46. Blade, The Matrix, Bricks

We add the character Blade, the 1999 movie The Matrix, and bricks to the List of Every Damn Thing.

Show Notes

Phil & Jake rank the fictional vampire-hunter Blade, the first (and best) installment of The Matrix film franchise, and bricks on the List of Every Damn Thing.

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SHOW NOTES:

• We of course talk a lot about the Blade movies and Wesley Snipes. When reviewing Snipes' early work, we only mention Major League briefly and don’t even talk about how he didn't come back for the sequel. We also mention Passenger 57 and Demolition Man.
• Sticky Fingaz from Onyx was the star of the short-lived Blade TV series.
• We talk about the history of horror themes in comics. We don't really get into EC Comics, Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham, or the U.S. Congressional inquiry and Comics Code Authority that followed, but we could talk for days about that if you let us.
• Here’s the cover of Tomb of Dracula #10, featuring the first appearance of Blade.
• Marvel Comics characters discussed in this episode include Morbius (The Living Vampire), Werewolf by Night, the X-Men (especially Gambit), Ghost Rider, the Avengers and of course Dracula.
• We bring up John Woo, the Hong Kong-based action director. He's best known in the US for Face/Off and Mission: Impossible II. His HK work was very influential also.
• Yuen Woo-Ping is a director and choreographer based in Hong Kong who's also done a lot of work in American movies (The Matrix and Kill Bill for example).
• We talk about non-Marvel Cinematic Universe movies such as the 1989 Dolph Lundgren Punisher movie, Howard the Duck, X-Men and Ghost Rider. We do get into the MCU a little bit, with the upcoming Blade movie starring Mahershala Ali.
• We talk about a whole lot of other action movies, including Mortal Kombat (1995), John Wick, Speed Racer, Police Story, Drunken Master II and Die Hard.
• Daybreakers starring Ethan Hawke is a very smart (but also very dumb) movie that's a lot more fun than it needs to be. It's about a world where almost everyone's already been bitten by vampires and blood is getting scarce. We guess it's about oil?
• The recently-cancelled, long-running show The Venture Brothers' character of Jefferson Twilight is a Blade parody who specializes in killing vampires of African descent.
• Blacula is a 1972 film that Phil saw on broadcast TV as a child, but it fell out of rotation.
• Phil mentions, but forgets the title of, Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again. Here's the scene where he transforms. 
• In pop-singer Bebe Rexha's video for "Sacrifice" she restages a couple sequences from Blade. The song has a real early 90s club sound to it, that's what the kids want these days.
• In the episode, Phil says you don’t see a lot of references to Popeye in pop culture. We forgot about Ludacris' legitimately terrifying video for "Get Back".
• Laurence Fishburne is Phil's wife's favorite actor. When he shows up she always hopes it means everything up to that point in the movie was inside the Matrix. It's almost never true though.
• The Three Little Pigs should have a back-to-basics reboot. Kids only know the deconstructed versions now. There are deconstructed, ironic takes on the story going back to the 1930s! We just want a straight-up fable about planning ahead.
• We mention the Reginald Denny incident, which Ice Cube references in the song in “Natural Born Killaz”.
• Brickbats are bricks used as weapons. Here's an illustration of a member of the Dead Rabbits with a brickbat.
• Krazy Kat (AKA Krazy & Ignatz) is a comic-strip in which one character loves to throw a brick at the other.
• Brick chicken is chicken that you cook by putting a brick on it. You can use a similar method to make a panini as well. Usually people wrap it in foil but Phil doesn’t. He’s a wild man.
• Brick ovens are excellent for making naan bread or pizzas because they can get to very high temperatures. 
• Note on the term “brick shithouse”: This is used with men as well as women. Phil remembers reading a description of Lebron James that said he was built like a brick shithouse. The song "Brick House" by the Commodores was written by Shirley Hanna-King, while her husband slept! Here's some discussion of why "Brick House" as a slang term never really took off. We think the main problem is the shit connection. Few people when they're talking about someone attractive want to also make a reference to an outhouse.
• Here’s a pic of the “earthquake bricks” that Jake talks about.

ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
Marv Wolfman * Gene Colan * Jim Brown * Guillermo del Toro * Nicolas Cage * Jackie Chan * Kris Kristofferson * Stephen Dorff * Twilight * Buffy the Vampire Slayer * Anne Rice * Interview With the Vampire * Queen of the Damned * Traci Lords * Randy Quaid * Popeye * Charmander * Dan Aykroyd * Will Smith * Boyz n the Hood * Apocalypse Now! * the Wachowskis * Keanu Reeves * Fight Club * Jackie Chan * Matrix 4 * Carrie-Anne Moss * Trading Places * The Truman Show * Batman: The Animated Series * The Three Stooges * Shakira * Bill Paxton * firefighters * Larimer Square in Denver * cubed ice * dilapidated shacks

Below are the Top Ten and Bottom Top items on List of Every Damn Thing as of this episode (for the complete up-to-date list, go here):


TOP TEN:

1. Dolly Parton - person
2. interspecies animal friends - idea
3. Clement Street in San Francisco - location
4. Prince - person
5. It’s-It - food
6. Cher - person
7. Pee-Wee Herman - fictional character
8. Donald Duck - fictional character
9. Hank Williams - person
10. air - substance


BOTTOM TEN:

151. carpets - decoration

152. broken glass - substance
153. Jenny McCarthy - person
154. Jon Voight - person
155. Hank Williams, Jr - person
156. McRib - food
157. war - idea
158. cigarettes - drug
159. QAnon - idea
160. transphobia - idea

Theme song by Jade Puget. Graphic design by Jason Mann. This episode was edited by Jake MacLachlan, with audio help from Luke Janela. Show notes by Jake MacLachlan & Phil Green.

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What is Every Damn Thing?

Phil and Jake rank everything.