The Stirrups Are Crocheted

[00:00:00] There are only 2,000 genders, Male, Female, Emile, Fell, Skell, Nail, Jell, Whale, 2,000 genders later I love all you freaks 48 Minutes of Dogs Barking, 48 Minutes of Dogs Barking, 48 Minutes of Dogs Barking, 48 Minutes of Dogs Barking, 48 Minutes of Dogs Barking, 48 Minutes of Dogs Barking, Growl!

[00:00:33] Growl! Growl! 48 minutes of dog barking. 48 minutes of dog barking. Bird pussy. What's that cloaca do? Let me see that cloaca squawk. Let me see that cacao. Make it squawk for me, Daddy. Dairy up that newspaper for me, baby girl. You pre-girl? You a pre-girl? That's right.

[00:01:03] You want the seed bell? Oh, you're going to have to go reach for it in my pants. Here's a mirror. Welcome to 48 Minutes of Dogs Barking. My name's Jason. That's Brian. All right. You ready to start drinking? Yeah, let's do it. If you want to know how things are going, this is the second podcast in a row we started with like, hey, do you want airport bottles? Yep. Gosh, it's almost like we work near the... I feel like I work near the airport right now. Yeah, yeah, definitely has that feeling. All right, what you got?

[00:01:33] This is the Bird Dog Salted Caramel. That's what we got at the house. It's not too bad. I like it chilled. And then you've got the espresso. The black. The black. I'm about to get blacked. Let's do it. Okay, that salted caramel is pretty tasty. I can see what you mean by it needing to be chilled, but it's doing what it needs to do. I'm awake. I am... I am... Good. I hope so. I am perceiving time. Yeah? In a new way. Excellent. I didn't even kill the whole bottle in one go, but...

[00:02:03] Hard living, folks. Hard living on the podcast circuit. I'm telling you. Drink tickets only. That's... And you get two. Oh, fuck that. What's going on with you? What's going on? Oh, I mean, you know, the usual. You got... I see we've got a cuck chair in the chalet now. My wife is doing some rearranging of furniture, so we have some new obstacles to avoid tripping over. But other than that, I'm still working on it. I'm working on it! Yeah, it's going to take a little time.

[00:02:33] I haven't quite figured it all out yet. There's now two love seats out here, which means that no one gets to be uncomfortable during a proper movie night. So that was the whole goal. Sure. And it's really nice. I like having a bit more room to stretch out. I guess you could put one against the garage door. Well, that tabletop also is going to go, so I think that's going to be... Oh, because it's no longer... It's no longer... You've completely usurped this from your wife. Yeah, she has said that multiple times to many people.

[00:03:02] And I'm like, you said it was okay, though. Oh, it's a whole thing. Yeah. God, man, getting married, having kids. Yeah. And then 13, 14 years later, they betray you by saying, you stole their she shed. And turned it into your goon cave. Well, speaking of gooning... Perfect segue. No notes. Speaking of gooning, there was a bit of a weird series of events that happened over this past... Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no.

[00:03:32] Yeah. Oh, dude. Dude. I saw a little bit of this. Okay. In a moment of insomnia and doom scrolling on my phone a couple nights ago. Boy, this might be one of the most depressing things we ever cover on this podcast. Just a heads up. Yeah, it's not great. Skip five minutes ahead if you don't want to be bummed the everlasting fuck out. It is a bummer because the story starts with a guy, goes by the name of Nautica Malone,

[00:04:02] caught on a viral video outside of a bikini... I think it's called Bikini Bean. Yeah. In Tempe, Arizona. And it was a bikini barista thing. I don't know if... We don't have those here in St. Louis, but I'm familiar with the idea. There's a very famous one, Portland. It's incredibly horny. And so he's going through the drive-thru with his pants off. Someone posted this on social media. Hi, how are you? Good. Have you been here before? Yeah. Sir, you need to leave. Unacceptable. Unacceptable. Call 911.

[00:04:37] He's driving... In the Challenger. Yeah, I know. And he's told to leave. That's unacceptable. People on the internet kind of figured out who he was, and he got kind of doxxed, and then he went home and took his life. Yeah. Just got married. Had a kid. Yeah. January 23rd, an Instagram user, Trey Sellers, posted an image titled Candlelight Vigil to celebrate the life of Nautica Malone to be held on the 26th at the Bikini Beans parking lot.

[00:05:07] This is a calling for all gooners and goonettes to come and pay respects to the goon lord, he wrote in the caption. Jesus Christ. That's according to Know Your Meme, which amassed more than 15,000 likes in three days. The full image here, it says... I mean, as far as gallows humor goes, this is pretty clutch. Yeah. The cherished community surrounding Nautica Malone will be holding a candlelight vigil at Bikini Beans coffee.

[00:05:33] Nautica Malone was a kind-hearted individual and a beloved fellow gooner whose memory will be celebrated and never forgotten, and loving memory rests in power. Goon lord. And so, it then quickly took on a whole thing. It then became known as the Gooneril. Jesus Christ. So, yes. Twitter user alobe underscore e posted a photo outside the Bikini Beans drive-thru writing,

[00:06:00] the Gooneril, inviting people to bring candles and flowers to pay homage to Malone. Bring candles. Candles misspelled. Love that. And flowers. Sunday, January 26th, 6 p.m. Are you pulling up? And on the same day, a YouTuber, a Yazzie Triple X, live-streamed the vigil event. And a lot of people there... Oh, Jesus Christ! With... Oh! Oh!

[00:06:29] With the Koreasu, the Heart of Christ candle with Nautica's face on it. Here's a TikTok from it, from the Gooneril. And it's kind of hard to see with all this crap in the way, but there's... They're all in the parking lot, all with photos of him. Hashtags are... Goonicide. Oh! Yeah. A few reactions on Twitter here, of course. At Stagecraft Beast, ROB4, Mario Kart 2025. Hot take!

[00:06:57] But we probably shouldn't be memorializing a man who was flashing minimum-wage workers his penis in the drive-thru window. Here's a close-up of one of the boards here. Rest in peace, Goon Lord. Photos of Nautica there. The Last Goon, it says. So, yeah. It's hilarious. It's sad. It's bizarre. The Gooneril, everybody. Truly out there. And yes, Complex did cover this.

[00:07:26] I kind of want the shirt. I kind of want the shirt. I know. It's fucking tragic, though. Where can I get the shirt? I know. I know. The police did shut it down about 20 minutes into this, according to Twitter user ad async Moo. Despite all the jokes, Bikini Beans Coffee founder Ben Lyles called Malone's death tragic, but reiterated that he committed a crime. This was unfortunate. Tragic. As a company, the safety of our employees is always top priority.

[00:07:56] In this case, an individual chose to commit a crime. Someone did make the XXX Tentacon Goon Lord shirt that you can buy if you want. Jason. Yeah. Oh, goodness. Yes. All right. Well, so rest in peace, Nautica. There's really nothing else to say. Oh, apparently there was a Nazi guy at the Gooneril who screamed out the N-word repeatedly and wore a Rhodesia shirt. And he was with a woman who recorded it all. Great. Yeah.

[00:08:26] We're really... Thanks, Nazis. You ruined everything. Thanks. Great. Great. Someone else caught on TikTok doing nefarious things. Thankfully, she's still alive. However, she is in jail. So, not great. This, according to Yahoo Entertainment News. Yes, I know. What an odd thing to pull from. But a 19-year-old Loganville woman, Lucretia Coyan, has been arrested and charged with felony exploitation after posting disturbing videos on social media in which she appears to dance

[00:08:55] provocatively over the disabled. Believe this does include the video here. Of course. I hope so. Yeah. There's... She's giving the man pills. The Loganville police chief, in this case, was quoted as, When I watched the video, I was disgusted is the only word I know. Police chief Dick Lowry stated, She's using these men for social media views and its exploitation. She's been charged with one felony count of exploitation of a disabled person. A serious offense under Georgia law.

[00:09:26] Additional charges may be forthcoming because there might be a second person. I think she's going to be okay under the current, under the new administration. Right. Where homeless people will be classed, or homeless people, disabled people will be all classified as furniture. Yeah, that's true. That's a fair point. Yeah. I think she's going to be okay. I think she's under the... She got in just at the buzzer. She's going to get that presidential pardon, bro. They didn't even know what was going on. It was fine.

[00:09:55] It was fine. They didn't even notice. They were too busy thinking about Bluey. That's chilly. Very hot. I don't really even know which one's the mother, but I think it's chilly. The dogs, they're hot. On the show. They like the show. What the story's not telling you is that they were paid in Nerds Row. Oh, fuck a duck. Yeah, it's been that kind of week.

[00:10:25] We got to find the gallows humor when we can. Yeah. And one thing that's always been on the back of my mind is the upcoming police state. Yeah, it's here. It's here, baby. Fuck your schools. Fuck your endowments as a student. We're here. We're here, baby. Yep. You know that statement that the end of the world is here, it just hasn't arrived in your part of the world? Yep. As you crack open the beer. Yeah. Well, I feel like we're on the precipice.

[00:10:55] Oh, yeah. We're right at the edge. Not trying to despair, but the bad days. They're a coming. It's going to get a lot worse before it gets better. Yeah. And not trying to concentrate on that too much. But in the meantime, we can get a little bit of spectacle. Yes, there is that. As we have a drone fighting a robodog. Yes, this is from The Sun. The U.S. edition of The Sun brought us this. Future of war.

[00:11:24] Watch drone and armed robodog fight to death, sparking fears of first machine war. Now, you have to understand, this is not actually the dog and the drone fighting. They have strapped fireworks to them. It's like something you do, Fourth of July. Yeah. What really gets me, though, is the alarmist's tone of this article. You know, it's a, this is what the first machine war might look like.

[00:11:52] Yeah, it's a little bit much. When you first showed this to me, I just thought it'd be really great if you edited in the audio from that video of like the girl seeing the, the boss of dynamics dog on the sidewalks. Oh my God. What is that? But there's that one where it's just the boss of dynamics dog. It's saying slurs. Yes.

[00:12:15] And it's just saying the N word over and over again, pauses, looks at the, at the camera, and then keeps walking on saying the N word. And I'm like, that's what I really want. Put it on top of this. I hope you know what I'm talking about. I do know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. 4chan was getting a lot of hay out of that this week. Yeah. That particular video. But, uh, yeah.

[00:12:40] I mean, that is, that is where we're going is Boston dynamics, police dogs, just roaming our neighborhoods with a, with a 12 gauge shotgun strapped to the top. Just saying the N word over and over again. The slur patrol. The slur patrol. Just when you thought it couldn't get any weirder. That's right. It's crypto scam of the week. You're listening to 48 minutes of dogs barking the podcast. And now it's time for the crypto scam of the week.

[00:13:09] This headline from the Cointelegraph, Johan Yun writing, Zach XBT rug pull drama reveals extent of unpaid detective work. Yes. People are accusing crypto sleuth Zach XBT of rug pulling. I'm going to say I'm a man's innocent. I would, I would definitely lean that direction. If you want to set this up, I'll explain further.

[00:13:37] So Zach XBT was, uh, he received a meme coin that was created to support him. Anonymous creators transferred half of the token they created to Zach XBT. He used it to add single sided liquidity, which is when one token type is deposited into a pool rather than a trading pair. The pool accrued fees, which he then withdrew.

[00:14:03] First 340 soul, then another 15,771 soul, which was, uh, roughly $3.7 million. Let's see here. It says ultimately 16,348 soul worth 4.3 million was sent to trading firm Wintermute. While 96 million justice for Zach XBT tokens were redeposited into the liquidity pool. They gave him a bunch of stuff. Yeah. I don't know.

[00:14:32] I feel like, uh, that's not a run pool. No, he was gifted and something that was in support of him. It seems like it did what it was supposed to do. Right. This isn't like when SHIB said they quote unquote locked half of their liquidity by giving it to VB's wallet. Oh, yeah. And then he gave like a bunch of that money to like a really sketchy crypto dude in India.

[00:15:00] And that was worth like hundreds of millions of dollars. This is a different situation. Very much so, yes. Yeah. This is like someone saying up a, basically a crypto GoFundMe. Essentially. And I would say that what Zach XBT has done as an individual outing these crypto scams, aiding in crypto scam investigations, I think it's worth a couple million dollars. Yeah. I think if the community wittingly or unwittingly gives up that money, I think that's okay.

[00:15:30] I think the guy has more than earned it. I'm going to say cry more bitches. Yeah. I'm going to reserve judgment, especially because this series of tweets here, Zach XBT back in May of last year, said, yeah, you know, I helped lead an initiative which resulted in the successful seizure of $12 million connected to the Caesars ransomware incident from September of 2023. He never got rewarded for that. He also said when the U.S. government got hacked for 20 mil a few months ago, I helped recover a sizable amount of those funds.

[00:16:00] And again, was not compensated for that. And I think those particular tweets are really where it started. That was the 21st. So, yeah, that kind of fits the timeline. Pay my man. I mean, that's what I'm saying. Yeah. I mean, maybe he could have been better about compensation when he was doing some of this stuff. I think he's brought a lot of stuff to light. I think he's been generally a good thing in the crypto space, which is a space that has very few good things in it.

[00:16:28] As far as illuminating what's going on, how people are taken advantage of, and making sure that at least some people that are scamming and exploiting others are not able to hide so well. And he's even quoted in this piece as saying, you know, people claimed the token was created to support me, so I sold a portion of those tokens that I was gifted. Other blockchain investigators like SomaXBT jumped in and said, you know what? What he did was right.

[00:16:56] You know, the people that sent him this coin didn't send him pumped tokens like Trump or Doge. They pumped the ZACXBT token using his name, and he simply took the profit. I think that's legit. Now, some people are calling it a rug pull, which is why it falls into this segment of the show. And because he's such a big name, you know, he's kind of the person I think of when I think about crypto investigators. It's him and CoffeeZilla.

[00:17:23] Some people, according to this article, claimed that he himself might be behind the token. He responded to that with, All I wish to clarify is I do not promote the coin to my followers at all anywhere and do not know who created it. The article then tries to both sides of it while saying, well, you know, Vitalik gets pennies like this too. It's like, well, I don't know about that. But I'm a little less inclined to believe Vitalik with Taryn, but that's just me. Yeah.

[00:17:52] And of course, some people are now saying, you know, he's going to be retiring. He's got all this money now. And he'd been posting things like, I'm cooked, you know, I'm mentally defeated. It's a strange time because we've got a lot of things pumping. We've got a lot of things that are also dumping. Yeah. We're getting it for both ends. Both ends. We're getting double teamed. Eiffel Towered. Yeah, exactly right. It's yeah. The second you showed this to me earlier today, I was like, yeah, I don't know.

[00:18:22] Like, I think my dudes, I think he's in the clear for me. Yeah, I had no doubt in my mind. I just thought it was an interesting angle for this article to go to come from because like, well, did he though? And like everything in the article refutes the headline. Like this isn't like when war are rugs, war on rugs, I should say, when war on rugs legitimately rug pulled their token, which was a criticism of Safe Moon. Oh, yeah. I think it was like something like Safer Moon. I can't remember what it was called. Something like that.

[00:18:52] Yeah. And, you know, war on rugs kind of has similar reputation as Zach, XBT and a couple other individuals on the in the crypto space. And they like legitimately rugged and scam people for I forget how much money, but it was a noble amount. And they disappeared off the Internet. But other crypto investigators, Soma, XBT here, the kicker of the article, Zach isn't retiring with that four mil. He's still committed to working hard and adding value. So we shall see.

[00:19:21] We shall see whether that was an actual rug. Well, I don't think that's true, but you know, it's one of those things. I feel like we needed a little bit of a breather. I feel like we needed something a little nicer. Yeah. And we did two things in a row that were basically our word. Very distressing. Yeah.

[00:19:44] Last week, I had a couple of discussions with people in my life outside of this just being like, yeah, I kind of kind of really I think I might have mentally abused my co-host. I don't know about that. But like, I feel like I feel like this is the most angry you've been at me. Yeah. Yeah. A while. I said it. I said it in the episode and I'll say it again. I wasn't mad at you. I was mad at this thing for existing.

[00:20:10] If you didn't, if you don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about electric R words, the old, awful, vile web comic. And go back and listen to last week's episode. I may have come at you a little bit, but I wasn't really mad at you. I want to clarify that for anyone who has any illusions about that. I'm not mad at you. But I feel like I kind of like clogged your toilet and like didn't tell you. Yeah. I feel like I did.

[00:20:38] I might have trespassed against a beloved friend by letting them know the existence of electric R word. I know it existed in the back of my mind. Like I had it on a list of things to cover and I just, I just, and I was just like, I was just kind of like, fuck it. We'll just do it. Like I had, I just couldn't think of a topic. Electric R word, whatever. We've been doing like web comics. Yeah. And that's kind of like the white whale of like really weird ass ones.

[00:21:05] So as a palate cleanser, Brian offered me this and I wholeheartedly agreed. It is our main topic this week worth a thousand, a website for people to do Photoshop. Photoshop contests, essentially. Basically. I mean, it was also creative writing, photography, a lot of other creative or artistic things. Yeah. I think towards the end there was some video editing stuff. Sure.

[00:21:29] But mostly I think it was known for was Photoshop because they, on a somewhat regular basis, did like Photoshop contests with like Fark and Something Awful. Mm-hmm. And Fark and Something Awful were always kind of seen as being like, you know, not necessarily like talentless, but more humor based in their submissions. And worth 1,000, their Photoshop's are always kind of considered to be a little bit more professional.

[00:21:56] They had some folks in there who maybe worked in the industry or like, you know, people who did layout or people who did work for magazines or whatever it was. You know, these people were semi-pros if not pros. Sometimes you could really tell in the submissions and sometimes it's like, okay, I've seen goons do that too, you know? Yeah. So it really did. And not that Something Awful didn't have a group of really talented Photoshoppers for Photoshop Friday, but Worth 1,000 was kind of like a little step above.

[00:22:25] And so 2002, January 1st, Worth 1,000 started. It was created by two guys, Avi Muchnick and Israel Durdick. Now, Avi Muchnick, he started the website while he was at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, together with Israel Durdick. Israel Durdick, oddly enough, at the time Israel Durdick was senior developer at White & Case.

[00:22:54] So the two of them, you know, they knew people. You know, one was a law guy, one was a design guy, and they got together and created the website. Most of the time it was themed contests. They did a bunch of stuff. This one made it to the National Enquirer, the headline Desperately Seeking Sodom, Artists' Funny Ideas of What the Idol Tyrant is Doing Since His Sudden Career Change. Where's Saddam?

[00:23:23] The article begins, President Bush doesn't know, but some creative American graphic artists have a few ideas. The website Worth1,000.com ran a contest asking artists to create images of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden in various new jobs. We received 140 entries worth 1,000. Webmaster Avi Muchnick of New York told the Enquirer they were terrific. It was hard to choose winners. Here's a few. My favorite right up here on the top left. Goon on the moon!

[00:23:53] The cheesy despot could be hiding in a place with terrain similar to Iraq, craters and all. We can only hope his air runs out soon. You love to see the National Enquirer openly calling for the death of a person. Yeah. And it's a Photoshop of Neil Armstrong, but with his face replaced by Saddam Hussein. Here's another one right below it. Rinky Dinks, no power play here.

[00:24:20] As puck jockeys, Saddam and Osama will be so busy body checking each other, the Zamboni will run them over. Then we'll get to see them as we always wanted to, permanently on ice. But, man, the bloodlust of early 2000s is uncomfortable. It really is. It's the two of them photoshopped into hockey uniforms. The team name is the Camels, of course.

[00:24:49] Saddam Hussein photoshopped onto a painting of a beautiful woman. Hubba hubba Hussein, do you think his wives are jealous? First of all, he only had one wife. See, again, it's that thing. Here's him photoshopped onto the body of 70s era Elvis. Elvis has left the Middle East. Maybe Saddam is hiding at Graceland in the jungle room with the king himself, who really isn't dead, according to the Iraqi Minister of Information. All right.

[00:25:19] Choice reference. To Baghdad Bob. Baghdad, that's right. Jesus. The Americans are not anywhere close to Baghdad. All of that stuff, yeah. Yeah. Isn't that guy still alive? Is he? Yeah, he's still kicking. That's surprising. We should see if he wants to come on the pod. Baghdad Bob, if you're listening, please. Please. For wherever you're hanging out in the United Emirates. Give us a call. 314-246-9766.

[00:25:50] Just call us on the phone, Mr. Baghdad. That's right. Come on by. Mr. Baghdad. Come on by the chalet, Mr. Baghdad. We'll host you at the chalet, Mr. Baghdad. We'll have some hummus. I do have the singing service. And some grape leaves. Oh, yeah. Domas. I gotta get some domas. Domas. That's Greek, though. Mr. Baghdad. I mean, I don't know. I imagine Syrian-Armenian food is probably not too different than Iraqi food. Very similar, yeah.

[00:26:20] A bunch of people have talked about Worth a Thousand many, many times, but I think some of the cool ones were this one that is Arusha De Reit on their website. It's arusha.de. Have you heard of Worth a Thousand? They describe it as such. Worth a Thousand is an amazing digital art playground. It is a site where artists and hobbyists compete in contests to create imaginative photo manipulations, illustrations, and more. For the stakes?

[00:26:50] Internet glory, bragging rights, and the thrill of leveling up your creative skills. I stumbled across it by accident and was in awe of some of these submissions. The talent and skill on the site is stunning. Now, the problem with Worth a Thousand is everything is image-based, right? Yeah. And so, even the web archive is not complete. That is a big problem. So, we're going to go to some of the galleries here to kind of get some of these images, but

[00:27:19] it really is... It's touchy. I remember being on Worth a Thousand and actually participating in some of the photography contests. And, like, I did find it actually as something that made me a better photographer. And people were actually really good at providing constructive feedback. Okay. I think Worth a Thousand was a really unique and special spot on the internet for creative people.

[00:27:48] Because it was competitive, but it was for bragging rights. Sure. And there weren't a lot of, like, trolls. I mean, there were, but it was heavily moderated. Felt like a good space. Like, even someone could post something in a contest and, you know, maybe it's really amateurish. Maybe the composition isn't good. Someone would still step in and provide, like, real feedback. Sincere feedback.

[00:28:15] Like, hey, you know, give that person something to chew on for their next try. And I feel like that's a kindness that's kind of missing in today's internet. Here's some ones. Alternate History 2. Thankfully, we found the W1K.com, which is an archive. Here's a alternate history cover of Life magazine with Marilyn Monroe, Carolyn Kennedy, and JFK. Okay. March 3rd, 1961.

[00:28:45] Yeah, there we've got a Native American man with a machine gun. The character Joker from Full Metal Jacket in World War II. Albert Einstein in the film Back to the Future wearing the helmet he's seen in the opening there. A cover of Van Halen's OU812 with Paul McCartney on base. Some of these are a little deep for me.

[00:29:14] Alan Turing in front of a pillar that has the Mac and Windows logos on it. Okay. Mike Tyson accepting an Oscar. Neil Armstrong in front of the European Union flag. Or is that Poland? Yes, European Union. John Lennon being sworn in in place of LBJ. Yeah, just some interesting ideas. And yes, the Photoshop is great. It shows you the creativity that people had.

[00:29:43] And now we just do AI slop. As fake as some of these images obviously are, there's at least the soussant of the human hand. Yeah, there's an artistry. There's animals dress up. Here's animals dress up too. They have a bald eagle with a pair of eyeglasses. Lemur. Lemur with a beret and eyeglasses. Okay. A cat in a bathing suit with the cap on. Okay. An elephant wearing a Superman costume. Okay.

[00:30:13] More lemurs. Wearing hats. Well, there's the Dr. Seuss hat and the scarf. And then like one of those floppy fisherman's hats. Yeah. A zebra with the top half of a referee uniform and a whistle. Okay. Okay. All right. And prairie dogs fully dressed up. And we got a dress and the gentleman wearing the... Lawman outfit. Mm-hmm. An elephant wearing a tutu.

[00:30:41] Balancing a barbell with a squirrel. A little dog and a macaw on his head. All right. A bunch of apes in punk uniforms outside the Sydney Opera House. An octopus with a beanie and those weird ass 2000s era goggle things that people used to wear. I don't even know what they were called. Oh, fuck. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? My only gentleman. Let's see here.

[00:31:08] A panda wearing the traditional Chinese vest and a straw hat. It was a place that existed. Nothing about these seems mean. Yeah. Even in any way negative. It's like, yeah, sure, it's an ape in a dress or something. But it's not real, so it's not hurting anyone, right? We're just kind of dicking around. Yeah. Dicking around. Just being creative. Working off of a pun.

[00:31:38] Mm-hmm. Things like that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. The alternate movie posters. Yeah. Yeah. It's a creative space that was not heavily monetized. It was creativity for pretty much the sake of being creative. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was a little bit because the folks who created it had their own stuff going on with this company, Aviary. Sure. But it's not like TikTok. It's not like endless self-promotion. Right. It's not like being fucking creative.

[00:32:07] I feel like it's a conversation. A point I bring up, anytime we have a particularly creative individual on as a guest, where it's like, man, remember when you didn't have to spend three times the effort promoting your shit than you did actually doing the shit that you like doing? Well, yeah, because people would come to Worth a Thousand to see what was on Worth a Thousand. That was the whole point of going there. And yeah, I mean, it was its own thing. And you went there for that thing.

[00:32:34] Now, of course, like you said, they collaborated with FARC or they collaborated with something awful. But for the most part, if you wanted that experience, you went to that site. Now, of course, now there's a whole subreddit for it, but you're getting what I'm saying. And so it ran- And I will beat the drum that I hate that everything is just a fucking subreddit now instead of its own website and its own culture. You will get no argument from me.

[00:32:58] So the site ran for 11 years, which for a site like this, very single serve, very single use, feels like a very long time. Incredibly long time, particularly this point of the internet. And the do it was like such quality. This was the page that came up when the site was about to be shut down. Have you ever received an image in an email and thought, that has to be fake? Odds are it originated at worth1000.com.

[00:33:26] For almost 12 years, Worth 1000 was the heart of creative competitions on the internet. Worth 1000 was the first and best site of its kind. We turned photoshopping from a hobby into a spectator sport. I don't know about that. Played in a virtual arena. We soon added photography, illustration, writing, and multimedia contests. More than 60,000 brave and talented artists entered our competition.

[00:33:51] More than half a million registered users voted these entries to the top or bottom. Over 50 million viewers saw the results. I'm Jackson Lotus, the founder and creator of Worth 1000. And I'm proud of the things we accomplished here. Jackson Lotus was the username of Avi Mutchnik. Just to clarify for those of you confused. So they said they pioneered the concept of corporate logo competitions that other companies have turned,

[00:34:21] have since turned into multi-million dollar industries. The Pentagon issued a statement distancing itself from Worth 1000 after a soldier used our images as propaganda during the Iraq war. We produced two books teaching people how to use Photoshop. I'm not sure how many Snopes.com articles there are to debunking Worth 1000 images, but it's a lot. I'm not sure why I'm proud of that, but come on. It's Snopes.

[00:34:51] People have met here, married, and had children. New people exist in the world because Worth1000.com was here. But sadly, all things must come to an end. And as of September 30th, 2013, Worth1000.com will be archiving the, the live site. Oh, you love the typos. We are building an online museum to honor all the past contest entries.

[00:35:13] It will be a beautiful, respectful, and fun, all caps, testament to the hundreds of thousands of original works of art our users created here. And, yeah, he mentions that you've got to join the subreddit. Ugh. Yeah. So, after that, Israel himself, one of the co-founders, worked his way up, and he is now the director of platform engineering at Adobe.

[00:35:43] Great. Yeah, of all the things. And then, Avi himself has a hell of a career. The company that he created during the Worth1000 years, Aviary was basically a creative suite of apps. Yeah. Much like Adobe's creative suite of apps. Mm-hmm. It got acquired by Adobe in 2014, so now they both work for Adobe, essentially. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:13] 2010, Avi Munchnik was named one of the top 35 innovators under 35 by MIT's Technology Review magazine. Two guys interested in design? Two guys interested in the software of design? Create a website that kind of became the way you referred to those kinds of things. Because he says, I know, Worth1000 was bandied about every time a Photoshop contest came about before I became a Something Awful user.

[00:36:42] So, like, you know, from FARC and things like that. But, yeah, I mean, if you go click the jackpot link. I love those. Active jackpot contest. This is a snapshot courtesy of the archive.org from 2008. But here's ones, you know, the Drip Incorporated free logo design contest win $220. So, they connected people with some actual money. You know, not much. You know, $100 for a logo design.

[00:37:10] But the folks at D&D were giving away $300. And now I know a lot of the designer friends I know will say, you know, don't work for free. Don't work for contest money. And while that is well and good, there are a lot of, and I hate to say it, starving artists out there. And $300 could be the difference, you know? And it was very... Is there between making rent and not making rent? Oh, exactly. It sucks.

[00:37:40] But it kind of feels like that was what was going to happen with the internet anyway. And you might as well get in. Now everyone expects people to design things for free. You know, no one wants to pay the artist. And, you know, maybe we shouldn't have been so cavalier about it in the beginning. But at the same time, some people do do it for the love of the game. Sure. You know, because they have a side gig or they have a normal job. And designing stuff is just kind of fun for them. Yeah. So, I'm torn.

[00:38:07] You know, I'm a big believer in, you know, like pay people what they're worth, especially creatives. Especially creatives. And so, I'm torn on these kind of design contests. Now, I know as a photographer, I'm sure there have been more than a few, you know, submit your photos for free. You might win X amount of dollars. Right. Yeah. Have you done those? Not really. No. You know, 10 years ago, I was pretty mercenary and like, you know, I was a real fuck you pay me kind of guy. Yeah, man.

[00:38:34] Um, but nowadays I just kind of do it for the fun of it. Like, I obviously like, I'm nobody's fool. No. And I respect and I protect my copyright and all that stuff. But like, I do it because I enjoy it and it brings things into my life that are good or worthwhile. Um, but I also like with the, the state of the industry, um, particularly in a place like St.

[00:39:02] Louis, uh, I have no delusions of ever making a living off of it. Not, not to fucking bring everything down and be like, yeah, you know, like people did it for fun then. But now that's, uh, well, that's all there's, all that's left is doing it is for fun. It is the way things are. The only audio editing that I do is for this show. And, you know, we do that for fun and that kind of thing. And like, that was my training.

[00:39:27] You know, I, I, I came up through a TV radio program and, uh, TV and radio farthest thing from, you know, what I do for a living. So that's one of those things worth a thousand did have beyond the online. They did have, like it was mentioned before three different books on how to do Photoshop. So this is the one that was my favorite title.

[00:39:49] I've got a human in my throat, create more optical illusions with Photoshop by the worth 1000 artists published in 2006. It's described as discover the windows of Photoshop as you learn to create humorous images and art. Let's see here to hands-on tutorials. Let's see if we can get the, uh, the sample to the load up here. No, but the cover image alone is, is a frog with human teeth and you just got, it's a pretty good, it's a pretty good shot. Pretty good.

[00:40:17] So the three books were when pancakes go bad, I've got a human in my throat and more than one way to skin a cat. It did have a forum as most websites did at the time. You know, you had to have your own forum. Mm-hmm. August 12th, 2013, Abby announced that it would be closed and converted to a museum. After a brief hiatus, Muchnick announced via a cryptic message from the first book of Corinthians

[00:40:43] and an image from Worth's archives of the Turin Shroud posted to Worth's refugee websites, communities on Google Plus and Reddit. Former users found that the site had been sold to Emerge Media. Emerge Media. It sounds so familiar. I want to see. Marketing and media group. Okay. Not, not much. They are there.

[00:41:07] About a year later, graphic design crowdsourcing company Design Crowd bought it for an undisclosed amount. And the idea was that they were going to make their own version and it never really happened. It really, yeah, never really popped off. And then as of 2016, Worth1000.com, no longer online. But some kind souls out there did do the work of archiving stuff. W1k.com is still around.

[00:41:36] And that is where we were pulling up the stuff from earlier. And it is worth looking at because it's just kind of fun. It's just really fun to look through because there's still some stuff. Design Crowd does have some stuff still on their site, like some of the tutorials. Yeah. So if you go to blog.designcrowd.com, you can find the design tutorials about zombies.

[00:41:58] You can do, you know, things that are, you know, some of the galleries, you know, giant skeletons, houses in unusual places, things like that. And like you said, everything is becoming AI slop nowadays. And so the art of Photoshop, I have a real fear, is going to be lost eventually. Obviously not completely, but to the masses, I guess. Yeah.

[00:42:22] Because I remember when we would continually call Photoshop, Frodo Shop, because everybody, everybody who was using like a cracked version of it was using it to fuck with Lord of the Rings screenshots. What does that simply drive through? God, the Photoshop Friday, Lord of the Rings might still be. It's a classic. Like the fucking Schmeagel, fucking, I don't know, like a Mazda RX-7. Yes. But Schmeagel as the actual car body.

[00:42:52] Like just. Obviously the Eye of Sauron is the butthole in Goat Sea. Yeah. Yes. And of course, because the two towers, the twin towers, of course they had to add that. And I love that raw weirdness of early internet Photoshop fuckery. People just doing it to do it. Yeah. Because contests are fun and contests are great.

[00:43:16] But sometimes you just, you really just want to see what it would look like if, you know, Thomas the Tank Engine starred in, you know, the Crank movies or something. Yeah. I'm just doing it for the love of the game. Speaking of things that you kind of just remember. Mm-hmm. The Hobbit movies, were they good? No. I'm sorry. Not no. I have a soft spot for Martin Freeman. He's great.

[00:43:40] And Benedict Cumberbatch, despite my misgivings about him and a lot of other stuff I've seen him in, doing the voice of Smaug is exactly how I heard the voice of Smaug in my head when I read The Hobbit. So there's a few performances that are really worthwhile, obviously Ian McKellen, Benedict Cumberbatch. But for the most part, they took one book and made three movies out of it, which really didn't need to happen. I saw a great fan edit where they cut the three movies into one two and a half hour movie. And it's great.

[00:44:10] It flows. It works. I think it was just a matter of milking the one story they had left to tell. Yeah, there's also a bevy of production woes because once his face dropped off and the other guy, boy, I'm sounding like my brain. Okay. Watch this face down the street. That other fella. Bob Case. Yeah. Whatever his fucking name is. Bob Case? Oh, my God. The bass player? Bob Case?

[00:44:40] No, no. That was just some guy in the neighborhood. He's got to be dead by now. Incredibly dead. Anyways, but yeah, they didn't even have a storyboard. They were just going by the seat of their fucking pants. Well, I mean, they had the book to go on, but yeah. But yeah, it was just absolutely just fucking raw dogging. For movies that all had, I think, like $200 million budgets, just absolutely just fucking like, I don't know.

[00:45:10] It's like the whole time, I don't know what we're doing today. Yeah, a collective budget of $745 million spread across three films. But then again, they brought in three bill. So there's a lot of potential and there's a lot of wasted potential. And the Hobbit movies are a pale shadow in comparison to what Peter Jackson did with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yeah. It was about Photoshop.

[00:45:37] I feel like there's, like you said, everything's a subreddit, which is fine. It's whatever. But also, and I'm just going to be honest here, Adobe cracking down on piracy has taken some of the joy out of this for a lot of people. Oh, yeah. The average person with the subscription model that the creative suite now requires you to do, the average person doesn't want to pay monthly for Photoshop. And they're not going to.

[00:46:07] And they're going to move on to something else. Oh, that's why there's GIMP and a couple other alternatives. They just don't quite have the same feature set, let's say. No, they don't. And so, I don't know. I don't know. It's gone the way of the buffalo, I think. Imagine what it would be like to kill the last buffalo. Buffalo. Yeah, would you feel bad? Or would it be like, fuck yeah. Get out of here, buffalo. Dumbass. But as I'm like, wrist deep as Sarah.

[00:46:37] Yeah. Because I'm killing it with a sport because I'm so fucking random. Oh, sure. LOL. And I'm wearing my favorite Invader Zim hoodie. Yes, naturally. As I yell, epic bacon. As it shudders its last breath. The narwhal bacon's at midnight. Yeah. But, yeah. I imagine at some point I'd feel bad.

[00:47:04] But I also feel like that wouldn't be the first animal I made extinct. So maybe I would be a little dead to it. Well, it's time to watch something gross, Brian. Yeah. It's shock.jpg, everybody. And now, the moment you've all been waiting for. Shock.jpg. This guy feeding an M.A. to a kookaburro. No. No. This one is called Sack.

[00:47:33] Well, this one doesn't have a name. You just gave it. I gave it a name. I'm calling it Sack Slap, Brian. It's my internal monologue. The video of a man with a very large nutsack swinging it back and forth, pounding it onto the end of the flared base of a butt plug, screaming. Screaming.

[00:48:03] Holy shit. I don't know, man. It's gigantic balls, though, I gotta say. It's just insane. Massive sack. Hanging real low. Yeah. He's gotta be sitting on those way more than most people. I wonder how long the original video is and how far into it we are now. Because maybe they've just swollen up this big from being slapped against the base of it. I don't know. But, I mean, it also sounds like...

[00:48:33] It's hard to believe that that's the actual audio to me. Because it almost sounds like just like the ape house going nuts. Like a cat snuck in or something. Well, here. Let's listen to it again. Yeah. I don't know. I can't tell. I can't tell. It's horrifying. It is terrifying. It is a thing that nightmares are made of. Rar! Rar! Rar! Rar! He sounds like Tom Green in Fray Got Finger when he puts the gun in his mouth. And he's like... Rar! What do you mean? I shouldn't pull my brains out?

[00:49:04] So, yeah. That's sack slap, right? Well, that's enriching. Oh. And he's just... I'm trying to make out, like... Is this, like... Okay. Obviously, he's in his home. There's some detergent there. Yeah. So, he's in the laundry room or something. Let's see. Well... Jeez. I know. Scroll to time... Mainly scrolling the timeline does not make this better. It really doesn't. Fucking put yakky sacks to that. He's sweating.

[00:49:33] Looks like a bunch of towels. So, he might be just doing this in his laundry room just to make sure that he can clean up easily. I don't know. At least the audio's not there with the screaming. Rar! And it ends with him going, like, holy shit! Yee-haw! Oh! He's making the Max Payne face. One of these days. One of these days when I have Sam Lake on the show. And, uh...

[00:50:03] So, that's shot on Jay Big Brian. Wow! Can you Photoshop that into a movie? Can you Photoshop that into... Wow! I can't wait to get out of Africa, Martha. And it's just that dude slapping his nuts. The titular line in Star Wars. It's just that. He's riding the Millennium Falcon. Holding on to its feathers, yeah. He's slapping... God!

[00:50:30] Slapping the butt plug in his ass with his gigantic balls. I'm sorry, I just can't get over it. It's captivating. It really is. And it's like... I kept looking at it like, is this real? Are these fake balls? No. These aren't fake balls. At least they don't look fake. I don't know. Those are real ass nuts, man. Gigantic! The two nuts together is like the size of a really big avocado. Really unsettling. With that in mind, it's time for the Breath of the Night.

[00:50:57] It's time for your mom's favorite part of the show. It's time for the Breath of the Night. Brian? Yeah? What do you got for us? I received what I believe is a private and personal transmission from Jory Greep last Saturday night. And I have taken a vowel of celibacy. And I've been listening to nothing but 12-tone jazz while creating large amounts of chlorine gas. Excellent.

[00:51:26] Are you going Joker mode? Or what is... I have decided... It's like, what can I say that doesn't sound legally actionable from this? I'll bleep it. I'll bleep whatever you need to do. I'm going to get George R.R. Martin to finish that fucking book. Long story short, folks. The Turle Man. When's the winner is coming, motherfucker.

[00:51:54] I just posted the worst word salad on Facebook earlier today, which was Meow Wolf abortion clinic. Oh, yeah. I saw that. I didn't know what to make of it. I just think that's the only abortion clinic that's going to be left in this country is a fake one. Meow Wolf. I'm like, oh, look. The stirrups are crocheted. Wow. Isn't this wacky? Anyways, real women have rights. Weird. Weird.

[00:52:22] That was a weird thing we thought we could do. Hey, Arthur. Remember when women can vote? I don't know, Dutch. I don't know if that was such a good idea. I got a plan, Arthur. We're going to Tahiti where women can vote. We just got to do one more abortion. I don't know, Dutch. We ain't so good at family plans no more. I got some leftover mephistoro before they banned it.

[00:52:54] Before they banned it, Arthur. Oh, God. Kill me. Oh, everything is terrible. Yeah, so the Jory Greep show. Yeah. Amazing. It was a long way to get there, but I appreciated every minute of it. Thank you. Oh, thank you. I was texting people while I was at this show. Half the dudes at this show look like the guy that killed Lennon, and the other half look like they know how to make chlorine gas.

[00:53:19] It really, I felt like I was at a con for future or potential school shooters. Oh, wow. Okay. And the amount of people that I just kind of made small talk with that were engineering students, like Rolla. Oh, yeah. Was like a little on the nose. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, yeah. Yeah. The show, like the performance itself was phenomenal. Jory Greep is a singular generational talent.

[00:53:45] Dude's not even like 25 and has already made so much stimulating music. And his new record, his first solo record since the disbanding of Black MIDI, the new sound is this interesting mix of like prog jazz, Latin jazz, and a bunch of other things. And all of the songs are kind of about being a pathetic like incel. Okay.

[00:54:15] Like the lead single, Holy Holy, which is a fucking amazing little ditty. It's not only six minutes long. That's like, that's how, what kind of record we're talking about here. The lead single is a six minute long song. Right. And it starts out with a guy kind of almost doing the character that's being expressed. I'm a stud. I'm a Chad. I've fucked every chick at this bar and you're going to be the next one. You know how this goes, right?

[00:54:44] And then by the end of the song, he's, you know, how much would it cost for you to flatter me? I would love for you to put your hand on my knees. Would that be okay? Hey, can you act like you can't take your eyes off me? Would that be okay? Like it goes from being like, I am this, this, this machismo womanizer, like very like 1960s or 70s idea of like a ladies man to,

[00:55:12] I can only come if I slam it in the door kind of. And most of the songs are kind of, kind of like that from different perspectives. And there's some, some lyrics that like out of context are like really like, Oh, this is like some love song shit. But in the law, in the larger perspective of the song itself is actually like really pathetic. Okay. And it's almost kind of like he's making fun of people like Andrew Tate.

[00:55:42] Right. Or like mystery method. The manosphere fellas. The manosphere. Yeah. It's very much like against that moment in time. Okay. Okay. Cause like in the Holy Holy, there's a, the, the chorus line is, you know, all of the revolutionaries love me and the jihadis too. And they all think I'm holy. Yeah. I mean, there's a song called Tara. I think it's the second song on the record that is like, it is like, it reads like a love song, but it's pathetic. And I believe it's the one where he mentions,

[00:56:12] you've given me an incurable disease. So you'll never leave me. Like just like, it's great. And there's a song called the, as if waltz, as if waltz that starts out like very, has a lot of momentum, like the first half. And then it becomes almost very theatrical with the different instruments repeating the same arpeggio and slows down. And it kind of,

[00:56:39] kind of choose the scenery a little bit. And to see that song performed live and to have that moment and to have the room so well mixed off Broadway, which isn't necessarily an easy room to mix for the concept of a soundstage. Cause it's just kind of a brick square to have those different instruments to have Jordy on his guitar, to have the bass, to have the second guitar player,

[00:57:06] to have the keyboard player all do that and have it feel like a very three dimensional thing. And a show that's pretty loud felt like I get kind of goosebumps thinking about it. Just like this, here's this moment, like it slows down and every instrument is doing. And then the bass does it. And, you know, um, it was interesting. It was,

[00:57:35] it had such a level of dynamics that I'm not used to. And I brought one of the young ladies I'm dating and she is, uh, a music major for her, uh, college, uh, scholarship. She has a music major or has a degree in music. And so she just got a lot out of it. Oh yeah. I got some fun photos. Um, I had to shoot through the crowd cause we showed up probably about 10 minutes too late,

[00:58:02] probably to actually be in line to get at the front of the stage, but whatever. It was a fun show. incredible show. Uh, if you get the chance to see him on this tour, uh, you, you fucking should. It's it. I don't know what's going to top this this year. I'm not even sure if soul coughing is going to be able to strike that chord. That's going to be a hard road to hoe for sure. Yeah. And it's fucking January. I know it's January. I already,

[00:58:31] I've already seen the best show I'm going to see this year. That is a little Wayne hot boys next month. Ain't going to do it. Maybe ammo, the sniffers of the salt shed. If I get the, if I end up going, Oh sure. But yeah. Uh, what, what you got chief? I spent a lot of time reading this past week. Nerd. I know. And the book that I chose is I just finished a really mediocre book. Uh, it was called a model home. It's all right. Yeah. Very much.

[00:58:59] The anxiety is the real monster kind of book. And it's like, okay, that's, it's fine. It's fine in moderation, whatever. I think the only one who can do that really well these days, there's two of them. It's Grady Hendrix and, uh, Stephen Graham Jones, but, or actually scratch that Chuck Tingle also can, can pull that off because he's also, you know, talented writer on top of all that.

[00:59:25] But I picked up a book that I've been kind of faffing about on reading. I always do this with Don DeLillo books. I always do this with Don DeLillo books. And this one was no exception. It had wound up in my free library outside the front of my house. And I picked it up just unlike the gay Lord of the Rings manga. Now that one I'm keeping, that one was hand translated. Somebody sat there with little post-it notes and wrote, and translated, Jesus Christ,

[00:59:55] and translated Frodo and Sam kissing each other in the tavern in the opening. Anyway, it's great. It's just fun. But, can I carry your load, Mr. Frodo? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Share your load, Mr. Frodo. Share the load. Yes. Aside from that, occasionally there will be a thing or two in the little free library. And this one was one of them. It was Don DeLillo's book called Libra. I had not read this yet. It was one of the few Don DeLillos I hadn't read yet.

[01:00:24] I read White Noise and Underworld and yada, yada, yada, right? And all the big ones. And this one, I don't know if you're familiar with this. Have you heard this? Have you seen this book now? I'm not really familiar with his body of work. I'm sorry to say. Educate me. Libra is a book. It's a fictionalized retelling of the life and death of Lee Harvey Oswald. And so,

[01:00:55] it starts, you know, from when he was, when he, basically from when he can remember. And there's a change of perspectives. You know, some parts of the story are told through his mother's perspective. Some parts of the story are told through some of the guys that are kind of weird figures in the whole assassination plot. There's several chapters from a completely made up guy who's going through the archives of the CIA

[01:01:21] and trying to like write together a full history of the assassination. But it all comes together in an interesting way. Parts of it are fictionalized. Parts of it are based on things that actually are real. And so, it's this weird melding of reality and Don DeLillo's idea of what happened. And I was really enthralled through the whole thing. And I think a lot of it really has to do with the fact that I'm just enthralled by the Kennedy assassination.

[01:01:51] Sure. But also because, yeah, Lee Oswald was a strange fellow. Oh, yeah. A lot of that stuff is real about him. You know, where he grew up and him defecting to Russia. Hands off Cuba. Oh, yeah. And the fact that he was the only member of the Hands Off Cuba committee. Like, it wasn't really a real organization. He just like, it was like a shell organization he set up just to say that he was. Carass people in New Orleans. Kind of. Yeah. The shit,

[01:02:21] the Mexican, Mexico at the American embassy. And all that's covered in there. And yeah, him trying to defect prior to the assassination or trying to at least get a Cuban passport so he could, you know, get out of the country. And his attempted assassination of, of that, uh, Walker in Texas. Just, there's a lot of stuff that's real. And so I think. Did he kill a cop after the. Yeah. Tip it. Yeah. He, he did kill a cop after,

[01:02:51] but there was also, he attempted to shoot this guy in Texas and they never caught him. And it's a whole thing. Yeah. Well, they, I mean, they call him after he killed the president. Eventually. Yeah. Eventually they got, but it didn't catch him. Oh gosh. Good thing he killed the again. So we can make a connection. Allegedly. Allegedly killed again. Yeah. The book posits not to do spoilers for like a 30 year old book,

[01:03:17] but the book posits that it was a confluence of multiple groups wanting to assassinate Kennedy, all converging on Dallas at the same time, because originally the plan was to hit him in Miami, but they canceled the Miami stop. And so they had to scramble and get, you know, and get some local guys on the scene. So it was like bullet train, but for killing a president. Essentially. Yeah. Well, uh, this, this didn't go as planned. So we got to make it work. We're going to throw a bunch of people at it.

[01:03:47] Uh, cause there was some, some guys that worked with the CIA in Cuba that were pissed off to the Bay of Pigs didn't go as planned. There was a bunch of mafia people that said, so-and-so has me money and we're going to hire him to kill the president. Like there, there was a lot of stuff. And DeLillo was like, yep, all of it happened all at the same time. Sure. Here's, huh? And I think one of the more fascinating parts is that, you know, not a lot of people wrote about the interior life of Jack Ruby,

[01:04:17] but so throughout the book, there's peppered in these chapters about Jack Ruby and his whole deal. And, and it all kind of comes together in this perfect storm of moments. And I think the only thing that really comes close to it as far as like a book about the assassination goes is Jim Garrison's on the trail. The assassins. That's about the only one that I could compare it to. And this is way more heavily fictionalized and it's still just an enthralling read.

[01:04:45] It's about 500 something pages longer than I thought it was going to be. Um, and, but it sings, you know, DeLillo books tend to sing a little bit, even white noise, which some people are kind of hot hit or miss on. Um, but I think that's probably one of his best works. This one though, I don't know how much of it was because it was his style of writing and how much of it, because I am obsessed with the Kennedy assassination and have been since the fucking Oliver Stone movie came out.

[01:05:15] I don't know. It's hard to tell, but a combination of the two things that I like really worked well. So I thought that was one of those ones where like, Oh, maybe more people should have read this again. Don't take it as gospel. It's just, here's a thing that might've happened and here's how it might've gone. And then the other thing was in preparation for seeing Joker fully adieu, which I still have not completed. I started it, but I fell asleep during it. I did watch with my wife, Todd Phillips Joker.

[01:05:44] And it's not the first time, obviously. Of course you're a white man in America. Exactly. If you don't have it memorized, but it was my wife's first time seeing it. So it is interesting watching a movie that you're kind of familiar with, with someone who hasn't seen it before. And my wife, especially as I, as I mentioned on the show before, she does, you know, she's the therapist. Yeah. And so I thought, Oh boy, she's going to pick this movie apart for the way it handles this stuff.

[01:06:14] But thankfully she didn't. She did say at the beginning, Oh, that social worker is kind of a shitty therapist. I said, yeah, she's a social worker. Yeah. She's not trained for this, but yeah, seeing it with fresh eyes, seeing it with someone who hadn't seen it before. I did notice some interesting ideas kind of cropping up in that. It still holds up. I'm surprised. I kind of thought, Oh, you know, it was an edgelord thing. It had its time. Maybe it won't age. Well, so pretty good.

[01:06:43] I don't think it's a terrible movie. I think it's, uh, has an interesting aesthetic. Oh, definitely. It's shot very well. The cinematography is good. No, it very, very, very obviously leans heavily on the influences and it leans on the Scorsese bed. And yes, I mean, down to casting De Niro. I mean, he did fucking De Niro's in it. So, you know, you already know. Right. Um, yeah, I don't think it's a, it's a bad movie. I think, and, uh, full they do or whatever.

[01:07:13] I think it's a very flawed movie, but the stuff that hits, the stuff that sings. Yeah. It's fantastic. When Scott, it's, when it finds, you know, it's a, it's a musical. When it finds its rhythm. Yeah. Like it's an effortless thing to watch. Cause I think I got to the first musical number. If I remember correctly. So the movie opens, you know, Arthur's in jail and Dom Hall Gleason. I love him. I love, you got a joke for me today, Arthur,

[01:07:43] you know, and playing that like Irish stereotypical Irish cop. I love him. And yeah, you got a joke for me today. Arthur threw the meat cute with, with Lee, not Harley Lee. They make a point to point that out up until, yeah, he comes back and they're watching the news and he has that moment straight out of Lars von Trier's dance in the dark, where he's singing a whole song and then snaps back to reality to someone saying,

[01:08:13] well, aren't you going to tell me what it is? It's a trick we've seen before in musicals or musicals that are trying to be subversive about being musicals. And yeah, that was about the point where I think I fell asleep, but that was just because I had watched a full movie and had a few beers in me. Nothing to do with the quality of the film, but I am looking forward to finishing it. So, so hopefully next week I will give you. You got, you got what I, uh, I said about the whole, like shooting LA for New York thing. I always hate that shit.

[01:08:43] Speaking of movies, uh, I kind of forgot to bring this up last week, but I finally got around to watching American fiction. Okay. What did you think of American fiction? I thought it was a very interesting movie. I thought it was really, uh, surprisingly have big heart. Yeah. For a movie that also could be really funny and really cynical. Yes. It's a movie that never gets to, it never goes too far. Yeah.

[01:09:13] I think it really is centered. Yeah. Yeah. It's got a good center. Some really fantastic performances. I think it kind of falls apart a little bit near the end, but that's my criticism of all movies for the last couple of years. I think that was their attempt also to be kind of like adaptation. And I don't hate it. I only think it was bad, but I'm like, this is definitely the third act has some really good stuff in it. Kind of stumbles a little, still nails the landing well enough. Like it, it ties up the story. It's still good.

[01:09:43] It's still fun. And Jeffrey Wright is, it's one of his best roles. Absolutely. Sterling K. Brown even. Yeah. I love, and the fucking Keith David cameo. I love the Keith David cameo. Cause it's like, Oh, we're leaning into really exploitative version of the thing that he's written. Yeah. Just the concede of the joke of writing the book out of anger and just like making fun of a bunch of shit.

[01:10:13] I think it's to confront the author who he's kind of, he's written this mean parody of and, Oh no, I did all this research. Eric Gents. Yeah. It's, it's, it's almost like the climax of the film. It feels like. Yeah. Cause the rest is kind of like, we're just wrapping up. Yeah. We're wrapping up this plot. yeah. Tracy Ellis Ross, right? I think so. Yeah. So many people in that movie are just doing their best. I really liked Jeffrey Wright's bit there. Oh,

[01:10:42] that's right. Adam Brody. I forgot he was in that. Oh yeah. Just for a bit, but it's enough. It's enough. You're like, okay. Um, yeah, I really enjoyed it. I feel like, like you do with endings that, I don't know. I think the adaptation ending kind of works. I don't hate it. I think, I mean, definitely a completely enjoyable movie that most people should watch. Oh, for sure. Um, the thing that kind of got me is it's baking fun shit. That's like Oscar bait or award bait,

[01:11:11] but then kind of goes there. It does the thing that it's trying to piss take on. Sure. But I don't know how much of that is intentional or unintentional or the fact that the movie doesn't want to be as mean as it could be. And I think that's one of the things I like about it is that like Jeffrey Wright's, his character's brother is a fuck up. Yeah. Yeah. He's not worthless.

[01:11:41] And I feel like there's a lot of media that would take a character like that and just make him unredeemable. Oh, yeah. And like the scene near the end of the movie where Jeffrey Wright's character shows up at the beach house, the family beach house, and his brother's unexpectedly there with his brother who has recently come to the epiphany that he is a homosexual and is trying to find himself in a way that's really messy, but still trying to figure out who he is.

[01:12:10] And he has two young gay men in the house. Oh, yeah. Like that was a part of the movie where I'm like, oh, God, this is going to be like really cringe because they're going to make everyone all these these three queer characters shitty assholes. Yeah. And then they flip it. And the two, you know, these two gay club guys, they're in this house are then incredibly sweet to everyone. And that was very nice.

[01:12:39] I think that's a good turn. And I guess it's weird for me to say as a decidedly the most cynical person on this podcast to be like, I'm glad it didn't feed into easy cynicism. Right. Because I think that's a very easy, very cheap. It's cheap heat. It is. To do that. When you can avoid it, I think it's really a sign of someone thinking about the story and thinking about the characters as characters. Yeah. And I think that's nice.

[01:13:09] It's nice to see that. And I felt like every character in that film, even down to some of the people that are exploiting Jeffrey Wright's character for their own gains, they're still human in a way that you wouldn't necessarily expect them to be. Right. And I think that's a strength of the movie. And I also feel like the people that we could say are more exploitative of Jeffrey Wright are not completely self-interested. They're still like, they're still like, hey, I understand this is fucked.

[01:13:39] Like what we're doing. But what's, where are your options? Like, I'm not trying to be, I'm not being an asshole. I'm trying to help you. Yeah. Argument. And even though like maybe it is an asshole exploitative thing to do, they are not trying to hurt Jeffrey Wright's character. Right. They're not trying to hurt Monk. They're trying to help him. Oh, that's right. His name is Monk. That's right. His name is Thelonious. Thelonious. He's called Monk. Yeah. Which is another great little element. It's, it's a nice touch.

[01:14:08] It's just that one little, little detail that I completely forgot until you said it. Yeah. It's a movie with no villain. Other than just like the world is kind of shit. The villain of the piece, if you really even have to have one, is the person he sets out to satirize. Satirize. And even that just kind of falls by the wayside by the end of the movie. Yeah. Cause he's confronted her over and done with. And then the rest is just kind of like, and then also this happened. Yeah. And he realizes that he maybe doesn't have the,

[01:14:38] the moral high ground. No. He comes from like an overly mobile African-American family, but of, I think more modest aspirations. Yeah. I mean, like he's, he says he's the only person in his family that ended up being a doctor. I ends up being a doctor, but a doctor, I presume literature. Yeah. Which is a fun little joke on its own. Just kind of. Yeah. Okay. Um, but so like, he's a well-learned African-American man coming from a family that,

[01:15:08] that has lived their own version of the American dream. It feels like not without tragedy, of course, but they've done okay. Yeah. And the grand scheme of things. And he's confronting this pop off author who has written this book about the black experience that feels like a minstrel show. Yeah. It feels tawdry. Yeah. It feels cheap. I think is what he says in there. Yeah.

[01:15:37] And he confronts her and she's like, well, I did all this research and, you know, but she's had like this kind of, in a way, a kind of a privileged, like scholarly life. And she comes about it through, well, I did my research. Yeah. Whereas for him, that's his, he feels like he gets gotcha and that he can't really say anything because he's also an intellectual and has not lived like a life of poverty. He hasn't, he didn't grow up in the hood. He is,

[01:16:07] his sensibilities are offended. Right. And he realizes like, well, shit, I didn't, I didn't also grow up in it. And so who am I to, yeah. Who, who am I to say? Yeah. And so it's a commentary about like lived experience, which I think is an interesting topic. And I think it handles it well enough. Yeah. It doesn't, it doesn't let monk be the better person. No, he's, but it doesn't make, you hate him for it either. It's better for it. I think,

[01:16:37] because if the movie had committed one way or the other, Oh, monk's a jerk. No, he's a jackass. Oh, if like, it was like, imagine if that was Will Ferrell. Right. Right. Or, you know, anyone else really. Uh, but you know, like, Oh, monk's this real prick. Right. And, and he's just doing this to, to get back at this person for a perceived slight. It might've shifted the tone of the film a little bit. It definitely would have cast him in a different light. Yeah. I think the way it was handled was so great. Well, uh,

[01:17:07] I guess that means it's time to tell people where to find us online. Uh, yeah. If, uh, you want to, um, harass me on the internet, you can find me at, I shock, I shock, I, I, I, S H O T G U Y D B O R D on all major platforms, Instagram, Twitter, whatever. Yeah. And if you want to specifically see my music shit on Instagram, it's a music photographer.

[01:17:35] If you want to check out my music portfolio, my music photography portfolio, you can go to asshole music, photographer.com. If you want to check out the last and only good media website left in St. Louis, you can go over to the arts, S T L. Dot com. And, uh, that's it, Jason. What can they tell you to do things? You can tell me to do any old thing you desire. Any place there's a video crime. Chances are that's going to be me.

[01:18:04] That's B I D E O C R I M E. You can also find me as part of a podcast. That's not this one submitted for the approval of the midnight pals. There. I play a fictionalized version of horror icon, Stephen King this week marked, the release of episode three, season two, the tale of the watcher. Oh, this episode features Stephen's adopted son,

[01:18:32] Dean Koontz telling his story about a crazy murder monkey and the super smart dog who helps hunt him down. It is based on an actual book, by the way. I don't know if you've ever read this, but the Dean Koontz book, the watchers, I know of it. It's, it's completely insane. The episode is very much a parody, but it's not that far off from the actual plot of the book, which makes it even better. So do that thing.

[01:18:59] Check out midnight dash pals dot simplecast.com or wherever podcasts are sold. Just search up midnight pals. You can reach this show in a number of ways. My personal favorite, of course, is the telephone three, one four, two, four, six, nine, seven, six, six, three, one, four. Ahoy poo. If you want to spell with your telephone, Baghdad, Bob, if you're out there, give us a call. Anyone else out there? Give us a call. We'd love to hear from you. Uh, the green river killer. Um,

[01:19:30] BTK, give us a call. Wait, I think he's dead, but, uh, whatever works for you. You can also shoot us an email, Jason at the number four, the number eight minutes of dogs, barking.com or Brian with a Y at the number four, the number eight minutes, dogs, barking.com support the show, patrion.com slash four, eight minutes of dogs. We're doing the thanks. I hate it, which is the post show hangout. We're doing the mind zone. Anytime we feel like we want to get, real freaky with it, we're working on a punishment tier.

[01:20:00] I was thinking, uh, maybe something a little bit less intense. Maybe the punishment tier would be the, uh, the resident evil movies that we talked about. Oh, they're so fucking terrible. Eight of them. So, yeah. Chime in anytime that you want to tell us what it is that we should be doing to be punishing ourselves. Punishment tier. Join us. Patreon.com slash four, eight minutes of dogs. Well, that about does it for the show. My name's Jason. That's Brian.

[01:20:29] And as we always say at this time, namaste, good luck. Give mommy a good gut fucking 25th amendment. Now who ate all the pussy? Eat. The. Knife. Knife. Knife.