60 episodes. Can you believe we’ve made 60 of these? Hopefully the kids still find “6-7” funny once we reach that point. We’re pretty excited about hitting another milestone, so it’s only fitting that we spend this episode listing “10 Hype Movie Moments That Make Us Black Out.” From massive cinematic franchises to a few hidden gems, we try our best to maintain our composure and not “run through a wall,” as Ashley would often say. Oh, yeah. This is Adrian. I guess the secret’s out. Please enjoy this episode and don’t tell Ashley I was here!

Hey, gang! Adrian here. Ashley’s busy checking our Halloween candy at the behest of G.U.A.P.A. and didn’t have time to do a write-up. Apparently she’s requesting all of the fun-size Snickers bars. Who knew rogue computer programs ate chocolate? News to me! Anyway, this was a fun episode to record. We decided to share stories of past Spooky Season wackiness including being radicalized by trick-or-treating, party-going woes and we weigh in on whether or not primetime television created the concept of Mischief Night.

[The episode’s about Invader Zim, CW: Mild spoilers for a few episodes of a cartoon that is almost 25 years old. Enjoy the following barely related rant below.] 

So I had this idea of doing a riff on some ‘90s commercial about Hungry Man TV dinners or something about potatoes (listen to the episode, it’ll make sense), but I found this article today about how this potato chip company (the biggest one, they make most of the chips but I’m also not advertising for them so no name drop, the article’s linked below) is doing a “drastic rebrand” after finding out that 42% of consumers “didn’t know their chips were made out of potatoes” and to that I say, “…Huh? How?!”

Ok, so: A slightly sneaky play that some corporate leadership will do, especially new leadership, is to futz with the branding or logo. If you’re a job-hopping Sweaty Executive who’s looking for a line item to put on their LinkedIn page or whatever, you spearhead a logo or branding change. You as the executive don’t have to do much (marketing and your art departments are doing most of the work), but it’s still a project you, Sweaty Executive, led. So, credit taken. This potato thing sounds like the absolute flimsiest excuse to do a rebrand ever. Either that, or American education is so in the toilet that we don’t know stuff about snack food, the thing that we should obviously be best at. And we are Too Good At Snacks for me to believe that. 

It sounds like, among other things, that the logo is going to look more “like the Sun”, we are redoing the packaging to look “like the wood planks of a potato crate”, and that obviously we’re doing to shout out that the chips are, in fact, made from “real potatoes”. I cannot believe that marketing is a real thing. This truly is the darkest timeline. 

Also what other questions were asked on this survey?!?! Idk, I’m spiraling out (like spiral cut potatoes, ayyyyy). At any rate, I will be thinking about this 500 word pseudo-press release for the next several hours. Enjoy the episode. Next time I’ll just stick to rewriting the Doom Song or something.

[Thanks to Ro Panuganti, we got a new theme song, it’s almost as catchy as “Yvan eht nioj”! His socials and stuff are below, go show him some love plsthnx]

Oh, say can you cry?

There's trouble in a far off nation

Time to get in Emo formation

Lyrics more deadly than Jets to Brazil

That's why I gotta ring da bell!

Secrof Laiceps TALT!

Secrof Laiceps TALT!

Secrof Laiceps TALT!

‘Secrof Laiceps TALT!’

You gotta love that crazy chorus

What does it mean?

Uh, it doesn't mean anything.

It's like "Soco Amaretto Lime" or "L.G. Fuad"

The mission’s happening

It's no basement on the hill

So here’s a tissue

Secrof Laiceps TALT

So, nostalgia for commercials is weird, right? 

I was listening to the episode edit, trying to figure out an angle for this write-up that you’re reading (hi hello welcome) and thought maybe it’d be fun to find a super niche piece of media from 2005 and write about it. So I head to YouTube to brainstorm, type in “2005 things” in the search bar and so many of the results were just commercial compilations. Which….struck me as strange, and now I’m doing an Overthink about it and dragging you along. 

Commercials are a strange sort of pop culture time capsule. I have used them several times as fodder for write-ups: The Mc DLT commercials, KC Masterpiece, [a third thing that I’m too lazy to research], the list goes on. Some of the longest running TLAT references are just old commercials: Bagel Bites, Crossfire, you know ‘em. They’re strange because they do capture the vibe of a time, but also…they are * just* selling you stuff. Bagel Bites Guy is wailin’ into a mic trying to get you to buy a box so you can do your own bagel bites draft meme and he can get his royalty check. But also I can’t help but think about how back in 2005, commercials were memes before we had a term for memes! They were these tiny weird little pieces of media that everyone experienced because we all had more or less the same basic cable package and options were limited. But because they were doing Catchy Capitalism, everyone that was watching TV at a certain time is now  just a sleeper agent walking around waiting for the activation phrase “education connection” ,“800-588-2300”, or “structured settlement”. (Also why were there so many contraptions that allowed you to add filling inside a cake?!) And now we’ve circled from “annoying things that interrupt my show” to apparently “Thing on YouTube that I am actively seeking out to do A Nostalgia.” The commercial [is] the show. And for someone who traffics in nostalgia for occasional content, I don’t know why this hits me as strangely bleak today. Maybe commercials are art, and I’m the problem. The question at the beginning that started as a leading question is now…just a question, I guess. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m Grandpa Simpson, yelling at cloud.

The world is weird now, who am I to judge you for sitting down to watch all nine versions of the free credit report dot com commercials? They are bangers.

Anyway, here’s part two of our 2005 music episode. Hope you enjoy it.

I’ve started up another Skyrim playthrough, which for me is usually one of the biggest red flags that burnout is raising its ugly head, as this game, while a thing I enjoy, is something I tend to delve into when I need a thing to fill time while not having my brain go brr. (So look forward to that “Conversations with an Adult part 2: Burnout Boogaloo” episode in two months) but. That’s not why I’m here. I’m here to soft pitch the thesis that “No Stone Unturned” is an ok quest actually. For those of you that don’t know, there’s a Skyrim quest where you stumble across an “unusual gem” (what’s unusual about it is that it is hot pink in the gray/brown/green ass game) and then, upon getting it appraised, finding out that your gem is part of a set of 24 and you gotta go find ‘em. And unlike most quests, there’s no quest marker telling you where they are, so this is no easy feat. Once you collect these 24 gems, you’re sent to go collect the crown they’re from, at which point, the quest ends and your reward is this passive ability to find more gems (and gems more often) while you’re out exploring. “Burgs, this sounds horribly tedious,” you might say. “Eh,” is my impassioned response. The thing with quests like these is that (shocker) the people that built the game from the ground up want you to play it. They spent time and effort and all that jazz building all of these areas, especially in an open world game like Skyrim, and they want you to explore it. Therefore, games like these are going to have quests that incentivize you to explore: think the shards in DA: Inquisition, the metals/gasses/literature/mummies or whatever in ME1, audio diaries, bobbleheads, souls, orbs, power moons, friggin….Korok seeds, the examples are endless. The game wants you to play it, and if you don’t want to, then…idk, touch grass, I guess. The quest is optional, just don’t interface with the hot pink gems if you don’t want to. If you want quest markers, there’s a mod. Or countless lists on websites you can use to track stuff. It’s ok, you’ll get through it, or you won’t. No biggie. 

What does this have to do with the music of 2005? Almost nothing, other than music itself also working in a very similar way. If you’re willing to explore, your new favorite band could be in the dark corner over there. The next song that will “change your life, I swear” says Natalie Portman in 2003 might be opening for a band you already know but you skipped the opener to arrive late like a Cool Person. If you don’t want to look for hot pink gems, it’s all optional, mainstream radio’s got you. But you’ll never know what a Korok seed does unless you find one. (also don’t tell me, I haven’t played that Zelda game yet.)

(SLIGHT SPOILERS FOR THE NEW JURASSIC PARK MOVIE YOU KNOW THE ONE WITH SCARJO IN IT [this episode is about the band Silverchair’s album “Young Modern” if you’re skipping the rest of this, enjoy])

So, a week or so ago, one of my favorite humans on the planet and I did a date night of sorts that we called “Diner-saur Night”, in that we went and got gravy-covered greasy breakfast food at a cruddy diner and then went and saw “Jurassic Park 7: You’re Welcome Chris Pratt Isn’t In This One”. We had a lovely time, it’s a pretty fun movie but I cannot stop thinking about two tiny nitpicking points of order and how it has plagued my brain ever since. (these are where the small spoilers are happening, I have warned you so many times)

Nitpick One: This movie has a beginning text crawl. In this text crawl, the movie establishes that around 30 years have occurred since dinosaurs were brought back. Fine. This text crawl then proceeds to tell the viewers (who are, need I remind you, there to view a film about dinosaurs doing a Ruckus) that in thirty years, people are bored and tired of dinosaurs. Look. Short of “The Dead Speak!!!” or whatever Episode 9 was trying to do, I am generally going to take a text crawl and roll with it–I get it, we’re doing world building to give the movie context, sometimes the worlds we’re building are nonsensical. But I absolutely CANNOT abide by “30 years later, dinosaurs are lame AF” while sitting in a movie sequel being released literal weeks after the OG film celebrates its 32nd release anniversary. No. Absolutely not. People would be stoked on real dinosaurs much in the same way that people are still stoked on digital dinosaurs. Premise denied, movie.

Nitpick Two: Dinosaurs are being genetically modified in this one, much like basically all the rest of ‘em. Especially in these last few, where we are kinda splicing together known dinosaurs with other ones to make superdinos or whatever, at what point do these stop being dinosaurs and just become like…kaijus or Big Chonky Reptilian Monsters Trademark Symbol? How many genetic modifications before a dinosaur isn’t a dinosaur? I don’t know that I have an answer here, per se. I absolutely have time for the argument that they’ve technically never been dinosaurs, as the OGs were mixed with frog DNA, thus making it not purely genetically just a dinosaur. I thought about this a lot during certain portions of this movie, mostly because there are a few dinosaurs that are not looking like traditional dinosaurs and are kinda starting to look like Muk, the Pokémon with a dinosaur texture pack thrown over it. Some of these bois in “Jurassic Park 7: Yes All Of The Women Are Wearing Practical Shoes In This One” are looking kinda goopy and not like T-Rexes, and that’s a bummer to me, a person who expects this dinosaur film franchise to maintain a level of integrity in regards to its visual language. This might be a me issue. I don’t know. In conclusion, Dinosaurs(???) caused a ruckus for 120 minutes on a large screen and that’s enough for me. Expectations met. And I got three different forms of carbs covered in gravy. All in all, a good night.

(And yes, before you ask, I absolutely could not be bothered to look up what the actual Christian name of this film is, sorryyyyyy.

(To the tune of “Do The Bartman” from The Simpsons)

Yo, hey, what's happening, dude?

I'm a mothy guy known for bein' rude

Terrorizin' people wherever I go

It's not intentional, just eyes all a’glow

Huntin’ for tasty snacks to get the best scores

Pieces of Weezer’s sweater are all over the floor

I'm the little bug known for being a goth

Last name Man, first name Moth

I'm here today to introduce the next phase

The next step in the Cryptid craze

I got a dance, real easy to do

I learned it with no rhythm and so can you, ooh

So move your winged arms, if you got the notion

Up and down in a flap-like motion

Now that you got it, if you think you can

Do it to the music, that's the Mothman

Everybody, if you can, do the Mothman (Woah)

Flap your arms, turn it out if you're bad, man (Check it out, man)

Up and down, to the side, yes, you can-can (Mothman)

Everybody in the house, do the Mothman (Uh-huh)

Everybody, if you can, do the Mothman

Flap your arms, turn it out if you're bad, man (Check it out, man)

Up and down, to the side, yes, you can-can (Mothman)

Everybody in the house, do the Mothman

(As a big Mothman dork, when your podcast partner pitches this idea to you, you do it immediately. This is part two of our Age of Ultron episodes. Enjoy.)

So occasionally one of us will make a joke in-episode where my brain goes “Ding! Fodder for the write up” and then I have time to think on it, flush it out, edit out the dumb bits, or forget my original idea, have it again, and essentially…do the same thing, only faster and more of the dumb bits get left in. Anyway. That happened here and we’re doing the second version of it (hence that lead-in sentence being the lead-in.) So, for those who weren’t there, there was this time in the early-to-mid 2010s, right around the time A) the movie we’re talking about it coming out and B) Nerd/Fandom culture is kinda hitting the apex of where that’s going to go, where we loved combining different fandom IPs on t-shirts and mugs and stuff that we could take digital art and print it on. So think things like R2-D2 and C3PO riding on the Tardis, or it’s the Pink power ranger with that mean girls quote about wearing pink on Wednesdays, or Link and Zelda riding on Pokémon or whatever. So this joke in the episode led me to wonder if there were any Avengers x Arrested Development shirts like this and after about 10 minutes of internet searching, I’m coming up mostly empty, but I cannot shake the feeling they existed at one point. I can picture it in my mind: Tobias a blue Hulk, Iron Man as Gob using the Aztec Tomb with War Machine as his assistant, Black Widow as Maeby asking Cap where he got his “cross necklace” so she can go on a ski trip, Hawkeye driving the stair car while the Maximoffs ride on the back….yeah. The shirt draws itself. Or it would, if it were 2015 and I had any artistic abilities. Oh well. Anyway, we did an episode about Avengers: Age of Ultron. It’s a two-parter. This is the first part. Enjoy.

So, in the part 1 write-up, I referenced this speech class I took in the summer in high school. This is probably the closest in my experiences to doing something like a Project Runway or Top Chef-style reality show–where you are expected to pump out creation after creation on long hours with very little time to recoup or really think through the thing you’re making. You’re basically just getting a crash course, then expected to pop out some genius. 

Unsurprisingly, I don’t remember many of the presentations I put together for this class. Except for one. It starts out much like any episode of Project Runway or Top Chef–Heidi or Padma come out to the contestants, say a witty, scripted preamble, then go into the “Challenge” for the day: prepare a dramatic reading, complete with at least one physical prop. Must be at least three minutes in length. You have one day for this challenge. (I do not remember the teacher at all but am willing to bet she was not Heidi Klum or Padma Lakshmi levels of hot–few of us are.) So after sitting through the presentations from whatever nonsense was assigned yesterday, we are released and allowed to go work on what is due tomorrow. 

I hear many people joke about snagging a skull from the science department to do Hamlet, in that sort of desperate way where they’re trying to gauge how this would land, because no other ideas are coming and they’re dying inside. The idea of trying to learn and be able to recite Shakespeare with one evening’s worth of prep did not sound appealing. So like many successful competition-based reality show contestants, I thought about what I knew and how I could fit this challenge to it. Like most moody teens from the early 2000s, I did not know Shakespeare. I did not have Robert Frost or Henry David Thoreau committed to the dome. What did I have embedded in my brain? Song lyrics. The metaphorical lightbulb of genius clicked. I knew what I had to do. And what I had to do was walk over to the nearest Walgreens and buy a puzzle. 

The next day, presentations began, and we saw a fair amount of fumbling through Hamlet and other Romantic poets. Someone recreated the space landing audio with a toy spaceship. It was a lot of uninspired mediocre dishes. It was a ton of napkin-style mini-dresses in the unconventional materials challenge. I started to panic–either I messed this up royal, or I’ve done this better than anyone ever has, and I won’t know until I volunteer to get up there and present. 

I finally get the nerve, go up there, quiet with my unopened puzzle, knowing I only had one shot at this. This was pre 8 Mile coming out, so I couldn’t even mom’s spaghetti to hype myself up. I just had to commit. What was I committing to? Well, ripping apart the box of a puzzle, throwing pieces around the room for a full minute before reciting the lyrics to Dashboard Confessional’s song “This Ruined Puzzle”. I also apparently committed to giving myself a few gnarly cardboard cuts on the stupid box, but…it landed. I got a 100 on the assignment and Padma would’ve definitely named me the winner of the challenge. Heidi gave me immunity for next week’s show, so I’m definitely not getting eliminated. Love that for me. Shout out to Claire from the last writeup, whose feedback included the joke “But not all of the pieces were face down :( ” which is still objectively hilarious, good job Claire. 

What does this have to do with part 2 of our 2024 Musical Wrap-up conversation? You have to embrace who you are and let it drive you. If you are an emo teenage dirtbag, Shakespeare doesn’t got you, Chris Carrabba does. Also, a healthy dash of chaos and Committing to the Bit ™ always helps. And that’s the TLAT way. Enjoy the episode.