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#74. The Substandard Halloween Leftovers Episode
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Micro episode (10:55, recorded Halloween day). All three hosts present.
Dudes Chatting — Halloween costumes and horror recommendations: The hosts swap childhood and adult Halloween costume stories. JVL wore Darth Vader and Indiana Jones as a kid, and Miami Vice's Crockett as an adult. Vic went as Captain Hook as a child, then as one of the Valens brothers from La Bamba. Sonny has dressed as the Ghost of Brett Favre, James Bond, and Chuck Klosterman. Brief mention of Stranger Things. The conversation pivots to horror movie recommendations: Vic names The Changeling and The Others; Sonny recommends Scream and Get Out. JVL notes he grew up in Haddonfield, NJ — the fictional setting of Halloween — and watched the film at age 12.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00Hello, and welcome to another micro-episode of The Substandard, sponsored by Casper Mattress. I'm Victor Matus, along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a quick reminder that full episodes of TheSubstandard are available every Thursday at 11 a.m. So, Halloween is finally upon us. I don't know about you guys, but it's like, with my kids, it's the second biggest holiday. After Christmas. Because, like, six months prior, they're already saying, you know, what do they want to be for Halloween? In fact, it's usually the day of Halloween that they're already thinking about the next Halloween, and what they want to be.
JVL00:00:41JVL. Oh, yeah. No, because you have all the costume regrets. Yes, costume regrets! You know, well, I'm Batgirl today, but I really wanted to be Wonder Woman, or vice versa.
Vic00:00:49I'll be Wonder Woman next year. Yes, exactly. And then, a couple months later, it's somebody else. And on and on. It keeps on changing, yes? What are your kids going as tonight? Okay. Okay, my daughter is going as somebody named Mal from Disney's Descendants. It's a show that's apparently popular about the kids of all the evil villain characters of Disney. Is that acceptable? That is, I don't know. I guess Maleficent, Mal for short. It's an interesting outfit. And my son is going as a Death Eater from Harry Potter.
JVL00:01:22The real heroes. The real heroes of the movie. Of Harry Potter.
Vic00:01:26He has the forearm tattoo with the skull and the snakes. He made his own staff, partly using clay.
Sonny00:01:33Wait, are the Death Eaters the, like, not the shrouded? Yes. Those are like the ghosts, the, like, wraiths? Kind of. Oh, no, no, no. They're people. Yeah. They're like the clan. The Death Eaters are like the clan. That's right. They're like the Helena Bonham Carter. The wizarding version of the KKK.
Vic00:01:51Yes, you're thinking of Dementors.
Sonny00:01:53Yes, I'm thinking of, that's right.
Vic00:01:54Dementors and Death Eaters. So it's a black, you know, conical hood. I told Michael, as long as it's black. and not white, you'll be okay. But they wear part of the, you know, it's a half mask, and I believe the staff is like Lucius Malfoy, because he wanted to be- But aren't they all specific characters?
Sonny00:02:09Can you just, it's not like a stormtrooper, right? You can't just go as, like, a Death Eater.
Vic00:02:12But there are other unnamed Death Eaters, and I don't know. So he's, because he initially wanted to be Lucius Malfoy, but the white wig, he said it looks too much like a girl and didn't want to do that, so.
JVL00:02:22Lucius Malfoy? Oh, yeah, Lucius does have a, the dad does have a brown and white. The gray Jason Isaacs. Jason Isaacs. He's wonderful. Isaacs. Okay.
Vic00:02:30But you know what, I mean, but I don't remember, I mean, they go, so they go, they're in public school, they go Halloween costume every year. I don't remember doing that in grade school, do you? I did it once, which was, I think, senior year. You dressed up, and then you got to go around the grade school and then, you know, go to different classrooms, and the little kids see you. Did you ever, who did you dress up as? Oh, this is funny. Goldberg, Rupin, Fuhrer. No, excuse me. How dare you? How dare you? My buddy and I, my buddy Stevie Starrs and I were supposed to go as Milli Vanilli, because it had just happened where it turned out. You know, we're both fairly medium brown-skinned, and it turned out that, I think it had just, the news had just broken that they were lip-syncing, yes, they were lip-syncing, and so I said it would be really funny if we should go as Milli Vanilli, so I had gotten the ridiculous sort of the spandexy outfit and tie, whatever it was, and dreadlocks, and he was supposed to go as the same thing, and then at the last second, he tells me, oh, you know, I heard these two other guys are doing it, so I don't want to do it now. So I showed up. Just like this. So you were just Milli? I was just kind of looking like a reggae guy. Were you Milli or Vanilli? It didn't even matter.
Sonny00:03:36You would definitely get suspended for cultural appropriation.
Vic00:03:39I believe, you know, absolutely. This was 91, and 1991, and I believe, and there were some kids who thought I was going as this other kid in our school, like, making fun of me. Oh. Yeah. Even better. But you would never have done that. Happy Halloween? No. Yeah, you're Mr. Popularity. You would never have. No, I was, I was. It's not the way you roll. A little bit. A little bit of nerdy, a little bit of both. Anyway, so that was me. What about you?
JVL00:04:04We, at Quaker Hippie School, always came to school in our costumes. Ah. Yeah, because there was a big Halloween parade, and we did the thing. My kids' current hippie Montessori school, though. Mm-hmm.
Vic00:04:18No Halloween.
JVL00:04:19Yet. Too complicated. No, everybody's in uniforms all the time. You don't get to wear a costume for nothing. So, the kids won't get into costume until tonight, when we get home.
Vic00:04:29And head on out. When I was a kid, and the seniors would come around the classrooms, one kid, who was a senior in our Catholic high school, dressed up as a KKK guy. And then he stood at the top, and then he takes off his hood, and he was black. So, I guess that was okay. Thank God. It was irony. It was. It was funny. An ironic costume. But even now, I don't think that would, I don't even know if you could get away with
?00:04:52that now.
Vic00:04:52No, you definitely would not be able to.
Sonny00:04:54Well, maybe if you were black. I don't know. But even then, probably not.
Vic00:04:57When you were a senior, or did you? Inappropriate. Did you ever dress up in high school, Sonny, or no?
JVL00:05:02No.
Sonny00:05:03I can't remember if we were allowed to or not, but there's a zero percent chance I ever did, because that sounds like the worst thing on planet Earth, dressing up and going to school.
Vic00:05:12Even worse is if you had a Stranger Things moment where you dressed up and nobody else dressed up. Yeah. That would be really embarrassing. Yeah, that would be embarrassing. Yeah.
Sonny00:05:18That's a show on Netflix. It's very popular. It's extremely popular. Is that television? I'm six episodes into the new season. I am going on seven episodes. I don't watch TV. Into the new season. It's amazing. It's scary. It's about these kids. These kids. No, they go to an alternate dimension. 1984, D&D.
Vic00:05:32It's right up your alley.
Sonny00:05:33You would actually really like it. You would like it. It's filled when the snarl comes.
Vic00:05:36But it's also not beat you over the head.
JVL00:05:38It's just right. So, last night, I was working until about 11.20, and then I got up at four o'clock this morning and came to the office. So, when would you, if you were going to run my life, when would you recommend I sit down to watch this, what is it, 13 hours of content? Nine hours. Nine hours of content.
Sonny00:05:55It's actually probably closer to eight, too, because not every episode is.
JVL00:05:58As a life coach, if you- If you could just go through my schedule and show me where I should be watching this. Midnight to one.
Sonny00:06:03Okay. Yeah. I mean- Just one episode. Just watch one episode. You don't have to watch it all at once. Watch the first episode of season one. You can watch it at work. You sit down and take 45 minutes off work. We do a lot of that in here. Just watch it on your laptop.
Vic00:06:16You wanted to also talk about scary movies for Halloween. Yeah, scary movies, right? People like scary movies.
Sonny00:06:21People watch that on Halloween night. My wife and I used to watch The Shining every year on Halloween. We're not doing it this year because we're watching Stranger Things.
Vic00:06:29You watched the one with Stephen Webber, right?
Sonny00:06:31Yes, right. The ABC miniseries. The Defendant of Shining. Yeah, but I mean, it's closer to the Stephen King book, and therefore it's better, obviously. I mean, all these people who complain about Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, I mean, Stanley Kubrick hacking a piker, who dare deviate from the great Stephen King's vision. You know, why would anyone watch that? No, I definitely watch the five-hour ABC miniseries every year.
Vic00:06:55You know what's a great- movie that you never hear much about anymore, and it was from, I think, the 80s, called The Changeling, with George C. Scott. If you haven't watched it, watch it. It's pretty good. Hot at house. There's something going on in the house. It's really from my time. It's way before Sonny's time. And more from more recent times, I would say The Others, with Nicole Kidman. I think that's just a classic. That's a classic. That's a good ghost story. With a great twist. JVL. You're not much into horror.
JVL00:07:27Nope. Not really into horror. I have one sort of quintessential horror experience, which is that we, when I was in grade school, did a Halloween party for my Quaker school friends every year. And so we'd all come over and do the bopping for apples and all that. And the last year, I think it was sixth grade, when we came over, because we were all, you know, big kids then, we popped into the old VHS, the original Halloween.
Sonny00:07:58How old were you? Sixth grade.
JVL00:08:00So like 12 years old. Well, you picked a classic. Picked a classic, but it was super eerie, because we all went to the Friends School in Haddonfield, New Jersey. Halloween is set in.
Vic00:08:12Oh, in Haddonfield?
JVL00:08:13And that made it real.
Vic00:08:15Yeah.
JVL00:08:15Wow, absolutely. It really, it was pretty real to us.
Vic00:08:18Well, some of our listeners always try to remind me about Tom Silver being where they filmed Amityville Horror. Yes. And I've mentioned this several times on the show, but, and it was funny, is because you actually, even though you passed it as a kid, you passed it on Dock or Water Street, whatever it was, you actually just started thinking it was the house.
JVL00:08:36You know, so that movie is all on its own responsible for probably tens of millions of people getting lower SAT scores than they otherwise would have. Why would you say that?
Vic00:08:47Because a classic SAT word is Amity, and because of the movie Amityville Horror. They think Amity's bad?
JVL00:08:55Generations of American high school students have confronted that question. on the SATs with no real vague, you know, I've heard this word, but, oh, Amityville Horror, I know about that. Amityville Horror, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Vic00:09:06And then thought that it must be bad then. Or Jaws. Right, Jaws is also Amity. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there you go. Amity, as you know, means friendship. That's the mayor, Murray, says that in the movie. Okay.
Sonny00:09:18Wait, wouldn't they cancel each other out?
JVL00:09:20Right. You technically. Then you would get into Georgetown, wouldn't you? Yes, if you were, well, okay.
Vic00:09:26Sonny, we're going to say something.
Sonny00:09:28Well, no, I was going to say, if you, but the Jaws and the Amityville Horror should cancel each other out, right? They should. Like, if you've.
Vic00:09:35They should. They should. And more people have seen.
JVL00:09:37Nobody who has seen Jaws who is, remembers that it's set in Amity. You have to be a cine-esque to believe that. So, here's a question. The best, what is, to your mind, because this isn't something I'm interested in, but the best, when you're a high school kid with a bunch of friends on Halloween, the best Halloween movie to watch on Halloween night? Would it be one of the Screams? Because it's funny as well as scary. I mean, that came out after I was in high school. No, I'm not saying when you were in high school. I'm saying now. Yeah, now. So, if you were in high school now. I imagine. Just hanging out with high school kids.
Vic00:10:11I imagine that it, I imagine that the kids will say, even Scream is past their time now, right? Yeah. I mean, they came out 20 something years ago. But if it came out. Get out.
Sonny00:10:21Yeah, yeah, probably. No, I mean, or like The Conjuring or something.
Vic00:10:26Yes, definitely. The Conjuring. I mean, Annabelle Creation, Sonny. Annabelle Creation. I just wanted to bring that up again. No, but I'm not asking what they would watch. I'm saying what you, if you were directing their lives. Scream, Greater Sign. I know what you did last summer, because it came out at the same time. Did it come out at the same time? Yeah. Same era. But you know what, though? Jennifer Love Hewitt, Greater Sign, Neve Campbell. There you go. Wow, that's in many ways. And it all comes back to Party of Five.
JVL00:10:48Yeah. Yeah.
Vic00:10:49Oh, do you see what I did there?
JVL00:10:50Yeah.
Vic00:10:51Yeah. Okay. So.
Sonny00:10:53I'm sure it's fine.
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