Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Nate.
And I'm Mike.
What are we smoking today, Nate?
We are smoking, and I don't think I've ever smoked an Espinosa cigar before.
But this is no regular Espinosa cigar.
This is The Dude.
And I should mention that this is a sponsor stick cigar from one of our listeners, Matt.
So he provided us with two of The Dudes.
And we thought, gee, we just came off a bowling episode or a heavily themed bowling episode
with Jordan.
And Mike just couldn't resist, we had to do two in a row.
So we're going to do The Dude by Espinosa and talk about the big Lebowski and also probably
the movie starring Maude Lebowski, Gutterball.
Yeah.
I should also mention Mike and I had a little bit of a picture photo contest with each other
and for the episode's cover art.
And I'm not sure which way we're going to lean.
Mike's pictures are phenomenal.
However, they don't feature the cigars prominently as mine.
So we'll see which one we end up going with.
But they'll both be on Instagram.
So check out the Instagram will have all the pictures that were not all the pictures that
were taken, but the highlights from the photo contest that we did informally.
And there is no winner because we're winning if we get to smoke a cigar and drink.
Speaking of drinks, Mike, what are you pairing your cigar with?
Well, I have a refreshing glass of ice water as well as a Caucasian.
How about you, Nate?
I have a double Caucasian because I wasn't about to bring my little mixing bar out to
the garage.
So I just poured a double.
But it's also known in some circles, I don't know these circles, but some circles it's
also known as a white Russian.
Yes.
I would also like to say for those who are looking at the pictures, it is the exact same
one that I had in the pictures is the one I'm having right now.
For those of you looking at the pictures, the white Russian in my picture is not actually
a white Russian.
It's a bit of leftover coffee and water and then the splash of cream and a couple ice
cubes because I took my picture earlier in the day to get the light.
So I wasn't about to slam a white Russian on the clock, if you know what I mean.
Yes.
I took my pictures after I was done with work.
I took mine while on a conference call.
So what do you do?
But you get to see one of Mike's bowling balls and my bowling ball, I only have the one.
But both of our rugs and dare I say it, Mike, our rugs are eerily kind of similar with the
vibe.
You know what I mean?
Yes.
I picked, we have several rugs and I picked the one that looked the most like the Big
Lebowski rug.
Yes.
We have the one rug that's like in a pot, you know, like folded up because we're not
sure what we're going to do with it yet.
So I grabbed that one.
First couple puffs.
This is a spicy stick, man.
Yes.
It's interesting because it's very light, but it has a lot of depth to it.
Yes.
So I'm going to take out my first sip of my Caucasian and see how that affects it.
I think it's going to be a good pairing with the white Russian and the cigar.
I'm sure the people at Espinosa took that into consideration.
When making a dude themed cigar, what are people who like the Big Lebowski going to
be pairing this with?
That is actually a pretty good pairing.
That's a W for them.
Yeah.
That's it.
Call the episode.
Big W. Thanks for listening, everybody.
Yeah, so it was fun because we talked about doing this and we've had the cigar for a little
bit now, a few months, I suppose, or a month.
I don't know.
It's hard to remember.
And I was really looking forward to revisiting the Big Lebowski because I've seen it many,
many times, but I just haven't seen it recently until watching it again for this episode.
We, Sarah and I watched it two years ago, so it was a little fresher in the memory.
Yeah.
Usually, I don't watch movies critically, which I do for the show.
It's a different experience.
Yeah, but also it's the Big Lebowski, so I wasn't being super critical about it, but
I was trying to pay attention so I'd have things to talk about outside of all the catchphrases
and things, which are awesome by the by.
Oh, yeah.
I did partake in some festivities when I watched it, so I wanted to be in the right frame of
mind.
Well, that's like your opinion, man.
That is a great line.
Oh, my.
That is like legit.
I love how he's like mostly like nonplussed about everything that's happening, except
maybe like the ferret in the tub.
The ferret in the tub definitely harrasses vibe.
Also pissing on his rug.
He was more angry about pissing on his rug than almost anything else.
And he was angry about Walter pulling out his pistol.
He was pretty mad about that, too.
He was a little upset about that.
And the toe, when the toe showed up.
Yeah, he was concerned.
So how do we want to open this up?
I mean, well, I was going to do, I was going to suggest we both take pictures in like bathrobes.
Then I didn't really want to get my bathrobe all, you know, cigar smelly and have to wash
it again.
So I kind of didn't do that.
But that's, I mean, outside of the narration from Sam Elliott, that's pretty much how it
starts is he's like in his bathrobe getting half and half or heavy cream or something.
I put heavy cream in mine.
He did in fact buy half and half.
That's why I bought half and half.
Yes.
I bought heavy cream because that's what the internet told me.
I will say though, on a personal note, I much prefer the black Russians just because I think
the cream is a little too much typically.
But again, the cream really sweetens this up and makes it pair with this cigar very,
very nicely.
Right.
It's a vodka based Kahlua and it is boozy for sure.
Yeah.
I got a, I think it's rum based.
It's also boozy.
But I poured a double and then I think, I think we'll be good by the time we get to the end
of this episode.
I have to like not drink this too quickly because white Russians are easy to pour down
the old gullet there.
So.
Yeah.
They're definitely headache makers.
Yes.
A headache for the guy editing the episode later makers for sure.
Yeah, man.
I guess like, I don't know what you would even kind of call the Big Lebowski.
It's almost like a fairy tale kind of, you know, the way the Sam Elliott, the narrator
kind of pops in and out.
Right.
It's almost like a detective story that has comedic elements and also fantasy elements
for sure.
Yeah.
And it's kind of, it's almost like a slice of life maybe, you know, of like that generation,
you know?
But yeah, I mean, so it starts, it kicks off the bat pretty quickly.
I mean, you get the narration, then he's shopping for his half and half.
And then I think it's right then when he comes home, the rod gets peed on.
It is.
Yeah.
Right away.
And then he's going around to get going, which is nice.
And the whole confusion for those who haven't seen it is Jeff.
Jeff Lebowski.
Sorry, Jeff Bridges, the actor is playing Jeff Lebowski, but there's another Jeff Lebowski
and the Jeff Bridges character goes by the dude or the deuterino and various other forms
of that.
His dude-ness.
And these goons are trying to shake down Jeff Lebowski, who is not the dude Lebowski.
So the name of the movie, The Big Lebowski comes from the wealthier Lebowski, the one
who is not living in a shithole apartment that people could break the door down in quite
easily.
So then he goes to seek retribution for the rug being peed on because obviously you can't
have that anymore.
Because his bowling team convinced him it was a good idea to go seek money for the rug
getting pissed on instead of just cleaning the rug.
And it wasn't really his bowling team.
It was Walter, John Goodman, who convinced him, who's a Vietnam vet, and a Jew because
his ex-wife had him convert to Judaism.
He doesn't roll on Shabbos.
No, he does not roll on Shabbos.
But yeah, so I think if you watch the first time when he's telling Walter and Donnie,
and Donnie's played by Steve Buscemi, and he's telling them and Walter convinces the
dude to go and seek retribution for his rug because obviously the Big Lebowski has money
if he's being shaken down for money.
So that was kind of the thought process.
Right.
That's so funny.
That's so good.
It is.
Well, it's ridiculous on the face, but the nihilists, there's three nihilists, and these
are the guys that beat his door down.
Well, we don't even know if they're nihilists.
We know that they're nihilists because they say they're nihilists later in the film.
That's actually their character name if you look at the list of characters.
So nihilist one is one of the guys from Fargo, Steve Buscemi's partner in crime.
I think he's like a Shakespearean, Northern European actor of some variety.
And then the nihilist number two is Flea.
Yeah, Flea.
And then nihilist three is like some random guy.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I mean, probably not random, but somebody that Mike and I are not as well aware of or
well acquainted with as the other two.
But yeah, so basically it just kind of follows all the events that happened because the rug
got peed on and because Walter convinced the dude to try and find the other Lebowski to
get a new rug.
And Philip Seymour Hoffman is the big Lebowski's personal attendant or something or like butler
or housekeeper.
Secretary, yeah.
Whatever.
Some kind of administrative role.
The big Lebowski is in a wheelchair, disabled.
Yes.
Right.
Because that was one of the funny lines when he's looking at all the pictures on the wall,
Philip Seymour Hoffman showing the dude all these awards that the big Lebowski has won
and he was like, oh, is he disabled?
Yes, he is disabled.
Yeah.
They have a couple inappropriate jokes in the film.
It is rated R.
As you would expect from this comedy team.
Yes.
They also continue their trope of Steve Buscemi's character dying and being in smaller pieces
than the previous film.
Yes.
So.
But we'll get to that in a bit.
But then on his way out, he basically gets called a loser by the big Lebowski because
he doesn't have a job.
He shows up wearing his everyday clothes that the dude wears, which is some variation of
like a sweater or cardigan or bathrobe and these really funky looking sandal things.
Jellies.
And I knew Mike would know.
I did know, sadly enough.
And so he kind of gets a dressing down by the big Lebowski because of course he's like
in a suit and tie and he's like, I worked for all my stuff in my life.
And so on the way out, he meets the big Lebowski's wife, who is got to be what?
40 years his junior.
Right.
So his wife is played by Tara Reed and this is Tara Reed circa 1998, Tara Reed.
Yeah.
So she's in her early 20s, I'm guessing.
And the big Lebowski's supposed to be in his 60s.
And Bunny, fun fact, is from Moorhead, Minnesota.
We find out later.
Which plays in because she offers to suck the dude's dick for a thousand bucks.
Yep.
Immediately.
Yeah.
Right upon meeting.
Well, actually first she wanted him to blow on her toes.
That is true.
Toe nails, which is excellent foreshadowing because they use the same color paint on the
toenail of the toe they send to the dude or the big Lebowski, whoever ends up getting
it initially.
But it winds up with the dude is the point.
And it has the same shade that Bunny was painting on, which led the dude to believe it was Bunny's
toe and Walter wasn't buying it.
But that comes a little bit later in the film.
So she's already trying to be overtly sexual to any man that isn't her husband, basically.
Oh, and she had a higher fee if Philip Seymour Hoffman's character watches.
Because her suck the dude's dick.
What did he say to her?
He goes, well, let me just go find the deer's cash machine.
Yep.
Something like that.
Of course, he doesn't have it.
And I don't know how many people like, it's not really a part of the movie that you remember,
but the dude's landlord comes by in the middle of this or in some part of this film earlier
on and is like, hey, you don't even know he's the landlord yet.
He's asking if the dude will come see his interpretive dance performance.
He's like, yeah, my dance performance is, and the dude's like, yeah, I'll come see it,
man.
And then he goes, oh, and by the way, rent.
So obviously the dude doesn't have the thousand bucks or whatever it is to have Bunny suck
his dick.
No.
Which I think we know before he goes over there or something, right?
Oh, we definitely knew.
He had like a 1970s Cadillac maybe.
And he wrote a check for like 62 cents for his half and half.
Yes, he did.
I forgot about that.
Oh my.
Can't even write checks hardly anymore, which is fine by me.
Oh, I still write checks all the time.
Too much writing all the time.
Oh, you know, literacy, it's bad.
Just plug me into the big Nero link and let me scan my noggin to pay.
Anyway, we're not talking about Nero link.
We're talking about the big Lebowski.
Where do you want to go from there, man?
I guess Bunny gets kidnapped or the big Lebowski believes Bunny gets kidnapped.
They believe that she gets kidnapped and then he receives a ransom note for a million dollars.
Now, this is the first clue that something's going on because the big Lebowski finds our
friend the dude and convinces him to hand over the million dollars for a finder's fee,
which was 20 grand, I think.
Something like that.
Yeah, something like 10% of it.
So it was not a small chunk of change, but not a small chunk of change for the dude.
But you know, you would think.
It was worth it for the dude.
And probably only the dude.
And only the dude.
So he shares this information with his bowling team and Walter, the thorn in everybody's
side.
Is he wrong, though?
Is he wrong?
No, he's not wrong.
He's not wrong.
Walter is convinced that Bunny kidnapped herself and that it's all bullshit and that anybody
could have cut a pinky toe off and that he's like, you want a pinky toe?
I can get your pinky toe by this afternoon.
So he fucks up the money transfer.
And of course, the guys, the nihilists run away with the money, which I suppose we don't
really know that they're the ones doing it yet.
No, but everybody kind of assumed it was.
Yeah, everybody assumed it was.
Some new shit has come to light, man.
You're not privy on the new shit.
No, but that's kind of the whole thing is like Walter has, oh fuck, what does he call
the other bag?
The bag with like his dirty underwear in it.
It makes a bag with dirty underwear and they're going to throw that out the window instead
of the real bag.
And they end up throwing the fake one out, I thought.
They did.
They threw the fake one out, but they never checked what was in the real bag.
No, because it was in the trunk and then his car got stolen or something.
His car got stolen by a 15-year-old.
Yeah, for a joyride.
For a joyride.
Some homeless man used it for a bathroom or something when he picked it up at the, he
impound lot.
The thing was gone, but nobody was overly concerned about that.
And so they came to realize that what was in the original one was also fake, like newspapers
or phone books or something.
Right.
Well, they came to that conclusion because the dude was kidnapped again by Maude Lebowski,
the daughter of the big Lebowski.
The daughter of the big Lebowski, who's still got to be 10 years or more Bunny Lebowski's
senior, right?
Because they even mentioned that somewhere in the film.
I don't remember how much older, but it's Julianne Moore.
Yeah, Julianne Moore is in real life is older than Tara Reid by 10 to 15 years.
And she's the one playing Maude Lebowski.
Yeah, she's the one playing Maude.
Fun fact, one of Maude's buddies was the actor that played Remus Lupin.
He was the filmmaker that laughed, kept on laughing for no reason.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was hilarious.
Oh my God.
What a great introductory scene where the dude is there and he's walking down this dimly
lit hallway and there's a big kind of canvas propped up kind of on the floor.
And then there's like screams and Maude's like naked with paint coming over him on a
zip line.
Yeah.
So she's clearly a weirdo.
Well, yeah, I don't know that there's anyone in here that's not a weirdo.
But we should mention though, well, all this is happening.
So the dude's in all of this stuff, right?
But also the dude, Donnie and Walter, their bowling team made like the playoffs or the
finals or something.
They're in the playoffs.
Yeah, yeah.
They're in the playoffs.
Yeah.
And so this whole time, Walter is mildly intrigued by the rug, the kidnapping and all of this.
But even when the dude gets really like worked up, he's like, well, you're still going to
make it to league, right?
So that's really like Walter's focus in this whole film is I'm interested in this like
side stuff as long as it doesn't interfere with league.
As long as it doesn't interfere with bowling.
Yeah.
Yes.
And then the dude is like, dude, why do you even have that thing here, man?
Like it was my ex-wife, why can't she board it?
Like why do you have your ex-wife's?
And then, you know, when he was saying he doesn't roll on Chavez, he had to, he made
the league change their playoff game because it was on a Saturday and he doesn't roll on
Chavez.
And they're kind of like arch-nemesis bowler Jesus.
It was like, oh my God, what's the deal and stuff.
And he was a pedophile.
Well, I wanted to bring this up.
Was he really?
Because it was one of the fantasy scenes and it was brought to you by Walter.
So it's not a reliable narrator.
Is he wrong?
I don't know.
He's never really wrong about anything that he says.
He's never really wrong.
He's crass about it.
He's not polite about it, but he's not really ever wrong because it turns out that the toe
wasn't from Bunny.
It was from one of the nihilists.
One of the nihilist's girlfriend or a female nihilist, whatever you want to call her.
Yeah.
I don't know that nihilists have significant others if nothing is significant.
Right.
So, oh, we also missed that the dude is kind of racist because he called somebody a Chinaman
and Walter had to correct him.
And one of the best lines ever was, Walter, man, I'm not talking about somebody who built
the railroad.
Yeah, that was classic.
Was that one of the nihilists or?
I can't remember who he called the Chinaman.
I can't remember who he was talking about, but it was funny as fuck is what it was.
Oh my God.
Do you want to keep going through and get to the end of the movie and then maybe we
can talk about our favorite scene or favorite scenes or some of our favorite stuff?
Yeah, why not?
And then we've got a little bit of, we've got some trivia stuff and we can keep kind
of talking about the film a bit.
By now, it's an old enough movie that everybody our age should have seen it.
No judgment if you haven't, but the younger generation might not have and the older generation,
I guess might not have too.
It kind of depends because it really did come out in the late 90s.
Yeah, it came out right at the right time for us to watch it when we were in high school.
That was exactly the right time for us to watch it, exactly the right time.
A lot of the kind of like anything like 80s to maybe early 2000s is kind of really the
sweet spot of modern cinema like Tropic Thunder, I don't know, Team America, things that can
be offensive and they're funny, but they're funny because they're offensive to everybody.
They're not pulling punches.
I'm not saying Big Lebowski is offensive to people, but it's not your stereotypical like
the dudes calling people Chinaman, Walters, obviously using his time in NAMM as a grandiose
blanket statement to get away with a lot of bullshit.
Right.
They're like pulling guns on people in league across in the fall line.
Yeah.
Market is zero, Donnie.
Market is zero.
I would also like to say that this is at like the when the movie got released, it was at
the heyday of bowling, like league bowling in the 90s.
Oh, sure.
Yeah.
And it was a huge, huge industry in the 90s.
It wasn't until like 08 when, well, the dot com bubble and then 08 really knocked the
wind out of the leagues, but a lot of people were league bowling.
When did Kingpin come out?
The mid 90s.
It was right around that same time.
So yeah, so it tracks.
Yeah, yeah.
Bowling was huge.
Somewhere around.
Not that these two movies are similar really in any way, shape or form other than they're
both kind of comedies and kind of have bowling.
They focus on bowling in this one.
They both have bowling in them.
Yeah.
I guess the focus on bowling and Big Lebowski is kind of like the constant backstory and
not really at the forefront, whereas in Kingpin, it really is kind of all about bowling and
the other stuff is kind of the side story.
Right.
Yeah.
And well, yeah, Kingpin had real bowlers in it, whereas the Big Lebowski had actors
and things like that, which is fine.
I got a feel like I feel like there was like that one guy, though, had to have been a real
bowler.
Oh, Big Belly?
Yeah, that guy had to be.
He knew how to bowl because they showed him bowl.
Oh, I know.
Yeah.
That's what I mean.
He must have been some bowler guy.
I don't know.
Yeah.
I can't remember his name.
Maybe he just hit the lane.
I don't know.
There was a professional bowler that was the, what would be called, the film expert on bowling.
Sure.
And he's the one that threw all the balls when you saw the balls rolled on the lane.
And that's why you never saw any of the actors actually throw a bowling ball.
Yeah.
Not that it's hard to do, but you're making a movie.
So anyway, here's my interesting bit of trivia, or one of them is the only character in the
movie, not the only character, right?
But the only bowling character in the movie that we don't see throw a bowling ball ever
is the dude.
Oh, I did not know that.
He never picks up a ball to go and actually bowl.
We never see him bowl in the entire film.
That's hilarious.
He's always just sitting there.
Maybe he's keeping score and stuff.
Sometimes he's keeping score.
Sometimes he's just sitting, but we never see him.
We see Donnie with a ball.
We see Walter with a ball.
We see Jesus with a ball.
We see the other Jesus' teammate with a ball, but we never see the dude pick up his ball
to actually bowl.
That's funny.
I never noticed that.
We even see Jesus lick a ball, which is disgusting.
We see Jesus do a lot of things with the balls that we wish we didn't.
And some of those are the bowling balls and some of those unfortunately are not the bowling
balls.
Yes.
Some of the bowling balls they have in there are legendary too.
Okay.
Yeah.
They used the balls that were popular at that time to kind of showcase it.
The companies probably paid money.
Oh, I'm sure.
Yeah.
But yeah, they were prevalent at the time.
The cigar check, Mike, where are you at?
I think I'm about halfway.
I'm just about to peel off the label, which is phenomenal by the way.
It's got bowling pins and white Russians and sunglasses on it.
Yep.
Yeah.
This label is fantastic.
I'm not quite halfway.
I'm like more like two thirds.
Well, two thirds is more than half.
Not two thirds, one third.
I'm sorry.
I know.
I'm with you.
You know that Burger King was trying to introduce a third pound burger.
Really?
But Americans thought it was smaller than a quarter pound.
So it didn't sell.
And that's true.
That's a true thing.
Like fractions, we don't do it.
That is awful.
So it's still spicy.
Have I noticed any flavor change?
No, you're not wrong.
No, people are dumb.
Really, really dumb.
The best part of that movie is I can just kind of like loudly announce, am I wrong?
No, I agree with you, Mike.
If anything, the spice is kind of mellowed out a little bit, but it might just be because
I'm pairing it with the white Russian and the sweetness of that.
The white Russian definitely dampers that high note of spice down and it really kind
of makes it mellow, like almost buttery.
It's a phenomenal pairing.
Oh, for sure.
I won't complain about it.
That's for sure.
Yeah, no.
This is a lighter wrapper that is spicy.
That's pretty rare.
It is rare.
I think the...
Oh, is it the Kristoff Connecticut we did?
That one was, if I remember correctly, it was fairly spicy.
Maybe not to this level, but it did have some spice.
Yeah, this is so far I can recommend.
We'll see how it finishes.
But for the wrapper alone, I would buy this if I saw it at the store.
Oh, yeah.
And our listener, Matt, got this.
They had a deal, promo deal.
And so you got a box of these plus a bathrobe.
That is fucking awesome.
Yeah.
So I don't know what it ran, but fucking awesome.
We'll have to see if I can get him to put a picture up or something and tag us in it
on Instagram or whatever.
But I don't know where he got it from, but I'm sure if you look up Espinosa the Dude,
you can find that promo somewhere still.
I'm sure they've got a warehouse full of the robes.
Right.
Made somewhere in a country that we don't want to talk about.
This aggression will not stand.
Man.
Oh, man.
There is a ton of one liners in this film.
Oh, it's very quotable.
Very quotable.
So where were we?
Oh, yeah.
The Boski eventually makes it to, let's call him Not Hugh Hefner's house.
Not Larry Flanagan, not Hugh Hefner.
He's like a porno magnet.
Oh, yeah.
What the fuck was his name, though?
I don't recall.
There was something with a T, I thought.
Yeah.
He it was a story that didn't go nowhere, but it was just to explore whether or not
he was responsible.
Jackie Treehorn, man.
He went to Jackie Treehorn's place.
Yeah.
His bunny, of course, was an adult actress on the side.
Yeah.
In all these pornos with the nihilists.
Mm hmm.
So the question was, was Jackie Treehorn behind this scam?
And I pretty much I think they proved that he was not behind the scam.
No, I think they call him the main antagonist of the movie here on his little like villains
Wikipedia.
He's the overarching antagonist of the film.
I don't know if that's true because he drugged the dude and got him arrested by the Malibu
police for sure.
Yeah, that seems pretty antagonistic to me, man.
I think that the nihilists were acting independently of Jackie Treehorn because they're the ones
that like burned down.
So the nihilists were in the film too, though, dude.
They were in the pornos.
Well, I know, man, but that doesn't mean that they were working directly for Jackie Treehorn,
does it?
I mean, I don't know.
It's kind of left in the air.
I don't think it was ever explicitly said that they were working at the behest of Jackie
Treehorn.
You would think that he at least would know that the big Lebowski lived at a certain address
and he wouldn't have sent the nihilists to harass the dude.
Well, but I think maybe he did.
Well, maybe not.
I don't know.
It says Bunny wound up borrowing money from all over town, including from Treehorn.
When Bunny did not pay Treehorn back, he sent two of his thugs to rough up Bunny's husband,
but they went to the dude instead of Jeff.
So he was the main guy and those two guys peed on his rug.
It was Wu, the Chinaman Wu, remember?
That was the reason.
Wu was an Asian American.
Yeah, he was an Asian American.
How dare you call him Chinaman?
Hey, man.
Walter corrected the dude and Walter corrected me.
Okay.
He's not wrong.
But we have to talk about Larry Sellers too because Walter, well, Walter was wrong in
one instance is they tracked the money down, I don't know how, to this Larry Sellers kid.
They found his homework shoved in a seat.
Oh yeah, they found his homework in the car from the thing.
And then they went out and found his house and there was a brand new car, like a Corvette
or something, right, like a fancy car.
And then they were trying to shake him down, shake this Larry kid down like a high school
student, right, in front of his parents, but he wouldn't talk.
And then Walter went out and started breaking every single window and headlight on this
car.
And it turned out to be one of the neighbor's cars.
That's right.
So then the neighbor came out and fucking smashed the dude's car, which already couldn't
open the driver's side door and smelled of like shit and excrement and stuff.
And yeah.
Oh, that's right.
And then, yeah, Jackie Cherryhorn did know it because that's why he wanted to talk to
the dude, because to find out where the money is.
Yeah, the dude was like, look man, the money's at Larry Sellers place, the kid.
We can get him to crack if we go back, but, or something like that.
And then he spiked the thing and that's when one of the better, well, they're all good,
right?
They're all good segments, but the gutter ball sequence.
Yes, gutter balls.
That's great.
There's a fantasy in the dude's mind with Maude and like a full on very cheesy, not
unattractive, but cheesy like Vikings outfit and a whole bunch of sexual innuendos with
bowling balls and bowling pins.
And going down the lane and yeah.
Bowling themed music video, let's call it that.
No, it's not a music video.
Here's what it is.
This is my other bit of trivia.
There is a, it's not as a film director, he's a film director and a choreographer.
And he was born in 1895 and he died in 1976, but he made a ton of movies in the forties
and fifties that had these very elaborate musical production numbers that had a lot
of complex geometric patterns, oftentimes made out of scantily clad women, their legs,
their arms, they had these phenomenal headdresses on them.
The guy's name is Busby Berkeley.
And if you've seen any of those films, like Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, some of those
type of films, right?
The dancing and the musical numbers, all of these things, all you have to do is go and
look up Busby Berkeley Kaleidoscope Dance, some of the other sequences and you'll see
instantly that this gutter ball sequence was an homage to this guy and his crazy geometric.
And he did this stuff back when the cameras were massive and he was putting cameras underneath
women's legs going through them, just like they do in gutter balls, right?
Oh, sure.
That's funny.
That's definitely a Coen Brothers thing to make references to other films and other...
Only a film nerd would do that or get that.
Right.
Especially in 1998.
Yeah, man.
Yeah, yeah.
And then when the dude was coming home from Malibu, because this is where the pornographer
lived, is Malibu and the sheriffs arrest him, rough him up and kick him out of Malibu.
And that's when he gets...
Yeah, don't come here.
Yeah, he gets in the vehicle with a cab driver dressed like New Jack from New Jack City,
like Wesley Snipes is what he reminded me of.
Oh, yeah.
And he was listening to the Eagles.
I fucking hate the Eagles.
I fucking hate the Eagles, man.
You get the fuck out of my car.
And he gets kicked out in the middle of the highway for hating the Eagles.
When does he end up calling Walter on Shabbos?
It was after that, because he needed a ride.
Yeah, he needed a ride from Malibu Beach or wherever the fuck.
Yep.
Right?
It's got to be a dire emergency, dude.
And he's like, it is, it is.
And then Walter's like, well, that's why I picked up, because I knew it was.
Because they're not even supposed to pick up the phone on Shabbos.
Oh, my.
And this is the days of the answering machines.
So the dude's answering machine goes off just constantly.
He never answers the phone.
Oh, yeah.
Well, why would he?
They're all collectors.
They are all debt collectors or deep secretaries.
Not all of them, but it's funny because it's...
Oh, what's his name?
Philip Seymour Hoffman's character, right?
Yep.
He's like, after...
Oh, so the big Lebowski is like, no, man, I'm not going to recompense your rug or something.
I'm not going to reimburse that.
You go pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
And then the dude's like, oh, okay, man.
And he leaves and Philip Seymour comes up and he's like, hey, how'd that go?
And he's like, good.
He said I could take any rug I wanted in the house.
And that's why he ended up actually meeting Maude because the rug he chose was the rug
that Maude got her father for some thing, right?
And so that one had emotional value to her.
And she was like, pick any rug other than that rug or whatever.
That was the whole reason he even met Maude and that whole thing even happened.
But then there was a lot of like Philip Seymour Hoffman playing the nervous business person
type where he's like, oh yeah, we've got a proposition for you.
We're not worried about the rug at all.
You keep the rug, we're happy you have the rug.
We're not worried about the rug.
And Philip Seymour Hoffman calls him the dude and it's hilarious.
Oh, it's so funny.
That's right, dude.
We want your help.
Do you want to know my favorite scene slash sequence of events maybe in the entire film?
That's here.
Okay.
So the dude gets back to his apartment and he's done because there's been two or three
times now people have kicked in his door.
So he goes and he grabs himself like a two by four or something.
It's not quite a two by four.
It's like, I don't know what, a one by two or something.
And he's like, he's spending all this time.
He's got all these nails.
He's pounding all these nails into this strip of wood on his floor, you know, to prevent
the door from kicking in.
And he's doing it, doing it, doing it.
And then somebody opens the door because it opens out instead of in.
So he's been nailing it wrong the whole time.
And that's funny enough in itself.
But then later in the film, he like rushes into his apartment and trips over it and falls.
And that's like classic comedy, my favorite bit in the whole thing.
Because it's like, it's so small.
It's not overstated.
It's very, it's subtly done in my opinion.
Maybe like nowadays with how they have to spell things out for you.
But it was fucking hilarious.
Oh, yeah.
That's well, that's one of the joys of this film is that it is an intelligent film that
you have to pay attention to, to understand everything that's going on.
Even then, there's so much going on that you really don't understand what's going on on
purpose.
It is purposefully complicated so that you just kind of fall into it and let it happen.
Kind of like Sam Elliott showing up for no reason.
And drinking his Sioux City Sarsaparilla.
Which I tried to find and I could not find one in my area.
So there we go.
I've had it.
It's pretty, it's pretty decent.
I have had Sioux City Sarsaparilla and it is good, but I could not find one in any of
my local, local places that sell pops.
Sarsaparilla?
Yes.
Yeah.
Not shocking.
But sometimes you find those things in really weird places.
Oh, I know of a place in my area that sells it, but I wasn't willing to take the drive
and do an hour long round trip to go get it.
It wouldn't be hour long to get it.
A lot of these, you know, where they have a lot of these kind of like novelty sodas
and things are kind of like touristy towns or touristy streets or shops, right?
So yes.
Yes.
You go into some like touristy place and they've just got kind of like a cooler of them for
no reason.
I don't know why, but they do.
That's because the little kids love sugar and they'll wine and then their parents will
get them that because it's cheap.
And instead of spending-
And if they get that, they might as well write the check for a dollar 67 cents instead of
just the 67 cents for the soda, right?
Right.
Exactly.
Yes.
So that's actually the kind of store I was thinking of, but a very specific one.
Oh, sure.
Got it.
That I know has it.
Like I know it has to have it.
So yes.
Yeah.
But anyway, so they get back to the bowling alley and they leave league.
And of course, the nihilists are there and they light the dude's car on fire.
Yeah.
They get into a fight with the nihilists and Donnie, Steve Buscemi's character ends up getting
killed.
There's a whole sequence of events.
I don't know that he got, he didn't get killed.
Well, yeah, he died of a heart attack.
He died of a heart attack.
Yeah.
So it's kind of, I don't know, it'd maybe be manslaughter.
I don't know that it would be straight out murder.
It wouldn't be murder.
It kind of depends.
I don't know the legal definition of if you cause shock to somebody who has a condition,
you know what I mean?
Right.
I mean, if it was a police officer in Washington, DC, it would be considered the T word and
the travesty.
And then they would talk about it on the news for the next four years.
Yeah.
And he was on our radar and everything like that.
Right.
I mean, it's similar to like, if you get into a bar fight and go to like push or punch somebody
and they fall and crack their head open on the bar, the street curb or something and
die.
Like it wasn't the intent to kill them, but it happened.
So it's one of those fuzzy aspects of the law.
But anyway, go on, Mike.
We're not lawyers.
Don't listen to us.
We're not lawyers.
So they have to...
But it's complicated to talk about because it's like they didn't necessarily set out
to kill him.
No.
And I don't know that they actually did kill him, but they set into motion events that
did kill him.
So...
Right.
And this is like where the movie...
This is like really indicative of the whole movie.
They go to the funeral home, which is a mansion.
And it's like all this crazy nonsense in there.
Then of course they want to charge them just tons and tons of money and they refuse to
pay.
So they end up taking Donnie home.
This is our most economical...
Yeah.
Whatever.
It's not a vase, but...
Container.
Yeah.
So somehow they convince the funeral home to...
Receptacle.
It's our most economic receptacle for the remains.
He was smiling that shit eating grin like, ha ha ha, I get to steal your money.
You're going to have to pay me something for this absolute terrible thing.
So they end up taking them home in a coffee can, of course.
And then they try to spread the ashes.
And of course this is a famous scene.
It ends up all over the dude.
Yeah.
Because Walter goes up to the cliff and they're like...
It was funny because you don't really know much about Donnie because he doesn't get to
say much.
Because every time he opens his mouth, Walter's like, shut the fuck up, Donnie.
You don't know what you're talking about.
Shut the fuck up.
So he doesn't really say a whole lot.
And then at the end, Walter gives him a eulogy and he's like, he wanted to be buried here,
we think.
Because he loves surfing so much.
And we're like, what the fuck?
We've never seen Donnie do anything other than bowl and be interrupted by Walter.
So it's funny because you don't know anything about the character.
And then Walter's in the front and he dumps it over the cliff, but the wind is coming
up over the cliff and doesn't blow it into Walter's face, but right into the dude.
And of course the dude has a beard and they have a lot of fun with his beard, with the
white Russians and drinking and stuff like that too.
So do you want to talk about the other PI for a bit?
Oh yeah, yeah, go ahead.
Well, it's this guy following the dude and he kind of notices him because he's driving
like I don't know, a bright blue Volkswagen Beetle or something, right?
And so the dude's like, quit following me, man.
And it turns out it's like a PI.
I don't remember who hired him.
He didn't even, he wasn't even hired, was he?
He was just trying to like watch the dude.
I think he was hired by Maude to watch him.
And then he was under the impression that the dude was a PI and he was really impressed.
Yeah, with how he was piecing everything together.
But I don't know that he was really hired by Maude.
Maybe he was.
I know Maude, because one of Maude's people hit the dude or knocked the dude out and Maude
wanted him to go to this doctor and he's like, oh no, it's fine.
And so he finally goes and he gets like the full, full workup because she wants to conceive
a baby.
And so she sleeps with Lebowski after he comes back being clean and having strong swimmers
or something.
And then he was like, oh, that's why the doctor's physical was more.
So thorough.
Yep.
No, it's great.
He's got to be messed up because he's constantly smoking doobies and drinking white Russians
throughout the whole thing.
Yeah, man.
Like constantly.
I know people like that though, and they're perfectly functioning most of the time.
You know what I mean?
Oh, sure.
For sure.
As long as they don't have anger issues.
So I think that's where it kind of goes off the rails.
If you're not like a happy-go-lucky drunk or if you don't know how to just maintain
a certain level of drunkenness, then it becomes an issue.
I think it's still an issue.
I'm not advocating that you should go out and try and sustain a BAC of a certain level,
but people do it and they're not like the angry alcoholics that beat their wives or
get into fistfights and bar fights and things like that.
But they got stuff, man.
If they can't abide.
That's just like your opinion, man.
I think why I like this film an awful lot.
It's funny.
It's irreverent.
It has callbacks to older movies, other movies made by people that actually know how to make
films.
It's a film made for people who want to watch a film.
Yes.
They give you just enough details through the thing.
But the beauty of the whole thing is a lot of the time, you're just feeling like the
dude.
You're like, well, that just happened.
Okay.
Where are we going from here?
And then you can't piece it together until Walter is like, no, man, that's not her toe.
That's not her toe.
What's the same shade of toenail polish?
That's not her toe.
So...
Yeah.
So literally, and I guess we'll spoil the end for everybody, Bunny was just off whoring
around, disappeared, didn't tell anybody.
And then the nihilists knew this, so they faked a abduction and turned in a fake toe.
Yes.
And the bigger twist is the Big Lebowski knew this as well, because it turns out he doesn't
have any money and he was spending the foundation's money, the million dollars.
And so he put a fake...
He put the fake money in the thing because he wanted to pocket the million dollars.
So he also knew it was a fake thing.
And he just wanted to pocket the million dollars because his allowance from Maude or from the
wife that died, right?
And set up the foundations, he wanted more of his allowance or something.
And he was playing big at the beginning of the film with giving Bunny an allowance to
live on, which he probably was, right?
But he was trying to pretend like a big successful businessman.
And here he is.
He doesn't have any controlling interest in any of the foundations.
He can't do anything.
He hasn't made anything of himself by himself.
He's only there because his ex-wife put him there or his dead wife, whatever.
I don't know what happened, but...
She died.
Yeah.
But so he was trying to run a scam on everybody too.
And so that's why he wanted Big Lebowski...
Or not Big Lebowski, he wanted the dude to do everything because here's some stoner,
loser guy that's going to go give the money or whatever.
And then he's going to take the fall for it because it's a fake...
It's not even real money in there.
It's a phone book or something, right?
So he's going to go give them fake money.
They're going to kill the dude, which is going to just get this guy away from the Big Lebowski
because the Big Lebowski is repulsed by the dude.
And it's a win-win because then the Big Lebowski gets the extra million dollars.
Right.
Yeah, it was a big workaround.
Yeah.
And then the dude ends up worse off for interacting with any of these people other than getting
to sleep with Maude.
I guess that's his one...
I mean, that's got to be a win, right?
I mean, he had the whole gutter ball dream sequence.
So yeah, obviously he won.
Yeah.
I mean, Julie Anner is a very attractive woman.
So he got something out of it.
Yeah.
And weird naked zipline painting aside, you can be scared and aroused.
It's a thing.
Yeah, for sure.
In the case of Jeff Lebowski, for sure.
Yeah.
The dude abides, man.
Yeah.
And it's funny because the bowling is so integral to Walter and Walter's motivations.
And when the last scene of the movie, Sam Elliott's back there again and he's like complimenting
the dude on he likes his get up and stuff.
And the dude is like, yeah, man, I dig your style too.
And they're bowling.
He likes the cut of his jib, my friend.
Yeah.
Yes.
And which is exactly what a cowboy would say, right?
Because they use jibs all the time to go across the desert and shit.
But they don't even tell us if they end up winning the tournament or not.
No.
Which is hilarious.
And also 100% in line with the rest of the film.
You know what I mean?
Oh, for sure.
It's of pivotal importance to Walter that they compete in this thing and everybody's
there for the thing.
But then they're back at the bowling alley and that's just the end of the movie.
So there you go.
Yep.
Back in the day when bowling alley bars were places where people would actually go to drink.
Yes.
Yes, indeed.
Where you at with your stick, Mike?
I got only two inches left and it's getting a little like not pleasant.
I got two and a half left, something like that.
It's OK.
I mean, I'm still good.
I've been smoking a lot slower than you abnormally.
Yeah, abnormally.
So I, you know, but also abnormally, my white Russian is gone, man.
Mine is as well.
His aggression will not stand.
Yeah.
I need a mod, I need a mod to come back and fix me a Caucasian.
Yeah.
So the reason why I knew Bunny was from Moorhead is because she was a runaway, apparently.
Yeah.
So the insinuation.
They showed a picture, they showed a picture of her homestead and wasn't the dude like,
oh, make anyone homesick or something.
Because it was like a flat open field and a barn.
It's like the worst looking photo ever of anything.
It wasn't even of like a cow.
It was just a flat desolate field with a barn on it.
That is correct.
And it does look just like the farmland outside of Moorhead because Moorhead is part of the
Red River Valley and that is like not the flattest place on earth, but it's adjacent.
It's flat adjacent.
Yeah.
It's pretty boring.
All your economical receptacles in Moorhead.
Yeah.
So I thought that was great.
So anyway, the insinuation was that Bunny was underage.
I'm going to guess.
Because you can't be a runaway and be 18.
So which is hilarious.
Yeah.
We don't know how old she was at the time of the events in the film necessarily, but
we can pretty much imply that when she married the big Lebowski, she was potentially underage.
Yes.
Which adds even more.
And she was too drunk.
Well, she drunkenly crashed her car at the entryway.
Yeah, I remember that.
Yeah.
When she came back.
Yeah.
And then Philip Seymour Hoffman was like, she returned and we're happy or something
like that.
It was just...
All of his lines were classic.
Oh, yeah.
Another one of those actors that you wish were still alive.
Oh, yeah.
He was a gem for sure.
And it's crazy when you look at the budget, because it was a relatively low budget film.
Yeah.
And the number of actors who were very famous that wanted, clearly wanted to be in it.
Yes.
That was a different era.
It was a different era.
And that was an era when you could make a name for yourself as a director or director
team as these are.
And people would actually want to work with you because your films were so different.
Oh, right.
And think like early Tarantino.
And you could say what you want about Tarantino.
Some people still think he's the greatest thing ever.
I like a lot of his films, but I don't know, Hateful Eight, I didn't like as much as I
liked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
But I don't like either of those as much as I like Inglorious Basterds or Kill Bill or
Reservoir Dogs, you know what I mean, or Pulp Fiction.
So say what you will.
I've never seen the Hateful Eight or Kill Bill, but I did see Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Once Upon a Time upon, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
You did another Caucasian man.
Yeah, I know.
I've had one and it's like too many.
Am I wrong?
Man.
So, yeah, so it's got Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Julianne Moore, Steve Buscemi, David Huddleston,
who is the big Lebowski.
Yeah.
Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Yeah.
Tuturo.
John Seymour Hoffkin.
Sam Elliott.
Yeah, Sam Elliott.
I'm not sure who he is.
Yeah, he's a big Lebowski.
Yeah.
And I remember this guy.
I don't know if you remember the guy who did the film.
I remember, I think he was the guy who made the film and the end credits for Buster's
And I don't know if you remember the guy who made the film.
Yeah.
Yeah, I remember him as well.
Yeah, he's the guy who made the film.
Yeah, he made the film.
Yeah.
And it's like all these famous people and they made it for $15 million back in the day.
Now it'd be a $200 million.
Oh, easily.
And they'd have to make it.
And what was the run time on Big Lebowski?
Do you happen to have that up if you're looking at stats?
Yeah.
I'll check it out.
117 minutes.
Yeah, so just shy of two hours.
And if you made it today, it would be a 2 and 1 half.
I mean, for that budget and that star power,
it'd have to be like a 2 and 1 half, three hour long movie.
You know what I mean?
Oh, for sure.
And it'd have CGI instead of having actual artistry, right?
Yeah, well, I mean, let's be fair.
There weren't a whole lot of stunts required for the film.
But the gutter ball sequence needed quite a bit
of choreography, for sure.
Right.
And there was some pyrotechnics.
But outside of that, there wasn't really
gunfights or fistfights or anything
that needed overly drastic.
But it was an exciting film still.
The ferret that they called a marmot.
I know, I love that.
A marmot.
Oh, and I love the fact that the dude is just straight up
taking a bath.
Oh, he's drinking a Caucasian, smoking a dupe,
smoking a dupe.
Yeah.
Got to have Roach Clip in a doobie, you know?
Oh, yeah.
And I always like how his joints are always right at the end.
You never see a light one.
No, he's not.
They're already lit and already to the bottom.
They're already cached.
He could be like the Roger Miller in King of the Road.
Trailers for sale or rent, smoking old Stogies
that I have found, or whatever.
People picking stuff up, smoking them from the street.
Not that you'd find a whole bunch of doobies in the street.
But he was in California, so.
Right.
You never know, man.
No, it's great.
And The Jesus is epic.
Yeah, The Jesus.
I was going to say, though, this type of film
I really enjoy because it's not really,
I don't know that you would call it a quest film.
It's kind of a quest film.
You know, like he's just kind of there
and he's an unwilling participant mostly
throughout the quest.
He gets motivations throughout the quest to see it through.
But it's kind of a quest film.
It doesn't take place in like one night.
It takes place over time.
But another one of the films that I really
liked that's similar to that is, holy shit,
it was just in my head.
And you know what, kids?
That's what drinking a double Caucasian will do to you.
Right.
After Hours.
After Hours is a 1985 film.
And I believe it's a Scorsese film.
And it's got, I'm just fucking pulling it up.
Yeah, Martin Scorsese.
And it stars Griffin Dunn and Rosanna Arquette.
And Tommy Chong is in it.
Julie Gar is in it.
And she plays a phenomenal role.
But it's basically like he goes to visit a friend or somebody.
And then he has to spend all night trying to get back home.
And so the film takes place over one night.
And his quest is, he's got to get back home.
And it's kind of like a slice of life or like a quest type
of film.
And he meets these absolute ridiculous people
trying to get back home.
And there's people that offer to try and help him,
like Ola Walter, that end up creating more trouble for him.
Ola Walter.
So it's a very kind of like niche type of movie.
But I very much enjoy them because it's
so kind of surreal almost.
That's probably the best word.
It's kind of like a surreal almost like nightmare.
Like Eyes Wide Shut is kind of like that a little bit.
Oh, yeah.
There's a lot of films from this era that were like that.
Yeah.
And I love that style of film because it's
very like atmospheric and moody.
Not that this one's super duper moody.
But it's got its own kind of like vibe and mystery.
This is when you could go and see a film at the movie theater
for like $4, $5.
And they would let you basically anybody
could go in and watch a rated R movie.
They didn't care.
It was the 90s, man.
At least not at my local theater.
They didn't give a shit.
I've never been fucking carted at a movie theater.
No, no.
Either of them.
Never, ever.
Nowadays, even with the online stuff, if you look old enough
and you buy the ticket online, what does it ask you?
When's your birthday?
Just like all the naughty sites, the gutterball sites.
You know, when's your birthday?
Or even just to bring it more relevant, cigar sites.
If you want to go on pipesandcigars.com or Cigars Daily
or any Rocky Patel website or Espinosa website,
they ask you, are you over 21?
And say, yes, no.
Yep, I'm over 21 for sure.
Let me look at all these cigars, man.
You have to do that to go to sporting goods websites now,
too.
What?
I was recently on Cabela's.com, and they
had an age verification to be on there, which is crazy.
Do they have to do that on websites for sex reassignment
surgery?
I don't want to talk about that.
There weren't any beautiful ladies.
I meant ear piercing sites.
Tanning bed sites, man.
Tanning beds.
We did forget one actress that everybody
would know that was in it, which was Asia Carrera was in it.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
Who was, well, all the listeners know who that is.
But anyone who doesn't, she was one of the hot chicks
from the 90s in a lot of movies.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, there's people you would recognize.
Yeah.
If you don't know any of the names,
we're telling you hopefully you know some of them.
But if you don't, that's no big deal.
But you would definitely recognize them.
Oh, yeah.
The other interesting tidbit that I know about the film
is a lot of the dude's wardrobe came from Jeff Bridges'
personal closet.
Oh, really?
I didn't know that.
That's hilarious.
Yeah.
So they saved a lot of money on costuming.
Yeah, a movie like this, it would be made,
but it wouldn't be made by a major studio
and released to theater.
It would be like Sharks in the Corn kind of shit.
Yep.
Well, which is great.
If you haven't seen Sharks in the Corn, you should watch it.
But another, like the 90s had a lot of these really good flicks
like this, like something about Mary, which is also one
you wouldn't really, because they
have a whole truck stop gay sex thing in there, right?
So you're not going to get that kind of stuff these days.
They're more, they're not trying to be offensive.
They're just trying to be irreverent, I guess,
is maybe more so.
I think the motivation.
Right.
It's comedy through the lens of something that's different
and outrageous and something that most people are not
going to really, they know about it, but not directly.
What's sort of that?
They've heard about it or they've heard like,
and exaggeration is a key component in a lot of comedy.
And I know a lot of stand-up comics recently of late
have kind of gotten thrown under their bus
because they're exaggerating their stories
for comedic effect.
And they're like, well, that didn't actually truly happen.
He's exaggerating that.
That's the whole point of comedy.
That's the point.
It's not supposed to really happen necessarily.
It is not the literal truth.
And so in the 90s or whatever, the truck stops
were like, this is before same-sex marriage was
legalized and stuff.
And it was still, it was the height of the satanic panic,
which we talked about on the show previous episode.
And so truck stops being homosexual hotbeds
was kind of a sensationalized media story.
And something about Mary kind of took that as a comedic gag
in the thing to shock the probably what, upper middle
class white people, right, who've never been to a drug
stop and kind of give them something to laugh at
or something.
I don't know what.
Or to shock them.
You know, who knows what?
It's not one of those films trying
to make people comfortable.
Yeah, truck stops were shady at that time.
Just like bowling alleys were shady at that time.
Also, Cameron Diaz takes jizz and spikes your hair with it.
So you know, I mean, humor was definitely more allowable
back then, let's say.
Yeah, it wasn't supposed to be literally true, right?
You can't punch down and be funny.
Like, OK.
Well, Ed, what's his name?
In something about Mary, the guy that
was pretending to be using the crutches to walk,
he was pretending to be disabled, which now
would get you canceled.
Oh, for sure.
For sure.
So I mean, it's not one of those films that's
like run by the DEI sensors or what have you.
Tom Hanks recently said that he regrets doing Philadelphia.
But he didn't mention Bussum Buddies,
the entire TV show where he and his cohort
dressed up as women to live in the female apartments
because it was cheaper than living in the man apartments.
In Philadelphia, he has a problem with, oh, we
watched the whole series.
It was great.
It was funny as fuck.
Bussum Buddies, one of Tom Hanks' first roles,
he and his partner cross-dressed to live in the,
not for nefarious reasons other than the female apartments,
it was a female only apartment.
And it was significantly cheaper than any other apartment
in town.
And so they decided to dress up as women
and take on these female names.
And so the whole thing is hilarious
because they have to, when their neighbors come over,
they have to put it back on their get up
and pretend to gossip and do all the female stuff.
And then, of course, some of the women
find out that they're men.
And they help them go along with this
so that the superintendent of the building
doesn't find out that they're men.
Sure.
But I can't believe he would say he
regrets doing Philadelphia and not even bring out
Bussum Buddies.
That's fucking hilarious.
That reminds me of the people who
attacked the Bud Light commercials back in the day
for having the guys that dressed up
as women for ladies night.
Oh, yeah.
Well, and now, isn't ladies night,
you can't do ladies nights anymore because they finally
decided that that was actually sexist?
I think that they canceled ladies night because men
stopped going to the bars on ladies night.
OK.
Yeah, I don't think it was like a.
And ladies don't really go to bars a whole lot.
I mean, in the same droves that men do.
Right.
Yeah, the concept behind ladies night
was to get the women in the bar and then the men would
come in and buy drinks.
Yeah.
And I think what ended up happening
is that the men who are going to bars
no longer go to bars to pick up women.
Yeah, because that's dangerous.
I don't want to say it's the dumbest thing to do,
but there's better places to pick up women than the bar.
Yeah, that's high risk behavior in modern society.
Well, I think it's probably always been high risk behavior,
but it's less acceptable now.
Right.
It was normalized high risk behavior at one time,
and now it is frowned upon.
The risks to the man are well known.
Let's put it that way.
Yes.
And even the risks to the women in some extent.
Right.
Oh, well, yeah, there's definitely risk for women.
If you're going to pick up people at a bar,
I mean, gender does make a difference.
But if you're going to a bar to pick up a lover, let's say,
it's just kind of a high risk behavior
because you don't know what the other one is like
or if it's lots of different things.
I don't know.
I don't do that.
I've not done that.
I've never picked up a woman from a bar.
I have picked up a woman that I met at a bar,
but not picking her up at the bar.
We'd started our conversation at a bar.
Oh, sure, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It wasn't like a.
It wasn't one of these newfangled one night stand
type of things.
No, it was not a one night stand situation.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
I knew her because we both went to the same bar.
Yes.
Not because.
I've seen you in here before.
What's a woman like you doing in a bar like this?
Yes, yeah.
She worked at the bar.
You must bowl.
You must bowl, for this is a bowling alley
and only secondarily a bar.
Yes.
Something like that.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Mike, am I wrong?
Am I wrong?
No, you're not wrong.
I'm just kidding.
I'm just fucking with you.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
We were both there and not because we were there
to pick somebody up at the bar.
No.
You wanted to pick up the eight and nine pin
from your previous roll, right?
I wanted to throw heavy balls around.
Yes.
I don't roll on Chavez.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
I did like the picture that I took of the cigar
in my bowling ball's mouth.
Oh, man, it was great.
I loved all your pictures.
It took me a while to realize there
was a doobie in all of them.
Yes, there's a doobie and a hair clip.
Because I was mostly like, I fucking
hate the Eagles because you put a big Eagles vinyl down.
I didn't even think about that.
I have Eagles vinyl sitting right
by where I took the picture.
Ha, ha, ha, ha.
But I was like, oh, I got to get my bowling ball for sure.
I got to get the white Russian and the cigar in there.
And the rug, of course.
So you definitely threw more from the movie
into your picture than I did in mine.
Well, yeah, because I mean, I have a hair clip for bowling,
just like the doobie.
Yes.
Yeah, man.
So I had to go down to my bowling bag
and grab my ball and my fucking hair clip.
Yeah.
What was the track he was listening to in the car
when he was pounding on the roof?
Oh, I don't know.
It was Credence.
It was Credence, yeah, because he had a Credence tape stuck
in his car.
Yeah, a Credence cassette.
And he made that in the police report.
And yeah, that one police guy, he
was in Boston Legal as one of the lawyers, the taller
German-looking one.
But he's been in a lot of other films, too.
And I like that actor.
So there's definitely big names in here.
And even secondary names.
This is the kind of movie that just doesn't get made anymore
because it had all these people who
they wanted to be in the movie just so they
could be in the movie.
It had nothing to do with making money.
Yeah.
Yeah, but I think if you took the residuals, right,
on all the stuff, you would have come out ahead
because The Big Lebowski is hands down a cult classic.
Oh, it's in the Library of Congress.
Like, yeah, man.
So is Song of the South, man.
Well, it won an Academy Award.
So.
Yeah.
And it had the two first African-Americans
who ever won an Academy Award in it.
Yeah.
So I know we've talked about that endlessly about how that's,
I mean, I find that problematic.
But what do I know, right?
That's just my opinion.
Well, that should be out.
I mean, that's what I mean.
It should have a nice restoration on Disney Plus
is what it should have.
Like, why hide behind it?
There's nothing.
We talked about it.
We have a whole episode on it.
Go listen to that.
Yeah.
I want to talk a little bit more about the cigar
because I'm about to that point where I'm
thinking about stopping it.
I have an inch and a quarter left, and it's getting sour.
Yep.
See, so when I had about the two inches, give or take,
it was sour.
I kind of slowed down.
And I'm still smoking it, but I really
shouldn't be because my mouth kind of has
that puckery taste to it.
So I think this definitely kind of falls into the gurkha
category where the end, like the last bit of it, is not ideal.
I don't know if slowing down would.
Oh, go on, Mike.
Oh, go ahead.
No, go ahead.
I was going to say, I don't know if smoking the last bit
slower would fix it.
I know that for over 2 thirds of it, up until the last two
inches, it was really good, especially if you
pair it with the right Russian.
I loved the spice at the beginning.
Really like it.
It's really, really good.
The last little bit, not a huge fan.
The last couple inches, we've had that before in cigars.
It's not unusual.
It's not uncommon.
I smoked it slower than you, so the bitterness
didn't really come in until probably an inch and a half,
maybe an inch and a quarter.
Had a nice spice to it.
I was really impressed with that flavor profile.
And I was also impressed that it paired with a white Russian.
So they definitely put some thought into it.
Also, the wrapper is just awesome.
Yeah, it is great.
And I like a good package, for sure.
Mike loves the package.
It is basically, if you took all of the stuff
from the gutter ball, like mind sequence, fantasy sequence,
and could put it into a wrapper that
evoked the feel of the movie.
It's an off-white.
It's like a beige wrapper.
I took a close-up picture for the Instagram.
And it's all earth tones.
It's like a yellow, a brown, and I don't know,
is it kind of a red maybe?
There's a little bit of red in there or something.
These are the colors of bowling alleys
that were built in the 1970s.
That is the color.
Perfect.
I'm glad that they're able to do this.
I'm glad they can call it what they call it.
There's probably a reason they don't call it the Big Lebowski,
because they don't want to go the same way as the Consigliere,
the CAO Consigliere with the Sopranos,
because they have to rename and kind of rebrand that cigar.
I think they called it the Sopranos cigar or something.
They did, yeah.
So I'm glad that they did this in a way
that either they worked it out with the filmmakers.
I don't know that the filmmakers would honestly care.
But again, it's more the studios,
unless the actual filmmakers, the lawyers and stuff,
who have the rights to the things.
But I don't know.
If you see these and you like the Big Lebowski,
you like White Russians every once in a while,
you don't have to love them all the time.
I'd recommend it.
I see you gave it a four, and I gave it a four as well.
So this is definitely a good stick.
Yeah, I recommend it.
If I saw this in a lounge, I would buy it for sure.
Yeah, yeah.
Worse.
It is a recommend on my part.
Yes.
Thank you, Matt, for giving us these cigars to smoke.
And hopefully you and all of our other listeners
enjoyed a little walk down memory lane with the Big Lebowski.
Thanks for listening.
Be safe.
Have fun.
Việt VHK