Living the Dream (EP.370)

24:05Like there was that recession in 73, 74, and then inflation fell from there. So close enough. But this was like kind of a historic disinflationary period that we've lived through. It happened really, really fast. And is this inflation sticky? This is from Bloomberg. McDonald's to extend$5 meal deal. That was very TV anchory. But he goes, for those who are listening, is this inflation sticky? And then like, did like a point, like a finger point to the camera. That's a pro right there. McDonald's to extend$5 meal deal citing customer traffic. It is so funny that these, I mean, I don't know. I was the one who was lightly pounding the table on the corporate greed thing, but corporations are going to do whatever's best for them.

24:49Lightly pounding the table. Yeah, I wasn't pounding it. I wasn't tapping it. I was tapping the table. So this is funny, though. They're going to do what the customers tell them, more or less. And they learn, like, listen, we pushed prices too high. And now it's like, wait, we can go back to volume now. And this is what corporations do. Yeah, very successfully, I might add. Have you got the$5 meal deal yet? I don't eat McDonald's anymore unless I'm in an airport because if I'm on the road on a road trip and I'm in the mood for fast food I'm going to eat a spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy's every single time if I'm in an airport you know I just don't eat McDonald's that often I eat my kids McDonald's that's what I do I eat their chicken nuggets that's how I get my fix my kids love McDonald's well who doesn't it's great alright Ernie Tedeschi has a new he worked for the White House economic team and now he's got a subset called the briefing book And he looked, remember a couple weeks ago, we talked about how there's really only been two periods in the last 50 years of wage increases for people?

25:52Because like in the late 80s, 90s, it didn't really happen. And he looked at low wage workers have only seen two periods of sustained real gross in the last 45 years. So I guess this kind of matches up. But it was the late 90s to early 2000s. And then we had, so from 1980 to 1996 or so, we had stagnation in wages for low wage workers. Then it took off. Then we had stagnation again until mid-2020s. And now it took off again in the last 10 years or so. It looks like the biggest jump that we've seen in the last 50. Wow. It's weird. This started in like the mid-2010s. I feel like you didn't hear about it until after the pandemic, right?

26:28It's just, it is funny to think about the fact that income inequality was one of the biggest economic sticking points in the 2010s. There was a book about the CEO pay gap. Oh, yeah. And we didn't beat income inequality. It's still a thing, but it's improved so substantially, and everyone's kind of like, eh, okay, whatever. Also, one other thing. It doesn't get celebrated enough. One of the readers, I guess people celebrate bad news more than good news now. One of the readers pointed out in our inbox that, remember, we said, well, how come people weren't more miserable in the 80s? If wages were stagnant on a real basis in the 80s, why is it looked at as this economic boom period?

27:07And the point they made was, listen, the boomers were moving up the income ladder. They weren't stuck in the same wage class. Which probably— Russ Roberts did that piece. Yeah, excellent. That is a good point that people miss a lot of times when they look at different wage buckets. It's the fact that people don't stay in the same wage bucket their whole life or their whole career. They change and they move. So that was a good point. So, yeah, Ben's saying if you looked at the 25th percentile and it flatlined over a 10-year period, that's missing the huge detail that people are moving in and out.

27:40Yes. Hopefully up, up and out. Yes, and I'm sure most boomers did move up in the 1980s. That's the point. Somebody sent us an article, The Economics of a Martini. We've been over the martini and the glass and the deliverable, and we won't belabor the point that Ben is wrong about how good a martini is with the long stem. Well, no, you can't show the economics of a martini without showing the psychic income of drinking it out of that glass. Well, this is from the business on its point of view. Okay. All right, so in New York City, Does this mean the average price of a martini is$20 in New York City?

28:13Or is that just an assumption? Sounds about right. So they break it down by labor, OPEX, ingredients, rent, liability, insurance, credit card fees. And what's left over is not great. It's a buck. Even in Charleston. Charleston, the profit margins are a little bit higher. Do I what? I'm constantly looking at food establishments, whether it's dining or grocery stores or whatever. And I'm constantly thinking, how do these places make money? They don't. The margins have to be so thin. I feel like you've, like, God bless the people that run these establishments. I think a lot of them do it for the love of the game.

28:47But it's got to be such a difficult business to work in. It is. Robin and I, when we're driving on Merrick Road, we always look at stores and we're like, how does that place make money? And I always say, my answer is always, they don't. Just because somebody has a storefront with a business doesn't mean they're making a million dollars. They're probably not doing very well at all. These businesses are really difficult to run. Yeah. So the way you get around it is you launder money for the mob. That's how you make money. Yes. Very profitable. Okay. So it's a higher profit margin in Charleston than it is in New York.

29:19Yeah. Plus, Charleston has way better views, too. Good views. Behind the scenes, Michael and I sometimes discuss the doc in between tangents we go on here. And I said, do you want to discuss the ETH ETF? And Michael said, nah. And is that going to be the investor response to this ETF? Is it going to be underwhelming that people kind of go, we already had the big fanfare with a Bitcoin ETF. Is the ETH ETF going to be kind of a shoulder shrug? Okay. That has less to do with my feelings about the ETH launch and more to do with the fact that we have Matt Hogan on TCAF on Thursday. Ah, okay. But you and I have talked about this many times, that it's a harder, it's not as easy to sell it, right?

30:03So I was watching Presumed Innocent this week. I think I'm almost caught up. I'm on episode six. It's a pretty good show. And they talked about how when you're trying a court case, best story wins. That's what they said. You have to tell a story. I think they stole that directly from Morgan Housel. That's possible. So they said best story wins in the court case. And they're talking about the whole thing. It's all narrative driven. And how do you sell yourself? And that's the thing, I guess, that the Ethereum ETF, it's not as easy as just saying Bitcoin is digital gold. That's an easy, easy sell for a lot of people.

30:38So people in the crypto space could go, no, you idiots. Ethereum is way better than Bitcoin because you can do this, this, that, that, and this. And it's programmable money. But that kind of thing goes over most people's heads, I feel like. So I'll be interested. Maybe I was wrong on the Bitcoin ETF in terms of popularity. So maybe I'll be wrong about this too. I will say this. But I think that could be tough. I saw a tweet this morning that BlackRock's Bitcoin ETF generated more year-to-date inflows than the Q's. That is insane. That is surprising. Considering how strong the Qs have been this year?

31:11Yeah. That's pretty good. Pretty wild. Okay, this surprised me. Share of households planning to move over the next 12 months has skyrocketed. I mean, I'm guessing this is in anticipation of rate cuts, but that's a big jump. 18 % of people up from 14%. There's cash on the sidelines in the housing market. I do think that if we get to like a 5 % mortgage rate, there would be an unlock of demand. I don't know if it's just one initial burst, but I'm sure there's so many people who are just like, I'm waiting, I'm waiting, I'm waiting, I'm waiting till we get to better mortgage rates, and then I'm going.

31:49I think you can make the case that there'll be a bigger unlock of supply. We talked about this though before, remember? We did, yeah. It depends how many new household formation there is and all this stuff. total housing. This is from Torsen Slock who did the housing update. I just love how this guy, he tells it. Speaking of telling a story, it's all charts basically. Every once in a while, he'll give a little two or three sentence summary, but mostly he just lets the charts tell the story. Total housing inventory per person is at or near. It's total housing units divided by number of households.

32:31It's very, very low. And maybe going up a little bit, but there's still a lot of room for this to run. And he's saying that like the demographics are going to be the thing. And that's maybe your, what you think supply, I'm in the demand camp, just because of this. U.S. population by age and... No, my only point was, my only point was, I think the people that wanted to buy a house, like, were more eager to buy than sellers were eager to sell, right? Like the sellers just can't make the justification for selling a 3 % mortgage, I know up to 7%. But if you're a new home buyer, you need to buy a house.

33:06Okay, that's fair. That's my point. But I think that this chart, the demographics are tailored to housing, which the chart shows that the most people in the United States are 33 years old, like by age. And this should put a pretty high floor on the housing prices, like regardless of what happens. Yes, I'm still in the camp that you're going to have to wait until the 2030s to see some housing, like, big-time weakness if the boomers decide to sell, which is not a guarantee. Or COVID-20 hits. No, but that'd be a boom in the housing market again. We spoke about this a few minutes ago, but Noah Smith had a chart in here showing the ratio of the 75th to 25th percentile of weekly earners, so the spread between the two groups.

33:56and it's collapsing. He said the wage inequality between the American working class and the American upper middle class that appeared in the 1980s has completely collapsed over the past decade. A chart that should be celebrated that isn't. Do you also think this is why people in the upper class are a little cranky? Yes. This is why the middle class especially feels like they're not making progress. And I get that too. Yes. Because what happened following the 1970s is you had the middle class broke up a little bit. We had more people going to the upper class, which was a positive, but you also had a few more people going to the lower class.

34:28And now the lower class is coming up more than the upper and the middle. And yeah, I'm sure that's part of it because we think on a relative basis. Well, and guess who employs lower class? Upper middle class. Right. So it's a double, I mean. That's true. All right, this survey surprised me. From Bank of America via the Daily Chart book, the percentage of fund manager survey investors expecting a stronger global economy over the next 12 months fell by the largest amounts since March 22, driven by the most negative U.S. outlook since December. I'm not really sure what to make of this. Maybe it's just noise.

35:00It does go up a lot, up and down a lot, doesn't it? It's funny. Howard Marks, in his latest letter, first one of his I've read in a while, but he showed the 40-year volatility of economic growth, dividends in the stock market. And the whole thing is the economy, the standard deviation was like 1 % or something. And the stock market is 13 to 15 or something. and people think that the economy moves like the stock market and it does not yeah it doesn't there's not that much volatility in it uh okay a bunch of people sent us this university of michigan does the sentiment indicators and they do it by surveys and we've always made it clear the reason we're anti-survey podcast is not because we don't get how sampling works or surveys we think they're important but the way that they're conducted has a big bearing on the outcome.

35:48And they showed how they changed some of their, because people stopped answering their phones. Which, this is how old I am. I remember when my first friend got caller ID. And it was a little box that you placed next to the phone and plugged into the phone. And it was like the, we were, I don't know, freshmen in high school. And it was the craziest thing in the world. Like, you can see who's calling you? It's nuts. So of course no one answers their phone anymore. So they started changing these surveys to online. So they showed that the expectations of inflation of 15 % or more have skyrocketed.

36:22And it's like, why would people think there's more inflation of 15 %? That's crazy. And they said in recent months, elevated level of mean long-run expectations have been amplified by methodological, did I say that right? No. Methodological transition from phone to web interviewing that began in April 2024 because respondents on web interviews are consistently more willing to report extremely high expectations than on phone interviews. So they're saying people are crazier with their answers on the internet than they are on the phone. People are more reasonable if you talk to them on the phone.

36:54They're more unreasonable on the internet. And there's just so many different ways you could take this stuff. Yeah, this is the whole kink and boodle. It is almost like sometimes people think the internet is a fake life. Like the stuff you'd say to someone, Louis C.K. had this joke, the stuff you say to someone in your car or on the internet, you would never say it to their face. It's a warped version of reality. Yes, I think that. But anyway, this is one of the reasons that you can't. Because I don't think the people saying these answers even believe it in most cases. Right? Yeah, they're just clicking buttons.

37:29All right, from the Wall Street Journal. The Internal Revenue Service has made it easier to take a limited amount of money out of a traditional retirement account, penalty free. Previously, you could tap your savings without penalty in more limited ways, and often more paperwork. You can now take up to$1 ,000 of your funds for any self-defined emergency. you still owe income tax if you take it out and don't pay it back. So it'd be like a loan. I don't like this. I'm against it. I think they should make it harder for people to take out of their retirement accounts. Yeah, not good. If you make up your own emergencies, I don't think it's a good thing.

38:01I agree. Don't like it. Not for it. Let's talk about streaming. Last week, Netflix reported earnings. Alex Morris at The Science of Hitting does great work on this company. He's showing the trailing 12-month paid net ads. Wait, before we get into this, do you still own this stock? I don't remember. I do. Because you famously caught the bottom of this one. I do. You know what stock I sold? Thank goodness. We're going to talk about this in a little bit. I sold Disney a couple of weeks ago. I think maybe in like the hundreds or something after the gap lower. I probably should. So Netflix was down 76 % at the lows.

38:36And that was in spring of 2022. So a little bit more than two years later, last week, it took out the highs again. Well, this is a great example of stocks being very connected to fundamentals. Look at this chart showing the 12-month net paid ads. It cratered. They were actually going through it. You could say that Netflix deserved maybe 80 % of a drawdown is too much, but they deserved to fall a lot. Oh, no, they definitely did. They definitely did. They lost subscribers. They got super complacent. And look at their annual event margins expanding as well. So the company is firing on all cylinders.

39:16And now, effectively, they're the winner. I mean, Warner Brothers is in complete disarray. There's rumors circulating about what Zavlov is going to do with the company. Paramount got sold, but, you know, a horrible exit by any stretch for existing investors. Disney is in the shitter big time. And then it's Netflix and YouTube. Those are the two ones. So Lucas Shaw wrote on Bloomberg this week. Their quarterly profit rose 44 % year over year and is up more than sevenfold from 2019. They've got 277 million subscribers. They reach more than 600 million people around the globe. And they show the Nielsen ratings of the top 10 shows.

39:56And it's Netflix and everything else. I mean, Netflix has 33 billion hours spent on the top 10 shows. And Disney is number two. It's 5.3 billion. hour or so. Not even close. In the same article he wrote about Apple struggles and how Apple is trying to reel in some of the spend that they've done. They didn't have a ton of hit shows. They've had good shows. We Love Severance. They've had some other shows that people really enjoy. I've made the case that Apple is starting to slowly but surely become HBO. It's very high quality. But no one watches it. No, but they're not doing that anymore. That trajectory that they've been on is going to change.

40:34because - Well, what they need to do is just stop doing the morning show. They spend so much money on the morning show and that show is awful. So Ted Lasso - Cut the morning show salaries and you're fine. Ted Lasso is really their only hit hit, right? It sounds like Presumed Innocent is a little bit now too. Presumed Innocent is great. So its streaming service is attracting just 0.2 % of TV viewing in the US. Apple TV Plus generates less viewing in one month than Netflix does in one day. Oof. So it's showing that Apple is going to be canceling its original series more quickly now than they have in the past.

41:12There was a report that they're spending $20 million an episode on the new Severance season. Whoa. Huh. $20 million an episode? How is it even possible? Big paycheck for Ben Stiller? I don't know. Anyway, Netflix won. Game over. and that's that. Alright, getting back to our survey thing about are people really answering correctly? So I think I've talked about this before. This David Blanchflower guy did this research about David Blanchflower. He did this research on the U-shape of happiness. So you're really happy early in life, goes down, down, middle age, you bottom out middle age, that's why they have the midlife crisis, then as you get older and you age again, you become happier.

41:58It's this U-shape. And he said, but not anymore. Now young adults on average are the least happy people. Unhappiness now declines with age, and happiness now rises with age. And this change seems to start around 2017. The prime age are happier than the young. So the whole point is people always say that your best days are high school and college. That's your happiest. And for me, I had a wonderful—I know there's some people who did not like their high school and college days. I loved it. I was very happy then. and my point here is, are we sure young people are this unhappy? Yeah. Or do they just say they're unhappy?

42:32I think they're unhappy. I think it's much harder to be a child today than it was when we were growing up. Way harder. I agree it is. The social media and the internet and paying attention to stuff is harder. Think about how bad it felt. Like, were you ever like left out and your friends didn't invite you to anything or you were just like home bored? Like, it sucked, but you didn't really, it wasn't in your face. Now you see where everybody is. it's just, it's, it's way, way more difficult. Yeah. No, I, I get it. I, I've said it a million times. I'm so glad that cell phone cameras did not exist when I was in college.

43:04Yeah. Because it changes the way you think and act and behave. And every, your life shouldn't be in a fishbowl when you're that young and stupid. Yeah. Ben, somebody left a comment. Ben has a target date fund of boats. That's pretty good. That is good. A pontoon is no notes. We got an email. The subject line is honking etiquette. Need to know the appropriate honkage for the following scenario. Three lanes at an intersection. Left lane is a turn-only lane that stays red while the other two lanes are free to drive straight. All right. So, left turn lane, two to drive straight. Tracking. So, there's already a line of cars in the left turning lane, but some jabroni forgot he had to turn so he's just waiting in the middle lane blocking traffic with his left flasher.

43:41So, now the middle lane is jammed. Nobody can drive straight because of one selfish asshole. It gave him the longest mother of all honks when I drove by. Yeah, no, deserved. Definitely. This person, you don't stay in the middle lane, wait for the light to turn. Guess what? You're shit out of luck. Too bad, you missed it. You drive straight. Yeah, you go past and you turn around. You drive straight and you wait for a U-turn. This is clear. This is. And you can't hold up everyone else because you missed your turn. Totally agree. All right, this is interesting. Also from Charter, the box office versus video game spending.

44:09For every$1 spent at the box office in 2023, Americans spend$6.43 on video games. So it's saying 2023 spending on the box office is$8.9 billion. Spending on video games is$57.2 billion. Wow. Just not even close. You're the only one keeping the theaters alive, my friend. Doing my part. All right, Ben, we've got a new segment. This used to be in our random segment, mashed up with listener emails, but this is the part of the show that people seem to respond the most to, so we're going to give it its own segment officially, and hopefully people enjoy it. The formality. That is something to Google Doc in a while.

44:48Yeah. It's called story time. So here we go. A few stories from Michael from the previous week. Robin is off for the summer. She's a guidance counselor. How does that change your day today? Because you work from home mostly. You know, I like having her around. It's fun. We banter. We laugh. We say, what are you doing? Nothing. Do something. I'm on vacation. It's fun. So she's cleaning out the closets. and we're going through the closet of my office, which she took everything out, didn't put anything away. So that's just a bomb exploded in my office. But that's neither here nor there. She was keeping old laptops.

45:29I'm not even sure why. Not even like the old like HP or Dell laptops, like the Apple ones. And these were probably from college. So we're old. I don't know, call it 15, 17 years ago. They were fucking heavy, like actually heavy. Remember when laptops used to have a CD-ROM drive in a laptop? I had a laptop with a CD-ROM drive. So laptops used to be so inefficient. Remember, they used to have, I don't think the Apples had this, but they used to have the little rubber red button. It would look like a pencil eraser, and now it's like the mouse. Yeah. It's come a long way. That's true. My friend, first laptop I ever saw in college, it was like a Bible thickness.

46:10It was huge, and it couldn't do anything. Yeah, so it was not a laptop. I'm saying it was too heavy for your laptop. We probably just use it on the desk. True. Yes. All right, Ben. Is this not the ultimate conversation ender? So I'm at – the kids have, like, visiting day for their – it wasn't sleepaway camp. At least we don't go to sleepaway camp yet. It was day camp. So the parents come and they see – you know, they watch them do activities. And I saw a kid that I grew up with who I've seen around town. And I said, hey, what's going on, man? And his response was, living the dream. And I know he wasn't trying to be anything other than whatever, you know, but it's just like, it's the ultimate.

46:50I'm like, all right, see ya. Right? That's like the ultimate conversation ender. Not that I was looking to have small talk, but that's really like, don't talk to me. Like, hey, good to see you. I'm good. You're good. Let's just keep it moving. Yes. That's a good way to vet people out of your life. That's the keep it moving, buddy. That's also secretly, I secretly hate myself and I hate my life. I feel like you should actually adopt that since you don't like small talk. That'd be good for you. Oh, that's true. Live the dream. But then you know you get the living the dream guys that are on board with you.

47:22Oh, you're a living the dream guy? Me too. I'm also living the dream. Tell me about it. Tell me about your dream. All right, this is awkward. You ever been in a situation where you tell somebody like, oh, what are you watching? What are you watching? Oh, don't you love it? Isn't it so good? And they're like, oh, really? No, we don't like it. So I was talking to a couple at the beach and the particular topic at hand was House of the Dragons. I'm like, how good is it? How great is the season? Like, really? No, we think, like, it's kind of boring. And then you're like, oh, yeah, no, I see that. Can I, excuse me, can I actually offer my one detraction from House of the Dragon this season?

47:58I like it. Here's my only problem. Daemon Targaryen, the, you know, the guy who played Prince Philip in The Crown? I didn't watch The Crown, but I know Daemon. Okay. So he reminds me of the same character, but I feel like they have him sitting in the corner shooting threes. They got to let him cook. You know what? it never works for me in a TV or movie? Dream sequences. Yeah, I don't like it. It's a crutch. The show is great, but he was one of my favorite characters in the first season. I'm sure they're going to bring him out in the end of the season with the dragon, but he's in this musty old cabin having dream sequences.

48:26Let him cook. You really hate dreams, huh? The dream sequence never works. They did it on Sopranos. There's never been a good dream sequence in any show or movie ever that's helped move the plot along. I actually think that's a pretty good take. It's a crutch for... there's got to be there's got to be there's got to be some good ones in there you know what comes to my brain with dream sequence this is just random and did not move the plot along to your point remember the scene in Jurassic Park 2 where Dr. Grant is on the airplane and he he opens his eyes and there's a velociraptor sitting next to him or something completely forgettable why did that happen exactly it doesn't move the plot along at all alright great email here first time long time love the show Adrian put on a debate I found myself having oh you got more story time?

49:11All right. What do you got? Excuse me. I've got, this week was particularly chock full of stories. Let me tell you about my, let me tell you about my experience at the Foo Fighters concert. Do you have a minute? Do you have a minute? Yes. You called me on the way and said, you forgot your AirPods and you literally went home to get your AirPods because you couldn't stand a train ride without them. It was 70 minutes. I'm not doing, I'm not doing 70 minutes with no AirPods. So I enjoy concerts, but there's a big caveat. So Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters, they rock pretty hard, right? But that's a great show.

49:42It was great. But there was a few songs that are quieter. It's more like intermission. You know, you see people scarring away, go to the bathroom. And let's just say I wasn't exactly 100 % sober, right? So maybe I'm feeling some sort of way. But he plays a song that goes a little bit soft. And dude, I look to my left and the guy is singing very emotionally. And I think there was a tear rolled down his cheek. I'm like, I got to get out of here. This is too much. I can't take it. It had emotional meaning to him. Yeah, sometimes it gets weird with your surroundings when people are behaving in a way that makes you uncomfortable.

50:17Yeah, I can see that. So I got an F-pack, a fanny pack. You've seen me wearing my F-pack. I've been wearing one a lot lately. So when you go to a place like a concert, so normally I can't have my F-pack to work, but if I've got my phone case charger, my phone, sunglass case, this, that, or the other thing, I don't have six pockets. So I'm carrying around my panty. I'm kind of surprised you're not a cargo short guy. I mean, that's ridiculous. That defeats the purpose. I don't want things pounding on my knees when I walk. Over the shoulder FPAC. So the sun went down, so it was dark. That's what happens when the sun goes down.

50:57And I sat in the wrong section. One section over. I'm looking around like, this doesn't look right. So I get up and I realize I'm in the wrong section. I go to the right section. and I do the thing where I'm like, oh, oh shit, I'm checking my pockets. I don't, I look at my fanny pack. I don't have my phone. I lost my phone. I brought a fanny pack and I still lost my phone. How the hell is that possible? So I'm thinking to myself, well, all right, it's over. I'm not, I lost my phone. You don't, I can't go into a different section and start crawling on the floor looking for my phone, right? Excuse me, excuse me.

51:27Yeah, no, I'm like, no, it sucks. Like, all right, I lost my phone. That's, I guess that's just what it is. I didn't lose my phone. It dropped out of my pocket. under my seat in my existing section. You definitely panicked, though, when that phone's gone, don't you? I panicked. Yeah, I definitely had dark thoughts of, all right, I guess this is happening now. It's a panicky feeling. All right, Ben, on to the emails. Need your input into a debate I found myself hanging out at a bar recently. What's your age cohort's generational comedy? That is, a funny movie that defined you as you were growing up must be highly quotable, always watch on television, something that came in your life at an impressionable years of approximately 12 to 22.

52:05and so he says, I'm 35. Here's my definitive list in order. Wedding Crashers, Old School, The Hangover Anchorman. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. So he's 35 years old. So he was 15 in 2004. You know what's scary to me? Old School came out when I was still in college. That's like an old movie now. What year was Old School? 98? No, Old School like 2001 or 2002. Oh yeah, that's right. I was in college. Okay. All right, so this person was 15 in 2004. So these are his generational comedies for a 35-year-old. Wedding Crashers, Old School, The Hangover, Anchorman, and Superbad. Now, I will say— It's a great list.

52:40Great list. For the 2000s, this is my definitive list, too. I think it drops off after five. I would quibble with The Order. Hangover, Anchorman are 1A and 1B to me. But these five are unequivocally the list of the best comedies of the century. 40 Old Virgin. Good, but doesn't— These five, to me, are it. I don't think you can break through this list. There's some good ones. Knocked Up.

53:04it's close. Yeah, I just don't think it breaks. So here's, I did this list. I put a lot of time and effort into this. So again, those are the, so I did it by decade. 1980s, this is personal to me. Not best comedies. These are my favorites. Christmas Vacation or Vacation. I think those are interchangeable, but if I had to pick one, I'd do Christmas Vacation. Uncle Buck, one of my most rewatched movies of all time. I'm a big John Candy guy. I quote, my friends and I would quote that movie all the time growing up. Beverly Hills Cop. Wait, what's the best quote from Uncle Buck? you should have seen the toast I couldn't get it through the door I don't know you should have seen the what?

53:37should have seen the toast I couldn't get it through the door remember he makes the pancakes with the shovel I don't know for the birthday I might have seen Uncle Buck when I was a kid I have no memory of it okay no I mean the best line is when he's talking to the principal and she's got the big mole on her face hi moley Russell's wart no okay Beverly Hills Cop and Coming to America so I guess I got two Eddie Murphys on there but these are just me 1990s hang on hang on what about the naked gun I liked Naked Gun. I don't think it defined my, it just wasn't one of my defining, I love Naked Gun. Naked Gun is in my Hall of Fame.

54:09Also, also,

54:13oh my God. Why am I drawing so many blanks on movies these days? I'm getting very old. Oh, Trading Places. Okay, that's another good one. Another Eddie Murphy one. He defined the 80s, I guess. 1990s, I got Dumb and Dumber, Austin Powers, Office Space, There's Something About Mary and Tommy Boy. Dumb and Dumber, okay. Dumb and Dumber has been on any list. I would add, I mean, this is not going to surprise you. I would add Wade's World. Okay. That is one of your favorites. Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore. Oh, Happy Gilmore was pretty close probably. That's a good one. You know what? It was one of my favorites, probably irrationally so, but I just, sorry, not sorry, Hot Shots.

54:50I did that. Funny thing is I watched Hot Shots more than Naked Gun probably. Yeah, Hot Shots was definitely like my Hall of Fame. I mean, it stole from Naked Gun obviously a little too. Um, so that's what I got. Any other ones I missed for you? Generationally, comedies growing up? Um, sure. We missed a bunch, but those... Good question. I was doing the guy in the wall with the string. That was me trying to come up with these lists. It's a hard list. All right. Uh, speaking of heavy laptops, I watched Notting Hill this past weekend. One of my all-time favorite rom-coms. One of the better rom-coms there is.

55:22And your laptop heavy thing, they were watching a movie on Notting Hill. And he was watching on an old tube TV. and just got me thinking like, God, I can't believe we used to watch stuff. My first apartment out of college, I had an old Zenith TV, tube TV. It was probably 19 inches. How did people used to watch TV on these things? No HD, no widescreen. We spoke about this maybe a year or two ago. I was watching Funny People, which I think was like 2011 or something, 2009. And they referred to a TV as a big screen TV. Like it's only in the last 10 years is that we stopped calling them big screen TVs because they're all big screen.

55:59That's true. Because a handful of people you knew in your life would have a big screen TV. They were rich people. It was a mega thing, and now everyone has one. They were rich people. Speaking of Notting Hill, which I agree is an absolute all-timer, you know the guy who played Spike, his dumbass roommate, is the mentor in House of the Dragons season two? Oh, yeah. Okay. He's also the bad guy in one of the Spider-Mans. He is? Oh, he's the lizard. Yeah, he's a lizard guy. That's right. All right. Give me your Twister's review. Speaking of Spider-Man, so Kobe loves, loves, loves Venom. He just got a Venom toy.

56:39He's obsessed with Venom. And I showed him the trailer for the third one. And Robin goes, absolutely not. She's like, I'm like, what? Who cares? My wife always says that to me too. He's 28 years old. I saw, I saw, like in the mouth of the man. You saw Field of Dreams when you were three. True. I saw Friday and Friday the 13th when I was like seven years old. Probably not ready, but I did it. I did it. No big deal. So it turns out that Venom is rated R. What are your thoughts? Are you going to take George to see Venom? I feel like he might be – seven years old, that's pushing it. We've never tried Venom.

57:14He doesn't get into the superhero stuff very. He did like Spider-Man back in the day, but now it's all natural disasters and like over-the-top action for him. So I asked you, could I take him to see Twisters? because he saw the pre for Twisters and he was, that's it. That's all he's been talking about all summer is he wants to see Twisters. Yeah, so Twisters was... My guy, Glenn Powell. Yeah, no, he's so hot right now. It was exactly what you want from Twisters. It was perfect. Tons of fun. Great action. They shot fireworks into the Twister. That's not necessarily a spoiler. Did you get any nostalgia for the original?

57:48I actually saw the original on a class trip in fifth grade. Did I get any nostalgia for it? Nah. I mean, I think you could make the case that this was at least as good as the original. Were there any throwbacks to the original in the new? No, no, not really. Okay, because I rewatched it recently. It still holds up. You know, Twisters was a ton of fun. And it's doing big numbers. It did$80 million at the box office. And speaking of that, Mike Zicardi shared a chart with us from, again, another one from Torsten Slock. Weekly movie theater visits. I'm saying we're pretty back. And I'm pretty bullish on the back half of the year.

58:16Oh, I'm not, you know what? I'm not saying Wolverine and Deadpool. I just, I don't like Deadpool. I don't think it's funny. I know you're a big Marty Melds guy I love it I don't see it here but I like it I hope it's a huge hit because they're counting on this but yeah I don't know it just doesn't do it for me okay last week Ben I took umbrage with your saying that people are going to have nostalgia for this decade in a couple of years we don't have economic nostalgia you know what we do we have movie nostalgia they're making a reboot of I Know You Would you did last summer oh really huh okay I guess they did it with Scream it makes sense Jennifer Love-Hewitt coming back, hopefully.

58:53I don't know. I just saw Rodney Smith tweeted. All right, two more. Speaking of horror, there's a movie called In a Violent Nature that is a Shudder movie, and it is a throwback. It's like Friday the 13th, Jason Voorhees. The difference is that I've never seen a horror movie this way. It's done through the lens of the killer. So you follow the killer, and there's one of the gnarliest, most grisly murders. Let's call it a kill scene. It's not really murder, because murder is... Well, it is technically a murder, but murder implies that it's like sort of anything resembling reality. This is just a kill.

59:25It's not a murder. It's a kill. You could tell me in 10 years' time, there's going to be a big scandal in saying literally every horror movie that comes out now is created by AI because there's so many of them. Eventually, that's just what's going to happen. Yeah. It's insane to me. You see a horror movie once a week now, it seems like. No. They come out all the time. I saw this a few weeks back. I forgot to ask you if you saw. Did you see Challengers? Is that the tennis one? Yeah. I did not see it. It was good. Is it out yet? It's streaming. You can stream it. It was good. Okay. All right. A little heavy on the techno music, but it was effective.

59:58It was a—I feel like actually—how about this? Save it for your next airplane ride. I feel like it's borderline elite airplane moving. Like, much better in the plane, in the air than on the ground. That's fair. Okay. All right. That'll do it. Animal Spirits at the Compound News. We'll see you next time.

1:00:23Go good.