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#7. Gilmore Girls and Other Guilty Pleasures
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Dudes Chatting — Guilty pleasures: JVL taxonomizes guilty pleasures into four categories and leads with his own: Gilmore Girls, which he has watched since its WB days and argues features Rory as the true villain, not the hero. Vic recalls fondly watching Party of Five, Melrose Place, and various 90s Fox shows. Sonny professes not to believe in guilty pleasures as a concept but concedes he watches HGTV home-makeover shows (Flip or Flop) and Bar Rescue. The group debates whether action movies like Con Air, G.I. Joe Retaliation, and Transformers qualify as guilty pleasures or are simply bad movies. The Corrections segment covers the Super Toe toy, Stretch Armstrong, and the Contra Code. Spirit of the Week: Glass Vodka from Seattle.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hi, this is Bill Kristol. Yes, I'm still here at the magazine. Unfortunately, so is the Substandard podcast.
JVL00:00:30I'm Dr. Shaw's husband, and unfortunately, what he's saying is true.
Guest00:00:33You've got to believe us. We're not crazy. She's the one who's crazy. I'm beginning to think you're right. I heard her talking. She's planning on having you all lobotomized. Oh, my God.
Vic00:00:49Hello, and welcome back again to The Substandard. I'm Victor Matus, along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. This is our Guilty Pleasures episode, which I know sounds like a show I'd love to do, but it's not. It's not like we're going to be talking about the Red Shoe Diaries. That's next week's episode. No, we're talking about TV shows, movies we're embarrassed to admit, or that we love, but we're letting it all hang out today. We're not afraid to admit these things, and Jonathan's going to elaborate on this in a little while. I'd just like to remind everyone that The Substandard is available on iTunes. Just look under Podcasts and type in Substandard. You'll easily find it. Please subscribe, tell your friends, leave a review. Just click five stars. You don't have to write anything.
Sonny00:01:36Just click five stars. That's all anybody wants. Awesome. Four stars if you're feeling mean.
Vic00:01:41Sonny, how are you feeling?
Sonny00:01:43Oh, man. So can I tell you the worst thing about having kids? Is that you're always sick. I know you guys know this because you've been dads forever because you're old, but I have just recently discovered this. You know that Seinfeld episode where Seinfeld, he brags about, like, not having been sick for, like, 20 years. You know what that is? That's single-person privilege. That is single-person privilege because I have had vomit-inducing stomach viruses twice in six months, and I had not had them in literally 15 years before that. I had not been, like, sick except for reasons of alcohol consumption, which doesn't really count, let's be honest. For literally, like, 15 years. It never happened to me, and now twice in the last six months.
Vic00:02:29I'm used to it. It's going to be a regular thing now. And Jonathan, I don't know if you had any thoughts to add to that, but I just wanted to welcome you back from a week at sea to our listeners. Jonathan Last was on The Weekly Standard cruising the Caribbean. How was it?
JVL00:02:45How did we tape a podcast last week when I was at sea? Magic.
Vic00:02:49I believe there was a special room on the ship. That's amazing. Holland America has one of the best Skype studios in the world.
JVL00:02:59In the Caribbean. It was great. No, look, it was a super great thing. Anybody who has ever thought about going on The Weekly Standard cruise should actually just do it. It's a really good time. Everybody there was very nice. All of our readers, they promised to vouch for me at the show trials. Many of them promised that they would smuggle in cigarettes to me once I was sent to the Trump re-education camps. So I came away very happy. It was, you know, we were in the Caribbean, bouncing around the islands. I had half of my kids with me. They had a good time, like, building sandcastles. Stuff with the children of Mark and Molly Hemingway. And I had this, you know, a lot of times you're on the boats. They have a real strict segregation of staff from guests. And so it's like being in a hotel where you never see the back of the house, right? You're the front of the house person, the guest in the back of the house is sort of a mystery. And this was the first time, and maybe there's just been a change of policy, that above a certain level in the cruise ship cast system, and it is a real cast system. Oh, sure. I mean, along like ethnic national lines as well as like where you are in the hierarchy of jobs on the boat. So for the first time, I noticed that people above a certain level in the hierarchy were allowed to be like out on deck and, you know, eating in the dining rooms and at the Lido deck.
Vic00:04:18With the other passengers?
JVL00:04:20With the other passengers. And you could see them off duty sometimes. That's like steerage. It is a little, it's interesting. And so I, as a keen observer. Of the human condition was very curious about this because I've always wondered what life is like if you work on a cruise ship. And it became pretty clear that it's basically the boat. It's not the love boat, not the love boat. It ain't the love boat. And it's kind of awesome. I mean, it was I felt like I was gazing into an alien culture in a way that's kind of, you know, interesting and alluring. And, you know, these people are all none of them are over the age of 30. Most of them are closer to about 24, I would say. And it's like a room springing for many of them. They just get up and, you know, they say, hey, I'm going to go. It's like running away to join the circus. You run away to join a cruise ship for a year or two years. And then you come back and jump into real life and, you know, get a real job and stuff like that. And it was it was very interesting.
Vic00:05:21I wouldn't have an issue. I don't have claustrophobic issues, but I could have a seasick issue depending on where you are at sea. I think that would be the most. But there's a lot of things that I find alluring on a cruise ship. And my favorite part of the ship, and I've done these cruises four or five times, is the gym. I love the gym on a ship. You know why? Because there's nobody there. You get to work out by yourself. Most of your passengers, you know, either they're there to eat a lot and to drink a lot and to get some sun, or they're old and they're not going to be, you know, bench pressing or something like that. Oh, yeah.
JVL00:05:55No, if you're in the gym on a cruise ship, you're the youngest person by 40 years. And so you feel like Superman.
Vic00:05:59It makes you feel good. I turned 40 on a cruise ship, and it was one of the best times ever because all the 80-year-olds were telling me, boy, I'd do anything to be 40 again, you know. So that was great. And then after that, I like to, after a good 30-minute workout, I like to go to the Lido Deck breakfast because, you know, you can't screw up breakfast. You can't screw up eggs, bacon, and sausage. And I'll have, like, three plates of that, you know. After your workout. After my 30-minute workout. I probably burn about 100 calories.
Sonny00:06:23Yeah, I know. Well, you're working off at least one strip of bacon.
Vic00:06:27Yes, no. It's so good, and that's what I love the best. And those little bars that are tucked away in little corners of the ship, that's also a great little thing to have. Anyway, Sonny, have you done cruises?
Sonny00:06:43I went on a cruise once when I was very young with my family. We lived in England, and we cruised to Sweden. Was this to escape the Nazis during the war? We weren't, yes, we cruised from England to Sweden to, to escape the Nazis. Oh, I thought you were coming over from,
Vic00:07:02that's exactly, yeah, no, I mean, it was, I thought you were coming over from Gdansk.
Sonny00:07:05No, no. So I don't really remember it, frankly. I find the whole cruise thing really kind of bizarre. I don't, I don't, I don't, I would rather just go to an island and be on the island for a week instead of traveling on the sea from, like, beach to beach for six hours at a time. It doesn't make any sense to me.
Vic00:07:23I absolutely agree, because when you fire, we fire.
Sonny00:07:26I'm sure the weekly standard cruise is fantastic. Well, a lot of people, don't you want to leave the ship? Well, right, but, I mean, those are, those are, you know, it's like the journey cruise, right? You're there to see the stars. So, and to listen to the, you know.
JVL00:07:38This is, I mean, you need to, as you get older, you get to sort of step outside yourself and understand that, like, different people in different life stages have different needs and experiences. I would say, especially for older, especially for older people, or if you, like, if your parents are older, you want to go on a vacation with them, going on cruises, again, it's a very useful way to experience that part of the world. With people who have, you know, for whom mobility is a little bit difficult, or for whom the task of, like, getting on a bunch of different airplanes, or, like, renting their own car on an island for two weeks, it's, you know, this way, you're basically in a floating hotel that delivers a different beach and a different island to you every day or every other day.
Sonny00:08:16But don't you usually have to fly to the cruise ship?
JVL00:08:20Yeah, well, unless you live in Florida. That's right, which the vast majority. Yeah, which, you know. Fair enough. No, it's, it's great. This is why not a lot of, like, 25-year-olds go on cruise ships. Except for, like, the Bud Light cruise. The Bud Light cruise.
Sonny00:08:32Have you seen the ads for the Bud Light cruise? That looks like the worst time in the entire world.
JVL00:08:36Oh, you know what? It's funny. We had down the hall from me, there was a room of these three Russian guys, all in their mid-20s, who were just like animals, like, running around the halls, I mean, literally running up and down the halls, drunk and screaming at 4 o'clock in the morning. And it was so bad that they got talking to. Ooh. From the captain? By a Dutch officer. So, first, it was the front desk, who came and gave them a talking to, and they were like, you know, what are you going to do? And gave them the finger. And then it was the head of security who came up. I had to, I strolled past their room one morning when the cabin store was cleaning it, and he brought out a bag with, I mean, no fooling, like, eight large bottles of, like, liquor that were just drained. Like, vodka, tequila, rum. Anyway, when they continued their shenanigans and hijinks,
Vic00:09:26they got called by the captain. Yes.
JVL00:09:28The captain's office and the captain told them that we will, we will simply just drop you off the next island if you don't get it. And, of course, they didn't care. They just kept doing what they were doing. But the whole time I just kept thinking, it's like, you're like some 25-year-old Russian dude. Why do you choose to go on a Holland American cruise?
Vic00:09:47Which is more for a conservative, older set. This is not Carnival. Carnival would be ideal. What is it?
JVL00:09:52No wonder they were drinking so much. There is nothing else for those three guys to do. Was there any gambling on the boat? I hear there was gambling. This is actually great. We had one guest who, so every night you have dinner with a bunch of guests from the magazine. And one night I, there was a seat next to me at my table empty because the woman was on a hot streak at the casino and sent her husband. She said, just tell him, I'll be late. That's fair. Tell Jonathan last. God bless her. I've got to keep going while it's hot. Was she playing craps? I believe she was playing slots. Oh my God. The machine was on fire.
Vic00:10:28As my mother would say, the machine is on fire. It's hot. Oh, it's hot right now.
JVL00:10:30I believe she won $1,200. Good for her. And so when her husband came and told me that he was kind of sheepish, and I was like, are you kidding? She did exactly the right thing. No. She did make the right call.
Vic00:10:40Yeah, that never happens to me.
JVL00:10:41When you're on a run, you respect the streak. You don't get up to go like some conservative writer from a magazine.
Vic00:10:46No, you respect the streak. You shouldn't be playing slots in the first place. Respect the machine. But I tell you, the reason why people go to slots is because even though your machine might suck, Because people are easily amused by bright lights and pinging noises. And pings and pings. You're hearing this, that ringing noise of somebody hitting the jackpot, and in your mind is, somebody just won big. Why can't that be me? That's really the story of my life. Isn't that all of us all the time?
JVL00:11:09Isn't that all of us? Yeah, exactly.
Vic00:11:10So we better move on to the main event here. Although I will add, Jonathan, that my friend Sue Moroney, she worked on a cruise ship for a year and a half, and could probably confirm your suspicions about the dating that goes on on ships. Let's not call it dating. This is casual dating. This is so debauched that it makes Tinder look serious. You know, she dated a guy who was also working on the, you know, doing a social job, if you will, and he was cheating on her with the hairdresser. I mean, just all sorts of things were going on. There were lots of drama. Anyway, this is our, as I mentioned, Guilty Pleasures episode, and I'd like to begin with Jonathan, because I think it's the main reason why we thought of this. You had sent out a text at the end of Gilmore's, Gilmore Girls, and you were clearly in a state, and none of us, of course, were watching, and what is that all about? What's happening here?
JVL00:12:05So when it comes to Guilty Pleasures, I think you have to start with a philosophical taxonomy. Like, what are we talking about? Because I spent some time thinking about this, and I came up with four distinct categories of Guilty Pleasure, and you can tell me what you want to talk about, and we'll go from there. The first is something that's so bad, it's good. For me, that's something like a movie like The Conqueror. Or like Quick and the Dead, or Con Air, which are kind of terrible movies, but they then shoot all the way around and become kind of awesome because of it. Category two is something that everyone else hates, that you have found hidden merit in it. For me, that would be professional wrestling. I love me some WWE. Actually, it's my hope that we can have a whole show on wrestling at some point, but I don't know if either of you guys are into it.
Sonny00:12:53Do you think we can get Linda McMahon in studio? It's not after the piece I wrote about her. I don't know. Did you say something?
JVL00:13:00I did a profile about Linda McMahon a couple years ago.
Vic00:13:01She's a forgive and forget kind of person. Oh, yeah.
JVL00:13:03I hear McMahons are totally like that. So is her husband. Yeah. As an aside, if you haven't, have you guys seen Wrestling Isn't Wrestling, the Max Landis short film about wrestling? Yes, fantastic.
Vic00:13:14Have you, Victorino? No, I saw The Wrestler.
Sonny00:13:17It was depressing.
JVL00:13:18I'll put this in show notes. Max Landis, the brilliant screenwriter. Actually, we should do a whole Max Landis show someday because he's so great.
Sonny00:13:25That will drive all the right people. That will drive all the right people crazy doing a Max Landis show.
JVL00:13:29So he did a short about wrestling and about why this hidden, you know, why wrestling is actually awesome and it's amazing and everybody should watch it. Category three is something that is meant for an audience very different from you, but that you just kind of really jones on. So for me, like I was, like Dawson's Creek, Bring It On, Can't Hardly Wait, like any teen coming of age movie, these are pitched for people who are decades... A teen girl movie. Decades younger than me. And I just, I like them. I don't know why I like them.
Vic00:13:59I don't think there's anything wrong with that at all. Like me hanging out at Club Howl on the ship. I don't like to hang out with those kids. There's no age limit, is there? Was there an age limit on that special section of the boat?
JVL00:14:11What was it, Club?
Vic00:14:12Club Howl, which is called in America.
Sonny00:14:14Club Howl.
JVL00:14:14It's like the end of Boogie Nights where he's taught, Burt Reynolds is talking to the colonel.
Vic00:14:19Oh, it's nothing like that at all. You didn't touch her, did you? They're so small, JBL. Okay.
JVL00:14:25But category four then is something... Then this is, to my mind, the true guilty pleasure. It is the kind of thing that you actually hate yourself for liking.
Sonny00:14:37And for me, that's what Gilmore Girls is.
JVL00:14:39But I don't know about you guys. I don't know what you guys like. What sort of guilty pleasures do you guys want to talk about?
Vic00:14:45Well, no, I was thinking about shows like, you know, Melrose Place and Party of Five. But I really like to know...
JVL00:14:51So this would be like So Bad It's Good.
Vic00:14:52Yeah, I guess that would be... I guess that would be that category of it. But... When did you start watching Gilmore Girls? At the beginning? Like, back in the WB days?
JVL00:15:01Episode 1 WB. I was doing it for work. I was writing for... I was writing a regular column for a site called BeliefNet at the time.
Sonny00:15:08You were writing TV recaps?
JVL00:15:11No, this was a piece about... So Gilmore Girls grew out of an interesting financing thing. It was Procter & Gamble and a bunch of advertisers were worried that there wasn't anything wholesome on television. And so they put together a bunch of seed money to help get a pilot, and the pilot they chose, the script they chose, was Gilmore Girls from Amy Sherman Palladino. And I suspect that what sold them on it was, like, the most... the worst reading of the show and the most reductive reading of the show, which is that it is basically an anti-abortion show in its own way. Although I'm sure everybody associated with the show is pro-choice. I'm sure that everybody associated with the show would swear up and down if the pro-choice short... Yeah, I'm sure she does. That said, the premise of the show, because you guys have never seen it, I believe, is before the show begins, years before the show begins, there is a young teenage girl named Lorelei Gilmore who grows up as the daughter of a very wealthy couple in Connecticut where the dad is an insurance magnate and executive. And she gets herself pregnant at about age 17, and she keeps the baby, decides she's going to keep the baby, runs away from home, and just sort of moves five towns over and decides she's going to raise the baby herself. And get her own, get a job. And it's about as pro-life as it gets. And I think that's why the advertisers decided to back it. But then, of course, the show has nothing to do with being pro-life. The show has nothing to do with abortion politics on its own. I think that the advertisers just looked at that in like the very first five minutes of the show and thought, oh, wholesome, conservative, blah, blah, blah. So that's why I was watching from the beginning. I was writing about this, this financing thing for BeliefNet.
Vic00:16:52As a quick aside, Jonathan, when you were watching it on the show, on the WB at the time, which was 1999, maybe, 2000? Sounds right. When was that? 2000? If you called, Jonathan, if you called the WB main studios in Hollywood and the receptionist answered, what would he or she have to say when they picked up the phone?
JVL00:17:08The dub-a-dub-a-dub-a-B, right? Isn't that...
Vic00:17:11That's what they said. No, they literally had to do this. Or a guy or a girl had to answer every time the phone rang and say that. Yes. Okay. So anyway, that was your guilty pleasure.
JVL00:17:20That was, yes, that was my guilty pleasure and I watched it and I mean, I was going to tell you guys my whole, like, theory of the Gilmore Girls but since you haven't seen it
Sonny00:17:28you won't be able to participate. I'm all ears.
JVL00:17:31I would just say this, that the show is, it centers around three women. There is the grandmother, Emily Gilmore, who is very...
Vic00:17:37Already I've turned to another channel, by the way.
JVL00:17:39...very domineering and is sort of a tough person and is in constant conflict with her daughter, Laura Lai Gilmore, played by the great Lauren Graham, who also turns out to be a really gifted writer. She's written a couple books, both of which my wife tells me are really good. And then there is the granddaughter, played by Alexis Bledel, Rory Gilmore. And Alexis Bledel is a young, very bright young, ambitious young girl who winds up going to Yale and becoming a journalist and is seen as really the heart of the show. And I have an alternate theory in which actually Rory Gilmore, played by Alexis Bledel, is the villain of the show. And that Emily Gilmore, the domineering grandparent, is actually the hero. I've never...
Sonny00:18:23The heroine. I've never... I've never watched a single second of this show, but that sounds exactly right. That sounds exactly right.
JVL00:18:29Let me just say this, and then we'll move right along from Gilmore Girls. You could have retitled this series Rory Gilmore, the first millennial. Because she is... In retrospect, we didn't even have the term millennials back then. And in retrospect, she is everything that we have come to hate about millennials. She throws this huge self-indulgent tantrum when she only gets into Yale and doesn't get into Harvard. She wants... She wants to grow up to become an opinion journalist. She idolizes...
Vic00:18:58Not a reporter. Not a reporter.
JVL00:19:00No, no. She idolizes... And now I'm blanking on the name. The foreign correspondent, ABC... Yes, yes. Christiana Amanpour. Christiana Amanpour, right. Christiana Amanpour is her hero. She goes to Yale and becomes a total skull and bones groupie and then sort of avariciously climbs from not just like her mere real wealth of her grandparents to this guy who's basically the son of like a Rupert Murdoch type. But like insane, giant corporate conglomerate wealth. And then starts writing for The New Yorker. We learn in The New Yorker. And I would say if they were shooting Gilmore Girls today, hand to God, Rory Gilmore would grow up to work at Vox.
Sonny00:19:39Yeah.
JVL00:19:40That sounds about right. It's very deep. She's the villain. It's very deep.
Vic00:19:43I only know Alexis Bledel from her brief cameo on Mad Men and she's fantastic. She has a brief dalliance with Vincent Kartheiser, Pete Campbell, of course, who in fact, in real life, as you were saying...
JVL00:19:53Is her husband. I know. I've never understood why her career has not taken off. She's in Sin City. She's great in Sin City. And she's the only good thing in that movie. How can you hate Sin City?
Sonny00:20:02It's horrible. You're an idiot.
JVL00:20:04You know what? Of course, the guy who likes Sucker Punch likes Sin City. Sin City 2
Sonny00:20:10is even better than Sin City. No, that's not true.
Vic00:20:12Yeah.
JVL00:20:13No, so I've never understood
Sonny00:20:14why she gets work.
JVL00:20:14But you want to see that. Here's the thing. If you were back in 2000 looking at this show and I showed you the first season of Gilmore Girls and I then said to you, one of the actors in this show is going to become a giant movie star making $18 million a picture who's going to headline things running from gross-out comedies to buddy cop action-adventure stuff.
Sonny00:20:35I would have picked Melissa McCarthy, obviously. Yeah, you would have said, well, obviously, Melissa McCarthy is good. I would have definitely picked that. I would have nailed that question.
JVL00:20:42And because she, in the show, she's funny, but she's very nervous and sort of, you know, she's very nervous, shy, sweet, sort of eccentric. And there's nothing to hint at. Like, her giant, outsized personality is going to be and how, like, her really, really great sense of comic timing.
Vic00:20:58So what was the Netflix, they were off the air for several years, the Gilmore Girls? Years and years and years.
JVL00:21:05And the show ended badly with the show creator being kicked off by the network like six, with half a season left
Sonny00:21:10or a full season left.
JVL00:21:11But there was no... So the show never ended the way she wanted it to end.
Vic00:21:13There was no surprise ending of the way it ended just a couple of weeks ago is what you're saying. It just ended.
JVL00:21:19Right, the show just sort of ended badly in the way that this sometimes happens, right, when creators get into fights
Vic00:21:24with the network late in the series of the show. This happened on Time of Your Life, that wonderful TV show with Jennifer Love Hewitt and the lesser known Jennifer Garner.
JVL00:21:35Another one, right, you can imagine, I've always liked to think about that show and what it was like on set where Jennifer Love Hewitt, I'm sure, was the queen bee when, you know, the extra Jennifer Garner over there. Then Jennifer Garner becomes the giant movie star. And in fact, her...
Vic00:21:49And Jennifer Love Hewitt becomes the horse whisperer. That's not a horse whisperer,
JVL00:21:53it's that other whisperer. No, wait,
Vic00:21:54Ghost Whisperer. Ghost Whisperer, and she's wonderful and I'll never say anything bad about her.
Sonny00:21:58Ghost Whisperer was on for like seven seasons. I mean, Jennifer Love Hewitt has a pretty, had a pretty solid career. And you know what, she'll always have fans here at the set. Nothing. Jennifer Garner disappeared. Credit card commercials. Credit card commercials. Credit card commercials. She... That butter movie and she was the awful Electra. She was the awful Electra that bombed and set women back in comic book movies by decades. She just did a religious movie, Sonny.
Vic00:22:22She just did a religious movie.
Sonny00:22:23I'm sure that was great.
JVL00:22:24Alias is great. She got killed off. She carries Alias.
Vic00:22:27Oh, Alias is great. Alias was low rated
Sonny00:22:29and got canceled quickly. Five seasons.
JVL00:22:33I think all of this was about for like five seasons. It ran its course.
Sonny00:22:36Ah, whatever.
JVL00:22:36Back when J.J. Abrams knew how to end things.
Vic00:22:38Jennifer Garner actually got killed off on Time of Your Life. That's it. She was mugged. And then they had to solve her murder and then the show ended.
JVL00:22:45I don't even remember this show. At J. Love's total behest. You kill her off! Like Soap Dish. Like, you remember in Soap Dish like the Mac and Ashes where the writers are basically at the beck and call.
Sonny00:22:54I don't even remember the show with Jennifer Love Hewitt and Jennifer Garner that you're talking about. Oh, it came out in a spin-off. Sarah Reeves. Wasn't it a direct spin-off
Vic00:23:03of Party of Five? Sarah Reeves, who was Bailey's girlfriend on Party of Five.
JVL00:23:07Speaking of guilty pleasures, Victorino, is there something you'd like to tell us?
Vic00:23:10Yeah, let's get into it right now then. Okay, fine. I loved Party of Five, but mostly because of Jennifer Love Hewitt. Party of Five, however, was a story about these five kids who are orphaned because their parents were killed by a drunk driver. And this is, I think, in San Francisco, and they had a restaurant called Salinger's. That's the last name. And so once a week, they meet and get together, and it's about their lives. But it was quite a stellar cast. You had Matthew Fox as the oldest brother, Charlie, right? And then you had...
Sonny00:23:41Best known as Racer X.
Vic00:23:42Okay, thank you. And then... From Lost. From The Witch House. From Lost. No, I know. But also Neve Campbell as Julia. Scott Wolf, I don't know where he is these days, but he was Bailey, and he was a big, big star at that time. Yes, thank you, Sonny, for that motioning of a bottle. Who knows? But... Was it a bottle? I don't know. And Lacey Chabert, the great Lacey Chabert, was Claudia.
JVL00:24:04Fetch is not going to happen. Fetch. Yeah, from...
Vic00:24:07Stop trying to make Fetch happen. Of Mean Girls fame. She's wonderful.
Sonny00:24:10And she was like a season of Family Guy. And then what happened?
Vic00:24:12I don't know, but I will also say they had a youngest brother, Owen, and they kept on switching him out with different actors, much like on Mad Men with the son. So it's one of those situations. But in any event, Jennifer Love Hewitt was wonderful and then she became successful and then she did... And then she gave her own show on Fox, A Time of Your Life, and that did not work out so well for her. But she did Can't Hardly Wait and that's really all that matters.
JVL00:24:42Also, wasn't she in the... In House Arrest, but she was a little young on that one. Wasn't she in I Know What You Did Last Summer?
Vic00:24:47Oh yeah, of course.
JVL00:24:48Absolutely. Can I tell you a brief digression? So Matthew Fox, during his wilderness years, after... Party of Five, when he basically couldn't get work, I was out in Los Angeles with a friend who works in the industry and she said, I really want to go see... I got a friend who's doing some experimental theater. Can we go see that for the night?
Vic00:25:08Was it Matthew Fox or Scott Wolfe?
JVL00:25:11Scott Wolfe, it turns out, was sitting behind us. There were 12 people in the audience and there might have been more. There might have been like 20 people in the audience and Matthew Fox was part of this experimental theater troupe and they put on a production of Macbeth all one act set in the Stone Age. So they're all cavemen. That makes sense. Are they using the Shakespeare lines or are they grunting?
Vic00:25:37Is it grunting?
JVL00:25:38No, no. It was not like, ugh. It was shooting the action. Something wicked this way, ugh. It was one of those and Matthew Fox himself was Macbeth and it was one of these moments where the choices being made were so horrible. But I don't want to judge. This is why you have experimental theater, right? Not all of your choices have to work out. You're there to broaden yourself as an actor. Yeah. But man, it was something else.
Vic00:26:05I was, you know, in my office, I've got this on my bulletin board and I put it on there. I still have Variety's 1998 Fall Primetime Schedule because I'm that ancient. But if you look at it, there's a bunch of... Sonny was four. Sonny was four. There was a bunch of really interesting guilty pleasure shows on that board. We were just talking about that. We met some of them on, for example, on Fox. On Fox, on Mondays, it was Melrose Place followed by Ally McBeal. And then on Wednesdays, the other powerhouse they had was Beverly Hills 90210 followed by Party of Five, which was pretty powerful. They all had the X-Files, but I don't count that as a guilty pleasure. It was just a good show. And then, of course, on the WB, Jonathan, it was... On Tuesdays, it was Buffy followed by Felicity. And then on Wednesdays, it was Dawson's Creek followed by Felicity. followed by Charmed.
JVL00:26:55Wait, so Buffy followed by Felicity. So it is Joss Whedon followed by J.J. Abrams. And who would have thought back then that these guys would have directed two of the top three grossing movies of all time?
Sonny00:27:08Is that right? With The Avengers
JVL00:27:09and The Force Awakens? To the top four? To the top four domestic. Yeah, I mean, that's very interesting.
Vic00:27:16That's insane. I'm surprised that Stellan Skarsgård didn't have a cameo on Felicity because he seems to appear in all these movies. Or, Buffy. But, you know, again, Dawson's Creek was another great one that I loved. And I'll also say I believe that was another fan of Dawson's Creek was our editor Richard Starr. Loved Dawson's Creek. Or Party of Five. He loved Party of Five. He was a Party of Five guy. No, and then the other one of course was Melrose Place which was completely trashy. And it was ridiculous. And they had the weirdest thing which was Heather Locklear appeared in every season except for the first one. And this must be in a comic book contract. But every time they had the opening credits for like the next eight or nine seasons she was the last one and it was a special guest star Heather Locklear. Even though she was on for like eight seasons.
JVL00:28:05Whenever you see that you know that some lawyer billed about a thousand hours to come up with that solution.
Vic00:28:10Yeah, it's fantastic. And it was ridiculous. And I was going to say one of the reasons why I remembered one of the subplots there was a Dr. Kimberly and she had a she was by multiple personality disorder and then the bad personality was Betsy and she tried to give her everybody a lobotomy and they were rescued luckily by Priscilla Presley's character. And the reason why I remember this is because I wrote about it and it was one of the first things I wrote a guilty pleasures piece for a small publication in 1998 called Squire Magazine. Not Esquire. Not Esquire. I like to say it
JVL00:28:44I say it fast enough. Esquire Magazine. I say it fast enough.
Vic00:28:47I read it for Esquire. For Esquire Magazine. And Jonathan was the editor of Esquire. Jonathan. And that was Jonathan's startup. Our little
JVL00:28:54our little e-zine. Right? Zine. It was a zine
Sonny00:28:58back in the zine days. Was it a blog? Was it a web blog?
JVL00:29:00It was not a web blog. It was a zine. Yeah. It was e-zine. We called it e-zines. We were too early. If we had been five years later we could have raised about $400 million in venture capital for that thing.
Vic00:29:10Absolutely right. And as the story of our lives the other thing I mean we're always like too late or too early but the This is why we started a podcast
Sonny00:29:19at the end of 2016 by the way.
JVL00:29:22There aren't any podcasts out there.
Sonny00:29:24It's a real growth. It's a growth market. It's good that we've got three dudes talking about culture. It's not a coincidence
Vic00:29:28that this started and I just got a Blu-ray player. It's not a coincidence. But I was going to say, Jonathan I think Monica Lewinsky was a fan. She was one of our readers. One of your readers was Monica Lewinsky.
JVL00:29:39We had an email database of people who were signing up for alerts before she was famous.
Vic00:29:42And you had a launch party at like Tortilla Coast or one of those places. Joe Scarborough like stopped by and hung out with us. It was great.
JVL00:29:50Those are the good old days.
Vic00:29:51It was excellent. What about you, Sonny? Did you only watch cool films from the time you were born? I don't believe in guilty pleasures.
Sonny00:29:58No, this is like a I think it's a category error. I think that the idea that you should feel guilt for taking pleasure in cultural objects is part of capitalism's project to destroy us and make us all go to psychiatrists. Tell me more. No. If we are in the classic sense of the guilty pleasure of thing that you watch that you know is not good and yet you still still enjoy, I would say my biggest one probably for the last year or two has been all of the ridiculous home makeover shows on HGTV. Wow. Like Flip or Flop. I watched that show.
JVL00:30:40You did this before you had children?
Sonny00:30:42No, this was mostly as a result of both my wife being pregnant and then us having the child and just sitting around. But that also stretches out into Bar Rescue with John Taffer, your friend. The great bar. John Taffer. And the thing I really like about these shows is that I mean, they're all vaguely kind of ridiculous and who knows how real they are or whatever. But you actually do learn things about the bar industry. Like the butt funnel. The butt funnel that John Taffer talks about all the time is one of the great inventions of all time. It's a thing in a bar where you build little barriers so you force customers to rub up against each other. It's like forced manufactured consent.
?00:31:26I thought you were talking
Sonny00:31:26about something else. No, the butt funnel is a well, that's a I know what you're saying. That was the chug. The butt chugging, yes. You needed a funnel for that.
Vic00:31:33The good news is I don't think this episode will get an E. I have a feeling. Yeah, I'm sure it will. Or we're going to bleep out
JVL00:31:37the F-bomb, right? Yeah.
Sonny00:31:39And the and unlike Flip or Flop, you know, my wife and I remodeled our bathroom and we had all sorts of ideas in our head from that dumb show.
JVL00:31:48Did you put a butt funnel in it?
Sonny00:31:49Did not have a butt funnel. They could. We could have. I mean, you only really have one person at a time in the bathroom, so you don't need a butt funnel so much.
JVL00:31:57So that's how things are in your head. Oh, jeez.
Vic00:32:00So that's it. Anyway, yeah, no,
Sonny00:32:03but I like, you know, you say things like, why should Con Air be a guilty pleasure when it's just a good movie? Like, it's just a Because it's not a good movie. Because it's funny. It has great action scenes. It moves from moment to moment. It's got great performances from high caliber acting talent.
Vic00:32:20The guy who plays Poe.
JVL00:32:22Yeah, it's,
Sonny00:32:23Poe, what was his name? Poe Dameron. Not Poe Dameron.
Vic00:32:26Poe Dameron, it's not Poe Dameron. Cameron, is it Cameron Poe? Cameron Poe, Cameron Poe.
Sonny00:32:30Yeah, Nick Cage. You've got Nick Cage. You've got John Malkovich. John Malkovich, and, you know, Danny Trejo, and Steve Buscemi. That was the movie that put Steve Buscemi on the map for America, isn't it? Did that come out before or after Fargo? I feel like Fargo probably put him on the map.
JVL00:32:47No, Fargo, but if you were like into indie movies, you already knew who Steve Buscemi was. Right, but what is that movie?
Sonny00:32:52White Alligator or something
Vic00:32:53or Smoke or one of those movies.
JVL00:32:54Yeah, but if you were just a normal, like, popcorn multiplex kind of movie, maybe more.
Sonny00:32:58Yeah, that may be true. Maybe true.
?00:33:01Yeah.
Sonny00:33:02So anyway, I don't feel guilt for enjoying, you know, movies that come out of the studio system that people judge as bad. That's why we have the auteur theory to relieve all guilt that you feel for liking bad studio product.
JVL00:33:16So what if you like the first Transformers? I'm just looking to find to get to, because, like, the first Transformers movie, I think, defies any sort of judging, even. It's like the platonic ideal for cinematic product. You can't even say it's bad. It just sort of is. It exists entirely on its own merits. Well, then, why would that be a guilty pleasure? Because it's terrible. Why would I feel guilt?
Sonny00:33:40Isn't it terrible? If it's a movie created to be enjoyed and you enjoy it, then it's not terrible. It's literally subjective. It's not created to be enjoyed. Yes, of course it is. It's created to, It's created to be enjoyed. make money. The only reason it makes money is because people enjoy them. People don't go,
JVL00:33:56people don't go to the Transformers movies because they hate them. It is a river of intellectual property designed to capture money and dollars at like 50 different, Well, you know.
Sonny00:34:06So, look, here's, We will seize the means of production. No, but I mean, like, we, the Transformers movies are, I don't think they're particularly good. I don't enjoy them. I would never pay to go see a Transformers movie, but I think a lot of people do, really enjoy them. And I can understand why, kind of. They're kind of, like Shia LaBeouf, underrated, kind of funny. We'll do a whole episode on that. It's got big, it's got big action set pieces. It's got splashy special effects. It's dumb enough that you can shut your brain off and just watch the moving pictures on the screen like you're an infant having a picture book flipped in front of you. So, like, it does what it's supposed to do, which is anesthetize the masses.
JVL00:34:47I don't care. The first one has a Spectre gunship destroying a Decepticon, and that's amazingly cool.
Vic00:34:54Well, there you go. See?
Sonny00:34:55So, why would you feel guilt for enjoying that?
JVL00:34:57Because that is not what evolved people should find entertaining.
Sonny00:35:02I'll throw this one. G.I. Joe Retaliation. Have you seen G.I. Joe Retaliation?
JVL00:35:07Just a terrible movie. Is it? But yet, I love it. I think it's kind of great. You have this fantastic, Jonathan Pryce is amazing in this movie. As playing a, Zartan playing the president, and that's that scene where he launches the nuclear missiles and he's just sort of totally unhinged and nobody else in the room understands what he's doing.
Sonny00:35:26And it's got The Rock being The Rock. The Rock being The Rock. And it's got Bruce Willis being Bruce Willis.
JVL00:35:30The RZA showing up as a blind,
Sonny00:35:34ancient kung fu master. Oh, that's right. The RZA is in that.
?00:35:38In like full
JVL00:35:38blaxploitation kung fu homage. And all of this sort of works together, but only in a so bad it's good way. It does not function in the same way. Well, that's your other category. So bad it's good.
Vic00:35:48So bad it's good.
Sonny00:35:49I don't, but again, like, you say it's so bad it's so good, but all it's trying to do is provide levity and entertainment for, you know, an hour and 45 minutes or whatever. So if it does that, it's not bad. It's good.
JVL00:36:02It's actually so good, it's good.
Vic00:36:06Nailed it. Okay. Well, all right. Do we have any other thoughts on this?
JVL00:36:10I don't really know. What is yours? You haven't given us your guilty pleasure.
Vic00:36:14I did. I talked about it.
JVL00:36:15He talked about terrible
Sonny00:36:1890s Fox shows
JVL00:36:19for like 10 minutes.
Sonny00:36:20It's not terrible because you're giving pleasure and enjoyment. What about Model Z? Did you like Model Z?
JVL00:36:24No, I haven't watched. Totally watched that. Kindred the Embraced, totally watched it.
Sonny00:36:28Oh, I remember. Was that the vampire show? Yes. Yeah, I never watched that. That is another show
JVL00:36:3215 years too early. If that had come out post-Twilight, it would have been the biggest thing on television. People were not ready
Vic00:36:37for that sort of vampire embrace, shall we say?
Sonny00:36:40Mantis.
Vic00:36:41Embrace of the vampire, that's what I meant to say.
Sonny00:36:43No, that's Alyssa Milano. Yeah, that's guilty pleasure. You should feel guilty from taking pleasure from Embrace of the Vampire. Embrace of the Vampire, yes.
JVL00:36:50Wait, is that the...
Vic00:36:51Well, thank you. Is that the...
Sonny00:36:53Yes, yes it is. Okay, let's move on.
JVL00:36:55No, no, let's not move on. Let's talk about... You know, she wound up on Charmed.
Vic00:36:59Well, there you go. Charmed, another guilty pleasure. See? Okay.
JVL00:37:02And Buffy, you were a huge Buffy fan. Yeah, but Buffy, there's no guilt in Buffy. Buffy was a very clever, well-constructed show. And Joss Whedon, for all of his political tomfoolery, is a tremendous storyteller. And the best hallmark, it's like he's not the same storyteller he was 20 years ago. Like, his stuff is much better. He's really grown. He's not doing the same thing, which I would say some people, Amy Sherman Palladino, are still doing the same stuff they were doing 10 years ago. Shots fired.
Vic00:37:30Okay. We need to move on to corrections. Jonathan, clarifications, comments, whatever. Jonathan, you have stuff.
JVL00:37:38Yes, I have a few things. The first we mentioned in the last episode, talking about toys, the 80s. I said there was an 80s football kicker game. I couldn't find the name. Super Toe, also marketed under the name Super Jock.
Vic00:37:52So there were two. JBL, Super Jock. Two of them. I think it would last after like a week, it would be broken, I think.
JVL00:37:58Basically, yes. We talked about Stretch Armstrong. You said that there was the villain. The villain's name
Sonny00:38:03was Stretch Monster.
JVL00:38:05Stretch Monster. Very clever. I wouldn't have thought of that. Out of curiosity, Wikipedia tells me that Stretch Armstrong was made of latex rubber
Sonny00:38:12filled with gelled corn syrup.
JVL00:38:15Yeah, that felt like it. Mint-conditioned Stretch Armstrongs today sell for, according to Wikipedia, which is never wrong. Sometimes thousands of dollars.
Vic00:38:24Like if you had it in the box. Stretched in a box.
JVL00:38:26Yes, but it also has to be stored at the correct temperature,
Vic00:38:28otherwise the gelled corn syrup
JVL00:38:30would have room temperature constantly is what you need. Run home and check to see if you still have Stretch Armstrong.
Vic00:38:35This happened to Stretch Monster. He froze and he was never the same. He was never the same. He was never the same.
JVL00:38:40And finally, the Contra Code. I did the Contra Code wrong. And I am. Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B-A-B-A, start. Shock. And I am having used that not, because you know the Contra Code is used on hundreds of games. Like programmers just put that as an Easter egg into all sorts of games. And having used that myself hundreds of times, I am shocked that I got that wrong and embarrassed. So that was my brother who pointed it out to me and made fun of me as he was doing it. All right. Sonny, what were your corrections, Mr. Perfect?
Sonny00:39:09I actually had, I did have one correction this time. I had one correction. We were talking about the Star Wars toys that came out in like the 90s. Remember the ones that I put on my way? Yes, people wanted to ask about that. But it was 1995 when those came out. I was 13. So not 97 when I was 15. And they were kind of muscled out, right?
Vic00:39:29I mean, they were all sort of, I mean, it was not really the same.
JVL00:39:31Much like Mark Hamill himself. How tall is he? Do we think he's 5'2"?
Vic00:39:38No. Maybe 5'5". 5'5 or 5'6". 5'5. He just took a picture with my neighbor who is about 5'5". So maybe he's 5'6". I'll put it there. Because at the end of Force Awakens he looks like a hobbit. Yes, yes, I know. He got shrunk on that planet because of the gravity. A couple episodes ago we were talking about the Christmas episode. We were talking about the Christmas story and Jonathan sort of offhandedly had mentioned Ralphie sticking his tongue on the flagpole and we said it wasn't Ralphie and we moved on from there. More interesting, the kid who stuck his tongue on the flagpole, his name was Scott Schwartz and he was the child actor, Scott Schwartz. He was in a movie called Kid Cope and he was in the toy with, Richard Pryor, Jackie Gleason. I mean, that's a big deal to start with those guys.
Sonny00:40:23Is this the one who became in the adult film?
Vic00:40:25And very good study, he became a porn star.
Sonny00:40:28See, this is not really a correction. You just wanted to talk about porn. I wanted to talk about that. You wanted to talk about children moving into porn movies. Yes, yes.
Vic00:40:33And he left it. It just wasn't his thing. But the funny thing in the toy was he played this rich kid whose last name was Bates and so the butlers had to call him Master Bates in the entire movie. I thought that was good. Wait, he... It's a cheap laugh.
JVL00:40:47You're saying he left porn?
Vic00:40:49Yeah, he was fed up with it.
JVL00:40:50Mm-hmm.
Vic00:40:51Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. He gave him the shaft. Okay. We were talking also about the Star Wars universe and Jonathan, you were saying, oh, it would be great if they had like these smaller $30 million Star Wars pics, like just lives of the bounty hunters and stuff like that. And there is a terrific Seth Green robot chicken video on YouTube about Bosk. Just a brief, like a day in the life of Bosk and it's fantastic. And if you just do Star Wars Robot Chicken Bosk, it's fantastic. It's short. It's wonderful.
JVL00:41:23Love to put that in show notes.
Vic00:41:25Yes. And finally, a special shout out to a longtime listener, my good friend, John Buckley, who recently received 18 copies of The Weekly Standard at his doorstep in Morganville, New Jersey. The postman screwed up and gave all the subscribers in the township to one address and it landed on him. So Buckley drove around and hand-delivered all 17 copies of the magazine to different places in New Jersey and he said it was a great way to find out where other subscribers live. I don't know if that's legal.
JVL00:42:00Yeah, not creepy at all. Yeah. Anyway.
Vic00:42:04Does he have a database? Yes. Now he knows where they live. Okay. On to Spirit of the Week. We've got a special spirit this week. Normally we've been doing brown spirits, which I love, but recently we received in the mail a gorgeous bottle of glass vodka from Seattle that's named in honor of all those glass artisans up there in the Pacific Northwest. It was started by Ian McNeil. It's distilled from Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc grapes. I'm having it on the rocks. Sunny is under the weather, but I have to tell you, it is delicious. There's just, you know, light floral notes. You're not supposed to actually enjoy, you know, vodka straight unless you're a dipsomaniac. You know, you have a drinking problem. That's what they all drink is vodka on the rocks. That's slowly changing with better vodka that's coming out and you can just have it on the rocks. And this is what's happening here.
JVL00:42:50With either better vodka or more alcoholism. Well, no.
Vic00:42:53So, you know, take your pick. It's one of those two. Less shame. I haven't looked into those studies.
Sonny00:42:57It's either better vodka, more alcoholism, or just less shame.
Vic00:43:00It indicates to me that also it's not one of these... We've got all three. It's not one of these five or ten time distilled products because the more you distill it, the more it tastes like ethanol.
JVL00:43:08This habit has worked out great for Russians. Yes.
Vic00:43:10No, they like theirs closer to ethanol. This is like probably three or four times distilled so it still has all its flavor intact. While we're on the topic of booze, we'd like to have a public service announcement from our friends at the Distilled Spirits Council. When it comes to drinking, what do you think moderation is? The U.S. Dietary Guidelines define moderation as up to one drink a day for women and up to two drinks a day for men. So what's a drink? The guidelines say a drink equals 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine, or a cocktail with 1 1⁄2 ounces of distilled spirits. Each contains the same amount of alcohol. If you'd like to learn more, visit drinkinmoderation.org. That's all the time we have on this week's episode of The Substandard. Questions, comments, compliments, complaints, tweet us at Victorino Matus at Sonny Bunch, maybe at JV Last. No. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes. Just type in Substandard on a podcast. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time.
JVL00:44:16That's rich, having you do a PSA about moderation.
Vic00:44:19Well, again, as I said at the beginning of the show, Jonathan, they wanted to find somebody who's been there, who's seen the dark side. I mean,
Sonny00:44:26you probably poured yourself at least three servings in that podcast. I'm not driving,
Vic00:44:31so that's moderation. That's good. I believe in moderation and everything, including moderation. When your car has autopilot,
JVL00:44:36it has autopilot, right? So you've always been
Vic00:44:38You just press that, you're fine. No, it's not like, you know, I was thinking back, you want to talk about the opposite of moderation. Drunk Vic always believed that the emergency brake
JVL00:44:46on his car was actually the autopilot.
Vic00:44:47The autopilot lever. Don't sleep, don't sleep at the traffic light because it's going to turn green soon. I'll just warn you about that. That's a mistake.
JVL00:44:54Yes. No, I mean,
Vic00:44:56that's what Uber's for. Uber's a godsend for everybody because of this.
JVL00:44:58No, this is true. Can you tell us the story of 55 and still alive?
Vic00:45:03Oh, well, really briefly, that's a college story, but I went to Georgetown, which is not really a big drinking school.
JVL00:45:10And we had a friend who was known as the man. It's like Ohio State,
Vic00:45:13not really a football school. Not a big program there. Not a big program there. And a friend of mine, he had come over with, a housewarming present of vodka, but, you know, college couldn't afford much, so he got a plastic bottle of Chesapeake vodka. Chesapeake vodka. And then he came to the house. The apartment. With a built-in pourer. Yes. And he came to the house and everyone's like, well, you know, we're all leaving. We're doing different things. We'll be back later. He's like, fine, I'll just hang here at the apartment. And so he hung out there with his bottle gift and then got out a bottle of Coca-Cola and then just started making him vodka cokes until the bottle was empty. Until it died? And well, 55 is what? 55 shots. So what we did, what the guys did when they came back and found him and it was a mess.
JVL00:45:54And this guy, he was known colloquially as the man.
Vic00:45:58The man. He got confused. He was using the sink as the toilet. He thought the sink was the toilet. The worst part was there were dishes in the sink. Anyway, that's college for you. And they measured out the bottle and it came to 55 shots. So that is that story. But that is not moderation. And take it from me, it's a terrible thing. The other terrible story I would say is the bar that had a great idea for my friend, Sue Maroney, again, she gets mentioned twice on this episode, her birthday, like for her 24th or 25th birthday, the bar said, we'll make you a deal. Bring your friends over. We don't know who they are. Bring your friends over and from the hours of 5 to 9, for $25, all you can drink. Anything on the shelf. Top shelf, anything. And that's nuts. Yeah, that's a terrible deal.
JVL00:46:44That's a terrible business idea. It's like the Simpsons episode with all you can eat. All you can eat, yes. At the Homer, it just crushes me.
Vic00:46:50At the Frying Dutchman, at the Frying Dutchman and what happens is when there's an hour to go, people start thinking, oh God forbid I didn't have, get my money's worth and then somebody, doing shots of Johnny Walker Blue. and the next thing you know, then you're doing Red Death, tequila, warm room temperature and people are saying, you know, 30 minutes left, 15 minutes left. Amazingly, like a year later, the place was shut down. Yeah, it's shocking. And my brother-in-law, Steven Delhaas,
Sonny00:47:12I'm surprised it lasted another year.
Vic00:47:13My brother-in-law, Steven Delhaas, was on the construction crew that like flattened the place so it's very fitting.
JVL00:47:18I didn't tell you guys, the big news from the cruise was that I got home and the Christmas tree had not killed my other two kids. Oh, that's good. God bless. They escaped. The murderous Christmas tree. They escaped the murderous Christmas tree. That's good.
Sonny00:47:29Are we good? Yeah. I'm sure it's fine.
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