#62. Michael Jordan, The Batman, and Cassette Tapes!
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The main event is the first two episodes of ESPN's Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance, and it splits the room: JVL says he "kind of hated" them, complaining that this smiling, authorized Jordan is a PR construction and that the real Jordan is the score-settling man from the Hall of Fame speech, a "con man" despised by his peers whose gift was not freakish athleticism but a total will to dominance. Sonny agrees the tone felt massaged — even Jordan's account of racism at his North Carolina school struck him as something Jordan would say to earn credit with ESPN's audience rather than something Jordan would actually say — while Vic, unbothered, declares flatly, "I loved the documentary. I thought it was great. Michael Jordan is awesome," and admits he was triggered all over again by the 1982 Georgetown–North Carolina final. The real fight is over Scottie Pippen's eight-year, $19 million contract: Sonny is "100% team Jerry Reinsdorf" on the grounds that if you sign a contract, that's the contract, and notes Magic Johnson's 25-year, $25 million extension was worse; JVL calls it an abuse of capital against a man supporting twelve siblings, a quadriplegic brother and a bedridden father, and concludes, "Fuck you, rich white guy." They also spar over whether Jordan wins six titles without Pippen (Sonny: absolutely not; JVL: any decent Pippen substitute would do, name-checking Marcus Camby) and swap notes on how old everyone looks now, with Pat Riley resembling Tom Cruise in Collateral and Stacey King's immortal line about the night he and Mike combined for 70. The other centerpiece is Nick Pizzolatto's Instagram manifesto on Batman, which Sonny reads aloud in full and largely endorses — Batman as human saint who could defeat God given time to prepare — while JVL says almost every word is wrong, since Batman's enemy is injustice, not death, and Frank Miller's explanation is the right one: he doesn't kill because he knows he's a monster who couldn't stop. Opening banter covers Vic's Philips Norelco self-haircut, his growing reputation as a herald of celebrity death (Brian Dennehy this time), JVL's Guitar Hero sessions with Flash and the Living Colour cassette he bought at Tower Records on South Street, and Sonny's confession that his tech-snob father forbade him from buying tapes, so he taped songs off the radio instead.
From the show notes
#cdata-section -------------- On this latest episode sponsored by DoorDash, we discuss the new Michael Jordan documentary The Last Dance ....
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00No matter what we did, it seemed like it was a story. Scotty was being selfish. When the trust is broken, it's sort of shocking. I've never hated Scotty. Six championships in eight years. We were the greatest team ever.
?00:00:11What time is it?
Guest00:00:12I'm gonna ridicule you until you get on the same level with me.
Vic00:00:14You're not making a free run of me.
Guest00:00:16It was his team. My mentality was to go out and win at any cost.
Vic00:00:27Hello, and welcome to another edition of the Sub-Beacon, sponsored by DoorDash. I'm Victor Matus, along with Sonny Bunch and Jonathan V. Last. Just a reminder, the Sub-Beacon is available on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. Look in our podcast and search for Sub-Beacon. You'll easily find us. Please subscribe, tell your friends, and leave a review. Gentlemen, how are we? JVL, what's going on?
JVL00:00:49Everything is great. Victorino? Yes. How are you, buddy?
Vic00:00:53I'm doing fine. You doing okay? I'm doing fine. As you can tell, I got... I got my... I used my Philips Norelco.
JVL00:01:00It looks great.
Vic00:01:01Thank you. I shaved the side... And Kate said, if you need any help, I can, you know, do the back part. And I said, great. And she goes, anytime. I said, great. So I was downstairs, outside. Yes, Sonny, I was outside. I let my hair just scatter to the four winds. And then...
JVL00:01:16Now somebody can frame you for murder by using DNA trace evidence where they can gather up...
Vic00:01:21That's right. Those little... They're like pine needles. Isn't that what happened in Gattaca?
?00:01:27Well...
Vic00:01:27Yes, no. He left the hair on the bed.
Sonny00:01:29One of the characters gathered some DNA evidence so he could pretend to be somebody else. Oh, okay.
Vic00:01:35It was. But also, he had to make sure there was no hair left on the bed. He was with... Was it Uma Thurman?
Sonny00:01:41I don't know. I hate that movie. I think that movie sucks.
Vic00:01:43I liked it. I thought it was really interesting. Anyway...
Sonny00:01:45Now, lots of people really like that movie. Yeah. It looks like a movie that costs $12 to make because that's what it costs to make. And I've always hated it. I've always thought it looked cheap and bad.
Vic00:01:55You didn't like Gore Vidal?
?00:01:57No.
Vic00:01:58He was great at that. So, then she came down, but she's like, I got a Zoom conference in like five minutes, so I'll be really quick. And then she just went like this really fast. Boom, boom, boom, boom. And that was the end of that. But I love this Philips Norelco 7000 series, I think it's called. And it has all different kinds of clips. There's five millimeter, six, seven, three. And then there was one that said body. Oh. Yeah. So, I'm basically... I'm smooth like a dolphin now. Just like a dolphin. I'm just going to put it out there.
JVL00:02:29Andre Agassi style? Yeah. Do you remember when he went through the phase when he went totally hairless?
?00:02:36Oh.
JVL00:02:36Below the eyebrows. Well, of course he did. Below the eyebrows.
Vic00:02:38Below the eyebrows, of course. No, no. It was during his Barbra Streisand period. Oh, my gosh. I had no idea that that was a hair piece. That's the other thing that was so wild about that story about Andre Agassi.
JVL00:02:48What's funny is because he's Armenian, the guy's insanely hairy everywhere else. Except... Just not the head. That's right. Not the head.
Sonny00:02:55Okay.
JVL00:02:56So, that's it.
Sonny00:02:56It's around monkeys. It's a monkey's paw sort of thing.
Vic00:02:58It is. It is. But we're going to... This is all sort of impromptu because you're throwing it to me, but I might as well just do my bit and then I'll go over to you guys. So, I'm doing fine now that you asked, JVL, except I do feel bad. Brian Dennehy died. Yeah, you killed him. So, you know, when I heard the news...
Sonny00:03:21Add another victim to the pile.
Vic00:03:22JVL, you mentioned you were like... Oh, no. It was your wife who said, oh... You know, if he died, then I must have mentioned it, the whole thing. And I said, oh, that's crazy. What would I mention him? What do we do? Discuss the movie FX2 or whatever? Cocoon? And so, you know, the Bobby Knight movie. So, I started thinking about it. I said, did I mention him maybe in that Rambo episode we did on Rambo Last Blood? And so, I went back and I found it. And I'm going to play it to you right now, the bit. Okay, here it is. Are you ready? Here it is.
Sonny00:03:56I think First Blood is very good. We discussed this a little bit last week. I think First Blood is very good and everything else after that is like a pretty steep decline.
JVL00:04:05Literally, you just said his name. Brian Dennehy.
Sonny00:04:08Not even a...
JVL00:04:09I now condemn you to death.
Vic00:04:11You know, it was really quite disturbing the way it sounded.
JVL00:04:14Brian Dennehy, you now have six months.
Vic00:04:16You know, it was really weird.
Sonny00:04:18If we had real fans, if the Sub-Beacon had real fans, we get some fan art of like Vic as the emissary from Persia in 300. You remember in 300 when the Persian emissary rolls up and he's got the skulls on the chain that he shows to Leonidas? We would just have the heads of celebrities on a Vic Matus wielded chain.
Vic00:04:45Gary Fisher, Neil Peart. Here's the question. Yes. I should have said David Caruso, so I'm sorry, everybody.
JVL00:04:52Vic, are you killing these people yourselves? What? What did you say? You said them now.
Vic00:04:57Yeah. Am I what?
JVL00:05:00Victorino, are you killing these people yourselves or are you like the silver server, merely a herald for death? That's right. That's it. I'm more silver server. You yourself. No, no, no. I'm not like William. You've just been sent by Galactus in front of him. You don't want Brian Dennehy dead.
Vic00:05:15No. It's just your mission in life. Well, Vic is a medium. I love Brian Dennehy.
Sonny00:05:19Is this what you're suggesting? He's a medium. The death flows through him.
Vic00:05:23It flows through me. One of our listeners... I actually put together some really insane art where I was like the Grim Reaper with my head on it. I don't know if you saw that. It was great and terrifying at the same time, so thank you. But that's all that is going on with me. Otherwise, everything is fine. You know, I'm working out and running every other day. I did...
JVL00:05:48Do your favorite. Rip that shirt off. I want to see what you got going on.
Vic00:05:50What is this? A Calvin Klein commercial? Three and a half miles. I did three and a half miles.
JVL00:05:54You've got a really nice body. Do you work out?
Vic00:05:56Okay, JVL. Enough about me.
JVL00:05:59Listen, listen. I don't want you to do anything you're not comfortable with. Just the top button. Just to see how it feels.
Vic00:06:05I need the wood paneling. Remember that? You remember those things? And the guy was like a director clearly sitting on a couch.
JVL00:06:12Do you like doing woodwork?
Vic00:06:14Right, right. He sounded like a total perv. And the models I think were probably like 16, 17. It was insane.
JVL00:06:19And they're all boys. They're all 17-year-old boys. And that. And that. Do you ever work with hardwoods?
Vic00:06:25This is before... This is before Sonny's time, isn't it? I have literally no idea what you guys are talking about. Can you believe they ran that commercial? This was a... If you think about it now, it's like, go ahead. Take your shirt off.
JVL00:06:33Oh, that's great. A series of Outra... Outra... Calvin Klein... Outra... Television ads. Outra... Calvin Klein television ads. The theme of which was basically perverted fashion photographer getting young boys to strip down to their underwear. But that was the idea. I mean, this was a... This was a very transgressive...
Vic00:06:59And I think they managed to get away with, like... Does YouTube have them? They aired it, like, two or three times. And then even they had to pull the plug at the time. It was like, this is too much.
JVL00:07:07Was Mark Wahlberg in those ads? No. No, no, no. This is when Vic and I were, like, 12 or something.
Vic00:07:13No, we were older, but... Were we? Oh, yeah, but... Do these things exist when you were kids?
Sonny00:07:18So it was, like, 1974? No. Yeah, this has got to... I think it was late 80s.
JVL00:07:26So I will tell you what's up with me, Victorino. I have discovered a rare delicacy. Playing Guitar Hero with your kid. Because Flash and I... So we are borrowing... We don't do a lot of video games in our household. And we are borrowing my brother-in-law's Wii system. Because only decade-old video game systems in my house. We never obviously do something up-to-date. And the only one of the games I think we've bothered playing is Guitar Hero. And we've been doing Legends of Rock, which is filled with great... I mean, both 70s rock, like Iron Maiden and Alice Cooper and Kiss. But also 90s stuff, like Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam.
Sonny00:08:17I have this game. I have this game somewhere in my house.
JVL00:08:20Flash and I jumping around in the basement, rocking out to... To this stuff, like with total abandon, like doing the leg kicks and the machine gun style. Oh, it's awesome.
Vic00:08:32Because I'm older than all of you, but, you know, spiritually I'm older by decades than all of you. Is it basically like Guitar Heroes, like Simon says, you just have to memorize what they're doing. You just have to follow it quickly. You're watching the pattern in order to play the right chords.
Sonny00:08:47Yeah, kind of. You're not like strumming chords. You're pressing buttons. No, no, no, no, no. So it's like you press them in the right order. And then there's like a whammy.
JVL00:08:55But you've got a wah-wah pedal on it. Oh, man. And you can just go hog wild. Good to know. A little bit of Living Color. You know what's funny, though? So we're playing Cult of Personality, the Living Color.
Vic00:09:09People love that as well as the video, if you remember the video.
JVL00:09:13So we're sitting and we're playing this and he's like, God, Dad, this song is so rock and roll. I said, you know what this song was? I said, this is the first cassette tape. That I bought for myself.
Vic00:09:27Oh, wow.
JVL00:09:27My buddy Chris Worshoven and I were in Philadelphia. We went to the Tower Records on South Street and I bought myself my very first rock and roll cassette tape. Tower Records was a big deal. And he flash looked at me. He's like, you're what?
Guest00:09:46Yeah.
JVL00:09:47Never mind. It's a thing we used before there were iPods. Yeah. It's like, I what? I like phones. Before we had phones. It's a thing we don't know. Just play your guitar.
Guest00:09:56That's right.
JVL00:09:57So it is a little bit hurtful that he has relegated me to being the bassist. He wants to play lead guitar on everything.
Vic00:10:05It is the most important part of any band because it lays the foundational structure and it's so unsung. That's what we tell the bassist all the time. That's what we tell the bassist. Yeah.
Sonny00:10:14That's what you have to tell the bassist. Yeah.
Vic00:10:16But, you know, Flash is like.
Sonny00:10:17That's why the bassist is always like a hot chick in the background. It's like, yeah, you just do it.
JVL00:10:22Flash goes, this rage against the machine stuff is awful. It's awesome. I was like, yeah, I know. And they're really ahead of their time because they're all commies. And he's like, what?
Vic00:10:30I was like, this is the proto Sanders movement.
JVL00:10:33Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, totally. It's all the rage against the machine guys.
Vic00:10:35I'd say the bass is probably the easiest. Oh, okay. Sonny's gone. It was great seeing you. Take care, Sonny. We'll show you pictures.
Sonny00:10:43No, I just, I needed the move so I could get a coaster to put my drink on so you don't hear a thunk every time I put it down on me. What are you drinking, Sonny? It's an old fashioned. Oh. Very nice.
Vic00:10:56Even with the orange peel so that you don't do the, you don't, you don't do the maraschino.
Sonny00:10:59I do, I do an orange peel and a lemon peel, but I don't have any cherries. I don't actually like cherries in my old fashioned. Sometimes I'll do the cherry on the Manhattan.
Vic00:11:08And I, and I see that your, or you have what you call a rustic slice because it's a wide slice. It's not a twist.
Sonny00:11:14It's not a twist.
Vic00:11:15Definitely not a twist. You need it. You need a nice rustic slice for a nice drink like that. I'm sorry.
Sonny00:11:19Can we just talk about music technology for like one minute? Because I, I never, I never actually. Bought a cassette tape.
JVL00:11:28So you never made a mixtape for the girl you liked your sophomore year?
Sonny00:11:31No, no, I definitely never did that. Um, I, I never bought a cassette tape, but I had a bunch of blank cassettes and I would record songs off of the radio. Oh, right. So I definitely, I did that. I did that a ton, but I, uh, but I never, I never had the actual, I never bought the cassette tapes because my, my dad was a total like tech snob. And he was like, don't buy cassettes just buy CDs. And I was like, dad, I don't have a. CD player. It's fine. You'll have one in a couple of years.
JVL00:11:57I was like, all right. He had you buying discs before you had a CD player in the house.
Sonny00:12:04No, I just bought nothing. I just bought nothing. And, uh, and I, I recorded songs off of the radio.
Vic00:12:10I had, uh, Motley Crue's theater of pain on cassette and also, uh, the beastie boys licensed to ill, uh, and then, but my two favorite, there's a beastie boys track on this legends of rock game.
JVL00:12:24It's awesome. Oh, really? With sabotage.
Vic00:12:26Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure, sure, sure.
JVL00:12:28Uh, and I also had Belinda Carlisle solo career free or post when she, uh, took to the pages of playboy. Do you remember this? Yeah. It was 10 years too late. That's right. That's right.
Vic00:12:42Oh, this was the one where this is the one with, uh, heaven is a place on earth, but the even better circle in the sand really go back to that. That's an underrated. And she had a couple of songs that turned out to be covers. I'm like, what? I thought she wrote all her stuff.
JVL00:12:54I was
Sonny00:12:54really disappointed.
Vic00:12:55Was she Australian? No, not.
JVL00:12:58No, that's Kylie Minogue.
Sonny00:12:59I'm thinking.
Vic00:12:59I'm sorry. Great too. She's great too. Okay. Uh, well, Tino, how are you? Sunny?
Sonny00:13:05Uh, I'm fine. How is life in Texas? You're just loving it.
JVL00:13:10It's great. Did you go to the big protest in Austin?
Sonny00:13:12Life in Texas? No. Was there a protest in Austin? Huge protest in Austin.
JVL00:13:16Uh, I, I've been fascinated with this all day long. This is going to stray a little bit close to politics, but I think we can stay away from the political angle of it. Uh, so there's a protest in Austin. By a bunch of patriots who really are just sick and tired of big government trying to keep people in their homes and whatnot. And they're ready to, they want to fire Fauci. And anyway, so Alex is all organized by Infowars and Alex Jones shows up to this thing. And, uh, I believe it is Jones who announced through a bullhorn at this protest, uh, that there is now been confirmation that the virus is a biological weapon that had been unleashed on America by the Chinese. And as he says this, the protesters let up a cheer.
Vic00:13:56Oh, well, they were cheering the confirmation that this is what happens.
JVL00:14:00Because that's what they mean. Because that makes it better?
Sonny00:14:02Yeah, absolutely. Yes, absolutely. 100%. If this, if this is a biological weapon that the Chinese unleashed upon us, that gives us an enemy that we can attack. Right now, we're just all, we're all just attacking ourselves. We're stuck at home. We need to be unified against the Chinese threat. Frankly, Alex Jones is making a lot of sense here.
Vic00:14:19What, you know, I knew it wasn't just the weapon.
JVL00:14:20We have to then like go starting a war with the Chinese. I mean, cause. If they in fact have attacked us biologically, don't we, on top of all of this stuff, also have to go to war with a country that has a billion people? That's fine. That's fine. Do we have, do we have the, the, the time and money to do that right now?
Sonny00:14:37JVL, haven't you seen Red Dawn? Don't you remember the great line in Red Dawn? I thought there were a billion screaming Chinamen. There were. There were.
JVL00:14:48Says the great powers booth. Says the great powers booth.
Vic00:14:51F-15 fighter pilot powers booth.
JVL00:14:53Curly Bill. Yeah, so, uh, you didn't go to the, to the Alex Jones protest.
Sonny00:14:58No, sadly, I missed that. Uh, no, I'm, I'm excited to open things back up again. I, I think that Georgia's on the right track here with their theaters and their barbers and their salons opening back up. You know, we're going to be fine. It's the, it's the experiments, the, the, the, the, the democracy experiments, state by state. We'll, uh, we'll get through this.
Vic00:15:17Right before, right before the shutdown in Virginia, I went to the barber and, uh, Habib was wearing the mask and gloves. And they sprayed the Lysol, the chair. I mean, it was, it was fine.
Sonny00:15:27Yeah. It was fine. You're not going to get it. You're not going to get it. He's wearing a mask. You'll be fine.
Vic00:15:30I'm looking around. I feel like Richard Dreyfuss at the end of Close Encounters when they say, oh, there's nerve gas. Everybody wear a gas mask. And I'm looking around at all the people wearing the mask and I feel like, oh my God, it's fine. You're fine. I can guarantee you we're all fine. That's how I felt about it. I just wanted to, ooh, that got kind of political there. Sorry. I rarely get into that. But I looked at that and I see them wearing the masks inside their car. And I'm pretty sure they go to sleep wearing the mask. I'm done. I'm done. I'm done with this. I'm done with this. It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Open it back up. They're coming in through the vents.
JVL00:16:00All right. God, natural selection is the best, isn't it? I know. JVL's convinced.
Sonny00:16:06Two million. At least. I mean, nobody in Dallas has it, is the funny thing. Like, just as a percentage of the population, like, virtually nobody has it. So we're not like New York. We're not like those dirty New Yorkers jammed into their cattle cars going to work.
Vic00:16:23It's the subways.
Sonny00:16:24Jammed into their disgusting disease factories as they shuttle from their home that's six feet wide by 12 feet long to their office that's a cubicle and a closet as they cough on each other in the subway to get there.
Vic00:16:38I love how we didn't expect to get into this and then now we're getting right into it. Okay. There's nothing else. This is our life now. But you've had it. You've had it. When they decide that they're going to. They're going to reopen the theater. Sonny, are you going to go to the theater?
Sonny00:16:52100%. Absolutely. I'm not going to be cowed by this disease into giving up the things that I love. Like movies.
Vic00:17:00JVL, are you still holding the line that there won't be theaters to come back to?
JVL00:17:06For all intents and purposes, most Americans have seen their final movie in a theater. Some chains may live to reopen and will then be pushed into bankruptcy. Shortly after, when it turns out that nobody will go. This isn't going to... You know, I actually feel very lucky because the final movie I saw in the theaters... Was The Hunt? Inception. Inception! Yes, that's right. Because I took myself out as a special treat to the Inception anniversary Dolby Atmos screening. And that's a heck of a way to go out. But, yeah, no. This whole thing is... People don't...
Sonny00:17:47I'm in the middle of writing a long piece about this. When Tenet comes out and is playing on IMAX and you go to the website... Because you're curious. You're curious. And you go to the Fandango and you look at the thing and Tenet is playing on IMAX in the middle of July at like a 2 p.m. showing. There were three other people in the theater. Are you going to go see it?
JVL00:18:10I would love to be able to go see it, but that theater won't exist. That theater's not going to be open for business. The Udvar-Hazy might be, but the Udvar-Hazy won't. It may itself not be open because things like museums will be the last things to get open along with major sports. I'm telling you, you guys are way... Have you read the Nick Eberstadt piece on this that just came out over the weekend? No, I saw it in your newsletter. I have not read it yet. Nick is even further out on the ledge than I am. It's going to be great. It's going to be great.
Vic00:18:43No, who did I read? George Gilder in the journal. He's on the other side. I read Alex Jones. Get over it.
Sonny00:18:50I read Alex Jones and he said that this is a Chinese weapon and to defeat the weapon, we have to bomb the Chinese.
JVL00:18:57I do wonder if it's a bioweapon that makes it more serious, right? Not less serious. No.
Sonny00:19:06Well, it depends on what you mean by serious because if it's a bioweapon...
JVL00:19:11It means they've engineered it to be really bad.
Sonny00:19:12Right. Well, which is about what we've seen, right? This is like, in theory, people can catch it again, right? Like that.
JVL00:19:20Mm-hmm.
Sonny00:19:21So if it is a bioweapon, that just means we have to go to war with China now before everyone gets too sick to fight.
JVL00:19:28That could be one of the interpretations. That's true.
Vic00:19:31Now, normally we get to some sort of a box office discussion, but of course there is no... Is there ever going to be a box office? Are we going to have that happen again? Box office thoughts. No.
JVL00:19:42No, we got to come up with a new segment in this place. Oh, my gosh.
Vic00:19:45In its place. VOD chart. I'm at a VOD. Right, because I'm really...
JVL00:19:48I'm at a loss. I'm at a loss there. Okay. All right. We could do streaming minutes. Yes, streaming.
Vic00:19:54Do you have any streaming thoughts?
Sonny00:19:56I've been watching lots of things on streaming. Actually, I have a giant stack of Blu-rays in my garage that my wife keeps getting angrier and angrier about. She's sitting right over there right now. She's shaking her head. And it's getting... Beth, come say hi. Come say hi, Beth. It's getting... She can't hear you. You're talking... Well, you could tell her. The guy, say hi. The stack is getting bigger and bigger. But I don't have time to watch anything, because I don't have time anymore. And who has time... Who has time? ...to sit down and watch a two-hour movie? No, no, no.
Vic00:20:26This is totally true. I'm busier than ever in a weird, weird way. You don't think it, but of course, it's the full day.
JVL00:20:31What do you mean, weird way? Victorino, you're a journalist. I had more of a schedule. You work in news. Yes, yes, yes. This is, in fact, the largest news event of our lifetimes. That's right.
Sonny00:20:40That's right. So, of course, we're busier than ever.
Vic00:20:42And working home. It's just weird. But, you know, when I go to... If you go to Amazon or Netflix, I'm convinced there's a conspiracy that the computers are listening to me. So every time I say, oh, yeah, I think I just saw that movie on Netflix. I'd like to see that. And suddenly, it's no longer there. That keeps on happening to me a lot.
JVL00:21:04Oh, I thought you were going to go the other way with this, where you're talking about it with somebody, and then when you open up Amazon, it's right there. It shows up.
Vic00:21:11Oh, it's there, but you've got to pay for it. You know what I mean? It's all there. You've got to pay. But they usually have these. They have the free selections, and then they just rotate them in and out. I'm like, it was just there.
Sonny00:21:21JVL, I have a question. How excited were you to see that Netflix is now more valuable than Disney? Super duper excited. Did you go and liquidate all of your other stock to buy nothing but Netflix stock?
JVL00:21:38Well, I did that months ago, because I think Netflix is really the place to put all your money. It's better than gold bars buried in your bag. In your backyard. Better than oil. Although it's not entirely crazy right now, because Disney is in a lot of trouble.
Sonny00:21:56So would you say that all along, the people who told you to invest in Netflix and to overlook the earnings versus whatever ridiculous numbers you were throwing around...
JVL00:22:12No, I still don't think Netflix is a... No. Because... Because Netflix is still going to be stepped on by Amazon.
Sonny00:22:19It's the most valuable company, though.
JVL00:22:21Well, it's the best company. And if they could only merge with Tesla, if they could merge with Tesla so they could stream Netflix in people's electric cars...
Sonny00:22:31And the ventilators that Elon Musk is making.
JVL00:22:33With their ventilators. That would be the best of all of the things.
Vic00:22:39Did you gentlemen want to discuss... This is nothing that I really care for, but I'm throwing it out there because I saw you exchange it on Twitter. Exchange it on text about the Batman. The Batman. The Batman. Batman versus God. True Detective Season 4, Batman. So, what's happening here? Nick Piazzoli.
JVL00:22:56What's his... Nick... Pizzolatto. Pizzolatto. Pizzolatto. Uffa. Uffa. Oh, my don't. Gabagool. All right, Sonny, can you set the table for this? Because I'm too much drinking.
Vic00:23:11Tell us what you're drinking, JVL.
JVL00:23:14I'm drinking my mother-in-law's favorite. I'm drinking my mother-in-law's favorite drink. Kirkland brand knockoff Bailey's over club soda. And this is number three. Over the club soda. Number three. Number three.
Vic00:23:25It's like fizzy. That's like your... It's like an alcoholic egg cream. How much... What is the percent of alcohol in that? 20? 20%.
JVL00:23:32Hold on. I'll look at it. I'll effort this. Okay. So, this story...
Sonny00:23:3613.9.
Vic00:23:37Oh, wow. You must be just hammered right now.
Sonny00:23:40So, the story... I texted this to Vic and JVL. It's Nick Pizzolatto, who is the guy who made the True Detective shows. He's done all three seasons of True Detective. He's written some novels, whatever. Somebody asked him on Instagram, would you... Is there any, like, comic book that you would want to do? Or, like, would you want to do Batman, blah, blah, blah? And he just goes off. He says, Batman is the only character. In the world, I didn't create that I want a shot at. And I think he's the only piece of geek culture I have any affinity for. Batman's no-kill policy is valid and should always remain. But, the policy does not exist because, quote, killing makes me as bad as them, quote, or some kindergarten bullshit. That never held any water at all. Batman's no-kill policy exists because Batman's real and eternal enemy is death. Death is his real enemy. I think the Bat is a totem and tool. This is a man who's... Mastered every form of meditation and martial combat on Earth. A man versed in world religion and martial tradition. I hate this version of Batman. It's everywhere, especially in the movies. Batman is not some wounded boy, some man-child who can't get over his parents' death. He's not an arrested child. He's not the Phantom of the Opera. He's not broken in any way. He's the opposite. Batman is not the story of a traumatized rich boy who works out his catharsis on the mentally ill. Batman is the story of how one human saint turned a life-defining tragedy into the pinnacle of human achievement. And the single greatest humanitarian crusade the world has ever known. And his money doesn't matter. It's merely a convenience. It actually adds to his heroism. His wealth means he could have done literally anything else than what he devotes his life to. Batman's superpower is not money. Batman's superpower is that he thinks of everything. And he has the strongest will of the species. If he had time to strategize, Batman could credibly defeat God.
JVL00:25:44A will to power?
Sonny00:25:45I, of course, email or I text this to Vic and JVL. I was like, this hits many of our issues. Batman, God, fascism, all at once. And I am a big proponent of this. I think it's basically right. And the only real question is, would Batman have time to prepare for his showdown with God? Or would God, like, cheat and lightning bolt him out of the blue? It's really the Batman versus Superman question.
JVL00:26:18Yeah. Almost everything that Nick Pizzaface says in this is wrong. Like, just wrong. Elaborate, JVL. Batman's enemy is not death. His enemy is injustice. Like, his obsession is with justice. And the reason he does not kill. Death is the ultimate injustice. No. There are plenty of people who deserve death. No. The best explanation for why the no kill exists comes from Frank Miller. And it is because Batman understands that he is a monster. He's not a saint. He's a monster. He's, like, vaguely sociopathic. And that if he allows himself to kill once, all he will do is kill. And that he will not be able to make the rational distinctions between the Joker, who should be killed, and, like, some guy who just snatched a purse.
Sonny00:27:12Yes.
JVL00:27:12He does not have that ability to discern things. And so he has to draw a line in the sand and say, I can't do anything over that line because I do not have the ability to understand what is proportional.
Sonny00:27:25The counter to that, of course, is that the purse snatcher deserves to be killed just as much as the Joker. Because every purse snatcher is only, like, three steps from becoming a Joe Chill who kills Batman's parents.
JVL00:27:36True. And also because the lady with the purse worked very hard to own that purse. 100%. You know who else Batman should kill? Should kill? Takers. Anybody who ever downloaded a pirated song from the internet.
Sonny00:27:53Yes.
JVL00:27:54Because you're basically four steps away from being Joe Chill if you ever used Napster.
Sonny00:27:59You say that. I mean, I agree with this, actually. This is this but unironically. If we were on Twitter right now, I would be saying this but unironically.
JVL00:28:06I don't agree very strongly about that. Yeah, no. It's all very stupid. But I'd be willing to overlook all of this if he promises to. Cast Alexandria Daddario.
Sonny00:28:19Alexandria Daddario, yes.
JVL00:28:20In his Batman movie.
Sonny00:28:23As literally any character.
JVL00:28:25Literally any character so long as she appears basically in the same way she did in True Detective.
Vic00:28:31Speaking of Poison Ivy, Sonny, what is this thing about a Poison Ivy discussion? They're at Poison Ivy Week.
Sonny00:28:37So last week we had Tombstone Week, which was a lot of fun. Michael Biehn showed up. He wrote some stuff for us. It was great. Stephen Lang. Stephen Lang sat down for an interview with me. I interviewed the great Stephen Lang about working on Tombstone. But this week we're changing it up a little bit. One of my coworkers, Preston Fassel, he got his hands on a copy of a four-movie set, the new four-movie set from Shout Factory of the Poison Ivy films, the series that began with Drew Barrymore.
JVL00:29:13Drew Barrymore. The Samolano.
Sonny00:29:15The Samolano. And then Jamie Presley, of course. I'm sorry. Hold on. You didn't get Vic Mattis to do this? I didn't get the Blu-rays. Preston just came to me. He was like, I've got to-
Vic00:29:26You know what I'm writing for them? I'm doing the series on the Emanuel series. Emanuel. Emanuel. Emanuel in space.
JVL00:29:33Emanuel in space. Poison Ivy is much more on brand. Victorino. Yeah. Frankly.
Vic00:29:37No comment. No comment.
JVL00:29:38I would pay your site $1,000 of my own money to read Victorino reviewing the Poison Ivy. I can make that happen. Don't say that, because I can make it happen.
Vic00:29:48You know what? If you go back into the internets, do you remember JVL? We had a movie review of The Girl Next- Kiss of the Vampire. No. Sorry. We did a movie review of The Girl Next Door. I think it's Embrace of the Vampire. Embrace of the Vampire. It is. Yeah. Embrace of the Vampire is a good one. We did The Girl Next Door, and it was reviewed for us by- Michael Goldfarb. Michael Goldfarb. And let me tell you something. It's a funny review. That's right.
Sonny00:30:11His first and only movie review ever. Everything Michael- Goldfarb writes is funny. The great tragedy of Michael Goldfarb is that he has decided that he doesn't want to write. He doesn't want to have a paper trail of all of the terrible things that he says out there.
Vic00:30:26Well, this happens because they go where they can make more of an impact. It's sort of like Tony Kornheiser, right, Sonny? You wrote about this once, about the tragedy of people like Tony Kornheiser leaving journalism to go on the TV.
Sonny00:30:42I wrote about the tragedy of Tony Kornheiser. He did not. I don't appreciate that.
JVL00:30:45That's right.
Sonny00:30:46That was a JVL assignment. JVL asked me to write about that. Do you remember that, JVL?
JVL00:30:51I do remember that. I remember what a dick he was to you, too. You didn't believe that was your name. In an alternate universe, Goldfarb could have been like a political version of Leibash. Yeah. You know, like just with the gonzo hangout stuff. He has amazing instincts. He does have amazing instincts, and he's personable, and he could just get to people and hang out with them. But he chose a different path.
Sonny00:31:14Good for me, though. He probably made the right call. Let's be honest. He's not here jabbering on a podcast at 9.05, 10.05 of your time.
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JVL00:33:49That's right. We were. It's a Utah jazz when he broke the ankles of poor Byron.
Vic00:33:55Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
JVL00:33:56Oh, what's the jazz backup guard? It's a long time ago.
Vic00:34:01It's like.
JVL00:34:02Yeah, we were together. That was the first cover story I ever wrote for the. For the.
Vic00:34:07We were together. I don't remember much of the game because I blacked out shortly after that. I don't remember why. Just blacked out.
JVL00:34:13JVL gave me something to drink. And then. Yeah, but you woke up fine the next morning. On my stomach. Oh, okay. Yeah.
Vic00:34:19No, but I remember I was going to ask you, was that the first cover story you wrote?
JVL00:34:24Yeah. Yeah, it was. And it was one of these things where I couldn't believe that Crystal let me do it.
Vic00:34:31I thought it was a great sign because I thought he was very, he was very encouraging. And, and I thought it was great.
JVL00:34:37And. It was the first time in my life that Bill ever got excited about an idea I had pitched. Yeah. And, you know, like it is really. It's really, you feel like, like the sun is shining on you when, when the guy who runs your magazine is excited about a story you've pitched to them. And it was a really good feeling. Yeah. I'll actually never quite forget that.
Vic00:34:56Did you by any chance look over, look back on the piece or you remember it? No, I remember. In context of now like 20 something years later.
JVL00:35:04The last time I read it, I was so embarrassed by the, the writing that.
Sonny00:35:12I know what you mean. Which is good. It's painful. No, it's, it's painful. I don't like to read things I wrote two weeks ago, let alone, like I, I went back and read some of the like pieces that I wrote for the website for the, the weekly standard website when I was like first started writing about movies on a regular weekly basis and I was just like, wow, this is either obvious or stupid.
JVL00:35:33Sometimes both. Uh, no, but there's a period of my life when I go back to it, where I like, where I, I appreciate the things I'm doing with a piece and I can see it. And I almost always, I can see how I would do it better. Now, but I, you know, I, I like it, but that, that predates that period. I mean, it was really before I knew how to write. Um, and so it is sort of, do you remember who edited the piece? Uh, Claudia, Claudia edited almost every piece.
Vic00:35:57I believe her was her first question is who is Michael Jordan?
JVL00:36:00That was, uh, that was a big part of it. She had no idea who this man was. Uh, God, God loved Claudia.
Vic00:36:07That's funny. Uh, okay.
JVL00:36:09So anyway, the best ever was watching her ask Matt lay bash, what DVDA meant and watching Matt try to not answer her question because he had worked, it was like he had gone to some porn conference and he, and I just sat there, I spent an hour literally just like rear window style looking through the window into Claudia's office, watching the interactions between she and Matt while she asked question after question, but, but what is this thing? What is that thing you're talking about? And watching Matt was like at beat red. Like he'd been in the sun for 15 hours or something. I have never seen him.
Vic00:36:49Writers defend your piece. No, but I mean, embarrassed.
JVL00:36:51Not even like he just didn't want to say out loud to your mom.
Sonny00:36:55Like, yeah. Claudia, who's the best editor I have ever had. I think probably any of us who have ever had.
Vic00:37:04She, she, she left, she left me great advice before I came to the beacon. She says, remember, we hire writers for the sensibilities. So you let the writer be the writer. That was one thing. She had a lot of other thoughts in any event. But what did you think about that? What did you think about that first episode?
JVL00:37:20So I watched the first two episodes. I mean, I have a, a long, a long relationship with the idea of Michael Jordan. And I have very complicated thoughts about him. And I kind of hated the first two episodes of the documentary. What, what did you guys think?
Vic00:37:40The first two episodes?
JVL00:37:41Yeah. The first two episodes aired last night. Oh, they stretched it out.
Sonny00:37:45Okay.
Vic00:37:45All right.
Sonny00:37:45So, so JVL, you, you texted us something that this is not the real Michael Jordan. No. The real, the real Michael Jordan is the guy at the Hall of Fame speech who is settling scores. Yes. And that is 100% how I felt when I was watching this. It felt very much like a massaged PR Michael Jordan to the, like, and this is probably unfair. I'm probably bringing my own biases into this. But to the point where when he was talking about racism in his school growing up, I thought to myself, that does not sound like something Michael Jordan would say. It sounds like something Michael Jordan would say if he wanted to earn a measure of credit with ESPN and their crowd. That, and like, it's not even that I, like, didn't believe that he, that he encountered racism. In North, what, North Carolina in the 1970s? Like, yeah, I mean, 100%, I absolutely believe he did. And I have no doubt that that shaped his view of the world. But it was just like, I, it's not, it's, you know, maybe, and again, maybe, maybe this is just my own, you know, biases coming into it. But it just doesn't sound like something that Michael Jordan would say when talking about his experiences growing up. You know, am I wrong? Did that jump out to you as well?
JVL00:39:15No, not so much as just the other sort of the smiling Michael Jordan and the, you know, sort of talking a little bit nicer about the dearly departed Jerry Grouse and downplaying that. You have to understand, so this is an authorized biography, essentially, right? So Jordan let them in, Jordan participated in the whole thing. He, I mean, there's a reason he does not have a great many close friends from the game of basketball. And he does not hang around the game of basketball that much anymore. And it's because he was despised by his peers because he, a con man is what they all call him. This was a guy who never spent a second thinking about anything else except for how to cut everybody else's throat. And, I mean, it was just a total will to dominance. And that is why he was so good. I mean, there's nothing freakish about his athletic ability. He's a top-level elite athlete the way many NBA players are. But his focus, his drive, and his competitiveness. Uh, are what made him what he was. And, uh, to the point where, you know, this is famously, he was always very aware on court of where the cameras were. And, you know, if he was not on camera, he would be talking trash and saying horrible things to, you know, the other guys he was playing with. And then the minute there's a camera nearby, he was like, you know, back to Gatorade Mike. Just, just me doing some space jam over here. Look at me. And, uh, I don't know. I find that, I mean, there are a lot of things that are fascinating about him. One of which is that you could see his, when you plot what makes him different versus every other basketball player I've ever seen, um, and maybe every other athlete is his rate. If you were going to graph his increase in skills, it's a steeper curve than anybody else has ever had. Right. So, and the, the documentary actually gets this part of it right, where, uh, so his senior year in high school, his high school coach calls up, uh, Dean Smith and says to him, I've got a kid who you guys should look at, bring him here for your summer camp. He shows up at summer camp for a week. And at the beginning of the week, they think he's a pretty good player. And by the end of the week, they're convinced that he's the best high school player in America. And he gets to North Carolina and James Worthy is there. And Worthy says, yeah, I was better than him for two weeks. And at the end of two weeks, Jordan's the best player on the team, you know, he gets drafted into the NBA. It takes him like another two weeks to assert his total dominance within the NBA. And you would see this even within playoff series. Yeah. The best line in those first two episodes, a reporter asked him like, how's the transition
Sonny00:42:01been to the pros? And he's like, that's been pretty easy so far. Pretty easy. Yeah.
Vic00:42:05And it's just like, and then it's interesting with the draft because he was the number three guy in the draft.
Sonny00:42:09Sam Bowie. Yeah. Right. But it was, it was. Because everyone agrees that Hakeem should have gone first.
?00:42:16Sure.
Sonny00:42:16Elijah Wan.
Vic00:42:17And it worked out. And it is because of whatever role, what role needs to be filled by that team. You're looking for a center. You're looking for this, you're looking for that. And that's why they got those.
JVL00:42:27Always pick the best available player. This is the lesson for, at least for the NBA. I don't understand. I used to know and care a lot about the NBA, the NBA drafts, you all, you never care about what you need. You draft the best available player.
Vic00:42:41And that's what they did though, right? Yeah. Did you think it was fair or unfair that the way, you know, his relationship with like Jerry Krause?
JVL00:42:51So Krause is a monster, at least as an executive.
Vic00:42:54People seem to think he's a very nice guy. He sadly did himself no favors because he looks the part, may he rest in peace, but he looked the part. You know, he didn't look likable, but you know, they try to say nice things about him, you know, but.
JVL00:43:07I mean, maybe he was a great human being when they, when they, when they had the ceremony
Vic00:43:11before the first game. And they, they're there and they introduce everybody. You remember this in the documentary and, and they're at the United Center. And then with, you know, I mean, they won the whole thing and then, and then, and they introduce Krause right before Phil Jackson. And when they introduce Krause, all you hear are boos, you know, from the, from the fans.
JVL00:43:30Why the hell does he need to be introduced? Right? I mean, if you're Jerry, again, there's like, why do you need to come out on the floor before a game and get your ring? You're the GM, you know, you're a front office guy that get up, go up in the box. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you look at what he did because the draft, once you have Michael Jordan on your team, my mother-in-law could have coach, could have general managed any franchise with Michael Jordan to six championships. There's almost nothing that had to be done.
Sonny00:44:03Disagree. That is disagree. Oh yeah.
JVL00:44:06No more than any, more than any other player in NBA history. He is easy to mix. Pieces around very, very easy to mix pieces around.
Sonny00:44:17I think the real master stroke was, I mean, look, I, this is not a, this is not like a bold contrarian stance that I'm taking, but I think the real master stroke was bringing in Scottie Pippen. Scottie Pippen was the ultimate role player who could work around him and do all of the things that Michael Jordan needed him to do and was more or less content to play second fiddle right up until that last season when it, you know, there was money and there was issues, injury, and there was all sorts of stuff involved there. But like I like working, working the phones to get Scottie Pippen is the thing that made them a double dynasty.
JVL00:44:55Well, but they, but they used a five pick on it. You know, I mean it is, I mean they traded up, they had to trade up to get them, but
Sonny00:45:03it is not like they plucked, they signed up, they signed them to like a, what, a eight year $19 million deal or something, you know, I mean like a, they locked them down for a long time. During the prime of Michael Jordan's career, I like I, I, the, the whole Michael Jordan thing does not happen without Scottie Pippen.
JVL00:45:24It does not happen without somebody basically like Scottie Pippen. I would argue there are a bunch of guys who could fill that role in a way that like Shaq needed somebody like Kobe, right? I mean, and Kobe's are hard to find, right? A Scottie Pippen isn't that hard to find. I mean, there are, there are guys. There are guys like him, right? I mean, you could, Marcus Camby could have been Scottie Pippen.
Sonny00:45:47No, Marcus Camby couldn't have been Scottie Pippen. If Marcus Camby could have been Scottie Pippen, he would have been Scottie Pippen.
JVL00:45:54I mean, I like, I wasn't put on, on a team with Jordan.
Sonny00:45:57I am not, I am, I am a, uh, Scottie Pippen diehard defender. I think he doesn't get the due he deserves and I think this is why I actually really enjoyed the second episode of this, uh, series because I do think that they, they got into the whole Scottie Pippen thing. Which I think is, I, again, I like, I just don't think that Michael Jordan wins six titles without Scottie Pippen. Maybe he wins three.
Vic00:46:20Maybe he wins two. Sonny, when you were growing up, uh, were you, were you a fan, were you an NBA fan and if so, were you a Michael Jordan fan? Did you follow the Bulls? No. I, I have weird...
Sonny00:46:32And you traveled a lot, obviously. Yeah. I, so I, I was in the military growing up in the, in, in, and I wasn't a huge NBA fan exactly. Manchester United. Yeah. Liverpool. Liverpool. Liverpool. Um, no. So I have, I have kind of a weird agglomeration of fandoms that I have accumulated again from my dad who, you know, refused to let me buy tapes. Um, uh, the long story short is I really didn't watch the NBA until Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal were on the Lakers together because I like had a, uh, an inherited Lakers name. Lakers fandom. And so like, I knew Michael Jordan was very good, just like from discussions and whatever, but I just never really watched the NBA until, uh, the Lakers were good again. And then as soon as the Lakers stopped being good, I stopped watching the NBA again. I was like, I don't, I don't, you know, I mean, it was rare for me to watch. I think they were, they were good again this season with LeBron, but then I don't know. Coronavirus.
Vic00:47:36It was, it was rare for me to watch NBA on TV, but I did enjoy watching, uh, over at the Horizon Center, uh, because of course we got tickets from Fred Barnes's tickets and remember Fred Barnes. He had, he had it. He shared tickets with, uh, Robert Novak and I, and Paul is a go. So it was like six in a row and, and their buddy Dave Smick.
JVL00:47:57And then you ever go with me to see Jordan when he was, I remember that because you know
Vic00:48:01who else was there at the time? I think Oakley was there. Do you remember this? Uh, Charles Oakley. Yeah. And, and he would come out and it was total, he was probably in his forties, 95 years old. But, but I remember, uh, cause this would have to be early two thousands then when Juwan
JVL00:48:17was still there too.
Vic00:48:18Wasn't he? Wasn't John Howard still there? Yeah. And, and, and, well, then there was my favorite number 55 to Heidi White, Joe Heidi was not
JVL00:48:25there yet. No, he wasn't there.
Vic00:48:27It was later. No, no, no. That was later. They did overlap. But I remember the excitement in it. It's sad because it's not the United. We're not watching a bulls game. It was the wizards. And so, you know, you have to take that into account, but it was still a score. He scored 50 points one of the nights we were there.
JVL00:48:42See, when he decides to get, you know, uh, and he, you know, he, he, he takes off, you
Vic00:48:46know, the, the, the, you know, the, his, you know, his, his, his, his sweat jacket thing. And then he comes out there and, and like, oh, he's, he's getting it, he's getting ready to go in and everybody gets so excited. Uh, and it was something, it was something to watch it because you knew that you were
JVL00:48:59watching something that is, is, is the guy had totally remade his game midway through his career. It was the other thing that's not, not understood or appreciated, you know? So he starts out as a guy who is a slashing attacker. He just sort of get around people in traffic and dunk the ball. And midway into his career, he masters this fadeaway turn around jumper. Yeah. And so even when he is not fast enough to kill people off the dribble 80 times a game, uh, he's just able to sit 23 feet out, 26 feet out and just murder them with a turnaround fade away. That is not a thing that normal basketball players, even like tremendously great levels of basketball. Players can do, you can't just become the best at something in the league over the course of a couple of years because you decide you need to add that to your repertoire.
Sonny00:49:50Well this is why Kobe will always be the like distant shadow of MJ cause he did something very similar to this. He like worked on his 18 to 20 foot turnaround jump shot and got, and was able to stay relevant for an extra five years as a result, but he just wasn't dominant in the same way that Jordan was.
JVL00:50:09Well he didn't, I mean he was not a sociopath. He was a sociopath and did not care to be dominant in this way Jordan was.
Sonny00:50:18I think that is the thing that they most shared was their ability to like drive people crazy and work harder than everyone else.
JVL00:50:28I mean I don't know. Maybe that's true.
Sonny00:50:31I just am excited to get to the Kwame Brown chapter of The Last Dance because Michael
JVL00:50:37Jordan breaking Kwame Brown's spirit. So I rooted against Jordan for the longest time. I mean I even the I guess it's the third the where do they beat the Phoenix Suns?
Sonny00:50:54That's the third title where they beat the Suns. Yeah is that 94-95?
JVL00:50:58And I am rooting so hard so hard for Phoenix at that point because they have Barkley, they have Dan Marley, they have Kevin Johnson. It's an incredibly likable team. They're really balanced. They're fun to watch. And they are better top to bottom, 12 guys through the roster, than the Bulls are. Because the Bulls are kind of a joke, right? I mean it's Judd Bushler and Stacey King and Jon Paxson and Bill Cartwright and a bunch of guys who would do well at most rec centers but you know are basically the Island of Misfit toys arranged around Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen and Steve Kerr and Scottie Pippen. Steve Kerr. They told me to watch them and it wasn't only until late in life that I-- Tony Cucucci. Not then? No, not until later. I know. Not until later. Yeah. And so it's a-- did you guys-- so did you guys-- this is an interesting question for Sonny. Hmm. Because I think you would be sympathetic, Victorino, to the Jerry--
Vic00:52:02The guys in the hotel room, that part? Yes. The answer was yes.
JVL00:52:06I'd be in that hotel room. The Jerry Reinsdorf versus Scottie Pippen. No.
Sonny00:52:10No. The Jerry Reinsdorf. 100% team Jerry Reinsdorf. Of course.
JVL00:52:14Of course you are.
Sonny00:52:15If you sign a contract, that's the contract. That's the contract.
JVL00:52:21Would you like to explain the debate? So Scottie Pippen is offered a contract by the Chicago Bulls to play for, I think it's whatever it is, however many years, seven years, $7 million per or something like that. No, no, no.
Sonny00:52:37It was like-- $3 million per. It was like eight years, $19 million or something like that. Yeah, you mentioned that.
JVL00:52:41It was something insane. And he's offered the contract and Reinsdorf says to him, "I don't think you should take it." But Pippen takes it because he comes from--
Sonny00:52:53That's what he says in the interview now.
JVL00:52:55I mean-- He comes from a family of 12 kids, one of whom is a quadriplegic, the father of whom is bedridden from having suffered a stroke, and he knows that he has to take care of this large number of people. And that if he hurts himself by playing for more money, he won't be able to do it. And this is the type of abuse of capital where it is awfully easy for Jerry Reinsdorf, Mr. Richie Rich, who got rich playing shell game companies in real estate because he basically figured out how to cheat is the wrong word, but take advantage of several tax loopholes. That was his thing. For the guy with the pilot-- He's got a pile of money to say to the guy with the poor family who literally needs their son's income to live, "Well, I think that you should gamble and go for more money, but if you choose not to, eh." You know what? Fuck you. Now-- Fuck you, rich white guy.
Vic00:54:00I'm so excited to have Elizabeth Warren on the show. This is really--
Sonny00:54:02Yeah, this is such nonsense. He has an agent who should be telling him not to sign this. First of all, he should not have signed it, and second of all, third of all, it's not even close to the worst deal that was signed within five years of that. You remember what Magic Johnson signed his contract for? You remember the 25-year extension that Magic Johnson signed his contract for? I do. The 25-year, $25 million extension? A million dollars a year for Magic Johnson? There are people who get screwed in the NBA. Matty Pippen probably made a bad choice, but in the annals of bad choices, he made it on his own, he got the money, and he was still able to sign a pretty big contract after
JVL00:54:55that. Here's the problem with this: looking at professional sports like this as a zero-sum game between ownership and the workers, not players, workers, is a short-term problem. It's a short-sighted and foolish way to view it. The Patriots didn't get this way by Brady and Belichick and Kraft brink-sum-and-shipping one another. You work together. You try to keep the essential pieces of the puzzle happy, and this way you can win more championships and make more money. How much more money would they have gotten had they won eight championships instead of
Sonny00:55:38six as a franchise? They would have had to do to do that was have Michael Jordan not go away for two seasons because he got busted for gambling.
JVL00:55:47Oh, you want to go there. Tell me, what is your conspiracy theory about this, Sonny?
Sonny00:55:54No, I actually don't believe that at all. I actually believe Michael Jordan when he says he got tired of playing basketball and didn't want to do it for a couple of years despite the fact that it's like the thing he was best at and all he cared about was being best at things. I totally believe that he just walked away for two years. That's not the stretch of time that he played baseball. Yes. Yeah.
Vic00:56:15Yeah. Well, there you go.
Sonny00:56:17That's the answer. So I totally believe he just walked away and wanted a new challenge and that makes a lot of sense to me. I believe it in the bottom of my heart. But to win eight championships had nothing to do with whether or not Scottie Pippen was kind of was relatively more happy for two of those seasons. It had to do with whether or not Michael Jordan was there.
JVL00:56:39But it changed everything.
Sonny00:56:40They won six titles with a guy who is the second best player on the team and probably one of the five best players in the league at that point, making $2 million a year. Do better than that. Do better than that.
JVL00:57:01They could have won another title, clearly, had they not decided they wanted to blow it
Sonny00:57:07all up. Maybe they could have. I don't know. You know what? Would you take six titles in hand or maybe you get to eight titles if you do it differently?
JVL00:57:18If your marginal cost is throwing an extra $3 million a year at Scottie Pippen, I, as the guy who owns the franchise, would rather spend the extra $20 million on keeping Pippen happy and keeping the bands together in an effort to make whatever the marginal increase in...
Sonny00:57:36But Jordan was leaving after that season. It's not...
JVL00:57:39They brought him back again. He was only leaving because everything else blew up because Kraus wanted Phil gone. This is a very interesting question. Is there another precedent in sports for a GM, not an owner, but a GM going to war against a championship franchise in an attempt to blow it all up early? Because almost always it goes the opposite, right? The management tries to hang on too late because they try for that one more year where it doesn't work out, and they decide too late to blow it up.
Sonny00:58:14I would assume there is a Steinbrenner argument to be made somewhere in here, Steinbrenner being unhappy with some iteration of the Yankees and blowing it up. I don't know. But they were never good under him, were they?
JVL00:58:29Not until he was an old, old guy in the early aughts.
Sonny00:58:32Well, I mean, how many World Series did they win in the '90s in aughts?
JVL00:58:40It wasn't until, it wasn't until the late '90s, right, when they got, I mean, Stein had owned the team for like 25 years, right, before they, I'm talking, somebody who was a Yankees person.
Sonny00:58:50Yeah, somebody should chime in. I don't know.
Vic00:58:53Well, I loved the documentary. I thought it was great. Michael Jordan is awesome. Sorry. Sorry, Vic. Victorino. The thing that I was relieved by was the, yeah, when they showed the '82 final, I was so relieved that they didn't show, that they ended it with the Michael Jordan shot. And they didn't show with 12 seconds left.
JVL00:59:12Sleepy Floyd.
Vic00:59:13Oh, no. Fred Brown's errant pass to James Worthy. That, you know, because that's the one that really lives in infamy. And I was, I text you, I said, "I'm going to be sick." And I was triggered watching that. Did you like seeing Patrick? Oh, yes. I love seeing Patrick.
JVL00:59:28He looked very svelte.
Vic00:59:30From that angle, they did, there was a lot of, there was a lot of shadows there, shadow
JVL00:59:34play.
Vic00:59:35Excuse me. No, no, no. I mean, there was a lot of angling going on.
JVL00:59:38I had the exact same thought. When he showed up on stage, I said, "Did they put a lot of makeup to thin him there?"
Vic00:59:45And like a shooting at a very specific angle. No, they just, they did what they did to Robert Downey Jr. or like they did to Robert De Niro in The Irishman. I think they did the same thing. They de-aged him. They de-aged Patrick. I'll tell you who looked good. Scottie Pippen looked good. He looked better now than he did back then. That's a weird thing.
Sonny01:00:00Did you notice that there was like just a little, a little tinge of gray right at the bottom of the hairline? Which made it pretty obvious that he had dyed the rest of his hair and just hadn't quite gotten.
JVL01:00:11Yeah. That last little bit. That's okay. That's all right. You know, so of all the old, of all the people who now look crazy old, who did you find most disconcerting? I don't know.
Vic01:00:21Oh! Uh, Pat Riley.
JVL01:00:23Yes.
Vic01:00:24I was so confused.
Sonny01:00:25He looked like, he looked like Tom Cruise from Collateral.
?01:00:28Yes.
Vic01:00:29Yes. You know why? 'Cause he didn't look normal old. No. He looked like a lot of work plus the old. I know, uh, you know. You know what I'm saying? He, he didn't look like Pat Riley.
JVL01:00:37Phil looked like he's on death, so Phil Jackson looks like he's on death's door. Oh.
Vic01:00:41Uh. Phil looks about like he's always looked.
JVL01:00:43He looked like... He looked like...
?01:00:45Danny Ainge looked puffy.
JVL01:00:46Very, very puffy Danny Ainge. But Bill Wellington. Yeah, yeah.
Vic01:00:51Man.
Sonny01:00:52Was that the guy with like the, the goatee with like the three? The white... The trident goatee.
JVL01:00:57Yeah. Yes. The trident goatee. Yeah. Who, who now looks... I mean, he was never a great athlete, if we could be honest. Um.
Sonny01:01:04Did he have a slot machine behind him? Who could say? In the interview? I'm pretty sure he did.
JVL01:01:10Yeah. Yeah. But he looked like an old, old man. Yeah. Paxton looked like an old man. All these guys who you remember seeing. Yeah.
Vic01:01:18I know.
JVL01:01:19It's depressing. It's so depressing. None of them age... None of... You know, professional athletes don't tend to, at least in basketball... Yeah. They don't age like George Clooney ages.
Sonny01:01:27Well, but they're, but they're, they're weird. They're...
JVL01:01:30The body type is weird.
Sonny01:01:31I mean, they're, they're just... They're such... They're such weird giants. I mean, like I remember... Weird giants. I, so I saw a Wizards game from Courtside and it was... It changed my entire perspective of basketball. Oh yeah. Of course. Because I was... Tower. They're all towers. I was watching these guys go like down the court in four steps and I was like, no, this is... Oh, no wonder it's easy. This is freakish.
Vic01:01:52This is, this is bizarre. With the exception of Earl Boykins.
Sonny01:01:54These people are... Everybody else's. These people are barely people. They're giant freaks of nature and it's like, it's actually weird to watch them play that close in person. And it's... And I, and I, I mean, I've been to like a dozen NBA games before that, you know, but like in, in the 200s and in the 300s and like... Yeah, yeah, sure. When you see them up close. It's kind of like watching them on TV. It's like, okay, well, but when you see them up close, it is, it is disturbing. Right.
Vic01:02:16Because when they're all... It's actually disturbing. When they're all together, when they're all together, um, you lose, you know, the sense of... Totally. Yeah. You know what I mean? No perspective. No perspective. Yeah. You know, because they're all together. And then when you're down on the floor, uh, Sonny, it's like, they're like the, it's like in Lord of the Rings, the Ents. Yeah. Totally. Totally. Just giant trees playing against each other.
JVL01:02:36Totally. Except that they're fast. But they're enormously fast. Yeah. Like it's... The speed of an NBA game, which you really can't appreciate until you have good seats there is insane.
Sonny01:02:44You can't, you can't appreciate on TV. You can't appreciate in the 300s. You have to like be there on the floor watching it happen. And it is, it, again, it was, it was like actually a, like, I would say of every sporting event I've ever been to, it's the thing that most changed how I see the game. Yeah. And how it's played.
Vic01:03:01Yeah. I mean, you imagine yourself on the court with them. Can you imagine yourself on the court?
Sonny01:03:04Yeah. No, I mean like you watch it, you watch like an NFL game and you're like, I could never do that. I could never like get hit like that. Like this is, you know, but watching the NBA, you're like, oh yeah, it's just guys, just guys playing ball because they're all, they're all like 6'6 to 6'10, you know, more or less in that range. Right. Um, no, I, I, I will, I dispute your, your take on Phil Jackson's age just a bit because I do think that he looks, he looks old, but he is old and he looks good. And also here's an argument that I would like to throw out there. Phil Jackson is obviously the best basketball coach of all time, right? Like he's the best NBA coach of all time. And I say this, while you think, I say this because the, the, you know, in the NBA, the only thing the coach really has to do is manage personalities, right? That is his main, his main function is to manage the personalities.
JVL01:03:59No, coaches can do other things. Yeah. I mean, he had big chief triangle, uh, Tex Winter there to help him. Uh. I think as much as it kills me to say this, I think Larry Brown is probably the best coaching mind, at least of his generation, and considering for many places, but he had to work with,
Vic01:04:18you know, I mean him and Alan, that guy was something else.
JVL01:04:21Can I, so here are two questions. Who are your favorite Pippen and Jordan aside, your favorite role players from those Bulls team. And then I would like your favorite NBA players of your youth from your NBA days. When you actually cared about the NBA, Sonny, I assume it would be Kobe for you.
Sonny01:04:43It would be, well, I mean, favorite is not exactly the right word with Kobe. He's the person I'm most watched with awe. My favorite was probably Rick Fox, who is just a ridiculous person. Rick Fox is a ridiculous person, but he's absolutely the French. Vanessa.
JVL01:05:03No, no. He's married to the movie star.
Sonny01:05:05Vanessa Williams. Vanessa Williams. That's what I love. I love Rick Fox. You wanted to be Rick Fox. He's so upset. Everybody wants to be Rick Fox. He really is a fantastically ridiculous person. And the other the other option would be Robert Ory, who Oh, yeah. Big Shot Bob. Big Shot Bob.
Vic01:05:19I mean, sure, sure. He was good.
JVL01:05:21I liked him. Big Shot Bob is an amazing guy. But of the of the role players throughout the Bulls years, were you a Kukoc guy?
Sonny01:05:29I guess. Kerr. I guess long way. Probably a Kerr guy. Steve Kerr. I like Steve Kerr. But again, I didn't really watch a lot of NBA from like once Magic Johnson retired to until Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant were on the same team. Like I just didn't really watch. And that that's basically the entire Michael Jordan era.
JVL01:05:49Yeah. Same thing. I'm not an NBA person, so I don't know. You're not an NBA person, but you followed all the Hoyas in there. Oh, I sure.
Vic01:05:56Sure. Jerome Williams, Junkyard Dog, a lot of obviously so obviously Iverson and you overlap with
JVL01:06:04so. I was a freshman. And Iverson. Oh, yeah. Both. Both. And Victor Page. No. I was going to bring his name up. So who who is your favorite of all the of all the Hoyas? Oh, all those.
Vic01:06:16Oh, gosh. I mean, you know, it's so funny. I still I loved. The team that went under J.T. three to the final four, Jonathan Wallace, who was he was a role player and he was fantastic and he had a very clutch three pointer towards the end. That was. It was neck and neck and then they broke and then and then went into over. That's how they got into overtime against North Carolina in the Elite Eight going into the four. And I always remember Jonathan Wallace. He was there with Jeff Green and oh, Roy Hibbert. I love Roy Hibbert. Roy Hibbert was great. But I will say of the three, my I would say in the Bulls, it would be like Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and ready for this, Joaquin Noah.
JVL01:07:01They never played. I don't know.
Vic01:07:03Many, many years. He's the player. He did the most. I think, you know, he was terrible. I hate it. I love this. Father hated walking.
JVL01:07:10Yeah. Yannick was really great.
Vic01:07:12Nick was great. OK, so we got to move on. We're an hour. So, JVL, you look like you're about to pass out.
Sonny01:07:16JVL, what was your what was your what were your what was your pick?
Vic01:07:20What about you?
Sonny01:07:21What about you?
JVL01:07:22I was an Iverson guy. Yeah, I was. I was. I love the answer.
Vic01:07:26He was. He was like, you could still see on YouTube right where he pulls that move on Jordan. Right. Where he fakes. Right. He fakes Jordan. People love that. The first time. It was like the first time that he was playing for the Sixers.
JVL01:07:40You know, of all the guys, I loved Ron Harper, who was there for the second set. Kukoc was fun to watch. I don't know. I mean, I honestly I had a soft spot for guys like Judd Bushler and Stacey King, who were absolute zeros. So one of my favorite lines ever is one of the nights when Jordan dropped 69 and Stacey King got a free throw. And in the locker room, he says to the reporter, Yeah, no, people are going to talk about this for years, is the night that Mike and I combined to score 70. That's good, that's good. So yeah, I like that. This is the truth is of all the Bulls guys, it wasn't until the end when it was harder for Jordan to will them to victory that I finally got on the Jordan bandwagon. And it was then was only to watch the otherworldly feat. I wasn't even really rooting for him, but I just wanted to watch him do it. That's right. Because it was right. So that's right. That's right.
Vic01:08:38And I double nickel. Right. Yeah, I would be missed not to mention Dikembe Mutombo, who I always wanted to be like him off the court. I want to be like him off the court.
JVL01:08:45God. Say it. Say it.
Vic01:08:48No, I guess. Say it. There was remember the controversy. Give me the line. Give me the line. There's two variations. Do you remember the two? The two variations? I only remember one. People are going to be chiming in and saying, No, you're wrong about it. It's like he either said, Oh, excuse me. Sexing Dikembe tonight. Okay. And the other one was, Who will be giving Dikembe the sex tonight? And so it was one of those.
Sonny01:09:12Oh, no. I see. I thought it was.
Vic01:09:15I thought it was. Who wants to sex Dikembe? Yeah. Oh, see, there you go. It was one of those. It was an interesting conjugation of sex.
Sonny01:09:21The best.
Vic01:09:22It's the same voice as Andre the Giant in Princess Bride, by the way, when he's on fire. Okay.
JVL01:09:28We got to end this show. Hold on. One note. One more note. The '82 final with Georgetown versus North Carolina. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Imagine three future top 50 Hall of Fame players on the court in a national final at the same time. That is something we have been deprived of ever since Kevin Garnett broke college basketball. That's right.
Vic01:09:53That's right. And you know what? We're worse off for it.
JVL01:09:56Yeah. No. And I wish it weren't that case.
Sonny01:09:59We're going to sound like old farts, but I agree with that 100%. Man, it was exciting to be able to have college finals like that. That minor league basketball must have been real fun to watch.
JVL01:10:03But it wasn't really minor league. It wasn't minor league basketball. Right? I mean, it was like high AAA. Right. Yeah. Right. And now... And what is AAA exactly? It's like a... But now it's like college basketball. AAA is a minor league... Very close.
Vic01:10:16...thing. People are really getting an extra... It's like a bonus. This is like the double... What else are we doing with our lives? Double episode. Really? Okay. So, corrections and shout outs. I'm going to say apologies to listeners. I totally forgot Master and Commander when we were ranking Russell Crowe. I love that movie.
Sonny01:10:32And you heard about it from everyone who listened to the episode. From everyone.
Vic01:10:35And I love...
Sonny01:10:36You got about... You know what? You got about a hundred, you know, tweets.
Vic01:10:39I did. And it was strictly a brain fart because I loved Master and Commander. It's a garbage movie. That's a great Peter Weir. It's a garbage movie.
Sonny01:10:46Peter Weir is fantastic. That's the worst. That's the worst thing. That's one of your worst opinions, JVO. One of your worst opinions. You know why?
JVL01:10:52It's because I like the books and that movie has nothing to do. Okay. So, you're telling me they made a book from the movies, right? They novelized the movie.
Sonny01:10:57I like books. It's like the...
?01:10:59I read.
JVL01:11:00You know what? I read. You know what?
?01:11:04I read.
JVL01:11:05Okay. I'm not going to be reading tonight. Okay.
Vic01:11:08I think it's time for you to go to sleep. I also want to give a... This is, you know, since this is a crisis time, so a little bit of a serious note here. I do want to give a shout out to my brother-in-law, Captain Bill Dwyer. I believe he's going into the breach this week, nursing homes and such, so Godspeed. But you know what? I told him. I said, "Hey, I got to work too. I'm editing." Same thing. Same thing. You might have to go to a nursing home, but I'm catching up. I just caught an ellipses that was three point, but should have been four. And there's a difference. Wow. Because it was the end of a sentence, and then a new sentence, and they skip the middle. If you only do three, it's like the same thing. It just continues on from the first sentence.
JVL01:11:48And you know what? If you didn't catch that, just think about what would have happened. Disaster.
Vic01:11:53Disaster. Chaos. Okay. That's all the time we're giving to this episode. Questions, comments, complaints, compliments, tweet us @SonnyBunch, @VictorinoMattus. Again, be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes. Google Play, Stitcher. Just type in Sub-Beacon at a podcast. We're there. Leave a review. Tell your friends. Until next time.
?01:12:10Okay. Thoughts? Gotta have something.
Vic01:12:13JV, I was going to ask you about your drink again. You know what you should do is put equal ounces, an ounce of the cream and then an ounce of vodka. Well, I guess that takes care of it. And an ounce of vodka. Put it on the rocks. I was going to say if it was Kahlua, then you could just take an ounce of Kahlua, an ounce of cream and an ounce of vodka on the rocks and you got yourself the Big Lebowski over there.
JVL01:12:46A Russian?
Vic01:12:47A Caucasian?
JVL01:12:48A white Russian. A white Russian. Yeah. I'll have a Caucasian. Yeah. We gotta have something, right? What are we going to talk about next week? I am. What are we going to do now that there are no movies and there will never be movies out in a movie theater ever again because the theaters are all going away?
Sonny01:13:01I don't know.
Vic01:13:02The Trolls World Tour? I don't know. I don't want to do one.
Sonny01:13:05We should all, we should fly to Georgia together. We should all get on airplanes and fly to Georgia so we can watch Trolls World Tour. I'm sure we have listeners. In the theater when they open on April 27th.
Vic01:13:14We have listeners who live in Georgia who will be willing to host us and we can all live together and we can all stay in the same like. We're going to Eric Erickson's house.
Sonny01:13:20Hey, Eric, you're putting us up. That'll be great. We've probably got a big house, so that'll be fine.
JVL01:13:26So serious question? Serious question.
Sonny01:13:30Yes. Not an XM question?
JVL01:13:33Poison Ivy? No. No.
Vic01:13:36I can't do. Come on. I wanted still. I still want to do an episode where we pick the three, the three worst films you could find on Netflix that I saw one the other day when I was. So book club basically. Book club. Where you each go. And we bring to present. That's right. That's right. And I'll. Okay. Well, I'll mention it. Book reports.
Sonny01:13:55Yeah.
JVL01:13:56Because I don't want to mention it. Now we'll save it.
Sonny01:13:58Save it for the show. All right. Well, I guess.
?01:14:01I guess that's fine.
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