#23. X-Men: Dark Phoenix, HOT Lanes, and Food Poisoning
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Dark Phoenix closes out the Fox X-Men run with a $33 million opening, a number so bad that Sonny notes The Hollywood Reporter had a story out the next day with producers, the studio, and James Cameron all knifing each other over release-date musical chairs with Alita, and JVL points out it's nearly a 50 percent drop from the franchise's previous worst opening while The Last Stand pulled $103 million thirteen years earlier with no IMAX or 3D. JVL then delivers the surprise of the episode by admitting he kind of loved it — walking it back to "kind of liked it," a B-minus or C-plus, but insisting it's superior by an order of magnitude to Godzilla, Captain Marvel, Shazam, Aquaman, and Apocalypse. He praises its efficiency at 110 minutes, wants a Michael Fassbender Magneto movie immediately, and admires Jessica Chastain's eyebrowless, perfectly still performance, arguing her alien feminism is an exact analog to Bane's fake populism in The Dark Knight Rises. Sonny calls it not terrible, just bad and boring, with a genuinely sharp thesis: the X-Men series is a tribute to the experience of reading comic books, complete with creative turnover, spin-offs, timeline resets, and the eventual staleness that makes you age out. Both men agree Jennifer Lawrence is practically tapping her toe and staring at the clock, that Rebecca Romijn's Mystique was far better, and that nobody has filled Famke Janssen's shoes; JVL ranks the eight films with First Class on top and Apocalypse at the bottom, and both pine for the Eric Lehnsherr Nazi-hunter movie First Class teased. Vic gives it a B, confesses all the X-Men films blur together and that he asked his eleven-year-old son mid-movie whether this one connected to the others. The opener is a full JVL rant about Virginia's HOT lanes — the price shown without the travel time is "not capitalism," it's like a store selling sealed brown paper bags — while Vic tries to work out whether he can fake an HOV-3 transponder setting and get away with it. Then comes Vic's magnificently self-deceiving food poisoning saga from the Free Beacon's mandatory Movie Day at Fiola Mare: nine drinks across seven hours, Negronis alternated with Coronas, one sidewalk vomit outside Cava in Rosslyn, another in his own front doorway, all of it firmly attributed to the squid, which Sonny also ate without incident. The show also sits at exactly 666 iTunes reviews, which Vic finds a bad omen and asks the priest listeners to fix from the pulpit.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- In this latest episode, sponsored by Express VPN and Blinds.com , we discuss Dark ...
Full transcript
?00:00:00*music*
Vic00:00:30Hello and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacons sponsored by ExpressVPN and Blinds.com. I'm Victor Matus along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. I'd like to remind you the Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes and Google Play. Just look at our podcast and search for Sub-Beacon. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends and leave a review. In fact, I just checked the site on iTunes and we are at 666 reviews. Perfect. We don't need any more reviews. Please, our priest listeners, do something. Add a few more reviews. That's all I have to say. I'm very uncomfortable with that. It's a bad omen. It's a bad omen.
Sonny00:01:19Oh, I see what you did there. Yeah, in their homilies, right? They should tell their parishioners to vote, to go and give us reviews. We can't stay at 666.
Vic00:01:30We can't stay at 666. That's just not right.
JVL00:01:31I had dinner with a priest friend this week and he said, he said, you got to tell Vic this. He said, on Ash Wednesday, I worked reduced gluttony in my homily. That's great. We are out there saving souls. Basically, you saved a soul, probably. What was the context of the...
Vic00:01:50Yes, I want to know what the context is. Don't be like this guy, is what he said. It's not the real deal. Either you go full on, self-denial or not.
JVL00:01:57I don't know the exact context of the homily. I'm sure I could track it down.
Vic00:02:00Or it's perhaps like, you know what? A little bit is better than nothing. That's what maybe it was. Just the tip. Just the tip. Just the tip. Once again. JVL, what's going on?
JVL00:02:11So, I had a first time ever experience where... He's bringing up just the tip. Flash has been selected to the all-star team. Oh, hey. And I was at the first parents meeting and I was sitting next to... For the all-star team? Practices and meetings and it's three hours a night, every night, forever. This is the worst. And I met this very nice fellow and we started talking and he was like, Jonathan, I love your stuff. Bulwark and the Weekly Standard, long-time Weekly Standard. I just had never put together when I had seen **** name in the... And he goes, wait a minute. That means **** is Flash? We're going to have to bleep that. At least part of it. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't. It blows the story. I can't do the story without using it. Anyway, and I was like, yeah, yeah, he is. And so that's funny. Yeah, there he is. It all comes together. It all comes together.
Vic00:03:11And you were just telling me because I was surprised how quickly it took you to get into studio today. You took a half lane, hot lane. I took the Hyperloop.
JVL00:03:23Hyperloop. I took Elon Musk's Hyperloop.
Sonny00:03:25Did you take the Uber helicopter?
JVL00:03:26Oh, that's what I want, man. Uber. Uber drone. Yeah. It was fine. The hot lanes. I was able to get here to the lovely offices of the Washington Free Beacon in only 39 minutes. In lovely Roslyn, Virginia.
Vic00:03:39Do you have a Flex Pass? Is that what that is? Of course I do.
JVL00:03:43Yeah.
Vic00:03:43So I just got a Flex Pass.
JVL00:03:45You need it for 66 now, right?
Vic00:03:47At certain times, but I'm always outraged. I'd rather just go local roads when I see how much they're charging depending on the traffic because as you know, it's the invisible hand, the free market at work.
JVL00:03:58Oh, yeah. It's all. It's all the free market. You're just $30 to go two miles.
Vic00:04:03So.
Sonny00:04:04Well, the reason I hate it when people complain about this because the whole point of the is to deter. Yeah. The whole point is to deter people from not using the HOV and the alternative which exists before this was people would get tickets. You ride it and you and you. So you're just saying depending if there's a you're just saying you're a police park.
JVL00:04:24You're annoyed that it's harder to break the law now.
Vic00:04:27No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm outraged by the price.
JVL00:04:30What the free market, what the real invisible hand free market would be. Yes. Would be them telling you the time it will take to get there, which they can do. And then the price to get there. Just giving the price without the time. You don't know is meaningless. And as somebody who does this all the time and watches, there are times when the HOV, the HOT price will be something like twenty six dollars and the HOT. The lanes are just all like a parking lot because there's an accident and they're making a killing. They're making a killing. If you looked at the price and said, oh, wow, that must mean that the traffic on the normal lanes are really bad. I ought to pay the twenty six dollars. And then it did you showing something. It's like if you walked into a store and everything was in a brown paper bag that was sealed, but they had prices on them. And so you all of this brown paper bag is fourteen dollars. This brown paper bag is six seventy five. I wonder which I need more. This is not capitalism. This is not the free market. This is saying it's perfect.
Sonny00:05:35Crony capitalism.
JVL00:05:37This is something that the burn is going to burn down, baby. When Bernie Sanders is president, all hot lanes will be given to you. Given to the people. The people. The people. The collective.
Vic00:05:50Thank you. So, but I thought, I thought, you know, they give you very strict instructions. Take your hot lanes.
JVL00:05:58I give them to you, the people.
Vic00:06:01It kind of looked like it, too, with the thing on your head. Come on. Yes, that was very good. That was very good sound effect, too. So they tell you, okay, so if you have three people in your car, then you can switch the thing on.
Sonny00:06:14We should explain to people what this actually is, who don't live in the region. So in the D.C. region and other regions, I'm sure, there are lanes that you can drive in. Dedicated. You can either pay money to drive in or you can drive in them for free if you have three or more people. Right. That's right.
JVL00:06:31Do you know who pays for the toll if you have three or more people? Because it isn't free.
Vic00:06:37JVL.
JVL00:06:38The state of Virginia compensates the company that owns the toll roads. That's interesting. I didn't know that. Your tax dollars.
Vic00:06:46I was going to this company.
JVL00:06:47Pay for your HOV-3. You know what? That's a perfectly normal, reasonable deal that any government would strike with a private company. I'm sure there was no graft or corruption there at all. JVL has lots of thoughts.
Vic00:06:59My question, I had this question to Sonny and then to you as well, JVL, is, oh, I have three people in my car, so I don't have to pay. You turn on the flex. I can turn on the flex. What happens if I don't turn on the flex? They charge you. How do they charge me? They charge you because it's just a transponder. How do they know if there's three people in the car or not? This is what I thought.
JVL00:07:23You're asking. You're asking. If I turn it to the flex and I only have one person, how do they know? Yes. You're trying to figure out another way to break the law.
Vic00:07:31Because I thought I did. Yes. Go ahead.
JVL00:07:33So they are very secretive about this. Very, very secretive. And it is unclear if they are paying the Virginia State Police to sit there and with a little gun that's monitoring the transponders that says HIV and when they do a visual check as you drive past with your HIV. Or if they have infrared in the cameras that is looking for heat signatures in the car. It is likely to be one of those two. Probably, my guess is, that they're using the state police because that would be another use of public funds for which the state is uncompensated. But, you know, that's fine.
Vic00:08:11My thought was this. I'm going over down the ramp and, oh, I'm going to, you know what, I'm just going to pretend that there are three people in my car. But I see a police parked. Oh, quick, switch it. And then I'll be okay. Or, oh, I've just been pulled over. Quick, switch it. And put my seatbelt on.
JVL00:08:29I don't know. I mean, so here's the thing. The question is, have you gone through one of the gates? Right? Because they have the...
Vic00:08:35They used to be there and then sometimes they're not. You know what? No, no, the transponder gate. So there are the transponder gates. The things that are over the road. Sure, sure.
JVL00:08:41And those are the ones that tag you to let you know. So if you enter, so you enter an HOV lane with your transponder one way. Yes. Okay? You can, you pass under the gate. You can then switch it back and forth and back and forth. Whatever you want to do before you pass under the gate. That's right. Right. And it's at the next one where you have to be matching. Matchy match? Matchy match? You put them together.
Vic00:09:05Okay.
JVL00:09:05Just like in... Thank you. Wow. What? You don't have to bleep that, do you? Okay.
Vic00:09:10Do you have to bleep that? I understood it. Okay. I see what you're saying.
Sonny00:09:13Of course you do. So what you're saying is... This is a family show.
JVL00:09:15That is Michael Goldfarb's favorite moment in all of cinema.
Sonny00:09:19Yeah, I know. I know. That's why we have to bleep it.
Vic00:09:22So you're saying it could be possibly heat signatures or visual. Like, oh... It could be either of those. Or it could... So much for that. Or it could be neither. Yeah. It could be just a free-for-all.
JVL00:09:34It could just be fake. Yeah, yeah.
Sonny00:09:35It could just be using the threat. Using it all the time. Right. The threat of the state.
JVL00:09:39The state's force. Because, again, they have the state compensating them for you using the HOV-3 anyway. So what do they care? That's a good point.
Vic00:09:48They're getting paid no matter what. A guy was telling me that they're going to be putting, in the District of Columbia, besides those insane speed cameras, stop cameras. Like, for stop signs, and you have to stop. A guy told me this and said that... A guy? You got a guy? I got a guy who said you have to stop five seconds. Was it your barber? No. No. It was a guy I was having a dinner with. He's a food person. But it was like, you have to stop five seconds, and then go. And if it's less than five seconds, you'll get a ticket. I don't know if that's true. It sounds like something the District of Columbia would do.
JVL00:10:24It does sound like something the D.C. would do. It totally does.
Sonny00:10:26If they did that, people would riot.
JVL00:10:29People would start smashing those things to pieces. The way all of this stuff works with optical recognition, they could have it so that only license plates from outside the district wind up getting, you know, oh, the cameras just weren't able to get a good fix on it when you have a D.C. license plate, but it's all the commuters who get it. Yeah, entirely possible.
Vic00:10:51I can see that. Okay. Victorino, how are you?
JVL00:10:54I am. Wait, Sonny, tell us all about your life. Great weekend? Huh? How was your weekend? What's up?
Vic00:10:59It's good. He's got nothing.
JVL00:11:01Okay.
Vic00:11:01Victorino. I am, unlike Sonny, I am recovering. I am recovering from about, I believe, I've decided is about a food poisoning. He has decided. On Friday, last Friday, we had our annual. Food, not alcohol. We had our annual company outing. Annual company outing. Sub-Beacon Movie Day. Yes. What did you guys see? We saw a restaurant is what we saw. It's a great movie.
Sonny00:11:28Yeah. Vic and I and Michael Goldfarb and a couple other people, we went to Fiolomar. But it was funny. Somebody was trying to explain Movie Day to a business that does not have Movie Day. Yeah. And we were, you know, it's a team building exercise. It's team building. Team building. Mandatory. It's mandatory attendance. So they were like, oh, so you all go and see the same movie and then you like talk. No, we all go see different movies.
Vic00:11:49Pick whichever one you want.
Sonny00:11:50You know, and they're like, oh, so then you like come back and you do what? Like drink. Team building? It's team building. But it is team building.
Vic00:11:59And I enjoyed spending that sort of outside of the office time with my colleagues. Yeah, you don't get enough out of the office time. Oh, you know me. At the Palm. No, no, that's not the office. Or the Blue Duck Tavern. So then a couple, two other people at our lunch had gotten sick. So this gives me some comfort because, you know, a few hours after. You grew up sick. Yeah. So a few hours after lunch, for example, I was walking home and I got sick. And I don't think it had to do with the five Negronis and four Coronas that I had. And I think if it did, it would be because of the order. Because I started with Negroni. I transitioned to Corona. And then I went back to Negroni, which is, you know, delicious with gin and Campari.
Sonny00:12:45It's actually a terrible cocktail. I don't understand. I like it a lot. I like it. It's bitter, though.
Vic00:12:50But it's like. It's bitter. It's too bitter. Once you go bitter, I can't do the sweet anymore. So then what happened was I.
JVL00:12:55Did you throw up on the sidewalk like a bum?
Vic00:12:59No, no. I was sitting down outside. I was sitting. I was sitting when it happened. I was sitting at outside.
JVL00:13:04You had passed out on the sidewalk like a bum and then you threw up.
Vic00:13:06I took a seat outside of Cava, the place where they all sit right here on North Lynn. And I just leaned over. Did you have a sign asking people for help? No. And I just let it out. And I felt a lot better. You threw up on the sidewalk.
Sonny00:13:21You didn't tell me that you threw up outside of a restaurant that we go to for lunch.
JVL00:13:25I looked around and there was nobody there because as you know, this was like a little after 7 p.m.
Vic00:13:31So there was nobody there.
Sonny00:13:34Rosalind is a ghost town.
Vic00:13:36So yeah, I staggered my drinks, JV. It sounds like I had a lot to drink, but I staggered it between 12 and 7.
Sonny00:13:42Right. You had nine drinks over seven hours.
Vic00:13:44Over seven hours? That's nothing.
Sonny00:13:45Really? You only had two drinks in your system.
JVL00:13:47But now I realize it's a comedy.
Vic00:13:50And also, I remember this because at some point I just realized when we were at the harbor, I said, I just got to leave. And I just walked out, didn't tell anybody. And I was weaving because of the food poisoning. And I remember going over Key Bridge and I would touch the barrier with my hand because of the food poisoning. And then I managed to get an Uber, kept it together, got to the house. And then right before I walked in the door, I had to get, I got sick again because of the food poisoning.
Sonny00:14:23So in front of your home. Yes. Where your children play with their toys. Where my wife sleeps. Where your wife sleeps and your children play with their toys. Yes. You were sick in front of that house.
JVL00:14:37The door opens. You walked in and you said to your children, Don't ever do what I do, kids. Is that what you told them? To reassure them that everything's okay? Don't eat the squid at Fiola Mare, kids. This is what happens to you.
Vic00:14:53I'm pretty sure, Sonny, I'm pretty sure it was the squid.
Sonny00:14:55I had that squid, too. We shared it and I did not get sick.
Vic00:14:58Maybe. I don't know. But, you know, it was like Sharon Stone in Casino when she says, she's doing the coke in front of the daughter. She says, don't do this. Don't do this, sweetie. So anyway, Kate's like, were you crying? And I'm like, no. You know, and then she goes, did you get sick? It's a very sad movie. It's a very sad movie. And so she goes, okay, let me go check outside in case she had to hose it down. And so she goes, go, go upstairs now. She just said, go upstairs. And then the kids are like, what's going on? And she told the kids, she was like, oh, I think your dad got sick. And then I heard them go, I want to see it. I want to see it. And so that was. Can someone be sainted while they're still alive? Yes. Me? Yes. Because. Thank you. Because Mrs. Kate Mattis. Oh, her.
JVL00:15:38She is. The things she puts up with. What an amazing human being.
Sonny00:15:44When she finally goes to the divorce lawyer. He. He's going to look at the track, the list of things that you have done. And he's going to be like, OK, you can get everything. You can have it all.
JVL00:15:57Here is. Here's everything. When I say my prayers at night, I'm going to ask her to intercede on my behalf. Because that girl must have a direct line upstairs. She. To be able to have the grace. The grace. It's grace.
Vic00:16:10It's grace. With you. But it was really. But I was the one who was suffering. Obviously. Yeah. So. In a way. In a way. In a way. You suffered more than. I did. And I went upstairs and I blacked out because of the food poisoning. The food poisoning caused me to pass out.
Sonny00:16:26But you felt so much better in the morning because you threw up all of the food poisoning.
Vic00:16:29I did. That's a good point, Sonny. I woke up the next morning. I felt lighter. I don't think I gained weight. I didn't think I gained weight. That's another. That's a little stipulation in the RG diet. You did. We try not to. That's definitely. You didn't. Only for emergency only. Throw up your food.
Sonny00:16:44You didn't. That you ate. You didn't have a food poisoning headache. In the morning. Yeah.
Vic00:16:49No, but I did.
Sonny00:16:51You felt better. Can I tell you what it felt like?
Vic00:16:52It felt like I had gotten my stomach pumped. Speaking of getting my stomach pumped, Rocket Man took fifth place in the box office with $14 million.
JVL00:17:02That is a tough one to swallow.
?00:17:04Wow.
Vic00:17:05Wow. JV, yow. What? Woof. Well, you know what? I made your transition. That is a reference to the drug overdose I want to point out. The drug overdose. Not the Rod Stewart nasty rumor.
Sonny00:17:15That's terrible.
Vic00:17:16That's a terrible one. Terrible. I can't even. The rumor by the ex-publicist, which I will not bring up here. We'll not repeat that. Just go to Google. All right. Move on. Anyway, do you want to hear my other transition? No. Okay. I'm going to say it anyway. I'm going to say it anyway.
Sonny00:17:31Save it for next week.
Vic00:17:32No, no, no. It has to be now. Sonny, do you ever wonder what your dog does at home when nobody's at the house? No. Yeah, you do. So, you know, you ever think about putting one of those cameras in there? No. And seeing what they're doing? I don't think about that. You know what? I've always been curious about the secret. Secret Life of Pets 2.
JVL00:17:49Speaking of which, the Secret Life of Pets 2 took the top spot at the box office with
Vic00:17:55$47 million, followed by Dark Phoenix with $33 million, and in third place, Aladdin with $25 million. Box office thoughts. What happened to Godzilla? Dropped.
Sonny00:18:09It ended up dropping 67.7%. It looked for a while in the weekend that it was going to drop 70%. 67% still not very good. But, I mean, it was heavily front-loaded. It lost all its IMAX screens because Dark Phoenix was on, blah, blah, blah. But, I mean, it underperformed its first weekend and it dropped disastrously its second weekend. So, I'm sure the studio is really, really glad that they already have Kong vs. Godzilla in the can. It's already shot.
JVL00:18:37Yeah, but that'll be even better because it has two monsters. It has two monsters.
Sonny00:18:40It's got more monsters. What is this, Legendary? Only one of them can be the king of the monsters. Do you think? Do you think it's going to be like Batman vs. Superman and they're going to have to team up against some other villain? That's an excellent question. It kind of has to be because they're both heroes. They're both the heroes. Right.
Vic00:18:58People love them both. Do you think they're both?
Sonny00:19:00Do you think? I'm going to steal a joke from Twitter right now. Do you think they're going to be fighting and then one of them is going to say, but Mothra doesn't want us to fight. And the other one will say, why did you say that name? Get it? Because it's like Martha. Terrible. I'm going to take this out. Maybe I'll take this out. Why?
JVL00:19:16That's very funny.
Sonny00:19:17I'm thinking about that. Awful.
JVL00:19:20Jeez. Mothra. Why? Why did you say that name, bro? So there's like subtitles underneath of the Godzilla. I would really like a Michael Bay version of this where the monsters can all talk to each other.
Sonny00:19:36That would be great. Yeah. Like Transformers.
JVL00:19:38You, me, friends.
Vic00:19:40Right. They can only speak in fragment too. They can only speak in fragment. So there were two bad things. There was. There was the Godzilla drop. And then, of course, there's Dark Phoenix, which is an X-Men movie. What happened there?
Sonny00:19:54Nobody wanted to go see it. I don't know what to tell you. The tracking numbers were soft anyway. It was tracking at about $50 million. And it drastically underperformed that. You know, this movie was not cheap to make, despite it being kind of a smaller scale X-Men movie. Because they had to. They had to reshoot the whole last third of the movie, if the reports are correct. This box office performance is so disastrous that literally the next day, a Hollywood reporter had a story out where everyone was knifing each other about whose fault it was. You know, the producers blamed the studio. Someone at the studio blamed James Cameron because James Cameron wanted the...
JVL00:20:40Originally, this was supposed to have a November release date. Originally, it was supposed to have like a 2018 summer release date. They pushed that back.
Sonny00:20:47To late 2018 because it's a smaller... It's like, they're like, this is a more personal story about, you know, Gene and... Okay. But like, that was what they said. And then James Cameron was like, no, but I can't go up against Alita. I can't have Alita going up against this and, you know, blah, blah, blah. So they pushed... Oh, wait. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I got this slightly wrong. They pushed Alita back to February. They pushed Alita back to February, which is when Dark Phoenix was supposed to come out. And then James Cameron was like, you can't do Phoenix this because I got to do Alita. I don't want to get screwed. So they're like, all right, fine. We'll push Dark Phoenix back again to June. Anyway, a whole bunch of things conspire to make this a bad show.
Vic00:21:33And then there was also... Wasn't there also a concern about it not... They didn't want to coincide with the Nutcracker and the Four Realms or something as well. It's terrible. It's just... This isn't JVL.
JVL00:21:43It's really bad. When you look at how it has... It's performed within the X-Men franchise. Yes. It is a drop of almost 50% from the lowest opening ever, which is from six years ago. What was that? Which was The Wolverine. The Wolverine, yeah. I mean, think about the X-Men movies that we think of as total dogs, of which I would say X-Men Origins Wolverine is probably the biggest, right? It is... Yes. Very low, total, gross. Maybe X-Men Apocalypse. Well, X-Men Apocalypse is definitely, I think, the worst of these movies. X-Men Apocalypse grossed more than double this in its opening weekend.
Sonny00:22:26But Apocalypse was also coming off Days of Future Past. I know.
JVL00:22:29Well, this is, as I believe I said to you guys, I believed that this movie was going to be punished for the sins of X-Men Apocalypse, and I think that is clearly what happened. The depressive effect of having that terrible a movie. But it really is stunning. And, you know, I had forgotten, actually, how well Last Stand did. Last Stand opened 13 years ago to $103 million. That's really something. That's without the iMac screens, without the 3D.
Sonny00:22:57I mean, it did Spider-Man numbers.
JVL00:22:59It did, like, the... Yeah, this is... So, I wonder... And this is, I believe, the last X-Men movie will get not done under the Disney banner, right? Yes.
Sonny00:23:10Well, there's that new Mutants movie.
JVL00:23:12Is it already shot?
Sonny00:23:13That has been shot and has been re-shot and has been edited. And has been re-edited. And they have no idea what to do with it. It's going to get dumped on a streaming service at some point. Disney Plus.
JVL00:23:24The only place you can see X-Men and the new Mutants.
Sonny00:23:26Exactly. It's going to wind up on a streaming service at some point.
Vic00:23:29What are the new Mutants? This is not Teenage Mutants. This is just... I'd see that one.
Sonny00:23:34Do you want to explain what the new Mutants are, JVL? Wait, hold on.
JVL00:23:37Can I float... I don't know what's happening. Can I float a theory? Yes. Is it possible... So, Disney obviously had... Some control over the release of this movie. Yes. Even though it was not theirs. Yes. Is it possible that they wanted it to tank? Ooh. Because this way, the first Disney-fied X-Men... Will be... Will be... Has to do better than this.
Sonny00:24:04I mean, it's possible.
JVL00:24:05In the same way that every... Like, you know, whenever a studio head... This is like the classic thing. A studio head comes in and the first thing he does is submarine all the stuff about to come out from his predecessor to make the predecessor's stuff look bad.
Sonny00:24:17And stuff look good. It's possible, but Fox was doing a pretty good job of submarining this before Disney. Disney. I mean, it was supposed to come out last year. They've been advertising this movie for like 18 months now because they keep pushing back the release date and it just had the stink of death on it. Yeah. So...
Vic00:24:35Sonny, you want to... Do you want to give a big boy review of Dark Phoenix? Sure.
Sonny00:24:41A little bit? Just a little bit. Dark Phoenix is the... The second terrible adaptation of the Dark Phoenix storyline from the comic books. No, I don't know. I don't... I'm not... So, I... It's funny. My review of this movie was only very marginally a review of Dark Phoenix, which is just not... It's just not very good. It's not terrible. It's not terrible like Apocalypse was terrible. It's just kind of boring. It's bad and boring and has some really weird acting choices in it and whatever. But here's the plot. The plot of the film is that the X-Men are now... Have been embraced by humanity and the power structure. They've got a direct line to the president who sends them on a mission to space to save the space shuttle that has encountered some mysterious cosmic force. And they save the people, but Jean Grey gets consumed by this energy and it goes inside of her. And she's now super powerful. I'm super powerful. And when she comes back, she loses control. She loses control of that power and an alien race of some sort, not the Shi'ar Empire, which is from the comic books and the animated series. Ironically, the best adaptation of the Dark Phoenix storyline was the animated series 1990s version. You should check that out if you want to see a good Dark Phoenix story. But this alien race of shapeshifters who have indeterminate powers. I don't understand what they are. They don't do a very good job of explaining it. She wants her to bring their planet back to life, I think. Turn Earth into their planet. Turn Earth. It's basically the Zod story from Man of Steel, but done a million times more incompetently. And she kind of like goes with them and she kills Mystique. And she thus earns herself the enmity of Beast and Magneto who join forces to take her down. And then they all decide, wait, we actually need to fight these aliens. And then they do that for the end of the movie. And then the series is over. There's my review. There's my review.
Guest00:26:56Thank you, Sonny.
Sonny00:26:59I'll get into what I actually kind of like about this movie more a bit later after the...
Vic00:27:04Right. Well, after the what? After the transition here. Yeah, I just thought that she was kind of like, I don't know, Captain Marvel. That she absorbed this power accidentally and now she's become all powerful and invincible. Nothing can stop her. It was like her powers were so blinding. Speaking of which, when you need new blinds, there's only one place to go. Blinds.com. With 15 million windows covered and over 30,000 five-star customer reviews, Blinds.com is America's number one online retailer for affordable quality custom window coverings. Whether you're looking for energy efficiency, you just moved, or want to refresh the look of your home, Blinds.com makes the whole experience so fast and easy. Just send them pictures of your house, and they send back custom recommendations from a professional for what will work with your color scheme, furniture, and specific rooms. They'll even send you free samples to make sure everything looks as good in person as it does online, and every order gets free shipping. And this is the best part. If you accidentally mismeasure or pick the wrong color, if you make a mistake, Blinds.com will remake your blinds for free. They've really made it easy for you, so there's no excuse to leave up those mangled blinds. My house has had mangled blinds since we moved in, and we just never bothered to change the blinds, so I don't know. They've been there for maybe 15 years, longer, 20 years. I have no idea, and we're down to the point where certain blinds, you know, there's two strings, and then suddenly you lose one of them, and then you're down to one, and then next thing you know, you're rigging them, and it's just a disaster. Have you measured for blinds? That's the next step, once I feel better, really, for my recovering. So, listen, for a... It's a Dwyer family project. It's a Dwyer family project. Captain Bill Dwyer, Dr. Dwyer, and probably my mother-in-law, too. For a limited time, our listeners get $20 off at Blinds.com when you use promo code SUBBEACON. That's Blinds.com, promo code SUBBEACON for $20 off Fauxwood blinds, cellular shades, roller shades, and more. Blinds.com, promo code SUBBEACON. Rules and restrictions apply. JVL, what did you think of Dark Phoenix?
JVL00:29:19I kind of loved it.
Guest00:29:20Wow!
JVL00:29:22That's too strong. I kind of liked it. I thought it was pretty good. I thought it moved kind of from beat to beat, as we say. It's efficient.
Sonny00:29:33It's 110 minutes or so. It is a very efficient story.
JVL00:29:36That I appreciated. It is very competently told. There were a number of performances that I really liked in it. Really? Like Michael Fassbender. Oh, he's great. Every time Michael Fassbender was on screen, his Magneto is so good and deep and nuanced and I can't wait for my Magneto movie. Boy, do I want a Michael Fassbender Magneto movie.
Sonny00:29:59There's no way he's going to do Magneto in the new Disney movies.
JVL00:30:01I really, really liked Jessica Chastain's choices throughout the movie. She looks like Edgar Winter. Yes. No, no. She looks weird and albino-like and she has no eyebrows. And she holds herself totally still at all times with this like controlled rage. And she does. I thought this was actually quite clever. The Jessica Chastain alien feminism in this movie is an exact analog to the Bane Dark Night Rises populism. It is fake and it is meant to manipulate people in order to get. What you want. I thought that was sort of funny and a little bit subversive. I just really liked the choices for her. I loved all the combat. I thought the train sequence was really good. I love seeing how mutants fight differently.
Sonny00:31:03You know, the Nightcrawler doing the things he does. Storm doing the things she does. Can I make one critique here? I think that that action sequence here is inferior to. I mean, I can think of five or six different sequences that use the powers of the mutants better and demonstrated how they work better. Like, for instance, the opening fight in Days of Future Past, which is the only it's it's one of the like 10 times in a movie theater. I thought 3D actually added something to it because one of the one of the mutants had the power of being able to like open little wormholes. Yes. So you could actually see the depth of things. And like that, that was actually really well done. Or the Nightcrawler sequence. In X2.
JVL00:31:46In X2.
Sonny00:31:47Where he goes to the White House. Oh, the White House. That's an amazing scene. Which is just filmed so much better than the Nightcrawler sequence here, which is fine, but it's not it's not inventive or or or great or the either of the Quicksilver sequences in the last two films. I don't disagree with that at all. I again, nothing is like what what is done here is competent, but not interesting, which is which is basically how I feel about the whole movie.
JVL00:32:13Competent, but not great. Interesting enough to keep me. I was sort of vaguely rooting for Jean. I was interested in seeing how Charles because the what the movie is really about is whether or not Charles can be redeemed morally. I mean, Jean, the Jean thing is just the B plot is actually much more interesting than the A plot because we all know that Jean is going to be OK. Because this isn't the comics in which you you may remember Chris Claremont at the conclusion of the Phoenix saga in the comics. He would show up at conventions wearing a T-shirt that said, yes, she's really dead. No. She's not coming back because that's all anybody wanted to ask was, you know, is she really dead? And he was like, nope, she is dead and she's not coming back. I'm not ever going to bring her back. I thought it was. Look, so I was thinking about this in comparison to other superhero movies. I have me. I've seen recently other other movies. I've seen recently Godzilla, Captain Marvel, Shazam, Aquaman, X-Men, Apocalypse. This is superior by an order of magnitude to all of them. Is it a great movie? No, it's a B minus. C plus movie.
Sonny00:33:17But I would give it a B minus or a C plus. I enjoyed it. Sonny, Aquaman Spectacle is better. No, Shazam's storytelling is better. No. Oh, my God. Entertaining.
JVL00:33:28I was actually I sat there the whole time. What I really wanted to know is what you thought of it.
Vic00:33:33OK, well, I gave it a B. I thought it was I thought it was OK. Again, all the X-Men movies now blend in my mind. You know, I mean, I know there's the ones with Ian McKellen and then there's the ones with Michael Fassbender and there's the ones where obviously Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy. So but I get confused which is happening and what's going on. And so I'm watching this and I actually and I went with my son and I turned up. I said, does this do you think this connects to that? He's like, I don't think this connects to the next movie because
JVL00:34:01I said, you're now asking your 11 year old son. That's where I am.
Vic00:34:04If it's not happening, I can't see anything alone.
JVL00:34:07I need somebody. What did he say? I can't hear. What?
Sonny00:34:10So so here's what this is. This is this was the sub the sub headline of my review. And this is how I feel about these movies. Basically a tribute to the franchise that most closely approximated what it's like to read comic books. So right. So the the the original run of X-Men movies, right? We're like big and exciting and it was something kind of new a like blade was like the real, you know, forebear of all this stuff and Spider-Man did it bigger and better a couple years later, but like X-Men was proof of concept that you could take a popular comic book series that didn't necessarily have huge awareness in the general public and make a successful cinema. Universe out of it right and then you know there like the comic books you have this initial run of excitement and then there are creative changes right and the new guy comes in Brett Ratner comes in and everyone's like, oh, he ruined it. He ruined it and like it's not really that different really. Let's be honest, but whatever like people the fans get annoyed and then you have the spin-offs. You've got your Wolverines and your Deadpools and you got to keep track of kind of what's going on and all these different different worlds and then you have the big timeline reset, right? Then you've got the the reboots and the timeline gets messed up and you can't you don't actually have any idea what universe you're in at this point. Are we in the past? Is it a different past? Have they has everything kind of really collapsed on us and then and then it just gets kind of boring and stale and that's what these last two movies were for me Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix like you when you have when you have one theme and the X-Men movies have one theme which is acceptance, right? We need to accept. People and we need to accept our differences and this is this is what matters and when you have one didn't get that at all and when you have one because like what and when I thought
Vic00:35:55it was just about the guy with the claws, I said there's a lot of magic going on in this movie and when you have what that's
Sonny00:36:01not a theme and when you when you have one mode of when you have one mode of storytelling, which is epic action, right? It's just like action then things will eventually get stale and boring just like has happened in every serial superhero book. Mm-hmm like you get to a point where it's it you're reading the same things over and over again with slightly different characters or slightly different variations and who cares who cares anymore. That's when you stop reading books you age out of it or whatever and that's kind of how I feel with the X-Men series it like the the series itself has done a an extremely good job of approximating what it was like for the 10 years in my life when I read superhero comic books like age 12 to
JVL00:36:4022 or so 10 years.
Sonny00:36:42Well, I mean, I'm saying you well, I'm saying in quotes. Yeah. You know give or take a few special decades here or there but like it's it's but that but but that was like the time when I was actually like reading books every month, you know when I was like following series, I don't I don't do that anymore. I read some trade paperbacks here and there but you know, but that doesn't count but it's not the same thing once
JVL00:37:04or twice in an alley behind a bar every year.
Sonny00:37:06It's not the same doesn't matter. It's not the same thing as as buying Batman, you know, 593 594 595 every month. That's totally different. Okay. Anyway, do you I just remember yes boring please boring
Vic00:37:21just like comic books the acceptance thing. I think I remembered being at its most blatant with again. You'll have to remind me which X-Men movie this was with the the one with the wing. Thank you. Was that Ben Foster? Yes.
JVL00:37:37Oh my gosh. I wonder if he ever that was last stand, correct? Yes. That was less stand and then because his father was the senator. Yeah, where they were they where they used like three different beloved story arcs all packed into one 90-minute movie. Yeah, that movie is 90 minutes like you just throw it all in here. We may not make another X-Men.
Vic00:37:55He rescues he rescues his father.
Sonny00:37:57I think he flies in last stand is not a good movie exactly, but it's not as terrible as I remembered it being when I saw it.
Vic00:38:05I just remember JVL pointing out the posters on Connecticut Avenue. You're like, oh, there's like a poster of Angel.
JVL00:38:11Oh, yeah shirtless Angel nipping out. You know, the one the one thing which which really so the act, you know, what is okay. Yes, JVL. I was struck by two things in the just general acting of the movie. The first was Jennifer Lawrence who is practically tapping her toe. Yes, and staring at the clock whenever she's on screen like just hates being I can't wait to get the F off of this set. I have no idea. I've never seen a movie star act like that.
Vic00:38:48I'm just in my life.
Sonny00:38:50Once again, once again, I'm just going to throw out there Rebecca Romijn's mystique much better better in this movie.
Vic00:38:57I was confused. How come they don't call her mystique? They call her Raven's original name and Raven's
Sonny00:39:02her real name. I tried to I tried to do like Cyclops is Scott Summers.
JVL00:39:06Don't try to don't don't try to do that with Wolverine is Logan. Don't try to what? So to the to the extent that when they walk her into the school, she changes her appearance to being Jennifer Lawrence, which is wildly outside of the character. Is it not at all the way the character is? Why? Because clearly Jennifer Lawrence didn't want to sit in the makeup chair.
Sonny00:39:29This has been the this has been the case for the last two movies to the point to the point that when she actually does, if you look at compare compare the first movie's makeup to this movie's makeup, they do something differently and it looks like a sci-fi original version of Mystique compared to the the the first film.
JVL00:39:48I was shocked that she would give this sort of performance. Secondly, I so you guys are Game of Thrones people. Yeah. Sophie Turner. Is she?
Vic00:39:59Yeah, she's great. I love her. She was really good. She was really good.
JVL00:40:02Or is it just the problem when she's up with James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain and Michael Fassbender, who all really great actors. Yeah. She I thought she was much better in this movie than she was in Apocalypse. I thought she was. I thought she was. I thought she was terrible in Apocalypse. I agree.
Sonny00:40:17She's like dead eyed and awful. But I thought she was better. I thought she was better.
JVL00:40:21She doesn't have a lot to do here. I mean, a lot of it is she's got to like sit there and stare and look conflicted.
Sonny00:40:25And I have powers in me and I just. Well, there's the ridiculous scene with her and Magneto where they're just both like they've got their arms out and they're like, I'm going to do this more. You're going to.
JVL00:40:36It's a lot of hard acting. It's terrible. You know what, though? The problem is Famke Janssen, who was a non canon Jean Grey. So the idea of Jean Grey is that she's a Jean Grey is like a 32 year old woman in the very first X-Men movie. That was a really weird choice. She was so good. Yeah. So good. Nobody has ever been able to fill her her shoes in the series. I don't think.
Sonny00:41:00No.
JVL00:41:01No, I think that's right. Man, I love the Famke Janssen Jean Grey like you wouldn't believe. I do. And that is. And I found it very touching in Last Stand when when when Logan has to kill her. Like that's actually the one moment of genuine emotion that lands in that movie. Yeah.
Vic00:41:15So this takes place in 1992. Yes. And then the next X-Men movies in 2000. X-Men, per se, the one that came out in 2000 when they look for they look for Wolverine Logan. Right. But there's obviously no connection between going from the last scene, which is them playing chess in Paris. Professor X. Well, in 2000, Professor X is 72 years old. Yes. Yeah. So they can't. They don't want to connect that at all. They've.
Sonny00:41:40I mean, it's it's a. Well, this is this is the problem with they did a timeline reset and now nothing from basically nothing from before Days of Future Past is canon. It's all new.
JVL00:41:51Is it a timeline reset or did they just decide to be kind of like their comic books, which is like, hey, you know what? We're going to tell a new story, which is fine. Well, the whole point. The whole point of the whole point locked into continuity is always a mistake.
Sonny00:42:04Agreed. But the whole point of Days of Future Past, which, again, is a direct direct, you know, predecessor to this was to reset that that whole timeline. It was basically to get rid of X-Men The Last Stand. Essentially, that was like the whole point. Did you love the Dazzler cameo? I did. I thought that was I thought that was fantastic, wasn't it? Yeah.
Vic00:42:22Which one was he?
JVL00:42:28Victorino.
Vic00:42:29That was my X-Men was not my thing. So what do we rank the X-Men?
Sonny00:42:34Oh, I don't have an X-Men ranking. Would you like to rank?
JVL00:42:37I always like Cyclops.
Sonny00:42:39He's the worst. The worst X-Men.
JVL00:42:41Well, that's interesting. I was going to rank the movie like Wolverine, but I like the idea of ranking the X-Men themselves. Would you care to rank the X-Men themselves?
Vic00:42:51Did you own JVL? Did you own? There was a moment where back when we were kids, X-Men action figures, they were they were larger. They were, you know, like rubber cast. So they're not they don't have Kung Fu grips or anything. But the Wolverine, you could attach the claws to his wrist. Oh, that's that's that's pretty cheap. I know. But that was that was it. I did. I can't remember. Oh, I had Ken. But that King is unrelated.
Sonny00:43:18That's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Vic00:43:19Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. He was a crang. He was from the fifth dimension. And that was. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Something like that.
JVL00:43:27You know, I didn't start reading X-Men until I did not read them as a kid. I was I was not into them. I found them sort of boring and everything. The other problem is when we were kids, all the there were like 15 X-Men books and all of them were really about Wolverine. Yes. It was all about Wolverine. Everybody loved Wolverine. Wolverine became crazy popular. So they just made everything about him. And I didn't really get the Wolverine thing back then. I didn't like the iterations. I didn't really fall for the X-Men until Joss Whedon's Astonishing X-Men series, which is still one of the 10 great comic book like series ever. There's 26 of them. It's actually a pretty small story. It mostly is centered around Kitty Pride. And like, there's no Magneto. There's no Professor X. It's the Joss Whedon series was about the teenage girl.
Sonny00:44:23Pretty shocked by that. Wow.
Vic00:44:25It's really, it's really, was that Anna Paquin?
Sonny00:44:30No, no, no.
Vic00:44:31Anna Paquin was rogue.
Sonny00:44:32Oh, right. No, it was. What's her name? Juno. Ellen Page. Yes. Kitty Pride.
JVL00:44:38If you if you are if you are an X-Men person out there and you have not done Astonishing X-Men,
Sonny00:44:44just hop on Amazon and pick up the trip.
JVL00:44:45And you're so good.
Sonny00:44:47I have to say, I was never into I was never into X-Men comic books, but I did actually really like the X-Men animated series. It was I was like 10 when it came out. And I was like, this is this is really this is really great. And what was that? Some of the books. What channel was that? It was a box.
JVL00:45:02Huh. So we're not. So you don't want to rank the X-Men themselves.
Vic00:45:06No, go for it. No, no, no. But the movie. Give us a ranking JVL.
JVL00:45:09Number eight, Apocalypse. Number seven, Origins Wolverine. Number six, Last Stand. Number five, The Original X-Men. Number four, Dark Phoenix. Number three, X2. Number two, Days of Future Past. Number one, First Class. You agree, right, Sonny?
Sonny00:45:27Yeah, that's close. I mean, we're not counting like Logan. I'm not counting Logan. We're not counting any of the Wolverine or the Deadpool.
JVL00:45:34Only X-Men Wolverine. Only X-Men Origins would I count in this. Why would you count that?
Sonny00:45:38It's not really an X-Men movie.
JVL00:45:40It's just a Wolverine movie. No, it's full of full of other X-Men. Like Emma Frost. Yeah, there's tons of and I don't count the Deadpools because they're like R-rated and totally out of continuity. I'm only counting the ones that are really about the X-Men.
Sonny00:45:54Yeah. Do you do you disagree with any of it? I don't remember what you said. I would put Dark Phoenix lower than that, probably.
JVL00:46:02What?
Sonny00:46:02What I would say I would say is so if I off the top of my head, because, again, we weren't asked to do this beforehand.
JVL00:46:07I just assume that we all know we're going to rank.
Sonny00:46:10I would go. First Class X to Days of Future Past. The original X-Men. Then Dark Phoenix. Yeah. Last stand, probably before Dark Phoenix, frankly, then Dark Phoenix, then Apocalypse. Did I get that? Is that all of them? Yeah. I don't think I don't think again, if you're not doing the Wolverines, there's no reason to include X-Men Origins Wolverine.
JVL00:46:39All right. So let me let me play this game then. I want you to give me greater sign, lesser sign. OK. James McAvoy, Patrick Stewart. Lesser. I love Patrick Stewart. Which which Professor X do you prefer?
Sonny00:46:53I probably prefer the James McAvoy version. Ian McKellen, Michael
JVL00:47:00Fassbender, Magneto.
Vic00:47:02Yeah.
JVL00:47:03Yeah. Fassbender.
Vic00:47:04Real close. It's close. It's close. The last thing I see with the last thing I saw with Ian McKellen is Magneto is whether or not he had the power to move a chess piece. Is that correct? Yeah. OK.
Sonny00:47:16I want I want to I want and he's good. I great what I wanted after first class was a a Eric Lensher Nazi hunter movie. Yes. Which would just just like the one scene in first class where he like goes to South America and starts murdering Nazis. I would have I would have watched two hours of that easily. Here's my money.
JVL00:47:36You can even do it. You need to have Quentin Tarantino direct it. Sure. Quentin Tarantino style X-Men movie where it's all about him running around through Brazil hunting Nazis. Sure. Sign that's great.
Vic00:47:49Yeah. All right. Oh, how about this one? Alan Cumming versus the other dude.
Sonny00:47:56I got to say, I think I actually like the other dude.
Vic00:47:58No, no, I did not like
JVL00:48:01I did.
Vic00:48:01You don't like Alan Cumming? He kind of played him like a vampire. I thought he kind of played him like a vampire. Yeah. Well, I think I think
Sonny00:48:10Alan Cumming's Nightcrawler is a little closer to the canon Nightcrawler. He's monkish and, you know, very sweet, thoughtful and very sweet. Yeah. But I like kind of I actually kind of like the the, you know, the scared teen. Yeah.
Vic00:48:25Well, I mean, they have to be younger. Where was Colossus?
Sonny00:48:29Well, he's in the Deadpool movies.
Vic00:48:30He is in Deadpool. OK, that's right. Very confusing. Do we have any other Dark Phoenix thoughts? X-Men thoughts? Nothing.
JVL00:48:37JVL. I will be very interested to see what Disney does here because they're clearly going to definitely phase three will be X-Men versus Avengers.
Sonny00:48:47I mean, I don't know if they can do that right
JVL00:48:50away, though, right? They build to they're going to build sure.
Sonny00:48:53The next giant Infinity Gauntlet. Yeah. Payoff will be X-Men versus Avengers. Kevin, I think Kevin Feige has said that they are not they don't have any X-Men movies planned yet. So the little teaser would be great. It's going to was there
JVL00:49:08was there a stinger? I was asked, was there a stinger, Sonny? I didn't stay through that.
Sonny00:49:13I did not.
JVL00:49:13I don't think there was.
Vic00:49:14I don't think there was. I stayed to the end and they're in a hospital room and there's an old man like an intensive care. But all of a sudden you hear Patrick Stewart's voice coming through the old man that actually happened at the end of last. Oh, I got confused again. Sorry. Wrong stinger. OK. Again, I gave it a B. You give everything a B. I kind of do unless it's really great.
JVL00:49:37Except for Widows.
Vic00:49:38Widows. That's enough. I didn't I didn't find it compelling. The idea of the aliens. You know, I'm not it's not like I'm losing sleep. Alien mutant invasion. But I do worry about cybercrime and so should you. JVL.
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Sonny00:51:24powers of the aliens in this movie?
Vic00:51:26What weren't their powers?
JVL00:51:29I think their only powers were shape-shifting and semi-Wolverine type regeneration and super strength, but not total Wolverine because they could be blown apart by kinetic weapons or have their heads chopped off and stuff.
Sonny00:51:44Yeah. What was the thing where she like moved her hand? Yes, and killed her husband. The guy's stomach? Yeah, and killed him.
JVL00:51:52Oh, that was kind of cool, wasn't it?
Sonny00:51:53What was it? Nonsense. You know, it's that thing the aliens do. You know, for someone who gets real worked up about in-universe things making sense, nothing in this movie made sense. Nothing?
JVL00:52:04What were Jean Grey's powers? Why was she? Photon blast. Photon blast. Her powers were all the
Vic00:52:11psycho-Kinetic-y Charles.
JVL00:52:13I'm sorry. When it's like, the last time Vic gave an one-hour-and-forty-minute movie to me, all you need to know is that this was one-hour-and-forty-minute. For you, that is always an A-minus.
Vic00:52:23An hour-forty-three. It felt longer. She turned into a bird in the end. That's all I saw her. I saw Jean Grey in the sky. Okay, corrections, additions, shout-outs, anything else? No? We're good?
Guest00:52:32Jean Grey in the sky.
Vic00:52:33That's right. Okay, that's all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us at Victorino Matus at Sonny Bunch. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes or Google Play. Just type in Sub-Beacon at a podcast. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time.
JVL00:52:59You got anything? I just have one. I got one small thing. Okay, me too. Mine is tiny, though. So, do you want to go second?
Vic00:53:05Yeah, sure.
JVL00:53:06So, my wife is away. The girls are away. It's just me and the two boys. And so, like, no rules. No rules. Like, you can't even imagine. And, like, you know, today, G-Money comes down and he goes, I farted.
Sonny00:53:24My butt killed the dinosaurs. I was like, what's happening here?
JVL00:53:29As long as it's just a fart. Among the man things we've done is I introduced Flash to a little bit of professional wrestling.
Vic00:53:35Oh.
JVL00:53:36And this joke will kill with the seven people who are, like, who understand professional wrestling and listening. I listen to the show pretty frequently. But who is he automatically drawn to? John Cena. The Duke of the WWE. Yeah.
Vic00:53:56He's very popular in the schools. The kids say it all the time. And they go, John Cena. And then they do this whole flexing thing.
JVL00:54:01Yeah, you can't see me.
Sonny00:54:03I don't know what that means, but you can't see me.
JVL00:54:06You know why? Because he wrestles the right way and he always wins.
Sonny00:54:09He wrestles the right way.
JVL00:54:11That's right. Vic, what do you got?
Vic00:54:12He's got a good attitude. I got an email from our friend and listener, Adam White. Adam! And he was saying, and he teaches, he's a professor, a law school professor, and he said after class one of the students came up to him and said to him, so what's it like knowing those guys from the Sub-Beacon?
Sonny00:54:34Did he say, it's fine?
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