← all The Weekly Substandard episodes
#99. The Substandard on Hostiles, Westerns, and Solo
Listen to this episode ↗on Substack, where the show lives now
Dudes Chatting — Super Bowl aftermath and trailers: The guys debrief on Super Bowl LII ads (the Tide campaign is declared the winner; "Dilly Dilly" has run its course) and trailers: the Solo: A Star Wars Story teaser lands with a mixed shrug, and the Cloverfield Paradox Netflix-surprise-drop is discussed with curiosity.
Dudes Chatting — Westerns: A deep dive into the western genre. Sonny argues the genre never truly died and distinguishes "revisionist" westerns from classical ones; JVL loves the form as a vehicle for moral clarity. Films discussed at length include Unforgiven, The Quick and the Dead, Open Range, Maverick, and Hell or High Water (identified as a "western in disguise"). The guys debate which modern films are secretly westerns and what makes the genre's iconography stick.
Box Office: Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle holds at #1.
Reviews: Gene (Vic) reviews all three Hostel films — having confused them with Hostiles — giving each zero stars and focusing entirely on the torture-porn content before being cut off. Sonny gives Hostiles a reserved positive: a beautifully shot, serious Scott Cooper western that earns its grim tone but runs long; Vic awards it two stars, praising Christian Bale's performance but finding the pacing sluggish.
Spirit of the Week: Old Forrester Statesman bourbon. Corrections segment included.
Full transcript
Vic00:00:00- Hey, Court. There's a lot of people here that want entertainment. I could draw with my left hand. How does that sound? Of course, unlike Mr. Ace Hanlon, I really can fight with both hands. How do you feel? - I'm nervous. It takes a lot to scare me. I love the sensation. I always wanted to fight you, Court. Ever since the first time I saw you. Just this itch that I had to scratch. - Hello and welcome back to another edition of The Substandard, sponsored by the Black Tux. I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. I'd like to remind you that The Substandard is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. Just look under podcasts and search for Substandard. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. Gentlemen, how are we? AVL, it's two days later, or three day, four days later. - How many days later? - Many days.
Sonny00:01:05- We came back and it's Thursday, so that's three days?
Vic00:01:08- Yes, it's three days later. How does it feel? - It feels the same as it did on Monday. - Is that right?
JVL00:01:14- I am just flying high. - You feel exactly the same. - Can I say one thing I forgot to say on Monday?
Sonny00:01:18- Yeah, before the Facebook Live cut out and we, you know.
JVL00:01:21- I don't want this to sound like I'm getting chesty because we finally have a Super Bowl title. So please understand this is not me trolling, this is not me getting chesty, this is honest analysis on my part. - Okay. - I believe this is the first time the Patriots have lost in the Super Bowl to a team which during the course of the game was clearly a better team. Their previous two Super Bowl losses were flukes. In both of those cases, I think everybody watching the game understood that while the Giants may have been better on those two days, the Patriots were a better team, they just got caught flat-footed, they were victim to fluky catches, this game, the Eagles were, I think, a superior team. And that's the first time that's happened, and that may wind up rattling Patriots nation. And it could be the spark which brings down the Dynasty. - The spark that lights the fire that ignites the rebellion? - Hope. - It's a weapon.
Vic00:02:20- It's that passing of the torch, as I was saying.
Sonny00:02:22- I would say, I think that is not an unreasonable argument to make, I think the real question we need to be asking - I think we're the better team. - Is Eli Manning now a better quarterback than Tom Brady? Eli Manning, two and O in Super Bowls, against Tom Brady both times.
JVL00:02:40- Let me go someplace different with that. Is Eli Manning now a funnier TV presence than Peyton Manning? - Yes, yes! - Because I didn't think Eli had it in him. - It's really a dark horse. - He was hysterical.
Vic00:02:52- Yeah, that was a good ad. - If you wanna go right into that, I don't mind. - We wanna talk about Super Bowl ads? - Yeah, absolutely, let's do this right now. So, I thought it was great between him, ODB, and the rest of the team doing a direct, riffing directly from the very end of Dirty Dancing, and they had all the moves, they did all the moves. It was really very good, I thought, look, you know what, you finish at the bottom of the barrel, might as well make a commercial out of this and have a lot of fun, and it looked like, it was one of my favorite ads. - The best ads were the Tide ads. - Were the what ads? - The Tide, absolutely.
Sonny00:03:27- I'm sorry, am I saying Tide ads or Tide dads? It took me like two ads to kind of figure out what exactly they were saying. Tide, the Tide ads were fantastic because they kept surprising me.
Vic00:03:38I was like, hey, oh, that's a Tide ad, that's funny!
Sonny00:03:40It didn't wear out, it's welcome.
JVL00:03:42- Very good, they-- - I didn't understand them.
Vic00:03:44- Well, you couldn't--
Sonny00:03:47- It was very meta. It was like, the Super Bowl ads all looked great.
JVL00:03:49- I didn't understand any of them.
Sonny00:03:51- The Super Bowl ads are all the same.
Vic00:03:52- They're all wearing bleached shirts, and they're all wearing bleached, you know, their shirts look great, everything looks great, and also, it worked because David Harbour, but Jonathan hasn't watched Stranger Things, so he doesn't appreciate--
Sonny00:04:01- Yeah, you haven't watched Stranger Things, you don't know who David Harbour is. - He's fantastic, he's a sheriff, and he's-- - See, this is a problem with being out of the zeitgeist. You are out of the zeitgeist. - Yes, yes. - And the zeit-- - True. - The zeit has moved on. - Is that the right part? Is that, or is it the geist has moved on?
Vic00:04:16- Speaking of-- - The geist has moved on, 'cause it's the ghost. - Speaking of Tide ads, yes, the geist. - The geist has moved on. - It's moved on, it has. - But I'm gonna go back. - Has this bit moved on? - But I'm gonna-- - Has this discussion of Tide ads moved on yet? - No, no, no, no, no. Can we just-- - Tide ads? - I'll tell you what's very funny. One time, we were all on an airplane, me and my buddies, we were heading down to visit my friend, Rusher, down in St. Martins, and they picked up one of these video game publications that, you know, at the airport, like for like-- - IGN. - Whatever it is. Yeah, yeah, very good. - EGM or-- - Yeah, yeah. So they're sitting on one end, my other buddy's on the other end, and my buddy, Buckley, yells over to Steve, "Hey, Steve, when you're done, pass me that game magazine."
Sonny00:04:52- Oh.
Vic00:04:54- People are like, "What, who, what?"
Sonny00:04:56- Game magazine. - Game magazine. - Game magazine.
JVL00:05:00- So can I have an ad complaint?
Vic00:05:02- Yes.
JVL00:05:04- The Budweiser Dilly Dilly spot-- - Oh, fudge. - Took a turn which, creatively, was entirely unwelcome. From being a sort of funny, broski, it's a set, they're sitting around-- - Well, let's not oversell it.
Sonny00:05:18Let's not oversell the funny. - Ish. - Because it's one of the worst things that's ever been put on television.
JVL00:05:23- Funny-ish. But to do, from there, to then swerve out into, and we've got an epic conflict, and there's a fight scene, and there are dragons, and now there's the Bud N-- Like, all of a sudden, we're so divorced from the initial concept of the Dilly Dilly and the spot, and it's unwelcome and stupid in ways which I was surprised by.
Vic00:05:42- Also-- - Did you feel the same way? - I have, without naming names, 'cause we have friends at Anheuser-Busch, but I have a source that tells me who's over there that they were quite surprised that Dilly Dilly became Dilly Dilly, and that-- - They had no idea what to do? - They were really surprised that it, apparently, that it supposedly caught on, and people are saying it, not us. It's the same people who probably say YOLO, but, you know, my-- - No, what's up?
JVL00:06:07- At my kid's-- - What's up? - At my kid's school in fourth grade, somebody makes a good play out on the football field in recess, they all go, "Dilly Dilly!" You see? - It's spread.
Sonny00:06:20- It's spread. - No, it is. - No, but I'm saying-- - So it's the Joe Camel. - They have a great bit. - It's the Joe Camel of beer ads.
Vic00:06:26- Except that there's nothing wrong with kids drinking.
Sonny00:06:28- They're gonna have to ban it now. They're gonna have to ban it.
JVL00:06:29- No, but I would say they took that creatively, and they took a turn on it, which is no longer funny. - No, it was-- - Right?
Sonny00:06:38- It was a bad ad, it was a bad ad, and I will tell you the thing that jumped out to me is that they clearly spent about 30 seconds devising the Bud Knight costume. They just took a Boba Fett helmet and spray painted it with ice. - I skipped most of it. - And I was like, what is-- - I skipped most of it.
JVL00:06:52- What is, I was like, where have I seen that before?
Sonny00:06:54Oh, that's right, it's just Star Wars. It's just, it's either like a clone trooper's helmet or a Boba Fett helmet or something that they have slapped a paint job on, and somebody was like, eh, pay me $20,000 for this, probably.
Vic00:07:09- Speaking of Star Wars, there was a very interesting commercial on the Super Bowl. - That's a heck of a transition, Victorino. - Yep, you jumped on it. - And you know what? - You jumped on it. - And I sacrificed myself 'cause I wanted to talk about Visit Australia, which is another big commercial. - We'll get back to that.
JVL00:07:21- Can we go back to that? - Yes. - 'Cause that was, absolutely. - The whole time, I'm saying to myself, I wanna see this, this looks fantastic.
Vic00:07:26- Okay, speaking of Star Wars, there was a trailer for a new Star Wars story.
Sonny00:07:32- No, no, no, no, no, no. - Please, Sonny, what's happening? - No, no, no, no, no, no.
JVL00:07:35What there was was a commercial for a trailer for a new Star Wars story. - Which comes out, when does the trailer come out, today?
Sonny00:07:40- For a teaser. - A commercial for a trailer for a teaser for a product placement toy manufacturing nightmare. That's what we are, that's the dystopian future that we have been promised. I was promised disease and nuclear war, and instead I got endless nesting dolls of Star War ads.
JVL00:08:03- Thank you. - So, do you think it looks good?
Vic00:08:06- It is directed by-- - I mean, I'll go see it. - It is directed by Ron Howard. - You gonna buy the lunchbox? - Ultimately.
Sonny00:08:13- Vic, what'd you think? - For me or for my daughter?
Vic00:08:15- What did you think, Vic? - Well, the first thought was, you guys had said this on one of our many Star Wars episodes in the past, which is, we are going to have Star Wars every year now. And I said, well, not every, and do you remember, you know, there was a time where we waited, I don't know, 20 years, something, for episode one, and then we waited another stretch of years before we got to-- - It was 15 years between,
Sonny00:08:37no, 16 years between Return of the Jedi and episode one.
Vic00:08:41- That's right. - That was the longest gap. - And then another stretch 'til we got to episode seven slash Rogue One, I think, and now, is it because of this, I guess the cynical side of me is gonna say no, but because of this, is Star Wars now just, it's losing its sheen as, oh, this is a Star Wars movie too, oh. Oh, it's another Fast and Furious. Is that happening?
JVL00:09:05- No, more another Marvel. Right, it's another, remember how special superhero movies were? Like, ah, it's a comic book movie. They have guys in spandex, and they're jumping, powers! They have powers! - Powers! - And now it's like, oh, Marvel's got another-- - You know, hey, it's Ant-Man 3. Yeah, I think that's where we're headed.
Sonny00:09:23- Infinity War, this is gonna go on forever, 'cause it's infinity, get it?
Vic00:09:29- Is this a new person down at the studio, who was that? - I, no, I-- - Who was that guy?
Sonny00:09:33- I, my-- - I gotta talk to him later. - My issue with the-- - Is that Mr. Plinkett? - Shut up. - Just let me steal things, God. My issue-- - I'm gonna get a pizza bite. - Sonny, Sonny, please. - Suns, Hotinos, pizza rolls. I don't even know what I was gonna say. Something about Star Wars being dumb now.
JVL00:09:59I mean, the problem isn't that,
Sonny00:10:02the problem with all these Star Wars stories, or at least the first two that we've seen, right, is that they're basically the same. It's like, all right, we gotta get a team together, we're gonna go do a thing. - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It's all the same, like that.
JVL00:10:15- Then they do the thing. - The first two Star Wars stories,
Sonny00:10:18Rogue One, and now this, and now. - Well, we don't know that that's,
JVL00:10:22let's put together a really multicultural team.
Sonny00:10:24- The ad is literally Woody Harrelson being like, we gotta get a team together. We gotta get a team, it's like Ocean's Eleven, but for Han Solo.
JVL00:10:31- But I think he's gonna live.
Sonny00:10:33- You think Woody Harrelson's gonna live?
JVL00:10:35- No, Han Solo.
Sonny00:10:35- Oh yeah, it's probably.
JVL00:10:36- I think Han is gonna make it out of this alive.
Sonny00:10:38- How great would it be if they actually retconned it, so he dies, and then they just do the original trilogy again, but without Han Solo? 'Cause you know what would be great? - So much better without him. - Original trilogy, no Han Solo, with. - Different character. - Lando Calrissian in the Han Solo role.
JVL00:10:53- Oh, he would have been. - Boom. - He would have been traveling with him.
Sonny00:10:55- Oh, I'm sorry, I just made Disney three billion dollars.
JVL00:10:59- Well played.
Vic00:11:00- How do you do it? How do you do it?
JVL00:11:02- Well played. There Han looks a little. - Okay, well this is my thing. - Oh, terrible. - Okay. - Everything about that trailer was bad.
Vic00:11:10- And the thing is, and I like. - Everything about that trailer. - And I know Sonny, I know you like as well, Alden Ehrenreich, he was great in Hail Caesar. Is he trying, do they tell him, try to look like Harrison Ford and try to sound like him? 'Cause he does neither for me.
Sonny00:11:22- But here's the thing is, I like Alden Ehrenreich in Hail Caesar. And if you remember in Hail Caesar, he is playing an actor who can't act. - He looks small. - Out of his depth. - He looks small. - And young, and I. - Yeah, he sounds callow.
Vic00:11:41- Is it supposed to be also, is it supposed to be Han Solo as a teenager? Because I could, okay fine, he'll change, but otherwise. - Well, how old do we think Han is when we meet him?
Sonny00:11:51- Well, it says in the voiceover. Well, it says-- - In A New Hope. - In A New Hope, I mean, he's 40.
Vic00:11:55- What does he look like?
Sonny00:11:56- He looks 40. - You hope he's 40.
JVL00:12:00- I think he's 40. - No, 30. - No.
Sonny00:12:01- 30. - I was gonna say 30 years old. - I'll tell you how old he looked to me when I was 10 and saw it for the first time. - Well, when you're 10, you see a 30-year-old, you think they're 70. - How do I look to you now?
JVL00:12:09How do I look to you now, Sonny? - 104.
Sonny00:12:12- I honestly am not sure how you're still alive. 'Cause I just see a desiccated skull. - There was a commercial. - Your eyes are sunk into your head and there's little tufts of hair.
Vic00:12:27- There was a commercial yesterday and it was some sort of health related thing and there was an old Asian guy running, jogging, barely making it. - The Toyota ad! - The Toyota, and I said, "That's how I run now."
Sonny00:12:38- The dystopian future that Toyota has promised, which is robot cars that can't be stopped and elderly people ambling down the street.
JVL00:12:45- I don't know, are you thinking of the E-Trade ad with like the old person running on the beach? - No, no, no, no, this was later. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. - This was later. - 'Cause that was later. - That was unpleasant.
Vic00:12:54- That was later, that was later. So anyway, back to-- - So it looks bad, right, Greg? - Yeah, disconcerting. I mean, I get it, but you know, I mean, how long can they, do the young kids, I mean, is it continuing? They're gonna wanna see it, so we're just gonna keep cranking it and it's gonna make a billion dollars. So that's why we're gonna do it. - I think that's the plan.
Sonny00:13:15- This Jedi box office receipts, you know what that movie's gonna gross less than? Avengers.
JVL00:13:21- Oh yeah. - It's gonna, it's not going to, it is-- - It's really fumbled down the stretch.
Sonny00:13:26- If you look at the weekend-by-weekend numbers, Rogue One is beating it. If you look at weekend-by-weekend drops, all of the comparison movies are doing better. Like, it's actually, again, I know that, again, this is like a very complicated discussion because on the one hand, you have an objective fact where this movie is one of the highest grossing films of all time, it's made 1.3 billion dollars, there's no universe in which Disney is losing money on it. On the other hand, it has dropped precipitously from its previous iterations and it is creating a sort of, I think people are actively annoyed by it.
JVL00:14:03- But here's how you can reconcile those two things. Because this is part of a mega forever franchise, Disney cannot evaluate the success or failure of this solely on the top line number. Because this movie exists to help launch whatever movies follow it as well. And so to the extent which it underperforms and then sours the audience going forward, that's a failure. Because however much money this movie makes, whatever follows it is, you know, they've got another 13 of these movies, each of which needs to make a billion dollars.
Sonny00:14:39And so how much more money will the next J.J. Abrams Star Wars film gross? - I would bet it, I bet it, I bet it does much better than this one.
JVL00:14:48- I don't know. Let's see what Solo does. Does Solo perform better than Rogue One?
Sonny00:14:54- That movie's gonna be a, I, who, I mean, I'm gonna go see it. I have to go see it, 'cause I'm gonna write about it. I think a lot of people are gonna see it because they feel the need to see it. I would be curious to see if anybody sees it more than once.
Vic00:15:08- Do we know how much Ron Howard changed or had to fix the movie, or was he just there to pick up the pieces at the end?
Sonny00:15:15- My understanding is that he reshot almost everything that they had shot already. - Wow. - And then shot the rest of the film. - Wow. - That is what I've been led to believe.
JVL00:15:24- Okay, jeez. So, I mean, the big question, the $64,000 question is, is Star Wars fatigue theoretically possible in audiences? - Yeah, that's the question. - And I talked about this last time we talked about Star Wars. I talked with Richard Rushfeld about this, and he, what he said to me was, that is the one eventuality about which no one in Hollywood is prepared. And if you think you've seen panic over, like, the summer box office numbers, or the incursion of streaming, or what Netflix is doing, or the collapse of a studio, you wait to see what happens if Star Wars goes soft, because then Hollywood will have a total freak out over what to do. There.
Sonny00:16:09- Speaking of Netflix. - Yeah. Sonny. - The biggest big movie reveal last week, last night, last, on Sunday, on Sunday, was Cloverfield. - Yes, okay. - So. - Number three. - The third Cloverfield movie, it's called The Cloverfield Paradox. And it's fascinating, because by all indications, it is a terrible movie. It's just getting savaged by the critics. But the way it was sold was very clever.
JVL00:16:37- I thought it was fascinating. Made me wanna see it, even though I have not seen
Sonny00:16:40either of the other Cloverfield movies. - Very, very clever. And there was a very, there was like a brief story and deadline that maybe this was coming. But what they have done, and again, I find this totally fascinating, is that they have taken a movie that is unsuitable for release in theaters. They have taken a movie that's so bad, nobody would pay for it on VOD. They have dumped it on Netflix, and they have turned that into an event. They have turned it into an event. They have turned it into like a, "Hey, we need to get everybody out there to go see it." And the way they did this, one, or at least one very small part of how they did this, and this was, again, one of the things I found very interesting, was director Ava DuVernay on her Twitter account said, "Oh my God, film Twitter. "Something so big is coming. "History is being made right now. "You'll see in a couple hours." Or something like that. And so everyone was kind of on tenterhooks, like, "Ooh, what's gonna happen? "What, are we gonna see a new trailer?" And so it comes, so the trailer for The Cloverfield Paradox comes out, and then she gets back on her Twitter feed, and she's like, "This is the first movie directed by a person of color, "and it stars a very minority cast, blah, blah." So what she has very specifically and kind of cagely done is create, she has hyped up this movie, and then kind of pitched it in a way that says, "I dare you to come after this film for being bad."
JVL00:18:04And it is like, it's actually a very brilliant piece
Sonny00:18:07of marketing. It's very smart and clever, and I haven't seen the movie yet, I haven't seen the movie yet, so I don't wanna judge it, but the early returns on Rotten Tomatoes are not good.
JVL00:18:19They are bad. - This is very helpful, though, because then, when Netflix puts out their press release on the Sunday night after it's been released, they can say that it is the most watched science fiction movie over an initial three-day period directed by a woman of color in Netflix history.
Vic00:18:39- Probably. - On the other hand, a movie you would wanna see is Dundee.
JVL00:18:45Is that what you were saying, JVL? - So, I feel like such a sucker, because that thing comes on, and I just think, Danny McBride and comic Chris Hemsworth, sign me up, that looks amazing. - And Margot Robbie.
Vic00:18:55- Oh, Margot Robbie. - I didn't even see her. - Oh, there were two versions, because I saw, I thought, I said, let me see the whole thing again online, but I remembered the one I saw during the Super Bowl, unless they did it twice.
Sonny00:19:06- I don't know, I missed the one on the Super Bowl, so I didn't--
Vic00:19:09- The one on the Super Bowl is great, because they had, yes, I remember, Margot Robbie was in that, and then also, at the very end, and he's, you know, it's about-- - Roby. - Roby? - Roby, Margot Robbie. - The best of Australia. I began to think, wait a minute, oh, wait, this is a, this is not a movie, when they were doing the, oh, you know, actually, Australia makes great wines, which is, directly reminds me of the California commercials. - Yellowtail. - Yes, yeah, well, that was a separate one.
Sonny00:19:31- The official wine of poverty. - I really hope.
Vic00:19:34It's right up there, yes, yes it is. - Hey, if Yellowtail wants to sponsor us, feel free to send a couple bottles. - We'll find something nice to say. - We could use it in our cooking here. We'll do a cooking segment with Yellowtail. And then, but then, but then, at the end, he's trying to be convinced that he's gonna make a great Crocodile Dundee, and then they have a quick, like, one second shot of Paul Hogan sitting at another table shaking his head, saying no, you know, and he looks great. And Paul Hogan's still wearing the same outfit. But online, Russell Crowe and Isla Fisher are also in the line.
Sonny00:20:05Really nice.
JVL00:20:06- That looks better than 80% of the movies put out by Hollywood. - Yeah. - No? - Yeah, yes. - Do you disagree?
Vic00:20:12- No, I agree. And especially, I think-- - Looks more fun. - I thought Russell Crowe was supposed to be sort of a young Rupert Murdoch, because he, like, owns, he goes, "I own Australia," and this whole thing. It was fantastic. It was great. - Totally knew it. - Okay, good. Other commercial thoughts? Anybody? - No. - Okay. Sonny, how was your week, weekend, otherwise?
Sonny00:20:32- Great, mm-hmm. - Uh...
Vic00:20:34- Something happened with your-- - Did you enjoy watching Laxance on the football field, Sonny?
Sonny00:20:39- Ugh. - It was fine. I mean, I, like, I didn't actually, I didn't want either team to win or lose, so--
JVL00:20:45- I thought you appreciated excellence.
Sonny00:20:46- I mean, I am a big fan of the Patriots, because they make everybody else so angry. So that's the only reason. I was, like, kind of cheering for the--
JVL00:20:54- I'm sorry, you think the Eagles don't make the rest of the world angry? - No, not compared to the Patriots. - Not compared to the Patriots.
Sonny00:21:00- Not compared to the Patriots. I mean, like, the idea that so many people were suckered into cheering for this garbage city of horse poop eaters. That I just, like, I'm, like, this is the problem with cheering for underdogs, is that underdogs are trash. There's a reason that underdogs are underdogs, it's 'cause they're not good at things. And cheering for people who are not good at things is immoral. I think it's actually immoral, and we should celebrate excellence.
Vic00:21:25- Do you remember, did you see the cover of the Daily News the day after the Super Bowl? And it was about, something about the hated Eagles, but they defeated the evil Pats.
Sonny00:21:34- Yeah, I mean, that is kind of where we are.
JVL00:21:36- The New York Post headline, Eagles fan stoops to new low. Even for Philly.
Vic00:21:43- I mean, it's, it's right, it's accurate. - That's good, that's good. - So anyway, I was fine, I was fine. - All right, good. You know what I've started to read, to-- - Read? - Yes, because I don't, and if I don't do-- - Question, question! - Yes, Sonny? - You own a book? - One of the things is, if I don't read it to the kids, right, or to my son, then I'm not gonna read it, right? 'Cause on my own, it's very hard for me to just get through these things. - Unless I'm getting paid. - Books. - Thank you. Unless I'm getting paid to review it. - When you say these things, do you just mean books? - The things with letters and words on them. - Yes, thank you, Sonny. JVL's showing a video of, oh boy, yeah, rioting in Philly and a traffic-- - This year's post headline? - Post, fires, mayhem, insane trust falls in Philly after Super Bowl win. - Gosh, sorry. - It's gonna continue, wait 'til the parade. We have started to read, I have started to read The Hobbit. - Oh. - I was not a Tolkien person. I used to make fun of those people. - You're not a what person? - A Tolkien. - Tolkien, you're not a Tolkien? - Tolkien, that's how it's spelled. That's how I'm saying it. And I wasn't one of that, we'd make fun of them, but I thought, okay, you know what, my son's into it, and you know--
Sonny00:22:58- Your son is into The Lord of the Rings movie.
Vic00:23:01- Yes, so I started reading. He loves it, and I love it. As it turns out, what I'm surprised by The Hobbit is how readable it is. And it was, I guess, initially just gonna be a very simple children's story. But I don't know, I haven't gotten to the Silmarillion yet, you know what I mean? I imagine it gets more and more in the weeds. - Never, never do that. - No, okay, good, good. - Stay away from all that. - So I bought the Ballantine book package. It comes with the four books. So it starts with The Hobbit, and then we have the three, it's all nicely in a big box.
Sonny00:23:31- Yeah, is it, are the covers like black? - I definitely, I almost certainly have that set in mine.
Vic00:23:36- Oh, no, there's another one, and I should've gotten that one. - I think it's bigger, and it looks, yeah, that's the other one. I think that's Rat-a-Mouse, I can't remember. But in any event, I tried to make sure I got the one that was like the original one, you know? So, like there wasn't any sort of, you know, like.
Sonny00:23:51- Well, there hasn't, it's not like, it's not like the Star Wars movies. There haven't been, you know, additions and subtractions.
Vic00:23:56- What's weird is, they made some fixes, apparently. What's weird is The Hobbit was 19, I think 1937. And then the last book, Return of the King, was like '56 or '57, I think. And, but yet it doesn't catch on, until almost, like fantasy is a genre, it's kind of a weird thing. But, in any event. But it's great, it's a great adventure. You're going through mountains. - Are we going somewhere with this? - Yes, we are. Mountains, rivers, valleys, streams, snow. But the only place that you don't see, topography-wise, in Lord of the Rings is jungles. Speaking of jungles, over the weekend, Jumanji, Welcome to the Jungle, was back at the top of the box office.
JVL00:24:32- You did it, you did your ninth consecutive Jumanji transition, that is astonishing. - That's like the Lou Gehrig record of transitions.
Vic00:24:41- Well, that's amazing because this movie--
JVL00:24:43- Well played, sir.
Vic00:24:44- Thank you JVL, thank you. This movie is not dying. It's just continuing on. It's back at the top of the box office. I was gonna say probably for the last time.
Sonny00:24:52- To be fair, this is one of the worst box office weekends of the year.
Vic00:24:57- Top means 11 million. But it is now more than 352 domestic. That is more than Justice League, I assume. What about Star Wars?
Sonny00:25:05- By a lot. Well, no, it's like-- - Star Wars exploded. - The Last Jedi made 600, has made 612 million.
Vic00:25:14- And then dropped, whereas if you look at the chart, I guess, of Jumanji, it has, again, it only declined by 20%, something like that. Okay. Followed by Maze Runner, which had a steep decline. Winchester, which is about what, Sonny? Did you see Winchester?
Sonny00:25:29- I did not. Winchester opened cold, so here's what Winchester is about. As far as I can tell from the trailer, which I saw several times, in movies recently, it is about a house, a real house, this is like a real house that exists, that was built by an heiress to the Winchester fortune. - Oh. - That is like, kind of like insanely built, and it just like, it's like rooms on top of rooms, like kind of built out, like in an inorganic, like random haphazard sort of way. And the plot of the movie is that the rooms were all built to house the ghosts of the people who were killed by Winchester rifles. That is my understanding, again, I don't know, I don't actually have any idea if this is the actual plot of the film, this is just what I've been led to believe by the trailers.
Vic00:26:19- Okay, followed by The Greatest Showman, still lingering, The Greatest Showman. - You could not pay me to watch that movie. - And in fifth place, with $5.5 million, Hostiles, a western starring Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike. JVL, you did not see Hostiles. - No. - Sonny, you saw it.
Sonny00:26:36- I did see it.
Vic00:26:37- And I saw it, too. - Did you see it? - What? - Did anyone else see it? - So I guess, does that mean
Sonny00:26:41three of us saw it? - What? Oh, come on in, Gene. Vic, get the F out of that seat. Get out. All right, sit down, Gene, come on. - Move over, Vic.
Vic00:26:58A group of guys backpacking through Europe are lured to a spa in the east, but this spa is no pleasure palace, a point they really drill into the first victim. - Gene. - Let's just say they really cut to the chase. Don't get me wrong, the spa is definitely into skincare, as in how do we care for your skin in order to wear it as a coat? I can't even make a joke about what happened to the poor Japanese girl. Konnichiwa? More like Konnichiwa happened to her eyeball. It's dangling all over her face. Hostel is one of the worst films I've ever seen. My advice to you, don't see this movie. It is torture. Zero stars.
Sonny00:27:36- JVL, I think Gene saw Hostel, the Eli Roth movie, not Hostiles, the Scott Cooper movie. - Well, I... - Gene.
Vic00:27:45- Really? I suspected that, so I saw the other movie called Hostel 2. Women being tortured. One lady sits in a bathtub torturing a victim above her. Talk about a bloodbath. Zero stars.
Sonny00:28:00- No, no, Gene, Gene.
Vic00:28:03- Hostel 3, straight to video. They take a gamble in Las Vegas and lose. - How many stars does that one get? - Zero stars. I need a vacation and not to Slovakia. Bye bye.
JVL00:28:18- Oh boy.
Sonny00:28:19That's, well, you know.
JVL00:28:21- For a man of his age, those movies are hard on the heart. - I mean, it's pretty intense. - I can't believe that. That is terrible. - Yeah. - Poor guy. - That is terrible. - I'm just happy he made it out alive. - Yes.
Vic00:28:31- Sonny, you-- - So far. - You, you, you have a real, you wrote a real, real, real review. - I did. I did write a review.
Sonny00:28:39- For the Freebeacon. - Freebeacon.com. - Your thoughts. - I like Hostiles. I don't love it. I, I think it's, it is a kind of well done. It, it's a, it's a very, it's a movie that is in a very weird genre, which is that it's almost like a throwback to the new wave of Western films that starts basically with Unforgiven. Unforgiven is like kind of the postmodern deconstruction of the Western myth. Blah, blah, blah. And it's great and it's, it's wonderful. And like Hostiles is kind of in that vein where you have the, the men who are, who feel bad about the violence that they have wreaked across the, the West. It is about, it opens, the film opens with a very kind of brutal sequence of the murder of a family of settlers by a group of Indians and a Comanche. - People who are stealing. - The Comanche.
JVL00:29:29- Stealing the land of the natives.
Sonny00:29:30- Well, the Comanche, you know, they aren't really people of the land. They are, you know. - Even the Apaches say that, right. - So, but it's, it is, it is a movie that is very much about, so after this, after this kind of very violent open, Christian Bale plays a, a army captain who has to take a war chief, yellow, yellow tail, what's his name, I can't remember. - Hawk. - Yellow Hawk, thank you. He has to take Yellow Hawk home to his ancestral lands in Wyoming. - Montana. - Montana, thank you. - I just saw it. - Thank you, thank you, thank you. - Yeah, yeah, I saw this like three weeks ago, so I'm, we're, we're, I'm playing a little bit of catch up here. But the, but the, anyway, he's gotta take, he's gotta take the war chief home, and in the course of doing this, they go up against a number of different hostiles. You have the Comanche who, again, attack the people going. Then you've got the kind of criminal army guy who, you know, the-- - Ben Foster. - Ben Foster.
Vic00:30:33- Apparently he was like a real hardcore method type actor from what I've read.
Sonny00:30:36- Yeah, he's very, he's very intense. And then, once they get to the, the kind of endpoint, the ranchers-- - Oh, don't forget the fur trappers. - Oh, the fur trappers. I forgot about the fur trappers. They're fur trappers slash rapists. - Yes! - Anyway, it's, it's a movie about-- - It's a fitting job description. - It is, it is a movie, oh. It is a movie about the-- - A play. - The way in which the West was a lawless society, and the only way you could secure your rights was through violence. That is like-- - Yeah. - The overarching theme of this film, as far as I could take it. And I, you know, look, it's, it is, it's an intense movie. It is, it is a very real and true movie in a certain way. But it is not for everyone, and I, I am vaguely surprised that it is a big, or modestly big-budget feature that is getting a wide release for-- - Very wide. - For a lot of audiences.
Vic00:31:31- Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. But you know, I mean, visually, I thought it looked spectacular, and I thought performances across the board were great, and everyone, even what they were wearing, they looked great. - Yes. - Speaking of looking great, everyone wants to look great as their date at a wedding or special event. Trouble is, there's no way you wanna spend the amount of time or money she did shopping for her outfit. Theblacktux.com is your answer with high-quality rental suits and tuxedos delivered to your doorstep. The Black Tux is the easy way for guys to rent suits and tuxedos online. The Black Tux lets you create your look, or choose from tons of stylists, selected outfits. Suits usually retail for $1,200, but at The Black Tux, they start at just $95. Expert customer care has your back every step of the way, completely done online. With The Black Tux free home try-on, you can see the fit and feel the quality of your suit months before your event. After ordering, your suit will arrive 14 days before your event. If anything is less than perfect, The Black Tux will send you a free replacement right away. When your event's over, just drop your rental back in the mail. Shipping is free both ways. I wore a BlackTux.com Wrigley suit on Friday. It was 100% merino wool. I thought it fit really well. Even the shoes and, you know, the whole outfit, it did not feel like those obviously used suits for your junior prom event. The tux that you spilled spiked punch on in your friend's basement. It smells good. It smells fresh. And the best of all, free quality socks. You get socks out of this. So. - You get to keep the socks. - You get to keep the socks. I certainly hope so.
JVL00:33:12- It's like a $12 value right there.
Vic00:33:13- I wore, it was a starch white button down shirt and a gray suit. I tell you, I look like Tom Cruise in Collateral. If I just dyed my hair blonde, people, oh my gosh, that's Asian Tom Cruise from Collateral.
Sonny00:33:27- Literally what I said when I saw Vic come into the office on Friday, I was like, oh my God, Tom Cruise. is right here.
JVL00:33:35What did Kate think when she saw you?
Vic00:33:37Kate must have been... Also, Neil from Heat. Neil McCauley from Heat. Same outfit. To get $20 off your purchase, visit theblacktux.com slash substandard. That's theblacktux.com slash substandard for $20 off your purchase. The Black Tux Premium Rental Suits and Tuxedos delivered. Nicely done. You're such a pro.
JVL00:34:01Can I ask a couple questions about Hostiles? Yes.
Vic00:34:05No, no, no. I want to hear your thoughts first. Your thoughts. Okay. Oh, right. I wrote them down because I'm not a pro-reviewer like Sonny. I don't do this for a living. That last segment was so good. I really crushed it. You did. I thought it had a powerful start. I said, okay, we're off. This is going to be a good movie. This is really... It starts off very strong, very powerful. I actually heard sniffles in the audience during the first act. Because you like
JVL00:34:32gore. And so it starts off with the slaughter of the rancher's family.
Vic00:34:36And you're like, yeah. The emotional. No, the emotional. Not from the sense of the command. And Rosamund Pike is very great. She's powerful. Thank you for your heavy breathing. I actually caught... I'm not even a Westerns genre expert at all, but I did catch... There was an opening scene that I thought was a direct reference to The Searchers and the opening shot and the closing shot. In which, in fact, in The Searchers, that closing shot was itself a homage to Harry Carey Sr. So I think I said, okay, this is really going to be great. And then I just felt dragged on. I just thought, you know, I feel like it exhausted the emotions of the audience. Okay, it's a tear jerker. And then, okay, how many more times are we supposed to be crying here and everybody else and the actors are crying. Everybody's crying. And particularly there's a scene in the infirmary and Christian Bale is talking to his right-hand corporal bidding him farewell and then he wells up with tears. I get it. At the same time, I don't know. I mean, Christian Bale's a great actor, so when he cries, it's good, but I just don't know what the backstory is and he's leaving that. And then it just, I thought there were too many plot points. I would have focused on maybe one or two themes. I would have cut it by 15 minutes. A little bit long. A little bit long. Okay. Two stars. If he saw it. If he saw it. Now, JVL questions.
JVL00:35:52The first question is, why do they have to bring Yellowtail across the country?
Vic00:35:57Yellow Hawk. Whatever.
JVL00:35:59Like, why, what is the... To pull one last job? Because he's too old for this ass?
Sonny00:36:03He needs to be buried in his... Well, there's actually a very funny kind of moment at the beginning of the film where the liberal mainstream media of 1890s... Harper's! Harper's Weekly is like, they're so like, the way that this is set up is Christian Bale's boss, the colonel, who's played by, what's his name, from Avatar. Stephen Lang. Stephen Lang is playing the colonel and he says, you know, I know how much you hate the Indians and you've killed so many of them, but you're the only person who knows the lay of the land. You're the only person who can get this chief, who's played by Wes Studi, who's great, back to his, you know, his burial... He's dying of cancer. He's dying of cancer. And the only reason they're doing this is because the lamestream media has, like, whipped up an angry mob about, like, not letting this this heroic war chief slash killer of Americans be buried in his ancestral homeland. So
JVL00:37:06this movie is not saving Private Ryan, it's burying Chief Yellow
Vic00:37:10Feather? It's kind of like the Circus Meet Dances with Wolves. We're just gonna go
JVL00:37:14in the opposite direction. We've gotta take this guy. We're not sure we believe in the mission, but we're gonna go through hell to get him to this other place. By order of President... By order of President Harrison, right? Yes. And it's become this...
Vic00:37:28publicity stunt, where, not a publicity, but, you know, good public relations image thing. A publicity stunt. A publicity stunt. Because of
Sonny00:37:34the left-wing media. Yes.
Vic00:37:37Has a journalist ever not been a sniveling journalist in a Western? Because I'm thinking about Unforgiven. Fantastic. Remember Unforgiven? No, Unforgiven, yeah. This guy was awful! Question.
JVL00:37:47JVL. The setup to this movie reminds me a little bit of The Last Samurai, which involves another colonel of that era who has an encounter with the other. Who would win in a fight? The Comanche? Or the Samurai? Ooh. Samurai.
Sonny00:38:07Samurai. Well, it depends. Are we talking about... Well, if the Comanche have rifles...
JVL00:38:12They have rifles. The Comanche have rifles. I think that that could be... So did the Japanese army in The Last Samurai.
Sonny00:38:18That's what I'm saying. In the very end, didn't they have the
JVL00:38:20gatling? Yeah. So, I would say probably... You still take the Comanche.
Sonny00:38:24I would say probably Comanche versus
Vic00:38:26the Samurai. If the ratio was one-to-one, like, literally the same number. You have five
Sonny00:38:30Comanche versus five
JVL00:38:32Samurai. Well, I was thinking two armies. So, like, two armies, the Samurai... As Tom Cruise says in The Last Samurai, these people have been practicing war for 2,000 years. They've gotten pretty good at it. Yeah, but they don't have rifles.
?00:38:44Okay.
JVL00:38:45Am I wrong? I don't know. This is why I asked the question. Do you guys ever read the great Reddit thing about the Marines versus Roman Legions?
Sonny00:38:56No. Oh, yeah.
JVL00:38:58Yeah, so this guy... There was a Reddit thread where, you know, people just shoot around BS and ones are like, so who would you pick in a fight, a battalion of Marines versus a praetorian of the Roman Legionnaire? And this guy actually wrote what essentially is a scriptment about what would happen. So, like, all of a sudden a wormhole opens up over Camp Pendleton or something, and a single Marine battalion is dropped just outside the hills of Rome, and what happens to that encounter? It's fascinating and what he seems to suggest is that in the initial battle, the Marines would have a huge advantage, but over time being in a foreign land and just overwhelmed by sheer numbers and by men who are hard, who have never known air conditioning, who don't have padded seats in their chairs, that they would be crushed by the Romans. Well, yes.
Sonny00:39:48I mean, eventually, once you throw a wave of wave of...
Vic00:39:52And you run out of bullets if it's hand-to-hand combat. I imagine the Romans. What about the Romans versus, I don't know, the German hordes under Odewacker. Okay. Westerns. You know what was interesting? I thought to myself, let me bone up on Westerns and watch some on either Netflix or Amazon. Did you bone up using your Cox Giga Blast? Speaking of boning up... Come on, guys!
JVL00:40:16Yes, very good, very good. Cox Giga Blast.
Vic00:40:19They're getting lots of, you know, free plugs, shall we say. Okay. So I said, look under the... So go to Netflix and get into, go into, you can go under categories. Genre. Genre. Western is not a genre. Really? Yes. And you can go into drama, action, per se, and it's just like there's almost nothing there. But we've talked about this before, how it's mostly... And then I went to Amazon and they did have Westerns and I'd say 99% of it was garbage. Yeah. Even from like the olden days, like bad John Wayne, not good John Wayne movies. And I'm like, this is where we're at. But it is a weird thing, as I was talking to Sonny on the way here, about Westerns, I get the sense that that's just an older generational thing, that I don't know if young people today have the same love for Westerns, right? No.
Sonny00:41:08I mean, I think they obviously don't. Right.
Vic00:41:10Yeah, I think that's true.
JVL00:41:12But that said, it's still a genre which has devotees and has things to say
Sonny00:41:18within it. I am, I, is that actually true anymore, or is the genre kind of exhausted? I mean, is there any, where do we, where do we go from here? Because we've had the kind of straightforward Western, you know, with the hero and the girl. Serenity is a Western. And, but, well, so these are, this is, this is another thing we can discuss in a moment. But, like, the idea of the Western itself is very played out, it feels like. I mean, it, it, again, Unforgiven came out in 1992. And that was kind of the end of what you can do with the Western. The modern Western is just like things were bad. Things were bad all
JVL00:41:56over. Not true. Deadwood is a Western. Deadwood is definitely a Western. But Deadwood is, Deadwood is great.
Sonny00:42:00Deadwood is, Deadwood is amazing. Deadwood is Shakespearean. But it is still very much in that kind of Unforgiven mode.
Vic00:42:06But you know what? You know what came out in 1995? The Quick and the Dead with Sharon Stone. The Quick and the Dead
Sonny00:42:12is great. I am
Vic00:42:14so happy. I have a whole thing to talk about. That's what I wanted to talk about. Okay. I was going to say, I remember from back in the day, you were a big devotee of The Quick and the Dead. Huge fan.
JVL00:42:24Go for it. The Quick and the Dead is the blood sport of Westerns. Blood sport is an evolutionary concept because what the movies presuppose is, okay, so what do people like about action movies? They like fights. So I want to, I don't know, what if we did a whole tournament of fights and that's the movie? What do people love about Westerns? Gunfights. So what if we did a Western that's nothing but a tournament of gunfights? And you stocked it with great actors and you have it directed by Sam Raimi. With a legitimately great cast. Yeah. Legitimately
Sonny00:42:53great cast. Russell Crowe.
JVL00:42:54Gene Hackman, Sharon Stone, Leonardo DiCaprio, Lance Henriksen. Gary Sinise. And you do all of this with highly stylized Sam Raimi, who's doing his first really major mainstream movie, unless you count Darkman. And it's, sign me up. Everything about that movie is great. It is so highly watchable. And you can drop, because it's so episodic, you can drop into that movie for 15 minutes at a time if you don't want to watch the whole thing. God, I love that movie. Totally underappreciated.
Sonny00:43:26Yeah, great. 100% great movie. So this is one of the, I was kind of compiling a list of westerns since Unforgiven, and this is the movie that jumps out to me as the best exercise of western as a, like, not quite western genre. It's some other genre. I don't know what genre. The fight movie, I guess. It's a fight movie. It's Bloodsport. Or Lionheart. And it is perfect. It is perfect. I mean, other, like, the... Shanghai Noon. The best classic western, as an idea that has been, that has come out since Unforgiven, is probably Open Range. Oh. And that movie came out almost 15 years ago. 310 to Yuma?
Vic00:44:06Oh, the remake. 310 to Yuma is a
Sonny00:44:08remake. And there's been a whole bunch of, like, western remakes, like 310 to Yuma,
Vic00:44:12Magnificent Seven. And that's another Christian Bale as a western, in a western.
Sonny00:44:16Interesting. But, yeah, so, like, the, I don't know. I am, I have, I just feel like the western as a genre is spent, and there's a reason no westerns make money. I mean, like, the highest grossing western is Dances with Wolves. They're expensive, aren't they? That's not adjusted for inflation. That's just, like, the western that is grossed the most money is Dances with Wolves, and that's $187 million or something like that. This is a very random, just a very random factoid that I wanted to share. What is the highest grossing Coen Brothers movie? You can probably guess, since we're discussing westerns. It's True Grit. Oh. True Grit is the highest grossing Coen Brothers movie by an enormous margin. Really shocks me. It is made almost twice as much money as, like, the next closest. That's amazing. Like, No Country or whatever. Right, yeah. Wow. So, and, but, so, here, the idea, then, is, like, what movies have kind of adopted the norms of the western, or the ideas of the western, but aren't actually westerns? No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood, I would say, are, like, two very good examples of that.
JVL00:45:22But the opposite. I mean, No Country for Old Men is a western, just not set as a western. Right. Well, that's my point. Oh, okay. It's like, it has the ideas of a western, but it's not. It's a western under the hood with something different. Serenity, I would throw on this. Serenity. Yeah, Serenity is a, it's not a sci-fi movie. It's a western, just it's set in space. How about Westworld?
Sonny00:45:41Yeah, kind of, I mean, but it's kind of, it's almost, it's actually kind of the opposite of that, because it's, like, set in a western, but it's not a western. It's really a sci-fi movie. Huh. Or show. Mm-hmm. Okay. Really. The show is better than the movie. Yeah.
JVL00:45:54So, what else do you have on
Sonny00:45:56your list? I don't know. I mean, I was just just, I was spitballing. Oh. I was spitballing.
Vic00:46:00Oh, okay. All right, all right. Do you, I love Wes Studi, though. Wes Studi's great. And he's sort of, he's already on his way, I don't want to say on his way out, but, you know, he's old, and so he's, but he played the role well. He's on his
JVL00:46:10way out now. Oh, so, because
Sonny00:46:12I'm talking about him. Thanks, Vic. Last of the Mohicans. Is Last of the Mohicans a western? That's really a revolutionary war movie. Yeah, it's upstate New York,
Vic00:46:18too. I was going to say I actually made a mini-ranking of Wes Studi. Do it. Okay, I did not see Geronimo, but I'm going to assume he was great in that. I'll put him at four. Number three. Dances with Wolves, Toughest Pawnee. He kills not Oliver Platt, but a guy who reminds me of Oliver Platt, and he's sitting alone making his stew, and he slowly shoots like five or six arrows in the poor guy, and then he scalps him. Awful. And then he meets his end, I think, in the river. Okay. Number two. Heat! Casals! Right? He was part of Vincent's crack team, along with the great Ted Levine. He's in Heat? Wes Studi. He's playing, obviously, you know, a Hispanic cop, but he is Yes, he's Hispanic! But he's great. He's got the short hair. He's a good guy.
JVL00:47:03Is he allowed to play Hispanic? Is that some sort of face? No.
Vic00:47:06Moving right along. Guys, just keep going. Moving right along. And number one. Last of the Mohicans as Magwa. He has the line, Grey hair before you die, know that I will put under the knife your children, so I will wipe your seed from the earth forever. And then he takes out his heart. I thought, you know what, that'd make a great book, too. Okay. Okay. JVL, any other thoughts on anything before we move on? Another one of my favorite Westerns? Maverick. Oh!
JVL00:47:34I love the crap out of that movie. And fun. So it is a gambling movie and a heist movie, but it's really a Western, and it's everything about it is great. And a great cast. A great cast. James Garner. Alfred Molina. Young, fat Alfred Molina.
Vic00:47:49Yes, as a villain. And of course, Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster. Yeah.
Sonny00:47:54Hell or High Water. A Western that is not really a Western. Yeah.
Vic00:47:59I wanted to watch that. You had to pay for it. You don't want to do that. You don't want to have to pay for it.
JVL00:48:06Wait, so all the good stuff you have to pay for, that probably says something about the Internet.
Vic00:48:12I think we're ready to move on. Yeah. Okay. Spirit of the Week. Sonny, you brought this. Yeah, we... Oh, well, it's an oldie. It's an oldie.
Sonny00:48:20This was a gift from the Expanded Universe, if you remember. The old Forrester Statesman. And I wanted to...
JVL00:48:25I just wanted to break it out again, because the good folks at Old Forrester tweeted at me.
Sonny00:48:30Yes. And I was like, hey, I like being appreciated by brands.
Vic00:48:33And Old Forrester, we love the Statesman, but we're running low. Send help. I could always use more.
Sonny00:48:40So, anyway, Old Forrester Statesman, love it.
Vic00:48:43Plus, this is a Western-themed episode. Western-themed. There you go. Corrections, additions. I have two things. Okay, one. This was corrected earlier. Thank you to substandard listener Alec M. Dent for pointing out that, contrary to my co-host's claims, Roger Federer is four games up on Rafael Nadal, 22-16, as I had mentioned on the show. And, ready for this? Sonny doesn't see this one coming. Speaking of tennis, Sonny, your mother tells us on Facebook that you once met John McEnroe. Yeah, that's right. Okay, let's hear it.
Sonny00:49:17Well, I was like two.
JVL00:49:19I mean, it was like-
Sonny00:49:20You remember a little bit- Did you spit up on him? No, it was three or something.
Vic00:49:24The spit up flew up.
Sonny00:49:25It was at some, like, signing at a mall or something, and there's a poster somewhere in my parents' basement that's like, you know, from John McEnroe to Sonny.
JVL00:49:35Oh, so they hadn't signed to you. You were a high school tennis player, were you not? Yeah.
Vic00:49:39Weren't you, JVL? I was a very, very bad high school tennis player. So was I, but I was on a team, but that was, you know, Catholic school. I was all district. Really?
JVL00:49:48You've been pretty good, man. I was first doubles.
Sonny00:49:50No, my shoulder. I'll tell this story someday. Please. Oh, what? My shoulder. My shoulders all got messed up in college. Oh, I remember this story. You know, I had forgotten. Yeah.
Vic00:49:59I was briefly third singles. I couldn't handle the pressure. It was a lot of pressure. I'd rather blame the loss on a partner. Yeah. More fun playing with a partner at that level.
JVL00:50:08Like, seriously. All sorts of antics. Yeah.
Vic00:50:10Yeah. But on our side of the shore, JVL, the big school was CBA.
JVL00:50:15Christian Brothers Academy. You can't beat those guys in anything.
Vic00:50:18On your side, it was, well, it was Moortown.
JVL00:50:21Your school. Yeah, my school.
Vic00:50:23No wonder you weren't on the team. Geez. No.
JVL00:50:25I was on the team for one year, my senior year. I was like 27th doubles or something like that. And we had, I mean, my school was insane. We had a guy who, our number one singles, won the state singles tournament four years in a row. I was the first guy ever to do it. And he made it as Mike Sell. Yes. Made it as high as 123 in the world, which is insane. Yeah. I mean, you don't understand how good you have to be to be nearly top 100 and is now the coach of the women's team at LSU. Wow. Yeah. So we still do. That's what everybody loves. Totally. And he is such a great, an unbelievably great guy. If I could say this about Mike Sell. So this was eye-opening to me. I had always assumed that great tennis players were just the kids who started youngest and took the most lessons. Mike was one of the most pure athletes I've ever seen. You could throw a basketball, he'd just shoot three-pointers. He would come out and run with the cross-country team, and he was the fastest guy on the cross-country squad. He could do anything. If he had played football, he would have been an all-campion. He was a county halfback. But he just happened to play tennis, and he was amazing. It is interesting. You're just a jock who played tennis.
Vic00:51:31Certain athletes, as you know, I just saw the little profile of Nick Foles before the Super Bowl about how he was a big basketball star. Yep. Insane. Mike Sell. Yeah. Well, that's all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus at Sonny Bunch. At JBLast. Again, be sure to subscribe. Subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Substandard on a podcast. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time. Thoughts?
Sonny00:52:12Anything? Outtakes? I got nothing. I got nothing. Do you have any more happy thoughts, JBL, before you revert back to sadness?
JVL00:52:20I feel so emotionally spent from that game. I can't even...
Sonny00:52:26And the interceding four days.
JVL00:52:28And that, too. I just feel drained by it and emotionally, physically exhausted. I don't know how Patriots fans have done this for the last 15 years or whatever it is.
Vic00:52:39I wonder if they feel like, okay, it's okay. You know what? We've lost before and we've won our share. This was the great thing.
JVL00:52:46No, I just mean getting through championship games. As somebody who has never suffered through a championship game once every decade and a half or something.
Sonny00:52:54It's really... The funniest reaction was Tom Brady's wife, Giselle, saying, like, well, we need to let other people win sometimes. Oh, she's so good. To the kids.
JVL00:53:04Can I say something about Giselle? Please. I would make a case for her as top five sports wives ever. Oh, sure. Because the tirade in 2012 after the game... It was great.
Vic00:53:16Tom, he cannot do everything.
JVL00:53:18He cannot throw the ball and catch the ball. And she wasn't wrong. She was standing up there. Wes Welker dropped. Like, seven passes in that game, and it was his fault.
Sonny00:53:28And as we saw this weekend, he also can't catch the ball.
JVL00:53:32Tom Brady. Tom, he can't catch the ball. And then this reaction, her sort of, on the surface, it's gracious, but she's going, you know, oh, look, you know, it's nice. Congratulations to the Eagles. And then, you know, because she says to her kids, they've never actually won anything. And we have five of them. And so we have to learn to share because sharing is caring. She literally said because sharing is caring. That is such an epic troll. I just think it's awesome. And I'm pro-Giselle and still pro-Pats. And I think the Eagles could repeat.
Vic00:54:06Okay. Really quickly, I was thinking about, to go back to the Eagles, the horse poop incident. Yes, I'd like to end on that note. I've never been in a situation where, as the subject or as somebody standing around somebody encouraging somebody, to eat that, but it reminded me of the one time we did try to peer pressure a guy in Germany to eat an ashtray, like the contents of the ashtray, which contained, it was back in 93, so there was a lot of cigarette, people smoked a lot, and there were lots of ashes, and spilled beer, and spit. I mean, the filters are made of asbestos. Yes, and filters and fiberglass, right? You can kill somebody. Did you participate in the pressuring? I don't remember. I just remember yelling. And we called. We called this kid, we all had nicknames, and his nickname was Rauko, which was smoking, because Rauko means to smoke. I'm not using his real name, God forbid. And we just said, come on, Rauko, you can do it. Do it, Rauko, Rauko. And we started yelling it, and somehow convinced him to start to ingest the ashtray contents. And then he started tearing up, and I don't know who was laughing, maybe it was me. I'm sure it wasn't me laughing and getting him to do this. And then he ran to the bathroom and threw it all up, so thank God. What was your nickname? Coach, because I was like the old guy, and it was like a reference to Cheers.
JVL00:55:31I'm sure it's fine.
Spot something wrong in this episode? Suggest a correction →
Comments
Loading…