The Psychosemantic Podcast EP 129: ‘Coneheads’ and immigration

Show Notes

Welcome to The Psychosemanticast: Join host Daeron and a revolving door of guests in discussing movies, politics, and political movies. In this installment: Florida Man Lance from The Horror Returns is back. We talk about the 1993 SNL Sci-fi Comedy ‘Coneheads’ , Immigration, Flooded Basements… and other things. 

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What is The Psychosemantic Podcast?

The Psychosemantic Podcast: Join host Daeron and a revolving door of guests in discussing politics, movies, and political movies.

No, no, no.

You done got me talking politics.

America has opened her arms to those who dreamed of a better life, in search of opportunity, equality, and freedom.

And so, it is in this proud tradition that America once again welcomes her newest aliens.

Coneheads.

They're from another planet?

That theory has been advanced.

I'm ready to suck back a cold one.

What?

Welcome to the United States.

And so the saga begins of a family unlike any you've ever known.

This summer, and open wider, their name will live in history.

Very sorry, Mr.

Conehead.

Conehead, my name is Conehead.

Coneheads.

Holy fucking shit.

OK, so real quick, you're over in Florida now, right?

I am Florida Man.

And if I say that one more time, AJ is going to slap me.

She said, you've got to stop with the Florida Man.

She said, you've got to give it a rest, man.

Oh, but it's the novelty of it right now.

I know.

So you probably didn't get hit with that string of storms that they went up through from Texas.

Yeah, I heard something about that, but yeah, no, we get some light, you know, light rain today.

Okay.

So I already know this is how frazzled I am.

What day is today?

Today is Wednesday.

Yes, Wednesday.

I missed a meeting today.

So like I looked at my calendar and like, oh, fuck, that was supposed to be this morning.

Oh, whoops.

Yep.

Whoopsie.

Yeah, so that's when I found out it was Wednesday.

We got a big storm Monday.

Sunday night.

Well, fuck this.

The other day, we got a really big storm and our basement, the little, you know, we live in one of those neighborhood, one of those really old neighborhoods that people are like, oh, yeah, you know, some water will come up in the basement.

But I've never really been happy about that.

Yeah, of course.

So we we had there was a little bit of water up, you know, but it was around the drainage hole where the washer, the clothes washer drains.

OK.

I was like, OK, well, maybe I'll have, you know, the plumber just check it out to make sure before it gets bad.

But then we got a fuckload of rain.

The river flooded, the street was flooded, my trash can washed half a block down the street.

Oh, no, I caught it before it smashed into a car.

That's a good thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then but then a bunch of water came up in through the basement.

So I've been having people in and over.

Got to have like the basement sterilized and throw a fuckload of shit away.

And then the plumber today found this is how fucked up our neighborhood is.

So our house is 100 years old.

And I'm thinking that the house to our back used to just be a yard, you know?

And but you had a bunch of skeletons wash up into your basement from the yard.

Am I right?

Almost.

Almost.

That would have been cooler.

Way fucking cooler.

It's like kind of like the pool and poultry guys, right?

Yeah, that that would have been much I the way I am right now.

I want to move out of this house because we've been here almost 10 years.

Yeah, this is the basement flooded right the day after my son was born.

And then we had to deal with all that shit.

And then today, we found out that 129 feet from my house, there is a crack in the pipe.

But since it is my pipe, I have to pay for it, even though it's like in my neighbor's underneath my neighbor's driveway.

Oh, wow.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

And there are closer access points to sewer system.

So, yeah, they found it.

It is, yeah, 129, 130 feet away underneath my neighbor's driveway.

It's a rental and the landlord also lives in Florida, bringing it back to you.

So I have been waiting for a year for to hear back from them about their walnut tree that I don't know if it was you and I recording, but it hangs over my garage and every once in a while, you know, with the windstorm, branches come down or whatever.

But sometimes just a bunch of walnuts will come slamming down on my roof and I won't know what's going on.

I'm assuming, you know, insurance doesn't like to cover anything.

So just a bunch of fucking bills and a house that I'm mad at.

But first of all, problems, right, like I own a house.

Yeah, that's true.

And look at it this way, man.

I mean, if there's anyone I know that they can they can get with the city and make it happen, it's it's got to be it's got to be my my my politically activated buddy.

I would hope so.

We'll see.

We'll see how that goes.

But thank you so much for being flexible with all of this shit and all the moving stuff.

Around and yeah, well, you know, if I don't cut if I keep any of our preamble in, I don't know if I'm going to cut this part out or not, but like the people that are coming to unshitify my basement are supposed to be coming in the next few days.

Are they are they coneheads?

They come from France.

Well, dude, if they come from France, they know plumbing and they know they know broken busted pipes and they know catacombs right with skeletons in them.

So I think you're in good hands.

Yeah.

So we should be in good hands.

But yeah, the wife was like, you know what?

Let's move.

And she just kind of got me whipped up right in a fervor and I was like, yeah, fuck this place.

But anyway, right.

So even so even by human.

So even by human standards, that house isn't worth living in.

No, it's I'm I'm making it a bigger than it.

Well, I mean, it is going to be a big pain in the ass and everything.

I guess it's going to be a way to realize what I actually want to keep from my basement.

As long as you didn't see Mr.

Hanky floating by on a leaf, I think you're OK.

I know we were trying to keep this a little shorter than usual, so you already did one one segue attempt.

I can bring us back towards that.

I moved four blocks from my old apartment to this house.

And then that happened.

But I did not come from Remulac, like Beldar and Primat.

And the pack.

That's right.

Beldar and Primat and Connie is an American citizen.

If you don't know what we're talking about, you either don't remember Saturday Night Live or you don't remember the Coneheads movie from the 1990s.

I mean, we can get the movie introduced.

Coneheads is from 1993.

I mean, I figured this was kind of like a base movie.

There's going to be a couple things from the movie that we're going to talk about.

But like usual, we kind of picked a movie that is really easy to summarize, so we can just talk about however the fuck we want.

But you know, the main stars in this are Dan Aykroyd, Jane Curtin.

There's Chris Farley, Jason Alexander as the neighbor, Michael McKeon as...

What was the department back then?

It's changed so many times.

It was way before.

It was way before ICE.

Yeah, it was before ICE.

It was before the Department of Homeland Security.

No, but at least they still were thinking ahead, right, to the electrified fencing.

I mean, yeah, he he he had he he would do well in today's ICE or Department of Department of Homeland Security.

Well, Michael McKeon was seedling.

Was that his last name in the movie?

Yes.

Yeah, it was seedling.

I keep thinking of David St.

Hubbins.

Oh, yeah, from Spinal Tap, but there were a bunch of standup comedians in the movie like Sinbad.

And Adam Sandler.

So as often we had a topic and we found the movie to go with it.

I thought I saw Ellen DeGeneres as as the swim coach.

Wouldn't wouldn't surprise me a bit.

I missed that, but definitely wouldn't surprise me.

I'm not sure what to compare it to.

Sort of like.

Oh, fuck.

It's kind of like a Saturday Night Live movie like it was.

And you're a big SNL fan, as we've talked about quite a few times.

Never missed never missed an episode ever.

I guess before you get to the topic that we chose the movie for.

Do you remember the first time you saw the Coneheads, like the skit or the movie?

Were you excited about the movie when it came out or was it, oh, OK, I was distracted when you came out.

Now I'm happy to know you exist.

And I'm always excited when an SNL skit makes it to the big screen, although they're they're less and less frequent, it seems, for some reason.

Although that the current the current season, dude, I was telling you about that, man, they've got a new they've got a new head writer.

And I think this dude was like, you know, like one of the writers, you know, team.

What did they used to call it?

The writer's room or whatever.

Kirk was in and shit.

Yeah, yeah.

But but this this guy that's the head writer, I mean, I've just I haven't seen SNL this good for many, many years, if not a couple of decades, man, because, you know, it's comedy it's all about timing and delivery, but it starts with writing.

So you know, these these skits, there's just a lot of surrealism, which I'm a huge fan of.

Right.

So you know, you've got like the old British the old British comedy where you had so much surrealism in it.

And SCTV, you were a fan of the Canadian SCTV network, right?

Yeah, I have seen a few of those.

That's where I've found out about like Dave Thomas.

That's right.

And he was in he was in this movie.

Yes.

So yeah, he was a he was the main the main conehead, right?

Yes.

The never the Garthak.

It was Dan Aykroyd, Canadian also.

He was Canadian.

He might still be.

He might be both.

Oh, yep.

He has dual citizenship, but he's from Ottawa, Ontario.

Oh, well, there you go.

Not from France, but from Canada.

Pretty pretty close.

Right?

Well, there's probably more French speakers in Canada than America, although, you know, it's not like every part of Canada is Quebec, but I feel like educational systems and other things included sort of like how a lot of us took Spanish in school.

But it was usually French or Spanish.

Yeah, it could come in a lot more handy to speak Spanish, like especially where I grew up, Texas made a lot more sense.

I did actually, I took, I don't know why, but for some reason I took French my first semester in high school.

And the only thing I really remember from it was, uh, faite attention, faite attention la, la, faite attention.

Pay attention, Lance.

I think that's what it meant.

But I, uh, I kept asking the, the only thing I remember was asking the teacher, what, what does, uh, what does coup d'etat mean?

Cause a, a movie we both love, there's a song in there called coup d'etat talking about repo man, of course, so I don't know why I got into French, dude.

I, I, I did, I did French and then I dropped it out as quick as I could and went to Spanish.

Didn't do incredibly well in that either.

Unfortunately, I wasn't the most disciplined child.

I think I did better in Spanish in college than I did in high school.

Well, for one thing, you're actually paying for college, right?

That is true.

So have you, not, sorry, man, no, I'm sort of manic right now, so I'm glad when you talk, because I'm just like, ah, there's a lot going on with you, dude.

You know, you don't want to flowing down the street.

Oh, man.

Dogs and cats living together.

Ah, mass hysteria, and I guess we are talking about immigration and things like that.

I did want to say, and I've been meaning to do this, but I am broadcasting from Stolen Land that formally are I am to what a coincidence.

I imagine most American and Canadian podcasts are.

The people who used to live where I live were the Miamia, the Shawandak, and the Shawnee, the Kakaskia, and the Hopewell people.

Ohio is a native word.

And of course, I live in a place called Columbus, which is sort of the antithesis for Native Americans.

Well, not sort of.

Columbus was the antithesis to Native Americans.

And he was a bad...

Well, no, he never immigrated, but he would be one of the people that did not come and improve the lives of the people who lived here.

As they say, the caravan of terror that always seems to get started up before every election to come get us and took our germs.

Like, you know, what they they didn't have the electrified fence of the INS because he was busy singing.

What Stonehenge or because he did say that little break when they got his promotion is like, let the next guy deal with it.

Yeah, makes sense.

Pass it down to the next sap or sap.

You had some things to say, or at least I think you do about how fucking stupid some of our should we say stupid?

Should we say ignorant or both?

I don't know, man.

Well, I mean, there was a time, and I don't know how much the immigration policies have specifically changed, but I mean, there was a time when this country was set up, and unless, maybe we're romanticizing, but it seems like at one point, we actually wanted people here to help out and take on the burden of the heavier jobs and build the nation up, and well, I mean, it's obviously a super rich nation.

It's hard to complain.

Like you said earlier, first world problems.

It's difficult to complain, and if people still want to come here as fucked up as we are now and as divided as we all seem to be, especially if you listen to people talk about how divided we are, right?

Yeah, but how bad our health care system is, how bad our education system is.

And it is.

Quality of life, public transit.

Really, a long, long time ago, I stopped romanticizing how perfectly wonderful and awesome America was.

And just sort of wonder what it is that would make a person want to come here.

And so often it's because our government has destroyed their country or helped.

Well, that's what that's what's so frightening, isn't it?

You got to be very, very cautious and vigilant, right?

About when you start hearing people talking about, you know, dog whistle statements like, oh, I don't know, certain groups are poisoning the blood of our country.

And you heard those exact words in the late thirties somewhere over in Europe.

It does kind of put you on edge a little bit.

Angry politicians complaining.

You don't listen to them much, but you know, the band No Effects.

Sure.

Yeah, my yeah, my my late my late son-in-law was a huge fan of theirs.

So they've got quite a few songs with lyrics like they turned out the fire underneath the melting pot.

Red blood of America is starting to clot.

I admire any immigrant that comes to this country.

Well, yeah, it's true.

I guess I should say that.

And I've got my doubts about Melania Trump's special visa that she got to get into the country.

My main problem is the hypocrisy of people that like to pull up the ladder once they get somewhere.

The people that pay for politicians or the people that marry politicians who try to get rid of the same things that their families and their friends were gifted to have because immigrating most places, like after getting there, if you get there, if you survive the trip, you know, with fucking Texas politicians putting barbed wire in the river and drowning kids and whatever the fuck, once you get somewhere, then there's all the fucking paperwork.

And how many people do you know that complain about immigrants?

Do you think could pass the citizenship test?

Probably none.

I mean, I'm sure there's probably a grand grand total of none.

So, you know, you got to love America, you got to speak the language.

Well, which of the languages that we've tried to snuff out?

But you know, a lot of this attitude toward immigration, it's nothing new, you know?