we, we still talk about it to this day, my family and I, um, all the good times. All right. Let's move on though. And, uh, talk about the box office. Cause I have some questions actually. It just, or just sort of the general question about, uh, so number one of the box office, once again, send help, uh, which we, we talked about last week. Uh, number two though, at the box office is solo Mio from angel studios, which is, uh, I mean, it did $7 million at the box office is pretty, pretty abysmal weekend in general, but this movie is like kind of interesting.
Sonny00:26:25To me, go ahead. This is always famously one of the worst weekends of the year, right? Exactly. Superbowl, Superbowl weekend. Nobody, nobody goes, but it's interesting. I, I always think, I actually think there's a decent case to be made for counter-programming the super bowl. Like for instance, there is a, um, there's a movie coming out this weekend in limited, I think. And, and, or maybe it's next weekend called pillion, which is basically, it's like this gay bike, motorcyclist romance with Alexander Skarsgård and Henry Melling, from the Harry Potter movies. Um, but we'll be doing that on this show. I'm sure.
JVL00:27:00Henry Melling, Henry Melling in the Harry Potter movies.
Sonny00:27:04Henry Melling is, um, what's he's the, he's the, he's the loser kid at the end who like stands up
Mike00:27:10to Slytherin and all the, oh, he plays he's Neville Dudley. He plays Dudley. Oh, he's Dudley. Not
Sonny00:27:21he's the cousin. He's the cousin. That's that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. Uh, I w I, who is the, who's the, oh, anyway, it doesn't matter. He says, he says, he says, I'm thinking of,
Mike00:27:28I was thinking of Neville Longbottom. No, no, no, this is, this is, this is the cousin who says. Cause Neville Longbottom would make sense for the gay biker movie. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway,
Sonny00:27:37uh, nothing. I liked it. I don't, I don't Longbottom cause long. I get it. I get it. I understand your, your entendres they're double, uh, the, uh, um, but I think that there, there's a case that that should, you should, if you're gonna release that movie on 2,500 screens, why not do it? Superbowl weekend is counter-programming like, oh, you're not, you're
Mike00:27:59like, you're not watching sports ball. You're gonna go to the, if you're not watching sports
Sonny00:28:03ball, we've got some other balls for you, et cetera, something, you know, something like that. Swing and a miss. Uh, anyway, uh, but no solo Mio is, uh, it's like, it's, it's being pitched as it's a rom-com, but for men and also with Kevin James, also like Kevin pretty tame. Well, yeah. I mean, it's an angel studios. Exactly. But it's, but
Mike00:28:25what's interesting about this movie is all the, the little, the kind of viral gorilla marketing that went into it, right. That where they had, are you aware of this sunny? The, uh, there was this,
Sonny00:28:34uh, men go free. Huh? Did you see the men go free thing? No, I didn't see that. What I'm
Mike00:28:40talking about is the Instagram or Tik TOK account, whatever of a, uh, of a teacher, an art teacher or something in an elementary school, um, that just sort of popped up out of nowhere and people were looking at it. And just so happens that that art teacher at some random elementary school looks like exactly like Kevin James. And it was like, they w he was like denying or he was not confirming that it was him, but he was like, basically he was in his character from the movie and he was like posting all of these videos. Are you, you're, you're looking at me.
Sonny00:29:10I have no idea what that, I have no idea what you're talking about. It's true. Totally, totally, totally foreign world to me. This is the marketing of the angel studios movies I'm getting, I'm getting the gay biker movie at not the, not the angel studio ads. I don't know why, I don't know why. Uh, but the, um, no, the, the other, the other, I did see, they were doing a thing that was like, uh, men, men take your man for free to go see you solo me, uh, uh, which, which is kind of interesting. Um, wow. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Okay. I haven't seen the Hollywood
Mike00:29:42reporter is Kevin James doing a self marketing campaign for his new film. A user posting as an art teacher, Matt Taylor on Instagram and Tik TOK bears a striking resemblance to the king of queen star. His lifestyle dovetails with the plot of James's upcoming rom-com solo Mio. Boom. I didn't, I didn't disbelieve that this exists,
Sonny00:30:03Mike. I just saying, I hadn't seen any of it. Right. I just like knowing something about the
Mike00:30:08industry that you don't. It, it, it gives me power. Well, I'm not surprised that you're
Sonny00:30:12getting inundated with the angel studios ads. That's more your, you know, that's my speed.
Mike00:30:17I'm not going to see this movie. I have no interest in this movie. So what is like a rom-com for guys? Like, why am I seeing this? This is not appeal to me at all. It does not look like fun or interesting. So like rush hour is a rom-com for guys.
JVL00:30:30Yes, exactly. Exactly. Right. Com for guys is an, is a dodge ball is a rom-com for guys.
Sonny00:30:40Is it, is that not right? I totally agree. It's not wrong. It's not wrong. I don't know why you're seeing ads for it. I, I don't know what fucking keywords you have in your, your, because it's probably, it's like no joke. It's probably because you have like religious
Mike00:30:55themed. No, no, no, no. It's not even, but it's not even that it was like, it was not even, I wasn't even seeing the, the Instagram account. It was like, I was seeing people saying, is this account supposed to be Kevin James? It was like people who were either willingly or wittingly or unwittingly, like helping make it viral by saying like, uh, this guy claims to be an art teacher, but he sounds, it looks like,
Sonny00:31:20where were you seeing these on Instagram? I don't go on it. Well, see, this is the problem. I literally never go on Instagram. I would rather blow my brains out than spend time on Instagram. No, no offense to all the Instagram fans out there, but I like, I check out the sub beacon on Instagram. Everyone, every time, every time I go on Instagram, I get, I get flooded with videos of people waiting in lines at Disney parks. And I'm just like, why am I? Yes, I get a lot. I don't want, I don't, I don't want any of this. I don't, I don't want this content. So I go back to the hell site of Twitter and I stew in misery. It's much better. We all have our vices. Um,
Mike00:31:54all right. Well, any, any other box office thoughts before we move on to cool?
Sonny00:31:58Uh, no, the only other, the only, again, like Zootopia is beating avatar fire and ash again for another, another week. I like it's going to end up grossing $20 million more, which again, nobody domestically, it's just say nothing of overseas. I didn't, nobody saw that coming. I don't think that's a, that's a pretty shocking thing to have happen. So that's about it.
Mike00:32:19All right. Uh, well let's talk then about the, uh, the movie of the week. Cool. Running Sonny. You want to give us a quick big boy review of, uh, this now 30 something year old movie.
Sonny00:32:32Cool. Runnings is a lie. It's a, it's a lie. This whole movie is a lie. It's a, no, the, uh, so cool running story of course, of the Jamaican bobsled team, uh, that went to the 19, uh, 88 Olympics. I believe it was the 88 winter Olympics in up in Canada. Isn't that where, isn't that where um, it's the story of the Jamaican, the, the, uh, long and short of it is a guy who thought he should be in the sprinting, uh, Olympics in the, in the summer. It doesn't make it. And he's like, I will instead be, uh, I will be a bobsledder and John Candy will teach me to do it. And lots of hijinks ensue because as you know, there is no snow in Jamaica and there's a real fish out of water situation. That's a montage of people laughing in Jamaica. There's a montage. There is literally a montage of people, of people laughing at, uh, our hero who is, his name is Darice Bannock. Uh, he, they say, no, you cannot be a, you cannot be a bobsledder. You are a Jamaican and we live in hot lands and that is a cold land sport. Uh, and yada, yada, yada. They, they come together and win nothing. Um, but the, but the, the movie is the movie. They go the distance. They go the distance. They go the distance. Look, here's the love. Cool runnings, cool runnings. Great movie. It is, it is one of my favorites. John Candy movies, which is saying something like in partly that's because it's one of like the first John Candy movies I saw. Right. It's cause this is like John Candy to me, even though it's his last movie. Correct. It's, it's one of his last movies. It's not his last movie, but it is last movie that came out when he was alive. Yeah. Okay. Um, but he, uh, anyway, uh, he, you know, is the kind of boisterous, uh, figure of fun that he is in so many other movies, but this is the first one where I like saw him. I was like, Oh, who is this guy? He's, he's great. I like him. Um, cool runnings, uh, as I said, is delightful and it's charming and it's a great underdog sports story. You cannot get enough underdog sports stories. I love underdog sports stories and it has the benefit of being kind of based on a true story, right? There was in fact a Jamaican bobsled team that did in fact go to, uh, the 1988 win her Olympics. Um, the, the falseness of it is all in the drama once they actually get there, because once I got there, they ran a series of terrible races. They were like my bird. They were like my Pinewood Derby car from last year was there was their bobsled runs. Like they were not, they were not good. Their, their, their times were bad. Um, they were never, I think they, they came like 25th, 24th, 26, something like that in their three respective runs. They were over three minutes. Like it was not, it was not a, it was not a good, it was not a good team. And like they did in, in the last, in their last run, they did crash just as they do in the movie. Um, but the, uh, but the, the crash was not because of faulty equipment. It was because they did a bad job steering the thing. Like it was, uh, they, they, they went and they, they crashed and, uh, analysis after the fact was like, yeah, they crashed because they were all over the place. They were not, they were not very good at this. Um, so, uh, my, my objection to this film is only, is only that they're really stretching the, the, you know, it's a true story angle here kind of beyond it's beyond it's a natural, it's not like a miracle, right. Which is another movie that I keep getting served up ads for now on, on Disney plus like, Oh, you watched cool runnings. I bet you want to watch Miracle. You want to watch winter underdog sports movies. And I would like to watch that except it's 137 minutes long. I don't have time for that. It's so long. It's so long. We just watched it last week. It is so long. It's a million. It's a million hours long, which, you know, fine. Um, I will say, uh, again, it's, it's one of these, it's, it's one of these movies that if you made it now, there would be all these complaints about it. Oh, look at woke. It's you know, there and, and it's kind of nice to be reminded of, you could just have this movie come out and everybody just kind of enjoyed it. And it was fun. And nobody, nobody whined and complained about, um, what was in it. Uh, I don't know. I love, I love this film. I love the, I love the performance by, um, Dougie Doug as Santa. He's like the perfect comic relief. He's just silly and ridiculous. Um, and I love, I love the guy who plays Yul Brenner, Malik Yoba, who's had like a bit in dozens of movies and TV shows. I think he was, he does a lot of the, uh, Tyler Perry stuff, I think. Um, so he, he's been around, but I, I just, I, I have always really greatly enjoyed this movie. I'm glad your kids like it, Mike. I want to show it to my kids. I haven't had time since we decided to do it, to show it to them. Maybe this weekend we'll, we'll watch it. Um, but I, I do want to watch it with them. Cause I think they will, I think they will also like it a great deal. Uh, because it's, it has enough, like, and this is the other, it is, it is a perfect kids sports movie too. Because it is, it has lots of funny set pieces with physical humor where people are like falling and hurting themselves. Um, and also, uh, lots of, lots of, as you, as you mentioned, the kind of like, um, I don't know, the running gags where like the guys are like laughing. I could see my kids thinking that is very funny. Uh, and the bar fight, your kids will laugh at
JVL00:38:18the bar fight, the bar fight, the kids will laugh at the bar fight. And anyway, it's a, it's,
Mike00:38:23I mean, Dougie Doug is like, is, is there to like do goofy kid stuff, right? Like that's his, that's his role, like the song, you know, which we used to sing when I was a kid, we used to sing that same song just like on the playground. Um, anyway, I'll, I'll, I'll let you
Sonny00:38:39finish it. But anyway, so I'll, you know, I plan on showing, uh, showing my kids this and then we'll run through the whole Dougie Doug, um, body of work, Mo better blues, jungle fever, eight legged geeks, you know, and it's, it's going to be, it's going to be a good, but he had some good,
Mike00:38:57he had some good kids movies, right? He was in, um, uh, he was in, uh, the, the Vietnam movie about the elephant operation Dumbo drop. He was in that movie. He wasn't that movie. He was
Sonny00:39:06Sharktail. He does the voice in the Sharktail. Uh, I don't know. I like, I mean, he's in that darn cat, that darn cat, which I feel like is another, another good kids movie. I don't know. I, I, I, I, I'm, I'm being, I'm being sarcastic. I do like, I like this movie a great deal. I've loved this movie since I was a kid. It is a perfectly charming, um, uh, underdog sports movie. It just happens to be like almost not really horseshit. Yeah. JVL your thoughts on cool
JVL00:39:37runnings, man. I mean, I got some thoughts on miracle. Maybe I'll save that for the optics, but, uh, for the first time in my life, I've seen miracle a bunch of times. And this time I was rooting for the Russians and I can explain why later. Okay. Uh, so here's the thing about cool runnings. The, it could not be made as it was made today. So if cool runnings was going to be made today, it would either be an over the top comedy like dodgeball or like blades of glory. And it wouldn't be, you know, Jamaica centered, like it said on some, but some other sort of fish out of water underdog type thing, which was, it'd be a PG 13 and it would be like just a full comedy. Or it would be like miracle, like a real heart string tugger. And this is, it's, it just kind of lives in that middle. And the, and that's because it was written as miracle. It was written as a sports drama and it only sort of became a half comedy like during production and it shouldn't work, but it does. Like, I think it, it winds up balancing the two genres in ways that are successful for kids. Now, I don't know that I would like, if I was a 25 year old in 1994, whenever this came out, 1999, what, what, what year this came out in 93, 93, if I was in college in 1993, watching this, I do not think I would have been charmed by it, but watching it with kids. Uh, I think it works and that surprises me. Honestly, because I would have preferred this to have been Blades of Glory. Another great Olympic movie that actually I'm doing with the big kids this weekend. I'm so excited.
Sonny00:41:33I, uh, it's jazz.
JVL00:41:34Michael Michaels.
Sonny00:41:36I, it's, it's interesting. It's interesting to like read about the production of this movie because, um, you know, on the one hand, yes, this, I could, you could see it being a kind of standard sports, uh, triumph type movie, right? Like a serious drama, right? With lots of intrigue.
JVL00:41:56All this John Candy redemption stuff and honor. I mean, that, that stuff is wildly out of place in a pratfall type movie.
Sonny00:42:03The shots, the shots where you see the Swiss team actually making their run and it's like in slow motion and, you know, it's like, that's real. That's real. Like, um, uh, Oh, what's the, what's the running movie? The chariots of fire. It's real chariots of fire stuff. Um, but then you look at the people who actually made this movie, one of them being John Candy, of course, but like the director is John Turtletaub who, uh, his, his, his body of work includes three ninjas, um, uh, national treasure, national treasure is a great movie.
JVL00:42:35Totally. I'm sorry. I will die on that Hill. It is an appreciated, great movie. It's not fine. It's, it's fine. It's great.
Sonny00:42:42It's fine. It's fine. It's, it's fine. But like, will you back me up?
Mike00:42:45I'm with you JVL. I love the platonic ideal of the family movie.
Sonny00:42:49Okay. Yeah.
Mike00:42:50I have more thoughts on this in general with regard to cool running.
Sonny00:42:53No, but I've always, I've, I've always believed that Disney should make national treasure like a central park of the theme parks and like they should be making those movies and TV shows, you know, as long as Nicholas Cage wants to do it.
Mike00:43:05Like if that, if that DC area, if that DC area Disney park had come to fruition, which that was like what, 20, 25 years ago. Yeah. That, that would have been a huge part of that. And I actually wonder if somehow national treasure gets green lit as a part of those plans that never, which never came to fruition, but that's, that's, I'm just speculating,
Sonny00:43:26but, uh, but the, but the other, the other big name here is a name you guys JBL, you might recognize Mike, you probably won't, but is Chris, uh, Chris Melandri, Chris Miller.
JVL00:43:39I can never find the guy who winds up creating illumination studios, right?
Sonny00:43:43So he is the illumination studios guy. And like the, and, and you can see so much of minions and grew and all of that kind of humor in this movie that it's like, Oh, that actually, I, when I saw that this time, cause I haven't watched this movie, you know, I watched this movie start to finish probably 15 years. Like it's not 20 years. God only knows. Um, but when I saw his name in the opening credits, I was like, Oh, Oh, okay.
JVL00:44:10This is one of the producers.
Sonny00:44:12Yeah. He was a, he's a producer.
?00:44:15Wow.
Sonny00:44:16Yeah.
JVL00:44:16Wild.
Sonny00:44:17So I, you know, look, it, the, the, it's, it's one of these things where there is, it's this weird. Kind of accident of fate, mixture of talents that like, is what Hollywood should be best at doing is like creating almost accidental long-term masterpiece is the wrong word. This is not a masterpiece, but it's highly entertaining and very effective at what it does.
JVL00:44:43It's a, it's a TV class. One of the great Hans Zimmer scores.
Mike00:44:48That's right. That's right. Um, so I have, I have a few thoughts. Big picture thoughts. I'll get to it in a second. Uh, but just about the movie itself. So Candy's performance is interesting to me because he plays against type quite a bit, uh, particularly the beginning. Um, you know, it's, he has played, uh, you know, a schlub before, right? That's uncle Buck basically. Um, but he's not played a kind of bitter schlub really happy guy. Yeah, exactly. Always. And so like his arc in this movie. He's like getting him to the John Candy that we love. And that, that's interesting to me. Uh, and I was thinking about it since part, because we watched the John Candy documentary for this show. Um, and just watching him in this movie. And again, I agree, Sonny, between this and home alone, it was like my introduction to John Candy. And I remember when my mom told me that John Candy had died, which was like, what? Like he died. Like he's in these movies, um, that I just, I see all the time. Um. So I, I really enjoyed candy in, in this movie. Um, I, here's another thing that I was formative for me watching this movie. And I was thinking about as well as the fact that it is a sports movie where the characters, the main characters lose and they don't lose like the final championship and learn a lesson. Like they just lose like, like they don't, it's what, what they achieve is. Being there and like doing what nobody thought they could do and actually getting everyone on their side, which again, the reality separate the reality.
Sonny00:46:33My beef with the movie is that it kind of shies away from that though. Like I, I like, I almost feel like they should have leaned into that more. Like I, I think I understand that's hard for dramatic purposes. It's hard to do that. You can't really like build to like, Hey, these guys have sucked ass for the first two runs. Let's see if they suck ass again. Like, uh, you know, right.
Mike00:46:52You, you, you have to put the, you have to put the dramatic tension in the interpersonal relationship when the, on the team and who's, you know, and, and, and having the rich kids dad and all that stuff. Um, well, I would tend to agree with you on that as an adult, as a kid, however, it really hit me. It was like, it was like a, a slap in the face, but not, not in a negative way, but like a, like a, almost in a way that sort of matured me a little bit. It was like, Whoa, the good guys can, can lose. And like, there's like something a little more than winning that is important. Uh, and, and I was thinking like loser talk. Yeah, total. Well, I mean, you're talking to a life loser talk. You, you were talking to a lifelong loser.
Sonny00:47:35So like, this is like not, not something you had to fail.
Mike00:47:38Yeah. Wow. This is like, actually I'm, I'm learning so much about myself, even in this conversation.
Sonny00:47:43Um, but you know, this make you feel lamey, but beyond the couch.
Mike00:47:49Um, but anyway, so I really, I really, I enjoyed that aspect of it and, and appreciated that aspect of it. Um, the, uh, I also just love how we accepted in 1993 that we could enjoy a movie about the Jamaican bobsled. Like, it's so weird. It's so weird. And yet it's like, sure, let's watch that movie. And I love that.
Sonny00:48:14The flip side, the flip side to the point I was making earlier that like, if this movie came out today, there would be a contingent of people, you know, conservatives who'd be like, Oh, this movie is so woke here. They're showing that, you know, they, you know, they get, but the flip side of that is there would be a contingent of people on the left. Who'd be like, you can't appropriate this culture. This we're making fun of the Jamaicans. You're making fun of their proud hair.
Mike00:48:35So the star of the movie about the Jamaican bobsled team is a white guy.
Sonny00:48:39Yeah, no, you would totally, it would be, it would be, yeah, it'd be the, it'd be annoying and it would be annoying in another direction. And this is me. This is mostly me just complaining about right now and how much I hate everyone.
Mike00:48:52Um, so the other thing, and then I'm going to get in the big picture of like this, of Disney making this movie. So I also get the sense I've done a little research on the 1988 Olympics, which by the way, it was not an NBC covered Olympics. It was an ABC. It was ABC, ABC won the rights on the 1988 winter Olympics in Calgary. Um, and I just have to wonder like how much the production of this movie had to do with like just the, the Disney. Conglomerate, like, like they covered this, like the research that I did was the reason that anybody even cared about the Jamaican bobsled team was because the American hockey team got knocked out early. Uh, and that's the only reason why people were story. So, so, so it was like a story and then it's like, it's like classic big Hollywood studios, like, well, we, we got this story for real. What have we made more money on this story? And I would just, I would love to know, like, I'm sure there's been a good, uh, oral history of it, but I would just love to know that aspect of the production of this film. Um, go ahead, Sonny.
Sonny00:50:00Did Disney own, when did Disney buy ABC? I feel like that didn't happen until the mid nineties.
Mike00:50:06Was that the mid nineties? I, well, maybe, so then maybe my, my theory is out of, uh, I can't remember.
Sonny00:50:12I can't remember what the actual time I used to know this. The great book Disney work goes into this in depth. Um, I feel like, I feel like the deal wasn't sealed until later, certainly not when the Olympics actually happened.
Mike00:50:24So ABC, uh, yeah, you're right. 1996.
Sonny00:50:28Yeah.
Mike00:50:29Uh, capital cities, ABC incorporated merges into Disney. Um, so yeah, so maybe not, but maybe they just saw this as, uh, and, and saw some synergies. I don't know, but can I make a confession?
JVL00:50:42Go ahead. About Olympic storylines. Sure. Every two years when we get an Olympics and the. Broadcast network decides that it's gonna shove some fucking story down our throat. Sure. For some person that nobody's ever heard of. Yep. And pretend that they are the greatest. They are the goat of whatever they are.
Mike00:51:04I always find myself rooting against that person because I hate.
Sonny00:51:08That doesn't surprise me.
JVL00:51:09The hype. And so for instance, this year when Lindsey Vaughn fell 13 seconds into her downhill run, I, I feel terrible for her. Who is just, uh, just an athlete out there trying to do, do her job. But part of me loved having it stuck to the producers of the coverage. Does that make sense? Like, I don't want to like, it's, it's the, the force feeding. Cause it is force feeding. It is like watching. It's like watching the Superbowl. Right. Where everyone is pretending that, uh, Oh, if this thing could go either way. I mean, I know it looks like they're down by 26. But, but, and so there was a great moment in this Superbowl. I don't know if you guys have closely paid attention to the game, but there was a, an interception, uh, thrown direct. It was the best pass that, uh, the, the New England quarterback threw all day long. And it was directly to a Seattle defensive back who didn't even move. There was nobody near him. And Chris Collinsworth says, well, I don't even know what to say about that because. Because he couldn't put the shine on it. There was no way.
Mike00:52:24Well, there's nothing you can say about that one. That's going to be just the end of New England here.
JVL00:52:30And I hate, hate TV sports broadcasting, which puts the shine on it because I feel it's like they think we're suckers.
Mike00:52:40Yeah. Well, it's, it's, if you think of it as a, as a way, if they're not, that they're not broadcasting this to you, they're broadcasting it to people who don't. Care about this. Well, I, I mean, I hope you're not rooting against the kid who lives down the street from us, Ilya, uh, uh, millennium, uh, the, the, the quad God, because he's a local boy. Quad God. He's a, he's a local kid.
Sonny00:53:04My daughter used the word quad God in, in, in just conversation yesterday. And I wanted to say to her, you have to stop watching the Olympics. You can't, that's not your band. You're banned from watching.
JVL00:53:18Nobody has heard of before 10 days ago. And now we're just like. Oh, no, everybody agrees. The quad guy, he goes to school down the street from me. I'm sure. And I'm sure he's great. I'm sure they're all great. I'm sure all of them are great. It's not about them. It's about the, the production. And this is a thing that, that is reasonably recent. Like it is the last 20 years that Olympic broadcasting in particular leaned into narratives and decided that the way to max out viewership was to make it all about stories and human interest. Or it's not about sports. It's. It's about human interest stories. But this is, this is, you could see this in the NFL.
Mike00:53:55You see this in the NFL all the time. This is, it's, I'm just going to be, I'm going to be blunt here. It's about, it's about women. It's about keeping women who are not sports fans, you know, interested during the games.
Sonny00:54:08Instead of going off to watch pillion, here they are ruining our sports.
JVL00:54:13When are they going to find a cure for a woman's mouth? As Dr. Spaceman once said.
Mike00:54:20Can I say one, one thing before we go? Before we close here, I'm just about Disney and the family movie and like the live action family movie thing, because yeah, national treasure. I agree. JVL is like ideal for this, but like there was a whole string of them and some of them were better and some of them were not, but like Disney was like churning them out in my childhood in the nineties, right?
JVL00:54:38Remember the Titans.
Mike00:54:39Cool runnings. Remember the Titans. Even like movies like the kid, remember the kid, which was Bruce Willis and it was like
JVL00:54:46also directed by John Turtletap.
Mike00:54:48That's right. But like a ton of sports. Movies like the big green, which we, we watched recently. It's like, which by the way, that's an amazing movie for like extremely low production values, but, but actually quite entertaining and enjoyable. And then like a few of the other studios, like the Warner brothers did a few of these like mostly a lot of sports movies is what I grew up watching. Ladybugs. Well, okay. I was thinking little giants, but yes. And like it, they just, they, they just don't make. Them anymore. I don't mean to just say, oh, they don't make movies like this anymore, but it's like.
JVL00:55:25They don't make movies like this.
Mike00:55:26No, they don't. And like, when I say there's no kids movie, it's not just like, when is the next animated, you know, uh, tent pole animated movie. It's like, where is the movie that I can take my kids to where they can see in the theater, like kids acting like kids in a, in a real setting, not in a fo setting, but like, and then with like grownup actors that I can enjoy and there's like jokes for me and jokes for the kids, but it's not inappropriate. And like, where is that movie? And the thing is, is it doesn't exist. And like, Disney doesn't care about it. Disney doesn't make those movies anymore. They're not even a rant. I don't even know what to do with it, but like, what the hell?
JVL00:56:05I mean, I don't know if it's true that they don't make those movies. You know, I have to think about, but if they do, they go to, to Disney plus. They go to Disney plus.
Mike00:56:11That's right.
JVL00:56:11Right. And so they're not that you don't get the quality, the theatrical quality. That's right. So you get like the second order versions of them, which they used to make. Like they're more like that used to be on the Disney or the Disney
Mike00:56:24channel movies, right?
JVL00:56:25Like the Disney channel. Exactly. Exactly.
Mike00:56:28But we all knew those were subpar.
JVL00:56:30Yeah.
Sonny00:56:30All right.
JVL00:56:31It's interesting. I'm trying to go ahead.
Sonny00:56:32I'm trying to think of what, like a movie like sidekicks, for instance, like, you know, the, the Jonathan Brandis, Chuck Norris movie, uh, or.
JVL00:56:43Or three ninjas. Three ninjas. Three ninjas.
Sonny00:56:45Three ninjas. Three ninjas. Kind of more like, well, yeah, but I mean, even, even stuff like that, they don't like live action. And high concept comedies for kids is absolutely angels in the
Mike00:56:56outfield rookie of the year. Yeah. Uh, the mighty ducks, you know, like it's like they, they, they
JVL00:57:01just, there's one of the professional wrestling that G money just watched, which I have to go.
Sonny00:57:07Oh, is that the relatively recent one starring the rock? Yeah.
JVL00:57:10I think. Yeah. Yeah.
Sonny00:57:11Yeah. The rock is in it. He's not really Steven merchant, right? Steven, Steven merchants in it.
JVL00:57:16I think so. I have to go look it up. Yeah. And Florence Pugh.
Sonny00:57:19That's the Florence Pugh one. Right. Like she's, she's the, I don't know.
Mike00:57:24Is that fighting with my family? No, no. That's, that's when I was thinking the biopic.
JVL00:57:30Yeah.
Mike00:57:31All right. All right.
JVL00:57:32Uh, we got to get out of here so I can tell you about miracle.
Mike00:57:34And there we go. Uh, all right. Well, I think that's all the time we were giving to cool runnings and this episode, join us over at sub beacon.com. Tell your friends and family, if they want to watch this, listen to this show, I should say they can do it at sub beacon.com. We will talk to you next time.
Sonny00:57:50All right.
JVL00:57:58So I have always been anti-American best on the side, you know, look, always against the commies, always pro the Americans.
Mike00:58:07Are you sure about that? Yeah.
JVL00:58:10Fucking I wanted Von Drago going down. I'm a cold war baby.
?00:58:13Okay.
JVL00:58:15But this time I was watching it and I was looking at it through different eyes. Sure. And the eyes I was looking at it through, it begins with the idea that the differences in age, that the guys who are on the Russian national team were men. Like they weren't college age kids. They weren't 23 and 24 year olds. They were grown ass men with families. And they had, they had been playing hockey at the highest possible level it could be played at. They were artists. And they were never allowed to go to the NHL. They could never play professionally. Their gifts were locked up inside the iron curtain where they got to live. And like, you know, because they were special, they got a two bedroom flat in Moscow. You know, you get second bedroom. Be grateful, Igor, you know, and, uh, and on the other hand, you've got these kids who, if you pay attention to the end credits, what are they doing now? Senior vice president of finance. Senior vice president of finance owns his own real estate company. Senior vice president of finance. And there is a world in which you could view this as a slobs versus snobs story. Sure. Where you have these professionals who have been held back their entire lives, who are raising families in an authoritarian state, who get nothing for it. They have to do what they're told and they're never allowed to get rich. And they go and show up in a hostile foreign country and a group of dilettante rich kids gets a one in a million victory against them. And the only thing that these guys had to live for, which was an Olympic gold medal. They don't get.
Sonny01:00:06Yeah, good. Fuck them.
JVL01:00:07Fuck. Yeah, America.
Mike01:00:08Fuck.
JVL01:00:09I don't know, man. I'm sorry.
Sonny01:00:11I'm not going to wait. I understand your argument here, but I'm not swayed by it in the slightest. It's not. It's important. It's important for them and the rest. Of the Russians, the rest of the Soviets to learn that you even you Russian masters at the top of your game cannot compete with the group of dipshit rich kids we threw together in a minute. Exactly. To come play you in your own sport. You know why we can do that? Because America's number one.
JVL01:00:38They had just beaten the NHL All-Stars like six nothing.
Sonny01:00:40America number one, baby. America number one. Not, not. Go eat your, go eat your bucket of goulash, Ivan. I don't know, man. It is.
Mike01:00:50It is weird in that you're, you're way off base. You're way off. I cannot.
Sonny01:00:54Well, maybe I, I understand I JBL, I totally understand where you're coming from here, but I don't care. I don't.
Mike01:01:01That's, uh, that's like, I just getting old.
JVL01:01:04Like I now look at them and I'm, I much more closely identified with the old Russians who
Sonny01:01:08just have all these responsibilities in the world, broken down Russians, the old guys
JVL01:01:12who just like, you know, they don't want to be doing this. They wish they could be. They wish they played for the Boston whalers, but they're not allowed to, and they wish they made more money. And they got a, you know, baby needs new baby needs new shoes and they're away from their families. All of that.
Mike01:01:28Right. And then, you know what? And then like, ah, yeah, these kids getting drunk all the time, but they, uh, you know, they get one lucky punch. You know what, you know, what would have gotten me on their side, JBL, if they had all defected.
Sonny01:01:38Yeah, actually, that's a good point. If the movie had ended with them defecting and becoming the next generation of American, you know, NHL players, I would have been like, okay, I do love defection stories.
JVL01:01:50Great. I love those. I love those.
Sonny01:01:53The defections during the Olympics. Doubly. Great. This is why, this is why the, I keep seeing, I keep seeing efforts to make this, this woman who is an American who is playing for the Chinese as like some sort of sympathetic figure, like, oh, she had, oh yeah. Oh, there's some, there's some female skier who is American and Chinese.
JVL01:02:15What's that? Was it, she couldn't make the us team.
Sonny01:02:17She couldn't make the us team. So she went and played for China.
JVL01:02:19Eileen Gu is her name.
Sonny01:02:21And fuck her. Fuck her with a, with a, she's the worst. She can, she should go live in China.
JVL01:02:27People do this. Is it just because it's China? Because people do this all the time. Like normally it's because they've got like a parent in the British Virgin Islands or Kazakhstan. Or Singapore. And so, yeah, yeah.
Sonny01:02:39Right. It's worse because it's China, but I do feel that way about any, anybody who does this. I don't, I don't care for this at all.
JVL01:02:45If they had a Greek parent and they could make the Greek ski team, would you still?
Sonny01:02:48I would still. I would still, I would be cheering against them, but I wouldn't be doing, I wouldn't
Mike01:02:52be like cursing while I don't care if they are from another country and they want to go play for a separate other country. I only care if they're Americans who don't want to play, compete for America.
JVL01:03:03So I gotta say on the other hand, watching these Olympics, it is clear that we have scooped up a whole lot of incredibly awesome Russian athletes because their parents got the fuck out of Dodge the minute they could, they came over here. And like the quad God like, Oh, we could live in America and just, you hear like their kid comes off the ice and he's like talking Russian totally, you know, to his coaches and uh, like, that's great.
Mike01:03:31Ain't that America?
JVL01:03:32Like this is, we were able to gobble them up if, uh, you know, USA number one.
?01:03:38Yeah.
Mike01:03:39I'm sure it's fine.
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