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#6. The Substandard Goes Rogue
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Dudes Chatting — Star Wars nostalgia and the Empire-is-Good thesis: Recorded the week Rogue One hit theaters, the episode has two distinct halves. The first is a roughly 22-minute tour of childhood Star Wars toy memories: the Death Star playset, the Millennium Falcon, Slave I, the AT-AT, and the holy-grail mail-away Boba Fett figure. The second half belongs to JVL's "The Empire Is Actually Good" argument, which he delivers with mock seriousness: the Jedi are arrogant, accept slavery, and are terrible at their jobs; the Rebellion is culturally imperialist (the Ewoks are a conquered people feted for helping foreign insurgents); Alderaan's destruction can be justified via a Tarkin Doctrine / atomic-bomb analogy; and Princess Leia is a liar who smuggled Death Star plans in violation of the treaty she was sent to negotiate. Vic and Sonny push back but mostly enjoy the ride. Hopes and expectations for Rogue One are discussed in the lead-up to opening weekend; no spoilers because none of them had seen it yet.
A Corrections segment is present. Spirit of the Week: Old Line Single Malt American Whiskey.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hi, Bill Kristol here, editor of The Weekly Standard. Here's my Christmas wish, that the Substandard podcast would go away.
Guest00:00:15They are requesting a call sign. It's, um, Rogue. Rogue One. Now, Lord Vader will provide us with the location of the Rebel Fortress by the time this station is operational. We will then crush the Rebellion with one swift stroke.
Vic00:00:36Prepare ship for light speed! No, no, no, light speed is too slow! Light speed too slow? Yes, we're gonna have to go right to... Ludicrous speed! Ludicrous speed? Sir, we've never gone that fast before. I don't know if the ship can take it. What's the matter, Colonel Sanders? Chicken? Welcome back to The Substandard with your hosts Victor Matus, Jonathan V. Last, and Sonny Bunch. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is coming out December 16th, so we decided to make this our Star Wars special edition of The Substandard. And just a reminder, The Substandard is again available on iTunes. Just search for Substandard on our podcasts. Be sure to subscribe, tell your friends, give us a review. Good to see you all. Uh, Sonny, it's good to have you back in the studio. Thank you. Uh, it was not the same without you, and just having you on Skype, you kind of sounded like Kylo Ren.
Sonny00:01:32Uh, that's, I mean, I, thank you, I guess. Adam Driver, he's pretty, he's pretty cool.
Vic00:01:38Yeah, yes, you should think about, uh, buying a vocabulizer. That's what I heard it's called, on the mask, by the way, according to the books. Uh, and, uh, Jonathan, how are you? Great. Good. Have you, uh, we talked about Techie Gifts, uh, on the last episode. Have you already started, uh, planning on getting, you know, gifts for the toy, uh, for the kids? Do you know what they want?
JVL00:01:58Uh, we, you know, we don't do a lot of the traditional toys. We don't do, like, action figures and Barbies, because we don't want to reinforce gender constructs that are created by society. You know, our children are free to discover who they are, and we want to support their journey.
Vic00:02:12So they play with mostly gender-neutral toys.
JVL00:02:14We like to get large hunks of irregular-shaped plastic from Scandinavian toy companies. And the children just invent their own fun with them. Yeah, you know what I hear? I'm only half-kidding, by the way.
Vic00:02:26I, I, you know what, if you have that, you'll just turn it into a gun, I think, what happens. Yeah. You turn it into the shape of a gun. Absolutely. Or a plane. Um, my son asked for, assuming he's not listening to this podcast, uh, the LEGO Slave I. He got really into it. Very problematic. He was watching it.
JVL00:02:42Very problematic.
Vic00:02:44Empire Strikes Back, he saw it, and then he said, "The, the catalog, of course, arrives at our house." And he says, "Look, look, look, here's a Slave I." You didn't think, I said, "No, there's no Slave I in the catalog, because it's all about Force Awakens." But sure enough, it was under the category of, uh, "Hard to Find," I believe it is. Rare Finds or Hard to Find, you know what that means. Yeah. How expensive was it?
JVL00:03:04Well, uh, $200. Buy it, buy it now, 'cause it's gonna get a lot more expensive than the minute it comes off the catalog.
Sonny00:03:08That's right. $200 is gonna turn into $400, so that's what I thought. And... You're really saving money by buying a $200 LEGO Slave I.
JVL00:03:14No, what you have to do is buy two. The one you give to the kid, and the other one you sell on eBay six months after LEGO discontinues it. That's right. And then you can make up for it. And then, and then the sets are free. Yes.
Vic00:03:24Boy, what a way to think about it. That's like me going to Vegas gambling in order to make up for the airfare.
JVL00:03:29That's how you pay for your airfare, your food, and your hotel.
Vic00:03:32You win it all back at the tables.
Sonny00:03:33And meals, and getting comped meals, because you spent thousands of dollars. That's why they built that city in the desert, all the free money they give away.
Vic00:03:39That's right, that's right. So, you know what, we, I said, "Okay, well, I better get it, because it's not gonna be in the, you know, it's gonna be, uh, out of stock soon, and then, as you mentioned, the price is gonna go up." So we did that. Didn't say, I told him, "I don't know, I, probably not, who knows, whatever." I didn't say anything, and it's, like, somewhere in the basement, I think, and, and then, like, a week later, he goes, "You know what, you're right, you're right, I, I don't need Slave 1, but how about the Death Star? What about the Death Star?" And that's definitely not gonna happen, um, that costs how much? No, I know. How much does the Death Star cost?
JVL00:04:05I don't know how much it costs, because Santa brought it for my son last year.
Vic00:04:08Oh, really? 'Cause I was gonna ask, uh, do either of you own a LEGO Death Star?
Sonny00:04:12I don't own, I haven't bought a LEGO set in, like, 20 years, um, but every time I walk past, like, the LEGO store at the mall, or the, the LEGO aisle at Target, my eyes kind of bug out of my head, and I'm like, "Oh." So that's what, that's what's awaiting my checkbook when, when my daughter turns, like, five.
JVL00:04:30The greatest, the greatest toys ever, the, uh, the LEGO Death Star is essentially a dollhouse for boys. It's so great, it's, so it's like this giant sphere that has, it has all the, well, I, like I said, it's a Santa toy, not, not a mommy and daddy common toy.
Sonny00:04:48Santa, Santa is the one who believes in gender constructs, not Jonathan.
JVL00:04:52I believe thousands of years of history have proved this to be true, and so what it is, is when you look at it, it has each of the, like, iconic scenes from the three different movies all mashed up in them, and so you have, like, the trash compactor from the first movie, then you have the freezing chamber from Empire, then you have the battle chamber from the, uh, Return of the Jedi, it's unbelievably cool.
Sonny00:05:14So it's like an episode four, five, six special. Wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry, so, wait.
JVL00:05:18Yes, and when we finish building it, it'll take up residence in my office, because it was a gift from Santa. It's a gift from Santa to my son. Hmm.
Sonny00:05:24Wait, I don't quite understand, so the Death Star, uh, playset from Lego has scenes that don't take place on the Death Star within it.
JVL00:05:34No, you know, I, I am, I am, no, I'm sorry, instant correction, it does not have the freezing chamber, because it does not have Empire stuff, so it is mashing up the two Death Stars. That's right, because that one, yes, I'm sorry.
Sonny00:05:47Because I was, I was about to write a very strongly worded letter to Lego. About the importance of canon.
JVL00:05:54Strongly worded, but polite, because they're Scandinavian.
Sonny00:05:56Well, they, they are Scandinavian.
Vic00:05:57You have to be polite. They're nice, they're nice folks. But you know what, it's interesting about that Lego Death Star you describe, it's almost like the original Kenner Death Star, which I had, from like 1979, that was the greatest Christmas present I ever got. And it is just, you know, rather than try to build an entire sphere, a battle station, as a toy, which is impossible, they try to make it to scale, and what they do is just give you a chunk of the Death Star. That's what that is, it's a chunk.
JVL00:06:23And so it's like a cross-section? Yes, yes. Like a diorama?
Vic00:06:25It's a total diorama cross-section, that's exactly what it is, Sonny. So there's kind of a cardboard paper outside that looks like it would be the outside surface. The bottom floor is the garbage compactor, right, and it came with bits of foam, and the monster. And you can turn a wheel and then make the room, you know, smaller and have the wall move and get the figures tight. The monster, do you remember what the monster's name is? We might as well just totally geek out at this point.
JVL00:06:51The monster's name was Dianoga. Dianoga. Yes.
Vic00:06:54Wow. Yeah, and then there was a midsection, which is where you can have the Star Destroyer commanders sort of just working on, pressing buttons, because that's all they did was press buttons. Boo! That's right, you didn't move that, it was a switchboard. And then the drawbridge, there was a drawbridge. So, you know, it combined into that scene. And then the top floor was like a laser cannon, but you can make it Darth Vader's throne room if you felt like it. Could you? Did you feel like it? I did, that was his office. Did you put a little chair in there?
Sonny00:07:23I did, well, it came with a little desk and like some Darth Vader stationery.
Vic00:07:27What's amazing is the cannon actually came with a chair, and it looked very comfortable, so you could sit. I guess you would sit a Star Destroyer commander or a stormtrooper there, but that was, for me, that was always Darth Vader's chair. But the knees are not articulated, right?
JVL00:07:40No, no, you're reclining. You sit them down. It's like a lazy boy. It's like a lazy boy. It's only their feet are sitting straight out.
Vic00:07:45Sonny, you mentioned that you hadn't purchased Star Wars toys, at least since you were a child. So was this like, were you buying stuff from The Phantom Menace when you were a kid?
Sonny00:07:56Yes, I was 10 years old when The Phantom Menace, no, I was 17 when The Phantom Menace. No, I, so my, the only Star Wars toys I've ever purchased myself, it was when they did a re-release of the toys in like, I want to say it was 97? Wow. Or 98? Well, that's when they did the re-release of the special editions. Which were so much better. And I bought, yeah. Oh, I love those special editions. It really fleshed out all the things you were missing. From the first, from the original cuts. When I, when I was, I guess, 15 or, it must have been 15, I'm pretty sure it was 97, I actually bought the like, whole run. The whole like, first run. I got the Boba Fetts and the, you know. Wow. And, but it was very expensive and I didn't have enough money.
Vic00:08:38They were probably better quality than the original 10 or worse.
Sonny00:08:40Yes, very, very much so. So I put them on layaway at Walmart. I got them all on the first day. I put them on layaway at Walmart and I paid them off like $10 a week for like. Six months or something. Are you a, I didn't know you were a layaway kind of guy.
JVL00:08:55Do you do this at TJ Maxx?
Sonny00:08:56My parents thought it was, my parents thought it was a very important lesson on learning financial responsibility. It was my first experience with credit. It was really a, it was really. So anyway, so I bought all of these as an investment opportunity. Speaking of the, like, buy one Lego set, save one to sell. And they're sitting in a box up in my parents' attic molding away somewhere. But I did take one, I did take the Darth Vader toy. The Darth Vader action figure slash doll. And took it to be signed by one Dave Prowse. Whoa. The physical, the body of Darth Vader. I met the physical body of Darth Vader. And it was one of the, really honestly, one of the saddest moments of my life. It was, the signing was set up by my local comic book store. And it took place in a trailer off the side of the highway. Can't believe you're married. And it was, it was really, it was like, he was, he was very nice, Dave Prowse. He loved. He loves, he loves meeting with fans. Did he have a voice that was even close to, or was it falsetto? No, he's very British. He's very, he's, he's a very large British man who, like, if you, if you follow, he's like very upset with Lucasfilm. He's been fighting with them for years about money and, and whatever. And credit, really, more than anything else. But he, he's like kind of creaky and he's very, again, he's very big. He's very, like, not quite Peter Mayhew, Chewbacca big, but big dude.
Vic00:10:16Not to, not to, I hate to jump all over the place because this is, you know, Star Wars with the three of us. This is opening up a can of worms here, but just a really quick aside and I'll bring it back to the, the main, is David Prowse, he's not the guy, however, when they take off Darth Vader's mask in Return of the Jedi. No, that's a different guy. So that's a whole other body that they use. He's just, he's the guy who walks around.
JVL00:10:36He's a mannequin. He's a walking mannequin.
Sonny00:10:39He was, and he's very upset because he thought, he thought that the, the voice of, he was going to also be the voice of Darth Vader. So he did all the lines on the set and he, you know, he liked, and when he finally saw the movie at the premiere and heard James Earl Jones, he was furious. He was like, what happened to me?
JVL00:10:54Lucas goes, no, no, that's just how you sound. You know, everybody, everybody thinks they sound differently in their own head than in real life. That's true. That's just how you sound, David.
Sonny00:11:01So anyway, I have a signed Darth Vader action figure that is one of my, one of my. Of course it's in the box.
JVL00:11:09He didn't sign the toy.
Sonny00:11:11He didn't like, he didn't sign it like that, right? He didn't, he wasn't like signing the boobs of Darth Vader, you know?
JVL00:11:16That's going to be worth dozens of dollars someday.
Sonny00:11:18I mean, it's probably, frankly. It's probably the only thing of value that I own.
Vic00:11:22I don't know. You know, my buddy from home, John Buckley, claims that he had, at the time, like 1983, purchased a Y-Wing fighter and left it in the box. I don't know if that is still true, how much that would be worth. It's probably worth a lot. Probably worth a fair amount.
JVL00:11:36A Y-Wing. An original Y-Wing. The original Y-Wings were really low production runs, right?
Sonny00:11:40Unless I'm, you could never find them at Kitty City or Toys R Us. You would hear like, oh, I heard of somebody who bought one of these once upon a time. Kitty City. What is Kitty City? It's a South Jersey toy chain. You have them, right? It's sad. I've heard of it. KB Toys. Oh, KB. Who knew? I was a KB toy guy. KB Toys is a real thing. Kitty City sounds like a child porn shop.
Vic00:12:00It's where Michael Jackson used to hang out.
JVL00:12:02It's a, you know, multiple platform, vertically integrated shop. They do all sorts of things.
Vic00:12:06What I was going to say is, I remember the first Star Wars toy I got. It was like from a friend of my mother's. She had given me this. It was a three-pack of the action figures. And, you know, the story is that when Star Wars came out and Kenner finally got the license for it, they were remodeling. They were remodeling. They were way behind. And so the demand was astronomical, and they were not able to meet that demand. And so you had to put in, like, coupons and things like that. But the thing I got was a three-pack of Darth Vader, a Star Destroyer Commander, and a Stormtrooper. Just those three. And that's what I played with, like, for the first, you know, weeks or whatever. Are those your first memories? Yeah. Are your first memories? No. Playing with your Star Wars dolls? My first memory, I think, is watching the Dinosaur TV show. I learned a lot of my broadcasting chops. I learned from watching that and Merv Griffin. But those three, I don't know, maybe that's why I like bad guys. But I enjoyed having those as the action figures. And as I mentioned, the Death Star is probably one of my favorite things that I had. Although eventually it all gets taken apart and dismantled for some reason, and then pieces go missing. I had the Millennium Falcon. You grow up. Of course you did. But you had the Death Star and the Millennium Falcon because you're the doctor's kid.
JVL00:13:20The rich doctor's kid had everything.
Vic00:13:21And by the way, that radar dish, gone. You know it's going to be gone very soon. The Millennium Falcon was excellent. What I did not have, but I wished I had, was Slave I. Because that came with, oh, look at that. And it came with Han Solo and Carbonite, right?
JVL00:13:42Yeah, it was hollow. Like backless hollow. I would say if they had actually added the bottom piece to it, it would have been a little bit cooler. Everything about Slave I, if I could just say, felt cheap and chintzy. Like when I got it, I was so excited. And then I got it out of the box, and I thought, man, someone's really squeezing us for profits here.
Vic00:14:01But it's connected to Boba Fett, and I think that's right.
JVL00:14:04Did you send away for the Boba Fett? I can't remember if I did. I did, and it took like a year and a half. And when I got it, finally, the rocket had been glued into it. You could see the glue on it, where they had run the production first, then had it gotten to launch. They had a lawsuit over the rocket shooting out and killing somebody by putting it through their eye or something. And so they had just, instead of recasting them, instead of recasting the molds, they said, well, we'll just glue the rockets in. And that's what I got. I was so disappointed.
Vic00:14:35I still have that Boba Fett, and it's in my son's room. And that rocket, it's stuck, but it moves. And I got to think that that probably was, at some point in time, detachable. So, you know, I mean, that is, as you mentioned, but I think it was probably one of the original ones. What were, I never had the AT-AT, the All-Terrain Armored Transport from Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. I did. You know. Yeah, that was awesome. Really.
Sonny00:14:58Was the AT-AT the one that was like the storage, you put the toys in it?
JVL00:15:02No, no, this was an actual vehicle with the moving, and the articulated knees on it clicked when you moved them. And also you put batteries in, so the cannons went in and out, making hand motions that looked like shake weight. Please keep that going. The shake weight hand motions of the front cannons. And it was tremendous, because as a six or seven-year-old kid, the height of the AT-AT, it almost came up to your waist, so you felt like you had an enormous, enormous...
Vic00:15:30I imagine that you could put troops inside it, though.
JVL00:15:33Oh, yeah, absolutely, and it had the little pegs on the inside, so the main body of it had the little pegs where you could stand up your troopers in there to make them look. And so you combine that with the snow speeder, it was hours and hours and hours of fun. My first vehicle was, I remember this incredibly clearly, and we got it at Kitty City. And it was the Darth Vader TIE Fighter.
Vic00:15:54Oh, you know, you had clearly better stuff than I did, even though I'm a doctor, I'm the child of a doctor.
JVL00:16:00So I had gotten the Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker figures first, and I was incredibly jazzed by the tiny, one-half-millimeter thickness plastic lightsaber, which you could move out of their arms. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And the end of which was incredibly thin, do you remember? So the lightsaber itself was like half of a millimeter thick, but then it had a little candle-like edge. Yeah, you could bend, which itself was like, I don't know, a fifth of a thickness or something like that. And that thing would, like, bend or get twisted off, and it was always sticking out, even when the lightsaber was theoretically retracted. I thought that was great. I thought, in terms of smaller vehicles, I thought the Landspeeder was a really nicely conceived-of toy, because it had the wheels, which were on springs.
Vic00:16:42It was a good mold.
JVL00:16:42Which could be a good mold. They could be recessed, and then you could pull a lever so the wheels popped out. And if you put it on your linoleum... floor in your kitchen, because we all had linoleum. Nobody had tile or anything like that in their floors. It really looked like it was kind of hovering. Floating. Yeah, it really did. I thought the Landspeeder was, in the, like, $9 class of vehicles, very, very highly made.
Sonny00:17:06How many dollars is that in today dollars?
JVL00:17:08That's an excellent question. $9 in today dollars. I bet it's probably a $19 toy today, something like that, or an $18 toy if you go to Target. My big gripe, though, was that, unlike G.I. Joe, which... ...nearly every vehicle is packaged with a figure. Yeah. Star Wars never did that. No. So you get a vehicle, you just get the vehicle, and then you've got to go buy the TIE Fighter pilot or the X-Wing pilot separately.
Vic00:17:29Otherwise, and if you don't, then you're out of luck that Lando Calrissian is flying a TIE Fighter. You know, that's what's going to happen. I just had the regular one, which the wigs could pop out. Yes. You know, as if you destroyed it. But I was like, why would you want to destroy the TIE Fighter? Because it's going to win. There were toys that I thought were terrible in that Star Wars collection, by the way. First of all, any figure... There was a figure that didn't come with a weapon. Did you know this? They were like C-3PO Death Star droid. Hands are completely... They were sealed hands. No weapons. It's completely useless. And yet you bought them. Power droid. All of them. You know, you just had them. Sonny's looking at me in disbelief. I love Bosk. All of the bounty hunters. I love the... Yes.
JVL00:18:07Who's the bounty hunter with all the bandages around his head? Dengar. Dengar.
Vic00:18:10Who has seen a... He was seen a second life on the Star Wars, Lego Star Wars TV show, and also on the... Robot Chicken, Seth Greed, Star Wars spoofs. But they make Dengar in those video spoofs very flamboyant, which is...
JVL00:18:27I like that. That's a good choice.
Vic00:18:29And his ship is a toilet bowl in that, you know, chasing after, you know, Slave I and the Millennium Falcon. And, of course, IG-88 was the other bounty hunter. The assassin droid.
JVL00:18:42Do you remember the real cash grab era of Star Wars toys when they gave the die-cast miniatures? Yeah. They did a random... When they put those things out, and they were... I think they were one or one and a half inch tall, just die-cast metal action figures that you put in place that didn't move at all.
Vic00:18:58No, they didn't even... It was bad enough that the Star Wars figures had limited motion. Right. Compared with the G.I. Joe guys.
JVL00:19:04And why anybody would need a die-cast miniature version of a toy they already have? People can't get enough. They collect these things. Had it anyway.
Vic00:19:10Yeah. I got the Cloud City Twin Pods. Yes. Useless. Terrible.
JVL00:19:14Like Slave I, it was a terrible, terrible toy. My father looked at it.
Vic00:19:18He said, looks like shoes. Looks like you bought... Shoes, plastic shoes. And of course, I'll tell you what I did not get, and I was very disappointed with when I saw a picture of it, was the Jabba's Palace. And there's a story about this. They had something go wrong with the Jabba figure, and his eyes are these black, like black diamonds. I mean, that makes no sense. Jabba does not have black diamond eyes. And so, I don't know what happened there. But by then, everything was going down. And, you know, I think I have one Return of the Jedi figure I had stopped collecting by then.
JVL00:19:48I think that's... I... We have parallel lives. I believe I am the exact same way.
Vic00:19:52You know, that was it.
JVL00:19:53And the figures did not... Was the black-clad Luke? Yeah. I think that's what I had. No, no, no. I had one of Jabba's...
Vic00:19:59I had one of Jabba's henchmen. And it was given to me as a gift. I didn't buy it.
JVL00:20:02Not Lando and his Jabba Palace guard. No, no, no. One of the little pig creature things?
Vic00:20:07No, no. This was... He was like a mummy face with braids. And he's the character that forces Luke Skywalker onto the plank, the gangplank. That guy, yeah. If you want to get into the details. The deets. So now that we've done 20 minutes... Yes, yes. And really quickly...
Sonny00:20:22Literally 20 minutes on Star Wars toys from 30 years ago.
JVL00:20:26You tweeted us your favorite Star Wars toys. We would love to hear your favorite memory. No, I'm actually totally serious about this. You should... Don't tweet us, though. Just email us and...
Sonny00:20:35Hashtag Snaggletooth. You can tweet at me. I won't respond. But you can tweet at me. That's fine. Just email me. It's jlastatweeklystandard.com.
Vic00:20:42The answer is Ugnaught. The answer is Ugnaught. Ugnaught. But I will say what's funny is they were, you know, stiff molds. They had these figures, but they had longevity compared to the G.I. Joe figures. So my mother, she kept all that stuff in our house, and when I go up to, you know, up there and my son wants to see all the old toys, you know, the G.I. Joe figures, they were connect... They had screws. They were metal, and they also... Plastic. They were plastic, but there were metal screws connecting them and their fancy kung fu grip, but they also had rubber bands connecting the body. Over time...
Sonny00:21:15Well, you could, like, pull them apart.
Vic00:21:16Well, what happened was over time, the rubber bands just dried up, and now they're just body parts. Body parts everywhere. Torsoes.
JVL00:21:21So when I was a kid, I would take a screwdriver, I would unscrew the back of the G.I. Joe, take them apart, take all the... And then make my own G.I. Joe characters out of them.
Vic00:21:29You were making transplants.
JVL00:21:30No, no, like, my only... And I would create a backstory for them, and I would create a new specialty and mix up the weapons and stuff. So you're... And I was 16, age 16 or 17, and I was really...
Sonny00:21:41I don't know why I...
JVL00:21:42Did I ever mention that I didn't get to go to Homecoming?
Sonny00:21:44So wait, wait, wait. So you were the creepy kid from Toy Story, then?
JVL00:21:48No, because this was not, like, me. I mean, Frankenstein.
Sonny00:21:51You were, like, you were creating horrible abominations out of different parts of toys.
JVL00:21:56No, this was Choose Your Own Adventure. This was mixing Airborne and Torpedo.
Sonny00:22:01All sociopaths tell them that they're doing good things.
Vic00:22:03What you just described is human centipede, is what you just described, okay? Okay, well, let's move on now. Sonny, should we move on? I think you're saying we should move on.
Sonny00:22:12Well, let's... No, I mean, we've only done this for 22 minutes.
Vic00:22:14Let's keep going. So the question is, again, why are we talking...
Sonny00:22:16I could talk about Ghostbusters toys. Could we talk about Ghostbusters toys? We were in college at the time, I think.
Vic00:22:21Okay, so the reason why we're talking about all this, obviously, is because on December 16th, the biggest movie of the year comes out, Rogue One, A Star Wars Story. Now, that subtitle, everyone's very excited, but the subtitle is significant, isn't it? A Star Wars Story. What's going on there?
Sonny00:22:38So neither I nor literally anyone else has seen this movie yet. They're not going to screen it, right? They will screen it. I have already RSVP'd for the critics screening. I'll see it before you suckers. All you suckers listening. But it's a Star Wars story, which means that they are skipping over, you know, they don't do the fanfare anymore because it's not 20th Century Fox, which is already one big blow. And they're not going to do the crawl with the kind of standard Star Wars stuff. And it's not a John Williams scored Star Wars film. I mean, they're doing what they have done is basically created a... A movie that has some of the trappings of Star Wars, but without any of the feel of Star Wars.
Vic00:23:25So there's not going to be like an episode 3.5?
Sonny00:23:28There's no explaining what's going on. There's no... And so the movie... But we already know what happens in this movie. It's a movie about the plans to... The effort to steal the Death Star plans. So we kind of know what's going to happen and we kind of know how it's going to end up and... Does it have a Mary Sue in it? Probably. To give us some context.
JVL00:23:49To give us some continuity so that people really feel like they're in a Star Wars movie.
Sonny00:23:52I assume that this movie will, like Rey from The Force Awakens, have a Mary Sue in it. And a Mary Sue, for those of you who don't know, is a... It's kind of a... It's a fan fiction term that denotes a character who is too good. Who is too good at what she does and is loved by everybody and is... Anyway, so Rogue One comes out. And Rogue One is... Is interesting to me. Again, just from watching the ads, I have no idea. I have no idea what will actually happen in this movie. None of us have seen it. But from the ads, it looks like they are making a very strong effort to evil up the Empire. They are really trying to... Why is that?
Vic00:24:34Well, you know, I...
JVL00:24:36It's because of me.
Sonny00:24:37It's because of Jonathan Last. Jonathan Last has, for years now, argued that the Empire are actually the good guys.
JVL00:24:49Deep stuff, Jonathan. Yeah, well, this is the only thing anybody will ever... I mean, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, and there's like some... Fingers crossed. Fingers crossed.
Vic00:25:00It's every editor's dream, by the way. It's Mike Kinsley's joke that the writer submits a copy and then gets hit by a bus.
JVL00:25:07Yeah, so if Politico does one paragraph on whoever writes their media, Hadas Gold, does she do Politico? No, she does... Hadas Gold isn't Politico. Is she a Politico? If she does a media mention of it, it will be, you know, the... The guy who mainstreamed the empire being good argument. And this has become, I think, a reasonably accepted cultural stance.
Sonny00:25:29It is still a minority position, certainly. Minority position. It is a minority position. But it is not laughed out of the room.
JVL00:25:37No, this is like Keynesianism in the late 1970s.
Vic00:25:41It would be like saying you're a fan of British imperialism.
Sonny00:25:45Well, that's actually much more verboten now. Yeah, you couldn't do that. I once dared Ross Douthat to write a defense of Rudyard Kipling in the New York Times. He couldn't do it. He would not. He obliquely did it once. Hi, Ross. He obliquely did it once later on. But it was, you know.
JVL00:26:03So when you look at the original movies, and the key is you have to stick to the movies because all of the expanded universe stuff is really ephemeral because the Lucasfilm people can, and in fact have, just wiped it all out. So all the expanded universe that existed before Disney purchased Star Wars. The books, the comics, the cartoons. Right. Those things are no longer canon, and they just were airbrushed out of history. So if you rely on just the movies, what you are told in the original Star Wars, the first six films, is actually quite different from what you see. And you are told that the Empire and the Dark Side are the forces of evil and that the rebels and the Jedi are the forces of good but when you actually look at what's going on and you decide that you are not going to simply accept George Lucas' off-the-shelf moral cues, the story you see is very different. And you see a story where you have a reasonably functioning central government run by the Empire, which is certainly autocratic, but is autocratic in the way that, I would say, your more benign autocracies in history have been. And compared with them, you have... You have a rebellion which is really, really problematic, and where people lie constantly all the time, where there is no interest whatsoever in actual welfare of people or in what comes next after you overthrow the Empire. And I think all things considered, one of the things you learn is that if you are a generic person in the Star Wars galaxy, your life is probably better under the Empire than it is at the close of Return of the Jedi.
Sonny00:27:46One of the things that really needs to be acknowledged here is that all of this kind of revisionism, if you will, is predicated upon what happens in the prequels, right? Like, the prequels kind of lay out this universe that is totally non-functional, that is totally, you know, not great for the average person, where we learn that the Jedi are kind of an aristocracy, a genetic lie, lottery-winning band of, you know, psychopaths. You think that they have the right to rule the universe. JVL, can you talk a little bit about the problem with the Jedi?
Vic00:28:32Because I thought the Jedi were a force of good, the force. It's good versus evil. Is it good versus evil?
JVL00:28:38The Jedi are terrible. They're really, really terrible. So they're unbelievably arrogant in the prequels. We have the Jedi librarian who is asked, you know, where is this planet, Jocasta? And she says, well, you know, if it's not, if it's not in our archives, then it doesn't exist.
Vic00:28:51You're talking about the Kamino system?
JVL00:28:53Possibly. And, of course, it does exist and terrible consequences for the galaxy because the Jedi just think, well, we have all the answers. If we don't have the answer, then there isn't a question. You see, when Qui-Gon Jinn shows up, their total acceptance of slavery, Qui-Gon Jinn shows up on Tatooine, he sees little Jake Lloyd with his high midichlorian count. He is told that Jake Lloyd and his mother are slaves, not slave-like, but actual chattel slaves. Actually, literally. Literally owned by someone. Literally owned by someone.
Sonny00:29:21And sold, bet in wagers.
JVL00:29:23And his response to chattel slavery of human beings is to shrug his shoulders. Except that he wants Jake Lloyd. And so then he's willing to make a bargain and cheat in a wager to take Jake Lloyd from his owner while leaving the mother there. Qui-Gon Jinn is, all of a sudden, he's got some Star Trek-like prime directive where he can't interfere in the affairs of Tatooine and just cut Watto's head off or something like that. Which makes zero sense, except that the Jedi don't care about the average person. The Jedi see something like slavery and just say, meh, okay, fine.
Vic00:30:01Well, he likes Jar Jar Binks, doesn't he?
JVL00:30:05He, I guess, likes Jar Jar Binks. They get along well. They get along. But he can use him. Secret Sith Jar Jar Binks.
Sonny00:30:10Secret Sith Jar Jar Binks. Just Google, we're not going to go into this, but just Google Secret Sith Jar Jar Binks.
JVL00:30:15After this, we should have a whole show notes section that we either post on Twitter or post somewhere or you tweet out or something with the links to all of these pieces.
Sonny00:30:23I'll do that at the Free Beacon in my write-up. Yeah, you should do that. That's excellent. Washington Free Beacon.
JVL00:30:29The Jedi are just terrible all around, and you balance them against the dark side, who we're told. Do you remember the Darth Side blog? Yes. The Darth Vader blog, which is one of these. So this is non-canon.
Sonny00:30:44What a musing.
JVL00:30:45There was this fantastic blog written by this guy who decided to take the metaphysics and her hermeneutics of Jedi theology seriously and do it then as the blog of Darth Vader, like his diary, his internal diary. It's really funny. Up until the very last few entries, which he spins out like a 5,000-word essay explaining the dark side and how what the dark side really is is people who believe that life matters and that we are in this messy universe. We are all warm food in the end and that in the interregnum, we must work hard and fight to make the universe a better place and we cannot just be disinterested observers who believe that we are above humanity and above this thing called life. I would say it really works as an explanation for what the Jedi and the dark side are about.
Vic00:31:33I was never attracted to the rebellion watching it as a kid. I mean, if you watch those movies, they're kind of a ragtag bunch, you know? I mean, there's nothing very, you know, nothing really defines them in terms of how they look, the ships that they fly in versus, I mean, you ever see those giant transports that they're on?
Sonny00:31:53There's just lots of curves and humps. Interestingly, the big fan of Germany in the room is in favor of, you know, a uniform look. Sharp angles, great uniforms.
Vic00:32:05Ordnung, I mean, I'm sorry, order, and great uniforms. But I thought it was,
JVL00:32:10and of course the British accent. Who do you dress up as for Halloween? You dressed up as Darth Vader. Yeah, this is what I was going to say. I look, our neighborhood has
Vic00:32:16a Halloween parade block party, and if anyone's watching, he's dressed up in Star Wars outfits. They're not dressed up, you know, as Qui-Gon Jinn. Stormtroopers. Or Luke Skywalker.
JVL00:32:25Look, think of it. Boba Fett.
Vic00:32:26Stormtroopers. Boba Fett, Stormtroopers. Kylo Ren.
JVL00:32:29Think of it this way. In the Harry Potter universe, Voldemort is really bad. There isn't really a case to be made, although I may have written one at one point, but there really isn't a case to be made as Voldemort being the secret good guy. And as a result of that, you never see kids dressed up as Voldemort. This is something that literally never happens. Yet on Star Wars, people intuit, they get to their core that they're being fed a line by Lucas, that the Empire isn't really bad, and there's something kind of cool about them, and interesting.
Sonny00:32:59What is that?
Vic00:33:00Go ahead, Sonny.
Sonny00:33:00Well, this is one of the things that you kind of, if you are a student of Empireology, this is one of the things that you notice in The Force Awakens, is how J.J. Abrams has to really go out of his way to evil up the remnant of the Empire, like literal Nazi rallies. And if you go back and watch A New Hope, go back and watch A New Hope, and watch the end scene, the scene in the awards room, what actually happens in there is like something out of a Riefenstahl film. It's literally modeled on a Riefenstahl film. So if you watch that, the rebels are actually the Nazi rally. In The Force Awakens, you have the screaming Hitlerite hucks. That's Stavro Gleeson.
JVL00:33:45Which is Brendan Gleeson's son.
Sonny00:33:47He's very good in other movies. He's not bad. He's not very good in this, because again, it's so over the top. Yeah, so over the top. I don't even know if he's miscast. I just think the character is conceived poorly, as this kind of screaming. Because if you, again, go back to A New Hope, and the Empire, they are steely. You know, you have your Grand Moff Tarkin, who is a steely kind of presence, but he's not a screaming Nazi Hitlerite type. He's not a lunatic. They're just dudes who are trying to maintain some order in the universe. This is literally, they are explicit about this,
JVL00:34:18that all... All the Empire wants is order. This is Darth Vader's pitch to Luke in Empire. He doesn't say, join me and we will rule the galaxy with an iron hand and extract wealth.
Vic00:34:29We kind of do that, except for that.
JVL00:34:30No, and extract wealth and have ourselves a bunch of slaves and get, you know, a bunch of beautiful chicks or anything like that.
Vic00:34:36And what did you say? And we could put an end to this. We could put an end to this destructive conflict
JVL00:34:39and bring order.
Vic00:34:41Like, what's wrong with that?
JVL00:34:42What could be wrong with order? So, yeah, and then this is Grand Moff Tarkin. So Grand Moff Tarkin's doctrine... The Tarkin. The Tarkin doctrine, as we like to say, is that we're going to build this giant battle station because if we do this, then we can rule the universe not through force, but through the credible threat of force. Yes. It is very much like the Pax Americana. This is very much like the Pax Americana. And again, you just have to go beyond what it is that George Lucas is spoon-feeding you.
Vic00:35:09Didn't I hear somewhere somebody has written about Return of the Jedi being some sort of Vietnam War allegory, in terms of the Ewoks as the Viet Cong versus the Americans?
Sonny00:35:21Let's talk about the Ewoks. Let's talk about the Ewoks. Because you know what I see when I see Return of the Jedi? I see imperialist rebels convincing the helpless, literally furry, non-armored, stick-waving Ewoks to go against armored, laser-bearing stormtroopers. This is imperialism at its worst. The Ewoks lived in peace with the Empire. The Ewoks lived on the moon of Endor, and they did nothing. They were not hunted to extinction. They were just kind of live and let live. And then you have this magical person come and show them the golden god of C-3PO and say, your god tells you... And pretend to be a god.
JVL00:36:03This is cultural imperialism at its worst.
Sonny00:36:06You go out and you fight for your god. You go destroy the awful people who are oppressing us. It's really horrifying, if you think about it, for more than the 30 seconds that George Lucas asks you to think about it. It's really a horrifying state of affairs.
JVL00:36:24Look, it's not an accident that the Empire comes down to build their shield generator on Endor, and they choose to do it in such a way with minimal environmental impact from what we can see. The truth is, the Ewoks...
Sonny00:36:35There were no emissions. No, zero emissions. Very little forest clearing.
JVL00:36:39The Ewoks are running around doing their thing, and the Empire is in minimal contact with them. It's almost like they're treating the Ewoks
Sonny00:36:44as an endangered species.
Vic00:36:44The worst destruction that happened was when the rebels blew up the shield, wasn't it?
JVL00:36:49It takes up a huge... Sonny, who was it who wrote this? I can't remember the name. The physics of what happens if you blow up Death Star 2 above the moon of Endor. It would destroy all life. Immediately, the Ewoks become extinct, because as that debris is falling, it's like the equivalent of a giant asteroid. Flash fires across the moon. Yeah, so the end of this, which shows the Ewoks celebrating and drumming and singing yub-yub, 45 minutes later, they're all dead, every last one of them, and it's because of C-3PO and the rebels. Uh... Wow. Yeah. Wow.
Sonny00:37:21This is, you know... These are all things to consider as you go into Rogue One.
JVL00:37:26Can we talk about Alderaan, Sonny? We can talk about Alderaan. So... Because, Sonny, the Empire must be evil. They blew up Alderaan.
Sonny00:37:33So this is a common refrain that you hear from... It's genocide, isn't it, Sonny? This is what you hear from rebel apologists, is that the destruction of Alderaan is per se a bad thing. The Empire is evil because they blew up a planet. Now, as we mentioned, there is a thing called the Tarkin Doctrine which basically says we will build this giant space station at great cost to the Empire in order to maintain peace around the world... or around the galaxy. Sorry, I'm confusing it again with the Pax Americana. The, you know... Yes, it is perhaps a drastic course of action to destroy an entire planet. But let's remember it's a planet of traitors. It's a planet of people who are funding rebellion. It's a planet of people who are providing the intellectual and ideological reasons for this rebellion. So it's not like they're all just kind of innocent bystanders in this thing. The simplest way to describe the Tarkin Doctrine is to say, well, you lose one planet and you save the rest, right? You lose one planet and you maintain order, you save the rest... It's a regime.
Vic00:38:41I was going to say, are you making a... It's an atomic bomb argument. Exactly.
Sonny00:38:45So, you know, I am open to the idea that... Alderaan is some sort of terrible tragedy, but only if you're equally willing to condemn Harry Truman to the annals of history as a horrible, warmongering monster. And if you aren't, and most reasonable people aren't, then I think Tarkin gets a pass.
JVL00:39:06Also important to remember that everything we think we know about Alderaan comes from Princess Leia. A liar. A noted liar. And Princess Leia, in episode four, literally every single statement she makes about the Empire is a knowing falsehood. She, in the beginning, she says, I don't have any plans. I don't know what you're talking about. She says that this ship is a diplomatic ship. We're on a mission of mercy.
Vic00:39:28A mission of mercy. Both of these things are lies. Also the rebel base of Dantooine.
JVL00:39:32When she was brought to be with Tarkin and he threatens to blow up Alderaan, she says, we don't have any weapons at all. Why should we believe this? We have everything else she said is lying. Then when she finally gives the name of the base and gives it up, she's lying about that when she fingers Dantooine. So you would have to believe suddenly that of all the falsehoods she has told, that suddenly she's a reliable witness because she says, well, we're peaceful. We don't have any weapons. I would say, in a way, it's not even blowing up. It's not even dropping the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It would be like dropping the bomb on Fallujah, you know, to make an example. It is, in fact, not a normal planet. It is, in fact, the headquarters of, the rebellion.
Sonny00:40:20Yeah, yeah.
JVL00:40:21And also, in all this, we would be, I would say, remiss to not talk about our Twitter buddy Comfortably Smug's piece about the radicalization of Luke Skywalker because you can very, very easily read it. Decider.com? It was Decider.com. Sonny, you'll put all this. Go follow Sonny on Twitter
Sonny00:40:38or go to FreeBeacon.com. FreeBeacon.com.
JVL00:40:41And you can read Luke Skywalker's entire narrative arc through episodes four, five, and six. It's a young boy who has been orphaned and is being radicalized by a militant religion. And it's totally persuasive, I would say.
Sonny00:40:57Yeah. Well, Comfortably Smug is one of our favorite people on Twitter because he has, I think, kind of definitively proven that Luke Skywalker is not to be trusted.
Vic00:41:07Luke Skywalker is a terrorist.
Sonny00:41:08Luke Skywalker, look, I feel pity for Luke Skywalker. He has fallen under the sway of aged leaders of madrasas. And, you know, I'm shrugging. I'm shrugging right now into the mic. It's not really working.
Vic00:41:24Rogue One, to use the term, is too big to fail, right, guys? I mean, it's going to be a big movie even if it's bad. But it can be bad. You think it's going to be bad? I don't think it's going to be bad.
Sonny00:41:34I don't know. I mean, from a pure pox office perspective, I can't see this movie doing less than $300 million domestic, and I can't see it doing less than $800 or $900 million worldwide.
Vic00:41:47And as a result, the Star Wars stories, and this is their test, because then they're going to come up with a bunch of other Star Wars stories.
Sonny00:41:54Well, they're currently shooting the young Han Solo movie, which sounds terrible and really awful.
JVL00:42:00Could they make Han Solo trans? I'd really like that.
Sonny00:42:04That's a what if. We need, like, a what if Star Wars universe.
Vic00:42:08Well, it would be like Bob Dylan played by Cate Blanchett, sure.
Sonny00:42:12But the...
JVL00:42:13No, I don't mean played. I mean, play him as trans. I just think that...
Sonny00:42:17He should start as a woman, is what you're saying. Is what you're saying. And that halfway through the movie, he becomes... Transition over.
JVL00:42:21I just feel like we're so pinned in to all this privilege in the Star Wars universe, and I'm a little woke myself.
Sonny00:42:29A little.
JVL00:42:30A little. A little. That's why we use the Scandinavian toys at home. Yeah, no, we have these movies coming out one a year, basically from here to the horizon.
Sonny00:42:38Until you are dead. Yeah. Until you are in the ground and being eaten by worms, or we all die in the nuclear fire that is precipitated by our great... New administration. You will have a Star Wars movie in December forever. You will have a Star Wars movie in the month of December celebrating the birth of Christ till you're dead.
Vic00:43:01Do you think that there'll probably be a Star Wars story, say, about the Bothan spies who took the blueprints for the second Death Star between episodes five and six?
JVL00:43:13Would I think the end game of this... Many Bothans died, as Mon Mothra says. The end game of this is when we have spin-offs that don't touch the original trilogy at all. In a way, actually, I am hopeful for Rogue One, not just because it has Mads Mikkelsen in it, and I'll watch him... Love Mads Mikkelsen. He's great. He really is great. But I am hopeful that Disney finally doesn't feel hemmed in by the original movies anymore, that they can treat this as a real blank canvas to just try to do some good storytelling. But when we progress to the point where we're all all of a sudden, you can be spinning off of new characters. So there may be, you know, the blind monk in Rogue One becomes so interesting that he can have his own movie.
Sonny00:43:58I don't think we're... That's ten years from now. It's at least ten years from now. And, like, I think, honestly, what we're more likely to see is a comic book series with a blind monk or a TV, even like a cartoon TV series with a blind monk. I don't think that you can put together a $150 to $250 million movie that's not based in some way on beloved characters from the original trilogy. Let me throw this at you.
Vic00:44:20I want to see cameos, right? That's what some people are probably going to hope. It was a Darth Vader cameo. Well, Darth Vader is...
JVL00:44:25Let me throw this at you. Do you need to have all of the Star Wars be $200 million, $10 million flicks? Or could you do what Marvel has done and have, like, a Deadpool? This is one of the things I have always wondered and thought would be amazingly cool, although risky from a corporate sense, would be to say that we own this giant franchise now. We own the entire universe. Why do they all have to be Star Wars movies? Why can't we do a movie set in the Star Wars universe that's actually a heist film? Why can't we do one that's sort of a thriller? Why can't we do a buddy comedy?
Sonny00:44:54But this is the idea behind the Star Wars story idea, right? This is supposed to be a heist flick. Rogue One is supposed to be a heist flick. I want to stretch it outside of the genre. What you want is a $10 million Boba Fett movie where he's, like, hunting. He's, like, he's basically... What you want, I know what you want, is a $10 million Shane Black Boba Fett movie set in Christmas or Life Day, whatever you want, where Boba Fett has to track down, you know, some rogue Wookiee and really, really, you know... To add to his Wookiee pelts. Exactly. And they wind up
JVL00:45:32as unlikely friends. Yes. Exactly. Yeah, I actually totally... Yes, if you go into Dr. Aphra, who is a character in the Star Wars, the current Marvel reboot Star Wars comics, who I think could wind up being sort of funny, and I... It's my hope that we can get to a point where the franchises are all so profitable that you can have them operating at different financial levels. So you can have $10 or $20 million movies. You can even have an R-rated, not like for... But just an adult, grown-up Star Wars movie that is maybe a little more sophisticated. But don't you think... It's kind of in that universe, but off in a corner that you don't have to worry about the kids going to.
Sonny00:46:09So I agree with you this would be fantastic because I'm emotionally and intellectually stunted, and this would be great for me personally is to watch nothing but Star Wars movies. Nothing but Star Wars. Star Wars. Don't you think that this would lead to... I almost dropped my drink. ...lead to a little bit of Star Wars overload?
JVL00:46:31Do you have comic book movie overload? Ah. That's a deeper question. I don't know. No, because what you're here for is the stories. If the stories are good, then you can't have too much good storytelling.
Vic00:46:46All right, that's fair. As an outsider, so I'm not a Star Wars geek like the two of you clearly... Oh, come on. You talked about Star Wars toys for 20 minutes. I don't read about Star Wars now. You know, we've been on the air for two hours. This is an extra...
Sonny00:46:59This is a supersized edition of the Substandard podcast.
Vic00:47:02There are now only six people left listening to this podcast. Yeah, thank you, thank you.
Sonny00:47:05I really like people to know that Vic Matus... I'm really glad Steve Hayes gave us the shout-out this week.
JVL00:47:09Vic Matus and I went together to see Meet Joe Black in the theaters...
Vic00:47:13Well, it looks like we're running out of time, Jonathan.
JVL00:47:16...for the sole purpose of being able to see the fantastic, the original Phantom Menace teaser. The original Phantom Menace teaser. Did you stay all the way through the movie to see it again at the end? Not only did we... Yes. Ah! The beginning and the end.
Vic00:47:25When Vic Matus says, oh, I'm not a Star Wars geek. No. The beginning and the end. And I kind of enjoyed Meet Joe Black, by the way. Okay.
JVL00:47:34It's not terrible. There were all these girls there. It's got Claire Forlani in it. Yes, Claire Forlani,
?00:47:38Anthony Hopkins.
Vic00:47:38Claire Forlani from Mallrats. There were six people. Mallrats and Claire Forlani.
JVL00:47:42And Jeffrey Tambor. There were six people in that movie theater, and you and I were two of them.
Vic00:47:46Well, we counted as one because we shared a seat. Okay. We were talking about the... I'm going to say this really quickly just as one final thought about the eviling of the Empire. Francis Ford Coppola had the same idea after Godfather I, which was people so idolized Michael Corleone. He was the coolest thing ever. And he had said, and I think this is in Peter Biscuit's book on The Godfather Companion, that his intent in Godfather II was to make Michael Corleone truly evil, you know, so that people will make no mistake this is a bad person and he had him do all these things and he killed Fredo. But of course the result is everyone loved Michael Corleone even more because everyone didn't like Fredo. Fredo was garbage. I think that the Empire will continue to be a cool thing.
JVL00:48:24This is a very interesting question as to whether or not Disney decides that they've taken the Empire is good critique to such heart that in Rogue One they decide they have to have Darth Vader kill a puppy or something like that to try to make him totally irredeemable. I really, what I honestly hope,
Sonny00:48:41what I really in my heart of hearts hope, and again, I've not seen it, I have no idea what happens, is that Darth Vader Darth Vader force chokes this movie's Mary Sue to death. On screen, in the closing moments, just to be like, he's bad. He's bad, guys.
Vic00:48:57I bet you Darth Vader will make Mads Mikkelsen cry tears of blood. I don't know why I think that, but something about that. Okay, we have to move on now. Hour seven of the Substandard Special Star Wars episode. Honestly, we could do this
Sonny00:49:11all day,
Vic00:49:12literally all day. If you like to listen to the podcast while running, you have just run a marathon by the way.
Sonny00:49:17Thank you.
Vic00:49:18Corrections. Jonathan has a bunch. I have one, so let me just get this out of the way. Last time we were, as a friend of ours would say, Jonathan, last time we were talking turkey, and I was asking why some people call stuffing dressing, and none of us knew this, and didn't have an answer, but according to our friend and longtime listener, Daniel Halper, he says that dressing is a southern term.
JVL00:49:43According to my best friend, Chris Wershoven, who is a big time foodie, he says that dressing is stuffing that is cooked
Sonny00:49:48outside of the bird
JVL00:49:50in a separate dish. Correction fight! There is a technical difference.
Vic00:49:55Take that, Dan Halper, and I was going to say it was a southern term, much like Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is a southern term. Okay, so, Jonathan, you had corrections.
JVL00:50:06So the other big corrections I had, I got a ton of email about Silent Night, Deadly Night, with people saying that Victorino was so wrong, Mike Russell, who is, Mike Russell is one of my, I think the two best full-time film critics in America, Mike Russell and Sonny Bunch. Mike says that Silent Night, Deadly Night is redeemed by this insane scene with the grandfather, we actually watched this before we went on air, where the grandfather is talking to a little five-year-old boy and tries to scare the crap out of him by saying, if you see Santa tonight, you better run for your life. It's fantastic. My brother-in-law, Sean Dunbar, writes in and says that Silent Night, Deadly Night, is an incredibly special movie because it's a trailblazer of Yuletide hack-slash movies. There were Silent Night, Deadly Night 2, 3, 4, and 5, as well as the Krampus series. Krampus. There are all sorts of great one-liners in it and it even leads us to Jack Frost, the mutant killer snowman. Not the Michael Keaton
Sonny00:51:07Jack Frost.
JVL00:51:07Yes, he's a huge, huge fan of Silent Night, Deadly Night. You know what?
Vic00:51:11It's dark out there in America right now. It's very dark.
Sonny00:51:14No, it's morning in America. Yeah, morning in America. It's like the pre-dusk dark. Magic hour in America. It's magic hour in America.
Vic00:51:22Right, this is... And Sonny, you're fine, obviously. I have no corrections.
JVL00:51:26Well, why don't you tell us, Sonny? You know what you are? You are this show's Kurt Hennig, Mr. Perfect. I am.
Sonny00:51:32I am. This is... Well, but this is why I wear the kind of onesie, the, you know, the blue... Go ahead. That's why I have a mullet.
JVL00:51:41Find the technical term for what you're talking about. Singlet. Yes. Singlet.
Sonny00:51:44Ah, I did it. Okay.
Vic00:51:46Why don't you tell us, let's say... No corrections on singlet. What is our spirit of the week?
Sonny00:51:51Our spirit of the week is Old Line Single Malt American Whiskey. It's distilled in Baltimore, Maryland. It is a gift from my friend and co-worker, one Mr. Bill Gertz, the senior editor at the Washington Free Beacon. It is made by the troops, so if you don't like the spirit, you hate the troops. How does it taste, boys? Jonathan, would you like to give it a smell? I know you won't drink it. It smells like poverty. See, this is just the really... You know what? It's honestly disrespectful to America. I support the troops. Frankly, to say such a thing. I thought it was nice. It's really good.
Vic00:52:26It's full-bodied. I thought it was full-bodied and a little bit of sweetness.
Sonny00:52:30It's both full-bodied and smooth, which is a neat trick to pull off. And it's...
JVL00:52:33I'm going to send a tofurkey to the troops.
Sonny00:52:35I quite enjoy it, and I think that you would quite enjoy it if you live in the D.C. area. I don't know where they ship it to. I'm sorry. I didn't research this very well. But if you live in the D.C. area check it out. Old line. Baltimore, Maryland's old line.
Vic00:52:49It does have a very attractive bottle. God bless America.
Sonny00:52:53Okay.
Vic00:52:54Well, that is all the time we have on this week's episode of The Substandard. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus at Sonny Bunch at JV Last, not really. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes. Just type in The Substandard on the podcast. We're there. I say that because if you just type in The Substandard alone on iTunes, it comes up like there's a band or something called The Substandard.
JVL00:53:21If you search it in the podcast store, we're the top. In the podcast universe,
Vic00:53:26we're the tops. Leave a review and tell your friends. Until next time. All right. Woo!
JVL00:53:37Good podcast, guys. You know what? I didn't even... We're Star Wars toy? Oh, we're Star Wars toy. Worst toy. What was your least favorite toy, period?
Vic00:53:46I don't know about that, but you know what? Stretch Armstrong. No, I had his villain, who was a lizard. You could stretch that. But I have to tell you something really insane. A friend of mine, Steve Yesteris, his family, they had a penguin doll from a company called like Kids of America or something from 2009. They've had it for years. And you squeeze the penguin's hand and it sings penguin songs. Like a penguin voice, very cute, chirpy, you know, Christmas songs. They've had it for years. And she just posted this on Facebook. They pressed it recently and a voice came on. So they had something happen where the guy making it, all of a sudden it says,
?00:54:26Boo!
Vic00:54:26Where do you think you're going? Ha ha ha ha ha! Terrifying.
JVL00:54:32That's its own hack slash movie. Yeah, no kidding.
Vic00:54:36That's all. A friend said, just throw it in the garbage. I said, you do that, you're going to wake up in the middle of the night and it'll be staring at you.
JVL00:54:40You have to burn it. You have to burn it. No, kill it with fire. Yeah. That's the only.
Vic00:54:44What was the, there was, an industrial presser like the Terminator.
JVL00:54:49There was, what was the toy that was like a guy who would kick a football? Do you remember this? There was like, you pounded his head and kicked a little football. Yes, yes, terrible. Terrible, terrible, terrible. I don't remember. The commercial, I have such detailed memories of all these commercials. My God.
Sonny00:55:03My God. What?
JVL00:55:04I cannot believe this. Well, what did you play with? What millennial toys did you play with?
Sonny00:55:08Let's see. I was born in 1982, so I was kind of the early side of millennials. I was a Ghostbusters, obviously.
JVL00:55:17The Lady Ghostbusters? Ninja Turtles. The patriarchal Ghostbusters? The patriarchal Ghostbusters.
Vic00:55:22And also,
Sonny00:55:22the original NES. I am so excited for the NES classic, you guys. The mini NES system that's coming out for Christmas, and it's going to just be tons of great 8-bit games.
JVL00:55:33Favorite NES game, go.
Sonny00:55:35Contra.
Vic00:55:36Oh, I love that game. I played that in the arcade.
JVL00:55:39A, B, B, A. Oh, yeah. Forward, forward, back, back. A, B, A, B, down, down. The Contra code. Yeah, yeah. Up, down, up, down. Good stuff. VLM, favorite NES game, go.
Vic00:55:50You're going to have to tell me what, is that Nintendo? I didn't have a Nintendo. Jesus Christ. Because you couldn't figure out how to plug it in. You had Atari?
Sonny00:55:56The RF switch was a million times more complicated than the H5. Do I want it on Channel 3
Vic00:56:00or Channel 4? I had the Atari 2600, and then I had ColecoVision. Oh, my God. And then we went for many years. JBL, JBL, you, you, what's your favorite?
Sonny00:56:07Until I get an Apple. Stop, stop.
Vic00:56:08Just, I'm done with you.
Sonny00:56:10JBL, what is your favorite NES game? I'm about to hit stop.
JVL00:56:12I love Tecmo Bowl. Tecmo Bowl was great. I love Double Dribble. Double Dribble was great. Kingsville. Atlanta Beach. Terrible.
Sonny00:56:19Video, you played the sports video games.
JVL00:56:21Loved the sports video games.
Sonny00:56:22That's interesting. The only one I really loved was Baseball Simulator 1000, which is one of the greatest games of all time. That's good.
JVL00:56:28Zelda was great. Zelda was great.
Sonny00:56:30No, I, Contra is still, I would play that. I could probably beat it now without using the code. You give me, if you gave me one practice run through, I could beat it right now without using the code.
Vic00:56:41I loved, The Bard's Tale on Apple IIe. Jesus Christ. It's really exciting. You can, you know, lots of scrolling. Okay. I think we're good.
Sonny00:56:50Yeah, it's pretty good.
Vic00:56:52I'm sure it's fine.
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