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#33. The Substandard on the Circle, Techno Thrillers, and ... the Cheesecake Factory?
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
Dudes Chatting — food snobbery, techno-thrillers, and the Cheesecake Factory: The episode opens with a cold read from John Podhoretz before the hosts dig into a "8 Chains You Should Never Eat At" article by a food writer, which Sonny eviscerates as the work of an out-of-touch snob — he defends chain restaurants and GMOs on practical and economic grounds while JVL and Vic mostly agree the anti-chain critique is classist. The group then pivots to the techno-thriller genre prompted by The Circle's release, tracing it from WarGames and The Net through Hackers and Enemy of the State, with Vic noting 2001: A Space Odyssey as an ancestor. The Cheesecake Factory gets its own debate: Sonny and JVL find it defensible or even good; Vic is characteristically on the fence.
Reviews: The Circle — all three hosts agree it's a failure; the film squanders a promising premise about surveillance capitalism with a muddled script and a miscalibrated Emma Watson performance.
Box Office: The Fate of the Furious holds at number one; The Circle opens at a disappointing number four, barely edging out The Boss Baby which remains stubbornly in the top five.
Corrections segment addressed. Spirit of the Week: High West Double Rye.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00This is Jon Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary Magazine, and for more than two decades, the primary writer on popular culture at The Weekly Standard, and I am so ashamed to have anything to do with these three guys and their ridiculous podcast. I'm humiliated. Take it away, boys. He found the right code word to play the game. We're in. But it was the wrong computer. Shall we play a game? How can I ask you that? How about global thermonuclear war? Fine. All right. But your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. They hacked into computers and they caused this chaos. Wall Street.
JVL00:00:52The market panicked as officials suspended trading.
Guest00:00:54The Department of Water and Power ended. Atlanta. LEX.
Vic00:00:59We've lost radar contact. Hello and welcome back to The Substandard, now part of the Ricochet Audio Network. I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. I'd like to remind you that The Substandard is available on iTunes and Google Play. Just look under podcasts and search for Substandard. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, leave a review. In addition, we'd also like to remind you that Substandard show notes posted by Jonathan Last are available every Friday at 11 a.m. at weeklystandard.com. The reviews are pouring in. We can't thank you enough. And remember, the more you review, the more we get around or something like that. Speaking of reviews, gentlemen, do we have nominees? JVL.
JVL00:01:50My nominee for best review of the week comes from somebody whose username is unpronounceable. It's like SF. GC. Blah, blah, blah. The subject header is, that was the worst Michael Caine impression I've ever heard. He, she, it, SV, GC, whatever, says, you guys should stop the impressions and stick to ranking things, being right about things. And then he says something that I'm not going to read on air, but it's super duper funny. And he gave us five stars. Nevertheless, five stars. Sonny.
Sonny00:02:21My review this week comes from iHeart. Zach Snyder. Zach with an H, unfortunately. It's not, you know, guys, it's Zach with a K.
JVL00:02:31That may have already been taken. Zach with a K. Oh, that's a good point. It's a username. Don't penalize him for that.
Sonny00:02:35Well, look, if you're going to do it, you should say, iHeartZachSnyder69, or something, you know? The title should be, or the title is- That's your username. The title is A Substandard Review, and it begins this way. And I'm only going to read the first paragraph here. Because, really, that's all that matters. But, first paragraph. Gents, in the last few months, Sonny Bunch has made me see the deeper truths of cinema. The other two aren't entirely garbage, either. Look, you guys got lots of praise. Lots of praise this week. That's, thank you, iHeartZachSnyder with an H. That's, you know, you got it.
Vic00:03:11SMDH, Sonny. SMDH. SMDH, okay? I like- GTFO, come on. I love this one by a woman named Rachu. She says, I'm a stay-at-home mom of one, with one on the way. By the way, this makes me feel like Casey Kasem, reading this out. I feel like I haven't-
Sonny00:03:27Can you do it in a Casey Kasem voice?
Vic00:03:28I feel like I haven't watched a movie in two years. There we go. And before that, I never watched anything these guys talk about. But still, I listen to them. I enjoy their hilarious bickering. Sonny's righteous indignation makes me side with him most of the time. But again, I'm really clueless. With another boy on the way, the petty arguments between these guys are preparing me for what's to come. Well, Rachu, you're not really clueless, because you listen to us. So we're going to dedicate this song to you. Oh, sorry. Never mind. By the way, you ever know? I noticed on that Casey Kasem, it was always, that's what friends are for. It was always that song about somebody who's been with her forever. And it was always a woman dedicating a song to another woman. And it was always, that's what friends are for.
Sonny00:04:04Thank you. Anyway. So who are we voting for? Obviously, I vote for I Heart Zack Snyder. That's a good review.
JVL00:04:12I'm voting for Pregnant Mom. I vote for Rachu. 100%. And we have to send her a good present, unlike the normal garbage presents we send to people.
Sonny00:04:20We only, we only really, I mean, I sent a fabulous prize. Last week, that was so fabulous, I can't even mention it on air. But I don't know, I don't know, what should we send?
Vic00:04:33We'll think of something.
Sonny00:04:34We'll think about it. We'll think of something.
Vic00:04:35The Homedics noise machine, because when you have a baby coming, that's the greatest thing in the universe to have. The sound of oceans and whales.
JVL00:04:41So I'm thinking the Homedics noise machine, plus a copy of Layer Cake. Oh, wow. Or, plus a copy of Sucker Punch. I'll vote for Layer Cake, please. I beg of you. We'll figure this out off air. Rachu, you should email or text or tweet at Sonny or Vic. That's great.
Sonny00:05:01Or JVL. He's at at JVLast. He's the one who handles most of this, most weeks. So if you really want your prize, you're going to have to tweet at JVLast.
Vic00:05:11Pregnant moms and guys who listen to us while mowing the lawn. Yeah. That's good. That's a good cross-section. You enjoyed that swing, JVL? Okay. Wow. We ready for Spirit of the Week? Believe it or not, we're going to fast forward to Spirit of the Week. Believe it or not, there were some people who did not like our guest last week. Sir Michael Caine?
Sonny00:05:31Really, it's unfortunate. We went to a lot of effort to fly him out here and put him up in a fancy hotel, and he came into our studio, and you jackals out there, you just didn't appreciate it.
Vic00:05:44I understand he was a little subdued. Maybe he was drinking a little bit, a little bit in the brandy, a little early. He seemed out of sorts, you know, and he was nervous to be with us, but that's understandable. That makes sense. It is the substandard. That makes sense. But I'm going to use that as a threat from now on. I'm going to tell people, you know, continue listening to us or we'll bring back Michael Caine. That's what I'm going to say. Moving right along. How was your weekend, gentlemen? Sonny?
Sonny00:06:11My weekend was fine. Went to a nice wedding and spent some time with the family. But it was, you know, there was a lot going on in D.C. this weekend. There was, you know, it was funny. It took me about five minutes. To get to the edge of town and then another 15 minutes to go the half mile from the beginning of the District of Columbia to the National Press Club, which is where the wedding was. But it was great. It was nice. Good. JVL?
JVL00:06:39I'm a little sore this morning. It was sunny out. No, we took my son and I, my older son and I took down a tree yesterday and played some baseball and the same stuff I'm sure you did, Vic.
Vic00:06:50I will tell you what I did with my children, but that will wait for the Spirit of the Week segment. Yes, think about that one. Ooh, teaser. Yes. Sonny, something's been bothering you. You remind me of Jeannie from Ferris Bueller. You know, hello, Sonny. Who's bothering you now? Oh, yeah. It has to do with fast casuals, chains, and something someone wrote. Please elaborate.
Sonny00:07:13There's a man on the internet by the name of David Wolf who wrote a piece called Eight Chain Restaurants You Should Never Eat At. All caps never. He was very emphatic about this. And, you know, at first I thought it was going to be one of these garbage, you know, random rankings of things. Who even likes that sort of crap? You know, whoa. Rankings is very sticky. Rankings is very sticky. So I was, you know, I settled in and I was prepared for something silly, and I got something even worse than silly. I got not the standard kind of rube baiting, you know. Oh, look at all this affordable food that's delicious, and you can take your family to. You know, we didn't get any of that. I wasn't expecting the anti-science claptrap of Mr. Wolf's piece. And before getting to the restaurants you should never go to, he gives you reasons why never to go there. Four reasons. One is antibiotics. Two, GMOs.
JVL00:08:04Also known as antibiotics.
Sonny00:08:06Antibiotics. GMOs. Barmed fish and excessive calories. Now, I'll grant the excessive calories, but I won't, actually. I'll come back to that. The antibiotics, I mean, look, I understand that, you know, the left hates the factory farming. All it's managed to do is feed more people for less cost than at any point in human history, turning meat into a standard staple instead of a luxury for the more unfortunate among us. Speak for yourself.
Vic00:08:32Better dead than fed, Sonny.
Sonny00:08:34GMOs. Oh, yeah. You know what's terrible about GMOs? Nothing. Nothing is bad about GMOs. They're fantastic. They're helping to feed the impoverished people of the world. We should have GMOs in everything. I wish I had a GMO right now. I wish I had some GMO wheat. I'd just eat it. GMO, greater sign, BPA. Yes, exactly. Farmed fish. You know what's amazing about farmed fish? It doesn't lead to the depletion of the world's fish stocks, and it's filled with all the good ...
Vic00:09:01I will say farmed fish from the United States, not farmed fish from China. Thank you.
Sonny00:09:05Well, I don't know about that. Trust me, you don't want that. I'll eat it all. The farmed fish, full of toxins and pesticides. Oh, no. You know what else it's full of? Omega-3s or whatever. The good stuff. You know what? Oh, I'm sorry. If we have to worry about the toxins and the pesticides, shouldn't we be worried about the fish from the wild? It's filled with mercury. It's going to go right to your brain. Anyway, and the excessive calories. Now, look, as somebody who's recently lost some weight, I found that eating ... Oh, you. You.
Vic00:09:37Sorry, Sonny.
Sonny00:09:37I did find that eating out was slightly more difficult, because you go to Chili's and you get a thing of chips and salsa, and that's like 17,000 calories right there. Fine. But in this piece, he totally ignores all of the great low-calorie options that they have. For instance, the Cheesecake Factory has the atrociously named, but incredibly healthy and very tasty Skinnylicious menu. On the Skinnylicious menu, you can get things like the Asian chicken salad. Oh, how dare you, Sonny.
Vic00:10:06Why are you looking at me?
Sonny00:10:07Or the Skinnylicious soft tacos, both of which are under 600 calories. He says Chili's is unhealthy, but you can get lighter options, like the classic sirloin with grilled avocado, or the mango chili chicken. I am just saying that if you make an effort, if you make an effort, you can avoid the excessive calories charge. Instead of eating at chains, he wants us to eat at local restaurants. You know what's terrible? Local restaurants. Filled with awful food, poorly made, no quality control, and there's a reason they go out of business. Every successful restaurant that is good becomes a chain. If it was good, it would be a chain already. So anyway, David Wolf.
Vic00:10:48I forgot to mention to our listeners that we've added a new segment, which is Sonny Does Andy Rooney. Sonny Gets Angry. Angry.
Sonny00:10:55That's just my life. That's actually just my Twitter feed. If you follow me at SonnyBunch, you'll see stuff like this all the time. Anyway, so David Wolf can, you know, he can just do a whole bunch. He can eat a what?
JVL00:11:08He can eat just a bag of apples. Non-GMO apples. GMO apples. They're the best. Also, there's a chain restaurant where you can order extra GMOs.
Sonny00:11:19I would go to that place. I would be like, look, I want- Super GMO menu.
Vic00:11:22Apples the size of one. Of watermelons.
Sonny00:11:24I would call it Science Foods, and I would have Neil deGrasse Tyson tell all the people to go there, because science foods are the best foods.
JVL00:11:34Did you ever notice the inverse relationship between people who profess to revere science, capital S, in some aspects of their lives, and then detest it in others? And also, none of these people have taken math above, like, Algebra 2. This is somebody who actually majored in math. He majored in hard science.
Sonny00:11:54Let's not start sneering at people who can't do math.
JVL00:11:57There is no... Anyone who fetishizes organic chemistry or linear algebra has never actually taken them.
Vic00:12:03I remember when I did the Bourbon Trail two years ago now, or three years ago now, in Kentucky, and there was a journalist from Europe, and all her questions had to do with GMO, like for the wheat, for the beer.
JVL00:12:17Oh, for the bourbon, rather.
Vic00:12:19Where does it come from? How do you know that the... These guys from Kentucky, they just sort of roll with it. Oh, no, we assure you it is.
Sonny00:12:27It's all locally made here.
JVL00:12:30Sonny, surely you would allow that there are some garbage chains.
Sonny00:12:36Yes. Well, obviously, if we're doing a top-to-bottom ranking of the chains, some chains are better than others. But if a chain was bad, it would go out of business. So, therefore, using the transitive theory... All chains are good. If a chain was bad, it would go out of business. A chain is not out of business. Therefore, the chain is good.
Vic00:12:58For example, Chi-Chi's, not around anymore.
Sonny00:13:01Bad. It was bad. It was no Chili's. That's for sure. Chili's is still here. It's amazing. Cheesecake Factory, which I know you love.
JVL00:13:08So, the largest chain is, therefore, the best chain?
Sonny00:13:11Oh, wow. Exactly. McDonald's.
JVL00:13:13Okay. Right. McDonald's is the best chain.
Sonny00:13:15The best food. The best food. Let's just say... The best food. The best food in America. You cannot get a meal that is better than a McDonald's meal. Any McDonald's meal.
JVL00:13:23So, you would say that the French Laundry, of which there is only one of, is probably not very good. Probably not nearly as good as McDonald's, because there are lots of McDonald'ses, but only one French Laundry. Yes. Right.
Vic00:13:35Are you going to talk about Dublin, too? We're going to have this... Are you doing Gordon Ramsay? I thought you were doing Spinal Tap in Dublin. No, I'm doing Spinal Tap. We're going to record this in Dublin. In Dublin. No, of course, the French Laundry is better. But, it's affordable, and it's edible, and it's affordable, and it's consistent. You go anywhere around the world. You know, if you're not sure what to get, if you're just a McDonald's, it's going to be something you can go to.
JVL00:13:58There is more variation in quality at McDonald's than people realize. There are good McDonald's, and there are bad McDonald's. Okay, yes. All right, fine.
Vic00:14:07Do you want to talk about the bad McDonald's? Do you want to go there? Where are you thinking about, JVL? What places? What kind of places have bad McDonald's, JVL?
JVL00:14:12I'm just saying that even within my little town, where we have one, two, three, four McDonald's that I'm aware of... Where you live now. Where I live now. Okay. A little like Serpentown, there is a clear cardinality of which one of these McDonald's is the best and which one is the worst, in terms of getting your food correct, getting the food prepped well, and getting the food that is not old and has been sitting there. I mean, and I'm not kidding. It really does matter.
Vic00:14:40JVL, what you and I used to call flagships. It's search for flagship McDonald's, right?
JVL00:14:43You want McDonald's that are run by a good manager. I assume that this is what it is, is that it's all about the manager. Somebody who went to Hamburg again. Sonny, what do you think? I would say, yeah. Do you not disagree? Have you not had the-
Sonny00:14:55No, of course. Of course. You have the good McDonald's and you have the bad McDonald's. You can usually tell which is the good one by which one is clean.
Vic00:15:00By the way, that is-
Sonny00:15:02If they're clean, if they've been mopped, if the bathrooms are well-stocked and clean, you have a McDonald's that is run well. And if it's run well in that regard, it's usually run well in all the others.
Vic00:15:12That used to drive Ray Kroc crazy, because he'd go on these surprise inspections, and then if he found things- The other thing was if you're having stuff on the menu that's not on the menu. Did we talk about the founder? No. Did we talk about that at all? I don't know. Pretty sure we did a segment on that.
Sonny00:15:25Did we? I can't remember. I remember either. Pretty sure we did a segment on that. Maybe we did. Anyway, everyone should see the founder. It's really good. It kind of gets to the central problem of McDonald's. The central problem and the central benefit of McDonald's. All of the McDonald's-
Vic00:15:38Yeah. I was going to say really quickly, JVL, all of the McDonald's I have ever been to on the continent of Europe have all been good, and maybe superior to the ones-
Sonny00:15:46But that's a slightly higher-
Vic00:15:48They taste a little different. The meat tastes different, and the Filet-O-Fish comes from the North Sea.
Sonny00:15:52People who are going to the McDonald's in Europe are going for a slightly different experience. No, it's like a meal out. It's like a trip out experience.
Vic00:16:00You get a lot of tourists who don't know where to go, and they'll go there too, but still. I find it tasty, and it's polite, good service, and neat. The sandwich is neat. It's not a disheveled- You don't get a disheveled Big Mac, kind of with a bun slipped off. And that's the test. The test is the Big Mac, and how much of the lettuce is all over the place. That really is.
JVL00:16:16Is McDonald's a minimum wage job in Europe? It was a real question. Yeah, yeah. I don't know.
Vic00:16:21I don't know. I don't know. I went to the McDonald's and brought a Slava, and it was wonderful.
JVL00:16:25So here's my question. What chain would you say has the smallest amount of quality variance from its sort of best outlet to its worst outlet, in your experience?
Sonny00:16:39I would ... I don't know, Vic. What do you think? What's your pick?
Vic00:16:43You know what? Some of the best chains I've ever been to are ones that have only been once, and so in my mind, I imagine it's like that everywhere. It's perfect every time. This is what I hear. Ready for this? Culver's. From the Midwest. Everybody loves Culver's. Yeah, I've heard that, too. And they're talking about Butterburgers and Concrete's, and you talk to our Wisconsin friends, Stephen F. Hayes or John McCormick, they can't say enough about Culver's. When my wife, you know, worked for a congressman from Wisconsin, you know, and she was out there, Culver's. And that's our good friend Bill Walsh is a big fan of Culver's and everything about it. So I went there back in 2012 when I was doing stuff for the Vodka Book. I was in Middleton, Wisconsin, and went to a Culver's. And it was unbelievably good. And it was just your average suburban location. It was amazing. I mean, it was just, it just tasted, everything tasted perfect. There was nothing, and it was clean. Again, one of the benchmarks is cleanliness. So Culver's is one. I don't know. I mean, Shake Shack?
Sonny00:17:38Yeah. JBL, I would say, to answer your question, JBL, I would say that the new breed of fast, casual, like slightly higher scale fast food joints. Have all been extremely good and extremely quality conscious. So like Chipotle. I have had the same baseline experience at basically all of them. Five Guys, for instance, is extremely high in quality, I have found. With the exception of the fries. Huge problem with the fries. The fries vary wildly.
JVL00:18:11Not only from unit to unit, but even within unit.
Sonny00:18:13Store to store. That's a problem. I think the Five Guys fries, I prefer Five Guys to In-N-Out, which is another place that has a very high quality, like very steady. Which we don't have here in the East Coast. Which we don't have here in the East Coast. But like, I find Five Guys fries to be the most wildly overrated product in existence. I actually really like Five Guys. I prefer Five Guys to In-N-Out, but it's based entirely on the strength of the burger, which is big and juicy and meaty.
JVL00:18:37Except when they're good. When they do the fries right, they can't be beat. But that's like one in ten visits. Yeah. Maybe one in seven. Yeah. Shake Shack is very good fries.
Sonny00:18:47Shake Shack does have, they have the crinkle cut fries when you put the cheese on them. Yes, and the cheese.
JVL00:18:51And it lasts longer. I love McDonald's fries. Yeah, no, and they're $4.50 for an order of a small order of cheese fries at Shake Shack.
Vic00:18:57You cannot know if you can call it fast food, per se. It's not food for people.
JVL00:19:00Are you saying it's too expensive? It's delicious. I find Shake Shack to be, for what it is, insanely overpriced. Overpriced to such a degree that I can't understand its success.
Vic00:19:09I like the taste, but I feel like I could have more of it. And I'm not going to, I can't, I'm not going to spend for two burgers, but I really do feel like, you know, after one.
JVL00:19:16You could eat two burgers.
Vic00:19:17Oh, easily. Easily.
JVL00:19:18No, no, they give you, those are small burgers they give you.
Vic00:19:21Tasty, salty, not the healthiest, but delicious. So, do you guys have, I don't know, a ranking of your favorite fast food places, perhaps, or something like that, or anything, or no?
Sonny00:19:32We've done this before. Have we done this? We've done this before, but not on the show, I don't think.
Vic00:19:37I thought that might have been on the Mysterious Missing Episode, but I'm not sure. It might be.
Sonny00:19:41Maybe we could talk about it. The only one that matters is Chili's. It's the best. For fast and casual. I love Chili's. JVL. JVL.
Vic00:19:51What's the look on your face?
JVL00:19:53Cheesecake Factory. Cheesecake Factory. I mean, it's not even a discussion.
Vic00:19:57I will give you an honorable mention for the Cheesecake Factory. Yes, like many of these places, it's what you call dump and stir. Nothing is made on premise, right? Everything is pre-made. You go there, it's called dump and stir.
JVL00:20:06Is that what it's called? That's the term of our-
Vic00:20:08Yeah, that's the term in the industry. It's dump and stir. So, you put it in there, and then they just have to reheat everything and serve it. That said, two things. Sonny, as you mentioned, one of the complaints that people have is, oh, it's so much, and the calories, it's ridiculous. There's no sign, as far as I know, at the Cheesecake Factory, which says, you must clean your plate before you leave. No, it's lunch the next day. Exactly right.
JVL00:20:30Cheesecake Factory is dinner and the next day is lunch.
Vic00:20:32In which case, it's a great deal. You don't have to finish everything. And you're right. Nobody says you have to order the factory meatloaf. Right, right, right. You can get some from that Skinny-
Sonny00:20:39Skinnylicious.
Vic00:20:40I take that Skinny menu, and I throw it back at the waiter.
Sonny00:20:43Just throw it right in his face. How dare you?
JVL00:20:46This guy on the cover of the product catalog looks like he orders from the Skinnylicious I thought that was Playgirl. I thought you brought Playgirl. Could you just put that away? He looks like he- We just have a Prana catalog in the studio. I did not bring it.
Sonny00:20:59JVL has literally placed a Prana catalog in the studio, so everyone who comes in here in our spacious, not closet-sized studio, everyone who comes in here- Has to look at it. Has to look immediately at it. It's been there.
Vic00:21:12Why don't you pin it on the wall? It's kind of dog-ear.
Sonny00:21:14You should start cutting pages out and putting them on the wall.
Vic00:21:18I'm going to laminate it for you. How do you like that? Oh. No, JVL, you know who had nice things to say about the Cheesecake Factory?
JVL00:21:27Who?
Vic00:21:28Our- Chris Caldwell. The late, great Michel Richard. The French chef. Your buddy. Yes, I was about to make a joke about it, and he said, you know what, though? He goes, you go there, and they have food from every cuisine, every ethnic cuisine, and whatever one you like, you can get it there. It's amazing. He just thought it was an amazing place where it's- You know what? There's something for everybody, he said. There's something for everybody. You can get Korean, you can get Italian, you can get French. It's wonderful. So that's what he had to say, and I'll leave it at that. Okay. Moving right along. The Fate of the Furious-
Sonny00:22:03That's a weak transition.
Vic00:22:04There was no transition. God. The Fate of the Furious- You know what? I admire that for its craftsmanship. Thank you. I just said, let's go. Fate of the Furious was back on top this weekend at $19.3 million, followed by How to Be a Latin Lover at $12 million, and Bahubali 2, The Conclusion-
Sonny00:22:24I was wondering how he was going to get through that.
Vic00:22:25Thank you. At $10 million. Did anything else come out this weekend? Ooh. Is there another movie after Bahubali? I believe it is called The Circle. Who does that star? Oh, it stars Tom Hanks and Miss Emma Watson and John Boyega, and it came in at $9.3 million. Can I say this to you guys? It just barely edged out Boss Baby. Boss Baby has been out now for five years and has made $17 trillion. I don't know if you know that. Boss Baby is $17 trillion.
Sonny00:23:04Wow. Yeah, it only cost $1,000 to make. That's interesting.
Vic00:23:07Yeah, it's interesting.
JVL00:23:07And you know that studios often inflate, this is deadly true, the opening weekend grosses, so they will, if they knew, I don't know, was this a Paramount, I forget who did The Circle, if they know it's close, they will just erroneously report a couple hundred thousand dollars extra, and then they'll correct it come Thursday. Would not surprise me if when we see the corrected numbers, it actually does put The Circle in fourth.
Vic00:23:34Today's number at Box Office Mojo is 9.3. I'll be interested to see if it changes. Yeah, that includes estimates. So what on earth happened here, Sonny?
Sonny00:23:42Well, I mean, it's a fascinating kind of misfire. I haven't seen it because they didn't screen it for critics, and I don't know. Yeah. And I don't know the last time a wide release, relatively modestly budgeted at about $20 million plus publicity and advertising, but I can't remember the last time a wide release Tom Hanks movie did not get screened for critics. I don't know the last time it opened cold. This is a totally fascinating phenomenon to me. It's based on a best-selling novel. It has David Vickers. It stars the woman who is in... What will probably end up being the biggest or second biggest movie of the year domestically, Beauty and the Beast. I am just totally kind of flummoxed and shocked by the way they've handled this. Apparently it's bad. It got a D plus from CinemaScore, which is... That's the score that audiences who actually pay to see it give it opening night. Some people sneer at CinemaScore because it's normal people giving their ratings, but I actually find it to be incredibly useful because it is people who have paid to see a movie and are therefore interested in it. So, like, does it meet their expectations? And the answer was clearly no on this. So, you know, it is just this kind of fascinating misfire, and I don't know exactly what to make of it. If it was just audiences didn't know what it was about. I certainly didn't until I read the novel this week, and, you know, I don't know if it was the audiences don't care about Tom Hanks anymore, which is probably getting close to true. Wow. If the movie star is dead, then I think... I think Tom Hanks' career outside of kind of bigger, you know, bigger, huger, budgeted type stuff is in a lot of trouble. I don't know. What do you think, JVL?
JVL00:25:31My question to you is you just read the book, and I have not even done that. How cinematic is the book? I mean, the book, do you read that and think to yourself, boy, I bet this would make a great movie? Or was it a stretch to get the project into movie form?
Sonny00:25:43So I think that... So the novel, again, by Dave Eggers, is a... It is an interesting book insofar as it's, like, it's very mediocre. I wasn't, like, blown away by it as a piece of literary fiction, as a piece of, you know, writing or whatever. But it is kind of perfect in the way it captures some of the more absurd aspects of Silicon Valley. Hold on. Let me just pull out the book. Yeah.
Vic00:26:11But, I mean, think about, I mean, The Social Network. That was a book that became a very successful movie. But... The movie's better than the book. Oh, yeah, much better.
Sonny00:26:21The movie's way better than the book. So, you know, one of the things that this book really gets at is the kind of absurd, cult-like nature of...
JVL00:26:36Hooli. It's Hooli, right? I mean, this really is from Silicon Valley. Do you guys watch Silicon Valley? No, I need to add that to my list. It's really excellent. But one of the... I think, so Sonny has often said that the, the most true-to-life fictional series about politics in Washington is not The West Wing, it's Veep. Sure. I, not living in Silicon Valley, I do not know this to be true, but it strikes me that it's probably true that Silicon Valley is the most accurate true-to-life representation of how things actually work out there. Right. Including the messianic insanity and the cult-like nature of all these companies. And so the bad guy company in Silicon Valley is called Hooli. It is vaguely Google-like. And what's sinister about it is, it isn't that they are stealing people's work or using lawsuits or anything like that, but it's that everything they do is couched under the
Sonny00:27:26making the world a better place.
JVL00:27:28And, you know, even on, like, the tram bus for the workers to get to the Hooli campus headquarters, there's a video of the founder talking about how they are all making the world a better place by using, like, you know, B2B link compression. Right.
Sonny00:27:42So this is one of the things that struck me as I'm reading the book is that this book doesn't really make any sense as a kind of techno-thriller. It doesn't make sense as a movie like The Net or Hackers or something like that. We can come back to those in a minute because I know we want to talk about tech movies and how terrible they all are. But it would work as a Mike Judge satire of Silicon Valley, of, like, the kind of absurd life that these people lead and the absurd beliefs that they all have. So here's just a passage from the book, okay? This is one of the... One of the characters, she's trying to decide whether or not she wants to unlike an image. She wants to... Okay. Next to the photo was a frown button that said, quote, we denounce the Central Guatemalan security forces, end quote. May hesitated briefly, knowing the gravity of what she was about to do, to come out against these rapists and murderers. But she needed to make a stand. She pushed the button. An auto response thanked her, noting that she was the 24,720th person to send a smile to Anna Maria, and the 19,282nd to send a frown to the paramilitaries. Now, this is the sort of thing that you couldn't like, write with a straight face unless you realized the absurdity of what these people are doing. And I think that you could make a movie out of this that treats this milieu like Mike Judge treats the office park milieu of office space, or something like that. The kind of self-importance, the self-awareness, the idea that your slacktivism is really changing the world. Instead, they played it straight. Instead, they play it straight, and Tom Hanks plays this kind of villainous... I actually don't know exactly which role Tom Hanks plays, because again, I haven't seen it, but there's a role in this book that would actually be perfect for him, as this kind of oblivious guy who believes in total transparency and the idea that we should all know everybody's secrets, and that a secret is theft. Privacy is theft. That's one of the ideas of this guy. I read that piece in Wired like 10 years ago. Exactly. So like the there is a character in there that would be perfect for Tom Hanks, and I don't know that it works for him in this movie because I get the sense that he's being asked to play it straight. I'll know later this week when I go see it, because I am going to go see it.
JVL00:30:03Is the book satire? No.
Sonny00:30:05Well, I mean, the book is deeply critical of Silicon Valley. It is like a deeply... It is like a, you know, kind of look at our... But is it played for laughs? I mean, is this
JVL00:30:13Chris Buckley does Silicon Valley? I don't know. No, I don't... More
Sonny00:30:17Angels and Demons. It's definitely more... It's more like Jonathan Franzen, you know, kind of like, here's our times and look at, you know... So there are absurdities in it, but it is not an absurd and comic novel.
Vic00:30:33Interesting. The... What else could be the problem, though, with it? Is it just bad writing? It can't be bad acting. It's got to be bad writing. Could it be the problem
JVL00:30:43of the female lead? You know what? I knew you were going to say that.
Vic00:30:47It's not her fault, right? You know what? I knew you were going to
JVL00:30:49say that, and... Look, she obviously is responsible for... Remember all of her... Hold on, hold on. Stand by. Go ahead. She has so many Twitter followers that Variety wrote a piece crediting her for the massive opening of Beauty and the Beast with her social
Vic00:31:07following, so surely... It's got to be the writing then, or the director.
JVL00:31:11Or the advertising. Or the marketing! JBL? No? Is it not true?
Vic00:31:17Let me explain this. Can I say this? Okay. There was in the news Comcast reported very positive quarterly earnings, right? In the millions and millions of dollars that they were up. They were up way ahead of projections. Great news. And I thought, why is Comcast doing so well? Oh, right. Because most of it was coming from Universal, right? Oh, this is interesting, I thought. I looked into this deeper. And Universal was helping it buoyed Comcast and one of the reasons was Universal, not necessarily from the picture but from the theme park. And I said, oh wait, this is interesting. Why do people go to the Universal theme park? And they go to the theme park because they really want to go see the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. And I thought, why would people want to go to the Wizarding World of Harry Potter? It's obvious they're all going there to see Hermione. So really, once again, using the Sonny Bunch transitive property, Emma Watson, Comcast, billions of dollars. Thank you. That's a good point. Do you follow her on Twitter? No, I don't. I don't want my image to be destroyed. Thank you. A lot of thank yous today. If you're playing the Is there a thank you?
Sonny00:32:24Oh, there's a thank you one and lots of chips on that. So, Vic, you asked why this movie failed, and it failed for I imagine the reason that all techno thrillers fail, basically. None of these movies are ever any good. False. Well, I mean, regardless of whether or not they're any good, very few of them are ever successful. Can we say that? False. But continue. Don't let this stop your point.
Vic00:32:47Fine. Go ahead, Sonny. And that is because
Sonny00:32:49techno thrillers are always hopelessly outdated by the time they hit movie theaters. The lead time is so long, and technical trends shift and swirl so rapidly that a movie like, say, The Net looks ridiculous within six months of its release. Or the movie Hackers, which I love a great deal, one of Angelina Jolie's early pictures, Johnny Lee Miller also in that, is like so, it is like a hilariously fun movie, but also like extremely silly. You know, they're talking about their 28 8 modems, and they're like 300 megs of memory, and like, it's just like, wow, that's, even at the time, I was like, that doesn't feel that fast to me, but I'm you know, also just a, I'm just a Rube in Stafford County, Virginia, what do I know?
Vic00:33:35And The Net, Sonny, that was with
Sonny00:33:36Sandra Bullock? Sandra Bullock, Sandra Bullock, and she's, you know, being chased by a secretive guy who knows all of her secrets.
Vic00:33:45I believe, isn't Dennis Miller in that movie? Yes.
Sonny00:33:46Yeah, he plays her boss, I think?
Vic00:33:49Yeah, Dennis Miller was in it, and do you remember the tagline? Because they kept on playing on the commercials, they always had her saying if they can get to me, they can get to you, right? That's great. I love
Sonny00:33:59all these movies, too, because there was a time on HBO where they were playing basically in a loop. It was like, you know what? You know what people want? They want a vision of the future. Let's give them The Net and Hackers, over and over again.
Vic00:34:09The Net and Hackers, good.
Sonny00:34:11Jonathan. JVL, you seem to disagree with my idea that these movies are all bad. You have thoughts. And they don't make money.
JVL00:34:17Go ahead. Well, many of them are bad, and many of them don't make money, but not all of them. And they tend to be low budget, interestingly enough. They're not a ton of super high budget techno thrillers. Well, in fact, and The Circle was only like $18 million. The Circle was
Sonny00:34:31$18 million. Which, when I
JVL00:34:33saw that, I immediately thought, were Emma Watson and Tom Hanks working for Scale? How do you do that movie with those two people for $18 million?
Sonny00:34:42Very good question.
JVL00:34:43Anyway, so when you look at the development of the techno thriller, starting in the 1980s, they were all but just about computers. And so with these things, they focus on little objects in technology development that are people's phobias. And so, first you had things like The Lawnmower Man and War Games in the 1980s. That then morphed into the late 90s, mid-90s into techno thrillers about the internet, like source code and the net. Then we had them about the surveillance state, which sort of merged both the internet and real time satellites and drones, things like Enemy of the State, The Will Smith State, and Gene Hackman. And then AI. Now, AI, of course, predates this. AI goes all the way back to at least 2001, but probably earlier, 2000, the movie. Westworld.
Sonny00:35:33I mean, you could go back to, like, Westworld.
JVL00:35:35No, no, I'm sorry. I mean, I'm sorry. By AI, I mean artificial intelligence itself. And so artificial intelligence as a fetish object goes back at least to the Kubrick 2001. I don't mean the year 2001. I mean to Hal 9000. Oh, oh, right, right. In 2001, A Space Odyssey. And probably before then. And now we have robots. So you have robot movies like Westworld, which is not a movie, but you have Ex Machina, which, or Machina. Ex Machina. And so these things all, and then you have, like, The Matrix, which are all of these actually mashed together. And then a whole separate category of biological techno-thrillers, which would be like Jurassic Park and Gattaca and the entire collected works of David Cronenberg.
Sonny00:36:15So you're really stretching what techno-thriller means I think, when you throw in, like, Jurassic Park. I don't think that that...
JVL00:36:22The novel of Jurassic Park is a straight techno-thriller.
Vic00:36:25Okay. I am in the middle of reading it right now. Isn't it fantastic? It's so good. I have to censor parts, obviously, for Michael, you know, like profanity. But not like where the guts get torn out. Right.
Sonny00:36:39The belly spills out on the floor. Oh my gosh, do we have any...
JVL00:36:42Do you do the bad dubbing? And so he said, what the fudge are you doing? Like the bad airplane dubbing?
Vic00:36:50Yes, I do bad airplane dubbing, right. Drop that egg roll! You know? Again, that was from Police Academy. No, I do a lot of heck. Would you record the audiobook version of that for me? I feel like that would be a good... For Jurassic Park?
Sonny00:37:05Substandard segment.
JVL00:37:07Yeah, yeah, we'll do that. But anyway... No, but so some of these... They're not always hopelessly behind. Sometimes they're actually way out in front, so far out in front that it's almost like science fiction, like Gattaca is. But I don't think you can just say that they're all bad. Techno-thrillers, it's tough to get right, because you do tend to either be too far ahead or too far behind. Too present. Too present, yeah.
Sonny00:37:28Too present, which makes you too far behind.
JVL00:37:30Right. But there are good ones, and it is interesting, they really do serve as a way... In the way that, like, you look at the WWF and whoever the villains are at the moment in the history of professional wrestling, that's where the American culture's anxiety was focused. So you had, like, bad Russians during the Cold War or bad Iranians during the Iranian hostage crisis, bad bankers during the 90s. I think that's true about the techno-thrillers, right? These things focus wherever our technological anxieties are, and that is sort of interesting to shift, and some of them are great. 2001 is a techno-thriller in its own way, and surely you would not say that Stanley Kubrick made a ridiculous movie. No, Stanley Kubrick only makes good movies.
Sonny00:38:14Computers out of control. Yeah, I mean, it is kind of a techno-thriller movie. It's more of a space opera, I would say. In a very, not in a Star Wars sense, but in a, like, spaceships dancing to music sense.
JVL00:38:31Both, though. I mean, it is about technology and where technology is taking us as human beings. Yeah.
Vic00:38:36I loved war games. And, of course, that ties in computers and, of course, evil government. Right. Or, like, the enemy of the state. I think what makes the circle different, and this is all private sector, right? Right.
Sonny00:38:45Well, one of the subplots in the book, and, again, I don't know if they do this in the movie, but one of the subplots is they want to make it so everyone has to, if you want to vote, you have to have a membership in this tech company, the Circle. You have to, like, basically, they'll run all government services through the Circle. Which would be, it's like, it's a kind of interestingly totalitarian idea, which, again, we're, like, still kind of, we're far away from, but, like, not so far that you couldn't actually see it happening, right?
JVL00:39:12I'd be fine if it was Amazon running everything. See, right?
Sonny00:39:15I mean, this is the real problem here, is that there are enough of us who would be okay with it. You'd be okay with it. I mean, obviously, I would be okay with it.
JVL00:39:21Look, not okay if it was Google.
Vic00:39:22Not okay if it was Facebook. But if it was Amazon?
JVL00:39:24Sure, sure. Why not?
Vic00:39:26Jeff Bezos? I loved War Games, by the way, so much, I had the game on ColecoVision.
JVL00:39:31What was that like?
Vic00:39:32So how did you play that game? I always wanted to know. Did you actually have to play Tic-Tac-Toe against... Only here at The Substandard will you find out how War Games was played on ColecoVision. First of all, you pop in the cartridge, right? Did you have to blow on the cartridge to get to start sometimes? A little bit, yeah, you had to get the dust out, yes. On the opening screen, it would say, you know, hello or welcome, Professor Falcon. Shall we play a game? Now, okay, it didn't say it, it just read the text. I actually said it out loud, though, when I played it. Of course, you know, I had to use the computer voice. While you were sitting there by yourself. Could you please do the computer voice for us? Shall we play a game? Thank you. That was awful. Hey, Michael Caine, what are you doing here? No, every bad impression we're going to blame on Michael Caine. So anyway, and then you have to protect the United States from incoming nuclear missiles, and they're coming from submarines, and they're coming from, you know, surface-to-surface ICBMs and bombers. And you had to toggle between six quadrants of the United States and then, you know, put your cursor over the bomber or the missile and play mini- Missile command style? Missile command style. And it goes on for like 20, if you can last for something like, I don't know, 10 or 20 minutes, then you win. You actually beat the computer. There's no tic-tac-toe. But they try to make it so that you're going to lose a few cities here and there, but that's cool, too.
JVL00:40:51Do you get to blow up cities in Russia, or are you purely defensive?
Vic00:40:54I'm trying to think if there was a Russian equivalent, or where you play the Russians attacking America. In my mind, it's only you defending America from, you know, so it's just the skill is being able to multitask, obviously, with six different quadrants or whatever it is, and they're coming from all different directions. And I love that game. I was going to say, if you go back, that movie was 1983. The website IT World had a great thing from a few years ago where it talked about all the different machines and computers that David had, Matthew Broderick had in war games. And it is funny, as you were talking about that, Sonny, like with hackers, but this is 1983. So David's computer, for example, was an 8-bit Intel 8080 microprocessor with up to 64K of RAM, and that's enough to, to hack into NORAD, apparently. And the computer was called IMSAI, which I'm not familiar with at all, I-M-S-A-I. It was dual 8-inch floppy disks, drives, and the phone acoustic coupler. So remember, not just a dial-up modem, but you had to put it because it would translate the sound into the signal.
JVL00:42:08People forget that before you had, like, a 50-baud modem where you could run the telephone jack directly in the back of the computer, before that existed, it was an acoustic coupler that you put your actual physical phone receiver into. This is... If you go deeper into this stuff, you find the entire hacking world actually began with a bunch of guys who were known as phone freaks. Do you know about this, Sonny?
Sonny00:42:33I know about it because it's a subplot in Hackers. Oh, that's right. They do, like, the guys who are doing the tones so they can call anyone for free. Yeah, there's... I was wondering if that could work. Yeah, yeah.
JVL00:42:43Yeah, there have been a few... New Yorker and Wired, a couple other places, have done massive... like, retrospectives about this, and it is an amazingly cool subculture which just doesn't exist anymore.
Vic00:42:54Yes. And, of course, those floppy disks, which... Five and a quarter. Yes, and I remember two brands, Verbatim and Elephant, because an elephant never forgets. And we were... I was... Believe it or not, it was 1997. I was still at The Weekly... I had just started at The Weekly Standard in 1996, and the late Robert Novak had submitted a piece that we were publishing, and he submitted by floppy disk in 1996.
Sonny00:43:18He, like, mailed over a floppy disk?
Vic00:43:20Yes, he mailed over a floppy disk, and I believe, in the words of Richard Starr, he said, he said, yeah, welcome to the 20th effing century, is what he said to me. But, yeah, it was a floppy disk. Wait, did we still have a floppy drive in the...
JVL00:43:34We might have had one, and probably it was in Richard's office because he had all the old computer stuff.
Vic00:43:38Yeah, that's crazy. And then we switched over to diskettes, and then faxes, of course, and scanners and things like that.
Sonny00:43:43That's actually... That is actually kind of amazing because it is... A floppy disk would be actually more... annoying to get than just a... like an actual printed manuscript, which I know we occasionally would get sometimes from... I had to retype some of our...
JVL00:43:55There were some beloved contributors to the magazine. Very beloved. Who still do it now. Totally beloved, who submitted their manuscripts in faxed, one-page typed pieces that some lowly person's job would be to, before we had a scanner, to retype.
Vic00:44:10Yes, yes. That used to be me, and then this peon who came on after me had to do it. I forgot his name, though.
Guest00:44:17He might be at the scanner.
Vic00:44:18But War Games, great cast, by the way. Matthew Broderick, Ally Sheedy, and Dabney Coleman. Who doesn't love Coleman?
JVL00:44:24And, of course, the director JVL was... John Battam also directed Flashdance.
Vic00:44:30Yeah, he directed a few interesting movies, actually. He did Saturday Night Fever. Saturday Night Fever, maybe not Flashdance. Famously, he did Saturday Night Fever, and I think the last big one he did was Nick of Time, with Johnny Depp. But he did some good... Oh, he did Stakeout, you know, with... Emilio Estevez? Yes, and Richard Jones. Dreyfus, movies like that.
JVL00:44:52And didn't you know... Did you ever meet John Battam, JVL? I never met John Battam. I met his daughter, who was lovely. And we went out a couple times. She was a love of the human being. She's old friends with childhood friends of our friend, our mutual friend, Jackie Goldberg. Jackie Goldberg, of course. And we had this, like, weird night where we were out of town with Ahmet Zappos, and it was back when I used to go to L.A. all the time. Yes. And it was just, you know, like, one of these crazy... It was like the missing years of Christ.
Sonny00:45:26I need, I need, I actually need, like, a TV show or movie about JVL's missing years. He was in L.A.
Vic00:45:33His missing years in L.A.
Sonny00:45:34Between, you know, the Johns Hopkins and the, you know, starting at The Standard. No, I was at The Standard.
JVL00:45:40Oh, you were at The Standard. I was at The Standard, and I would fly out to L.A. on, like, Friday afternoon and come back on Monday morning. I would do this all the time. Oh, God. How was that?
Sonny00:45:50That sounds miserable.
JVL00:45:51It was great.
Sonny00:45:52I had all these friends in the industry out there, and I would go out and wind up... I just mean the travel.
JVL00:45:57It didn't bother me back then. You're young, you can handle it. Like, the craziest party I was at, I actually wrote a piece for The Standard about this, you know, I'm at this party, and somebody takes out this giant boa constrictor, and so, like, the boa constrictor is, like, making its way around the room and, like, going from person to person, and somebody else pulls out a desert eagle, and is like, you know, hey, you know, should I shoot the wall out with it? And I was like... Oh, he didn't shoot the boa constrictor?
Sonny00:46:26Because that's where I was afraid this was going. He was going to blow the snake away.
JVL00:46:28No, no, no, no. This was not a defense of the boa constrictor. These were two independent events happening simultaneously in a small apartment.
Sonny00:46:36So, basically, this is, like, the end of Boogie Nights. This is, like, your adventures, too.
JVL00:46:41I believe I... In my piece, I believe I said I felt exactly like Dirk Diggler in that moment, where we are, you know, the Chinese guy... He's throwing the firecrackers, and Alfred Molina is, you know, dancing to Jenny 543. No, no, no, it's... No, no, no, it was Jessie's Girl. Jessie's Girl, right. And then 99 Red Balloons. Right, and I turned to John C. Reilly, who's actually in this story,
Vic00:47:04my friend Heather, and I said, we gotta go. I was sworn... I remember this time, Sonny. Wasn't it Sister Christian? That, too. Three songs. Yes. Three songs. That's the one I was singing. That's right. And... That was, by the way, an amazing scene.
JVL00:47:21Everything in that scene is amazing.
Vic00:47:22Well, everything in that movie is an exception. Molina had the earpiece, right, but he was not unfazed at all by the bangs, and the guys were all, Thomas Jane, they were all jumping around every time it would go off.
Sonny00:47:31Oh, that's right, Thomas Jane.
Vic00:47:32Sonny was... JVO was actually in the Viper Room when River Phoenix died. You ever wondered where River Phoenix got the drugs from? I'm not saying who it is.
Sonny00:47:40Yeah.
Vic00:47:41I'm just saying. Maybe he was in this room. Maybe. Maybe. Sad. Okay. Corrections.
JVL00:47:48Now, JVO, I have a correction for you, Victorino.
Vic00:47:57What could it be?
Sonny00:47:58Obviously not me.
JVL00:48:00Inchoate? No. Inchoate? No, it is not Inchoate. It is Inchoate. Really? Inchoate. Everybody has been mispronouncing
Vic00:48:07things in these last two episodes. All this time? I'm so sorry. All this time, I've been saying Inchoate. Thanks a lot.
JVL00:48:14Other questions. Vitally.
Sonny00:48:15Thanks, Sonny Vitally. This is a clarification. Vitally? I don't, was I? Okay.
JVL00:48:20Not, not. I am not. I just want to make clear. I am not, as it turned out, a Prana brand ambassador. I did not say I was. I said that I aspired to be, but I am merely an influencer, official influencer. I have a card and everything, but I have not yet ascended to brand ambassador. That's my goal. You may get there. Sonny? None.
Vic00:48:43Okay. Spirit of the week. Sonny, you brought this week's spirit. It's an only one. It's an oldie but a goodie? Yeah, we've had it before. It's the High West Double Rye.
Sonny00:48:52Even JBL is partaking this week. I've had two sips. Soon to be three. Oh, there it goes. Oh, there you go. Oh, he just fell on his way. He fell over. He just fell over. One of my favorite whiskeys, but we've talked about it before.
Vic00:49:05Vic, you had an interesting weekend. Well, as you notice, I'm only sipping my bourbon. I had a fairly rough three days. Kate and her mother did a little... Our lovely mother. Our lovely mother did a little... A ladies' trip away from the children and me to the Biltmore, which was very lovely in North Carolina. The Vanderbilt Castle is there, and there's all sorts of lady-lovely things to do, strolling the gardens, et cetera, et cetera. So it was just me and the two kids, and then my father-in-law, who said, hey, what are you doing? I'm coming over. So he came over. We started drinking beer. We went to a Chinese restaurant, drank more beer, came back to the house, and had some... And the kids were fine when you got back to the house.
Sonny00:49:50And the kids were fine. They were safe, I think, and we had some whiskey. Did you just lock the door, just lock your bedroom door, like shove a chair up behind it?
Vic00:49:56I said, kids, you know what... Yeah, that's right. Like a... Stay in there. Like a casino. In a casino, I just tied... You tied her wrists. I tied the wrists. I thought she was fine. I thought she was fine. And then on Saturday, I said, we've got to go on a field trip, a little excursion, and we went to Port City Brewing, which is in Alexandria, just off of Duke Street, and it was fine. It was fantastic. And we did a tour. Okay, Michael and Sabrina were probably the only kids on the tour, but the tour guide... Probably. Probably. Probably. Probably conscripted them. They were volunteers. Michael was handing out, you know, the grains and things, and Sabrina had to bring back these extra pitchers, empty. And then we had, I don't know, six or seven beers apiece. And then the best thing about Port City Brewing, by the way, very family-friendly. We had a great... We had a great tour guide, Rob Schoenberger, I think was his name, and free video games, JVL. So they had two upright machines, the kind of machines that have, like, six games in each one. So... And no one was there. So we were drinking, and the kids went right to the arcade machines, and it's time pilot, three different... Your game! My game. I went on for, like, 20 seconds. Did you shove your children out of the way? A little bit. A little bit, just to show them how it's done. And I went ballistic. And, uh... Daddy's playing. Sit down. Apparently three different kinds of Pac-Man. Burger Time in 1943. And Lady... You don't need any more than that. Did you take one of these home with you? Oh, my gosh. It can't possibly be that expensive. No, it can't possibly be that expensive. And then there was a Basic Burger food truck. Everybody was happy. And then, uh, magically got home.
JVL00:51:42Did you notice the white panel van next to the Basic Burger food truck? Because that is actually, I don't know if you know this, that's where we were at for Virginia Child Services, like to stake out to see the parents who are doing things that endanger their children. Why are you taking my picture?
Vic00:51:54Why are you taking my picture? No, I was perfectly fine. I was, um... Uh, one of the really great beers, by the way, is one that I found was... The best one is, like, the Helles and the Czech Pilsner, very light. Um, but they had a Scotch Ale, Scottish Ale, and it tasted like steak. Like, if you were thinking about having a beer and steak, that Scottish Ale, and it just was a... It tasted like Worcestershire sauce or something. And I drink Worcestershire sauce all the time, so... Anyway, okay, um, that is Spirit of the Week, so, uh, that's about... Hey, do we all...
JVL00:52:26Before we get... Do we all get to plug a Ricochet podcast that we like to tell our listeners to go and... Sure, absolutely.
Vic00:52:32We can do that. I love Glop. What about you, uh, JVL? You were about to say Glop. I was gonna say Glop,
JVL00:52:38because it's got Joan Goldberg and Rob Long and John Putter, two friends of all of us. Uh, so I guess I'll give you a non-Ricochet exclusive, but also in the Ricochet feed, the Commentary podcast, which is John Putter, it's... Greenwald and Noah Rothman. Yeah. It is my favorite podcast on the planet of any flavor. It's so good. Um, you should... If you are even mildly interested in politics, you should subscribe to it. Sonny.
Sonny00:53:00Uh, I am a big fan of the, uh, Fifth Estate, which is, uh, uh, the podcast of, uh, Twitter exile Neil Dewing, or possibly Dewing, I don't know how he pronounces his dumb last name. He's great. I really like that guy. I love him.
JVL00:53:15He left a very nice review for us. Oh, he's a friend of ours, yeah. Is he?
Sonny00:53:18Yeah. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. Um, but he, he sadly left Twitter in a huff. Oh. Left in a huff. Really? And, uh...
JVL00:53:25I like him even more.
Sonny00:53:25Yeah. Yeah, he's, he's, he's probably smarter than the rest of us. And also, Jake Russo is on it. Jake Russo has bad opinions about movies, but he's okay. And I'm definitely not just mentioning them because they were nice enough to have me on as a guest one time. That is definitely not the reason why.
Vic00:53:38Well, yeah, and I'm a big fan of Dewing, and it has, uh, Neil Dewing, it has nothing to do with, uh, the fact that he gave a rave review to an interesting book on the history of vodka.
JVL00:53:48Uh, and let's not forget Peter Robinson, of course. All right, so, Neil, I've never met you, and I have none of these priors, and I think your stuff is great, so...
Vic00:53:53Okay. Actually, you suck, Neil. That is all the time we are giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus at Sonny Bunch. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes. You forgot one, you forgot one person.
Sonny00:54:09Who did I forget? JVLast, at JVLast. You gotta get, you gotta get him. At JVLast.
Vic00:54:13At JVLast?
Sonny00:54:14At JV... All right. Junior Varsity Last.
Vic00:54:18It gets to him faster if you actually do the caps, JVL, and then lowercase.
Sonny00:54:21Yeah, you gotta just, try to send him some DMs. Yeah, yeah. He loves those.
Vic00:54:26Subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Substandard under Podcasts, and we are there. Leave a review, tell your friends, and don't forget the Substandard show notes, who will be up on Friday at 11 a.m. Until next time.
Sonny00:54:46You'll notice that JVL has, like, reclined from his microphone. He's reading his Prana catalog. You know, I was a little bit worried last week, Vic. Yes, so was I. When JVL started reaching into his bag to pull something out, he said, I have something for you, and I was immediately flashing. Big bag of... I was immediately flashing to all the stories about, you know, workplace violence, and, you know, what could possibly go wrong. But when he pulled out...
Vic00:55:11He was going right at me.
Sonny00:55:12When he pulled out the Prada pants, I was extremely excited, because... I've never owned a pair of fine leather pants like those. I, you know, I was a little bit worried about fitting into them,
JVL00:55:26because, you know, I'm still... I've lost a little bit of weight,
Sonny00:55:28but I'm still, you know, on the huskier side. And I was really... So I called up my friend Buzz Bissinger, who, of course, has a very serious problem of buying fancy pants, fancy leather pants. And he was like, look, you just get some oil. You squeeze right in there. So the Prada jeans were a big hit. You know what I...
Vic00:55:48You know what I got to match the Prada jeans, Sonny, was a dog collar. Yes. It's a perfect match for it. Now, I have... Oh, no, we're teasing. Oh, no. Now we're being mean. I only spent hundreds of dollars at my own pocket. We're being too mean. We're being too mean. We're being too mean. I don't look a good person in the mouth, so I did not look at how much he spent. But I have to tell you this. I had my doubts. I said, I think he was off a little bit on the waist size, but I'm going to try to fit in these anyway. They are surprisingly comfortable. And I usually think that the only kind of jeans I can fit in to are probably, like, you know, jeggings or, you know, maternity jeans. But these, there's a lot of room in there.
Sonny00:56:25I will say, no, I was being mean. But both, you'll notice, you'll notice that both Vic and I are wearing our Prana jeans. We're both wearing them. And we both are extremely comfortable right now. It's very, it's, you know... Two questions. A lot of crotch room. Did you notice how deep the pockets are? Strictly ballroom. The deep, I actually, not only did I notice, I was like, actually, I recoiled in surprise because I was like, because my hand kept going. And I was like, wait, what is down there? There might be like a monster or something.
JVL00:56:52What is down there? What's down there? A monster. Oh, there's a monster down there.
Sonny00:56:58That's not what I was...
JVL00:56:58It's like a kaiju movie in your pants.
Sonny00:57:00God damn it.
JVL00:57:01No, this is, you will wear them for a couple days and you will never be able to go back to normal. All normal pocket depths will seem inadequate to you.
Sonny00:57:11I will say that I have no, I mean, the problem is I've never really had concern about keys or phone or whatever falling out of my pocket. I've never fallen out of my jeans pockets. Me neither.
JVL00:57:20But once you do, once you have the extra deep, you, again, as I say, where have you been all my life is how you will think.
Sonny00:57:25And have you been crawling around on the floor after your lovely child?
JVL00:57:29No. Because these are, you know, they're great for rock climbing or floor play with your young children. For what? When you're, I put them on the mat and you've got to like, you know, hey, here, here's the... We're quickly getting blue.
Vic00:57:44This is getting very blue. We haven't,
JVL00:57:46this is our third consecutive episode with not a single explicit word in it. Hey, that's good. What do you mean it's good?
Guest00:57:52It's terrible.
Sonny00:57:53Yeah, we need to really just start driving. No, no, no. I'm sure it's fine.
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