203: Cool Wedding

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You're watching Podlandia. Hi, I'm Fred.

And I'm Keri.

And this is AO Rewatch.

AO Rewatch.

It's a Portlandia rewatch podcast.

Hi, Fred.

Hi, Keri.

Today we are talking about Cool Wedding.

This is from the second season. That's right. And I remember, first of all, I really enjoyed watching this.

Me too.

Definitely laughed.

Even before I watched it again, I knew I was going to like it because I remember this as being one of my favorite episodes.

Yeah. This was like, I mean, the second season is we really were in this really great zone of coming up with sketch ideas.

I was going to say the same thing. We were in the zone.

Do you remember you and I used to have this tradition of sort of getting together, just you and me.

Yes.

And just showing each other ideas. I can't remember if I had them written on my phone or like.

Yeah, we would get together before the official writer's room resumed and just kind of share any ideas that we'd been thinking about in the intervening months.

Yeah.

And, I mean, obviously this would have been the first year we did that because we'd only done one season. But we made it a tradition after this. But, yeah, I think it was just because the show started... as an extension of work that we were already doing together. I think we wanted to just kind of reconnect and like remind ourselves, like this is based on, you know, our friendship.

It's an extension of that.

Like, let's make sure that we are sort of like connecting and like on the same page with things.

And it, yeah, I liked that.

Even if things didn't come out of it necessarily, it was just a way of like getting your brain back into that, kind of writing mode and back into the Portlandia like ethos, I guess, or like mindset because it's different.

It's different than other things that we do.

Yeah.

And I can't remember if like we had it all written out in a way or was there like a list kind of like a list of ideas?

I feel like later for sure it was Notes app.

This might still have been like an actual notebook for me even though obviously I had a phone then but now I use my Notes app all the time.

Yeah.

Although I still actually have I should bring it out for one of these episodes. Like I still have Portlandia notes in my notes app, including a list of sketch ideas.

I think I do too. I think I've just left it on there.

Yeah, same.

Oh, we got to bring those in.

Yeah.

Was this the season where we sat down at this cafe or whatever, coffee shop, and then out on the street, salt and straw was like a sort of, there was like, they had like a sort of cart thing. Out front.

Yes, we were on Alberta, northeast Alberta in Portland. But I thought that was during a break from shooting.

Oh, it could have been.

It could have been.

It could have been like a different season or something. But I just remember like it was just the two of us when we saw that.

Yes, we were at a coffee shop and they were cousins. And they said, hey, we're starting an ice cream shop. And it's called Salt and Straw. And we were like, best of luck to you.

Yeah.

And the luck worked.

The luck worked.

You know, two other companies from Portland, Stumptown, and Voodoo Donuts, both also doing okay.

Pretty well. Yeah. This, you know, the premise around like the wraparound, as we call it, I remember this was in discussion a lot. Like the idea of, I think we'd been to some weddings where they were trying to do something different. Yes. And I think it just stemmed from that.

I know I was trying to remember because we talked about this a little bit. When we first get back together in the writer's room, it's called the blue sky period where it's just like everyone's just brainstorming. And often in those first couple of days when we haven't seen each other for months, what we do is just share stories from our lives. And that's when we get like a lot of anecdotes. It feels like this would have come from that. Like someone would have been gone to a wedding. You know, something that was like arduous and costly and for sure a destination or just trying to do something like conspicuously different.

Yeah.

But I don't, I don't remember being, I feel like I missed a lot of weddings because of Fort Landy.

I don't think I had gone to any recently.

I mean, was it the, were we talking about what we would do at a wedding? Like some things that like we would do differently? Yeah.

You know whose wedding we went to? My dad's.

That's right.

But that was later. That was later.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you know what? No offense, dad. I wouldn't call that a cool wedding. No. Yeah. This wraparound is not based on my dad's wedding.

No.

Yeah. A man who wore shorts, yes, at his wedding with a tux and a bow tie. Just putting it out there. Looked like he was in Blink-182. Totally fine. Totally fine, dad. Love those photos. Timeless.

Okay.

Back to this.

So the cold open for this is a technology sketch, which, you know what? We really were grappling with technology and our relationship to technology a lot in Portlandia.

It's a recurring theme.

And this one still resonates. For sure. And the cold open is Carrie's dropping her phone. And as it's about to hit the ground, she goes through all the trauma that it's going to cause. Right.

Well, she's basically like rhapsodizing about her relationship with the phone.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, oh, all the fond memories I have, you know, kind of like imbuing the phone, you know, sort of like anthropomorphizing the phone, you know, sort of like this phone was my friend, my lover, my confidant, you know, in the ways that our phones are often a substitute version.

Human interaction. We might've been a little, a little early on this.

Yeah. But it's still resonates.

Yeah.

And this is like, you know, I don't know if it's like if the editors, you know, made this vision come true. Like there's like a real, this is like a rich cold open. Like there are a lot of shots. There's like a, it's like a full sketch.

Yes.

Which I often think about when I'm rewatching is just, oh my God, we did not set this in one location.

This was shot all over town.

And often what we did was we would film a sketch that largely took place in one location and then we would get a piece of this cold open at the end of that. So we were piecing it together throughout the entire shoot.

There's so much going on. Background actors, you know, different settings and stuff that, you know, some of it's in black and white.

Yes.

But what I liked, something that I'd forgotten about, which is I think, you know, the ending where the, you shatter instead of the phone.

Yes.

Is very Portlandia editors.

Yes.

Like a very simple ending to it. That's like a little abstract, but.

A little absurd.

Yeah.

Yeah. That you, yes.

But I actually was, I, I hate to ascribe this to our own work, but I was like, oh, that's clever. But also I can say that because it wasn't my idea. I was like, oh, that's a clever ending.

Yes.

That's what I thought also. For real. I was a little bit like, I was like, okay, that's good. It also surprised me. Yeah. Even though we did it, I still was like, oh, yeah, that's right. That's how we ended it. Yeah.

I thought it was a good ending.

So then we go into part one of the through line slash wraparound, cool wedding part one, who feature recurring characters, Spike, who's Fred's sort of.

Bicycle rights guy.

Yeah, rassable, gauges in the ear, bike guy.

And his wife slash, not wife, sorry, this is his partner, his fiance, I guess, Iris. And is this the first time we see Iris?

I think it might be.

I think it is.

And to me, Iris has a very familiar look. Like I know this look, like the sort of baby bangs. dyed black hair, very severe bob, long bob, lob, as it's called, short bangs, and kind of a slightly retro look, which to me is like one of the choices you have when you're sort of in that like punk, punk adjacent aesthetic is like a little bit of a throwback, you know, like just vintage kind of 60s clothing, like, a nod to that time, and then with an.

Edge to it.

And it's not Rockabilly.

It's not Rockabilly.

It's not that version of retro. It's this other thing, yeah, like you said, 60s, 70s maybe even.

To me, when I think about it, it slightly.

Abuts like Riot Grrrl, where it's a slight reclamation of, it's like this reclamation of like, okay, we're taking a sartorial approach like look from an era where women had a different status, but we're sort of owning it in like a modern context.

And like, now it's empowerment. You know what I mean?

Like, it's just like re-imagining this clothing you know, that used to be sort of like signifiers of like domesticity.

And now it's like, nope. Now it's just like, you know, independence. That is that look for me.

And it's pretty serious. Like it's not like goofy.

It's not frivolous.

No.

Yeah.

There's no like funny jewelry. You know what I mean? It's not like, it doesn't, it's less like B-52s and it's more, there's a seriousness to it.

Yeah. It's severity.

Yeah. The black hair, especially. Yeah.

Yeah.

But I knew a lot of people with this look and I, it a little bit, that color of hair when I would just dye my hair at home, like in college, just blue, black, permanent, like.

Totally not good with my skin tone at all.

Like just no texture or like, depth in the color just it looked like the interior of a car like just like matte black um it was that look except it was a wig luckily i didn't have to dye it.

Uh our friends we had around us like it looked like it was like some sort of alternative looking people and then.

Dana dana millican back as she is we've talked about her before she's in the you know the chicken you farm episode, she plays the server in that. And now she's playing the wedding planner. And so in this part one, we're just going and talking to her about what we want from our wedding and that we want it to be a cool wedding.

And she's great at that.

She's great.

She really doesn't, like, she never tries to be funny or have like a comedic reaction. It's very real.

Totally.

And this, you know what else When I was watching this, I was like, this is something that.

We explore a lot too.

It's just like people who are about to embark on something traditional or conventional, but who really need you to know that they are against all of that.

Yep.

It's like we are doing this almost begrudgingly.

Yes.

It's like a hate wedding for yourself, which is like, why get married?

Why do it at all?

Yeah.

It's like barely dipping a toe in. Like we'll barely do this. Yeah. It's wedding in quotes.

Yeah. But to me, it's like the lady doth protest too much.

I'm just like, if you're going to do it and invite people, and this isn't what happens in the sketch, but in real life, I'm like, you just have to own it.

Just please. It's so tedious to.

Hear someone make excuses the entire time. Then I feel sort of manipulated in even attending this.

I wonder if wedding planners must have a million stories about people who've tried to do things differently.

Oh, yeah.

And they have to pretend that they've never heard this idea before.

Things that are impossible to accomplish in a wedding.

Yeah.

I feel like some of it was improvised. It felt improvised to me when we were coming up, like, I could just, some of these ideas just seemed.

You know.

Yeah.

This is definitely the seat still early on where we were improvising a large portion of the sketch. Yeah. Like a very threadbare kind of outline, a couple of lines of dialogue that we would not necessarily adhere to.

Yeah.

And long, long takes.

Long takes.

Yeah.

And props as a means of like finding story. Like there's, she opens up, that like binder at the end.

Yeah.

And there's like this moving mechanical part and that was something that she would have just seen for the first time that day. We would have seen for the first time that day.

Yeah.

Likely was not scripted but we had such a wonderful like creative art department.

Yeah.

That they would, you know, often provide us with things that would become like central.

Oh yeah.

To the plot.

Yeah.

You know, so.

And I think there's like screams. Like when she opens that book, the sound, there's a sound effect of screaming.

Don't you mention factories and I mentioned that like it's death.

Yeah.

So anyway, what is it with that age or like something in your thirties where like factories is like the ultimate cool thing. Just any reference to factories or like even graphics for like a lot of bands. I think we're like factory based. Yeah. There's like an obsession with it.

Yeah, like smoke billowing.

Yeah. I've still got the ear gauges in as those prosthetics.

Yes.

We lose it somewhere in the series.

Oh, because it was so cumbersome. I mean, you were there hours before. Which, like, if you're on a more traditional TV show or film and you, you know, obviously actors wear prosthetics all the time and you have this pre-call and you're there for hours.

But for a sketch show, that was very... inconvenient.

Like it just, it ate a lot of time and we needed to switch between characters and sketches quickly. And it was kind of a burden on both you and our makeup department.

Yeah.

That was a little time consuming.

Yeah.

I'm seeing also, I forgot to address this, but for the dropping the phone, there's a shot of us in front of goats.

Yes.

And the only reason I bring it up is just because The writer's room that we had was across from this like field.

An empty lot.

In the middle of the city.

Yeah. That had goats.

That had goats.

So, yeah. I just wanted to. It was very. When people would visit, they would say like, oh, this is so Portland. There are goats there.

Right. And so the reason the goats were there. Okay.

So there's this empty lot that was, you know, waiting to be purchased and developed and And in order to keep the grass from going out of control, this farmer brought in his herd of goats and let the goats live on the city block where they maintained the grass.

Why doesn't that happen all the time?

I mean, it's, I don't know. It was a great idea.

And they were there until they did eventually develop that block and it's still called the goat blocks because of it. Oh really? Yeah.

The, um, there's an apartment building there now and it's called goat blocks apartment. Uh, but yeah, we interacted with those goats a lot.

Yes.

They were very, very cute.

And we would, we would leave the office and walk to get lunch and we would pass the goats and say hi.

Yeah.

It was nice. It was nice in the environment to have.

It was great. It was great.

That's, that's a good, um, something to point out.

I agree. Um, No, you go.

No, you go.

This is, so this is the first time, this is a Subaru sketch.

That's what I was going to ask you.

Oh, well, I'm answering. It was, yeah, it's the first one. So we, Subaru was one of our sponsors.

And this was kind of, this was new for us. I don't think we had any sponsorship season one. We were a very low-budget show, so this was helpful to do. We had to do, I think, two sketches a year that were tie-ins. I don't know what the exact number was, but essentially we had to write the car into the sketch.

To me, this was one of the most organic uses of Superoo. Because I remember later it feeling like, oh.

Goodness, what are we going to do? Because there's rules, of course. You can't be doing something illegal.

Right.

In the car or like salacious, you can't be doing anything dangerous.

Like, you know, it's just, there's more guidelines and we weren't really used to that.

We had a lot of creative freedom. This, I still felt a ton of creative freedom.

I mean, this was something that we definitely noticed in Portland is this politeness that's so polite as to be actually impolite that to me, like it's frustrating.

But I think this was your idea. This might have even been before Subaru signed on.

I think you're right.

I think you just had an idea. You just brought up that like in Portland, you could just be at a light or a stop sign forever.

Cross traffic does not stop.

So going one direction or going like in one direction, there's no stop necessary. Yeah. You know, it's like, but people will still stop. So it's like, this is not a four-way stop. This is a two-way stop.

But everyone stops.

And then.

It's anarchy.

It's like there are rules for a reason and it creates more problems. I also find, because I still live in Portland, I just think let's be efficient. Like things need to move. So as a pedestrian, I'm fine to just wait. Like if I reach the edge of the sidewalk and you're about to go in a car, just go. Like what happens is they stop and then there's this awkward dance. So that's kind of what we're talking about, except it was two cars.

Yeah. We had a bunch of characters for those. I think we were just, you know, Mexican magicians. like, or these were new characters.

Yes. Although definitely this wig comes back for me. I don't know. I feel like you're, yeah, I think they're one-off characters, but the wig came back.

Your wig came back, I think.

Yeah.

You're right about that. I don't think they had names or anything, but. I really like, this was just, the sketch really worked. Yeah.

And I would call this, like we talked about this, the energy piece, right?

Where in terms of the pacing of the show, like this has, where it's just a classic escalation, right? It's just like, and then a ridiculous ending, you know, where the absurdity just increases until it just kind of collapses at the end.

Right. And like washing the car.

Yeah. Reading, like stopping to read, like writing the newspaper.

And I think- Did we get a real Yugo for that?

Yes.

In Oregon, somewhere. Somewhere.

Someone found a Yugo. Yeah.

We should explain what that is for a listener who may not know.

I was going to say a Yugoslavian-made car, but I don't think that doesn't exist anymore as its own nation.

So now you have to explain that.

I have to do history.

Yeah. We will be here a long time. Go ahead.

I wonder if there'll be a day where there's no more nations, where it's just corporations. We had these things called nations. But yeah, Yugo was made in the country of Yugoslavia. And they were weirdly popular. Not popular. They were just, Americans had them.

It was a budget vehicle.

It was like, now, I mean, that class of vehicle just didn't quite exist. a true budget vehicle. And it was a total rarity. I mean, and you'd see them every once.

In a while.

Yeah, there'd be like a couple jokes about it.

Yeah, there were a lot of jokes. But there hadn't been a joke in a while. Yeah. And so it was very.

It was like a double joke.

It was very weird that we even could find a Yugo.

Yeah. I'm sure, I mean, even before I was around, it was probably the butt of many jokes, like in the 70s and early 80s, you know. Remember, here's another car that had a joke about it was, remember the Azuzu Sidekick and they would roll over?

Do you remember that?

Yeah, that's right.

That was another.

It's like part of this like line of like cars that just like sort of were like little death traps.

Was there something called La Car?

I don't know.

This is 70s. There was something that was like in the vein of like, we're going to make things easier for you.

Someone should just do a whole podcast episode of just, like.

Of those, like, forgotten, like.

Forgotten cars that became the butt of jokes.

Yeah. Short-lived. Yeah.

I remember being with my sister, and we were in, like, an ice cream shop when we were kids, and someone pulled up in an Isuzu Sidekick, and my sister made a joke in front of the guy. And we were really young, and I remember thinking, like, that's... We're going to get in trouble.

Like, you can't say that. He's... If she wasn't, like... trying to be mean. She just was like, but she said something about rolling over in the car.

And I was like, her owner was like, I don't want to hear about this anymore. Um, and then we got the, we're towed away, which.

I think is still saying, there you go.

Yeah. I, the other thing I like about watching it is that nostalgically for that time that we were shooting, I just remember there was like a freedom to shooting in Portland. I'm sure they got the permits and everything, but it's just like this, like, Little corner.

Yeah.

That to me really, I don't know, just something, it really reminded me of being there.

Yes.

That's how I feel often every time I see a sketch that takes place outdoors.

Just how much real estate we took up.

Yeah.

And not in a bad way, but like that we just, it was, we were so fortunate. Yeah. We shot all over that city.

Huge areas.

Yeah.

I remember when we ended the entire show and we should get this number for our listeners, but someone counted all of the locations and it was for sure in the thousands.

It was a shocking amount.

So many.

Yeah.

And I still run into people in Portland who say, oh, you shot at my house or you shot at my store.

Same.

Because it was ubiquitous.

Yeah. Then we've got, what was the title of this sketch where Jack McBray didn't have a bag?

I don't know the name of the sketch, but it's basically just someone didn't bring their own bag to the grocery store. And you as the checkout cashier really give him a hard time.

Yeah. Just from like.

By the way, I feel this all the time when I forget my bag. Yeah.

So this is definitely one of those like anecdotes that someone relayed in the writer's room and everyone understood it.

I think that.

I still do.

I still feel bad. I just felt bad the other day. But I never have the bags in my car.

Sometimes I do, but it's just not often enough.

If the plan is to go to the grocery store, I bring the bags. But if I'm just out running errands or doing other things, and then I realize, oh, I should stop at the grocery store, that's when I don't have my bags.

And I still make a pretty big.

Deal about not bringing it for myself.

I self-flagellate over it. For no reason. No one has ever come at me.

No, but I feel like I'm wasting paper when I don't bring it.

Well, now you actually pay for the bags. There's a fee. That's the same here, right?

There's a fee, but if I bring a reusable bag, the problem is I get groceries, bring it into the house, and then when do I bring it back again? That's the problem. It makes its way into my house and then... It's like a one-time thing.

I think people, you have to keep it in the car. That's, I think, what people who are, I guess, better at pre-planning.

Yeah.

I'm not a great planner in that way.

Well, this came from a real feeling, this sketch. And I think I was playing like kind of like a, I think I've dealt with people like that too, who are not, they're just a little distant and a little dim. But pleasant. You know, because he's smiling the whole time. Yeah. And then did we do the same characters for the nature products, the deodorant and stuff? Oh, yeah.

I think we did. That's later.

Yeah.

But Jack McBrayer is great in this and he's just good at, you know.

Yes.

Making something like that funny.

Yeah. He's just guileless. So it's really hard to come at him.

Yeah.

You know, when he's playing someone with such a sweet nature.

Yeah.

Yeah. Put a little wig on him. I don't think we barely had an ending. We might not have even written one. Because all he does is he falls. Yeah. Yeah. And it just looks like we just were like, we'll figure something out.

Yeah. And sometimes we did and sometimes we didn't.

Sometimes we didn't. Like that was enough. Yeah.

To be fair, sometimes we did not.

But that was shot at Zupan's?

Zupan's. I believe not there anymore. On Belmont. Belmont.

But is there another one on another street?

There might be one. I think there's one Zupan's left and it's downtown.

Wow.

Yeah.

But that was kind of like the alternative to Whole Foods. Or would that be New Market?

Oh, New Seasons.

New Seasons.

Yeah, Zupan's predates both Whole Foods and New Seasons in Portland.

And I think Whole Foods used to be called Wild, not Wild Oats, Nature's.

Yeah.

I mean, every city has that, like, you know, just this like progression.

Yeah.

Evolution of grocery stores.

Yeah.

Yeah. That's.

See, if we still had the show, that's what we would do.

The evolution of grocery stores. Yeah.

Evolution of a city, like a city dealing with the evolution of grocery stores.

Yeah. Anyway, Zupans.

Okay. Then we've got. from in his bookstore.

Oh my God.

This one has one of my favorite improvised lines that one of our guest stars did.

Like to me, the perfect kind of improv.

Yeah.

Do you want to guess what it is?

That he killed himself?

Holy shit. I, even when I was rewatching it, I forgot what a brilliant response that is.

Yeah.

It's so good.

Yeah.

And the premise around this one, And this is, I think, it was a pretty quick idea.

Yeah.

That we have a guest.

This sketch guest star is Shoray Agashloo, who plays an author that we're coming, that we are inviting in to do a guest reading.

A Persian author.

Mm-hmm.

Who, and she's a Persian actor.

Mm-hmm.

Really great. It's been.

Mostly in dramas.

I was, we were very excited, as we often are, like struck by people's.

Yeah.

Just.

Interest in coming on the show and being silly. This is one of those situations where we were like, really?

Okay, great. And then gave her a very ridiculous... Yeah.

Well, the premise wasn't ridiculous, but Tony and Candace's response to anything is pretty ridiculous.

That's a pretty... We get through it pretty quickly. Like, it doesn't go through different levels of annoying her. It's just that we can't get our printer working.

Right.

Well, yes.

But.

Yeah. Tony.

This is also, by the way, we deal with printers a lot on this show because there's one later on with Kyle.

Oh, yeah, that's right.

But yeah.

Anyway, Tony thinks that in order to basically publish her book, the problem is that she hasn't printed it out and that we need to print out a thousand copies. But there is a moment where when we're talking about printing and process of writing and Tony says, what did Hemingway do? Yeah.

And she says, he killed himself. Yeah. And it's such a great line.

It's great.

Because I'm, of course, asking what he did about printing.

Yeah, yeah.

Which, in some ways, also, that joke worked in that, like, also, he killed himself over trying to get something printed.

Yeah. But I love.

I don't mean to be explaining jokes. I'm just saying them. No, yeah.

Worked on many levels.

Yeah.

But, yeah, that was a fun one.

I also, like, there's something about Iran that is appealing to me. And I just liked having just that, you know, the flag up there and everything. It's just something about, like, it's such a mystery to me.

Yeah.

That I liked that, having that aspect of it in the episode.

Agreed.

Co-Wedding Part 2.

Co-Wedding Part 2 is the... The rehearsal, wedding rehearsal.

You could see that the guy who plays your dad is not speaking because we couldn't pay. It's just too expensive to pay background actors.

Little inside industry tip, which is often if you see a background actor who's not speaking, it's usually because they can't.

Literally, the production cannot afford to have them speak.

And the money that we saved. We have now.

Sometimes it works. And sometimes I find it obvious. I can see it. Like sometimes I'll see it in a show where it's.

Like one of the speaking roles, you know, or like actual like cast members has two friends. And one is like a five and under or like at least another speaking part. And then the other is a non-speaking role.

And I can tell.

That they are not allowed to speak. And I can see it, and it bothers me a little bit. But I understand it from a practical level, of course. But sometimes it doesn't work because the dynamic is off.

Yeah. Yeah.

You're like, this person would have vocalized here.

Absolutely.

They wouldn't just be nodding.

No. Especially at a rehearsal for a wedding, it's like, people would be chiming in.

Yeah. It's just that like sort of general like din or just, yeah, it can feel artificial.

Yeah.

But, but whatever.

It didn't bother me, but it was noticeable that, but yeah, this is when we're trying to set up like what the wedding is going to be like.

It's the seating arrangement. Basically we're going over all the plans.

It looked like it was freezing that day. Oh. When I watch it, I wrote down that like, it seemed like it was a chilly day.

Yeah.

We had a few of those.

Yeah.

We did shoot all summer, but of course, as everyone knows, mornings can be cool. Or they used to be in the summer.

Yeah. Yeah. You are very funny in this scene.

Oh, thank you.

But I have a line in it that I think about a lot where I am talking to the wedding officiant.

That's right.

The priestess, I guess.

And she goes to comfort me because this scene culminates basically in us like breaking up or fighting. Yeah, yeah. She goes to comfort me and I say like, keep your hands off me. you're a dirty hippie and you don't understand punk at all.

Yep.

I've seen that as a meme. You have? Oh yeah.

Okay.

Well, it's weirdly, like there is something about Iris and we talked to, you know, I was saying earlier, like I know this character and there are so many of the characters, there are parts.

Of us in these characters.

And to me, Iris like taps into that part of me that still has that very like strident, like, pedantic like mindset about certain things and like I there's something about like coming of age at a time where like there was a real differentiation between like hippies and punks and this was like a leftover like from like the 60s and 70s right where there was just this.

Split and.

Now I mean I could care less, you know, couldn't care less about any of that stuff. But like, I, there was a time where it was just like the hippie mindset was just like this, it was like too lax, right? Like just that kind of like, oh my God, like we need to like care, like get a backbone.

Like it just felt too, too free.

And it, I definitely was channeling that in that moment.

That was exactly what that was. And that was really funny. Because it is everything that that couple is about.

Yeah.

And I remember at the, I guess in the 90s or whatever it was, like, I just remember that really was like, that was like a main point of an argument is if something was punk or not.

Yeah.

And I remember in those arguments, I'd hear myself saying something ridiculous just to prove my point.

Well, like bands like Phish or Grateful Dead and you know, Phish, I definitely appreciate and Grateful Dead, I am a fan of, but it was like never the 20 until me.

Like it just, you could, like, there.

Was something that felt too indulgent and like desultory about like hippie music and the style and the like labyrinthine, like guitar lines.

And just like, it, it just went, it just didn't have enough structure.

You know, and like punk was so much about like rules and things just like, I don't know, just having, it was a life, a code that you lived by. And like, even though ostensibly, of course, so it was just like the counterculture and hippies for some reason, we just didn't see the overlap there. It felt diametrically opposed.

And that seems so ridiculous now, but it really, again, we've talked about it on this podcast. Like there were just these hard and fast rules to punk. Yeah. That, you know, like it to deviate from that was a sort of going against like everything you believed in, like the ethos of it.

You know?

And Iris saying that, that would have been a real point that Iris would have made. Like that was a real, like, this is the end of this discussion. You are not punk.

Yes. Yeah. That's it. You, yeah, that was an insult.

Like it was just like to, to say that someone wasn't that, you know, you were just like excluding them from this ideology.

You know, that you lived by.

I remember, like, getting in these arguments so deeply that I would say things like, well, then, Duke Ellington is punk. You know?

Right, like, if you're going to open it even a little. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I know. The amount of.

You know, just endless, endless, like, discussions. It's funny. Even as I say, even as we talk about it, I can feel my own skin... getting tingly with like, you know.

Yeah, who was or wasn't punk? Like that was just.

It was such a fight. Yeah. The Beatles came up all the time where people would be like, they're not punk. Like actually they are if you think about it.

Even you, just the word actually, that's.

According to your rules, well, the Sex Pistols did that. What's the difference?

Yeah, yeah. It was, anyway. Love Spike and Iris. They just fly in the flag.

Yeah. And the whole, that was a good, you know, I like it was like sort of cliffhanger.

It was a cliffhanger.

Oh my God.

I'm so cold. Okay.

Netflix DVD.

Netflix DVD. This one, love.

Love it.

Yeah.

Whose idea was it?

To me, this is a Fred Armisen sketch.

No?

The part that.

The.

I don't remember who thought of was that then you become the mail carrier.

Right.

I don't know who came up.

With such a good.

I mean, that would have been a collective effort, but the other thing that I wanted to point out was just, and we've, you know, this is the problem, not the problem, but it just happens inadvertently with anything that it just, it.

Becomes of its time. And some things... We're ahead of their time and.

Some things transcend and are timeless. But this, when Netflix, when they actually delivered a DVD to your house in a little package, that time is long gone.

Yeah.

And every once in a while, we will come up against that.

How do you feel about that?

It's like I.

I don't want it to be that, but I'm also like, I'm glad those things exist. If I'm watching someone else's show, like, or something from like, you know, the eighties or nineties and you see like a landlady or do you see, I remember watching the exorcist like in the last couple of years. And like when they go to the doctor, he's smoking in the office. I'm like, okay, well, I haven't seen that in a second. I sort of like that because I mean, I think as a writer, it's like you want everything to.

Just like to exist like sort of outside of time and place.

But actually that's why things are good is because they actually are situated in time and place and they are a way of marking time and place for better or worse. And I like to, you know, a through line to something or to like understand like sort of, you know, anthropologically, like why something happened or why something was or the way technology, you know, places us somewhere specific. So I actually don't mind it, but I think, you know, of course I'd rather be ahead of something or outside of something, but that's just not the reality of it.

That's impossible.

Right.

How do you feel about it?

Um, I really like it because, uh, the relationship between the two, the mailman and Sandra is intact. Like that's the main part of it. Like someone trying to school someone on what films to watch. So that's, um, that seems a little more timeless.

Yeah.

And then the other stuff around it, like you said, I never mind seeing it on some other show. Yeah, of course. It still works for whatever reason.

Yeah, and that's true of all technology or clothing or haircut. I mean, that is just literally the nature of art. It's just music, all of it. It can't be divorced from that. so yeah I don't mind it but also to your point like what makes it last and relatable is the relationship between these two people yeah you know like that to me and that's I think what I just try to focus on.

I think we tried to we had a hard time finding what that film was going to be and then we had to get.

Oh right it was a permission I wondered why it was so specific.

And I think we've found something that was public and it just turned into public domain.

That's right. It was such an old movie.

I wonder what the original idea was, what the original film was.

I know.

I would be curious like what is in the earlier scripts because I think it was something, I know what it was. It was one of the, it was a Dracula or some kind of horror film that you would have, that's what I think.

Okay.

Right? Like, and then we couldn't do that.

Okay.

I thought it was something that was a little more like in your wheelhouse, like a Boris Karloff film or Right? That's where my mind's going, but maybe that's not true.

Yeah, it was something old, but I can't remember. Something old, for sure. But we had to, like, it took us a while. Yeah. I think it's because, didn't we, because we showed a clip of it.

Yes.

And you made me laugh so much in this. I wrote this down, that there's a part where you're pointing to the screen at one of the characters and you're laughing because you're, like, you're losing your mind. Losing my mind, yeah. So that really made me laugh.

Yeah.

That was really good.

That's nice.

All right.

This gets us to the end of the episode. We are on part three of the wraparound.

Yeah. Cool wedding. And we are now in a gym and we are splitting up friends.

Yeah.

Which is such a real thing. Yeah. Um, and it's sadly a real thing, but we sort of.

Made it into like when you're in school and you're picking teams, you're like team captain, you know? Um, And that's how we split up. And the thing that makes me laugh is when you pick my dad. I'm like, you can't pick my dad.

And you're like, yes, I can.

Technically, we're picking people. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And we had some of our friends in there, Rebecca Cole, keyboard player, who's gone on to tour manage some stand-up stuff that I've done. And then she also plays with Pavement. Yeah. And played in a band with you.

Yeah.

And then Lance Bangs.

Yep, who we just called Bangs for some reason.

Yeah.

I don't know why. Yeah.

So, nice clean ending. You know, we get the ear gauge.

Yeah, Jedediah.

Jedediah.

Who's been in a couple things, including sketches we've already talked about. And I do like that.

I like, first of all, I love seeing our friends populate the screen. And the recurring background actors and, you know.

Yeah. Characters. It's been great.

Yeah, it's good to see our old friends there.

Yeah.

This is a satisfying ending to me because they come back together, but it's not in a wedding venue.

You know what I mean? Like we somehow get to the wedding.

We end up having a non-traditional wedding.

Yeah, yeah.

But not the way we planned, which to me is how life is.

And it's a great idea that like the sort of basketball in the air, that should happen at more weddings.

Yeah, and for my ring, it's your gauge earring.

Yeah. Yeah. Do you still have it?

No.

So we should also, you know, in the tradition, even though we're not getting paid for this, give it up for Subaru. If you are a true listener, go out and get yourself a Subaru. Try it out. Keep it. We're asking you. That was a financial transaction back then, but now.

We're still obligated.

Still obligated.

It's a lifelong contract.

Oh, yeah.

Yes. I have to bring it up three times a year.

Get it out there. Yeah.

And what sucks is if I forget, and so it's like December 31st, I spend all of New Year's Eve trying to sell those Subarus.

Get those Subarus out there. So thank you for listening to Ayo Subaru.

Bye, guys.

Rewind.

203: Cool Wedding

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