Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Now, wait a minute. Now wait a minute.
[00:00:02] Speaker B: All right, my friends. Okay, it's time to vote. But in order to vote.
[00:00:07] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: I'm gonna need you to.
Need you to go to a couple of different places. First, I'm gonna need you to collect a couple of different items.
I'm gonna need you to combine those items.
[00:00:19] Speaker A: Why can't you do this for me? Government?
You're.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: You. You need to do it.
[00:00:24] Speaker A: Okay, okay, fine. I. I combine them.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: You. You combine the items. You put them together. I'm not going to tell you how exactly.
[00:00:34] Speaker A: Yeah. I don't know what this ostrich glue has to do with voting, but you need it. Okay, okay, okay.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: You gotta combine these items in a very specific manner. If you do it wrong, you might die or go to jail.
[00:00:50] Speaker A: Can I look up a walkthrough on this?
[00:00:52] Speaker B: If you look up a walkthrough, you might die or go to jail.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: Oh, God. I don't understand.
[00:00:59] Speaker C: What do these squirrels have to deal with? Voting?
[00:01:02] Speaker A: What does this squirrel have to do with voting?
[00:01:04] Speaker B: You know what? It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter how many hoops you have to jump through quirky little puzzles you have to solve. No matter how hard it gets, you've got to vote.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: You've got to vote. It's time to vote. It's not to vote.
[00:01:20] Speaker B: It's the most important election of our lives.
This election, which will be, I do truly believe, the most important election of our lifetime.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: This is the most important election of our lifetime.
[00:01:33] Speaker C: This is the most important election.
[00:01:35] Speaker A: Don't you?
[00:01:35] Speaker C: You hear that?
This is the most important election in our lifetime. I certainly think it's the most important
[00:01:42] Speaker B: election of my lifetime.
[00:01:43] Speaker C: This is the most important election of our times.
[00:01:47] Speaker A: Politicians say every time, this is the most important election.
[00:01:51] Speaker D: This one's really that important.
[00:01:52] Speaker C: I can't solve the puzzle. Somebody.
I can't.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: I need to vote, but I can't solve the voting puzzle.
[00:01:58] Speaker B: Actually, all you have to do is put your hand into this box that contains pain.
So that is. It's simpler than I said before.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Oh, okay. Ow.
[00:02:06] Speaker D: I'm here on time.
[00:02:08] Speaker B: Brandon Buchanan here on time. I'm Candy Cooper. We've got Andrew Fields here. We've got Incredible guest.
We have got this. Hold on. No, this can't be right. You've got a best selling author.
[00:02:26] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:02:29] Speaker C: The.
[00:02:29] Speaker B: The author of True Believer, the Rise and Fall of Stan lee, Ringmaster Vince McMahon and the unmasking of America.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Oh, my goodness. You must have sold over 13 copies.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, well, I would.
[00:02:44] Speaker D: I Would go as
[00:02:46] Speaker B: what the Josie Reisman is on our show.
[00:02:49] Speaker C: That's me, right? Am I supposed to talk yet?
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Yes, you can talk.
[00:02:53] Speaker C: Oh, thank God. Oh. Oh, it's so hard for me to not hear the sound of my own voice, so this is really a relief. Thank you. I am so honored to be here. No, don't, please.
I. My whole deal is just whenever people are like, oh, you're a best selling author. I'm like a. I was a best selling author for exactly one week, but they let you get to. They let you just call yourself that forever. It doesn't matter.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: You claim we were talking about this before the start of the show. You claim that forever.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Look, Markiplier had the highest box office movie for a few days, and he is still going to use the number one movie in America line. Okay, you get.
[00:03:33] Speaker C: I'm blessed. There's nothing wrong with that. But the other thing is I always just respond by saying, like, look, I'm just a dumb, horny bimbo on the Internet at the end of the day. Like, it's just like, I'm just stupid and like, to shitpost. I write bestselling books occasionally, and I'm very excited to be hanging out with this crowd who I. Listeners at home should know that we had a little bit of a green room conversation in the very elaborate green room for this podcast. The catering was excellent, by the way, and.
Oh, no, no, no, no. I. I always. I always expect the best. And you, you know, you. You went above and beyond.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: Your requests were pretty out there, I'm not gonna lie.
[00:04:19] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't know why I had to serve the food to you while doing a handstand, but, hey, I've gained a second.
[00:04:27] Speaker B: Dying. Dying M M's. Jet black with squid ink. That was pretty weird. Never done that.
[00:04:33] Speaker A: No, that was pretty cool. That was cool.
[00:04:35] Speaker B: The results were. I'm not. The results spoke for themselves, I will say that.
[00:04:40] Speaker C: Oh, deary me. Well, anyway, writers notwithstanding, I'm eager to be here, especially because I have no freaking clue. Can I swear on this podcast? I can swear.
Okay, great, great, great. I have no clue what we're supposed to be doing here. I was told to prepare. Not even prepare, but just give something that I wanted to talk about, and now I have no idea what the format is, so you. You tell me.
[00:05:08] Speaker B: Well, it's. It's great that you should mention that, you know, so you gave us quite the.
I'm sorry. An advanced puzzling topic.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: I don't get it.
[00:05:19] Speaker C: Why was it puzzling?
[00:05:22] Speaker B: Because I didn't know much about it. And the more I learned, the more confused I got, to be honest.
[00:05:28] Speaker C: Oh, great, great, great. That's what I love.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: I'm the only one in our little meeting trying to put together this. That really knew Monkey is. Even then, I've only partially played the first game.
[00:05:39] Speaker C: Wow, interesting.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Yeah, there's a lot of pop culture osmosis, as we'll talk about later in the episode, like insult sword fighting. You're going to be talking about that. No surprise. But like.
[00:05:52] Speaker D: Yeah, no, I've had lots of Osmosis series. You know, I used to subscribe to Game Pro and Game Informer when I was a kid. And of course, like, the journalist community was always very excited about these games. They always had very good reviews because they had writing which many games didn't have.
[00:06:11] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:06:12] Speaker D: And.
And of course, like, you know, the Lucas Arts adventure game genre was also just very popular. I did play Grim Fandango when I was a kid, you know, borrowed it from my. My dad's computer.
I barely played Monkey island, if at all. But I feel like I knew enough about it just based on the fact that if you followed video games, you got breathless coverage of it all the time. I kind of compare it to if you're younger, if you remember the Tim Schaefer game Psychonauts, which it's not that everybody played it, but everybody talked about it. Everybody thought about it as.
[00:06:53] Speaker A: Yeah. So what do you like about Monkey Island?
[00:06:57] Speaker C: Me?
[00:06:58] Speaker A: You, our guest.
[00:06:59] Speaker B: Yeah. I've watched, I've tried to understand it.
[00:07:04] Speaker C: So here. Well, you got at the first and most fundamental thing that grabbed me about Monkey island, which was the writing.
I was a very wordy kid and I played these games when I was very young for the first time. I've played them over and over again and run them through my head countless times and thought up fanfic and everything. But I first played on floppy disk at my friend's house because he had a PC and it wasn't available on Mac yet. The first Monkey island, we played it together. And then eventually I got this CD that true heads will remember.
True LucasArts, click and point and click. Graphic adventure heads will remember. There was a CD that got put out in like the early to mid-90s that was like, finally, CD drives exist and Mac users can play Monkey Island, Monkey Island 2, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. And not the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Last Crusade was already out. Fate of Atlantis. These were three original games from the Lucas Studio. Lucas Lucas Arts Studio.
And I was obsessed.
Oh my God. And here's the thing. I played games. I had a. I had a Super Nintendo, I believe, around this time, but. And I played a lot of games on it. But like, as was said, I'm a journalist now and it makes sense that I would have been obsessed with this game back then because like the journalists who were writing about it then, it's. It's writing based. And as a writing based journalist, it was really appealing to me. But also as a comic book head, which I was and comic strip head, it was this fascinating interplay of words and pictures. I mean, we talk about Monkey island at a very like 30,000 foot view.
Is this sort of, I don't want to say steampunk, because that term didn't really exist so much back when it came out. But it's this slightly anachronistic, in a dream logic way, vision of the Caribbean in the time of pirates. Sort of the dream world as created by everything from swashbuckling movies of the 20s and 30s to adventure chapbooks from before then. Everything.
And it's about this dweeby wannabe pirate with the wonderful name Guybrush Threepwood who is trying to make his bones as a pirate.
I really only count the first two games as canonical before we go any further. So I'm just gonna only really focus on those two. We can address like all the stuff that came afterward, but at that point the original creator was no. Like, Ron Gilbert was no longer involved. And even the first two games were what really moved me. And what was moving. It's. In retrospect, it's funny to look back on those games. I play them still occasionally on my Steam deck. Like, I recently finished Monkey island one a couple years ago for the first time in a while. And dear God, is Guybrush egg coated.
Like, like he is very much coded as somebody who is having a gender crisis or is. Has one coming down the pike. And as a very like effeminate amab growing up under the guise of quote unquote, boy, Guybrush was like my kind of protagonist.
He was dweeb. He was like, not even like a very competent dweeb. He got into all kinds of stupid situations.
And he was head over heels for this extremely strong, competent brunette named Governor Elaine Marley, who was.
Who cares what she's governor of? That's. That's less important than the fact that it's her official title. And they're fighting this pirate named Lechuck who is a ghost or a zombie, depending on which game you're looking at. And all of the plot stuff was interesting, but what was really grabby for me was a. The writing and the dialogue, which is very witty in a way that I had never really experienced in any kind of media before when I was playing this at age 7.
But also just the dreamlike quality of it. It's this very weird pastiche. It's not what the Caribbean was actually like. And it's sort of. The whole thing is kind of ripped off from this famous book called On Stranger Tides. Famous. Tim Powers wrote a somewhat famous fantasy supernatural novel called on stranger tides in 87. And it's kind of.
But the fact that like certain elements are ripped off from that doesn't detract from the art.
Like the visuals were just sumptuous. It was this. It's really the. For me, one of the high points of pixel art of that era.
If you look at the sprite. If you look at the sprites, especially for Monkey Island 2 and the backdrops, they're. They're. They're moving like they contain so few bits of information.
And yet the craftspeople who are putting these games together managed to make you feel a deep amount of identification or revulsion or yearning or anything for these tiny little characters that just have little dots rise. So anyway, that's my sort of opening pan where I tell you every, at a, At a wide range what I like. But I'm happy to talk in any more detail about it beyond that.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: That was pretty, that was pretty broad and wide reaching overview there. I really appreciate that. Yeah, yeah. I mean these games do seem fascinating and they are of just a. Just a really wonderful, you know, they're from. Which is a really wonderfully strange and quirky era of games that produce.
[00:13:20] Speaker A: Oh God, it's a shame they only made two.
[00:13:23] Speaker C: Yeah, right. It's a shame they only two. The third one's okay. The fourth one's abominable. There's a bunch of interstitial ones between that and when they brought Ron Gilbert back a couple years ago, I did not finish the new one, which is in continuity in canon. I don't, I don't know why. I probably will someday. But the two for two.
[00:13:44] Speaker D: You mean the telltale.
[00:13:46] Speaker C: No, no, the one that came out more recently has got returned to Monkey Island. I want to say they brought. Ron Gilbert finally made peace with the. Yeah, return to Monkey Island. There we go. In 2022. It came out after Ron Gilbert made peace with Lucasfilm and I played the beginning of it and it was very good.
But I'll tell you my problem with it. It's not a problem that could have been fixed because this, the version I want to see doesn't would never get sold these days. But I wanted it in the pixel format. Like I did not want something that looks slick and polygonated and was called Monkey Island. I'd already seen that in the Telltale or in any number of other sort of Monkey island spin off media or the remastered versions, which I thought were God awful in their visuals, which came out like in 2010, 2011.
I really sincerely love the mattes and backgrounds and the character sprites and even the objects and the animation. It was just, it was a beautiful thing to watch.
And the new stuff, I'm sure the writing is brilliant, but also it has voices. And you have to understand, when I was playing Monkey island, it was at an early stage of the franchise where there were Dominica Armato, who is famous for playing Guybrush3Blood's voice ever since like Luke Gaming got to a point where you could put in recorded voice modules at length. That's a new. That still just feels like a new and kind of abominable thing to me. No offense to Dominic. I just loved that the original, my original playthroughs of these games, which were plentiful, had no audio for the voices. I had to read what was happening and hear their voices in my head. And also it gave me time to focus on the music which was all MIDI and interactive and gorgeous.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I agree with that. I'm going to give a very spicy take of a franchise I like that's going to get everybody to hate me. I don't want them to give voice acting in Pokemon. I want it to stay as text because I get what you're saying about Monkey island is how I feel about Pokemon.
[00:15:55] Speaker C: Interesting.
[00:15:56] Speaker A: Cue all the if you hated what I just said, please give this podcast a five star.
I got you the comments.
[00:16:06] Speaker C: It's very funny. Yeah, I don't even know anything about Pokemon. Never got into that phenomenon other than blurbing. My good friend Daniel Dockery's excellent book about the history of Pokemon. But whenever it comes to games, I generally think like, you have to. I like reading. I know I'm in the minority here, but of like humans. But I think that if you're playing a game and it's purely visual like, and there's no text signature semiotics, then I don't know, it just loses something for me. Even if those text semiotics are Just like environmental storytelling, you know, Like, I love being able to read stuff within a game. It just. Maybe it's because I like reading stuff in real life.
[00:16:51] Speaker B: Yeah, that's fair.
[00:16:52] Speaker C: Also, I should say, I should say before we go any further, fun fact, not so fun fact. The sword fighting insults. Although that mechanic was created by designers of the game, I did not realize in all my years of Monkey island fandom until I did that aforementioned recent playthrough of the first one. I got to the end, I was like, let me watch the credits. This is delightful.
And I was like, who's going to be in the special? Thanks. That's where the fun always happens. Oh my God. Guess who wrote nearly all the sword fight insults. Orson Scott Card. You can't make this stuff up, folks.
Yep, Orson Scott Card is responsible for. You fight like a dairy farmer. How appropriate. You fight like a cow.
It's. It's really something to contemplate, folks.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: That's. I'll be thinking about that one. These games also helped launch the career of Tim Schaefer. Now that's a complicated guy.
[00:17:43] Speaker C: Tell me about that.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: So, okay, so he's, he's a real creative guy on the creative side. He does good.
[00:17:49] Speaker B: He's.
[00:17:50] Speaker A: He should never be allowed to manage money ever again.
[00:17:53] Speaker C: Oh, it's one of those situations.
[00:17:56] Speaker B: He's, he's one of the most important game designers of all time. Arguably in terms of like, he's made specific contributions to the art form that have had long lasting implications.
[00:18:11] Speaker D: But how would you compare him to the fable guy?
[00:18:15] Speaker B: To the what?
[00:18:17] Speaker D: The fable guy.
[00:18:18] Speaker B: Oh, I, I. Fable guy.
[00:18:21] Speaker D: You remember, he did black and white.
He did black and white.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:18:28] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: So like my thing about Tim Schaefer is in his time, he was the face of dis.
Of disappointing Kickstarters. He was the face of mismanage, of getting a massive amount of money, more than you ever asked for.
Not only did he need more, because of how badly he mismanaged it, he had to release the first half of the story of the game. I forget the name of it, to get more money. Let me look.
[00:18:56] Speaker C: Yikes.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:18:57] Speaker C: Broken age, that's like, that's like considered normal now.
[00:19:02] Speaker D: Yeah, Broken age. That's like considered normal.
[00:19:04] Speaker C: Right? That's the thing is, like, I'm not much of an expert, but I know that's become somewhat common these days.
[00:19:09] Speaker A: Well, back like that one literally was a record breaking Kickstarter at the time too.
[00:19:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm gonna say Tim Schaefer, you know, it's like I Said he's been a gaming pioneer. He's been on the frontiers of.
[00:19:23] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, fantastic.
Contributed so much.
[00:19:27] Speaker B: One of the frontiers of video games that he's been on is releasing.
That doesn't work.
[00:19:34] Speaker C: Hey.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: Anyway, I don't want to get too deep into that because it's a total aside, but just had to make a mention of Tim Schaefer. I mean, truly one of the creative geniuses of gaming who has released some very important things, some really wonderful games, Psychonauts in particular, probably still being his Opus. A game that completely revolutionized everyone's idea of 3D platforming forevermore.
[00:20:00] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:20:01] Speaker B: But, yeah, messy guy. So, you know, I was thinking about messy guys.
[00:20:07] Speaker A: Messy.
[00:20:07] Speaker B: I. I was thinking about sluts and politics.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: Political sluts. Is that what you're thinking of?
[00:20:15] Speaker B: I was thinking about messy guys. I was thinking about guys with too much money making goofy decisions. I was thinking about situations in politics where you have to try to make sense of stuff that is totally confusing.
[00:20:31] Speaker A: Yeah. Nonsensical. It's kind of a strange puzzle how they all work it out.
[00:20:36] Speaker C: Right.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: Because what was famous about a lot of the games of this era and Monkey island being of this. Of this type, certainly, is that the solutions to the puzzles don't make any sense.
[00:20:48] Speaker C: Well, they're not. That's the thing is, for me, that didn't matter because it was operating in Dream Logic, which is fine.
[00:20:58] Speaker B: I'm not saying this is a disqualifying feature of these games.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: I'm just saying there's something in politics that we would say operates on Dream Logic. Don't you think, Kennedy?
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Yeah, I do think that there's an aspect of American politics that operates on Dream Logic a lot, pretty heavily. And that's gerrymandering.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: This is the gerrymandering episode.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: You just dream up a district.
[00:21:20] Speaker A: Oh, my God.
[00:21:22] Speaker C: Gerrymandering. Okay, let's see how we can do this one.
[00:21:26] Speaker A: Oh, we've got a plan.
[00:21:28] Speaker C: Oh, dear. Okay. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: We're Republicans. Our plan is so we all suffer.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: But yeah, the plan is suffering.
Gary Mander, you dream up a district.
[00:21:40] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:41] Speaker B: Just make it up in your mind.
It doesn't really matter if it makes any sense.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: And Virginia is voting to redistrict right now. And if it passes through, one of the new districts is going to be a lobster. They just wanted a lobster district.
[00:21:57] Speaker C: They want the shape of a lobster.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: It looks like a lobster.
[00:22:02] Speaker C: Looks like a lobster.
[00:22:04] Speaker A: I forget what district number it is, but yes, they're making a lobster. You could do. You can make lobsters with gerrymandering.
[00:22:10] Speaker C: Wow. Well, so I have to pick a place to create.
[00:22:15] Speaker A: Oh, no, no, we're gonna.
[00:22:17] Speaker B: Not yet, not yet.
[00:22:19] Speaker A: We're gonna just be talking about Jerry.
[00:22:21] Speaker B: Yeah. So that's, that's our political topic for the day.
[00:22:25] Speaker C: Great, great.
[00:22:26] Speaker D: Wouldn't that be just a great way to do an episode if we were just like, now make the episode and we'll listen to you?
[00:22:36] Speaker C: Because I have, I have been on podcasts where that has basically happened.
[00:22:41] Speaker B: Oh no, that would be very Monkey island coded of us.
[00:22:44] Speaker C: Oh yeah, that would have been where it's just like, okay, now you got to suddenly be in charge of this ridiculous thing that you don't have any, you didn't have any knowledge of prior to two minutes ago. But no, you're not going to make me do that. So we're good.
[00:22:58] Speaker B: Yeah. I just want to lead here with a thought that, is that the term gerrymandering is a combination of this guy's name and the word salamander.
It literally is. If you just ever thought you heard the word gerrymander and you're like, haha, Gerry Salamander.
That, that, that middle school ass thought was correct.
[00:23:24] Speaker C: Wow. Was it Elbridge, Jerry?
[00:23:27] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:23:27] Speaker C: Nice. Yeah.
[00:23:28] Speaker A: Yes. Yes, it was.
[00:23:30] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:23:30] Speaker A: Congratulations, contestant, you got a hundred points.
[00:23:35] Speaker C: Wow, I, I had forgotten that that was Elbridge.
[00:23:40] Speaker B: Huh?
[00:23:40] Speaker C: How about that? And did the original district that he up look like a salamander? Was that the idea?
[00:23:46] Speaker A: Yeah. A political cartoonist was like, ha ha, gerrymander. And everybody else was like, ha, ha, gerrymander. You fucking suck, Jerry.
[00:23:55] Speaker C: And then it becomes like Watergate, where it's like, it just becomes a free floating signifier where you can take any part of the word.
[00:24:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:24:03] Speaker C: Anyway, go on.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think that, you know, to me that that smacks of old adventure game logic, right? Like combining a guy and a salamander to solve a problem.
[00:24:18] Speaker C: Sure. Yeah.
[00:24:21] Speaker A: And like, if you want me to sum up the last year, because we've been going on through gerrymander wars, right? Well, Texas gerrymander. Then California launches a different type of initiative to gerrymander. Utah is un. Gerrymandering itself with the Republicans trying to re gerrymander it because under the new map it has a blue district.
Indiana failed to to gerrymander because. Trump. Trump. And doesn't this sound like a fun adventure game where you just got to figure out who you've got to get to gerrymander to win?
[00:24:55] Speaker C: This does not. I, I'm gonna. Yes. And you as much as I can, but this sounds like the least fun adventure game I could possibly imagine.
[00:25:04] Speaker A: Listen, right now, Virginia is gonna be voting if it. I already mentioned this. It's gonna vote if, among other districts, it gets the lobster district.
[00:25:12] Speaker C: Like, here's what we do. Here's what we do. I figured it out. I figured it out. We just. The only. The only American map that I can think of, where you drive around or move around between the various states that fits in this general category would be Sam and Max Hit the Road. And if Sam Max were to gerrymander America, that would be something I'd be into.
[00:25:37] Speaker D: It's too bad that can't be the episode title because it would just be so misleading.
[00:25:42] Speaker C: Sam and Max gerrymander.
[00:25:48] Speaker A: So I live in Illinois.
[00:25:50] Speaker C: Hey, I'm from Illinois.
[00:25:52] Speaker A: Oh, hello. So you might know that our district map has ended up on Fox News.
[00:25:58] Speaker C: Oh, I missed that. I haven't lived in Illinois in many years. What happened?
[00:26:03] Speaker A: So we are so gerrymandered.
Long time fit for the seat on this show. I live in Illinois. District 13.
We are probably the most noticeable gerrymander there is right now. Because think central in Southern Illinois. Very Republican. Right. We are this.
[00:26:23] Speaker C: Very much so.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: We are this. Illinois District 13 is this hideous gerrymander that goes from the East St. Louis area in sort of an awkward L, swiping through Springfield and ending up in champagne.
[00:26:38] Speaker C: I see this. Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:26:41] Speaker A: Like, this is. I live in the gerrymander right now.
[00:26:45] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:26:46] Speaker A: Like, my thoughts are, if I had to stop gerrymandering button, I would press it. But fight fire with fire. I'm going to keep this. I'm going to keep this.
[00:26:55] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a corridor where you get a lot of people who are not like the people on the other part of the. On either side.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Yeah, Like, I don't want to. I mean, this episode should be out after our primaries, but I still don't want to dig too much into the strategy. But like I said, I. I'm volunteering to help somebody progressive win this district. We've talked strategy and who strategy on the east side of the gerrymander is very different than on the west side.
[00:27:23] Speaker C: Yeah, that's the thing. If you're talking about, like, East St. Louis, I don't know. We're getting very in the weeds, but I guess that's what you want me to do.
St. Louis is a. The suburbs of East St. Louis are very different from the campus community in Champagne.
[00:27:38] Speaker A: Yep. And that's something that we're both working with and hoping to take advantage of. I could probably say this much the centrist that currently has the seat. She has the more western side, but she's given up on the eastern side. But. Because the.
[00:27:57] Speaker C: Given up on the eastern side. Okay, yeah, she.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: She's given up on the college campus, but the hope that the progressive has is he's made enough work in. Work on the western side before she started taking him seriously that she. He has a little bit going on there. But yeah, the point is gerrymandering. You got to do what you got to do. But it. I would like all. It's a dirty business. Yeah, it's a dirty business.
[00:28:24] Speaker C: It's just.
That's the thing is like, we're. We're. I'm not. I'm not like, oh, boy, gerrymandering. My favorite part of, you know, representation in a large country.
It's.
But I'm not enough of an expert to tell you how we could fix the system to not require gerrymandering other than the general solution we all have right now, which is like, let's just, you know, somehow end the current constitution and write a new one. But even then, I wouldn't exactly know what to write as the new rules. I am very much more an expert on Monkey island than I am on the gerrymander. But I'm happy to keep waxing.
[00:29:02] Speaker A: I envy you. I wish. I wish I was. I wish I knew was the Monkey island expert at this episode and not the gerrymandering pseudo expert.
[00:29:12] Speaker C: Totally fair. We can swap next time.
[00:29:15] Speaker A: I don't want to hurt you. You seem lovely. I don't want to hurt you.
[00:29:20] Speaker C: You're very sweet.
[00:29:22] Speaker B: I think. I think it's time to.
[00:29:25] Speaker A: Is it time to vote?
[00:29:28] Speaker C: All right.
[00:29:30] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, we do have to get in the Kate Bush references. Good point.
[00:29:34] Speaker A: Well, we're really in the bushes now.
[00:29:40] Speaker B: God damn it.
[00:29:41] Speaker C: You want me to. Do you want me to do my impression? Should I do my K person?
[00:29:44] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:29:53] Speaker C: You had a temper.
Like my jealousy. Too hot. Too greedy.
How did you leave me when I needed to possess you? I hated you. I loved you, too.
I could keep going. My wife's laughing very loudly behind me. Sorry.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:31] Speaker B: You know what this is?
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Sounds like Miss Piggy doing Kate. Kate Bush, which is even better.
[00:30:39] Speaker B: I'm just glad.
[00:30:42] Speaker D: I'm glad that that's laughter.
[00:30:44] Speaker C: Yeah. Yeah. No, no, no, no. My wife. My wife has long ago learned to. No, no, it's. It's long. My wife long ago learned to laugh instead of cry at me. When it comes to my Answers. They were just making sure you weren't crying.
[00:30:56] Speaker D: But I'm glad that you're not punishing a detainee.
[00:30:59] Speaker A: No.
[00:31:00] Speaker C: Now, if I were singing Semi Charmed Life, that would be punishment to my wife because she hates that song, so I'm not gonna do that.
She says I can be Kate Bush anytime I want.
That's amazing.
[00:31:11] Speaker D: Sometimes the threat is enough. I just love. We should just get every guest to do that.
[00:31:16] Speaker B: So let's step into the voting booth, and I've got some questions here that are going to Kennedy.
[00:31:23] Speaker A: I have all these. I still have puzzles here. This seems like voter suppression. I feel like I shouldn't have to do the puzzles to vote.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: You got to do the puzzles to vote.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: I thought we got rid of the puzzles.
[00:31:36] Speaker C: No.
[00:31:38] Speaker A: Fine.
[00:31:39] Speaker B: We got rid of the poll tax.
[00:31:43] Speaker C: There was a poll tax on your show. Man, I don't know how I feel about being on this.
[00:31:49] Speaker B: You know, there was a controversial earlier time in the show we don't like to talk about.
[00:31:54] Speaker A: Okay, so what do I do with this coconut gun?
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Surprisingly, you're not gonna shoot anything with it.
[00:32:04] Speaker A: Okay, I get it. I put the paper inside the coconut gun, and then I press fire to vote. Okay, I solved this puzzle. Now onto the next ballots.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: All right, so I want to start with some insorts insult sword fighting. This. This concept did tickle me for viewers
[00:32:21] Speaker A: at home are completely unaware of Monkey Island. Insult sword fighting is a puzzle in the games where you have to learn insults from other fighters so you can beat some top fighters to get the thing that you need.
So it's all. And the idea is when they launch something at you, you need to learn the proper counter attack in order to catch them off their guard and get a hit. So like as said before by our lovely guest, the most famous one is when they say you fight like a dairy farmer, the proper response is, well, you fight like a cow.
[00:32:58] Speaker C: How appropriate. You fight like a cow. Oh, my God.
[00:33:01] Speaker A: Cancel me for that one.
[00:33:04] Speaker C: I can't.
[00:33:05] Speaker B: Orson Scott card. Okay. I think he was knighted.
[00:33:08] Speaker C: Yeah, I know. We're all big Orson Scott card fans here.
[00:33:12] Speaker A: Got a card. Am I losing my horse and Scott card. Darn it.
[00:33:16] Speaker C: You've lost your Orson Scott card. You can't have any more punches in it.
Your 10th Orson Scott is not free.
[00:33:26] Speaker B: New punch card and start over.
[00:33:28] Speaker A: Darn it.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: It takes forever to fill those up.
All right, so Guy Brush3wood, a protagonist of Monkey Island. He is.
He's quite the insult master by. By the end of two games.
[00:33:45] Speaker C: That's true. That's correct. Yes.
[00:33:48] Speaker B: So I want to pit him up against some political figures in, In. In trading insults. And I want to get everyone opinion here on whether he would win or not. So first, Guy Brush versus Ron DeSantis.
[00:34:07] Speaker C: Oh, Guy Brush would win that very easily because Ron DeSantis is a whiny little weirdo who does not have good. He doesn't think on his feet.
[00:34:18] Speaker B: This was, this was the gimme. I'm not gonna lie.
[00:34:21] Speaker A: Would win because I don't. I have bad judgment.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: What about Marianne Williamson, the crystal lady?
[00:34:28] Speaker C: Oh, that would be a tough one because she. Well, here's the thing. By the game mechanics, she would lose every time because she would always pick something that's just slightly off and she'd really be convinced that that slightly off answer had a connection to the initial insult that you weren't seeing. And that in fact you denying that you saw it was very suspicious and that we need to stop vaccinating our kids against crystals.
[00:34:59] Speaker D: You know, Marianne Williamson, hard to take insult damage.
[00:35:03] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:35:04] Speaker D: I hope she could absorb things as insult.
[00:35:06] Speaker C: That's. That's the other thing. Yes.
[00:35:08] Speaker A: Okay. So, yeah, no, I kind of got it in my head. Guy Brush is like, after this fight, you'll have to go to the hospital.
And Maureen Willison would be like, I don't need to. I have. I have my magic crystals. Something like that. Which she thinks it's his comeback, but it's not really.
[00:35:25] Speaker C: Right, Right. I. I mean, if we're talking like in a real insult fight, I think that one would just end in like a misfire or misfight, you know, mistrial, like, because I. I just don't see Marianne understanding or playing by the rules of it. Either she would lose or Guy Brush would walk away confused and go like, I'm gonna take a different path down this road on Melee Island.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: Yeah. That's fair. About Andrew Jackson versus Guy Brush.
[00:35:54] Speaker C: That would be tough because Jackson. Jackson has.
[00:35:58] Speaker D: They're from their contemporary.
[00:36:00] Speaker C: Yeah. Rough contemporaries. That's true. I think, I think it's implied that Guybrush is maybe like 30 years prior to that. But like it's roughly around that.
[00:36:09] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Andrew Jackson also lived in a dreamlike non reality sort of thing.
[00:36:15] Speaker C: Yeah. Jackson, a real son of a real Genesidera horrible person. But he did have zingers. He had bars. When you tossed something his way, he knew how to one up it. least according to the official chronicles.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: If that didn't work, he'd throw hands.
[00:36:30] Speaker A: Yeah. Like he stopped assassination attempts by his Own cane.
[00:36:35] Speaker C: I know, but like he's got the, he's got the, you know, the two of the great lines of the presidents of the 19th century presidency, which are. The court has made its ruling. Let us now see whether it can enforce it. Which is really something to say when you're the president of a new republic that has a supreme court. And the other is this bank is trying to kill me, but by God, I'm going to kill it. And he did. He killed the bank of America. There was no government bank. It's, it's. And those are two memorable lines, you know, they stick with you.
[00:37:07] Speaker A: Okay, I'm going with Andrew Jackson on this one.
[00:37:09] Speaker C: I give that one to Andy Jackson. I, I don't, I don't want him to win. But I think if we're talking strictly realistically, he beats Guy Brush. Three blood. Yes.
[00:37:17] Speaker B: What about Trump and Guy?
[00:37:20] Speaker C: Oh, what a thought.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: My opponent thinking.
[00:37:25] Speaker C: We're all thinking. Many people are typing right now.
[00:37:32] Speaker D: I, I just think Trump is.
Trump is a great poster. He's going to have such a high volume of attacks. You know, Guy, Guybrush being just a very broad character. Trump's going to find just in every aspect of Guybrush a ton of supplies for riffing. You know, he's, he's going to hit some real combos. Yeah, but, you know, but we may be underestimating that. Guy Brush is also a rift based attacker and he'll also have a lot of counter material. I just feel like Trump's supply of insults will be varied and nearly inexhaustible.
[00:38:16] Speaker C: You're probably right. He has a near limitless supply of incredible, really weird zingers that you remember for the rest of your life. You know, and Orson Scott Card couldn't even do that. He wasn't quite hateful enough.
Here's my real question. I'm going to turn it back. I'm going to turn, I'm going to take this prompt and turn it into my own version of it. Who wins? Who wins? In an interview between Guybrush Threepwood and Isaac Chotner.
Chotner would try to hit him with those questions. And Guy Brush would have studied every Chotner interview and be ready with the reposts. I think it would be very interesting.
[00:38:53] Speaker A: Not every person that Chotner interviews flails it. We only know the one fail. I think guybush is going to be one of the successes.
[00:39:01] Speaker C: I think he would study past shot in her interviews to know what the effective reposts are, of which there are a few.
[00:39:10] Speaker A: I could already imagine it you have to go to the library and solve a puzzle to get a book to research. You have to talk to the wise old man in town. You have to go behind the alley to get mafia information. Those are the three things you have to do before preparing for your Chotiner interview for your childhood.
[00:39:28] Speaker C: That would be a great text based game, actually, if somebody wanted to do a really quickie text based game where it's just like Chotner Quest and you have to like prepare for your interview with Isaac Chotner and it comes down to like an insult sword fighting type module, except it's him interviewing you. That would be something.
[00:39:48] Speaker A: Holy Fantastic.
[00:39:50] Speaker D: Tim Schaefer, if you are listening to this podcast you've made your next thing I know you're a big friend of the pod. Yeah.
[00:40:01] Speaker B: A patron.
We're allowed to say anyone's a patron of our show because we don't have a patreon. So
[00:40:09] Speaker A: it's gonna confuse people, voters at home when we do get a patriot. And that's fine. I want to confuse you. I love you voters. I love confusing you. It's affectionate.
All right, Kennedy, are you ready for the one you've been really looking forward to?
[00:40:25] Speaker B: No, I'm not ready for anything.
[00:40:27] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:40:27] Speaker B: I'm feeling generally unprepared.
[00:40:29] Speaker A: Yeah, fair enough.
[00:40:31] Speaker C: Who isn't these days? How can anyone be prepared for anything, right?
[00:40:35] Speaker B: Okay, the last one.
LeChuck versus LeChuck Schumer.
[00:40:48] Speaker D: Oh, this is great.
[00:40:52] Speaker C: That's just dumb enough for me to lose it. I'm sorry.
[00:40:58] Speaker A: You'd have to be a pretty dumb person to come up with that. Like, you'd have to be the dumbest guy, right, Kennedy?
[00:41:08] Speaker C: I have to start calling him that. I have to start calling him that on Maine for that from now on because pirate LeChuck Schumer. I, I, I.
[00:41:17] Speaker D: Whenever we can get a guest to raise their voice by an octave, that means the joke's doing well.
[00:41:23] Speaker C: You are helping with my feminine voice training here by making me giggle like a schoolgirl, so thank you.
[00:41:29] Speaker A: So, like, I'm the one who came up with that. And I'm just saying that to let you know I'm a real ally.
You are.
[00:41:37] Speaker C: That was beautiful. See, look, I sound like more like a lady than I usually do.
Oh, God.
Let's Chuck Schumer. Yeah. I don't know how to answer that question, but I'm very curious to hear what the voters say.
[00:41:49] Speaker A: I don't think.
Okay, so first of all, let's set a ground rule. LeChuck Schumer is also a ghost.
Instead of giving up power when he died, he became a ghost. He's still senator. He still leads the Senate Dems just as a ghost. Let's make that clear.
[00:42:06] Speaker C: Right, Right. He can only observe and haunt. He cannot influence events.
[00:42:11] Speaker A: Right.
[00:42:14] Speaker C: But that said, the Baileys are real. The Baileys exist.
They swapped places.
Now the Baileys are corporal. That's another great game we should do. That's great.
We're like the Baileys and Chuck Schumer swap places and, and like Chuck Schumer stuck in like the, the, like Dale Cooper style, like old world of the Baileys and the Baileys have to wander our world.
[00:42:41] Speaker B: I was just imagining a game where you, you simulate the family, the Baileys, but it like, it has like national and geopolitical implications.
Like, like, like a, like a simple version of the Sims was.
But then periodically Chuck Schumer like checks in on you and everybody applauds. Well, I guess I gotta bomb Syria. And you're like, why?
[00:43:11] Speaker A: What did we do? What did we do?
Okay, I'm picturing the insult sword fight in between LeChuck and LeChuck Schumer. LeChuck Schumer goes, the Baileys would never like somebody like you. And LeChuck would say, well, nobody likes you. And then win.
[00:43:31] Speaker C: All right. Yeah. Okay, fair enough.
[00:43:33] Speaker B: That's it.
[00:43:34] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:35] Speaker C: Wow.
[00:43:37] Speaker B: With all the law, how hard is it to vote in Monkey Island?
[00:43:41] Speaker C: With all the what involved puzzles that
[00:43:43] Speaker B: would inevitably be involved. How hard is it to vote on Monkey Island?
[00:43:47] Speaker C: Like in universe, how hard is it to vote? Probably pretty difficult. I mean there is. There's a famous. One of the first things you see in the first Monkey island is you walk down from this lookout tower and you see a poster that says reelect Governor Marley. And when you inspected it says re elect Governor Marley. When there's only one candidate, there's only one choice.
And I think that's probably how elections work there.
[00:44:13] Speaker B: I feel like it would still. Even with that somehow they'd still make it hard for you.
[00:44:18] Speaker C: They would. They would. That's true.
[00:44:20] Speaker A: What if it was a Monkey island problem for a right in candidate to beat the governor? Just think about that. A big ass puzzle to get.
[00:44:29] Speaker B: That'd be a good plot point.
[00:44:31] Speaker C: Yeah, you have to like go around and get all the pirates to sign a petition allowing the candidate to run.
And then you'd have to like raise the money and pretty soon it's just the most dull Monkey island game you could imagine. Yeah, that sounds great.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: Tim Schaefer. Ron Gilbert, I know you're listening.
You need ideas, clearly. I mean, I hate to be.
[00:44:53] Speaker C: I'm sorry I'm blowing any chance I have of working with these people now, but just by guilt by association. But, yeah,
[00:45:04] Speaker B: Indiana Republicans refused to gerrymander like Trump demanded they do in 2025.
What sort of wacky solution could have convinced them to change their mind?
[00:45:15] Speaker A: And let me give you a little bit more context on that situation.
One, yeah, there were more Republicans against gerrymandering than there were for it. So it wasn't just combined with Democrats. The Republicans didn't want it. And two, the reason why is they were tired of Trump. One, voted against because Trump used the R word. So this whole situation would be about getting them back on Trump's side.
[00:45:40] Speaker C: I'm totally lost. Can you say the question again?
[00:45:43] Speaker B: What kind of wacky Monkey island solution could have convinced the. Could Trump have used to convince the Indiana Republicans to do things his way? And Jerry?
[00:45:52] Speaker C: Probably. Probably a spitting contest, because that's, that's the game mechanic that, that replaces the. The insult sword fighting for. For Lechuck. For The Monkey Island 2. LeChuck's revenge. They didn't want to repeat themselves, so instead they have spit mechanics. There's a. There's a spitting competition that takes forever for you to figure out how to beat, unless you're using the cheat guide. And even then it's relatively difficult. And then you think you're done with having to care about the spitting, but, oh, no, in a climactic moment when you are trapped and bound by your hands, you have to. In a room where some fire is about to cause some cause of dynamite to explode, you have to do the spit mechanics once again and aim your spit just right in order to knock out the flame that might burn everything.
[00:46:45] Speaker B: You're joking.
[00:46:46] Speaker C: No, I'm not joking. It's great. It's brilliant. And in fact, when you are spitting, you know how at the bottom there's like the little text I was like, talk to pick up, you know, look at. Instead when you were doing the spit module, in those two portions, it changes to hawk, snort, schlock. Like just weird noises that you would make while you were making hawking up a loogie of some kind of.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: Why?
[00:47:13] Speaker C: I love it. I love it. I'm all for it. But I think that if Trump really wanted to convince Indiana Republicans, he would say, we're gonna have the most fabulous spitting competition you've ever seen in your life. And people would show up for it.
[00:47:26] Speaker B: People from Indiana. I'm sorry to say, I used to live in Indiana.
[00:47:32] Speaker A: I mean, I now live in the glorious kingdom of Illinois under the wonderful con Pritzker.
[00:47:37] Speaker C: But the great con.
[00:47:40] Speaker A: The great con.
[00:47:41] Speaker B: Do you think that Governor Elaine Marley could win in a free and fair election?
[00:47:47] Speaker C: People hate women too much, so, no, probably not.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: Oh, rough answer, but I'm going to take it.
[00:47:54] Speaker C: You love that. That's like the worst possible answer. Where it's like, could a free and fair election elect a woman? No, we should fix it so that women can be on top.
I'm sorry. That was the worst possible answer I could have given to that question. But it's on the record now. I can't go back.
[00:48:10] Speaker D: Well, a free, fair election, where and when? Maybe under some heavily controlled circumstances.
[00:48:16] Speaker C: After a lot of re education about, like, gender roles in the Caribbean, I think you'd have to, like, really lay the groundwork of a better society in those islands. I mean, look, the big specter haunting the whole Monkey island franchise is that there's like, no black people in it. And you're like that. You grow up later and you're like, oh, that's fucked up.
Like, it's set in the 18th century Caribbean and you've got like one black guy who's a Rasta dude. And I'm just saying there's some like, social politics in the. The islands of the Caribbean that really need to get worked through if we're gonna have a free and fair election.
[00:48:54] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's reasonable.
[00:48:56] Speaker C: Also.
[00:48:56] Speaker B: I also.
[00:48:57] Speaker D: I feel like the. The adventure game, debater style does not really go over well with voters, you know?
[00:49:03] Speaker C: No, no, that mechanic is not fun. It's not like.
It's not as fun as a caucus,
[00:49:09] Speaker D: you know, a zinger, zinger, zinger dispenser. I don't know.
[00:49:14] Speaker A: Okay. Yeah, like, I'm trying to vote now and I have this chord in the parrot talks. When I pull the chord, how do. How does that translate to voting again? I don't understand.
[00:49:27] Speaker D: A literal coastal elite, you know?
[00:49:30] Speaker C: Coastal elite. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[00:49:32] Speaker A: If I feed the parrot something else, it says something different. I don't understand how this gets my ballot cast.
[00:49:40] Speaker D: Maybe. Maybe some. Maybe some party insider role, you know, ahead of some committee that none of us know about.
[00:49:48] Speaker A: Puzzles.
[00:49:49] Speaker C: The puzzle committee.
[00:49:50] Speaker B: Yeah, I think that's the parliamentarian or something.
[00:49:54] Speaker A: You know what? You're actually kind of right there.
All right.
[00:49:59] Speaker C: The puzzle committee is the parliamentary.
Answer me these riddles. Three ye congressmen and then you. Whether you can have the bill pass.
[00:50:12] Speaker A: Hey, you want to have your mind.
There's actually two parliamentarian, even though we always say the parliamentarian.
[00:50:19] Speaker C: Wait a minute, two parliamentarians? They always say the Senate parliamentarian or whatever.
[00:50:24] Speaker A: And there's the House parliamentarian. Two completely.
[00:50:28] Speaker B: There's two parliamentarian voters at home.
[00:50:31] Speaker A: Plot twist.
Yeah. That's the type of platform you'd expect to see on Monkey Island. There's two of this person, not just one.
[00:50:39] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:50:40] Speaker B: All this time you've been looking for this guy called the parliamentarian. Everyone's just saying, go find the parliamentarian. The parliamentarian. The parliamentarian. You finally.
[00:50:49] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:50:51] Speaker B: You find this parliamentarian guy and he's like, oh, you actually want to see my cousin.
[00:51:04] Speaker C: Okay, no, here's how you do it. You get four, you get. Okay, no, no, let me tell you. You have three parliamentarians, right? And you write on them 1, 2, and 4. And then you send the parliamentarians running loose throughout the congressional chambers, and they will be looking for that parliamentarian number three all day.
[00:51:24] Speaker B: You just write at the bottom of some documents, parliamentarian number three must review this.
[00:51:34] Speaker C: Everyone's like, where's probability number three?
[00:51:38] Speaker B: Honestly, you could keep. This is. This is what we should. We. We should have figured this out before. Before they started a war in Iran.
Because we probably could have kept Congress busy for a few months and maybe stalled for at least a little while.
[00:51:53] Speaker C: I'm sorry, how much more of this are we doing? I'm losing my mind.
[00:51:57] Speaker A: We have a few more questions.
[00:51:59] Speaker B: Getting the closest to the end.
Okay, okay. All right, all right. So we talked about how gerrymandering is this word that is a combination of this guy Elbridge Jerry and the word salamander combined together. What would gerrymandering be called in the Monkey island universe?
[00:52:21] Speaker C: Oh, probably.
Good. What would make it. I'm trying to. I'm trying wordsmith here. I only have one neologism I ever came up with that caught on and it was pretty simple. So let me see here. Maybe now monkey is too hot. Three headed, wordy monkeying.
[00:52:44] Speaker D: Do a little woody. Monkey.
[00:52:46] Speaker C: Monkey.
[00:52:49] Speaker A: Yep. They would call it.
[00:52:50] Speaker C: Or monkey. Monkey wooding. Yeah, Monkey wooding's too much. Woody. Monkey.
[00:52:55] Speaker A: Yeah, no, monkey. Yeah. Monkey wooding is the sex maneuver, but woody monkeying is the voting thing.
Yeah.
[00:53:03] Speaker C: So that's my answer.
[00:53:04] Speaker B: Yes, I accept that.
[00:53:07] Speaker C: Could.
[00:53:07] Speaker B: Could. Could Guybrush convince the state to gerrymander a district just for him? The way that people, you know, with nepotism powers are requesting special districts that will hopefully get them elected?
[00:53:20] Speaker C: I mean, he's married to Elaine Marley. So, yeah, probably the governor. I, I would imagine that there's a lot of nepotism involved in any kind of. If she, if Governor Marley is actually in charge of anything at any given point, you gotta wonder what US State
[00:53:35] Speaker B: would, Would let Guy Brush have his way with a, With a district.
[00:53:40] Speaker C: With a district. Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah, I'm inclined, I'm inclined to say, well, what's a, what's a, what's a state where you help me out here? What's the state where somebody who says, hey, I want to be a pirate, and just shows up there and manages to actually get pretty far in being a pirate? Probably Florida, right?
[00:54:00] Speaker A: Yeah, Florida.
[00:54:01] Speaker C: It's got to be the Tampa area. I mean, they have a real proud history of being buccaneers there.
[00:54:05] Speaker A: You could get up in state politics. He could have a convincing voice.
[00:54:10] Speaker C: Yeah, I don't think he'd be a bad voice in state politics in Florida, necessarily. But that is the place where you show up and say, hi, I'm in the Tampa Bay, and I want to be a pirate. You know, and people will actually. If you show up in the Tampa Bay area and you say, hi, I want to be a pirate, as long as you say buccaneer, they will actually care and listen to you. You will not sound like an insane person.
[00:54:33] Speaker D: I, I know that this is a little bit, you know, but you guys know Blackbeard is from North Carolina, or he died in North Carolina. Blackbeard got a lot of North Carolina
[00:54:44] Speaker C: ties, and he does.
[00:54:46] Speaker D: I, I feel like North Carolina would want to compete in this area. Yeah.
[00:54:50] Speaker C: You are a very astute person. That is true. I had forgotten about that. I did research bit when I was doing my Vince McMahon book because I learned way too much about the history of North Carolina. And you're right that there is a pirate heritage there, too.
[00:55:03] Speaker D: So, yeah, maybe, maybe he could come to Georgia. We've got porch pirates.
[00:55:09] Speaker A: That is the worst type of. Okay, I'm not going to say that's the worst type of pirate, but that is one of the worst pirates, because then somebody will be like, oh, so you're okay with this?
[00:55:21] Speaker D: Guy Brush could get into court piracy, and we have a whole new game,
[00:55:27] Speaker C: the Porch Pirates life.
[00:55:28] Speaker A: I think we're ready to wrap this up with one final.
[00:55:31] Speaker C: I love it. If we could. Yeah, that'd be great.
[00:55:33] Speaker A: Before we kill our guest, this would probably be the first time we do that.
[00:55:39] Speaker C: You kill me with giggles. But also, I, I, I live in Portugal, so I'm many hours ahead of
[00:55:45] Speaker A: you right now, final vote.
[00:55:47] Speaker B: All right. Could Trump convince Congress to create the amusement park at the end of Monkey Island 2?
[00:55:55] Speaker C: Yes. He already has. That's what our world is.
[00:55:57] Speaker A: Whoa.
[00:55:58] Speaker C: That's. That's. That's. That's not even a question. Because here's the thing. The end of Monkey Island 2 is my favorite ending of any game ever. Because it is. What it implies is that you, the player, will forever be trapped by your memory of this game in your childhood. You will never escape your childhood on some level, and there will always be some little kid version of you trapped in this weird Manichaean conflict with your brother, who is the embodiment of all evil. And I think that right now, what we're stuck in is much as I depicted in my book, Ringmaster, and much as we're living through right now, a psychosexual nightmare of one person who has become way too powerful and therefore sort of trapped us in this weird mind palace of his own childhood and young and youth, much in the way that LeChuck is implied to do to Guybrush at the end, sort of trap him in this. This. His own mind and his own weird memories of what his youth was like.
[00:57:05] Speaker B: His own strange memories of the Baileys.
[00:57:08] Speaker C: His own strange memories of the Baileys. Now, that'd be a good title, too.
[00:57:12] Speaker A: The Chuck Schumer and his own strange memories of the Baileys.
[00:57:17] Speaker C: Weird scenes inside the. The. Whatever. Mine. Yeah. Okay. All right.
[00:57:23] Speaker B: This has been an incredible episode. Let's step out of the voting booth because it smells bad in here now.
[00:57:28] Speaker A: Okay. I failed one of the puzzles. I'm sorry.
[00:57:31] Speaker B: Is that what. That's the. Oh, God, it smells like rotten fruit.
[00:57:36] Speaker C: Look, it smells like podcast meme.
[00:57:39] Speaker A: I didn't understand how the pineapple was supposed to help me vote, so I just smashed it and left it there.
[00:57:45] Speaker B: We have had a wonderful episode today.
This has been such a delight. So much fun.
Josephine Reisman.
[00:57:54] Speaker C: Can I plug my stuff at least?
[00:57:56] Speaker B: Plug the hell.
[00:57:58] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:57:58] Speaker C: You should listen. Well, you should listen to the pod. It's. If you're a podcast listener, which listening to this, presumably you are, you should listen to my podcast with Becca, podcast Petunia, called Here Comes Tomorrow, which is about. Well, so far has been about Grant Morrison's run on the X Men from the turn of the millennium. But we're going to be expanding it out beyond those horizons, and it's very delightful for any listener of any persuasion, I think. And more importantly, go to my website, Josie Jo. Sie dot zone. Like the Twilight Zone, because there you can learn about and pre order my upcoming book, which is the Last Temptation of Beck, the Untold Story of a Pop Messiah. That's a, as my publisher puts it, propulsive and stylish biography of Beck Hansen Beck, the musician Beck of I'm a Loser Baby fame.
So, yeah, go to Josie Zone and pre order that book and go to here comes tomorrow.net and you will hear about the podcast.
[00:59:02] Speaker B: That's amazing.
I'm looking forward to checking that book out.
[00:59:05] Speaker C: Well, thank you. You can go to beckbook.com also beckbook.com also will take you to the site.
[00:59:11] Speaker B: Amazing.
And as always, this has been the most important election of our lives. You can find us where you find podcasts and give us that little vote five stars.
You can theoretically vote other ways too, but society will collapse.
[00:59:26] Speaker A: Remember, vote 5 stars. Then make a comment about how I'm the worst.
[00:59:30] Speaker B: Yeah, vote five stars. And then leave a comment saying I hate Andrew.
And that would be.
[00:59:39] Speaker C: Thank you, everyone. This was a really fun time. I. I really needed this on a day like today. Thank you.
[00:59:45] Speaker A: Not a problem.
[00:59:45] Speaker B: No, thank you so much for making the time for us and voters. Remember, if you're in line, stay in line. If you're not in line, get in a line.
[00:59:54] Speaker A: Any line.
[00:59:54] Speaker D: There's.
[00:59:55] Speaker A: There's a line open to the ice cream store right now. Get in it.
[00:59:58] Speaker C: 1.
