Welcome to Nice Ashes, episode two.
This is Nate.
And Mike.
And what are we smoking tonight, Mike?
We have Punch 1840 Diablo's.
This one, yeah, I've not had it before either, but it's got the same, I can't remember what
you called it, like the box, the box squish.
The box press, yep.
Box press looks to be six and a half, seven inches long.
Hard to tell the gauge, but I'm gonna guess it's a 60.
So people can look it up online better than I can tell them.
I'm just looking with my eye.
That is true.
My wrapper here says 56 maybe.
58, I don't know, it's hard to see.
The good news is the snowbank I was sitting in last episode has now melted.
And I was able to get my fire going out on the patio and it's 50, 60 degrees out here
still.
So should be a lot less teeth chattering this time.
Yes.
My little label doesn't have any of that information.
I must have ripped it like a fool.
Well I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but the wrapper appears to be quite a bit darker
than the diesel, I mean than the flathead.
Yes.
I would say so, yes.
I'm lighting this one with a match as well.
Okay.
I'm using my Jetline 3 burner lighter with the mirror on the little cap that I like so
much.
Also they don't sponsor us, nor do matches, I guess.
No, no, no.
Diamond matches do not sponsor us.
But all in all a great brand of matches if you're in the market.
Yes.
It reminds me of, we talked about this a little bit last episode and I talked to you afterwards.
You've never heard of King Cobra JFS.
No I have not.
King Cobra is an internet famous lolcow and he always says not a sponsor.
Always.
And there's another group or another YouTube video group, YouTube content creators I suppose.
YouTubers, there we go.
I'm aging myself a little bit.
The people that put videos on YouTube, that site where you put videos on.
But they say that to Good Mythical Morning and they do a lot of weird stuff.
But I like watching them when they kind of do the candy taste tests.
They do blind taste tests of different candies or fast food, chicken sandwiches, things like
that.
But they quite often say not a sponsor.
Okay, Good Mythical Morning is actually big though.
Yeah, yeah they're big.
And for those of us listeners, not me, not me.
But when you say lolcow or whatever, that means something.
Oh yeah, so a lolcow is somebody who is not aware of how ridiculous they are.
So they go around and they make YouTube videos typically and it's hilarious because it's
just psychotic.
But they don't think they are.
They think that everybody else is crazy and they usually interact pretty strongly with
their troll fans.
Okay.
Yes, and that's where a lot of it comes from.
So I suppose time will tell if we're lolcows or not.
Right.
Well, Ken Cobra, you know, he's like a kid with Asperger's.
Well, he's not a kid.
He's 30 years old, but he's got Asperger's.
And he makes videos in a shithole apartment and he practices magic with his wand.
And he'll have like a Mountain Dew and he'll say, not a sponsor.
Okay.
Classic.
Yep.
So I think I'm about, if my eyes judge correctly, about a quarter of an inch into this so far,
this Diablo.
And I think the initial quarter inch on this has so far been more impressive than the first
quarter inch of the flathead.
Okay.
So what do you mean?
Well it tastes more full.
It tastes more rounded out.
Whereas with the other one, the one we smoked last episode, you know, it really kind of
took to that middle part to get to the real sweet spot.
And that first inch and a half, I remember you used that measurement quite a bit last
episode.
So it was probably cold where you were too.
I don't know.
I don't dislike this first, these first few puffs that I've taken.
Interesting.
So I found them to be harsh and overwhelming almost.
If you can believe it.
On this one?
Yeah.
Oh.
Yeah.
I'm about a quarter inch down as well.
And it is intense.
It is intense, but I like the flavor.
It's bold.
Like I like it.
It's very bold.
I'm definitely not pumping hard on it.
It's slow puff.
It tastes very nice.
It does.
I quite like this one.
We bought this one at the same time together, did we?
Yep.
I think at the-
Yeah.
At the Tobacco Grove.
Yes.
Also not a sponsor, but it would be great to get them on the show at some point because
they've got like the best humidor I've seen.
You walk in there and I wear glasses and they instantly fog because they keep it at the
appropriate humidity in there.
But it's a fairly large room for their humidor.
Yes.
It was very big.
And it's rare that they allow you to smoke cigars in their shop.
They actually have like a lounge.
I don't know about how rare, but I haven't seen that before.
I mean, you're not going to see that at like a smoke shop that also smells vapes, but their
sign on their door is great because they say, we don't sell cigarettes, vapes, e-juice or
anything.
We only sell cigars and pipe tobacco.
Yep.
It's- so we had a cigar shop up here when I was growing up and you could smoke inside.
When Minnesota decided to do the smoking ban, they kind of killed a lot of that.
Yeah.
Not really on purpose, but the exemptions for cigar shops, proper cigar shops were extremely
limiting.
Yep.
So down in the Metro, I really only know of two offhand, which is Anthony's in uptown
and then Tobacco Grove, which is crazy for a city that has, or a metropolitan area that
has two and a half million people.
There's only two cigar shops you can smoke inside.
Yep.
What we did talk about last time, you don't really see a lot of people out and about smoking
cigars.
No, you don't.
Like you might have decades ago.
Right.
It's not as popular as it once was.
At least not for a daily type of thing, for sure.
Yeah.
And so, I don't smoke cigarettes, but I have smoked vapes every now and then a couple of
times.
And I'll tell you, when I'm watching a movie and the main character is vaping the whole
movie, there's just something about it that kind of takes me out of the movie that I don't
get when they smoke a cigarette or even a cigar or pipe.
It's like they've got the...
What movie are you talking about, Nate?
Oh man.
It's the one with Rosamund Pike and it's got...
Oh man, I just watched them in Cyrano.
Peter Dinklage?
Peter Dinklage.
Yeah.
Yep.
Okay.
And the whole premise of the movie is Rosamund Pike is a healthcare advocate for old people,
but she gets them committed to these old folk homes and swindles them out of their inheritance
money by working with the doctors to rack up the medical charges so that their inheritance
goes to that and then they split that.
So she's a lovely young lady.
Yeah.
But it's a fantastic movie.
But in there, I believe, I think she...
It's not so frequent that it's distracting, but I've seen some other movies where the
main characters are just always puffing on their vape and it's like, oh man.
But maybe that's how prevalent it was with cigarettes too.
And I just don't know because I grew up before they banned smoking in Perkins.
Oh, it was.
It was.
I've watched a lot of movies from the 50s and the 60s.
It's like a cigarette advertisement.
They'll have John Wayne smoking a Marlboro Red and the Marlboro will be showing onto
the top of his little pocket that he put it in, stuff like that.
Yeah, but that's historically accurate for cowboys.
Absolutely.
Yes.
So before I lose too much light out here, I know last time we promised we'd talk a little
bit about the Black, Red, Next, and White Liberals book that I finished reading and
will soon be sending your way.
I listened to it on Audible.
It was free.
It came with my subscription.
Excellent.
Well, and what did you think?
I thought it was good.
I wanted to listen to it again, to be honest with you, to hear more notes.
Yep, exactly.
I wanted to criticize them.
Well we can.
We can do both.
In the earlier section, he was describing Black Redneck culture and White Redneck culture,
and he kind of was railing or not railing, pushing forward the idea that White Redneck
culture had diminished.
And I'm not sure if White Redneck culture has diminished because-
I know the White Redneck gods have diminished because we took all the statues down of them.
Right, but the fact that they had statues to their gods in almost every small, hellhole
southern town, they got very upset about it.
Yeah, I guess that's a good point.
I don't know that they have diminished either.
I spent five years in Oklahoma going to college and then working.
And being from Wisconsin, Minnesota area, I got called Yankee quite a bit for people
from a state that wasn't in the Civil War.
Oh, as you know, I worked at the oil field for many years and I have friends from the
South and I worked with a lot of guys from the South.
I've been called a square head.
They always want me to pronounce words for them because they think it's funny, which
is normal.
But the square head thing caught me off guard.
I'd never heard that until I moved there and worked with Southerners.
I haven't heard that until tonight.
Oh yeah, that's a, I guess a slur against Scandinavians.
Well, color me offended, good sir.
I know.
I was like, I'm barely Scandinavian, 12.5%.
Yeah, I think, you know, I'm Norwegian and German.
And then, you know, the various kind of European mix sprinkled in.
But even with some of these racial slurs, like I don't, I haven't looked them up because
I don't want Google to target ads to me with like the Confederate flag boxers and things
like that.
But, you know, they, I don't know what some of these words mean that people call other
other races.
Like I don't know where it came from or why that's what we call them.
Not we call them, but.
Right.
Well, yes.
But a lot of the, in my experience, a lot of slurs are regional.
They're not national.
I mean, obviously we got the big, the big group that everybody knows.
Don't you say it.
We're not saying nothing.
But.
So to get back on point, Thomas Sowell is the one who wrote Black, Rednecks and White
Liberals.
And I thought, you know, it's a series of what, you know, what five or six essays, I
suppose.
But I thought it was very interesting because it kind of looks at things from a further
distance at the start.
And then kind of he drills down to different specifics and different reasons why certain
things may or may not have happened.
But I know on the last episode we were talking about, like imperialism.
And so his last, his last essay in here is called History versus Visions.
And basically I don't want to, you know, this is just my summation of it, that it goes into
way more depth and he's way more eloquent in getting his point across than what I am.
But basically he's saying that by living in modern times as we are stuck right now and
looking back at history, he is making the argument that certain people, perhaps in power
or whatnot, have colored history with their vision of what they want history to enable
them to do today.
Would you say that's kind of a fair assumption or a fair like summation of that last, that
last chapter?
Yeah, I would say it's, it's, it's pretty fair.
I think his criticism of policies that we've had never really addressed like elements of
hard work and personal responsibility.
Yeah, I think the biggest complaint that I have against this whole entire book is there's,
there's not a call to action.
There's not a solution or a resolution really other than just kind of a generic, like everybody
should be educated.
Sure.
Yes.
In these things.
But that doesn't, it doesn't really give you a path of like, well, if I want, you know,
equality to work, if I want things to be better, you're not going to find that in here.
I mean, maybe, maybe it will, maybe it will like trigger you to find something or come
up with something.
So, I mean, I guess there's that.
Sure.
It's potentially describing a way that we got to where we're at.
Yeah.
And you can say the same thing about like algebra.
Like algebra is not going to tell you how to solve it, but you know, we can use that
and go to the moon, you know.
Right.
And when I mean hard work, so I wrote a little screed about white rednecks.
It's not that the white redneck doesn't work hard, quote unquote.
It's that they're not smart.
They're not, they just, they don't value using your brain to solve problems.
Yeah, it's very more of a brawn.
Yeah, they'll grab 10 guys to lift a big pump up instead of going and grabbing one skid
steer and one strap, you know.
So they use 10 guys where they, when they're taking five times as long, you know, they're
just slow because they don't want to use machines.
You know, they don't want to look weak.
Yeah.
They want to, you know, get her done.
You know how many times I've heard that in my life.
It's like, no, well, it depends on how much you've listened to Larry the cable guy is
really what.
Oh yes.
They're all fans of Larry the cable guy.
Yeah.
But yeah, I did want to talk and I was going to read just one sentence out of here because
we were talking about imperialism conquest, you know, conquering other nations, um, Louisiana
purchase that kind of stuff.
Uh, but in, in this last chapter here, he says conquest like slavery existed on every
inhabited continent and involved all the races of mankind as both conquerors and subjugated
peoples.
And, um, you know, in that chapter, he really does go through and goes through all the different,
not every single different people, uh, but he does go through quite a few examples of
how that's kind of been humanity's way of life ever since we got here.
Yes.
And I thought that section of the book was wonderful because he is being accurate.
Uh, racialized slavery existed in Europe before America was discovered.
Uh, there was a push to end slavery by imperials, you know, by the imperial governments of the
world.
Yeah.
So in many ways, uh, and by Imperial, I think we should also clarify by Western Imperial
countries.
Yes.
So I remember that was kind of a big distinction that he made, um, was that, you know, Britain
and eventually America, um, after both had outlawed slavery, uh, England ran a pretty
large deficit sending ships out to stop slave, slave ships.
Yeah.
In the Arab empires, the Ottoman Empire, you know, those, that area, which there's still
slavery there now.
Uh, unfortunately, well, I guess we can blame England for that.
Well, I guess if they would never have, uh, made them independent after the first world
war, more imperialism, nothing that's a good thing to do.
Well, that's true.
Um, for that issue, it's true for that issue.
It's definitely true.
And I suppose it's also true that, I mean, it's great that we got out of, uh, Iraq and
everything, but you know, the Taliban's back now.
So right.
That's also not good.
But being an inch in now to the cigar, it's, it's mellowed out quite a bit.
I think I agree.
It's mellowed out and I really like it.
Me as well.
I'm not getting an even burn, but, uh, I didn't get an even burn on my last one, but this
one it's, it's even, this is one nice Ash I'm looking at here.
The other one burned very even for me, but this one's a little lopsided, not like a danger
zone or anything.
Yeah.
But very good.
Yeah.
It's tasty.
So yeah, that's a, Thomas Sowell is very, uh, even though it's reasonable and calm,
he's not blaming anybody for anything, but it's very controversial.
Very controversial, uh, you know, because, uh, certain groups just can't be at fault
for their own problems sometimes because it's all, uh, you know, the, the, the fault of
this other evil group where they're always wrong.
Well, and I think that was kind of the great thing about this last chapter, you know, the
history versus visions, because, you know, a lot of the things he talked about was saying
that, you know, if you dig into some of these social programs, let's just say that their
vision doesn't match with what actually happened or the statistics or facts, and they will
ignore things that go against their vision, even if they're true.
Sure.
Which could be said for, for, you know, a lot of people doing all sorts of things, you
know, and we talked a little bit about that last episode too, about, you know, just how
do you, or why don't people nowadays converse civilly with one another when they disagree
on something?
Right.
Yeah.
It's always, uh, evilist hope immediately.
Immediately.
Yeah.
So the other thing we talked about last episode was world war three and we posited that perhaps
China was kind of watching this Russian Ukraine situation with a closer eye and a day or two
ago, I got a news update on my phone that China had mobilized, um, some troops.
Oh, okay.
But I don't know where or why.
Um, cause I don't, I try not to go too in depth into any like news things because it's
the, the swing they put on it or the, um, oh, the spin, the spin they put on it.
Swing is different swingers.
Yes.
It's, uh, it's, it's slightly different, similar, but different.
Yeah.
I mean, sometimes spin helps there too.
I suppose it would.
I suppose it would, but, uh, yeah, we'll, we'll see.
I know that, uh, China was in some negotiations with the United States and, uh, they were
pretty much told us to piss up a rope, us being the United States government, not any
regular person.
We're not really involved with any of that.
I thought they singled you out specifically.
Yes.
They mentioned me by name.
Yeah.
In their little guy from that cigar podcast where they don't talk about cigars a whole
lot.
Yeah.
That's that, that, that show that has zero listeners.
Well, we don't know.
Uh, speaking about listeners and things, uh, we just watched the Adam project.
Okay.
That's the new Ryan Reynolds movie.
I've never heard of it.
With time travel.
Uh, so it's Ryan Reynolds, uh, playing Ryan Reynolds in a Ryan Reynolds film, uh, that's
not Deadpool.
But it kind of is, but less F words.
Um, so I don't know if you've seen a lot of Ryan Reynolds films.
I've seen the proposal and Deadpool and I just watched Deadpool over the last two years
or a year or something.
Okay.
Uh, yeah.
So he did like free guy and I don't know, I'm sure those are kind of like the recent
ones that we've seen of his, you know, his free guy where he's the, uh, NPC in the video
game.
Okay.
Do you see any, uh, trailers for that one?
I don't, uh, I don't, I don't watch any sort of, uh, movies.
I watched Dune.
That was really excited for Dune.
Yeah.
But, uh, typically if it's not as good as Dune, I don't want to watch it.
Yeah.
I'm busy doing other stuff.
Yeah.
Well, so anyway, uh, you know how he is in Deadpool, right?
He's always, he's got the snarky comments for everything.
Yes.
Okay.
So that's kind of how Ryan Reynolds is, I guess, maybe in even real life.
Um, certainly his Twitter is like that, uh, from some of the Twitter screenshots that
I've seen, but so he kind of plays that same character in all the movies now.
Uh, and we were kind of comparing him to say, you know, Michael Cera when you hear like,
oh, there's a movie with Michael Cera.
Well, guess what?
He's probably playing a high school kid who hasn't had sex yet.
Right.
And that's gotta be 40.
Yeah.
Well, and I haven't seen him in anything or heard about him, you know, for quite a while.
And so I think he probably got so typecast as that character, um, that he just, he never
could get bigger than, you know, super bad.
Um, but it's kind of the same with Ryan Reynolds, although Ryan Reynolds, I think is he's the
guy who's done other roles before Deadpool and before he was able to kind of like be
himself and have enough, uh, you know, money or say so to be able to bring his own interpretations
to these characters.
And even though some of the themes in this newest movie, the Adam project are, uh, you
know, fairly serious, he still has kind of that running sarcastic commentary throughout
the entire movie.
Which is good.
It's good.
Um, I can see where Ryan Reynolds would be kind of a distraction from the storyline,
uh, because like I said, there are some serious things like there's time travel, uh, trying
to save other people at different times throughout times.
Um, and stuff.
So do you think he's getting to like, uh, the Burt Reynolds level famous where I'm not
sure how many Burt Reynolds movies you've seen, but I've seen a few.
I've seen a few.
I mean, you know, I grew up watching all the movies my grandpa liked, which, you know,
it was a lot of John Wayne, um, a lot of Jimmy Stewart, a lot of, uh, like grumpy old men,
that sort of thing.
Sure.
So, so, oh, maybe he'll turn into Walter Matho, Jack Lemon, you know, maybe.
Yeah.
I mean, I don't know.
You're getting, you know, what you're getting when you watch those two in, you know?
Yes.
Yeah.
And, and I would say in the past, since Deadpool came out, if you're watching a movie with
Ryan Reynolds in it, you know what you're going to get.
I think he's, I think he's about there.
Uh, you know, he might do like a Nick Cage where he's going to, you know, abruptly shift
direction and then kind of like shift back, um, cause Nick Cage put out a bunch of really
terrible, terrible movies.
And then he put out one called Pig, where he's a truffle hunter and he uses a pig to
hunt the truffles.
It's a serious movie and it's quite well done.
And I really enjoyed it.
And I was reading trivia on it.
And Nick Cage said that he did this one, he did Pig because he wanted to prove to everybody
he could still act because he was, he was self-aware enough, uh, to know that he was
doing a bunch of, you know, crap movies.
Um, some of which are entertaining and some have not been.
His money problems are, uh, even I know that he's terrible with money.
Yeah.
And he's got, and he's, and he's got a new movie coming out where he plays basically
a caricature of himself with money problems.
And so it sounds quite, quite entertaining if they can do it the right way.
Sure, if it's, yeah, it might be some good popcorn blockbuster, you know.
So you don't watch a whole lot of movies?
No, I don't watch a whole lot of movies.
I don't watch a whole lot of television.
Yeah.
I don't watch hardly any television.
Um, but speaking about movies, just cause that's what I'm interested in and I seem to
have your attention on the subject for right now.
Um, but I think this next thing you might be interested in, because I know that you
like the more controversial opinions on things.
And so I really, really want your opinion.
And so I think your homework after this episode is to just pick, pick a movie, like a modern
movie and watch and see what you find.
Because there's this guy on YouTube and we've determined that these people are called YouTubers.
Right?
That's the kids are calling them that now.
Um, we're done with, we're done with calling people vloggers or do we still call them that?
I don't, I don't remember.
There are still vloggers if they're of a certain age.
Damn it.
Yes, they are.
The video response is dead though.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
That's a, that's a forgotten.
Yeah.
You know what I wish would die is you're trying to get this great recipe and you have to read
about their life story.
And you have to scroll all the way down to the bottom to find the ingredients and how
to cook it.
You know, and they're like, I made this for, you know.
But anyway, so there's this YouTube channel that I like and I've only just recently kind
of been introduced to it and it's he's called the critical drinker and he's a, he's a drunk
Scottish guy.
Uh, but he did a great one on why modern, he does a little series on why modern movies
suck.
And so this most recent one that I watched was, um, I can't remember what it was called,
but it was something about.
Well, he did one on heroes, he did one on villains.
Yep.
He did.
Oh yeah.
It was modern.
Why modern villains suck.
Uh, and that's, that's the one I want to talk about because he says that the unwritten
rule of screenwriting, you know, and there's, you know, it's the rules of storytelling.
Basically you've got, you know, you have to have things that catapult your characters
along to make a compelling story that people want to watch.
You can't, you know.
Um, I think clerks is the first one that kind of comes to mind where almost nothing happens
the entire movie.
Uh, but you still want to watch it.
Um, but that's cause he knew what he was doing when he made that.
But the modern villains, he's saying the unwritten rule is that, was that a jab at he man of
the masters of the universe 2.0, the he man free version of he met.
It could be, it could be.
But he was saying the unwritten rule now is you can't have a woman ever be beaten by a
man.
And I'm not talking like Chris Brown beaten.
I'm just talking like they can't lose, uh, to a man.
And he's very pro like, yep, there should be more women in films.
There should be more minorities in films.
There should be more everything in films.
Uh, but with the caveat that the films have to be good.
You can't just randomly throw people in there, especially in a setting where they wouldn't
typically be.
Um, you know, and the, the new Lord of the Rings series, uh, he kind of like broke that
down and he was like, uh, the first woman to ever fight in middle earth was in return
of the King.
So why are there women in full battle garb in the trailer for this prequel to Lord of
the Rings?
Um, I don't, I don't want to get into that, but what are you saying?
We can, we can, but I wanted to finish this thought first where modern films and modern
things, all the villains suck.
And I was going to talk to you about, uh, Adam project because I watched the movie and
then at the end I was like, Oh man, the critical drinker was right.
Um, so he, and I'm going to talk with these other movies that he talks about in the video
because they're, you know, within the past year or so or more, people have had a chance
to see them.
We don't have to do the spoiler alert thing.
Uh, but he talks about the new star Wars, uh, trilogy where, you know, Kylo Ren basically
sucks because the man, the protagonist is a woman.
So therefore even at the beginning of the movie series, when she's supposedly the weakest,
he can't actually defeat her because that's not allowed.
You know, the unwritten rules, he can't, he can't defeat her.
Uh, and then you get this, you get two more movies of him not being able to defeat her.
So then when she defeats him at the end, you know, and it's not just, it's not really a
clear cut like defeat.
It's, you know, it's kind of, they did the same thing.
I mean, it's basically the original trilogy, but just told poorly and it makes way less
sense.
But even when she defeats him at the end, there's really no payoff because she never
had to work for anything because he never defeated her.
There was never a point where she was like down and out in any way.
Uh, no, I, uh, I hate those movies.
I hate those movies.
Well get used to it because the same thing happens in the Adam project.
Uh, but they do some fancy footwork to make it less obvious.
Oh, okay.
No.
And, and, and he talked about Thor Ragnarok where Thor's sisters, the evil one.
Uh, but Thor can actually defeat her even though he's Thor.
And so what they did was they had this, and I'm not a huge comic Marvel person.
So if you're going to get upset by me not knowing the name of the thing that came out
of the, like the beam and killed her, uh, but they third partied her death.
They had something else come like some entity come and like stab her with this like cosmic
sword.
So it wasn't Thor.
It wasn't a man.
It was some cosmic entity that came out of like a wormhole.
Uh, and I can just hear, yeah, yep.
I can, I can hear all the Marvel people just like flipping their shit.
Like this guy calls himself a movie fan, uh, but doesn't know the name of the thing that
came out of the wormhole at it.
Sorry.
I don't know.
There's like a thousand Marvel movies.
I'm sorry.
I, I can't watch all the Marvel movies.
Some of them are bad and some of them aren't.
Yeah.
I'm interested in watching them to be honest with you because it's all mishmash together.
You know, I'm not interested in that type of storytelling myself.
But you know what?
Here's what I will say.
Like we did, um, Avengers end game and, uh, infinity war.
Like, you know, that two part one, we did that one.
Um, and we've seen some of some of the other ones, you know, I don't know that we, I don't
think we've seen any like the black widow or stuff like that, but here's, I'll give
Marvel their, their props because you could be me and have never read a comic book in
your life.
Uh, only vaguely know like these characters from growing up with like the 1990s X-Men
movies, um, you know, and the Toby McGuire, spider-mans and things like that.
Um, but they do a good job of, you can come into any movie, even if you haven't seen the
other ones in the, the universe that they have, you know, and you, and you know what's
going on.
Like they do a very good job of making movies that you can just kind of like, you can watch
as a one-off even though, you know, it still fits into like a bigger thing and you can
watch them in the, you know, the order.
I've seen these big lists online of all these orders of like how to watch these Marvel movies.
Um, and I just, I don't have the time to do that because there's like a thousand of them
now.
Um, you know, but, but some of them are good and some of them are less good, but I think
they do a good job of keeping them accessible for people that aren't the huge comic book
fans.
Sure.
I, I think that the Marvel franchise suffers from the same thing as a lot of these new
TV shows do a lot of Vikings comes to mind and Bolin comes to mind where instead of coming
up with a new story with new characters, they just shove in diverse people into spots where
they probably don't belong.
You know, there's no woman leader of ancient Scandinavia or whatever in mythology.
It's just not, that's just not the way that it was.
And there's historical consequences for lying.
Right.
And Bolin wasn't black.
Uh, and it takes away from the struggles of, uh, black people in our culture to pretend
like she was.
Well let's, let's counterpoint that real quick.
Sure.
And let's say what about in glorious bastards and some of these Tarantino films that are
reimaginings of historical events.
That's different because it's a fantasy story, right?
Like, okay, so because he does, you know, that this is not an accurate, this is a fantasy
story and you know that immediately.
Yes.
I'll agree with you.
I just, I wanted to do that counterpoint because you can do movies like this where it is, um,
fantasy and you, and you know, going into it like in glorious bastards, you just know,
like you know, the whole way the film is done, you still get invested in the characters.
It's, it's just enough base in history that you know, the people, you know, um, and you
know what, what really happened or you, you have a vague understanding of, you know, he,
you know, Hitler wasn't machine gunned in a theater.
Right.
You know, like you, you, you know that, I mean, some people, I mean, some family did
not get shot, you know, by a drunk actor or whatever.
With a, with a flame thrower.
Yeah.
Like we, we know that that's not true.
It's a fantasy story.
So it's fine.
Uh, I was thinking more specifically of, uh, we're watching Stargate and Stargate has
the main cast are a white woman who's a scientist, who's like a borderline genius, a black guy,
who was also an alien, who was one of the most entertaining guys on the show.
And then, uh, Richard Dean Anderson, uh, cause he's legacy for TV and very popular at that
time.
And then a random white guy, right.
Who's also a genius.
Like they had two geniuses, one's a woman, one's a man.
Well, I mean, to be fair, they're traveling through star gates.
They need geniuses.
You can't just walk through one of those things.
Exactly.
And no, and the head doctor's a woman and they have a diverse cast within the earth
side.
And then you go to these other planets and they have diversity there as well.
So are you saying that that this is done well?
Yeah, yes.
It makes sense.
It's not, uh, it's not diversity just for diversity sake, you know?
Yes.
And, and so I don't know if you saw the, um, 2016 Ghostbusters answer the call, the all
female reboot of Ghostbusters.
I could not bring myself to watch that movie, Nate.
I apologize.
You don't have to apologize to me.
But there's, there's things like that where you're taking a well-known loved franchise
and you are making it female only, but you're not actually spending the time to write a
good script to make it stand on his own two legs.
And I can prove to you that they didn't write a good script and they didn't care.
They just wanted to have the sensational headline, all female Ghostbuster cast or something like
that.
And here's the proof because they brought in every single actor from the original movie
in cameos playing parts that weren't their parts that they played in the original.
Um, but they would get their own kind of head of steam going and then there'd be Bill Murray
doing something.
And you're like, Holy, Holy shit, that's Bill Murray.
And then you would completely forget what these female Ghostbusters were doing.
And then it would take another 10, 15 minutes for their story to kind of pick back up pace
again.
And then there was somebody else and you're like, Oh, okay.
And so it was just kind of like, they would, it was like start and stop.
They'd kind of get their little storyline going and then they'd say, well, this movie's
no good.
So let's get Bill Murray in here, Dan Aykroyd, or let's get, you know, one of the original
cast in here.
And then, and then that tanked their entire plot line for like the five minutes.
And then they, you know, it took them so much time to get back.
Sure.
But that's one where it's like, it's diversity for diversity sake and story be damned.
Right.
See, and, uh, I watched some of the previews because obviously I'm of the age where I wanted
to, uh, do it.
You know, I wanted to watch it cause it's, it's good, but they had, uh, is that Leslie?
I can't remember her name.
The Melissa McCarthy and then Leslie Jones, I want to say.
And they have that these women on the screen and they're acting goofy.
And I mean, that's not, the story is that these guys are really smart.
All of them are smart.
They're not goofy.
The story is goofy.
They're trying to be serious in this goofy world.
And that's the way that the, the story works.
Right.
It's a zany world.
They're not zany people.
Yeah.
And you're talking Ghostbusters?
Yeah.
The original ghost.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, Bill Murray was zany.
Like his character was zany.
He was kind of, you know, he wasn't doing like three stooges, ratfalls.
Oh, no, no, no.
Remember?
You know what I mean?
No, no.
I mean, he was, he was doing like the, uh, you know, holding up the flashcards and shocking
the men and, uh, you know, rewarding the women, you know, he was doing like that kind of stuff.
Even, even though the man was like guessing everything, right.
He was still getting the punishment shock.
Right.
Yeah.
He was kind of, he was that kind of zany, like a loose, loose cannon, you know, womanizer
type.
Yeah.
He's not necessarily a good guy.
Well, he, you know, but I mean, like, I think of the, of the, the cast or of the characters
of the first Ghostbusters, the original, um, he was maybe the less, the least smart.
Uh, maybe he was smarter in, in, you know, interpersonal things because the other, uh,
the other characters are quite a bit more brainy, you know?
Yes.
He was a sleazy salesman type character.
Yeah.
Uh, yeah.
Which is, you know, you need to have that sort of thing, but I don't care for these
re-imagining stories where they're just shitting on the characters.
Yeah.
In my opinion, they're shitting on the characters.
I want, I want, if you want diverse cast, diverse, diverse everything, I'm all for that.
I want a diverse story then.
I don't want a story from my childhood that you're just going to lazily put these diverse
people in.
Like, I want, like, you give me a diverse story.
I don't, I don't need another Marvel movie.
I don't need another Ghostbusters movie.
I don't need another James Bond movie.
I want a fresh original story that's a diverse story that comes from diverse people.
I don't need another Hollywood, you know, by the book, paint by the numbers blockbuster.
You know, if you're going to modernize, let's say Jane Austen, because there's a thousand
and one fan fictions, people love it.
Yeah.
If you want to modernize it, make a diverse cast, of course.
Yeah.
But if you're setting it in Georgia and England, you can't have diversity in that.
I mean, there was no diversity in upper class England in the 1700s.
There just wasn't.
I, I don't know what else to say.
Like, that's part of the problem in our society now is that they were assholes then and we're
getting the hangover still from them.
Yeah.
It's.
Why don't you go back and fix it?
Go back and you fix Victorian England.
Yeah, exactly.
So I'm about halfway through the cigar now.
Yeah.
Me as well.
I was just thinking we should do a cigar check.
Yeah.
I am really enjoying it.
It's yeah.
I wish I could, I wish I could unsmoke part of it and smoke it again.
No, it's really a well rounded, still dark, but it's not.
It's not overpoweringly.
So it's not.
No.
It's not.
And I'll say the first, you know, the first half inch inch, that was, that was really,
really bold.
Very bold.
I liked it.
I still liked it.
It wasn't, it wasn't bitter.
It wasn't, you know, it wasn't unsavory.
It was, but it was a lot.
And if it would have, if it would have stayed that bold, we'd probably have different opinions
on this cigar right now, but it really has mellowed out.
Yes.
Yeah.
If it had been that bold, I'm pretty sure I would not have, I don't know if I could
have smoked it all.
Oh, you would have.
I know you and I know you would have.
I would have.
Just to spite it.
Oh, you think you can out-bold me?
Sad but true.
Yes.
Have you ever watched a channel called The Metatron?
A YouTuber called The Metatron?
No, no.
Oh, he talks about all sorts of historical things.
He's a very interesting character, but he did a video recently on putting, and he's
had this series for a while, putting black characters or Indian, Indian being from India
characters in storylines, historical type settings that they don't belong in.
And it's not, they don't belong in it in like, oh, authoritarianism.
It's just, if you misrepresent the past in our entertainment, it is misinformation.
Yeah.
If you misrepresent the past with the intent of making a film that is, you know, historical,
historically based, opposed to Tarantino's fantastical retellings or reimaginings of
historical events or, you know, like what ifs.
Right.
You know that it's alternate reality.
Yeah.
And I also want to say though, that it's not just putting, you know, diverse people into
the sort of situations where they were not, or there weren't diverse people.
It goes the other way too.
Like if you're watching a movie set in Africa before white people ever got there and you
have white people running around, like that's, that's a problem too.
And the only one that really comes to mind and has nothing to do with Africa.
So I don't know why I mentioned that, but the James Bond movie with Sean Connery and
they make him like look Japanese for a portion of the film.
And that was like their big thing with Q and then, okay, we're going to make you look Japanese.
And of course he doesn't.
He looks like Sean Connery with, you know, like a bowl cut.
And so, I mean, that's probably a very, very low point in the James Bond franchise for
just all things, all things.
We're guilty of that.
They even had Marlon Brando playing a Japanese guy in a movie.
Oh yeah.
I remember that.
Just insane.
But, but, but why?
From our perspective, no.
Well, yeah, yeah.
Look at all the cowboy in any movies from the 30s and 40s.
And I know there were.
Where all of them were white.
There were no black people and then we know there was a ton of black people in the West.
A lot of black cowboys, you know, ranch hands.
A lot of black cowboys and ranch hands.
Cowboys were kind of outlaws at that time.
And Native Americans are Native Americans, right?
Like there were Comanches in the 20s and 30s and 40s that could have played those actors.
You know, they're just assholes.
They were.
And, you know, I'm not up to speed on, you know, how many good or, you know, recognized
Native American actors there were back in the 30s or 40s.
I don't, I don't know.
Me either.
And I apologize for that.
I don't, you know, I'm really bad with actors and names and things too.
So I'm just going to kind of like play that card and be like, I don't know.
But it kind of brings back to the black, rednecks and white liberals because he's talking about
in there, he talks about like the black colleges.
They didn't have black professors because there weren't any black people that had the
qualifications to be black professors yet.
You know, so they had white professors come in and teach at these black colleges to get
that the black population to that level of education where they could then take over
and be professors.
Sure.
You know.
Yep.
And I, you know, and I just, I don't know, could it have been a similar thing with, you
know, minority or, you know, diverse actors back in the thirties, forties?
I don't know.
I honestly don't know.
Oh, there was, there was a lot of crazy blackface going on.
Oh, no, I know that.
I just mean like, you know, I can't think of any, you know, famous Native American actors
of that era.
And probably because Hollywood didn't cast them, you know, right.
But you have to do some research on that.
So they would even get rid of the Mexican actors too.
This as well as everybody knows.
Yeah.
There's Mexican cowboys and ranch hands to this day.
You know, you're having an all white cast in an area that was diverse traditionally
in real life.
You know, it's crazy.
I did think of a modern movie that had all white actors playing Africans.
It was a, what was it?
The Egyptian gods.
You remember that movie?
It came out, huge blockbuster that flopped.
Okay.
And it had all white actors.
It totally sounds like a movie that I wouldn't watch.
Just to be honest with you.
I didn't watch it either.
It was like, why do you have all these, this is ridiculous.
Like this is a story about the mythology of Egypt, right?
Like there were no white people there.
So I'm just saying, not, yeah.
But then you get the people, you get the people that also will just cry foul, just to cry
foul because there was a movie with Rami Malek and he was, he was playing an Egyptian.
It might've actually been night at the museum.
He was playing like one of the Pharaohs or something.
And there was some angry comments.
Like, why do you have a white dude playing this Egyptian person?
And somebody was like, that's Rami Malek and he literally is Egyptian.
So, you know, so some people just want to, you know, cry foul for the sake of crying
foul.
Oh, sure.
And I know in the animated world, there was a big push there for a quick minute to get
diverse act voice actors in, to voice cartoon characters.
Yeah.
And there's been pushes, you know, to have only, only gay actors can play gay parts and
only transgender people can play transgender parts.
Yeah.
And I remember that with the Eddie Redmayne movie where he played a transgender and people
were mad that it wasn't a transgender actor.
Sure.
And, you know, I don't, you know, I don't know.
People get mad about that, but then they were completely fine with Brokeback Mountain with
two straight dudes banging in a tent pretending to be gay, you know.
Sure.
But I know there's probably like a whole like sub fetish for that.
Oh, there's, you know, I guarantee you that.
I bet money.
Well, don't send me links on that.
Yep.
You know, where do you, where do you draw the line though?
Because I don't know, in my opinion, an actor is playing something they're not all the time,
all the time.
Oh, of course.
It's pretending that you're not gay.
And, you know, are we going to get upset every time a gay character is portrayed by a non-gay
actor?
Well, I was upset when in Lord of the Rings, they had all those hobbits and none of those
people were hobbits.
All right.
You know what?
I was so bad about that too.
I said we have so many good hobbits running around.
All great actors.
Yeah.
Well, and like the Klingons in Star Trek.
I mean, not one of those Klingons was portrayed by an actual Klingon.
Talk about cultural appropriation.
I know.
Yeah, Michael Dorn, pretty sure that's worth.
Yep.
Don't quote me on that.
That's worth.
I will because you're right.
Michael Dorn and his brother, Captain whatever, Kern.
Yeah.
Well, they had Christopher Lloyd play a Klingon.
Yes, they did.
Which I thought was fantastic.
Yep.
Well, as you know, I'm a Star Trek fan.
Yeah.
And I think it's great.
You know where Star Trek really kind of lost me though?
Well, the new movies, because I don't need to go back and see somebody else play Captain
Kirk.
But I thought the movies were fine except the second one was Wrath of Khan and they
promised us that it wasn't Wrath of Khan.
And then you went into the theater and you saw it and it totally was Wrath of Khan.
Yes.
You know, Benedict Cumberbatch playing Khan.
And it's the same thing.
It's like you're just retelling the movie from before.
You didn't even write a new movie.
You just you grab the script from Paramount's locker of scripts and you just you made it.
You know, but I just I didn't like the Beastie Boy tracks in a Star Trek movie.
Sure.
Right?
Like he's like he's cruising listen to Beastie Boys and it's like fine.
But there's been so many other Star Trek movies where they either like you know, they'll do
some classical music or something, you know, like Picard and whatnot.
But you could invent any kind of music you wanted, like literally any kind of music you
wanted.
It's a make believe set in the future.
You could have any any any music you wanted.
That would require creativity.
And you know what?
I went and saw the new Batman, the Robert Pattinson Batman.
Yes.
Which I thought I thought it was very well done.
It's a three hour movie that does not feel like three hours.
So they did a phenomenal job with the editing and the pacing and and everything.
The makeup was amazing.
But they said it's a three hour movie and they played one pop song twice, the same pop
song twice in the movie.
It's a Nirvana track.
And it just like they played it in like the beginning part of the movie, like the first,
I don't know, hour maybe.
And I was like, Whoa, what what's going on here?
Because like Gotham, it's supposed to be, you know, like New York or kind of a combination
of major American cities.
But I don't remember ever having them have like real life pop songs.
You know, so it really was kind of like off putting and I was like that really kind of
took me out of, you know, the Gotham aesthetic that they had going.
And then towards the end of the movie, they play the exact same song again.
And I'm like, Okay, it's a three hour movie granted.
Yes, yes.
And I understand the radio will play whatever song is popular, they play it, you know, twice
an hour or something.
So that's not out of the realm of possibility.
But it's still is this three hour movie, you can't play the same song twice in a three
hour movie, you could do an instrumental version first.
And then over the end credits, play the actual pop song like that's fine.
That's fine with me.
That's not pulling me out of anything.
It's you know, nice subtle way to include that piece of music in the movie.
But I just that was kind of my biggest complaint about the entire entirety of that movie.
In the interest of fairness, I would like to go back to Wrath of Khan.
Okay, let's do that.
Because I thought about this.
So in the remake, Benedict Cumberbatch was a very white British man is playing a character
called Khan, Noonian Soong, who's supposed to be kind of from the India region of the
planet Superman from the past, you know, real Vulcan.
And it was originally played by Ricardo Montalban, who was a Mexican.
So in the original, he did not get the character did not get played by a Superman from the
Pakistan region, let's say.
But they could have done that now.
They could have at least cast that character in a way that made sense, not just some like
skinny white guy.
You know, he's supposed to be like a superhuman in the context of Star Trek, you know.
Yeah, I guess here's my question.
And I'm not doing this because this is what I believe I'm doing this because I want you
to think on your feet.
And I'm going to try and get you flustered a little bit.
What if he was shirtless?
No, no, that's not what I was going to say.
What if what if the what if the point that they're trying to make with that is that in
the future that this movie is set in that humanity will be so homogenized that you could
be have that name and look like a skinny white British dude?
I would say that if that was the point, then they wouldn't have all of the other diverse
actors in the story.
You know, because they have a Japanese guy with a Japanese name.
They have an African woman with an African name.
They have a white guy, you know, from Iowa with a white guy from Iowa name.
Yeah, I wasn't saying that because that's what I believe.
I was just saying, you know, like for the counterpoint, what if that's what you know,
that's how they're trying to get around lazy screenwriting.
Well, it's lazy casting, lazy screenwriting.
I mean, lazy all around for sure.
But they could have gotten some bodybuilder, you know, somewhere to play that role who
was actually Indian and not, you know, like a British Indian guy, whatever.
I don't care.
He probably should in an English speaking movie.
Obviously, he needs to speak English, but he can have an accent.
He could have got Gandhi. Gandhi was ripped.
Right.
He was ripped.
Ripped where it mattered.
Well, I was hoping you're going like the brain, but that's not where you're going.
Oh, you mean one of those brilliant guys in like the last hundred years?
I can't make fun of him a little bit.
That's not what I'm saying.
But yeah, that's like a perfect example of, well, they should have, I can't believe they
didn't make a stink about it now that I really think about it, you know?
Yeah.
I mean, you know, it just seems, it does, it seems so kind of, you know, pick and choose.
Like they just, I don't know, they, I don't know who they are, you know, the social justice
warriors or whatever, you know, the thems behind the curtain.
But, you know, why wouldn't people get upset about that?
You know, why didn't people get upset about Brokeback Mountain outside of the religious
right?
But I mean, for the casting, non-gay people in gay roles.
Right.
There's plenty of extremely attractive gay men in Hollywood that could have played ranchers
in Montana.
Right?
Yeah.
I mean, there's plenty of gay actors that would love to play that role.
Well, and you know what?
They don't have to necessarily be attractive.
I mean, that's kind of, isn't that kind of what the point is supposed to be is we don't
have to have like the womanizing of James Bond because, you know, everyone's beautiful
in their own way.
I mean, I think that's like ideally what people want, but they can't vocalize that.
Possibly.
You know, I met a lot of ranchers in Montana and they're not as attractive as Heath Ledger,
I can assure you.
And the women certainly don't look like whatever actresses that are human goddesses they have
in the movie that I don't even know the names, but I'm sure I'm certain they were attractive.
Yeah.
Certain.
But.
I have a lot two inches left in my cigar and it's still good.
Yeah, I've got probably a little more than two inches just because now that it's not
quite so bold.
Mike, you've been able to outpace me once again.
Yes.
Yes, I have.
But we did a lot better, I think this episode, kind of keeping pace with one another.
Yes.
I haven't really had to speed up and I don't think you've slowed down any.
No, no, I haven't.
I've just been casually puffing away.
Yeah.
So.
Yeah, this one's I like this one quite a bit.
Now I have a question for you and I've done no research, so I'm going to sound like a
total fool.
What happened?
That's why we're here.
Yeah.
Well, if anybody is listening, they can tell we're fools.
But hopefully somewhere in the middle of the fool spectrum where we're educated enough
to know when we're being a fool.
I would, well, you know, at least when it's pointed out, we should.
Yeah, complete and utter fool, we know.
But what happened to Lou Diamond Phillips?
I would love to tell you if I knew who that was.
Like I said, I'm very terrible with names to the point that if we're watching a movie,
my wife and I.
And I can't think of the actor's name who we're watching.
I'll just pick another actor's name and be like, man, I can't believe so and so is in
this movie and he's doing such a great job.
And she'll go, that's not that actor.
It's quite fun.
She enjoys it a lot.
And I do.
OK, so refresh my memory on who this person is and then I will tell you what happened
to them.
Yes.
Lou Diamond Phillips played in Young Guns as one of the gang.
He was one of the Mexican members of the the regulators that rode with Billy the Kid and
all those characters.
And he was in a lot of blockbuster type movies in the late 80s and early 90s.
For about 20, 30 years, he was gone.
And now I've been seeing him as like bit roles in some of these like cop dramas that my parents
watched during the summertime.
You know, you go and visit them and they'll be watching NCIS, whatever.
And I've seen him in a lot of these shows.
I don't know if he's a regular character on that show particularly or what, but he's kind
of disappeared off the earth for a while.
I just pulled him up, man.
And I told you he's right.
I recognize him.
Like I know him.
Yeah.
He's even super famous.
I'm just telling you, I'm terrible with names of actors and musicians.
Yeah.
There we go.
But yeah, I don't see anything that necessarily explains like his absence.
I guess he's been on some TV stuff and I don't watch a lot of TV things.
So that's why probably you haven't seen him either if you don't watch TV shows.
No, I don't watch.
I watch old sci-fi shows.
From 2012 to 2017, he was on Longmire TV show, but you know, I haven't seen that.
So never heard of it.
Yeah.
It looks like he went to TV.
Oh, good for him.
To explain what happened to him.
And I miss him.
Yes, I miss him too.
I miss him too.
I miss Emilio Estevez as well.
And Charlie Sheen.
He's not on there anywhere either.
I love Charlie Sheen.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
He's a great crazy guy.
We did just watch a movie though recently, within the past year or so, year or two, and
Emilio Estevez was in it.
And I think the movie wasn't very good.
I don't recall, but I remember saying like, ah, it was good to see Emilio again.
But I can't remember what it was.
The last movie I saw, not the last movie I saw, but one of my favorite movies he was
in was Judgment Night.
I think that movie is great.
Okay, I haven't seen that one, so I'll have to put that on my list to watch.
Oh, it's got Cuba Gooding Jr. and Emilio Estevez and Dennis Leary.
And very good.
Very good like horror action in a modern setting.
Yes.
He's got the guy from Entourage, I can't remember his name.
My own bad memory with actor's names.
Yeah, really good like modern horror movie that we watched was The Wolf of Snow Hollow.
That one was, it was fantastic.
It was really, really good.
And that same actor, he wrote, directed, and acted in it.
And he also, I think Jim Cummings.
And he also did one called Thunder Road, which was kind of like based off of the Bruce Springsteen
song or that's where it gets his name from.
And they never actually use the song in the movie, which is a little bit of a disappointment.
But that one was good too.
It was completely different.
It was like The Wolf of Snow Hollow is more of like the creature horror, but it's more
like funny than horror.
And then the Thunder Road is like a police officer who's on suspension or something,
I don't know, trying to win his daughter.
So two very different movies, but they're both excellent.
Might have to start watching movies again.
I will have more time this summer.
I think so.
Yeah.
We've been watching Stargate.
The whole Stargate universe of television shows.
And then also we started watching The Witcher.
Okay.
Which I don't know if you've seen that.
I haven't seen it.
I wanted to watch it.
But so here's my thing with like TV series.
I am much, much more interested in watching them if they're done.
Like if they're done making them.
And I think maybe that's why I like British television series more because they typically
only go for two or three seasons max.
And then the writers, they go on and do something else and they put out another series.
But again, it's only a couple of seasons long.
So right.
It's not the Star Trek where it's five shows.
It's not the Simpsons.
It's not South Park.
You don't have to watch like, oh, I want to start with one while they're still going.
And they're 30 seasons deep now.
Right.
They'll never be off the air.
Well, they will eventually.
But I don't know if they will.
I mean, they're bringing people back with CGI and, you know, who's to say they won't
like bequeath the Simpsons property to somebody else to keep it going?
Sure.
That's possible.
I know that if you when you do watch The Witcher, it is very rated, mature, quote unquote, a
lot of sex and swearing and violence.
So not that you wouldn't watch with the kids.
Not a good one to watch with the kids.
Oh, yeah.
Probably not.
It's good.
There's another show that has a diverse casting that makes sense.
OK.
I mean, that's based on a video game.
It's based on a video game.
It's based on a series of novels written by a Polish dude.
Oh, OK.
And he's a I after I watched the show, you know, of course, I did the Internet rabbit
hole.
Yeah.
And he's apolitical, you know, type of guy.
So yeah, very interesting.
And I know that he has criticized the English translations of his works for not having an
accurate language, I guess.
That's you know, translations.
That's always interesting.
I know that I really enjoy Marcus Aurelius.
And when I was researching which edition of of his his journal in Meditations to get,
I went down so many rabbit holes on which translation was, you know, quote unquote,
the best or the truest to the original text.
So what's the answer?
The answer is that there are two very good ones.
I've only read the one, but there is a newer one that just came out within the past year
or so, a new translation and a new edition and everything.
And I guess that one's very well done.
I don't I don't know which edition I have.
I'll look I'll look right now, but we can keep talking.
Absolutely.
You should read it in Latin.
That's the answer.
Read it in Latin.
That way you don't you don't lose anything.
I guess so.
Except the language.
Right.
Well, Latin's not that difficult to read.
But it's dead.
It's dead.
It is dead.
But you can find all the Catholic texts and stuff in Latin still.
It's dead, Jim.
It's dead.
Sorry for the dead air.
I was yelling from the dog to come inside.
Oh, yeah.
So here it is.
It is the Meditations, a new translation, and it's it's only eight bucks on Amazon.
Not a sponsor.
Someday we'll be on Bezos's super yacht that they tore a bridge down to.
Yeah, he's going to come and he's going to slap me silly with a copy of this book because
I didn't give him any money for mentioning a book that he sells.
But OK, so it's Gregory Hayes.
It's the Gregory Hayes translation.
And that's the one that I read.
And then there's a newer one, which might be hardcover, might have extra like little
footnotes and things.
But I've I've heard that it's good.
So therefore it must be.
Well, everything you read on the Internet is true.
Yeah.
So here it is.
The new one that I want to read is the Marcus Aurelius Meditations, the annotated edition
translated by Robin Waterfield.
And so I hear that one is a nice translation, too.
And with the annotations gives you a little bit more to go on.
Sure.
Interesting.
Yeah, I've read the Penguin Classics edition years ago.
OK, I'm not sure if that's a good translation or not, to be fully honest.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
You know, I guess on some level, on some level, if you're reading something, something like
that anyway, it's probably better than not reading that.
But you could certainly get more true to what what was intended by getting a one of the
higher rated translations, I suppose.
Sure.
But it's interesting that, you know, Marcus Aurelius, this was basically his journal.
So it's not like he was writing it for publication or even intending anyone else to ever see
it.
Right.
Yeah, I'm aware that a lot of it was.
Like he wrote it on horseback a lot of times when he was, you know, traveling.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Very interesting.
I didn't know that.
I know that a lot of it was not so much.
It was like him triding himself because he was making mistakes.
Yeah.
He was reminding himself.
It was very self-affective.
To not make those mistakes.
Yes.
And mistakes, yes.
And also, you know, he's part of the Stoic philosophy, Stoicism, and one of the big critiques
of people that haven't really researched much about Stoicism is that they think that these
people are emotionless or strive to be because, you know, oh, he was Stoic, you know, and
as somebody who's like in the face of great emotional turmoil and they, you know, they
stay like, you know, poker faced basically through it.
But really it's embracing your emotions, but not letting them carry you away or carry your
thought process away.
And so there's a lot of that kind of like self-chiding in there too.
Like, oh, I was angry about this and I shouldn't have made this decision in anger, you know,
kind of things like that.
Yep.
Well, my cigar at about an inch and a half is now starting to get sour.
Yep.
Mine's sour and I've got, I have maybe about two inches.
Oh, okay.
But it's just, I could just, when you said that I could just, I just took a puff and
I just kind of got a little hint, little hint of sour.
Just a touch.
So I know it's coming.
Yes, it is coming.
Bitterness, bitterness.
Yep.
So maybe I'll slow down and see if that fixes it.
Possibly so.
But yeah, this one, it stayed lit the whole time, very even burn for me on this one.
You know, after I knocked the initial ash off, it re-evened up.
Oh, perfect.
And now it's very, very, very, very even smoke.
And the box pressing rounded off towards the end there.
Yes, mine did as well.
Yeah, I would say, you know, there are some cigars you can smoke pretty close to the end
and they taste great all the way through.
I don't know that this is going to be one of those though.
No, I'm about done with it to be honest with you.
It's starting to get that dirt taste.
Oh, yep.
Yep.
Which is, you know, the sign, the sign to be done, which is fine.
Yeah, that's fine.
It's time for me to be done smoking.
Yes.
But yeah, all in all, it was an enjoyable cigar.
I thought it was a lot more consistent throughout.
Yes, it was very consistent, consistently good.
There was no wasted space, so to speak.
So very good.
That's true.
I would recommend it to anyone, I suppose.
I'll have to send you a care package here.
Yeah, I'll have to send one your way or maybe we should try and, I don't know, meet up in
person.
We could.
We definitely could do that.
I know that next weekend I am busy as usual, but I will be coming down mid April to the
cities.
We'll be going up, I think mid April because that's my wife's birthday.
Oh, yeah.
So we'll have to coordinate some schedules there.
Yeah.
She's not old enough for me to lie about her age yet.
So over the weekend I had a friend turn 53 and we're all like, oh, he's 33 now.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
We had our neighbors over and he likes cigars and pipes as well and he's 51.
We have a lot of older friends though.
Most of the people we hang out with are like one of my best buddies.
We watch a lot of shitty movies together and he's eight years older than I am.
Most of my friends are older.
I've got a couple of good friends that are in their 50s and stuff.
Of course, you're what, 62 now?
Yes, yes I am 62.
Oh my God.
I guess I'd be close to retirement.
That's a positive.
Yeah.
So I don't know why I'm still smoking this cigar.
It should be done too.
Perfect.
Yeah, anyone younger than me, well, okay.
So any female I ever talk about is always 21 and I've never had any complaints from
the females whether they're younger than 21 or older than 21.
They all seem to like 21 as a number.
That does seem to be the peak age.
It's a safe bet.
Yes, yes it is.
A very safe bet, especially when you know she's not 21.
Well I suppose we got to wrap it up.
Yeah.
So yeah, I think if you do the Punch 1840 Diablo, that is a wise investment for something
that is a little bolder and darker than other cigars.
Yeah, than average.
There's certainly darker cigars than this one out there.
But this one is if you like the bolder and darker flavor, this is a good one.
Absolutely.
All right, well join us next episode where we talk about...
Who knows, whatever we talk about.
Who knows?
We'll figure it out.
We will figure it out.
We'll figure it out and you will find out.
Do you have any Kentucky shrews at home?
No, I don't.
But here's what I wanted to do with that.
Okay, so our episode format is basically we light a cigar, smoke the cigar.
When we're done with the cigar, the episode's done.
Which I think is great because we can talk about the stuff that we normally talk about.
I mean, for Mike and myself here, this is when we get together and smoke cigars in the
same room or the same space, that's what we do.
We light it and then we just talk about all sorts of things.
We're a little more focused for these podcasts here than we are in real life.
Yes, we are.
But what I was thinking about for the shrews, because they're smaller and you can smoke
them quickly.
I wanted to do a shrew showdown where we get the Kentucky shrews that we like, but we've
been eyeing.
We've been eyeing on pipesandcigars.com, not a sponsor, some other shrew packs.
If you bought a different pack and I bought a different pack, we'd have three different
shrews and we could do a three shrew episode where we smoke three shrews.
We could cut them in half, whatever.
I don't know how long we think we need to be smoking them.
But then we could give our thoughts and say, hey, these shrews, they're all around the
same price point or this one's a little more expensive.
Is it worth it?
Isn't it worth it?
Which of these is best?
Sure.
I like that idea.
All right.
That will be coming up sometime.
Sometime in the future.
Yes.
Sometime in the future.
I'm going to wrap this episode up and then we will see you next episode.