[Music]

So I watched a lot of comedy on TikTok and it has…

The algorithms obviously figured out I like comedians and it maybe

is figured out I’m old as well so it thought I would like this

which is a very interesting choice. I was interested in it.

“MZ doesn’t know how to write a check. They don’t know how

to address an envelope. They don’t know how to read cursive.”

So she’s saying what? They don’t know how to write a check.

They don’t know how to read cursive. What was the second one?

It’s a second one on the… “They don’t know how to read a paper map.”

Oh, they don’t know how to read a paper map. Okay. What she’s actually

done is listed off a set of skills that people don’t need anymore.

I was of the age of people who wrote checks. I have not

written a check easily since I was 20 years old. I’m 50.

So in the last 30 years I have not written a check. I am basically of

the generation she’s talking about that is capable of writing a check.

I know how to write a check. I have not done

it. It is a skill that is completely useless.

As far as reading cursive, people put a lot of stock into

that. I don’t actually see the value in writing cursive.

People don’t read cursive anymore because cursive is not relevant.

That’s actually what if you take her underpinning. This comedy is so low bar.

She’s basically listed off a series of skills that

her generation has. The following generation doesn’t.

And then the people in the audience laugh. That actually was a bit that I found funny.

People were laughing at this because I didn’t laugh at

the first part because I didn’t understand what was funny.

That young people can’t read cursive isn’t inherently funny.

Young people need a paper map. Can’t read a paper map. But they do have GPS.

People try to make fun of them for that. I don’t actually see it as a problem

because I took a minute and I made a list of some other things that boomers can’t do.

Let’s actually let her finish her joke and comment on that first.

They can’t get anywhere unless there’s a GPS map

on their phone. All I’m saying is a gentleman.

The irony there though is I bet she can’t use the GPS map on her phone.

So boomers famously are very poor at using technology.

So it’s really hard. I don’t see this as a picture maybe in my brain.

It’s like how can you make fun of someone who is able to use

something and relies on that thing that you cannot even use?

So there’s kind of a weird irony there. The

next sense is if Gen Z takes over the world.

Gen Z takes over the world. It’s going to be pretty easy to get it back.

I don’t see how those things correlate because what are

you going to do to take over the world with cursive?

What skill have you just espoused that is going to help you take over the world?

So the world we live in is technology based. What are you going to write a check?

And that’s going to help you take over the

world. You’re going to write a letter in cursive.

And that’s going to be some like secret script

that the Gen Z isn’t going to be able to read.

And so you can pass your secrets back and forth. But

you can’t do a technology because you can’t use any.

fucking email or anything. Are you going to use

your paper maps to outwit Gen Z that has GPS,

abilities? I mean, this is what I’m saying. The skills you’ve listed are relevant.

Gen Z is going to take over the world probably

mainly because you’re going to die. I mean,

you’re not going to be taking it back because you’re going to be dead.

The audience laughing at this. I didn’t

laugh because to me there was no actual joke.

They’re laughing hard. So this relies on the

audience agreeing with your sentiments having had

this kind of conversation in the first place in

their life. I do like, if you can watch the video,

in the front row there’s a dude. He’s got the American flag shirt on.

The irony there. There’s actually really big irony.

People who wear the American flag have not read

the rules about how you treat the flag. You’re

not supposed to wear the flag as clothing. So like

American flag pants and underwear and bikinis,

American flag shirts, bandanas and stuff.

You’re actually not supposed to do that. That

is technically disrespect them to the flag.

According to America, and that’s the irony. So

I wanted to get some of the better feel for her

comedy routine. I want to let her start from

the beginning, get a feel for her comedy,

and then see if I could maybe replicate the power of this in my own way.

Gen Z doesn’t know how to write a check. They don’t know how to address an envelope.

They don’t know how to read cursive. They don’t know how to read a paper map.

They can’t get anywhere unless there’s a GPS

map on their phone. All I’m saying is that Gen Z

takes over the world. It’s going to be pretty easy to get it back.

Man, they laughed really hard at that. Like way harder than they should. That is.

insane that they found it as funny as they did.

All right, so I went and found some things. So.

boomers can’t be a galley roller. Boomers don’t know how to use a knocker upper.

Boomers don’t even employ caddy butchers

anymore. Boomers don’t know how to use a beam of

test. They can’t operate a lino type machine and

they couldn’t even set bowling pins manually.

I’m just saying if boomers try to take over the

world, it’s going to be pretty easy to take it back.

Just so I what I did as I went and found a

list of jobs that don’t exist anymore. A galley

roller in a large, large ship they used to have

hundreds and maybe even thousands of people

hacked as rowers. They used to row the ship and

then they invented sales. And the sailing ships

were much faster, much more efficient than the

rowing and people didn’t have to die doing it not

as much. I mean people did die in sailing ships

but for totally different reasons. A knocker upper.

takes on very different meaning in modern parlons

but a knocker upper is someone who wakes you up.

So they come to your house, they knock on the door

and you get up and you get up. So a knocker upper.

A knocker upper was replaced by the alarm clock.

A caddy butcher was a very interesting job.

A caddy butcher is someone who is basically a

butcher for horses but because people don’t eat

horses anymore, like they don’t use caddy butchers.

A beam attest is a person who used to count steps

physically to measure distances. That was replaced

by the paper map. So an entire job industry

was replaced by paper maps. Boomers can’t operate

line-on-type machines. That is when you should do

type-setting basically. You have to take the

letters and put them in place and then it’s like a

heat thing. It was replaced by digital technology.

Oh big shock. And they couldn’t even set

bowling pins manually because that actually used

to be someone’s job. They didn’t have a machine

that picked up all the bowling pins and then put

them down. They have a big claw now that picks

them up, puts them in place and puts them down

physically. So the irony there is everything she’s

talked about has replaced some other technology

that was proceeding it. There are a dozen versions

of that joke. They all rely on you saying things

to your audience that your audience always

already agrees with which is not a joke. So first

of all if you have a listicle that’s not a joke.

and then going, “Ooh look at us, aren’t we better?”

I do remember the one of the videos I really enjoyed

and it was they gave a rotary phone to a couple

of teenagers. When they were laughing and laughing

and laughing as the teenagers couldn’t figure out

how to use the phone. And it took about 10 minutes

but then they figured it out. Whereas if you

gave one of these older people a smart phone,

a brand new smart phone and told them to do some

basic settings, I guarantee they wouldn’t be able

to do it. And that’s the difference. You’re talking

about young people not being able to do something

because they’ve never done it before. That doesn’t

mean they can’t do it. It doesn’t mean they

couldn’t figure it out. It doesn’t mean they’re

adaptable because they are. We’ve had some jokes going

around lately. Primarily about language. My coworkers

are old. My friends are old. I’m old. And they are

starting to rip on things. My wife specifically is

angry at the fact that my kids spend so much time

on their tablet. Now I didn’t really want to point

out but then felt obligated to point out the fact

that while she was complaining about kids being

on their tablets, she was watching TV. And she was

probably watching TV for the exact same amount of

time the kids were on the tablet. So the kids aren’t

watching television in the traditional sense. They’re

watching videos on TikTok, on YouTube and stuff.

They don’t watch traditional TV. And she in her

mind has demonized the tablet when the TV is just a

big less useful tablet that she is one step

away from being addicted to. And I pointed out,

so you have people now complaining that kids

are addicted to their phones and tablets.

My generation, the kids were addicted to TV.

Previous to that, kids were addicted to music.

Previous to that, kids were addicted to

music. All these complaints have not changed.

They’re generational. You’re not doing the thing

I did. And the new thing that you’re doing is bad

and addictive. It will make you sick and dying. Now

social media is engineered. So I think there are

risks to go along with it. TV is bad. It’s addictive.

But it was more passive. Whereas the algorithm,

what not is coming for your children, I am aware

of that and do caution my kids. We do a limit time

and stuff. But it’s because I know that modern

technology is manipulative in nature. I don’t blame

the children for that. I mean, the conclusion

to that is that first of all, that wasn’t funny.

From an objective point of view, what she did

was make a list and the only reason the people in

the audience were laughing is because they agreed

with her. So that wasn’t humor. That was agreement.

If I could be specific, I don’t want to define a

joke. A joke is something that makes you laugh. But

they were just like, oh yeah, I hate young people.

Therefore, this lady hating on young people is funny.

to me. Whereas I don’t, I personally don’t think

that’s a joke. If I was going to try to make a joke,

I would try to do better than that. There should be

an examination of something. Because her joke falls

flat when she says we could take it back. I don’t

think you could. I don’t think you could take it back

from the millennials. They would lock you out of

your email and Facebook. And then you wouldn’t have

be able to do anything. And you’d be spending time

calling the millennials or Gen Z or whoever you’re

talking about to come and fix all that shit for

you. Do you remember when people got really upset

about Miles Morales, the new Spider-Man and the

new Spider-Man wasn’t white? Remember that? I just

wanted to point out that no one gives a shit anymore.

So Miles Morales was introduced as a half-black,

half-Mexican kid from Brooklyn. He got bitten by

a different spider and got different spider powers

and became the new Spider-Man of Miles Morales.

Everyone who was racist lost their mind.

And fuck those people that’s so stupid. Because here

we are now, a few years later, I don’t know when

Miles Morales was released anymore. And no one

gives a shit. They came out with that movie in the

Spider-Verse. Fucking awesome. I watched it again

a week ago. That’s why this popped into my head.

That movie’s great. I almost cried at the part

where they’re supporting each other because I guess

I’ve never had any real support in my life. But that

is something I clearly clamor for. The interesting part

was like, I was like, “I’ll watch this because the

new movie’s coming out. I’ll watch the old movie.”

So I’m kind of like, kind of remember exactly what’s

going on. That’d be really nice to go into the

theater knowing that. Fucking mosquito. I am

not Spider-Man. I miss that mosquito twice.

I forgot to do me a fucking mosquito. It’s because

mosquitoes hate spiders that are racist too. And so

he hates Spider-Man. He’s trying to ruin my Spider-Man

thing. I was watching it on the train and then

I just right way, midway through the trip. I suddenly

went, “No one cares that Miles Morales isn’t a

white Peter Parker anymore.” Peter Parker is white

guy. Peter Parker’s Peter Parker. Spider-Man’s Peter.

Parker. Fucking is the calling man. No one gives a

shit. And no one ever did. They just were racist.

That’s something you just keep in mind. Those massive

controversies are just distractions for nothing.

They’re not even distracting you from anything. But

that got me thinking about other distractions we’ve had.

We’re not coronavirus. COVID-19 is not finished. It

still exists. It’s still something to be concerned

about. I still know people who have gotten it

recently. So still be careful. I want everyone to be

careful. But we are maybe just living with it

now or we’ve got it sort of under control. People

who are vaccinated, things like that. I wanted to

take a look at some of the conspiracy theories that

came out. Just remembering, this is kind of like

reminiscing of the history of a couple of years ago.

So Miles Morales, fucking awesome Spider-Man. No one

gives a shit that he’s Spider-Man anymore because

he’s fucking great in Asia. So I can really only

speak for this stuff. I read online and the stuff I

knew in Asia. So in Asia, the first conspiracy theory

about COVID-19 was that COVID-19 was engineered

to kill off old people because China, Japan, and

Korea have too many old people. It’s a graying

populations. So they engineered this disease that

would attack old people. Now the reality is that

anything virulent like a virus or a disease or

something is going to have a bigger impact on older

people regardless. It’s going to have an bigger

impact on older people because they are weaker. They

have more underlying problems. They’ve lived a

longer life. They are closer to death already. So a

devastating disease, respiratory disease, someone

who’s not already healthy, it’s going to kill them.

So yes, it was killing older people at a higher

raise, but any disease would. So the Spanish flu,

I’m assuming killed older people at a higher rate.

The bubonic plague probably killed people at a higher.

rate. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know about the

stats back then. It’s a job that went away with

the boomers. So who knows? But I’m betting any

disease that is powerful, kills older people at a

higher rate than younger people. I do remember

also in the paper they were saying maybe people who

smoke are more resistant, which was a weird maybe

like smokers lobby that they threw out there.

I don’t I think that one was pretty much debunked

pretty quickly. So that corresponds to the virus

was engineered in a Chinese lab. Then there was

a conspiracy theory and it got out from the lab.

Then there was a conspiracy theory that the US

imported COVID to China so that they could blame China

for the breakout of coronavirus. That turned out

to not necessarily be true. And it really was

devastating way more in America than it should

have been because of the incredibly poor rollout

of vaccines and the anti-vaccine movement in there.

In Italy, I didn’t know this one. I just started

looking up some some basic ones so I could remind

myself. In Italy, they were blaming GMO, so genetically

modified organisms, basically virus resistant

or bug resistant fruit and vegetables and things

like that are the most common ones. They try to

grow more perfect fruit that is healthier and

harder. They were saying coronavirus came from that,

which I thought that was an interesting one I’d

never heard before. So there you go, even now I’m

picking up stuff. I actually there was someone I knew

who was on the coronavirus isn’t real. It’s not

a real virus and there will be lawsuits. This was

at the beginning of 2019, 2020. It’s three years

later and they were like there’s going to be lawsuits

in the world of court and it’s going to be coming and

you’re going to be regret taking all these precautions.

I actually that was an interesting argument

because they’re like you shouldn’t take precautions

against this thing that may or may not be real. So

let’s give them credit. Let’s pretend for a second

that coronavirus was not real. Taking precautions

against it doesn’t hurt you. So this is like I’m going

to take vitamins so that my immune system or

my body is healthier as a precaution against

catching the flu or a cold or just getting sick

in general. That isn’t specific towards anyone. I

take vitamins every day. I actually find that if

I don’t take vitamins, I think I have a single

vitamin deficiency that’s very small. If I don’t

take a multivitamin over the course of a couple

months, I get really worn down. I take vitamins

that doesn’t seem to happen. So I don’t know what

vitamin it is. I don’t know what mineral it is. It’s

something in my body, but I take the multivitamin

because it fixes this problem. But then I’m like

it also will help me any other deficiencies I might

have. So I’ll be healthier overall. Protect

me against disease and whatnot. Non-specific.

But then it was like wearing masks. Well, I basically

know what I know during the period we were wearing

masks. Got the flu. I started sanitizing my hands

against coronavirus. Maybe multiple times a day.

I’d probably do it once or twice a day now. But

my chances of catching other diseases, not even

coronavirus, has gone down because I sanitize my

hands more often than I used to. Taking precautions

against anything isn’t necessarily a bad idea. I

see people wearing a mask. I might even feel like,

oh, you know, in this particular situation, it’s

unnecessary. But they’re taking a precaution

against stuff is going to protect them more so

than if they didn’t. So the anti-mask movement,

I always thought was really weird because,

okay, if you don’t believe coronavirus is real,

you do believe that flu is real. You do believe

that colds are real and it will protect you from

the flu and cold. So what is the problem with

protecting yourself against these other things?

And then it maybe will just, you know, that

protective ability will roll over into coronavirus.

If it does turn out to be real perchance, may

have. And that was a little bit of an aside.

So yeah, there was the group of people who said

that coronavirus doesn’t exist, that it’s just the

flu. Now, I always found that to be a very confusing

argument because you’re admitting that there is a

flu and the flu is virulent. The flu is going around.

It’s very communicable. The flu is killing people.

The flu is putting people on respiratory machines

and the bit you’re angry about is that we’ve called

it COVID-19 and said it’s something else. COVID-19 as

far as I’m concerned is the flu. It’s just a really,

really strong flu that mutates and attacks your lungs

and puts people on respirators. You can call it a

flu. It’s just as dangerous. It’s killing just as

many people as if it wasn’t the flu specifically.

So that argument, I actually had someone use that

to me that don’t be silly. It’s just the flu.

Someone, I think it was on Twitter or something.

Someone kind of came at me with that one.

And I was like, that argument doesn’t mean anything

because if it’s just a flu and it’s still killing

people and still really communicable, then it’s just

as bad as if it is coronavirus. So protect yourself

from this flu just as much as you would protect

yourself from coronavirus. It was a globalist plot

to take away our freedoms. So lockdowns and stuff,

of course, we couldn’t do whatever we want. We

couldn’t go get haircuts. We couldn’t go out and drink

and have parties and stuff. And that’s my freedom.

You’re taking away my freedom. Again, I was a little

torn on that. I did. I agreed with lockdowns. I

thought they should have happened. Japan didn’t lock

down in the same way as let’s say North America’s

the one in the news. So it’s always the one I

end up talking about because Corona in Japan,

they have written into their constitution freedom

of movement. So you’re not allowed to lock people

down, but they made the recommendation in Japanese

people generally being quite sensible. Most people

did stay home and they only went out when they had

to and they just didn’t do things to try to catch

coronavirus. But interfering with your freedoms, the

thing is the freedoms came back. So that actually

in historically that was undermined because the

freedoms didn’t go away forever. We aren’t still in

lockdown. And again, the economy suffered greatly

and the globalists are the ones who want to keep

the economy working. Maybe they want to control

it, but to control it, they need people passively

in place in their cubicles to do the jobs that need

to be done so that there is an economy to run the

globe because the way we’ve set up the economy

in the world right now, it is economy based. So

the globalist taking away your freedoms and destroying

the economy in the same hand is not beneficial

to the globalists. So that one again logically

falls apart the more you think about how the world

works, which is actually how a lot of these conspiracies

fall apart is when you think about how the world

works. And then the last one was Big Pharma. This

was the best one from me. This was the one Big Pharma

wanted to make some money. The engineer disease

put it out in the world that disease kills lots of

people. We have the vaccine. It’s a science

fiction, it’s a science fiction plot as old as time.

It’s a good one. I mean, I don’t think… Actually,

it is the most reasonable of the conspiracy theories.

Is that a corporation decided to get evil. The

thing is multiple places came out with multiple

vaccines. I actually had the… I forget what

they’re called now. That’s how long it’s been.

I had the AstraZeneca, I think it was one of

them. And then I had the Johnson and Johnson

one. That’s weird. They put… Maybe the

vaccines, maybe forget what vaccines I got. I got

three or four. I remember the last one was… So

I actually got coronavirus. It was bad as a cold.

because I had been vaccinated two or three times

already. The vaccine did its job. So I got coronavirus.

It was like two days. One day I was like really hot

and uncomfortable. And then the second day I was

kind of bad and I slept all day. I went into

one of those hotel isolation situations.

And then it wasn’t bad at all. I didn’t feel

good, but like I wasn’t going to go exercise or.

anything. But basically I slept a little more. The

fever kind of took a while to go away, but that was it.

I was actually in really good shape. So I actually

think the vaccines worked. I got the fourth vaccine

for 12 hours. I was just knocked out. I was in

physical pain. I had that sort of joint pain you

get from the flu and stuff. It was way worse than

coronavirus. But then if I needed to get a fifth

vaccination, if they said Peter, you won’t want,

I absolutely would because the disease didn’t do

anything to me. If the vaccine is the worst part,

I’ll take the vaccine and take that eight, 10-hour

period of pain and frustration just so I could

survive the actual coronavirus with ease, no less.

Bill Gates wants to implant everyone with a chip. So he was talking about Ebola virus.

And he predicted that there was going to be another pandemic in the future.

Scientists have actually talked about this. Climate

change has done it. Just more air travel and

interacting with people makes it more communicable.

So the disease is going to spread around more quickly.

Things like that. So there are basically lots of

people who are saying there’s going to be another

pandemic. It’s coming soon. After coronavirus, they

were like, it’s going to speed up because we had

Spanish flu. And then they said, once in a hundred

years, a hundred years later, we got COVID-19.

And they said, oh, then the next one will be a

hundred years later. That’s not how it works.

Because of climate change and stuff, it’s going to

speed up. So we’ll probably get one every 50 years

that is this bad. And then it’s going to be every

25 years. Unless we get to a level of technology

where we can take care of it, that’s kind of what

Bill Gates was talking about. We need to learn

to protect ourselves from ourselves because we’re not

going to stop air travel. And we’re not going to stop.

mutations of diseases and stuff. And people

are going to mix in, it’s going to get worse.

And so they thought, because he didn’t want to be

proven wrong, he created coronavirus. So a computer

guy suddenly, like I’m going to say, yes, Bill Gates

is probably very good at computers. I don’t know

if he is anymore because he got into that position.

Like he created computers. He made windows and

stuff like that. But then he got into a position

where he didn’t really make stuff anymore. He told

engineers how to make stuff. He probably understood

what they were talking about. But could he do it?

I don’t know. Steve Jobs gets the same deal.

Like did he make anything? No, he told engineers,

you have this. I want these features. Here’s a

list. Go make that happen. They’re off. They go and

they get it. Bill Gates is the same. I’m sure he

understands computers and he’s very good at computers.

But at the end of the day, he was like, well,

here’s a list of features. Here’s things to make it

go work better off you go, go make that happen because

I pay your money now. So he might be high level,

but he’s certainly not going to be like, well,

I’m going to just switch to biology now of

virology and create some diseases to go make sure

that I am right in the world and the things I’ve said.

Looking back is valuable because all the things we

freaked out about conspiracy theories, especially.

It’s we’ve you hear the conspiracy theory. You

have a good time talking about it and then it

disappears because you don’t think about it anymore.

When something new happens and it’s tempting to

believe, oh, we didn’t even talk about 5G in the

UK. The people in the UK thought that 5G towers

caused corona virus because it ate the oxygen and

like infected you. And they were setting them on

fire. Like they were setting 5G towers on fire.

These are these are again, the very reasonable

people, the boomers from the first segment, not

understanding how technology works or radio waves

or 5G or any of this other stuff. And then just saying

like, they put up this tower, bad thing happened.

I’m going to burn down this tower. I’m right.

You can’t tell me otherwise. I had an interesting

experience when I was sick in the hospital a couple

years ago. And I would take a pill in the evening.

And then about two hours later, my neck would get

tight and my shoulders would hurt and I’d feel

some sort of pain. And so I told the doctor like

every time I take this pill, it actually causes me

pain. Is that normal? Is that a side effect? Is that

something that’s happening? He’s like, oh, that’s

not what’s happening. What’s happening is you get

like a steroid in the morning. And then you feel

stronger and better. And then when we get to the

evening, sort of when you take your evening pill,

that’s when the steroids wearing off. See, because

I didn’t understand medicine or the things that

were happening. I was thinking there was a causal

relationship. I’m taking this pill and then very

soon afterwards, I start to feel pain. I was

thinking the pill caused me pain. That’s exactly what

these people were thinking about 5G. What was actually

happening is the pill I was taking in the morning

wasn’t working anymore because it’d been 12 hours.

And I was taking a different pill for something else.

And then I wouldn’t that pain was just going to

sit there anyways. They could have given me pain

killers now that I think about it. But Japan, they

don’t give very strong pain killers and they don’t

like to give out pain killers too much. You need

to suffer a little bit to make you a stronger,

better person. Did it work? No, not stronger,

not better. Still stiff shoulders, to be honest.

So what I’m saying, conspiracy theories, we forget

about them. And what we actually should do is take

a look back at, again, we just have to be history

like three, four, five years ago. What were people

talking about? What were we thinking? Were those

things important? And are they important now? And

then the next time someone comes up with, superhero

has changed color or superhero has changed gender,

or it’s like a non-gender conforming version

of a superhero. And people flip out, be like,

dude, we don’t even remember the fervor over Miles

Morales. We don’t even remember people getting

freaked out about Lady Thor, which was a great

storyline, by the way. I wish the movie done it

better, but Lady Thor was fucking awesome. And

I could have done me with some more Lady Thor.

I had a second part. So then when you get, then

when you hear a conspiracy theory and it starts to

sound logical, think back to, okay, coronavirus,

what were the conspiracy theories we heard?

What do we now just don’t even remember? Nevermind,

right off is not true. What do we not even remember now?

And that will hopefully keep you more even tempered going on into the future.

[Music].

(upbeat music)

All right, I’m about to shit on Guardians of the Galaxy,

via shitting on one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.

This, all right, let’s start again.

So this is the closest I’ve come to writing a full script for a podcast in years.

When I first started making podcasts, I wrote a script

and I recorded it three times and edited those together.

It was shit.

And then I went to bullet points.

And bullet points seemed to work for me.

This is full sentences.

So I’m wondering if I’m going to sound more scripted.

But there are my ideas, there are my words.

Maybe I planned out jokes better, but then I never,

the jokes I make that I’ve planned out don’t land.

So today I wanna talk about Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

But I want to talk about it via the worst film I think that’s ever existed.

You might be like, oh no, what’s going on?

He didn’t like Guardians of the Galaxy, which is 100% correct.

But let’s take a look first at Metacritic score for Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.

It has a Metascore of 80, generally favorable.

We all have the Metacritic thing where it’s like, 80 is not generally favorable.

That’s most people loved it.

The user score is 8.7.

I thought Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy was dismal.

And I hated every moment playing it.

And that’s unusual.

Mr. Warmhands sent me the game.

He said, you’re gonna love this.

You like story-based adventure action games, which is true.

This is a very heavily story-oriented action

adventure game, which is also true, I just fell apart.

And this takes us to Six Underground.

Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is the Six Underground of video games.

And Six Underground is the worst movie that has ever been made in the world.

First, I need to talk about a bad movie and a bad movie.

So there’s two kinds of bad movies.

I watch a lot of movies.

I watch probably a film every single day.

I have a one and a half hour train ride to work,

and then a one and a half hour train ride home from work.

I’m listening to podcasts, I’m watching TV, I’m watching movies.

That’s my media time now.

So I’ve watched hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of movies.

I love action movies.

I love funny movies.

I love goofy stuff.

I enjoy film.

Now, the first category of bad film is a film

where they didn’t have enough of something.

It’s not enough money.

It’s not enough talent.

It’s not enough time.

But there is sort of a heart there that makes you end

up going, it wasn’t a great film, but I enjoyed it.

There’s a kind of bad film that is still in the first category.

That is so bad that it sort of goes through the nature

and comes back up and is actually good again.

It’s still entertaining.

Because that’s all a movie or a video game really needs to be.

To be successful is entertaining.

It can be entertaining in the wrong way and still be successful.

I watch a lot of Steven Segal movies.

I hate him so much.

Oh, he’s the one who named Sean Nupi, said his name.

The curse has come back.

But my pleasure and enjoyment comes from

picking apart those films and how bad they are.

I would never recommend those films to another person.

I would never say watch them unless you had the same sort of mental state as me.

That’s also a very important part for criticizing media.

It’s understanding the way your brain is working

and the way other people’s brains are working.

There’s lots of stuff I would watch that I would not recommend other people watch.

There is the second kind of bad movie, which is bad bad.

So there’s bad, so bad it could be good.

There’s bad yet still entertaining.

There’s bad, but just bad.

And it comes from sort of two major issues that I’m gonna talk about.

But the primary thing is you have to have

all the things that those other movies lack.

You have to have the money, you have to have

the talent, and you have to have the time.

So you have to have all the things in place

to be successful and still find a way to fuck it up.

See, this is the problem without running a

script is I have to actually follow the script.

Let me introduce to you a film called “Six Underground.”

It is a Netflix movie.

Netflix has money up the wazoo.

This is a pre-pandemic.

Think it was toothed, anyways.

Maybe mid-2000 teens.

So they have enough money to make a good movie.

They have Ryan Reynolds as the lead.

He’s a very expensive actor and he’s actually quite good.

I like Ryan Reynolds.

He’s talented, he’s charming.

He’s made some good movies, made some bad

movies, but he has it in him to make a good film.

“Six Underground” is directed by Michael Bay.

Michael Bay has a very inconsistent career.

He’s made the rock, which was quite good.

He made bad boys, which is good.

He made painting games, which I actually thought was very good.

I’ve made Transformer movies.

Now, I believe that Transformer movies, I’m not the target demographic.

The most respect I had for Michael Bay is when he said,

“I make movies for 13-year-old boys,” which is a fair statement.

So he’s saying a lot of people complain and don’t like

my films because they’re not the actual target audience.

“Six Underground” in this case, there’s a couple of heads

explode and a lot of bodies get thrown around and stuff.

That means that I was the target demographic.

I had to be adults.

But it’s almost like his juvenile humor still

stayed and then his inconsistency in tone

is what infected the film, which made me so negative.

“Six Underground” had two writers that I remember.

And it’s two douchebags who should be ashamed of themselves because this movie–

I don’t know where it went wrong.

Because it might have been written really well.

And then Michael Bay changed it.

It might be Michael Bay took the material and actually elevated it.

I actually don’t know because I’m not part of the process.

I don’t think it was Ryan Reynolds.

I think Ryan Reynolds was doing all the things he was told to do.

He was being very Ryan Reynolds Z in this film.

You don’t even have to watch the whole film.

The opening is a car chase escape scene and it by itself will illustrate to you

all the problems in the film in the first 10, 15 minutes.

And I was thinking to myself, if I ever ran a film class,

if I ever got any sort of respect, and people were like,

Peter, teach us about all the films you’ve absorbed,

and you’ve taken, you’ve analyzed, and you

thought about, put that back out in the world.

Teach these young and up-and-coming people who want to make movies.

What is the right and wrong thing to do?

I think I could do that.

I think I could help some people make better films.

So this is for young and up-coming people who want to,

oh my god, I got a mosquito bite on my bicep, and it is massive.

Like I said, at the beginning, as soon as I got

into a flow, something would go horribly wrong,

and the horribly wrong part was, I looked at my own body.

All right, we can dispense with this stupid joke thing.

I’m not gonna ever teach a film class.

That’s fine.

So we have the opening car chase,

and it’s demonstrative of where the movie went wrong on every aspect.

The primary issues for me are inconsistent tone and too much noise.

And this is visual, it’s action oriented.

The opening of your film is teaching the audience

what they’re supposed to feel and think throughout the rest of the film.

The opening of the film, I would say,

is probably more important than the actual climax of the film,

because it tells me what I’m supposed to know,

and what I need to know about the world we’re inhabiting for the rest of the movie.

It sets up the film.

First, there is all the visual noise.

Then Michael Bay is famous for incredibly fast cuts.

He was a music video director before he became a movie

director, and that clearly has infected his style.

There are rarely moments where you actually get

to look at anything for more than a few seconds.

But the problem with constant quick cuts and penning cameras all the time,

it means no single image will have any real sort of impact.

Your brain, it’s your subconscious is taking things in,

and I actually think that makes it worse in this

case, because my subconscious brain is going,

oh, I don’t like that, I don’t like that, what’s that?

What’s that? I don’t like that.

And so I don’t have a comprehensive feeling for everything that’s going on.

There’s always dirt, spark, it’s inconsistent

lighting, there’s things flashing all the time.

It is visually a mess.

And it’s always shot from a thousand different angles.

And angles are very important for giving audience a sense of where things are.

One of the complaints about the Batman movies, the

Christian Bill Batman movies, was during action scenes.

It was very dark and the camera changed angles constantly.

Now, the director said, I wanted you,

the audience to feel what it would be like to fight

Batman, which would be disorienting and difficult.

The problem is, I’m not fighting Batman.

I’m trying to enjoy a Batman movie.

I want to see Batman do cool stuff.

So I can’t see him and I don’t know where he is.

That’s a problem.

And then there’s the famous trucks driving down the road

and the Joker opens any shoots like, I think a RPG

or something out of the truck at the other truck.

It’s actually very difficult to know which side of the road the trucks are on.

And you might be like, it’s a movie, that doesn’t matter.

But it does spatial awareness is very important for consistency.

Inconsistency in film makes it very hard for the audience

to stay with you because if something feels disjointed,

they feel disjointed and then you lose tension from the action scene.

We’re going to watch some clips.

And I’m going to talk about each clip now.

For the podcast listener, I’ve chosen clips primarily with audio.

But if you want to watch the bright neon green Alpha Romero drive around, I don’t.

It’s an interesting thing.

One of my first complaints was about the Alpha Romero being bright green.

And this is like a getaway scene.

And then Ryan Reynolds actually makes a joke

about the lack of subtlety of the choice of car.

But that said, let’s take a look at the first clip.

I have about seven clips of Underground Six.

Six Underground.

I say it wrong every time.

That’s also another weird, very small problem.

I always say Underground Six, not Six Underground.

That’s bad.

I’m safe.

Get in the car.

She’s bleeding.

I’m aware.

Just drive.

I’m going to smoke these mother’s eyes.

OK, so what has happened is we have been introduced to our characters right away.

They’re in a car.

She’s bleeding.

You can feel it’s very tense.

That’s the initial setup.

This is a tense scene.

It’s very serious.

We have a big problem.

One of our team is bleeding.

Then he says, I’m going to smoke these mother fuckers very aggressively.

That wasn’t too bad.

I was like, that seems like his concern is

less on the survival of his teammate and more

on revenge of the action of what’s coming up next.

So what I’ve been taught as the viewer is that that

woman’s life is less as important than I thought initially.

At first, I thought, oh no, this is a big deal.

She’s been shot.

One of their team is going to die.

That’s clearly a big deal.

His concern is immediately switched off.

And then we get to scene two.

I was covered in the door.

I was shot through a window.

I was too sure.

I went amateur shot.

Yes.

I know you got shot through the window.

God, that’s so bad.

What kind of lawyer are you?

Definitely going to die.

I don’t know a lawyer with friends in high places.

Maybe mafia friends or something to point us.

We got this.

That’s all that matters.

OK, so we’ve learned a few things in this scene.

Complete– like I’m saying, inconsistent tone, a complete change in tone.

It was very serious a few seconds ago,

because this is all part of the single car chase.

Now we’ve got Ryan Reynolds doing Ryan Reynolds.

He’s like doing quips and he’s talking really fast.

And he’s stating obvious things in a very uncouth way.

You’re bleeding a lot.

You’re definitely going to die.

But there is zero concern for her life.

And he says, out loud, we got this.

This is the only thing that matters.

So what I’ve been taught again is that the actual

life of the person in the back seat does not matter.

So if they die, it’s not going to be a big deal.

It can take a moment to thank you.

There is nothing else I’d rather be doing with my life.

I don’t care.

[SIRENS]

All right, so there we have the driver– again,

mid-car chase, person bleeding to death in the back,

saying, hey, let’s just have a little aside.

I want to tell you how happy I am to be on this team.

I love this.

This is my life now.

It’s great.

And then Ryan Reynolds turns around and says, I don’t care.

And so I’m learning that this team does not care about each other.

And that could be fine.

If the team is disposable, then that’s fine.

But of course, then we’re going to get to some other stuff.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

OK, so what has just happened for those who are actually

listening to the audio version of the podcast

is a big truck just scraped the bright green Alpha Romero.

OK, now they’ve hit a black car.

Now a black car would usually imply the bad guys.

I actually don’t remember if these are bad guys or not.

But there are two guys in that car.

They get exploded.

OK?

So now I know that at least the bad guys’ lives

are not worth anything because of the reaction

of the driver of the bright green Alpha Romero.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So he’s enjoying this.

So people dying doesn’t matter.

Enemies dying doesn’t matter.

Again, so this is all contextual for what

I need to know going into the rest of the

film to understand how I’m supposed to feel.

This didn’t bother me yet.

I did feel like this was, again, the sort of the visual cuts and stuff.

I don’t think Michael Bayes really the best director for me.

But I wasn’t annoyed at the film.

That’s coming up very soon.

Let’s get through the rest of the scene, though.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So we have the heavy bass drum kind of sound to give it some intensity.

They’ve just killed some bad guys.

He’s wooed his way into the next party.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

So he almost hits some– he almost hits some nuns.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Don’t forgive me.

So that’s just so they could throw a joke in.

He says, the nuns will forgive me.

I knocked them all off their bicycles.

And then the nuns give up and they start flipping them up.

It’s a joke.

I was kind of a throw away.

It seemed unnecessary because, again,

it’s lowering the sense of intensity of this scene.

If it’s a comedy, you could actually go lighter than

this and just have several of these things happen.

But then the next thing that happens– [MUSIC PLAYING]

Watch out for the gun.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Oh, I still had the right of way.

OK, so that was a pedestrian.

So the previous car that got exploded

by getting hit by the truck, there were two guys in it.

They died with a wound.

They had a great time.

That’s actually fine.

If you screw up with ’80s and ’90s action films

like I did, killing bad guys is a good thing.

They’re just fodder.

It’s a visual thing.

You kill as many as you can.

To show how great the heroes are, how capable they are.

Killing innocent people is bad.

Now, I know it’s bad.

Now, in this movie, what’s happened is he’s just hit a pedestrian with a car.

And he’s equipped.

He said, I definitely had the right away.

He’s shown no regret, no remorse.

Because he’s shown no regret, no remorse,

I know that in this universe, no one’s life has any value.

And that becomes very important for the end of this scene.

[MUSIC]

Oh, it was just the music bug.

We had, again, inconsistent.

We had this heavy-based drums and it was really intense.

And now it’s kind of actually got a bit of a light feel to it.

[MUSIC]

One for four.

Yeah, go ahead, but four.

We need you.

Cool, she need a bit.

Come here.

And then they have this, again, light introduction of another character.

No one gives a shit.

[MUSIC]

All right, so what has just happened is the driver has slid out and

he has crashed the car into a loader of some sort with like a fork lift.

And the tines were up and one has gone through him and it is killed the driver.

So we now know that this is important.

The driver is a member of the team, but well, again, what we’ve been

taught the entirety of the film so far is that he does not matter.

No one’s life matters.

And then we get to the burial scene.

So they’re on a boat, they’re going to dispose of the body.

They’re sipping up a plastic bag with his body in it.

One guy is crying, a guy who has just introduced

quite recently, they’re drinking and eating pizza.

Are you crying?

I didn’t even know his name.

We don’t know any names.

What was his name?

It doesn’t matter.

Now what you’ve done just there with one sentence is remove any impact.

So I thought we were going for a tonal shift.

We were going to be like this team cares about each other.

The death of one of the members of the team is important.

He says what’s his name?

They keep each other’s name secret as part of the whole

system that they’ve created within the film itself.

But fuck me.

This guy is dead right in front of you.

Ryan Reynolds faces telling me he’s sad.

The music is telling me I should feel sad and he’s just said who cares?

And if he says who cares, then it’s going to be hard for me to care.

He’s a good man.

Was he a good man?

I mean, he was kind of a dick.

He hit a guy with a car.

I actually see some inconsistencies in the lines that have been

written, which is where I start to blame the writers of this,

not necessarily Ryan Reynolds, because he’s doing what he’s told.

In this next part is the part that pissed me off more than anything else, I think.

While I manage the risk, I’m sorry.

Did he have a family?

I think you’re looking at it.

So did he have a family?

I think you’re looking at it?

Fucking none of you have demonstrated that you

care about each other in any way whatsoever.

How the fuck are you guys, his family?

And I’m supposed to feel emotional right now.

I feel nothing.

This kid dying meant nothing to me when I watched this film.

And it set it up for the rest of the film.

I don’t care if any of them die.

It doesn’t matter.

And that’s what they’ve established with this

opening car chase in these opening scenes.

What this should be doing is having impact on me.

I should be like going, oh, that team was really tight knit.

They care about each other.

This is a really important moment.

Tears are completely appropriate.

Nothing.

Because what we do know is that no one gives a shit

about each other unless you get to make a quip.

I don’t know if this is a comedy.

If it’s an action movie, it’s a serious movie.

I don’t know.

I’m pretty sure what it wants to be is all three at the same time.

And I’m actually finding that’s why it fails

along with so many other movies because they

actually haven’t decided what they really want to be before they start the movie.

Because you need a main tone or a main theme.

Comedy movies do need serious moments.

They make the comedy sort of more poignant.

Sad movies.

Action movies need breaks in the action to let you breathe and take in a moment of

the scenery and then understand the characters better.

Call a duty the video game.

You’re never going to feel anything about any

of the characters living or dying in a call

a duty because it’s essentially non-stop murder.

What they teach you is that human life has no value.

You’re there to kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.

So if you die, it doesn’t matter.

That’s okay.

Call a duty is a good game because it said like we’re focusing on one thing.

We’re going to do that one thing really, really well.

You go there.

You go there for the action.

You don’t care about the story.

You go to a movie.

You care about the story.

You go to a story driven video game.

This is me slowly dropping in that we’re going

to be moving on to Guardians of the Galaxy soon.

You care about the story.

Otherwise, you wouldn’t be playing a story based game.

Moments break up the film.

But if you have two tones fighting each other throughout the film.

So what we just had was serious action and lighthearted

comedy like ribbing each other back and forth.

Neither can it has a chance to sort of be the

big one and be successful because you need that big feeling to be successful.

Do you remember the movie Handcock?

So Handcock was Will Smith, pre-slapped.

He was a superhero.

He kind of had lost his way in the world.

He was drinking a lot.

It had two mini movies.

It had the first half of the film.

Was a film.

It was a comedy.

It was about this guy who was down and out but had superpowers.

The second one, it was supposed to be a redemption story.

But it changed tone.

It wasn’t funny anymore.

It was a completely serious action hero movie.

If they had stayed with any one of those themes

throughout, I bet they would have had a good movie.

If they’d stayed comedy the whole time, you would have had a good comedy movie.

If they’d stayed serious the whole time, maybe

with quips and stuff, every now and then, it probably would have been, I would say a

massive movie because that’s actually what Marvel does right now.

Marvel movies.

Everyone talks about how like Quippy and Funny They Are.

But if you actually watch the movie and like

take in the overall tone is almost always quite serious.

If I watch the Guardians of the Galaxy 2 movie,

volume 2, pre this podcast so I could have

a sense, how does the game relate to how the

video, to the movie, how does the video game

relate to the movie in their tone and do they have the same problems?

Guardians of the Galaxy 2, the movie, has very little comedy in it.

It has some standout scenes.

Those are all the scenes you’ll see in the commercials.

If you watch the commercials, you will actually

take in the entirety of the comedic offerings

of the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie.

And then I was also thinking about all my friends

have started playing Diablo, the new Diablo 4.

And I have never played Diablo, but I know that

one of the older games has a sort of easter egg.

It goes, there’s a side mission like a portal.

You can go to this other place.

Diablo is a very dark, heavy video game.

The tone is very depressed, it’s very heavy, everything is ominous.

Then it has this portal you can go through

and it’s level, it’s all cows and rainbows and green grass.

And it’s just a joke, it’s a little easter egg.

It came from a joke from a previous game.

That didn’t ruin the game because it was an

easter egg, it was a side bit, it was extra.

You actually could have passed right by it.

The only reason you would have gone there is

if you went their own purpose for a little surprise.

And a little surprise taking you out is awesome.

If that had become the second half of the

game, people would have hated it because it was inconsistent.

Then I thought, okay, what is a movie with

a consistent tone that’s trying to do a very similar thing.

And then I got to John Wick.

The first death of Six Underground demonstrates that nobody cares about anybody.

The world is unfeeling towards human life.

Human life does not matter.

But John Wick is the introduction of John Wick,

the character, he’s very sad, he gets a puppy.

The puppy represents the last vestige of hope

he has because it’s a gift from his recently deceased wife.

They spend nearly 20 minutes setting up that relationship.

It takes a really long time before any action

happens in John Wick if you really think about it.

Because they want to impress upon you the

audience, the incredible value of the life of that dog.

And it’s because that dog’s life in itself has a certain amount of value.

He’s showing that he cares about it.

I mean, at first he’s a little reluctant.

He doesn’t have dog food and stuff.

He doesn’t want to sleep on the bed.

Then of course he wakes up, it’s sleeping in the bed.

It’s all very cute and funny to be honest.

But what’s actually happening is they’re

saying, look, is the only person he’s ever loved is deceased.

She gave him this postmortem.

This is the thing that is pulling him out of

this state of depression and demise that he has fallen into.

Then the guys want to steal the car and then they kill the puppy just to be shitty.

But we as an audience know the value of that puppy to John Wick.

We know the value of it and therefore the impact of that death is more significant.

Therefore, the rampage he goes on for the rest of the film makes perfect sense.

He will not stop because you’ve taken away the only thing he cares about.

It’s just a puppy.

This, 600 grand, is supposed to be a team of

elite people who are all really good at their

jobs and they clearly don’t give a shit about each other.

So when someone dies, it’s like, I’m really the fuck cares.

There is supposed to be a redemption arc

for Ryan Reynolds where he cares at the end.

He starts out saying just leave him behind

but then at the end he’s got a new member who replaces the guy who died.

That guy’s like, I’m never going to leave

someone behind and then he goes, I don’t leave him behind.

I didn’t care.

Because the whole movie taught me that, yeah, does it really matter?

Because it doesn’t.

Because he’s just going to replace someone anyways because they’re just going to die.

Who gives a shit?

I’ve already mentioned 90s movies but it’s Quips and Death.

The only thing that was consistent in sort of 80s, 90s action movies was maybe, if the

hero wasn’t alone, he probably had a best friend.

That best friend died.

What they had done, sure, thousands of other Minion enemies had died around them.

But they had built up the relationships.

So if one of the main characters died, it was going to be significant.

They often didn’t do it in the first film.

It would have been the second film where a main

character, usually best friend or something

dies and that sets off the impetus for the

second film where it’s like a revenge fantasy kind of thing.

But they spent an entire film setting up that relationship.

Again, because back then in those films, they

understood that the relationship between those

characters has to be taught to the audience

as valuable so the break in that value becomes

meaningful, which is where six underground

fails in every aspect because nothing they did was meaningful.

Similar vein, last week I rewatch “Hurt

Locker” and in “Hurt Locker”, the first opening

scene has one death in it, but that sets up for the importance and the stakes of death

in that movie for the rest of the film because

they are very worked up about trying to keep

him alive and then they are very shattered when the first character dies.

And that teaches us as the audience what we are

supposed to care about for the rest of the film.

I have to pee.

You know there’s an average speed at which mammals pee.

It’s like 11 seconds is really normal.

So like an elephant pees on average for 11

seconds, a human pees on average for 11 seconds

and like certain dogs and stuff pee on average.

It’s not, I don’t remember the number exactly, but it’s something like that.

It’s an average, so of course you pee longer

and shorter sometimes, but the average amount

of time for almost all mammals is the same amount of pee time.

Science, someone studied that.

It’s kind of amazing.

Alright, so now we get to another sort of

complaint, again, teaching the audience what you’re supposed to care about.

Solo.

If you’re a Star Wars fan, solo is pretty offensive.

It’s offensive for me primarily because fuck

those writers who clearly did not understand

what they were talking about when they wrote this film.

Throughout the entirety of all the Star Wars

franchise, there is one consistent and is that Han Solo and Chubaka love each other.

They are best friends.

And this pissed me off so much.

This is supposed to be the solo story and of course

within that first story is how he meets Chubaka.

He gets thrown in a thing with a wookie and

they’re like, “Haha, the wookie is going to kill that guy.”

And then he speaks a little wookie and then

the wookie doesn’t kill him and then he helps

the wookie escape and they have a blood oath.

You save my life and therefore I will serve you.

That is not friendship.

That is slavery.

Now you can grow friendship out of that because

solo maybe he doesn’t think about, he doesn’t

have any sort of regard for blood oaths because that’s not part of his culture.

And he just treats Chubaka like an equal.

That actually seems to happen right away from the beginning.

But there is no moment where they demonstrate

that Han Solo and Chubaka love each other.

That Han Solo is willing to risk himself and

his life and all his choices for his friend.

Chubaka is very selfless.

But if he does selfless things what we’re actually

seeing is maybe he’s just doing it because of a blood oath.

There is one scene and it ruined the entire film for me because they’re in a mind.

There are wookies being forced to do work the

minds, they’re slaves and then they have a mission.

They have to go left to go finish the mission.

I don’t know, steal some data.

You go right and go save the wookies.

Han Solo and Chubaka in that film.

Chubaka is like, I gotta go save my people and then Han Solo

is like, we gotta finish the mission or they’re gonna kill us.

And then Chubaka is like, nah man, I gotta do this.

And then Han Solo is like, okay let’s split up.

You go save the wookies.

I will go get the data and finish the mission.

This was the singular missed opportunity to

establish the love between these two characters.

What you need to show is Han Solo being really, really torn up.

Like I have to finish the mission or they’re

going to kill us but my best friend here needs help.

What he should have done was said, fuck it.

Let’s go save your people.

And then if we have time we’ll go get the data together.

So you rewrite that scene where it’s like

Chubaka goes, hey we gotta go save the wookies

and Han Solo goes, no we gotta finish the mission

or they’re gonna kill us and wookies, Chubaka

is like, nah man, fucking wookies are being enslaved right now.

I’m not, I can’t stand for that.

And Han Solo going, we gotta get them, they’re

gonna kill us, we gotta do it, we gotta do the thing.

And then, fuck.

Okay, let’s go save the wookies.

He has that emotional tear where his love for Chubaka

overwhelms or is more valuable to him than his own life.

They go save the wookies and then the wookies

help them take over the data center and then they all escape together.

Good scene, good movie.

We’ve established for the rest of the film.

You don’t even need to do anything else.

You’ve established that Han Solo cares more

for Chubaka’s values than he does for his own life.

And that is what best French is all about.

So, to seem like being a little less than for you what French are up is all about.

So we’re gonna get to the Guardians of the

Galaxy game and everything I’ve said so far, fucking mosquito.

It’s the one who bit my bicep, you motherfucker.

Sorry, the distractions are running hard and fast today.

I need to give you sort of my gamer resume to start.

I think, I think that’s fair because you could

say you just don’t like video games and stuff.

And again, sort of my thing at the beginning

where Michael Bay makes movies for 13 year old boys.

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Suddenly has to go into the water because there’s

this whole sort of subplot of rocket hates to get wet.

He overcomes that fear for the team and stuff.

But I was like, this doesn’t make sense.

If it’s water and I have just been given

freeze powers, I should be freezing the water.

So again, inconsistency makes it difficult for me to care about what’s happening

because what I’ve been taught and what is actually happening don’t match.

Can you just shut the fuck up and do it?

So that is… Is everything about this sucks so much?

That you can hear… This is past the midpoint of the game, I’m pretty sure.

You can hear the despair I have at the fact that they are still talking.

One of my biggest complaints, again, messy.

Now, messy can come in a lot of ways.

There’s visually messy.

There’s a… Orally messy.

Guardians of the Galaxy, to me, is an orally messy game.

I care about what characters say.

I want to hear what the characters say.

I turn on subtitles even when I’m watching, even when I’m

playing a game, so that I don’t miss what characters say.

Because this game is a constant barrage of lines.

It means that the lines get mixed up so much that you actually

start to lose track of what they say is it important or not.

Because so much of what they say is trash, the

little gems of necessity in there get lost.

And all I can say at the end of this is, let’s see if I can hit that part again.

Can you just shut the fuck up and do it?

And to me that was almost my whole experience in Guardians of the Galaxy.

Is they spent so much time talking.

It was so unnecessary.

It was so laborious.

And they just never actually got to the fucking point.

No idea what the darn amount.

That’s fine.

These scenes are so long.

So I have no idea what they’re talking about, but that’s fine.

It’s not the reaction I should be having as a player.

I should care about what’s going on, but at this point, we’re chapter 13.

They’ve lost me completely.

I think I say in the next part what’s important.

Okay, we’re on chapter 13.

There are 13, 14, 15.

So there’s four full chapters left.

That’s how you know a game is good.

You start counting down the chapters to the end.

So what’s happened now is I’ve gotten past the midpoint.

So the point of no return.

I’m going to finish the game.

I’m now actually spite playing it.

I’m playing it because I want to find all the things I hate.

Because I knew I was going to do something like this.

I knew I wanted to do.

By the midpoint, I was like, I need to analyze why I’m

having such a negative visceral reaction to this game.

Because I actually have not hated a game as

much as Guardians of the Galaxy as in my life.

And remember, this is a game that everyone else seems to love.

It has a medocratic score of 80 and a user score of 8.7, which is 87.

That is ridiculous.

Why do I hate it so much?

That’s what I’m trying to get through.

The story itself gets lost in the amount of noise they make and it is constant.

During battles they’re talking, during cutscenes they’re talking.

And it becomes unnecessary to listen to them when they talk.

So you get into this problem where I don’t

care what they say even when it’s important.

Oh, okay.

No, I completely nonsensical once again.

You should never sigh like that when you’re playing a video game.

You should never be exhausted at the beginning or the end of a cutscene.

I was annoyed and tired when a cutscene started

and I was annoyed and tired when a cutscene ended.

Please lost track of what I’m doing to be honest.

Okay, this is, if you’re able to see the screen if you’re

watching on YouTube, a fairly low-key combat moment.

They have, on the screen right now, they have up in the corner.

It says marvelous. They have my health bar.

That’s all pretty normal standard stuff.

They have some green lights that’s health coming back to me.

They have neon flashes.

They have a health bar above the enemy.

This is only two enemies on the screen right now.

I punch him, he punches me.

There’s some guys battling the background.

And what I found very annoying is the visual noise on the screen all the time.

It made it very difficult for me to focus on enemies and what was going on.

You’re supposed to be managing your team as well.

And I found the team management to be laborious

because you had to basically step out of the game.

Click a button and step back in.

The screen was covered and shit the whole time.

And I remember when the first Destiny came out, it bugged me.

It was particle effects.

It was flashing lights.

It was all bright neon.

The screen lit up constantly.

This was clearly, I think this might have been designed for a new

generation of gamer who can take in all that visual information.

So this might be me admitting I’m old.

And maybe that’s where I’m wrong and the game is actually okay.

So all those people who love the game, they’re younger

people who actually like don’t care for all of your stimuli.

But I found that I wanted a better visual understanding

of what was going on on the screen all the time.

And you had to use the right weapon to take down certain shields and stuff.

Flashes, the whole screen turns green.

I’ve lost the ability to remember things.

And there’s one more actually.

Which takes us to the second last boss fight.

The second last boss fight happens in pitch black.

So they actually take everything off the screen.

It’s the exact opposite of what’s been happening the entirety of the game.

The entirety of the game.

Everything’s lit up.

Everything’s bright.

Everything’s flashing at you.

So I think the intent was that we’ll take all that away.

And then you’re going to be like you’ll lose track of the enemies.

It’ll feel very claustrophobic, something like that.

What I actually ended up happening was it was felt exactly the same.

Because overwhelming light and complete lack

of light end up being the exact same feeling.

I’m just trying to finish the game.

I just want to fucking get it over with.

I am waiting for the end of a chapter so I can stop though.

So I would have stopped like 10-15 minutes ago.

Jesus Christ.

Can these scenes go longer?

Can they fucking go longer?

If we just add another 30-40 minutes of this, be great.

And there it is.

A very sincere expression of frustration with

the fact that the cut scenes go on too long.

Because they’re just talking constantly.

Everyone has to have their say.

Everyone has to have their quip.

The Guardians of the Galaxy movie by comparison.

Because you could say maybe Peter, what you hate is Guardians of the Galaxy.

That’s not true.

I enjoyed the first movie.

I enjoyed the second movie.

I watched the second movie in preparation for making this video.

And what I found was there was significantly less dialogue, quipping,

and jokes in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, then you would think.

Because the bits that stand out are the comedy.

The bits that stand out are the comedy because they are chosen.

The time is chosen.

So we’ve just had a very heavy scene.

We’re going to do this and then put in a scene with jokes.

And then we’re going to go out from that and go back

to honestly a very straightforward, serious film.

It’s primarily about man’s relationship with

his father, family, who you choose to be with.

It is heavy stuff.

As I said earlier, if you watch the commercials, if you watch

all the trailers for the second Guardians of the Galaxy movie,

you can watch the entirety of the comedic content in the trailers.

Everything else in the movie is relatively straightforward and serious.

This game failed at that part.

So I ended up clearly in the last part, incredibly

frustrated, because I care about what people say.

So I really want to hear what people say and I want it to be important.

And that is good writing.

You need to actually have people say things that mean stuff because it’s

telling me the audience what I need to think and feel going forward.

I regularly couldn’t hear or it was filtered out because there was

so much noise or it was filtered out because it was so constant.

There was so much constant talking that I actually didn’t hear what anyone said.

Too much is just as bad as not enough.

An inconsistent will mean there is no impact.

They were consistent in the volume, but not the quality.

The good bits and the bad bits, they were just all shit together.

Now I’m going to say that Guardians of the Galaxy, the video game is bad.

And I know people are going to say that your opinion is subjective, but

my opinion in this case is objective and if you disagree, you are wrong.

Let’s just see what Ryan Reynolds has to say about this.

None of us will be remembered.

None of us will be remembered in six underground

because it was an inconsistent shitty movie.

And I think Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is going to

be very forgotten very soon because it’s a bunch of noise.

It’s a terrible game and I hate it so much that I

actually hope that developer doesn’t make another game.

I don’t know how to finish now.

I don’t think I wrote an ending.

I think I don’t wish anything bad on actual people.

Whoever was sitting down writing that game and

said, “So there must have been a production day.”

And they were like, “We need to have them speaking nonsensically,

constantly because that’s the nature of the character.”

Those guys were wrong and they shouldn’t be allowed to write anymore.

I don’t want them to not have jobs and not be able to eat and stuff.

I do want them to never write another script.

[Music].

[Music].

So I actually, in my notes, have written a multitude of failures.

And I just compile the list of times.

I don’t know if I failed or circumstances failed me or my brain failed, but

there is an element of failure. And maybe

this was, again, more an exploration of how

failure works.

Sometimes it’s me, sometimes it’s the world, sometimes it’s circumstance.

You got to take responsibility for what goes on in your life, but you can

also see how things are

sometimes out of your control. And so I thought I would explore that a

little bit by going through.

Basically, laugh with me by laughing at

me with me is what we’re trying to get to.

So like everyone who finishes university

and I was particularly bad at education,

I was trying to get a job. And so I

was just like, hey, throwing it out there.

Let’s try to get any job we can. We just want to get started in life.

And I thought, “Oh, what’s a noble thing I can do? Let’s try to make myself

the best self I can be.”

I also maybe had taken on too much information for movies like that things

work out really nicely

in the end, which found real life. They don’t really

work that way. Like, I’ve got, I’ve had a very.

blessed life, but at the same time, if you, what my aspirations in my

reality, there is a significant gap.

there. So I was trying to get a job right out of university. And I didn’t

really know how things.

worked. One of the things, university, high school, all education says it’s

supposed to prepare you

for the real world, supposed to prepare you for stuff. It doesn’t even come

close. Like, I think.

middle school elementary school should have a course on how to study.

That’s been a big sticking point for me for the last little while. It’s been

years now.

Well, I think about education is that

education never teaches students how to study.

They say, “Here’s math. Take this math and go study it.” They don’t tell you

how to study it.

Should I just copy it? Should I do like other activities? Should I make up

my own formulas?

Should I just look at it? Should I put it under my pillow and use osmosis?

They don’t explore anything.

Because again, I think every kid’s probably a little

different. And so what’s successful for one kid.

won’t be successful for another, but you got to try the different ways to be

successful. And then

find what works for you. So then by the time you get to junior high school,

high school, you know

what kind of studying works for you. Therefore, you can study more

effectively. When you’re going to

the end of university and you’re trying to get jobs and stuff, they got to

tell you how jobs work.

And that I think was maybe the first failure, where school has failed me

miserably. So I said, you know,

again, maybe being a little aspirational in my thinking, I decided to apply

to CISIS. Now CISIS is

CSIS. It is the Canadian. I forget what

it stands for. Canadian. It’s not secret.

And I’m going to have to look it up. Let me do that real quick.

What does CISIS stand for? Oh, there you go. Okay. It’s Canadian security

intelligence services. So

this is essentially Canada’s CIA or Canada, because the FBI is national and

the CIA is international.

Canada has the RCMP is national and CISIS is international. So they deal

with international crime. Now.

they’re spies. This is Canada’s version of spies. And I just thought, oh,

right, a nice letter and

a resume, which had like, I sold dog food for six years on it and send that

into the CISIS head office

because they do have an office, which actually is in itself kind of weird.

And I didn’t do any research.

I didn’t think of what requirements they had. I didn’t actually apply for a

specific job. I just

sent a letter to the Canadian security intelligence services and said, I’d

like to work for you.

Now with a little life experience, I see why this wouldn’t have worked out.

because I don’t think CISIS

just accepts applications. I think they recruit. I think they’re going to go

to the military.

They’re going to go to police agencies.

They’re going to go to specific things.

Again, perhaps banks need like forensic accountants and whatnot. They’re

going to find the people

who fit the roles they need and then they’re going to recruit them. They’re

not just going to take

applications off the street. It’s why you’ve never looked on Craig’s list

and seen an ad for CISIS agents.

Now I didn’t think I was realistic enough to think

I’m not about to be a spy. I’m not going to be like.

the Canadian version of James Bond going around the world shooting things

and solving crimes.

I thought I would probably be doing a lot of data input. Maybe I’ll get good

enough at that.

That I’ll actually get a job as maybe as a data analyst or compiling other

people’s information

and doing stuff for them. I was pretty, I’m not even going to say good, I

was pretty good with computers.

I was adequate. I was better than average at the time. That’s certainly now

that’s not the case

because computers have come so far. But at the time, I could have done some

Excel sheets that maybe

other people couldn’t do. I could put

some things together that other people do.

So I sent them a resume and a letter in a

cover letter and I actually got a response,

which I now in my head think this was

very nice of them to not make fun of me.

And then the response was a very short letter and I just said I don’t know

where you would fit.

in the organization. And it was a very nice way of saying like what the fuck

are you talking about?

You moron kid. But at the same time, it was respectful and it maybe even

took a moment to

recognize like this kid wants to do something bigger but just doesn’t know

how. Which I think was

the case. I wanted to do something good with myself in the world. I just

didn’t know how to do it yet.

Anyways, so I did not get a job at Canadian security intelligence services.

And that’s the first step

to how I live my life now is not a spy. So then I’m still looking for a job.

This is the same

era again with so I’m still in a situation. So now if I was going to get a

job, I’d do a lot of

research. I would find out stuff. I would make sure I know what I’m talking

about before I made any sort

of application. I’ve done internal interviews within the company I work in

now and I did as much

research as I could to get as much like background as I could so that I

could present myself very well.

Back then, I was just so ready to get a dream job out the gate that I just

thought any my brain was

making things look good that were not good for me. So there was a company

and I saw an ad and this was.

back then because this is when I’m in my 20s. So the Internet is functional

and it exists but it’s

not common. So most jobs, even it, you know, very technologically advanced

companies, you would still

send in a physical resume so you’d send it in the mail. So I saw an ad. I.

think it was on the Internet.

It must have been on the Internet and it was looking for a script writer.

Now I am a pithy guy.

I drizzle sarcasm. I am artistic and I’ve written lots of stuff. By that

time I’d actually written

a full novel. We’ll get to how that failed in a minute. I got quips. I could

do it. I can write

scripts. I could write scripts that dazzle people. I could even do drama. I

could do serious stuff.

Comedy is a hard thing to write. Drama is easy, comparatively speaking. So I

got this. So what I did is

I took some scripts that I had made for a mini Internet show I had at the

time. You can see that

this aspect of my life has not changed much. And I compiled those scripts

and I wrote, I made a list

of other things I’ve written in amazing scripts I’ve put together and then I

wrote an original script

for them and I made this package. And I thought, man, this is a pretty good

package. This has like

sketch comedy. Has little drama. Has some novel things to it. Like long form

literature style

writing. It shows that I am very diverse in my abilities. They’re going to

be creaming their

pants to get a hold of me. This is going to be awesome. And so I was putting

the envelope, the package

into the mailbox. And as my hand released, I realized, and you hear that

slam, you know,

when it slabs, and that’s the note that you’ll never get this back. This has

gone forever. This is

now in the world. This is in the hands of the person who you’ve sent it to.

As I released my hands

and heard that little pff, I realized it’s a computer company. They’re

looking for computer.

scripts. Not comedy scripts or drama scripts or any kind of script. It’s not

like a sketch show.

They had a, the reason I kind of conflated these things in my mind. This was

sort of the height

of flash and flash cartoons were huge. And my mind had put together, they

needed someone to write

scripts to make their flash cartoons. But what they actually probably wanted

was flash scripts.

Like if a then b go to 10, all those kind of, you know, basic things. They

wanted Python scripts.

They wanted SQL scripts. They wanted PHP scripts. They wanted database

access scripts. They wanted

a script writer to write computer scripts. And as I let go of that letter, I

realized, in that moment,

I realized, this is wrong. I have not done, I’ve not interpreted this the

way it is in reality.

And I’ve really messed up. And I couldn’t get it back. Now, thankfully, the

company never contact

because I now felt enough sort of self-humiliation, self-embarishment and

how stupid I was

that I was now dreading the call where they would ask me to come in and

actually talk to them about

scripts. And I was, part of my brain was going, they’re computer guys. What

they’re going to do,

is see this guy who’s so dumb and has made this huge mistake. They’ll bring

him in. They’ll sit down

and talk to him. And they’ll just be like this office joke. And I will, and

I, you know, I would have gone in.

Because I was out of university, I was in

debt. I needed a job. I would have gone in

for the interview knowing that I had applied for a job that didn’t exist,

knowing that I was doing

a thing that they were just laughing at. I still would have taken the shot.

And that would have just

added to the embarrassment. It would have been insane. I am thankful that

they never contacted me.

It is painful. I actually have a friend who ended up working at that company

for a short time. And he

said that it never came up. So they didn’t sit around. The office talking

about that one guy who applied.

for a script writer doing scripts, but not actually computer scripts. But I

mentioned in that story,

my first novel. Now, I actually have a tattoo of the title of the novel on

my back. And there’s

a secondary story. I got it on my lower left of my back. It is inches away

from being a tramp stamp.

Because I got it on my lower back before tramp stamps were a thing. And then

about two years later,

girls are all sort of getting like flurries or flashes or like barbed wire

and shit across the

bottom of their back above their butt. And actually all these slutty girls

ruined my tattoo.

But anyways, I wrote a book. And this was in university. I was actually very

proud of it. The basic premise

of the plot. There were actually two main characters. There was a police

officer. And the police officer

had this uncanny ability to always hit what he shot at. So one day, he

encountered a repist who

was raping a girl and he shot him. But he could sell that. I did just

explain tramp stamps. Because

I needed to give context to there was a time before tramp stamps existed.

Because before

tramp stamps existed, if you got a tattoo on your back on let’s say your

lower back like I did,

there was no negative connotation to it. There was no association with the

tramp aspect.

So I felt it was necessary to make sure everyone understood. I know I’ve had

people say it like I

say I got this. This tattoo on my back. And I’ve had people go, do you not

know what a tramp stamp is?

Not realizing there was a time before tramp stamps. There was a time before

that was a thing. So I

have a tattoo on my shoulder. And I thought for balance, lower on the other

side of the body on my

back would be like a nice balancing feature of the tattoos. That’s why I got

it there. And then

honestly like two years later, tramp stamps got wicked popular. Weird one I

saw, no whatever,

I’m not talking about tattoos, Ignats is just put in the chat in the 1800s.

Yes, in the 1800s,

that is when I got my tattoo. And in the 1850s, tramp stamps became popular.

That’s why you’ll see so

many cowboys talk about tramps. They’re not actually talking about homeless

people. They’re talking

about women with tramp stamps. So that’s just a little more in-depth

knowledge for cowboy lore.

From Seemick B podcast. And Sean White Beef Jazz.

Anyways, now you’ve ruined the plot of my book. It

was a shitty book anyways. I wrote it when I was.

in my early 20s. So you know it wasn’t. I think it was again, conceptually

good. I think again,

I just need to work on, I needed to practice writing more. But the idea was.

that there was this guy

and he, if he shot something and he killed it, he knew inside. So as a

police officer, he could say,

you know, I shot at him and I hit him and

he died and that’s just a circumstance. As

whereas deep down inside, he knew he shot him on purpose because he had

essentially perfect aim.

The secondary main character was a ghost and the ghost had no context for

what being a ghost was.

So again, all media we’ve ever heard is that ghosts remain because you have

something left unfinished.

But the ghost himself didn’t know what he had left unfinished. So he was

going to try to find out

what he needed to finish so that he could move on. Not even knowing if there

was a place to move on

to. This is all conceptual. So he essentially tries to help the cop with

some issues and solve a

crime and whatnot. It’s a weird buddy cop thing but also they both have

these like really deep-seated.

issues which was supposed to be the heavy part.

Anyway, I didn’t conceptually quite a good book.

I wasn’t ready to write something that high, high-falutin yet. So I decided

I’m going to say,

but again, I’m still in the stage of my mind

where if I just do it and I do the thing,

it’s going to be successful because I’m young and stupid and I don’t know

how things work.

So I sent this book. Now at the time you had to send a sample of the book

with a cover letter

with a stamped self-addressed stamped envelope in it with a postcard that

said whether you wanted

your manuscript back or not. And I sent

it to every publisher in North America.

And then the rejection started coming because every

one of those self-addressed stamped envelopes.

came back to me and every single one of them came back with a rejection and

you want to know what

rejection feels like. You get to the point where every single day for weeks

and weeks and weeks.

There’s a letter for you. And in that letter is something saying that the

thing you spent a year,

two years working on, it is not good enough for anyone else to ever see.

Thank you for your time.

Goodbye now. And of course, it’s not. Now again, with the benefit of years

of experience and stuff,

I know that it wasn’t very good and it would take years

of editing and stuff. I did have one publisher say,

this is interesting. We’d be interested in looking at your next project. The

next project never came about in a realistic

amount of time. I did an internship at a

publishing company that was a

only did poetry. So they only did poetry. And we got dozens and dozens of

manuscripts every day.

And it was hardly any event was poetry. And the guy who ran the publishing

company said,

like, Peter, here’s a good job for you. I want you sit down and write the

rejection letters for these.

Now, it’s basically a form letter, but he’s like, if you can put in

something encouraging and positive,

that’s really nice. And me having had the similar experience of being

rejected by every single publisher

in North America, I had sympathy for these wannabe writers. The thing is, I.

read some of the worst

trash ever. And there’s one that sticks out to my mind and my memory. And it

was like a pre-50 shades

of gray concept. It was a BDSM kind of thing. The only bit I remember now is

the dominant man and the

submissive woman meets in a grocery store and he takes her hand and then

they’re frozen food

section. And that’s already funny if you’re being honest. And he takes her

hand and he puts it on.

her frozen Turkey. And he holds it there against the Turkey for an extent

time until her hand goes numb.

And it’s so cold it starts to hurt. And I was just pissing myself laughing

the whole time. Because

it’s just the idea of holding a frozen Turkey as being sexually stimulating

anyway. It was just a bit.

much. I guess if you’re horny enough, it probably worked. I mean that guy

probably the guy wrote it. He

probably was, he was probably into that kind of stuff. Ralph says, damn, I

wish I finished writing

novels. It is hard. I mean, that’s it. I think everyone has the ability to

start. It’s the getting

through the middle and finishing. So last six months ago, I wrote and.

recorded Montana LDablo.

If you go to Montana LDablo.com, it is a choose your own adventure. And that

took me a year to write.

And then I got sick and was in the hospital. And then I got out and I was

working on it really hard.

And then I got COVID. And then I decided I’m just going to finish it. So I

don’t think it’s very

strong. I think it’s a really good first effort. I’m working on the concept

and stuff for a second

choose your own adventure book. But I really enjoyed making it. And I think

that made a huge difference.

Right now, what I’m doing is taking the first Montana LDablo story. I’ve had

some AI transcribe it

from voice to text. I’m going to go through and fix it and add stuff. And

then actually self-publish it

on Amazon. Yes, conceptualizing and starting is easy. And that’s actually

where everyone falls

apart. Because everyone has like a notebook like this with like probably a

good idea in it. I don’t

even get a sh*t on people. Most people’s ideas are pretty solid. It is

sitting down in again, a book.

It’s a year-long process, probably minimal. And then do you have the where

the will to sit down

and edit? Do you have the will to cut half the sh*t you wrote because you

realize it’s not very good.

or rewrite it to make it better? Anyways, working as an intern in a

publishing company was very.

eye-opening. And that was probably more leading me to understand how the

world works. And again,

why I wasn’t getting these jobs that I was completely doofing in the first.

place. I did do again a very

movie-like thing. I thought, “Oh, you know what I’ll do? I’ll take my novel

that I’ve written. I’ll leave it

on the publisher’s computer.” And then one day he’ll go, “Oh, what’s this

file I don’t recognize? He’ll

click it open and start reading and go, “Oh, it’s a novel by that young

intern, that young very handsome

and intern with lots of hair.” Oh my god, this is brilliant. I’m going to

publish this. And then that would

set off my publishing career. What actually happened is it was on his

desktop. He just deleted it.

He’s like, “I don’t recognize that file. It was gone.” So I’ve realized like

the movie concept of

how success works has no relationship to reality. And these lessons are the

lessons that get us

through there. So that’s a lot of rejection I experienced. Variant, I claim,

I claim, I act to,

Rao probably has not heard the story

of the failure of my judo career. Which.

since we’re here,

I got one more story after this. This will probably be edited. But I have

done judo my whole life

since I was like 10 years old. So now I’m 50. I’ve been doing judo for 40.

years. In university, I was on

the university judo team. I really, really, really wanted to go to the

Olympics. So I was like working

really hard towards it. I was huge. So the body you see now is nothing. I.

was like four at one time.

So this is how sad you can get if you don’t maintain that. I was doing judo

four or five nights

a week and going to the gym four or five mornings a week. And I was sleeping

10 hours a day. I.

basically one half the country. So I got this the like the West Canada part

and I went to the nationals.

And so I’m in the nationals. I’m fighting and then I have this moment. And

you know, this is

getting towards that peak, that moment. And my opponent grabs two of my

fingers and pulls them

backwards. Now I probably, so 50% of my mind thinks he did this on purpose

to cheat. 50% of my mind

thinks he did this as an accident. So he broke, broke these two fingers. So

this little finger,

so I can close, you can close your finger all the way. This little finger

doesn’t. Like I can do

that and try to push it. It does not close because it was broken. In the

movie, not the movie, but in a movie,

what happens is the hero gets injured and then they maybe tape it up or they

go off and they take a

break. And they use their heart, their spirit to will them to win. So they

go back in and then they

would using some special move or some some, so just the purity of their will

to win and be better.

They win the fight and they become the champion. I went out two broken

fingers. I taped them up to

this third finger. I’m like, okay, I’m going to do it. I’m going to go back

in. I’m going to be the

hero that everyone’s seen in every movie. They’re going to make a movie

about this guy right here.

And I go in and I get my ass kicked because judo is not a thing you can

fight with only one hand. You

need two hands to do it. I got absolutely destroyed.

Got up. You have to bow. So I bow and I walk off.

And that’s when the tears just started. Like I’m going down the side of my

face because this is it.

That’s the end of my judo career right there. And that’s reality. And again,

it’s not even sad.

It’s just that’s what happens. That’s real life.

Like you get hurt. You don’t become the champion.

It ends your career. You try really hard. Sometimes that does not enough.

And you can’t just like,

it doesn’t suck. It’s just real life. So

sometimes it sucks. Sometimes it doesn’t.

So I, that was the end of my judo career. I ended up though, but because I

had that experience in judo,

I came to Japan. And I have a really nice life in Japan. I credit that to

judo. So I think, yes,

I lost this one thing that would have kept me in Canada. But I got this

other thing that landed me in

Japan where I’m actually really happy. So that’s kind of the end point of

what I would end up

be getting to is like, how can I tell that one’s actually better? If I

become champion, I maybe would

have had a shitty job and been doing judo the rest of my life in Canada in

the country where no one

gives a shit about judo. Whereas now I’ve come to Japan. And as a mediocre

player, I get this status

because I’m a foreign guy who does a Japanese thing and does it really well.

And you know, really cares

about it and wants to share it with other people and they think I’m awesome.

I have an immediate

group of support, group of friends. It’s great. I think it’s, I see in a way

probably better.

And it was my last story. So again, this is the same period. End of

university trying to find jobs.

I go on and I find an online job recruiter and they’re actually based in

California. So I go, okay,

call them up. So I’m calling them long distance. I go, hi, I’m in Canada.

The job market’s tough.

I’m looking for jobs. I was wondering if there’s anything available in your

region because California’s

very up and coming. This was like the beginning and the very soon the end of

the first Internet.com.

bubble. I talked to them for quite a long time and then the recruiter said,

come on down and I’ll

get you working. And I was like, okay, I will arrange that. Hang up. I

immediately start looking for tickets

to San Jose. How much did they cost? I talked to

my parents because again, I’m in debt. How can I.

afford to go and get a job? But if I can get a job in California working for

a computer company,

I don’t be making tons of money really soon. So this is worthwhile. Let’s

try it. So I borrow money.

I get an airplane. I book a hotel. Really cheap cheap cheap. So cheap hotel.

I’m in San Jose. I call up the recruiter and I go, yeah, so I’m here and you

can just hear this

pause on the other end of the phone. They’re like, what? I go, well, I’m

here. You said, come on down.

You get me working. So I came on down and I’m

here now. What’s the next step? And they go,

and then they try to talk around. I’m like, oh, for fuck’s sake. They were

being euphemistic. They were

not being honest or direct. They weren’t being real. They were just saying

this because they’re

essentially a salesperson. So they talked to me for a bit and they’re like,

well, let me make some

arrangements and I’ll call you back. They didn’t call me back. So I started

calling the agency that

they worked for. And I got passed on to someone else who’s like, come on in.

But I’m like, I’ve now hit.

like deep, deep depression at this point. Come on in. We’ll see what we can

do. I come in. I mean,

we haven’t talked about visas or anything. So there’s no way I can get a job

in America. You can’t

just show up in America and get a job. You need a green card. You probably

need the job before you can

get all the shit I would need to get a job. So I’m

now in a position where I’m in San Jose. I have.

spent more money than I have. I’m completely lost.

I’m sitting in the shitty, shitty little hotel.

And this notification notification comes out and they call the hotel. They

call the room.

And it’s there’s been a chemical leak up the road of this big factory. And.

what they’re saying is

please don’t leave your room under any circumstances. So I can’t even go

like walk around. This is like

San Jose. It’s like sort of the bright sun shiny California weather. No, I

can’t go outside. Go,

you know, get a drink somewhere. No, you can’t go outside. I have to stay

indoors. I’m staying in this

place. And at this time, again, this is late 90s early 2000s HBO exists, but

it only plays two

movies a day and it just plays them on loops. So I don’t remember what the

other movie was, but I watched

Stuart Little four or five times in a 24 hour period because I could not

leave my hotel room. I

couldn’t leave the place I was staying. I was in the depths of depression. I

found it difficult to

motivate myself to do anything. And I’m just watching Stuart Little over and

over and over again.

And it’s talking about like if you have big dreams, you’ll like be

successful. And all I’m doing is

sitting in this shitty hotel room with chemicals apparently all around me,

probably giving me cancer

as I speak. Being as unsuccessful as humanly possible and I think Stuart

Little lied to me.

[Music].