The Darkside with Dave's Not Very Christmas Special Special

The Dark Side. Ha! With Dave. Welcome to The Dark Side with Dave. It's been a while. We've got Dave Bittner back. Dave from the Cyber Wire, the gallivanting man about the country and podcasting and everything. Dave, it's been so long I forgot what you look like, Mr. Handsome Devil U.

Oh, that's very sweet of you. Yes, I want to say it's been about a month since we've been together, just because of the fates of the world and vacations and holidays and things. But it's good to be back. What have you been up to? Yeah, where have you been?

Nothing. I'll see you next week. No, my wife and I had a lovely vacation and it was one of those trips that was prompted by a family wedding. A niece of mine was getting married in upstate New York, up in the Adirondacks, a part of the country I'd never visited before.

A beautiful part of the country, I know it was. Oh, gorgeous. Just absolutely gorgeous. So we drove up there to, again, small town in the Adirondacks, stayed in a little, I guess you'd call it a historic inn, which was wonderful. Little family run place.

I remember when I was talking to the guy who runs the place asking about checkout, he was like, yeah, just leave the key in the door. It's fine. It was that kind of a place. But it's just, I mean, the vistas up there, you're driving around and it's hilly and you're on all these country roads.

But time and time again, you come over a hill and you're just presented with this amazing vista that takes your breath away. Just a gorgeous part of the country. I was really happy that we got to go up there. I learned that I am spoiled by the ubiquitous amount of reliable cell service that we have here on the East Coast.

Sometimes you'd get into a valley and you'd be driving for 10 or 15 minutes with just no service and going, huh. How's that streaming Spotify in your car working out for you right now? Not so good. Yeah, exactly.

The other thing I had to recalibrate was from being an East Coaster is that when you're timing how long a trip is going to take, you look and you go, oh, it's about 40 miles away. That's probably about 45 minutes. No. No. Like, oh, it's 40 miles away.

It's an hour and a half. You know, that sort of thing. You've got to use LA math for that. Well, that's true. LA math is different just because of the traffic, right? Yeah. 45 miles is half a day. Yeah. We went up there. The day before the wedding, we attended a rodeo.

It was my first rodeo, which was great fun. The groom actually worked in the rodeo. He's a rodeo clown. Which they now, they don't call them that anymore. They're called Barrowmen. Barrett's family is so proud.

Well, and you know, what better thing to do the night before your wedding than to get into a big cage with a giant beast, a 2,000-pound beast that has horns and wants nothing more than to kill you. Sounds like my bachelor party. Yeah. Oh, that's true. I did go to cheetahs.

It was amateur night. I'm just saying. Oh, man. So, the rodeo was fun. I'd say what we attended was the minor league baseball version of a rodeo. But still, I had a good time. It was very good for me to remind me that here in Columbia, Maryland, where I live, I am in a bubble.

And this progressive bubble community in which I live is not the rest of the world. And the rodeo was not that. There was one point, we're watching the rodeo, enjoying ourselves very much.

And my wife kind of leaned over and she said, I'm pretty sure I'm the only Jewish person here. I said, yeah, probably. But everyone was very nice and very welcoming. The wedding was beautiful. I did have to do a little bit of detox of all the country music that I had to listen to while I was up there.

But that was okay. After that, we drove down to Saratoga Springs. Had a lovely day there. Beautiful downtown. Very hoity-toity. Then we went to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Have either of you been there?

Hell no. No. Someday I will get there. I'm a big fan of baseball. But it is a bit off the beaten path for places I would tend to go. Yeah. It is. But I will say it is a worthy destination. We spent a day there. It turned out it was a rainy day, so a perfect day to be inside a museum.

But there's a beautiful lake there. And the little town is just completely built all around the Baseball Hall of Fame. It's a really nice museum. We enjoyed ourselves. And then the rest of the week, my wife found one of the few remaining still-operating old Catskills resorts from back in the day.

Back in the day, there used to be a lot of Jewish people there. Right. Yeah. Well, and this is where they all still are. This particular resort is called Villa Roma. You can look it up. It's an Italian-themed resort. We had statues out front with fountains, and so the clientele were mostly people out of New York City.

And it was kind of like being on a cruise ship, where everything you need is there. They feed you a couple times a day. They're indoor pool, outdoor pool, bowling alley, bumper boats, go-karts, golf course.

I love bumper boats. Those are so much fun. You know, ping pong, bingo. We played bingo. Trivia. It took about a day for me to accept that I had to switch mindsets and just kind of go with the flow with this old-timey time machine.

But once I did that, we had a really good time. We did little day trips. It sounds like a cruise without all the norovirus. Exactly. Exactly. Everyone was so nice. The food was delicious. But we'd do little day trips to some of the small towns around different cities and went to a lot of small-town museums, which I love small-town museums.

You just never know what you're going to find. And then we ended up in New York City. My youngest son and a friend of mine took the train up to meet us there. We saw a Broadway show. We saw Proof with, oh, what's his name? Don Cheadle.

Oh, nice. Yeah, yeah. It was excellent. It was a show I wasn't familiar with, but really powerful show. So highly recommended. And then drove home. So about a week and a half. I think we put about 1,300 miles on the car. $10,000 in gas?

Yeah, pretty much. And I enjoy driving. I really do. And so I enjoy this kind of road trip that's loosey-goosey. And let's just see what we see. And like you were saying, Brian, this part of the country was just so beautiful.

And we were there at a great time of year. So I loved it. Yeah, really relaxing. And, you know, I don't know that I would, without the wedding, I don't know that I would just drive the seven hours it takes to get there from here. But I'm glad we did.

Right. If I had an excuse, I would not hesitate to go back. Excellent. Yeah, it's a great part of the world. It really is. It's different. It's very different, but very beautiful. It is. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So what have you guys been up to? Working.

You're looking at it, man. You're looking at it. Yeah. Yeah, I've just been sitting here talking shit. Pissing off people on Instagram is pretty much our daily driver. So it works. Yeah, keep the faith. Yeah. A few links I put in the show notes here.

I came across this browser filter. This is kind of related to the one that you shared with us, Brian, that filters Facebook. Yeah. This one does the same thing for Amazon. Yeah, I've already installed this since you put the link in the show notes. This has been my biggest complaint about Amazon recently.

It's been impossible to find the decent products. They're buried now. Yeah. Fantastic. Thank you for putting this in here. Yeah. So basically, this filter just gets you to the good stuff on Amazon, gets rid of the junk brands that show up at the top of every Amazon list.

So it seems these days. So, you know, we'll see how long it lasts before Amazon figures out a way to shut it down. But for the moment, it seems to be working. There is a new touring Star Wars exhibit that is making its way around and or is going to make its way around starting next February.

It is kicking off at the Franklin Museum in Philadelphia, which I don't know if you've ever been to the Franklin Museum. It is really good. It's basically a science center. And so this is supposed to be an 18,000 square foot exhibition.

So pretty big. I think it's maybe the biggest traveling show that they've ever done for Star Wars. So, you know where I'll be next February. I'll be making a road trip to Philadelphia to see this. It's called the Star Wars The Experience.

And then this other Star Wars. Yeah, it really does. The other Star Wars thing that dropped this week was a Star Wars parody by The Hillywood Show, which I was not familiar with before I saw this parody. Did you guys have any familiarity with Hillywood?

No. Never heard of them. Because I'm an old man. I didn't either. I guess they're pretty popular. They have tons of subscribers and viewers and all that kind of thing. But what really struck me about this was the attention to detail. Like, there are shots in this parody that are one-to-one faithful copies of shots from the movies.

I mean, just the fact that they were able to sweat the details with what I assume was a sizable yet still reasonable budget. I guess it's not hard to get people to show up dressed like a stormtrooper, right? Apparently not.

But they have an amazing Yoda puppet, and they're using virtual sets. It's just amazing to me what you can do these days for not a lot of money. And this is good. I mean, it's just fun. It's silly. It's fun. It looks like a million bucks. We have moved a long way from Hardware Wars.

I was thinking the exact same thing. Yep. I was thinking the exact same thing. I started to watch it, but I am so allergic to that song that they're using that I could not do it. And I've got it stuck in my head now, and I'm very upset about it.

Well, now that it's stuck, you might as well watch the whole thing. No, just because you cut your arm off doesn't mean you've got to pour salt in it. Okay. Fair enough. Well, there's been a lot of Star Wars viewing going on in my house. My son is all in right now.

I mean, everything that is happening in his life is Star Wars. He knows we're going to L.A. for the month, and we always take a trip to Disneyland. And he basically came downstairs one morning and said, Mom, Dad, I just wanted to let you know you don't need to spend the extra money on the Park Hopper Pass this trip, because I will only be in Star Wars land.

Oh, wow. That's it. I'm going to Star Wars land. I will be there all day. You are welcome to go ride other rides. You can leave me there with the Emperor, because I'm a bad guy, and I'm hanging out with them. Like father, like son. Yeah. So, yeah.

So, he's all in. He's ordering books off Amazon about deep-dive characters in the Legacy universe. He's just finished watching Star Wars Rebels, which was excellent. He's now watching Star Wars Clone Wars. He's watching Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Uh, he's re-watching, well, he's watching The Mandalorian for the first time with my wife, who's watching it for the first time, and that's done at night, so I'm re-watching. We just got through the three bad episodes of The Book of Boba Fett. That's where we're at. There's only three bad ones? Yeah, because then The Mandalorian comes in and kind of saves the show, so now it's getting a little better, so then we can move on to season three.

It's all Star Wars all the time right now, and my wife said, this is what you wanted, right? And I was like, not all at once. Right, right. I thought it would be a bit more spaced out, and occasionally I have to remind my son, because my son peppers me with questions, and is like, how do you not know this?

And I was like, Lucas, you have to understand, you know those three movies, those first three? Well, technically the middle three, but you know what I'm saying, the first three. That's all I had. That was it. And that took a decade. Until I was an adult, that was it.

Yeah, yeah. We didn't have series. There was some books, sure, but only nerds read those. No. That was it. We had a Christmas special, though. Well, that was aired once and then shelved forever. When you went to Disneyland, you had Star Tours. That was it. That didn't come until I was like 16, 15, 16.

Like, at your age, Lucas, I had three movies. That was it. That was the entire story. Yeah. So, yeah. So, that's, it's a little, it's a little, it's a lot. It's not a little, it's a lot right now.

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That's true. I did try that already. He actually really did enjoy the animated one. Below Decks. Lower Decks. Lower Decks. He loved Lower Decks. And then I tried to get him to watch one of the, I guess, oh, well, the one that's airing now with Anson Mount.

I'm getting confused about all the strange new worlds. Yeah. And he got freaked out by the Gorn. Like, that was it. He was like, I'm done. I'm done. I'm not watching this again. Well, see, you should have started with the original series so he could see what the Gorn originally looked like. I think the original series is way too outdated for anybody.

Like, he would just, I don't think he would be interested at all. I think Next Generation would even feel a little bit old to him at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking, starting with Next Gen, but then it crossed my mind, like, even that is probably kind of chatty by today's standards.

Yeah. So, we'll see. Well, the big movies that are out this summer, Minions, Toy Story 5, and Supergirl are the big ones that have dropped recently. Have you guys got a chance to see any of the above? I have seen Toy Story 5. And your take on Toy Story 5?

I very much enjoyed it. I didn't rock my world in any particular way, but I thought it was a solid entry into the Toy Story canon. It's basically Jesse's movie, which is great. So, yeah, the family went. We had a good time.

I think the thing that I have trouble with with Toy Story these days is that they've made the world photorealistic. Right. But the characters are still not, which is, and the human characters are not. So, it just, there's like this funny, uncanny valley where we're no longer in that toy world from the original Toy Story when they couldn't make things photorealistic.

Now they can. So, I don't know. I guess I find that to be a bit of a distraction. But it was a fun movie. It was what you want a Toy Story movie to be. I was pleased, but I'm not rushing out to go see it again or anything like that.

But I left feeling like, yeah, that was a nice evening with our Toy Story friends. Yeah, I think this is one of those things where it's like, with a family viewing it, I have a copy of it and I made it about 25 minutes into it. And I'm like, I just can't. It just did not hold me at all.

And I just think maybe I'm just past peak Toy Story because I don't have kids, obviously. And, you know, there's the whole thing with, you know, toys versus tablets and all that. I'm just like, this is for Brian. This ain't for me at all. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah.

That's totally what it is. I did like the main B plot is about this container full of Buzz Lightyear toys that falls off of a container ship and washes up on shore. And so you have all, you know, and the Buzz Lightyears get out and what happens next with them.

And it's very fun and funny. Yeah, that was the most entertaining part of what I saw. I'm just like, they should have just made that its own standalone and I would have probably liked that. That was fun. Yeah, and the two plots do eventually cross paths and it does so in a satisfactory way. And so, yeah, I think, you know, it's a fun, if you're looking for a movie to go see with the family or it's gentle and fun and funny and nostalgic, you'll leave the theater feeling better than you did when you walked in.

So what more could you want from a movie in this world today? Perfect. Perfect. I got to say, I've missed a couple of the Minions movies and this one, it had me fallen out of my seat laughing at the beginning. So I was very happy with this because I thought it was just going to be kind of stale, but it is actually very funny.

I was pleasantly surprised by this one. So this is definitely a worth watch. Yeah, Minions and Toy Story 5 are both on the list of things to watch, obviously. As I have a nine-year-old, we are waiting until we get to L.A. and we've got, you know, Camp Oma begins and the movie theater runs.

So we'll be watching both. As far as Minions goes, Jason, they've all been solid. Every entry in the Minions canon has been hilariously funny. There's a bunch of specials that they have on YouTube as well. And then Netflix, I think, has them and they're all hilarious.

The Despicable Me movies that the Minions actually came from, that is the one where the quality has kind of gone up and down a little bit. Like, it started very strong. They got a little bit weaker as they went along. I think the last one in particular just wasn't, even my son was like, yeah, it's not that great.

But Minions, fully solid. Yeah, looking forward to Toy Story 5. It's definitely right in the wheelhouse for me right now and particularly talking about tablets versus toys and the ongoing struggles that we as parents at this day and age have with screen time and things of that nature.

However, I will say I enjoyed Toy Story 4. I've enjoyed all the entries in the franchise, but I am firmly in the camp that Toy Story 3 ended perfectly with every single parent in the audience weeping. And if we would have stopped the series right then and there, it would have been classic trilogy, never to be touched by anything else ever again.

We did not need four. I'm guessing we do not need five. But one, two, and three. Boy, what a sucker punch that was. Yeah, I concur. Agreed. Agreed. I concur. My son Jack has, for the summer, he bought himself that movie theater membership thing that AMC Theaters has.

So that's why he's seeing everything. Because he can see like four or five movies a week. And he is. Yeah, I remember doing that when I was about 14, 15, too. My parents would just, we didn't have those movie pass things. We just did what we called skip theaters.

Yeah. So yeah, you would get dropped off by your parents in the morning. When the movie theaters opened up, you would go find a movie. You would get your popcorn. When that movie ended, you just kind of hung out a little bit until another one opened up. And then you ran into that theater to go see whatever movie was showing over there.

Yeah. What we had in the suburbs, like when I was in my early 20s, or like late teens, early 20s, we had this place called the Ogden Six out in Naperville, Illinois. And it was just a second run theater. So everything that was there was second run. So they had six theaters.

So you could go almost every night of the week, see a movie. And they were only a dollar, which was the great part. So we would just go see everything. I think I saw Dragon there five times in one week. It was so good. I love that movie. I miss the old days. We had a dollar cinema in College Park at the University of Maryland.

And it was so run down. I remember going to see The Little Mermaid there for a dollar, right? Hey, let's go see The Little Mermaid. That's a great movie. But the projection was so dim that everything was just dark and none of the colors were vivid.

It was like The Little Mermaid was, I don't know, like suffering from depression or something. Everything was just dark and blah. And it really made me realize how important good projection is for any, especially a movie like that.

But yeah. The last movie on my list today is Supergirl. Yeah, I was going to ask you about this because we talked about this a bit when the trailer came out. It looked amazing to me. I will fully admit I am not a Marvel Cinematic Universe guy.

I'm not really a superhero movie guy. But I did like, I like the DC stuff. I like Superman. I grew up loving Superman as a kid. I've liked those movies. I liked the new Superman reboot. And I liked the trailer for this an awful lot. I did not go see it right away because I have to go see Minions and Toy Story 5 first or my kid will kill me.

But I do want to see it. Unfortunately, now I've waited and the online discourse seems to be pretty split. Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I had a great time. It's not what I thought it was going to be at all.

It's more, definitely more adulty than I thought it was going to be. And it's funnier than I thought it was going to be. And I really like Jason Momoa as Lobo. He doesn't have a huge part in it. But when he's in it, he's funny. The fight scenes went on just slightly too long. And this is the cut that was the 10 minute shorter cut than that they were originally going to run with.

So there's a there's a whole drama about which cut was better. And they did some screenings and this one won by just a hair. But all in all, I thoroughly enjoyed it. There was some, you know, they take some liberties with with some canon in there with the whole Krypton thing.

But I don't care. I'm not a purist. I couldn't give a shit about it. And for me, it was just a fun movie. So, you know, if you're a drinker, grab a bottle of wine and just kick back and just it's popcorn. It's a popcorn. It's a Supergirl. Of course, it's popcorn. And just enjoy it.

You know, don't don't think too hard about it. And you'll have a good time. All right. That is my plan when it comes out so that I can watch it at home. Yeah. Say my my son saw it in theater. Very much enjoyed it. I think he pretty much had the same description that you did, Jason.

It wasn't really what he expected, but he had a good time and was happy he went to see it. So to me, that's what it's a win. Yeah. You know? Yeah. It's a total win. Yeah, I have a feeling this might be a view at home thing as well, just because there's too many other kids movies to see this summer and not enough time.

And by the time I get around to it, it will probably already be streaming at home. So that's fine. And I'm fine with it. Like, I will watch it. I just find the concept great. I think she's great. And I think I think I'm going to enjoy it. Good enough for me. Yes, we did.

OK, we we had we we did how how it was such a it was boomered out at the end. So one of the streaming networks, not really a streaming network, certainly not one competing for the top top tier that I was paying for for a little bit because I got suckered in.

I was I basically was paying for my well, not local anymore by my previously local PBS SoCal station. I was giving them the five dollar a month donation to access many things on their on their streaming app. I think I would. The reason I got into it was was the the American Revolution docuseries that came out.

So I got it for that. And then I started watching some other stuff on it. And then my wife got into rewatching Downton Abbey, which had all of it. And she finally finished. And so I canceled my PBS SoCal subscription. And then they sent me an email after I canceled showing all the things coming up.

And one of them, I think, is of great interest to it. Certainly, Dave and I. And I'm going to have to pay them five dollars a month again or watch it live. When I get the chance, if I'm in Southern California, when it airs, which I will be Bob Gurr living by design, delve into the remarkable life of Bob Gurr, who is part of the original design team that built Disneyland with Walt Disney.

One of the original Imagineers. Now, you may ask, why is this not on Disney Plus? Does not Disney Plus have all these shows about Disney Imagineers? Well, it's because Bob Gurr also worked for Universal and Knott's Berry Farm and the other places.

And this documentary discusses all of it. And Disney Plus will have none of fucking that shit on their network. It's as if they don't exist. Yes. You worked for Disney and Disney alone, and we will put that on our streaming network. We are not going to discuss the other theme parks that you worked for.

So this one does. This will be premiering Friday, July 17th at 9 p.m. on PBS SoCal or check your local PBS stations for their information. But I'm sure this will be great because he's a funny guy. He's an interesting guy. I've read lots of interviews with him, seen him interviewed, quite clever.

And yeah, so it should be pretty good. All right, I'm going to add that to my list. That does look good. And that's it for me. Yep. Can you tell we're a little rusty? Whose turn is it to take us out?

Well, now we actually have to have a little exit, don't we? Because this has been a very special Christmas episode with Dave in summer. Mm-hmm. Christmas in July. Since we only do eight episodes a year now, just like every other show that streams, instead of the 32, we don't get a very special Christmas episode.

We do Christmas in summer. Well, thanks, guys. We're going to be back next week with the crew at the regular time. So we'll be – don't get used to it, everybody. Yeah. That's true. Don't get too comfortable. No, keep you guessing on your toes.

That's right. All right, Dave. All right. Thanks, guys. Nice seeing you again. Yeah, you too. Talk to you next week. See you soon. See you soon. Saturday, September 26th, two of combat sports' most dangerous strikers collide. Bare Knuckle. Liverpool's own Darren the Gorilla Till goes to war with Cuban powerhouse Yoel Soldier of God Romero.

Plus, the Bare Knuckle Middleweight Championship of the World is on the line when the reigning champ Dave the Redneck Mundell defends against undefeated British challenger Jack the Meat Cleaver Cullen. BKFC 94. Till vs. Romero. Watch it live only on DAZN.

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