510: Fire by Nite Episode 6 - Facing the Future

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It's going to be all like Noah times up in this motherfucker before Jesus gets here.

Right?

Noah, how do you feel about that?

Like,

right?

Yeah, Noah times really blain.

I mean, I would be upset if somebody referred to now, right, and everything that Trump is doing and like just these wild times as like the days of Janice, right?

Wait, that's a great point.

Yeah, it's like that Nene links me.

Wait, wait, why am I in this

God-awful

movie?

Welcome back to the Gamcast, where each week we sample another selection from Christian cinema, whether we like it or not, and we don't.

I'm your host, No Illusions, and sitting 700 miles to my immediate left is my good friend Heath Endright.

Heath, welcome back.

Christian comedy?

Question?

No, Mark?

No, maybe?

Not at all.

Get excited.

Don't get excited.

No, don't, please.

And unfortunately, Eli is unable to join us this week, but we are excited to welcome in two brand new guest masochists today.

Janice Legata is the former former and always future host of God Has Not Given and the creator and co-host of Bad Words, where she flocks together with her fellow bad bird of a feather, Melanie Claimola, to give bad evangelical books the read they deserve.

Janice, Melanie, welcome to the show.

Hello, hello, thank you for having us.

Yes, thank you for having us.

Okay, so we just cracked into Ross Douthett's Believe Why Everybody Should Be Religious or whatever the fuck the title of that is.

What are y'all reading over on your show?

Redeeming Love by the uncomparable Francine

Francine Rivers.

It's a Christian romance novel set in the gold rush era.

Ooh.

As you all know well, because you watched the movie.

Oh, yes.

And you loved it.

Oh, did we?

If I remember correctly.

Oh, intro.

Oh, okay.

All right.

I think I might remember this one.

Yeah, I think it was.

a little higher budget than what we're used to.

So because like we're used to, speaking of which

the kind of shit we watched today.

Hey, Heath, tell us, what will we be breaking down today?

We watched Fire by Night, episode six, How to Face the Future.

It's the story of Christian people trying to do sketch comedy, failing miserably five times in a row, and then making another episode.

We're doing it again.

It's Christian SNL.

It's real bad.

Oh, and

we've done five of them now.

We're following along.

Well, me and Heath have anyway.

So tell us, Melanie, how bad was this video?

I know nothing about how to face the future, number one.

And it was honest.

I mean, it was honestly.

That's tons.

That's a great point.

Yeah, we never really, yeah, Jesus is coming.

It doesn't really fucking matter.

Do we face up?

Is the future up?

What direction is that?

Yeah, I am no, I am no better.

I am no more ready for the the future.

In fact, I could have used that time to really do anything, paint my nails, and I would be more prepared for the future than I am now.

Because you'd be facing it with painted nails.

Exactly.

Oh, they say get right or get left.

So maybe it's right to the right.

You face the future.

Okay.

All right.

Interesting.

Interesting.

You'd be left behind, otherwise, left.

Homophones.

All right.

So, and Janice, as an ex-evangelical, I'm curious, how triggering was this video?

on a scale from one to six six six

it was smart exceedingly abundantly above all that you can ask or think well okay all right now when you were religious did you watch shit like this were you subjected to this kind of stuff you know the name and like the graphics were vaguely familiar but this is the precursor to what i knew better which was ron loose and Acquire the Fire.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Oh, you're familiar with Ron Luce, our top 10 guy?

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay.

I didn't remember what he looked like, but that name and again, Acquire the Fire.

And so I don't know if I'm like backfilling details and I'm like, oh, yeah, Fire by Night.

Or if it was still running when Acquire the Fire was going and maybe it was in some of the marketing material.

I don't know.

So it was vaguely familiar, but I don't know if that's just because all the trauma is.

Yeah, yeah, because it all kind of bleeds together at a certain point.

So, and we should probably explain to new audience members and to Janice and Melanie, you know, to explain some of the jokes that we're going to be making today, how Blaine Bartell faced the future.

After this show wrapped up, his struggle with porn addiction.

led him to start a career in the anti-masturbation workshop field, which he's still working in to this day, as I understand it.

So

correct.

It was called chopping wood.

Yes, it cannot be real.

That cannot be real.

It's so real.

It's not.

You can buy the course.

I came really close to buying the course.

Like it really is.

I refuse to believe it.

It's called something else now, but it was called chopping wood for a while.

No, you're making this up.

Oh, I wish that I was so.

I wish I went to his website.

The mission statement to help men, ministers, and marriages encounter resurrection out of sexual brokenness.

For real.

To get them through the refractory period, or I don't understand.

Having an anti-masturbation ministry and calling it chopping wood is funnier than anything.

Right?

It's the one time he was funny in his entire fucking career.

Yes, exactly.

Yeah.

that's that's crazy that's wild

all right is there anything that you guys would like to nominate this one for being the best at being the worst at this whole thing was

the best worst at aging poorly and or perfectly like i could not tell i i yeah i don't know if there was wine it was milk yeah it might have circled back around to this holds up it like actually might have because it's that ridiculous yeah well what i love so much about it is of course it's 40 years old and they're like any day now here comes jesus you know

every time they say that it's so hilarious like yeah these pants will still be in style when jesus shows

listen our generation or the next i still wear my z cavarichis and

okay and actually awesome if you think about it i have more pleats than anybody i'm winning

And we can't see you guys, but I know, I know you have those haircuts.

Oh, yeah.

Well, back when he had hair, he did.

Yeah.

I could if I want.

Okay, so honestly, Janice, you don't know this, but I have the most 1980s haircut of any person alive in the 2020s.

So like it's just, it's just south of power mullet.

So

I thought it was a best, best worst Miami Vice wannabe vibe.

I haven't seen anything so Miami Vice looking in a very long time.

And I suppose back then everybody looked like that, but right now, no, this is pretty crazy.

Well, so Melanie, and in some of the episodes, not the one that you watched, but in some of them, they actually do a sketch called Muscogee Vice, which is their Miami Vice ripoff.

So it gets even more Miami Viceful than what you saw.

Oh, that was Carl's dream.

Right?

They tried to do an actual city, and they were like, this is too much vice.

We can't do this.

This is too big for us.

We got to ease it down to Muscogee.

Muscogee.

I hate it.

So, okay, so I was going to go with, and this is sort of an inside bit from our show.

So, like, when we do sketches and we have to establish that somebody is who they are and that they're doing what they're doing, we'll just write Lou, Lou, Lou, doing X stuff.

X stuff is, so I was going to go with best words, Lou, Lou, Lou.

So there's a black and white sketch, and I don't want to spoil this incredible and traumatizing sketch before we get to it.

But at the beginning of it, the mom in that does a Lulu Lou that was just so nourishing that I didn't need to eat that day.

It's awesome.

Lulu Lou doing black and white stuff.

It's going to be Christian.

It's my favorite stuff.

You'll get it in a second.

Lulu.

You didn't need to eat or the dog, apparently.

Yeah, Louie.

He's had plenty of hand cream i'm sorry we'll get to it that'll make sense eventually

okay i was gonna go with best worst just the general thing that's happening best worst sketch comedy show that doesn't know what sketch or joke or humor means as a concept right and you watch them just try so hard to explore it it's like you you know when a five-year-old tells you a joke and they don't know what joke really means yet but they maybe have latched on to like like one or two little components.

Like the cadence of it.

They'll say it in the order of a joke for a little bit or they'll like make, you know, one noise.

Then that's funny, noise, right?

They do that for the whole thing.

It's all amazing.

Sketches that don't know what sketches are.

With no punchlines, with them just going, no, because what makes this funny,

yeah, it's incredible.

Who are you making fun of?

Yeah, right.

I think it's us again.

All right.

Well, i've waited too long to revisit blain so we're gonna keep the break brief but when we come back we'll dive into fire by night episode six how to face the future

hey noah sorry i'm late for the record yeah no problem car's engine catch on fire again again yeah it was it's good that you have that dash mounted fire extinguisher now though yeah it really takes the stress out of driving a car that does in fact regularly catch on fire.

Does it take the stress out of

most of the stress?

Yeah.

You know what else would take even more of the stress out would be buying a new car.

Sure, yeah, but that's just trading one stress for another.

Not with car gurus.

What's

car gurus?

Car gurus is a website dedicated to helping you find a great deal and a hassle-free experience on your next car purchase.

They'll connect you with a trusted dealership when you're ready and ensure a transparent buying process.

No haggling?

No being talked down to something I don't want?

Nope.

And with over 4 million listings, Car Gurus has more listings than any other major online automotive marketplace in the U.S.

So you can find the best deal.

It's no wonder similar web-estimated traffic data shows that CarGurus is the number one most visited car shopping site.

All right, Noah.

I'm in.

Where do I find this cargurus.com?

Buy or sell your next car today with car gurus at cargurus.com.

Go to cargurus.com to make sure that your big deal is the best deal.

That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S.com.

Cargagurus.com.

Awesome.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go recharge a few fire extinguishers.

What if your engine catches on fire along the way?

Okay, that's why I have the windshield wiper jets reversed.

Ooh, good call.

Safe.

Hey, come in.

Have a seat.

I hope traffic wasn't too bad.

It was fine.

So I suppose we should start with introductions.

I'm Leonard Schmartzen Farver III, Esquire, and the 46 men behind me are my associates.

We represent NBC in this action.

Yeah, I'm Kate.

I'm the attorney for Mr.

Bartel and his interests.

It's good to meet you, and you, Mr.

Bartell.

Likewise, likewise.

I'd like to shake your hand, but my

palms have to be encased in wax 16 hours a day.

Why?

Don't answer that question.

Yep, wasn't gonna, wasn't gonna.

So, nice try.

Okay, so as we explained in our letter, we find your show a pretty clear violation of our intellectual property.

I realize that you are spelling night N-I-T-E, but calling it Saturday N-I-T-E Live is still going to create brand confusion.

What if we change it to Saturday N-I-T-E Life?

Still a no-go.

No.

Schmatterday N-I-T-E Life?

No,

I don't think rhymes are going to get us there.

And beyond that, you've been collecting revenues under this disputed name already, so I feel like you owe my client pretty significant compensation.

Hey, nothing about the revenues we've collected is significant okay blain let me do the talking sorry sorry you go look how about this and this is my final offer here we call the show fire by night and to ensure there's no brand confusion we never do anything funny

Well, that's tempting.

Yeah.

But what about the compensation?

Sorry, can I use your phone for a second?

I got to do a number one.

Only my mom knows the combination to my chastity belt.

Just

need a minute.

You know what?

There's one out there in the waiting room.

You know what?

He can keep the money.

And we're back for the breakdown, and we're going to open up with our classic Schmatter Day Schmeit Schmeive intro that we referenced in the sketch there.

Yeah, they do like a montage of what, you know, Christian people thought was sweet 1980s New York City stuff.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

But they're in like Tulsa.

They are.

So they're doing the best they can.

Tulsa night live.

Yeah.

It's the fonts, baby.

Like that's that's well, right.

That's how you know this is, this is cutting edge.

You're about to see black and white photos, even though it's color TV.

Fonts are Riz.

Everybody knows that.

And of course, we've watched six fucking episodes of this show.

Now, this is our sixth episode.

So when I saw that DeGarmo and Key were their musical guests, again, this is the third time in six episodes that they have settled for DeGarmo and fucking Key as their musical guests.

Just get them as your house band, GE Smith, DeGarmo, and Key, whatever.

Right.

Yeah.

No, but surely they were like building it up, right?

So first it was DeGarmo, and then it was Key, and then now we're getting them both.

Well, that's the problem, is they blew their load too goddamn early.

Yeah.

So that's often, often Blaine's problem.

Could have prevented this.

Yeah, Blaine's got a whole series of videos about how to deal with that for sure.

Yeah, yeah, right.

So then, okay, so then we get this intro.

Then Blaine pops out the door and he starts doing his monologue too early.

Like he's afraid we're going to leave if he doesn't start talking until he gets to the mic.

Right.

He was right.

I was like, this guy.

Yeah, right.

That door is open and nobody's saying anything.

I'm clicking out of this.

Escape while you can.

It's so sad how excited he is about DeGarmo and Key, who we know has been there like half of their episodes.

And he's like, DeGarmo and Key are here.

They fucking slap.

And they're going to talk about the second coming of our Lord and Savior.

This is serious.

Yeah.

So that's actually going to happen.

The musical guest is going to talk, not in sketches, just talk about the Bible.

Do they talk every time?

Yeah.

They do.

They do.

Well, so, okay, so what it is, is that they recorded one goddamn interview with DeGarmo and Key that that was like 45 minutes long.

And they're like, whenever they can't get a guest, they'll put like four minutes more of this DeGarmo and Key interview into the show.

It's fucking hilarious.

And also, we have to talk about the backdrop here, right?

Because so Blaine is standing there in front of a brick wall, because, right, because that looks like comedy in the 80s, but also leaning against a brick wall, he's got a tire.

a pallet,

a rusty oil drum that looks like homeless people in a Batman movie should have a fire that they're huddled around over it and shit, and just like a concrete floor with like a wharf built into it for him to walk out on.

What are they going for here?

It's Tulsa, you know, with wharf

and fire barrels.

I don't know.

Aesthetically, I was so annoyed by that

drum because why would you not just move it over a little bit so that it looks like the fire of the fire by night is coming out of it?

And it's called fire by night.

Yes.

Blaine is listening listening right now and he's like

i told you that

well okay so but what clearly happened is the whole idea was that there was supposed to be a fire in the fire barrel and then they got in there and they're like no our insurance isn't going to come you can't start fires in here man and they're like god damn it we'll leave it i guess now just be a big blank space there otherwise

because how will people know this is gritty street drama right well we don't have this right but that's exactly it though right the reality of it is that that looked gritty and street to him, right?

So now it just feels like we ran into him in the street, like when we were hanging out in cool youths or whatever.

As you did back then, right?

Right, well, yeah.

You get your friends.

We're meeting in the alley, right?

Is it your turn?

Who's bringing the video?

It's in the trash barrel.

Yeah.

Who's got it?

Because this is not

TV.

These are videotapes.

Yes.

We all got to watch it.

So which we'll know by the tracking issues that we have later in this video on YouTube.

Okay.

So, but their subject today is they're going to talk about how to prepare for the future.

That being, of course, the future of scorpion, horse, locusts, and the rapture, right?

Right.

Clearly.

This is the first of many times that this 1987 video will say, yeah, Jesus is going to be back any minute now.

Any minute.

Any minute.

Very likely before you even get to see this video.

Yeah, right.

I'm wearing a white fucking editing.

Yeah.

I love that they hedge it at one point in the episode.

Blaine's like, okay, but like, it could be anytime, assholes.

I don't mean like necessarily right now.

Is it now?

Well, no, it's not now.

It's not now.

But like, it could be, you don't know.

I'm not saying definitely now.

No,

it could be whenever.

Could be whenever.

Now?

So, and then he tells us about,

he tells us about, he's got to throw in some prophecy, right?

So he talks about Matthew 24, 37, which says, and I'm paraphrasing here, but hey, you know what?

Bible's a translation of a translation.

There's no such thing as a paraphrase.

This is just an alternate translation, which is Matthew 24, 37.

It's going to be all like Noah times up in this motherfucker before Jesus gets here, right?

Noah, how do you feel about that?

Like,

right?

Yeah.

Noah times really, Blaine.

That's my word.

I mean, I would be upset if somebody referred to now, right, and everything that Trump is doing and like just these wild times as like the days of Janice.

Right.

Wait, that's a great point.

Yeah.

It's like that Nene links me.

Wait, why am I in this?

Well, and famously, Noah's like, I'm the only one who wasn't like these times.

If you named it after anyone else that was alive, it would have been more accurate.

Damn.

Right.

Right.

But it's like, no, you're responsible for this.

These were your days, man.

Explain apparently.

I like the image of DeGarmo and Key in a cage on a boat full of like two by twos of whatever characters.

Yeah, oh, there you go.

So, but he finishes his breathless monologue, and then we get our first sketch, which is a it's supposed to be like a literary review show called So You Think You Can Write a Book.

Yeah, it's actually an accidental sketch called So You Think You Can Write a Sketch So You

Right, right.

But the point of this sketch, I shit you not, is to lampoon those pretentious assholes that read books.

Right.

One of them is playing the pretentious Ivy League elitist host, and he starts off going, last week we reviewed Charlotte's Web and Treasure Island because...

Well, because no one in our writer's room could come up with a book they didn't read in fits fucking great.

And you know, Treasure Island was that like picture every other page version of Treasure Island.

That's right, they read

all of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic.

No.

I was so confused because I was like,

it's just really hard to, again, to know whether these things are aging poorly or perfectly because I'm coming to it in my 2025 mind and knowing, okay.

If he's making fun of Charlotte's web, I guess the joke is going to be that think these books are good, but actually the book they're going to be talking about is the good thing.

But I'm like, oh, no.

The joke is that all these books are good.

Because I don't think evangelicals today would

like Charlotte's Webb, right?

Like, right, it's all D-E-I, yeah.

And it was so confusing because he just was laughing the whole time.

He was laughing hysterically at just the mention of a book.

Like, so it was, it, it was as if just the concept of reading was just so unfathomably hilarious to him.

Yes.

And, and the guy who reads and would actually have the audacity to like, I know that he would have the audacity to like a book was the funniest thing that's ever happened because there was nothing else even remotely funny happening.

No.

So no, that was the whole bit.

Jennifer, you said the joke is, and you were trying to figure it out.

That's your mistake.

The joke, you can't find out the joke is.

There isn't.

Nope.

There isn't an answer to that.

No, well, so, okay.

So, and I think where this comes from is the fact that every book that Christians like, when they tell their friends, oh, you should read this book, their friends laugh at them.

Oh, right.

Because they're always like, oh, you should read The Case for Christ or whatever crap you guys are reading, right?

Like the fucking Christian romance novels.

And then we laugh at them and they're like, oh, those liberal elitists always laughing at all the books, right?

Right.

Because the liberal elitist famously hate books.

Hate books.

Yes.

But then, okay, but then they bring on honest to God, Hal Lindsay.

Yeah.

Who, you know,

I'm sure you guys know he's the one who wrote the late great planet Earth or how there will definitely never be a the year 2025.

Right?

He goes, it's a bestseller.

And he goes, under respect, in the religious market.

sorry did you mumble the word asterisk just now for your own

but of course this was a best this book was huge back in the 80s right like honestly you could say that this book kicked off the rapture lunacy that is still like the you know that that informs uh republican politics to this day so hugely influential book yeah but what they've done and i love this i almost want to do a christian sketch show just so that we can do this to modern christian authors is they brought how lindsay on and they're doing a sketch where the liberal elitist is making fun of how stupid his book is and Hal Lindsay is just sitting there taking it right up the ass.

They even make fun of his stupid suit.

His suit.

And then this is this is where the confusion and

also some emotional trauma and work for my therapist was instigated because I was like, oh, like, again, this is, this is just before my generation of youth groups and this kind of nonsense.

And so it's like, when you're young, you don't realize the toxicity that you're growing up in is not normal,

is not toxic.

And so like, I knew the name, Hal Lindsay.

I knew late Great Planet Earth.

And I was like, oh, I think I thought that was a real book.

Like, I don't know that I had the context where that was a Christian thing.

And so I was even more confused.

Like, it was even harder to grasp the joke.

Cause I was like, wait, was this a book for us?

Is this a book we were supposed to like?

Or was this a real book?

I don't know.

Yeah.

What's the joke?

Oh, right.

Not supposed to ask that.

Yep.

No, you can't ask that.

So, but of course, the joke here, the punchline to this whole bit is that as the liberal elitist, atheist, secularist douchebag is making jokes about how silly rapture fear is, the rapture happens.

And there's like a kind of a

and how Lindsay disappears.

Yeah.

And he doesn't even leave the polyester suit behind.

You're supposed to leave the clothes behind.

Everybody knows that.

Previously.

A fucking Christian movie one time.

Everybody knows that.

Watch a book.

Yeah, exactly.

This was rapture for dummies.

Come on, guys.

Yeah.

And then the idiot, coastal elite, atheist, whatever, sees the evidence of the rapture and doesn't change his thinking.

And I was was like, oh, good one.

Yeah, the atheists see evidence and don't change their thinking.

That's stupid of us to do.

Got us.

But, like, the problem is the rapture didn't actually happen and it hasn't actually happened.

Right.

And so, again, with them setting this up, and Charlotte's Webb is the first example.

And then.

You believe in that, so you should be able to.

But I'm like, but this, I also have never seen a spider and a pig become best friends.

Should I believe in that too

that's a great question yeah right by the standards you're using it's a lot more realistic than your book yeah right because I've seen spiders and pigs right so I am

assuming

at least is real yeah and I've never seen anyone raptured so exactly yeah exactly also it's more moral because Charlotte's Webb never endorses slavery, for example.

Yeah.

There is that.

Yeah, small detail.

When they do the rapture lightning bolt in the sketch, do you think a few Christians on set were like, holy shit!

Oh, no, we

were doing the sketch.

I thought I got the punch.

Okay.

Well, I mean, after he disappears, right, and all the crew is looking for him, I'm like, they're literally looking behind this bookshelf.

Like, yes.

And then he goes and checks the other side behind the bookshelf.

Yes.

I don't, I know, he's not

sure.

He's a large.

Do you think the guy threw a smoke bomb and ran behind the bookshelf?

But they're still killing themselves laughing.

Yeah.

So I don't know.

So, yeah, right, right.

Exactly.

Yeah.

No idea what they're supposed to have thought.

I guess they thought it was a magic trick or, yeah, on their set, you know, like, yeah, he put a trapdoor on your set.

Okay.

What a funny guy.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, right.

No, you could tell by the look at his face, that man has a sense of humor.

But then, okay, so that sketch ends and we get the first of our fake ads

where we've got the like you know are you afraid this might happen to you and and the ad is for a thing that you can add to your car that should the rapture happen while you're driving will pull it safely to the side of the road yeah so if you believe in the rapture you should get this

right yes so it's it's like a a useful product in their fake joke ad for their people who believe the things they believe

I'm so confused.

Several times in this, in this movie or in this video, you have to say to yourself, okay, like, if you're not making fun of yourself, I don't get the joke.

Right.

Right.

Because, like, because what this what this sketch is is like, if our thing was real, this is the kind of dumb shit you'd need.

Yeah.

So they also say at one point, you want to go to heaven without sending other people to hell.

So that's why you want the Acme brand rapture parking device or whatever.

It literally Acme brand, yeah.

Okay, but like the people who don't get raptured, they're going to hell no matter what, right?

Right.

So it's just a question of whether they like live through the scary tribulation period.

The tribulation, yeah, right.

Christian people want heathens to live through that tribulation or just die right away,

right?

Right.

I don't know the answer.

You let them off easy then.

Well, I mean, it said that right after it said, your car flying uncontrollably into innocent people.

Innocent people.

So I'm like, what?

Yeah.

So Acne cares more about innocent people than your God does?

Like, and

you would think this is your opportunity to lean into the idea that, you know, not one of us is without sin and we all deserve death.

Right.

But they couldn't even do that.

Like, yo, these are innocent people bound for hell, but don't send them just yet.

Bound for hell?

Yeah, the innocent people that are going to hell later.

Yeah.

And also, this is a minor detail, but in their joke, they say, it'll even lock your car in case of illegal entry.

And I'm like, isn't it just like a fucking Christian to be banffed up to heaven, but still worried somebody's going to touch their shit?

You know?

Yeah.

And

the fuck do you need your car?

And I don't know.

Maybe I'm overthinking it.

Maybe, maybe I'm looking too deeply at it and giving them too much credit.

But at the exact same moment, they're talking about that in case of illegal entry, exact same time, a note about modifications being needed for foreign cars comes on screen.

Oh, no.

Exact same

time.

Guys, we should really put a tariff on these things, but if you happen to get one,

you're going to need our Acme device.

At least we know the xenophobia was alive and well, even

then.

I was going to say, either it was on purpose or it was subconscious, you know.

This is that spot where we're not, we're supposed to not ask what the joke is, right?

Because it's still, if you are being raptured, like, why do you care about the people who are being, quote, left behind and endangered by your car?

Right.

From their theological standpoint, if you didn't care enough about them before you were raptured, like, what is the point of all of this?

But this, this made me think of, and I know I'm stealing this idea from someone, but it made me think of like the joke of like setting up like a pet care service for people after they are raptured.

And that, you know, they pay you a monthly fee, you know, just in case they're raptured.

I think I would be so good at that.

Like, cause I'm

especially if they just said, right, if they just sent me pictures of their dogs every month, I mean, they're never going to get raptured, but you know, I'll take your $19.99.

And

starting up an insurance company with a whole suite of things for rapture insurance that you might need.

Sure.

Yeah.

Definitely.

Also, if your theology doesn't have your dogs going to heaven, fuck you.

Seriously.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What did they ever do?

Yeah.

Also, just from a professional standpoint, so normally we avoid trying to do, like doing comedy stuff on our show, no matter how bad it is, because it's hard to make fun of bad comedy, right?

Because all you can really do is say, and then they do this joke, which isn't funny, right?

But they're so bad at it that we don't have to bother to avoid it.

So when you write a sketch like this, the way that you do this is that you think of a funny concept, i.e.

a device that would stop your car if the rapture happens, right?

Which again isn't funny if you're Christian and think that the rapture is going to happen, but setting that aside, you would then think, okay, what are some funny things that we can say about this or do with it?

They never get to that point.

Right.

So after they introduced the idea of that, they just play this as a straight commercial for this device the entire time.

And it goes on for two fucking minutes with no punchlines, no jokes, no bits, no escalation, nothing.

What are you talking about?

Did you miss the part where it's so easy a two-year-old could do it and they have the little baby there?

All right, well, no, you're right, no, I'm sorry.

I feel like you didn't really watch the sketch, really.

I probably could have learned a lot more from them.

The two-year-old putting the Acme brand rapture parking device on their power wheel, like that's pretty funny.

I like that.

Okay, that's that's yeah, that was pretty good.

It just plows into a Jewish baby.

See, this is what you want to avoid.

We're not sure.

But it seems to be like the whole joke seems to be

we're stupid and we know that.

Yes.

Isn't that hilarious?

Don't understand what else the joke could be.

So, okay, then we get the chat with DeGarmo and Key.

Yes, the DeGarmo and Key.

First time together, because I refuse to believe it's been both of them all three times.

So, yeah, so but they've been buddies since the first grade.

They've been playing in bands since the sixth grade.

So, you'd think they'd be better at it.

You would.

They look like they're doing impressions of themselves, if that makes any sense.

It's like every cocaine dealer that gets arrested by a movie cop in all of the 80s, they're that, and they're making fun of that to the next power.

Yeah, every white one, yeah.

And honestly, they couldn't help but be rock stars.

Pat pat boon made them be rock stars god why would you mention that pat boon such an evangelical thing like i didn't want this this wasn't me right yeah this was god i was chosen i was you know i was ready to live a simple quiet life but god whispered in the ear of pat boon and

here we are you guys i went to a christian ministry banquet like probably 20 years ago, and Pat Boone was the like keynote speaker at the banquet.

He's still alive.

Well, that was 20 years ago.

20 years ago.

I don't think so.

Okay.

He might, he lived for a while.

I think I do recall him passing away.

However, he's with the Lord now.

But

I, although I didn't, I was like kind of a, I, I started getting involved in Christianity when I was in college.

So, like, that was like the late 90s.

And so, I missed a lot of the Christian cultural stuff.

So, I didn't actually have any idea who this guy was, but everybody at the banquet was like swooning over Pat Boone, like, all these like middle-aged women.

And then the guy gets up, and I, I can't remember if he's saying or not, but I remember him talking about how he raised his four daughters, that he raised them to be virgins on their wedding night.

And I think he raised them in Southern California or something, and he was so proud of this man.

So, this is that was my brush with Christian stardom.

So, when they said Pat Boone, I was like, oh, I know him.

His daughters don't fuck yet.

Well,

speaking of his daughters, he actually said during a speech, I'd rather see my four girls shot and die as little girls who have faith in God than leave them to die some years later as godless, faithless, soulless communists.

Exact words from Pat Boone.

Thanks, Dad.

Apparently, people were like doing beetle mania when he walked into this event you're talking about.

Wow.

Which is so sad.

Oh,

the boon swoon.

Yes.

The boon swoon.

Amazing.

So, okay.

And so whenever they bring Garmoinkian, everybody loves to tell this story, right?

Because they're like, hey, remember that time that you had a rock video that was so awesome?

MTV had to pull it.

It was so controversial.

So I want to tell you the true story of this because

of course DeGar Moinke never will.

The video was pulled because Christians complained about it, right?

The song is all about how

I met the Antichrist and he tried to get my soul, but I got away.

But it uses the chorus is just 666 over and over again.

So Christians saw that and they're like, oh, that's anti-Christian.

And they complained and MTV pulled it.

And then like when they figured out they were wrong, they're like, okay, we'll take out the part where there's a human being that's on fire in it, and then we'll put it back on.

And they did.

So that's the real story.

And they're like, you are too hot for MTV to handle, huh?

And DeGuara Monkey's like, yeah, we rock pretty fucking hard.

Right.

And again, like, has it aged poorly or perfectly?

Right.

Yeah.

Because I say perfect.

The cops in the video are on the side of the Antichrist.

Well, that's right.

I'm like, all cops are Antichrist bitches.

I don't feel like this video would pass for evangelicals today.

That's interesting to think of.

So, yeah, because we know they're Antichrist because they wear sunglasses, right?

All the bad guys wear sunglasses in this.

And what we see in the video is this kid walks up and he sees...

like the Antichrist.

He's just, you know, walking the street like you do when you're looking for a good oil barrel to hang out with and watch videos with your friends.

He's walking down the street anyway.

Classic night in Tulsa, am I right?

Friday and Tulsa.

Saturday, whatever.

I don't think we're allowed to say Saturday.

Friday and Tulsa, right?

But he runs into the Antichrist and a couple of cops.

Like, yeah, we're wearing the sunglasses.

So, so, so, sorry, I'm getting a little ahead of us getting into the video, but yeah, DeGarmo and Key set that up for us.

Now, we have actually, Heath and I have actually broken down this video before on Scathing Atheist on our other show where we do a segment called God Awful Music.

So, when this video came on, Heath and I just both had this really depressing moment.

We're like, oh, wow, again,

I'm going to watch this video.

I know this music video well.

Fuck.

So, obviously,

you did not learn the lesson that you were supposed to learn, and you have been presented with it again by the grace of God.

God has whispered in our ear.

You think we're being given a second chance?

He's trying to get at you.

Okay.

And this is like peak TBN, PTL era coming in because then Key is sitting there wearing a brooch that many of your grandmothers traded your inheritance for.

I got to send money to this ministry, and you're not going to need it because Jesus is coming.

ASAP.

Right.

So, okay.

So then we get this video.

Now, how aggressively 80s is this video?

Well, it starts with a guy in a denim jacket with a mullet putting a five and a half inch floppy disc into his Apple II E's disk drive.

Amazing.

So, okay.

Okay.

To be clear, this disc, this five and a quarter disc is going to be like Satan's plan in it or whatever.

Yes.

Yeah.

Satan put 360 max kilobytes onto a GD disc

to corrupt humanity.

that's kilobytes two seconds of a CD in terms of data

well it doesn't take much we're we're not that smart well yeah that's true yeah we were we were teetering on the fucking edge

and made it made it blatantly clear right because I'm like who is the person picking up this disc this floppy disc of destruction is this supposed to be a christian or a non-christian because even not like 666 is so obvious.

Like,

no shade, Satan, but you're not good at this because you're not even

a little tricky.

Put a formula, put a formula that

999 at least.

And then maybe they accidentally.

Oh,

we already put it in.

Okay, he sent it through his fancy dot matrix laser printer

and printed out those labels so colorfully.

And

he, he clearly, this was clearly a priority to communicate those numbers to someone.

Maybe that's maybe that's where the message is, is just in the printed label.

I was so excited when Satan hacked the Apple IIe to print out just a bunch of sixes on a dot matrix printed.

I wanted Satan to like poof into the room and be like, fuck, the feed is off.

Hold on, give me a second.

I'm going to do it.

It's off by two now.

I went the wrong way.

That print job took hours.

I listened a lot of it.

Do you have a new ream?

I stayed up all night printing that shit.

Do you have a whole new ream?

I need a new ream.

No, Satan drops by later.

He's like, hey, did you get my message?

He's like, what are you talking about?

No, I sent, I sent, I know I pressed print on that.

Oh,

it jammed, man.

It didn't.

No,

it didn't come.

Okay.

We'll try again tomorrow.

Also, so I also, I have a question about like the, with the story that we're being told in this video, because it seems like what happens when you get this five and a half inch floppy disk is that it sets up a situation where you are given this five and a half inch floppy disk, right?

Because he boots it up, and then we see him go to this place and they give him like the chick convinces him to put his hand on the thing and they open the box and it's this floppy disk.

And you're like, is this a fucking flashback then?

But then he throws it out the window, right?

Because that's what you do when you have Satan items is you just throw them up for anybody to pick them up.

And some little kid kid picks it up and he boots it up.

And then we see him going into the place and getting the floppy disc.

Right.

What the fuck is happening here?

It's the perfect plan

by Satan.

It's Calvinism.

Oh, is it?

Right.

Like you

were destined.

You got the disc because you were destined to get the disc.

Oh, you're right.

So

you got the disc.

It's deep theology.

I didn't realize it.

Yeah.

So there's also this great moment where like the good guy in the video realizes that Satan's trying to corrupt his soul and he goes to leave, but they won't let him out.

The bouncer turns him back.

So he throws this bar stool through the window.

And I wrote my notes.

I wrote stool throw.

And then I wrote, I mean a bar stool.

That's good clarification.

Yeah, yeah, I felt so.

That stool is pretty small and he smashes through like a big plate glass thick window at the front of like a storefront or wherever.

There's an outtake where that thing bounces back and hits the actor in the face really hard.

And I want that.

Yep.

Yep.

That was like Elon with the Tesla, with the Cybertruck.

That's how he's got

Elon Scott.

Unbreakable glass.

So good.

He should have known that.

He should have known it was all going to blow up right then.

Damn it.

That's how he got the black eye.

Whoever said that, so good.

Step ahead of me.

So, okay, but then he gets, he almost gets away, but then the Antichrist like corners him on the roof and there's a flame barrel, right?

Flame Barrel makes a comeback, star of the show.

Fire by night.

Yeah.

He kicks the flame barrel over at Satan.

And I'm like, come on, man.

You know he's got flame resistance.

That's obviously you would want to use an ice power against the fucking Antichrist.

So that doesn't do anything.

Fire is like famously Satan's thing.

Yeah,

You're making him feel more at home, if anything.

So, but then we get like the guy wakes up from this dream, but then the computer prints out 666, so he knows it wasn't really a dream.

And then he throws the thing out the window, and that's the end of them.

And also, because he really has the disc.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And yeah, yeah.

What do you do with

world-ending, soul-destroying propaganda?

You leave it out on the sidewalk.

You just throw it out your window.

Like, honestly, like, even setting aside that it's world-ending propaganda or whatever,

he just throws garbage out his own front fucking window into his own yard.

What kind of fucking slob are you?

Well, it was the 80s.

Just save one basic image over that disc to, you know,

everybody could be saved.

So,

reformat.

You have to punch a hole in the side there, but Set it next to a magnet.

Do something.

There you go.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Lick the inside of it.

Like, it's so many things.

It didn't hold up too much.

Fold it in half.

All right, there you go.

That'll do the trick.

But enough fun in games, dammit.

It's time for Blaine.

3-3-3.

Now you're getting mathematical.

Yeah, right.

But enough fun in games, dammit.

And it's time now for Blaine to get serious for a minute and tell us about how the end is nigh.

Then he makes this insane fucking statement.

I love this so fucking much.

He goes, one in seven scriptures talks about history or future events.

Who the fuck counted that?

No, that is my favorite thing ever

because I'm going to start juicing my stats like that.

Right.

Like,

guys, I'm not saying I'm a big deal.

I'm just saying one out of every two people I meet immediately recognize me or have no idea who I am.

It's like this step

either talks about history or future events.

Take history out of the equation, and I don't think future events

are putting up those kinds of numbers.

Oh, yeah, right, right, yeah.

Obviously trying to obscure the fucking point.

Yeah.

Because he's talking about prophecy.

And I'm like, yeah, man, prophecy doesn't include the history parts.

Right.

Okay.

Imagine if you went to somebody who could actually see the future and six out of seven things they keep telling you about the past.

And you're just like, come on, just fast forward.

What are you doing?

Just tell me the stuff ahead.

It doesn't, I know the stuff otherwise.

That's on video, man.

Shut up about that part.

Yeah.

I'm not depositing another $2.

So, but then he reminds us about that parable about the virgins.

Five of them had oil and were ready, and five of them didn't have any oil and weren't ready.

The parable of the ten virgins, like that's not even hardcore Christians don't even have like good interpretations for this, but this is what we're going with.

So I'm like, if I'm just coming in cold,

is this about Lube?

Right!

Right!

Is that right?

The bridegroom, the bridegroom is coming.

These are all virgins.

Half of them are ready.

Half of them are not.

And they're ready with oil.

Are they?

Yeah.

Are they oiling themselves up with it?

Or I don't get it.

That's why he's out of breath.

Chopping, brought to you by chopping wood.

Yeah.

Right.

The rapture is just like getting ready to be married and then oil stuff.

I was like, I'm listening, I guess.

But then I am actually getting ready to be married.

And I was like, okay, what does he mean by that?

Like making sure a big dinner fits 19 dietary restrictions for like two of the time, the people.

Okay.

The rapture is going to be a giant pain in the ass.

Great.

To loop that shit up.

All right.

So let's make sure that Anne has plenty of lamp oil, though.

Yeah.

So, okay.

So then we get a black and white sketch that starts off with this title card that says, one afternoon at a Christian home.

And this is where we get my best worst, the lulu loo, right?

So we see this kid getting home.

Mom is in the kitchen doing domestic things that are proper and appropriate for the fairer sex.

And she goes, she damn near goes Lulu Loo doing domesticated stuff.

Domesticated stuff is my favorite stuff.

But what she lands on is she's like, oh, I better feed that dog and get that.

And there's obviously no line written for her.

So what she lands on is

hand cream.

And the rhyme.

So we spend the rest of this little sketch going, like, why is she giving the dog hand cream?

No, like, is it, does the dog have the hand cream?

Like, is this the system they've worked out?

Yeah, I trade the food for the hand.

Lizzie, the dog needs to check out chopping wood, the video series.

I know you're not using that paw cream just for your paws and the moisturizing needs.

There's just so many references to, like, moisturizer in just those two, in those five minutes.

Like, that can't be an accident.

Then dad goes to get in the shower and he's, he's got his, he's still fully dressed in the, in the suit.

He's wearing a suit.

Yeah.

Okay.

Genuine question.

Do proper Christian people shower in their suit?

The full suit?

I don't.

Like I wrote that same fucking thing in my notes.

I'm like, was that a thing back then?

I wouldn't be all that surprised.

Maybe.

But is that, I mean, I don't, I don't know.

What, what do men do?

You go to, you go to the office, right?

And I guess you were sweating heavy at the office.

I don't think it happens.

Chopping wood.

I don't know.

Come home mid-afternoon,

and first thing you had to do is jump in the shower.

Well, not jump in the shower, right?

Jump in, you just start out.

Start the shower

and then go into your closet to listen to some music.

And he was like, I'm going to put on a three-piece.

I feel like it's not formal enough for the shower.

I'm going to, I'm going to get the waistcoat.

Yeah, no.

I think this is our first never nude, right?

Oh, interesting.

I love a never nude.

I was like, I think he is, I think he's doing what kids do.

Oh, right, like faking a shower.

The grown-ass man,

pretending to take showers.

Like, babe, I just took a nice shower.

And she's like, oh, but you smell still.

Well, you know, the water was running that whole time.

We could do the hand cream, I guess.

I'm going to get that water running.

I'm going to put on my secret music.

Yeah.

And I'm going to go in this closet and order my pants.

1987 Walkman that's the size of a fucking typewriter.

Yeah.

So

and now what we should we should be clear, what they're setting up here is that their kid is going to come home and he's going to find a shower with nobody in it and he's going to find that mom has left the water, like the dinner boiling on the stove when she went out to feed the dog.

And the kitchen sink just running.

Right, right, because she had to wet the dog food or whatever and forgot to turn it off, I guess.

But so they're desperately setting up a thing so that he can walk in and think that the raptures happen.

But in order to do that, they have to create all this insane dog needs more hand cream, dad's taking a fucking shower in a three-piece suit shit, right?

Leaving us all going, what is happening?

So when they finally have the kid walk in and he's like, oh, the raptures happened, we're like, oh, God, that answers so many of my questions.

Right.

And also, what was happening in the 80s where kids, teenagers, were coming home excited to talk to their parents?

Like, who is going home?

Like, mom, dad,

where are you?

Okay, here's what happened when this rapture happened, though.

I was just realizing this wife and this husband both got raptured, right?

So

they show up.

Well, the claim is they got raptured.

So they would show up in heaven, mom's holding hand cream, and dad's drenched wet in a three-piece suit.

And everybody's like, What are you doing right now?

I don't think you should be here.

Well, so, and we should point out to you.

So, the kid, he sees the water boiling and he goes upstairs and he hears the shower running.

So, he goes to check it out.

And he opens the shower like he's hoping to get an eye full of dad's cock, right?

Like, he throws the shower open and looks all at once.

Like, like, you know, not the like subtle, like, half look in the shower to see if somebody's there.

Look, no, he's looking for some dick.

Because, like, it's blatant, right?

The way they film it, you see his shadow on the other side of the door when he's getting ready to open it.

So, clearly, if somebody was in there, you would be able to see their shadow.

So, like,

what kind of games do you and your dad be playing?

But then he sees that the shower is empty and he screams.

He's like, oh, the rapture has happened, but I've been left behind.

And he runs downstairs and he starts confessing his sins out loud to God.

Downstairs, not right there.

No.

Like the emotional impact.

Did you?

No, downstairs where the lighting is better.

Yeah.

Where it's easier to frame three people in the shot, right?

Because that's what it is.

They need mom and dad to like walk in behind him.

So they need a room where that's possible.

He starts screaming, oh, it's the raptor.

Hold on, hold on.

I'm just going to head downstairs.

And mom, who went out last wee saw her, right?

She was going to bargain bargain for hand cream with the dog out the back door.

Dad was upstairs, but somehow they both come from the same direction at the exact same time.

Yep.

Yeah, where were they?

And what were they doing with that hand cream?

Yeah, right.

Going on.

Not clear.

Yeah, maybe mom went up to the closet.

Like, that was nice.

Well, now that she's in the hand cream cream, yeah.

Dad's deep in his sound-canceling headphones.

Yeah, right.

Son starts confessing his sins, mom and dad walk in, like, you got nothing on us, kid.

No, but, but, so, but let's stop for just a second, though, to point this out, right?

Because this is horrifying.

Yep.

Right, like, just objectively, like, this is, this is a sketch about what a terrible thing this is to threaten your children with.

But Christians are looking at it going, huh, right?

Pretty funny.

Pretty funny.

Yep.

It's really not funny.

It was terrible.

Under any circumstances, because either the kid really was left behind and that.

So from a, if you believe that, then from a Christian standpoint, you would be sad for the kid.

But then warning the kid using this is just pure terror, terrorizing, which is like very commonplace in the church, but none of it is funny anywhere.

Like, right.

Very strange.

Okay, if they ended this video, mom walks in.

She's holding hand cream.

Dad's drenched in a suit.

And they just transitioned to an ad for Blaine Bartel's chopping wood videos.

That would be pretty much

a funny fake real ad.

No, but instead, we're going to cut to fucking Judy the time life operator telling us about

this, like honestly, this thing that every one of us had to spend like a full minute going, is this a real ad that was left in or is this something they're joking about?

Right.

Because it's a, they're like, you need to read prophecy news today.

And the joke is that's the Bible, right?

That the prophecy news today is the Bible.

And it's telling you about all these things that are happening today, right?

But it takes a while to figure that out.

I read it every day.

Yeah, they make several of the casts sing that, and they're not great singers.

It's rough.

Well, and then they have to say their other bit, like, right, like, because the one guy goes, I read it every day.

And Zaruskis are on Zerwe.

Because voices are funny.

Yeah, well, clearly.

Right.

And Russians and Russians are bad.

Zs are funny.

But then the next guy who says it, and this is honestly, genuinely the first time I knew for a fact it was a sketch, was when the guy goes, I read it every day, and half my neighborhood is gay.

Which in 1987, if half your neighborhood is gay,

then I'm going to assume one out of seven men that you know are your lover or yes.

Yeah, right.

If half your neighborhood is gay in 1987, it's one of three neighborhoods.

Right, right.

And then, of course, the last one who says it is the little girl, right, who says, I read it every day, but my school won't let me pray.

But I do it anyway.

So clearly, they've been leaning on that same lie that kids aren't allowed to pray in school for at least 40 fucking years and counting.

And then they contradict themselves because she's like, I do it anyway.

Yeah, right.

It's like, all right, so you, so you can, right?

I guess that they're not.

You can wish.

There's no enforcement of wishing.

That's true.

Yep.

There you go.

And then like we get to the end and there's no legitimate call to action.

And I'm like, okay, definitely not

a real ad then.

Definitely a sketch.

I was just going to say that it's not.

It was a real ad, right?

For the Bible.

Well, that's, yeah, no, that's true.

Right.

They do want you to do a thing.

So, yeah,

I guess they don't know whether it's a sketch or not it's like schrödinger's sketch is it a sketch it's not a sketch you don't know it's deep

all right well with the bar for sketch comedy thus lowered i suppose we can feel pretty confident taking a quick break but we'll be back in a minute with even more of fire by night episode six

hey folks i'm no illusions and i'm heathen right and we're here to tell you about quince you see i have a crippling fear of fashion born of childhood bullying that i I hide behind a cynical ambivalence about my personal style, inefficiently trying to mask my fear of standing out behind a color palette most people would associate with various grades of concrete.

Okay, yeah, I feel like this is more confessional than the Quince people were looking for.

Right, but when he wrote us a Quince ad the other day and made a joke about how we were so fashion backwards that we just wear plain gray t-shirts,

I was literally wearing a plain gray t-shirt when I read it.

It's true.

He sent me a picture.

So I heeded my own advice advice and I perused Quince's selection of cotton silk polos, European linen bead shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything.

And I bought a shirt with colors in it that didn't appear on the Jackie Gleason show and everything.

And I wore it while we were in Oregon.

It's true.

I saw him.

It looked good, right?

It looked great.

I've genuinely never gotten more compliments about an article of clothing.

Afterwards, I was excited for the next Quince ad so that I could tell you about it.

And if you're using price as an excuse to be unfashionable like I was, Quince will rob you of that excuse too.

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That's q-u-in-ce-e.com/slash awful to get free shipping and 365-day returns.

Quince.com/slash awful.

Because it's okay to have colors in your clothing, even when there's none in your soul.

What are you filling in for Eli?

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

Scratch that.

Dark.

All right, everyone.

I want to talk about the fake ad for prophetic news today that we got in there.

It's not working for me.

The twist, I think it's just that it's like, that's the Bible.

The news is the Bible, and it's telling us predictions about a magical apocalypse.

Exactly.

So good.

Got Got him.

What?

No.

No, you got who?

What do you mean?

Well, we got

the people who think there's a magical apocalypse coming.

Okay, but that's us.

We think that.

Ooh.

Right, right.

Yeah, that's us.

And we're actually advertising the Bible and its prophecies as the theme of like our entire show.

It doesn't really make sense.

Okay, but like it's super meta.

That's a comedy thing, right?

It It can be a comedy thing, but this is not meta.

It's just, this is just, we're stupid and we don't know how jokes work.

Wait, I got it.

What if we lean into it and we make a sketch about this

right now?

Yeah, like we're idiot Christian writers who don't understand comedy and we're trying to learn how a sketch works.

Dude.

Love that.

It's like, we're really winking at it.

Okay, okay, that could actually be funny if we put it together the right way.

I kind of like that.

So meta, super meta.

Wink.

Yeah, yeah, we're like, we're like jumping up our own asses on purpose, and we know it.

That's act, that's actually not bad.

That's actually not bad.

Sweet.

Let's do it.

But wait, fellas, is it gay to jump up your own ass?

Yeah, that counts.

Oh, it's officially gay by the rules.

Yeah, I was pretty sure.

It's too bad.

Gotta scrap the whole thing.

Nice catch, Blaine.

Yeah, close one.

Love the center, right?

Hey, did we just write a sketch about people writing a sketch who don't understand what it means to write a sketch?

Writing a sketch about how they don't understand how to write a sketch?

You're inside out again, man.

Right.

Inside out.

I'll get to doodley swoosher.

And we're back and we're going to rejoin the show with more from DeGarmo and Key.

Lucky us.

Not their music.

No.

Their interview some more, which I was actually cool with.

Yeah, really, honestly, because otherwise it would have been.

their music.

Like they start playing the music and you're like, oh, God, not another song.

And it stops playing the song and you're like, oh, good, the interview.

And then the interview starts and you're like, oh, could we go back to the music?

I hope we learned from DeGarmo and Key about the state of Israel.

I'd love to hear about the geopolitical consequences of that now.

And yeah, there we go.

We get that.

Yeah, Blaine Bartel asks them, He's like, So, how close are we to the rapture?

And they're like, Well, close enough that it's going to be super awkward for us if atheists can make fun of this 38 years from now.

Yes,

whoops.

Apocalypse now,

it's never now when I say apocalypse now.

He's like, You know, it's very likely it's uh this generation, but it could also be the next generation.

Or maybe the one after that.

He was pretty confident, though.

Like, he was like,

I'm building a huge safety net here by saying the next generation, but come on, guys.

We know.

Yeah.

He's like, he's like, I'm sure I'll be alive.

He died in 2010, by the way.

I'm sure I'll still be alive.

Yeah, we hear a clip from their song, Ready or Not.

Guess what?

That's about

a mystery.

Hide and seek.

There's a great moment where he's asking DeGarmo and Key's like, you know, what advice would you give to kids these days about, you know, getting ready for the future?

And he's like, and they're like, oh, be Christian, would be our advice.

No, but like, he says that, like, at the very end, there is a point where if they had cut it off, I'm like, this would have actually been good advice because he's saying, like, don't worry so much about the future.

You're in high school.

Live your life.

You know,

have a good time now.

And to me having a good time means be a christian yeah right yeah yeah

without that little tag again age perfectly or poorly so my evangelicals would have absolutely pulverized this man because they do not want their high schoolers enjoying their life and living for the moment right now No, you're right.

I'm going to call MTV and get their shit off the air.

This is ridiculous.

Well, there's also, there's this moment where like he has to try to like make the argument that being Christian is actually pretty cool, right?

Where he's like, you know, I was living my life at 20 miles an hour until I became Christian, and then God sped it up to like 90 miles an hour.

I'm DeGarmo and I'm Christian, motherfucker.

Or maybe Key.

Heath isn't sure which one is talking now.

Well, it's easy to remember because DeGarmo is the one that plays the Keys and Key isn't, which is seriously.

Obviously, Key Utah guy is not Key?

No.

No, that's DeGarmo.

Yeah.

So dumb.

They tell that joke all the time.

Yep.

Yep.

But that 20 to 90.

This is Dwight Schroot, right?

With his ultimate fantasy being

the assistant manager of a hotel.

In hell.

To the regional.

It's like 90.

You couldn't even push to the 100.

Come on, guys.

Well, that would be reckless, Janice.

Okay.

90 miles an hour in a straightaway.

You could do that safely, but come on.

90.

I meant kilometers.

Oh, my God.

90 miles per hour.

That's.

Would your emergency rapture break even work at 90 miles per hour?

Right, yes.

An important point.

Good point that we need to keep in mind.

Does this work on a DeLorean?

No.

Can't seem to get over 88.

But yeah, so, and then we get it.

This devolves into another music video, and this is amazing, right?

Because we're fresh from them going, yeah, actually being Christian is super cool like us.

We're rock stars and we're super cool.

And then we cut straight from that to the keytar.

What happened to the keytar?

You don't see it anymore.

Like, I think it's a good instrument.

I kind of want a keytar.

I kind of want,

I wouldn't mind having a keytar.

So, yeah, but he's rocking the keytar.

We see a bunch of Africans, but don't worry, there are white people to help them with that affliction.

Jesus Christ.

It's rough.

And those are the only people of color you're going to see in this thing.

Well, there's the entire goddamn video.

There is one Asian kid who sneaks in to one of the scenes, but

other than that, this is it.

Yep.

This was my representation.

Yeah, yeah.

The video starts as mostly a like a commercial for a Chevy pickup, it seems.

Sure.

It was just like doing the like a rock thing and then maybe like a brand of christian axe there's some wood chopping oh wood chopping yeah

keeps coming back keeps coming back

but then yeah they fly somewhere in a plane it we're gonna find out to anywhere in africa according to them from like the heartland of america in this tiny little crop duster airplane in that tiny little plane which what did he bring right well and and also like i think you can't even fit any bibles in there no

so andy would have had to stop for gas like 37 times on his way to africa in that little fucking plane

oh god this and this video could not be more just ham-fistedly bucolic right like so we see that you know that we see a hay and clotheslines and mama literally ringing the dinner bell and we do

i laughed a lot at one one little moment when the two like farmer guys grit bootstraps and then they have a little hose fight they have a little water

one guy one guy just picks up the hose and sprays the other guy in the face the other guy gets visibly mad and they have to cut away the other guy's like hey you cut yes

there was that moment and then there's an even briefer moment where it's like right after Is it the son?

Is he supposed to be the son?

Yeah.

Father and son.

I don't know.

He throws his little suitcase in the pickup truck and he drives by and i rewound it a couple of times i was like is the dad is he wearing jeggings

because

he he puts his hand like on his hip he doesn't put his hand in his pocket it is the most like flamboyant coded thing interesting like you you have to go back and just watch that moment the way he is leaning on that fence and he just has his hand on his hip all right just watching his boy drive by.

I laugh.

Chopping some wood.

And I laughed.

Do you think DeGarmo and Key were like secretly infiltrating the Christian community?

Oh, interesting.

Any chance?

Let's hope.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Undermining

chopping wood.

But then that's why I'm like, I can't tell.

Is it aging perfectly or poorly?

Right.

Because this stuff is so campy.

No, it's beautiful.

But did they mean it to be?

I liked how excited Keytar guy was about spinning the synth around during the video too it's on just like one of those you know screw and peg things but he's able to spin it and he does it a couple of times so excitedly and then they do the uh the one foot hoppy thing yes yeah aggressively yeah very aggressive you watch them all be like okay we're gonna do the hop on foot thing in three two

hop hop dude you started early keep it we're keeping it whatever and a five six seven eight back

yeah you're right yes

Yes, yeah.

They go back to that well a couple of times.

There's also a spot where like the camera pans over and keytar guy is playing a regular keyboard and he's like he gets caught.

He starts running away from it.

I wasn't playing that.

I was rocking my keytar.

I'm actually DeGarmo.

It's confusing.

Don't worry about it.

And Key, like, why are you sharing the microphone with this Rando who doesn't get a name?

And it's not DeGarmo.

Yes.

It's not DeGarmo and Key and Johnson over here.

Who the fuck is this guy?

And like Carreris and Domingo, and everybody's like, what?

Who?

I don't even know what's happening.

So then we go back to the interview, right?

And DeGarmo's like, you know, everybody pretty much agrees at this point that it's very cool to be a Christian.

That's why Christianity is growing so much.

And I'm like, it's, but it's literally not, though.

Like at this point, like, the drop in Christianity, which that was the precipice, right?

Like, they had already fallen off the fucking precipice at that point.

So he might as well just have his fingers in his ear going, la, la la, I can't hear reality.

Right.

I love that they seem to really believe this.

He's like, yeah, so my fellow youths, we all know it's fucking cray cray riz fat to be Christian.

We all know that.

But it's also practical.

And that's what's important.

Yeah, because it came with like a hint of like a warning.

Like,

you don't see a lot of you trying to get into this Christian thing because it's cool.

But,

right, yes.

This is for real, real, right?

This is not playtime, like, this is not

this is it's also very practical, and you need to be aware of that.

We're not just going to be having fun and games over here,

serious anyway.

The scorpion horse locusts are

they're coming to kill us because a lady ate an apple.

Because, yeah, so okay, and then we get the fucking what's hot segment that I always manage to forget about between these episodes,

right?

This is where Ron Lucy Lucy loose loose is that his name is it

loose yeah so he's he's gonna tell us what's hot apparently what's hot right now is steve camp and his shoulder pads who looks like a baby lion at a day spa which is funny

that sounds really cute his nice silk robe thing yeah that looks good slash jacket not clear i liked what he's he goes he goes the band the choir formerly known as the youth Choir, but then they got old enough that that was just dumb sounding.

They're also, they got an album out.

And then he gives us the top 10 Christian singles.

There's only two that I like.

I recognize Amy Grant, of course.

She was only at number 10.

Wow.

She barely made it.

Barely made it onto the list.

And then there was Petra at number three.

I recognized them.

The other eight

were all new to me.

Yeah, same.

I recognize Michael W.

Smith.

Okay.

Oh, and I recognized the cover of Tremaine Hawkins.

Okay.

But again, this is, oh, okay.

So we lied before.

We did have some other cultural representations.

Tremaine Hawkins is a black woman.

Oh, well, there you go.

And

I couldn't have told you what her name was.

I couldn't tell you what that CD was called.

Cannot recall a song off the top of my head, but I know that CD was in our house.

Gotcha.

Okay, so while we're talking about the covers, I think we have to talk about Billy Sprague's Rock the Planet and the bold cover art choices that this album made.

Okay, this was a lot going on on this cover.

I hadn't, I didn't recognize any of the names.

Amy Grant, now that you say it, I was like, okay, yeah, I've heard of that.

But I saw this cover and I was like, this is insane.

It's got Billy Sprague.

He's got the curly 80s mullet and just mustache.

And he's got his name written in silly, fun 80s font whatever that is he also is wearing i think a robe but it's all in like connect the dots format

it's it's just like yeah it gets crazier the longer you look there's also a flamingo i don't know why walking next to him spinning the earth and uh he's he's spinning the earth on his finger like a basketball so it was so so it's hard to get across it in in audio how bizarre this thing is it's bizarre enough that i was copying an image of it into our notes and then noticed that Heath had copied an image of it into our notes.

However, however, I will say that the award for best image copied in our notes does go to Janice on this one.

No, but for real, genuine question.

Because, come on, guys, you see it, right?

He does.

Oh, yes.

Yeah, tell our audience what we're looking at in the notes here.

So again, I was familiar with Ron Luce from Acquire the Fire some years later.

I did not remember what he looked like, but as soon as he started talking, I was like,

this is Larry the cucumber.

He is.

This is.

The face is exactly

the mouth.

The mouth is honestly uncanny.

He had to do those motherfuckers.

Yes, right.

This is.

So, so Janice is included a side-by-side of this in our notes.

And I'll have Tim like share it it on social media.

It is amazing how much this man manages to look like an anthropomorphic cucumber.

And his eyebrows, the eyebrows.

Holy moly.

Yeah, he's got the eyebrows, the nose, the big round nose, the tooth sticking out.

Like it's just...

Oh, everything about him.

If you put this man in green, you could like, he could get picked out of a lineup and go to jail for a crime that Larry the Cucumber committed.

Jesus, that's so fucking weird.

I saw that in the notes this morning and I like, I went to laugh and I'm like, but it's too, it's too good to really laugh at.

It's actually just Erie.

So he gives us our top 10 songs and everything, but then he wants to talk a minute about all the Satanism in today's music.

So he gives this editorial where he starts listing all the Satan-y sounding band names.

And as he's listing the Satan-y-sounding band names, they're putting Satan-y-sounding band names up on the screen, but they're not the same ones that he's listening.

They're just random, and some of them are just like,

that's not a cover.

That's just words that you guys just took from Motley Crew isn't satanic yet, right?

A magazine?

I don't know.

So, yeah, but then he goes, he goes, this is so good.

He goes, you know, we don't have to listen to these songs backwards to hear Satan's influence.

Although, to be clear, we still will, just in case.

Okay, it says 666 both ways.

All right, never mind, never mind.

And then, like, it's just so, it's, it's so bad, just like in a marketing standpoint.

You don't end with the thing you don't want people to remember, right?

Right.

Like, this was an ad for Motley Crew.

It was, basically, yeah, he's like, here's a bunch of great bands that you should listen to.

Now, let me name 37 that you shouldn't listen to

and say way more about them because all we did with the ones we like was give you a list, yeah, right.

They like we took the time to

say them.

Oh, you're right, he didn't even say them out loud.

No, wow, you have to read these.

So, if you glanced away

and that went by, and then again, Motley Crew ad.

Absolutely, yep, he's he's just telling you all about it.

I'm like, okay, just back to the as he was talking about Motley Crew and saying that they don't don't denounce Buddha or Muhammad, Muhammad, but only Jesus.

And I just, like, this goes to what Janice was saying, like, did this age poorly or did this age perfectly?

Because it's that persecution complex, you know, like,

you know, whenever Jesus comes up, we're all, you know, we're always going to be mocked, you know?

And, and it's like, are you like, or are these guys just

doing their thing?

You know, it's, it's so cringe.

Well, yeah, right.

Are you being mocked because of of Jesus or because you look like an anthropomorphic pickle?

I mean, okay, right.

But now I do want a Motley Cruise song that's like, fuck you, Buddha.

You're doing the worst.

Well, but also, he's like, weird that these bands ever denounce Buddha or Muhammad, only Jesus.

And I'm like, yeah, it's weird that they're all singing in English too, isn't it, Ron?

Hold on a second.

I think we found a connection.

There's some connective threads here.

Also, do they, do they ever actually denounce Jesus by name or is it just a general idea of God or religion or whatever?

Because like, show me, pull that, pull that footage.

Yes.

Put that lyric up there.

Right.

Where they actually talk about Jesus because I don't think that they do.

I mean, I've heard a few Motley Cruise songs.

I don't remember the fuck Jesus parts.

Yeah.

And then, okay.

So now it's time for the sketch comedy to make way for the pseudo-TV show about how Blaine Bartell is actually very cool cool as a teenager, family first.

Normally, this is half the show.

Mercifully, this was only about 18 minutes long this time.

Mercifully.

Only.

Welcome to my world, Janice.

So, yeah, but this is the sitcom where the mom, the dad, the eldest son, who is Blaine Bartel, and the eldest daughter, who is Blaine Bartel's wife, are all the same age.

Right?

And to counteract this, they have spray painted a beard onto the dad.

Okay, I forgot that's what happened.

Dad comes in pretty early, and I was like, okay, dad's a chimney sweep.

Chimney, chimney, sweep, chimney sweep.

He made the shape of a beard today by chance.

That worked out.

Okay.

So, yeah, so we get Blaine and his sister, they're rocking out, listening to music too.

Our little brother, who's trying to study and do the proper Christian things, has to put earmuffs on just so he can concentrate.

Earmuffs don't really reduce sound.

They're not like earplugs.

They just, you can still hear in them.

Okay.

But dad comes in and tells him to turn down the music.

Now, the joke here is that they can't hear him tell them to turn down the music because the music is so loud.

That's funny for at least, what, a minute and 15 seconds?

You can get eight.

So, so long.

Seven, eight jokes out of that bit, that setup.

They milk that.

They do space work.

There's nothing space about it.

They just do like like a minute and a half of this.

It's so weird.

Every joke, it's like a square trying to act out the concept of a cube and it doesn't understand

other like and I feel like that was generous on the dimensions.

Yeah, no, it's like right

because like yeah, yeah, right.

They're two-dimensional give you a fucking break, but it's it's very much like watching AI try to do comedy, right?

Because it's got the various trappings of comedy.

It just doesn't have escalation or punchlines or empathy, surprise.

Right, yeah, all of those other elements that make humor humor, right?

It's like a, it's like a, it's, it's like a cargo cult of humor.

We find empathy and surprise off-putting.

We're doing the other parts of comedy only.

Okay.

Okay.

So Blaine and Connie, they go in to do the dishes, and then there's a knock on the door.

And

speaking of these fucking, the fucking simulacrum of comedy that this is, they answer the door and a guy just pokes an air horn, a literal air horn into the room and blows it.

I actually did laugh at this because of the like meta thing going on.

I'm writing like these people can't grasp jokes.

Literally, air horn next.

Like right as I was writing that, it was like,

how about that, motherfucker?

Horny humor, asshole.

Oh, that's not enough?

What about silly hat, idiot?

That's also humor.

So that's all we got.

It's a guy with a silly hat.

Wacky neighbor.

Maybe you've heard of him.

Yeah.

It's in a sitcom.

Lives next door to the main character.

Hello.

And the way like the shot is framed and what we see of the neighbor, like this man looks like he escaped from a hospital after a self-harm attempt.

You're right.

Cause he's got weird bandages.

Yeah.

He's got a bandage.

I don't even think it's like it's a wristband.

on his wrist and then he's got like

bandage wrapped around his leg so like it looks like it's a cast and like in the the there's a few times when they like pan out far enough where you can see it's not like it's just he just has tape on his leg i don't know but like it looks like he escaped from a hospital yeah the wristband could have been from one of those sweet friday night clubs in tulsa with the fire barrels you don't know right might have been a real life scenario Well, but and I think the tape around his leg or whatever is just he was being goofy.

He's like, look, orange hat, huh?

That's fun.

And tape.

That's not where tape goes on your leg, right?

But so he busts in and he's like, I just moved in nearby and I'm building a bomb shelter in my yard.

That's my personality.

I'm worried about New York

war.

Right?

Yeah.

And he, of course, he hates communism because it's 1987.

Everybody's being patriotic and hating communism.

And this guy who's supposed to be like ex-military and he's a prepper and he hates communism.

He wants a community bomb shelter paid for with liberal socialism.

He's collecting signatures to build a community bomb shelter where they can all get together and hate communism together.

Right.

And like, again,

poorly or perfectly.

Yep.

What?

Because

today's, there's no line between them, right?

Like today's preppers and the rapture people.

Yep.

Like the rapture people are preppers.

So they would be doing this.

Oh, that's interesting.

Yeah, because this has a very anti-prepper, that's not proper Christian kind of a kind of a overtone to it, doesn't it?

Right.

And then, like, you know, eventually, spoiler alert, they decide they need to, you know, save this guy.

I'm like, that's actually kind of,

again,

not a great look for Christians.

Yeah, this guy is crazy, but he just moved into the neighborhood and he's already thinking about his neighbors.

Like,

right, right.

They were thinking about him.

He wants to save them, keep them safe.

Yeah.

So, also, I have to point this out because they're going to come back to this over and over again for the stupidest possible payoff.

The little brother at this point plays a note on his trumpet.

He's learning to play trumpet.

And Buford, that's the wacky neighbor.

Buford mistakes that for a nuclear strike because nuclear strikes sound like one single badly played trumpet note sometimes.

Yeah.

Right.

Also, also, trumpet is the two beat for the air horn three beat that they will

nail it at the end with one other loud noise.

Yes, a loud watch.

He has a loud watch for reasons that aren't explained.

And that's you, asshole.

Rules of three.

That's comedy.

He said, we did it.

Damn it.

You will laugh.

I am.

So they were right.

So, okay.

So then we cut to Bible study, right?

And this is, okay, now I guess I have to, I'm talking to my fellow olds here, right?

So when you would rent a movie that had been out for a while from the video store, When you would get to the part of the movie where the most people like masturbated to There would be like tracking issues, right?

Because people would rewind that and watch it over and over again.

So I just, I point that out because at the Bible study scene, there are tracking issues on this VHS.

So I just started wondering about what the Christian experience is with movie rentals.

They call it super long play.

No, they don't.

They call it that.

They call it that.

Yeah, Yeah, right, right.

So, so, okay.

They're like, I guess Blaine and his buddy Clarence are at Bible study learning about the rapture and how Jesus could show up at any minute.

Right.

This is the part where I started wondering how much we were triggering the ex-evangelicals in our in our guest guestdom here.

Well, this scene.

That Bible study scene was so weird because like they mixed in actual youths

and then they have blain and his friend there and i'm like and it just looks creepy because either like

lean into it and all just be the same age and pretending to be teen but don't have like actual preteens like sitting right in front of them the 31 year olds yeah exactly right

and then it also like makes it makes them seem dumber right because

you're hearing the same message as these 11 and 12 year olds and your your mind is being blown.

Okay.

Good point.

Yeah, right.

Where were you when you were 11 or 12?

Right.

So then they head back to Blaine's bedroom.

His friend Clarence literally sits backwards in the chair that is just so goddamn youth group.

I can't handle it.

But they start talking about how great that Bible study goes.

Okay, so they are talking about Bible study.

The way my friends and I talked about like that weed we smoked the other night, right?

Or whatever.

Oh, man, that was some great weed.

They're like, oh, man, that was some great Bible study.

Holy shit, man.

Can we get some more of that?

Do you know if your guy has more of that?

Have you ever heard anything like that?

You should have.

Yes, you're 31.

But even if we said, like, even if we accept the premise of the show, right, that he's supposed to be 16 or 17, of course, he's heard about Jesus coming back.

That's the main thing in your whole fucking religion.

He's like, wait, what?

He was.

He's coming back.

I'm insane.

so he got renewed for another season that's awesome

but then his friend clearance is it is like oh hey i figured out who the antichrist is it's pee wee herman

okay

okay like i was underestimating some of the prophetic wisdom of fire by night there that's not bad that's not bad If only he'd known about chopping wood.

Right.

Poor Pee-Wee.

We lost another one.

it and but but like clearly they're like uh you know they're just trying to think of the funniest person that you could accuse of being the antichrist and this was before the masturbation thing so they're like ah pee we are and tee and then there's like he's like oh no you know what i figured out who it is the school room that we take math in is room number 666

so it must be the math teacher mr schnickel groover right and again The number 666, this is news to you?

Right.

I didn't know.

You just found out about that as well.

and i'm like

and it has to be this man first of all does your high school have six floors how how are these numbers working yeah right yeah forget about that um

why are you guys not the antichrist you go in that room too right fair fair right it's not like he chose that room it was just assigned to him

but apparently that was a joke because they throw to a commercial after it teachers live in their classrooms they they're they don't have anything

yeah they don't have any rest he was actually born in that classroom oh that's the end

I always assume they drove their school buses back and forth for a moment, but I guess this makes sense.

So now we're going to cut to mom and dad.

They're in the living room.

Dad is telling an ableist joke about people from Illinois not being as smart as people from Texas.

Wow.

Oh, I didn't even get that.

No.

That's what that was?

They were too smart, right?

Because this was, I thought it was a hit at the liberal elites again.

It is.

So the joke is that if you have a high school diploma from Illinois, if you go to Texas, you can hang that in your window and you're allowed to park in handicapped places.

We are pulling apart the like concepts of this dumb sketch show.

Like Will Hunting with math on glass is crazy.

And there's like no solutions to anything.

Well, because I was like, it's is it, because I thought, again, from this day and age, right?

Like

evangelicals do not like education in general.

Right.

So I think I was looking at it from this lens.

But then, like, I tried to look at it from 1987's lens, but I'm like, but it doesn't make sense because Illinois and Texas are not close.

So it's not like California, we might have, we might have.

It's like Ohio, Michigan, or what?

Yeah, right, right.

I might have a joke about Vegas or like you're like your neighboring kind of state, but like it's not, it's not like common.

You know, you people in Illinois are always going to Texas for the weekend, you know, and messing stuff up.

Yeah, so in this show, there's supposed to be people from Texas that have moved to the suburbs of Chicago.

But yeah, apparently you need that level of backstory on this dumbass sketch within a sketch show sitcom to even get their stupid fucking jokes.

So, but mom doesn't get his joke either, right?

Right.

And she's like, I don't get it.

And he's like, fuck it.

I'm going to read the newspaper.

And she's like, really?

In the show, you're going to read the newspaper.

That's crazy because you would think you would just start a scene saying, guess what I read in the newspaper?

But no, we're going to watch you physically, bodily read the goddamn newspaper.

I don't believe he really read that in the newspaper.

We're going to have to, a lot of people in the focus group said they don't believe us.

So, but then mom points out, though, that bomb shelters, and this is where we really diverge from the modern

prepper evangelical, right?

Mom points out that bomb shelters are actually of the devil since they represent the spirit of fear.

Right, right.

And then she couples that with like four other things that grind her gears for a little monologue.

No, that are proof that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket.

Yes.

People are locking their doors.

That's one.

There's international terrorism.

That's two.

Very equivalent.

Those two.

It's a weird list so far.

Little kids are getting kidnapped all the time.

All the time.

Can't stop people from kidnapping little kids.

Yep.

Yep.

But there was a fourth, wasn't there on the exact same level as the previously mentioned things

they keep making horror movies and they're all sequels and remakes yes

halloween 10 yeah halloween 10 and texas chainsaw massacre 13.

yeah that's with that thing

was was prophetic right like we are there no they did yes we did make texas chainsaw massacre 13 i think

Nuclear war.

They didn't get Jamie Lee Curtis back for some of those Halloweens.

I'm angry.

But ultimately, this lands on them realizing that they should go teach Buford the neighbor about Jesus,

which was not their first inclination.

Clearly not.

Right.

Like, it's taken a while.

to get to this.

And then he even is like,

yeah, great.

Yes.

He hems and haws, but I don't know because he's got the fucking orange hat and the air horn.

Kind of a prick.

Is he one of those typically atheist military veteran preppers from the 1980s in America?

That hate communists.

Yes, right, right, exactly.

What the fuck are they even going for?

All right.

Well, now that Buford's immortal soul hangs in the balance, I suppose we have high enough stakes to take another break.

But first, let me give Act Three the hard sell.

Will Buford find Jesus?

Will the show forget to tell us?

Will they, in fact, abandon that plotline mid-sentence?

Find out the answers to those questions and more when we return for the DeGarmo and Ketastic conclusion of Fire by Night, episode 6.

All right, everybody, welcome back to the writer's room.

So, the family first episode, it still needs some work.

We're looking to find some humor in the interaction with the prepper guy who has the bomb shelter, like some interaction for real.

love it

loud

horns are so funny yeah okay see that's that's what i'm getting at so far it's just a guy who makes loud noises like air horn

yup yeah like that like that but i'm thinking we can explore the dynamic a bit more like maybe um I don't know, maybe the prepper guy has a family, too.

Ooh, maybe the prepper has a kid.

Yes, yeah, there you go.

Okay, great.

Let's explore that.

He's got a kid.

And maybe

the kid plays the trumpet.

I mean, like the other kid plays, but sure, yeah, I guess.

Okay.

Class.

Rule of threes.

Also a horn.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, that's also a horn.

Technically, that was three.

Yes, rule of threes.

But let's go deeper into the characters.

That's what I'm getting at.

What if the prepper guy has a wife, too?

And he's like, my wife.

My wife.

My wife.

My wife.

Too many, Blaine.

And you ruined it.

Sorry, sorry.

Stupid, so stupid, stupid.

Just no instincts.

And we're back for still more of this shit, and we're going to rejoin the action in Blaine's bedroom with Clarence coming humorously skittering into the room, having now calculated exactly when the rapture will happen.

Yeah.

He allegedly did a bunch of math, I guess, and some other sciences.

They list a bunch of ology words because

lists are jokes.

Yep.

But he did the math, so there's like calculator tape involved, like the paper from 80s calculators.

But he's got it hanging off his head.

Especially an adding machine if it's got paper, but yes.

There you go.

He's got it hanging off his head, like from his sideburn area, like it's paeus.

Yes.

And that's not a good look for this, I'm pretty sure, anti-Semitic show full of an anti-Semitic cast and writers.

And it was like

too similar to be accidental.

This was absolutely what he was going for.

Yeah.

Okay.

Like maybe it's an accidental hate crime if we give him like the biggest benefit of the doubt, but that counts as an accidental hate crime.

You're not supposed to don't do those either.

And because like what even, what calculations were you doing?

Well, he asks him that.

Geology.

Yes, geology.

Zoology.

Uh-huh.

Trigonometry.

That's the first one that makes any sense.

It's the only math-related

one

at all, because then it's Bible doctrines.

You did zoology calculations?

Lord, give me a cosine.

No, don't go out on a tangent.

Oh, well done.

Like, bring these math jokes.

Our fucking audience, they're loving the math jokes.

Okay, and so I should point out, so this show doesn't have a laugh track or a live studio audience, but in my mind, it does have a live studio audience, and they're having as much fun as we are, right?

Like, because every time they say a joke, there's just this eerie silence that seems weird in a like 80s sitcom environment, except that their jokes are so unfunny, it doesn't.

And they were wondering, like I was, like looking at, what's Blaine's character's name?

Doug?

Yeah, Doug, yeah.

Was he riding with a quill?

What the fuck was it was 11 feet long.

Yes.

What was he doing?

I think it was just like, I'm trying to be zany thing.

So he put this long thing on his pen or whatever.

But yeah, yeah.

It's an oversized pen.

It's bigger than a regular pen.

It's funny.

Air horn.

Yeah.

Right.

So, but yes, but Clarence has figured out that the second coming is going to happen this coming Thursday at 4.15 p.m.

Right.

So, okay.

So now we have mom and dad.

They go to visit Buford in his bomb shelter.

And what they have done to create this bomb shelter is they have laid a door on the ground in Ed's backyard.

That's the bomb shelter, right?

They open the door, right?

We're seeing it from the side, so they open the door, right?

And those lazy motherfuckers that play mom and dad didn't even bother to do the stairs behind the couch bit on their way down.

Are you canoeing into the bomb shelter?

Come on.

Doesn't even make sense.

And in the background, like it's clear, like they did not clear this set because there's someone in the house in the back and they like wander into the frame.

Yes, see them in the sliding glass door.

And then they're like, oop.

Disappear.

But it's like, okay, so it was useless.

You guys didn't have to go through these moats and trenches that you claim you did.

You couldn't just come through the house.

Yeah, right.

Yes.

So, yeah, so, but, but then they, so they get into the bomb shelter.

They take the ladder into the bomb shelter.

We don't see a ladder.

We just trust them.

There was a ladder.

And then, so they go to talk to Buford.

Buford shows up to be wacky and zany.

He gives them helmets to wear

bombs.

And dad keeps trying to say, hey, we're here to tell you about.

And then he keeps cutting them off.

I know what you're here to tell me about.

So they do that bit for

most of my life.

Enough of it that it's going to come up as a percentage as I die.

I'm going to think about how much of it I spent watching this fucking scene.

One out of seven minutes of my life

was either this watching the scene, talking about the scene, or thinking about watching or talking about this scene.

Yeah.

I know what you're here to tell me.

I know what you want to talk about.

Oh, God.

And

to give you an idea, just how lazily done this is, right?

One of the things he thinks is, oh, you're here to pick up your picket signs for the protest we're doing at City Hall until they build us our community bomb shelter.

I'll give you your pick of funny picket signs.

So he pulls out these three.

They're not, they didn't even make picket signs, right?

They're just like 8 by 11 pieces of paper on which they've written non-funny slogans.

Okay, that one just says 666 over and over.

I don't know.

So, yeah,

but finally, they shut him up long enough for mom to say, hey, you know, you don't have to worry about nukes, you know, in a new globular war.

And he goes, what, are you some kind of communist?

And she goes, no, I'm a Christian.

Let me tell you about believing in Jesus.

Right?

We've been talking past each other for a while.

I really got to get this under control.

Here's the plot now.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

There's a lot of, like taking shots at commies, right?

And like one of those signs literally says, have you shot a commie today?

Jesus did it.

It was the 80s was a weird time to be around.

Yes, it did.

Yeah, it was a weird time.

But yeah, so they say they sit Buford down and they're like, let me tell you about my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Now, once upon a time, and then the whole thing fades out.

It fades out.

It's like,

this is the big moment.

That's the point of the show

and your life.

We cannot bore the people with this.

Guys, I got the perfect button to the sketch.

It's going to be, let's talk about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.

Right.

No, I'm done.

I cut.

We cut there.

Right.

We will never see Buford again.

We will never hear them talk about Buford again.

We're done with Buford now.

Maybe he comes back in episode seven.

I'm not sure.

But meanwhile, the kids are talking about how Clarence has gone a little rapture crazy, right?

So we get Blaine Bartell and his wife slash sister.

It's like Heath wrote this or something.

What?

And they're talking about like, wow, Clarence has really gotten carried away with all of this rapture stuff, right?

And it's one of these weird moments because we get these a lot in Christian media where basically the message is, yeah, this stuff is true, but don't live your life as though it's true, though, because that won't work.

Yeah, it's also like, so you guys are six episodes deep into this.

Have the storylines like been building on each other?

Nope.

No, nope.

It's episodic.

I have no idea.

I don't know.

Maybe.

It is purely episodic.

This is also like a weird thing that Christians do because they don't want.

They never want to be the bad guy.

They never want to be the villain.

They never want to be wrong.

Right.

If this is your family sitcom and these are your main characters why is this friend carrying like the main storyline right but they can't have actual doug or right connie the actual kids in this family really wrestle with something like they can't look bad it has to be the wacky friend right yeah exactly and it's like that in every episode like i think probably four of the six episodes we've seen have been somehow centered around Clarence doing a dumb thing and everyone else in the family knowing that it's dumb.

And like, really genuinely, you've hit on it exactly after only watching one episode.

But in every one of these shows, like like there was one where Clarence was the star quarterback for the high school football team, and there was one where he was the prom king, and there was one where his penis was actually a very good size and almost too big.

You know, it's just like every one of these is just this ego-stroking bullshit out of this guy, and

him never being remotely wrong about anything.

It's like he wants to be the son and the dad in this sitcom,

right?

So, yeah, so Clarence put together like a rapture club at the high school, and he's going a little too hard with it.

So, the point, the point of the sketch, or this moment within their sitcom, sorry, apologies all around your sitcom.

This moment is roasting a slightly more crazy version of their actual crazy

thing, yes.

But the joke is the difference between believing in a magical apocalypse with scorpion horse locusts.

Difference between that and believing in exactly that same thing, but being a little more chill about it.

Like that's the difference.

Right.

It's believing this magical bullshit or believing this magical bullshit on Thursday.

That's the difference that they're supposed to be like, well, he's so silly to believe that, you know?

Guys, the poison Kool-Aid was a bit gauche with the Jim Jones people, right?

Just get some matching Nikes and relax.

Those people are crazy.

The whole, like, the whole experience of Christianity, however, is very similar to that, where you'll have one church that believes in a post-millennial tribulation and another one that believes in a pre-millennial tribulation.

And on each side of that debate, they believe that they're wrong and that the other ones are going to hell because they believe, yes, they believe wrongly, you know.

And so it's, there's this show is so twisted in the way it, in what it makes fun of, because it's like, but that's like literally exactly what you do in your churches.

You know, it's, it's very strange.

Yeah.

And it's like, who is this?

Who is this for?

For.

Yeah.

Because

it's for us

Clarence and and and Doug at their big ages right just found out about the rapture apparently right do they think the teens

gathered around the fire by night barrel in the alley

they are also just now being introduced to the concept of 666 and the rapture idea and all these things.

And

the fear is that they're immediately going to think they can figure out when it is.

And like, this is the danger.

This is the thing we have to warn about.

Because you could have just as easily had the guy in the Bible study say, no one knows when it's going to be.

So don't even try that.

Yeah, right.

Like, like, why, why are we doing this?

Why are we going through this whole?

Because who,

who has actually done this?

But I think the underlying message,

as is so often the case in these things, is like, look, you have to say that this is true and that you believe it, but as soon as you start living your life as though it's true, it's going to fuck you up, right?

Because they say, through Jesus, all things are possible, but oh, God, don't live your life as though that's true, right?

Look, with, you know, if you ask with, I don't remember how they say it, but if you ask with perfect certainty in your heart or whatever, God will always, there's, there's some fucking saying they have about that, right?

But oh, God, don't live your life as though that's true.

And they also say, like, the rapture's coming any minute, but hey, still, you know, put money in your 401k, right?

And I think that's so much of this message, right?

it's just like yes act like this is true but don't don't act like this is true you know yeah also if you want to do like a reverse ira and tithe with it you're

yeah right right

so clarence and his buddies are convinced that the rapture is about to happen and like

i don't like they're all just so

Just laissez-faire about it, right?

Like,

my friends and family, like, we just had a sketch about this kid being terrified about the rapture happening never seeing his parents again you know whatever but these bozos are going to somebody else's house not one of them lived there but this is where you want to spend your final moments that's interesting yeah why would they be in fucking blain's house that's interesting it didn't even occur to me yeah so they're counting down they're like five four three two one and what's okay so what's amazing about this is that the genesis of our first podcast, Heath and I's first podcast, is that we were in New York City on the day that Harold Camping said that the world was going to end.

Right.

And all of his acolytes went to New York City and stood on Fifth Avenue.

We worked on Fifth Avenue.

So like we were there and we watched them watch the rapture not happen.

It was the absolute best.

Oh, it was so much fucking fun.

There was like a thunderstorm for like a little bit of a second and they were like, here it comes.

No, okay, cleared right up.

Yeah, there's a little light rain and then it started to rain and they were like, oh, here comes the, and then the rain backed off and they were like, well, shit.

But this is this dissenting.

Why is that guy skateboarding past us with his, with double birds?

What's happening there?

Please stop filming.

But yeah, but then, but this, here's this TV show and going, can you imagine Christians doing that?

That'd be pretty silly, wouldn't it?

And I'm like, I don't have to imagine it.

It's burned into my memory forever.

Right.

So, yeah, right when they count it down to the little kid who's learning the trumpet blows the trumpet, right?

Like in the rapture.

That joke paid off.

Oh my God.

Yes.

Jesus.

We had to pave our way through three and a half miles of virgin Amazon forest for that stupid fucking joke.

And that's all it was.

God.

Chekhov's Gabriel's trumpet.

Then Sid Field assholes.

And then the dad says, you know, Jesus says no one knows

which hour it'll come or whatever the fuck the quote is.

And they're like, oh, huh.

And then that fucking show ends.

What we're watching doesn't end, but the show within the show ends.

But here's the thing is that it's such a weird, abrupt ending, and they left the Buford thing unresolved.

So I didn't realize it had ended.

And that becomes really significant because the next thing that we get is this artsy music video.

Right.

So where you see like, you know, clouds and an hourglass and shit.

And I'm just like, what the fuck is going on with Family First?

Now are they

trying to make up, send a message here?

But no, this is a new fucking, another one of these stupid goddamn songs that were.

And it's the dad from the show that we just watched with his painted-on beard singing the song.

So I was like, is that, wait, because, yeah, that just added to the confusion.

So I was like, yeah, did it end?

Wait, does this guy just walk around like this all the time?

That wasn't makeup?

Like, this is.

Oh, my God.

He's got it tattooed on like Tammy Faye's eye makeup or something.

But no, so you're sure that Family First episode ended?

It did end.

It's like we don't get any more of it.

Or did it?

Are we the episode guys?

But yeah, so the music starts and there's like a news broadcast underneath and it sounds all raptury.

There is a very clear undercurrent through this entire episode that the Soviet Union is definitely the Antichrist and will definitely usher in the end times

in this 1987 TV show.

Yeah, so

they sing a little bit.

I just like so little happened in this video.

I felt like I wasn't doing my job at a certain point, right?

Like it's just dude walks around amid cuts of things running out.

That's the whole video.

Yeah, it's supposed to be like.

The rapture is about to happen and we're getting the story of one guy who's not sure.

So it starts with him just in a dark apartment by himself doing like

atheist anxiety space work, I'm sure is what the direction says.

Yeah, right.

And then we see Gabriel about to blow the doomsday trumpet, but not quite yet, to give us, you know, that context.

And Gabriel's behind a scrim, so we just see the shadow of Gabriel with the trumpet.

So to be clear, the Archangel Gabriel

set up a scrim and a sigh,

or was he in the shower with dad.

That would be a twist.

That's what he was doing in the closet.

Okay.

Oh, the closet was a euphemism for his gay relationship with Gabriel the whole time, guys.

It's been the tribulation the whole time.

Yeah, right, right.

So, okay, but and also, so as this video is going on, we should point out, too, the singer keeps popping out of funnier and funnier parts of the scenery.

Like, we're convinced that he's going to Oscar the grouch his way out of a trash can before it's over, right?

This whole thing, like, I assume, no, I know it is wonderful to be a white man at any time.

Sure is, but like, yeah, it's

so easy.

I gotta tell you, it is so fucking easy.

It's crazy.

And you're saying that in 2025.

Like, 1980s, every era has had its problems and whatever, whatever.

But, like,

they had to manufacture all of this because what exactly were white men afraid of in 1987?

Right.

What else could they be afraid of other than each other?

Yeah.

What, what about that era was giving days of Noah?

Listen, we'll find a fucking fear.

If there's not an obvious one, we'll find something less obvious.

That's our thing.

Like, go back and watch Fight Club, a movie where the literal message is that I find my job boring and unfulfilling that's the whole goddamn thing and that's an existential crisis and no one has ever suffered such no so yeah right it's just the worst things have ever been for anybody said the white man in 1996 or whenever that came out yeah i hate my job my kid steals my car you know what god wrap this up yeah

i cannot do this anymore can't handle it yeah so it and then in the video the good guy who's been walking around the whole time who isn't the singer he

chats with an unhoused person who then gives him a gun.

I think he's supposed to be talking this guy out of committing suicide.

I don't know.

I no idea.

Which, like, how is the rapture not suicide?

And how is like, like, again, these white men are like, we got to get out of here.

I cannot handle it.

It's days of Noah.

It's too much.

It's too bad.

But you, unhoused man,

don't kill yourself.

Yeah.

It's not that bad, really, when you think about it.

It's not like you have an unfulfilling job or anything.

You don't know pain, sir.

Very confusing.

The main guy doing the atheist anxiety space work, I guess, he's like, okay, no, I found Jesus now, and it's like 11.59.

I saw in the clock metaphor in this video.

So I got to go find a rando and convert him at the last second because that's the right thing to do.

Oh, is that what he was doing?

Okay, all right, but yeah, no, you make a good point, Jed.

It's like it, you should deconvert, otherwise, it is suicide, right?

Because, like, the only way to stay alive is to not be Christian in this moment.

Oh, yeah, right.

Oh, wow.

Very complicated.

I want to get a fucking theologian on that because what else are they going to fucking do with their time?

So, okay.

So, that, but that video ends.

And then Blaine shows up to slow things down again.

He tells us about the biblical signs of the second coming, and I love this so much.

We're running long on the episode, so I probably can't go into all this, but I have a whole fucking outline in my notes of how stupid his goddamn speech is.

But he goes through like the signs that Jesus gave that the rapture was coming, right?

Sign number one was a great deception, cults, and false teachers.

So other religions will exist.

That was sign number one.

And Blaine is like, you know, hey, maybe you've noticed Buddhism?

Huh?

So

Black Sabbath.

Right.

Refuses to do a song about it.

It was invented in the 80s, wasn't it?

Well, yes, clearly.

Yeah, is it 1986?

It's fairly new.

Yeah.

He says, well, you know, I actually met a guy one time that claimed to be Jesus.

And that's a false teacher right there.

I swear that's what he fucking says, right?

That's actually the example he gives.

Like, I met a guy who was wrong once, so Jesus nailed that.

Right.

No, but he says it well he said when he when i was a youth pastor so it sounds like it's somebody who's like come in to see him he's like this guy said he was jesus and i'm telling you right now he wasn't like we were like was he yeah

he's got to clarify and to be clear he was not he actually wasn't jesus at all hold on hold on let him cook i want

and he says okay so number two jesus said there would be famine and i'm like which has always existed but exists less now than in any other point in history, right?

But

I guess 1987, there was a lot of famine in the news in Africa, right?

So it was like heavy in the news cycle, right?

So he's like, there's famine, huh?

And then number three, Jesus said there would be pestilences.

And he actually says, and I quote,

the Webster's dictionary defines pestilence as, right?

So the laziest possible intro, but then the definition doesn't line up with what he wants to talk about, right?

He says it's something about bugs and shit.

But what I would, I wanted to talk about AIDS.

I think AIDS is a pestilence.

God fucking dictionary says it's about bugs.

God damn.

So, you know, what's crazy?

So him and Ron Luce do this.

I'm like, they are, they are anchormanning.

They are just looking at the cue cards and they do not understand context.

They do not know how these sentences are supposed to go.

Like they are just saying the words because

Webster's dictionary defines pestilence as, and what he says about disease, that is actually the definition.

Right.

So he's actually giving the correct definition, but he makes it sound like the dictionary said something else.

And this is what it actually is.

Yeah, right, right.

Right.

Don't say this part.

Look pensive and concerned.

What did I do?

Can we go back?

And yeah, I guess there's no, there's no going back, right?

We, these are one take.

Yes, one take.

time, one take.

We don't have the budget for this, so we're just going to go with it.

And he goes, he goes, like, and, you know, he's talking about AIDS and we're like, oh, God, please don't talk about AIDS.

And he's like, it's like AIDS and the homosexuals.

And you're like, oh, God, Jesus blades, stop, man.

Stop.

But he doesn't.

He's got a few words.

He gives us some stats on how deadly AIDS is for the homosexuals.

For the homosexuals.

And then like, it's so weird.

Like the whole America, American evangelicals just have this main character syndrome all the time.

Right.

So it's like, yeah, stuff gets bad here, but like we have never had it the worst.

Right.

Right.

Like like people's worlds are ending every single day.

And so even the signs that they're pointing to, right?

Like famine, that's not happening to us.

Right.

AIDS, the homosexuals, that's not happening.

to you.

So it's like Jesus is concerned about these things happening in these other places, but not the people in those places.

Clearly.

And none of this is happening to you, but Jesus is like, got to rush back to get you out of here before, before it touches you.

Right.

But yeah, consider how insidious that really is, right?

Because what they're doing is they're claiming the trauma of some other group of people and making it about themselves.

They're like, you know, all of those famines in Africa.

That's Jesus using those starving human beings as a signal to us to get ready for the shit that's going down.

To us.

Yeah.

And that's because, like, again, you know, earlier when she was listing all the terrible things that have happened and are happening, I'm like, this is, this is so white, right?

Because

international terrorism, kids getting kidnapped all the time.

So Jesus just like looked at slavery and was like, yeah, oh, yeah.

Oh, oh, well.

Well, it depends on how hard you hit him, you know.

Yeah.

Above my pay grade.

That's not, that doesn't really concern me, right?

But again, these white people in 1987, none of this is happening to you, but now Jesus is super concerned.

All of these terrible things have actually happened in your nation by your hand, right?

On your ground, but none of it, none of that was signs for the rapture.

Yeah, yeah, none of that happened to the white folks.

Yeah, right.

So, but, and, and so.

Also, he talks about earthquakes, right?

And he goes, sure, you might say that there have always been earthquakes, but what if I lie about how many there are?

Yeah.

He gives these insane numbers, right?

He says, in the 16th century, there were 115 earthquakes.

I'm like, no, the fuck there were.

There's so goddamn, there were 22,000.

And he goes, in the 17th century, there were 253.

I'm like, what the fuck?

Where are you getting these numbers?

In the 18th century, there was 378.

I'm like, why are your numbers so exact?

This is so fucking weird.

But he's trying to show that there's this increase in earthquakes, which is just

know it.

No, there isn't.

What?

I feel like maybe we got better at measuring those at a certain point throughout history.

Is there any chance and more people in more places to tell us about

that?

Because is that worldwide?

Are we talking about

America, a state?

What are the magnitudes of these?

Oh my God.

So that's exactly what it is.

And it's so stupid that my brain wasn't even able to get there until Heath said it.

That's the, like, he will, he went and looked at a list of known historical earthquakes and counted them.

Clearly.

Oh my God.

That's so fucking funny.

That is a level of stupid that I did not give Blaine Bartel credit for.

Wow.

Right.

That's so fucking funny.

Do you know how many more computers there are in the 20th century than any of the other centuries?

That's a sign.

We have more cell phones, too.

But to be clear, even if you give him his thing, which is a stupid lie, that means God was doing like a slow roll on the earthquakes for a dramatic

500 years.

Yes.

Yes.

He's like, let me kill.

I'm going to kill a few people in the 17th century so that Blaine Partel can really get some impact with the point he's making.

Wow.

And then he says, finally, Jesus also said that there would be an outpouring of the Spirit.

And well, that doesn't mean anything at all.

So we can say that's happening.

That's free.

They have to let you.

And then he starts, and he closes off.

He wants to talk about Samson.

Now,

I'm going to need y'all's help.

So, what the fuck, the point was here.

He says, you know, he says, you know, Samson saw more dead Philistines in the last hour of his life than the whole life leading up to that, which is just like our church.

What?

So confusing.

And also, not to be that guy, right?

But Samson, due to the eye gouging, just didn't see a goddamn thing?

Thank you.

That's a very good point.

Samson, that famous seer of things at the end of his life.

Yeah, well, well done.

Well done.

But even if he

did see the Philistines, Janice, what would that mean?

Like,

what is the parallel that we're supposed to be going for?

I feel like you're the only one qualified to answer.

Does Samson with those pillars?

Was that one of the earthquakes?

Does that count?

In the seventh century BC.

Yeah.

Oh, it was only the one earthquake.

Does he try to do like a numerology thing for a second here to connect it?

Because I think he says Samson's story, he was in the church for 20 years in the Bible story.

And that's just like how there's been, I don't know, like 2,000 years since Jesus approximately.

What?

Because

the number 20 is a lot like the number 2,000.

It has two of the same digits.

Two out of every four numbers in the number 2,000 are 20.

Yes.

So, okay.

So then now it's time for him to pray with us, right?

We're getting towards the end.

And he says, I swear to you, this is a literal fucking quote.

He says, God wants to use you, young person.

That's so close to fellow youths.

Come on.

Right, my hepcats.

This guy gets it.

My skibbity rizzles.

Yes, yeah, right, right.

No cap.

But now it's altar call time.

We get the altar call.

And then Garmo starts fucking, or Keys starts singing at us again.

I don't know.

Christians all look the same to me.

And then the, but the message of this song, though, which goes on for an interminable amount of time, seems to be, Jesus, am I right?

Yeah.

It's just like, it's a praise song, which just means that he's just singing, hallelujah, how about that, Jesus, over and over again.

Yeah, that's Christian music.

It's Christian worship music.

That's what it's supposed to be.

Yeah.

And they're all dressed in white as if to exacerbate my I'm in an asylum and only think I'm podcasting fears.

But they're wearing the sunglasses.

of Satan.

Oh, sure, sure.

Yeah, they're wearing those crazy oversized like white jackets from the 80s, the blazers like that.

They look like doctors, though.

You know, like it looked like lab coats because they're insane and too big.

Yeah.

Looked like Geico cavemen dressed up as doctors.

And at one point, they jump up in the air and they try to do this, like, like this cut or whatever where suddenly there's a choir behind them and we've, and we're reminded of how hard that was to do before they could do it with computers.

Okay.

I laughed a lot when they accidentally do a full choir pop scare, kind of by accident.

Yes, and they all have sunglasses.

All of a sudden, there's this huge choir in there, and then we get to see the choir, and it's like

it's there.

Some of them are kind of like not that excited about it.

So it's like a flash mob that's kind of meh after like a few bars of the flash mob.

They're just like, Yeah, hallelujah, Christ is coming.

I don't know.

This is really long.

Here we go.

Also, like in the in the previous, in the 666 floppy disk video, sunglasses is how you knew somebody was working for the Antichrist.

Right.

That's how we knew the cops were in on it.

Right?

Right.

And this whole choir is wearing sunglasses.

So they, I don't know, maybe his altar call redeemed sunglasses?

That's it.

That's it.

Those are ours now.

Yeah, they went back and saved the

Antichrist cops from the previous video now.

Somebody had to do it.

But also, I think they were just like, these people have dead eyes.

We cannot.

Like Samson, am I right?

Oh, so, okay, so, but then that video ends.

Blaine begs us to tune in again next month when they're going to be discussing the, quote, truth about rock and roll music.

So, yeah.

And I'm like, yes, I will, Blaine.

I will.

And apparently now I've got to go check out Acquire the Fire with Ron Luce as well.

You've added that to my list.

Oh, and then they end the fucking video by selecting the winner of their raffle

from a box that I guarantee only had the one piece of paper in it

in the envelope, folded up.

The winner is La La Land.

Ah,

no, the winner is Carl, who dreams of someday being on Muscogee Vice.

Yeah, I had no idea what that was, but now I know.

Yeah, right, right.

Yeah, so but will Carl make it on the Muscogee Vice?

I guess you'll have to tune in when we do episode seven to find out.

Well, that's going to do it for the episode.

But Janice Melanie, thank you so much for playing along with us today.

It's been so much fun having you on the show.

Thanks for having us.

Yeah, thank you.

It's been a blast.

Awesome.

Well, glad you enjoyed it because

it's always an uphill battle for us, right?

Because you have to watch the movie before you're on the show.

So we're like, we always know

we're catching people already kind of pissed at us.

So quick reminder, if our listeners wanted to hear more from you, where should they go?

Tell us a little bit about your show.

So

look up bad words.

Yeah,

I kind of got rid of my social media persona.

So you can't really find me as a person on the internet.

Well, not on social media right now, but you can find me on my website, janicelegata.com.

And from there, it will link to all the various and sundry things that I am doing.

Awesome, awesome.

Because, and because just googling bad words is as likely to bring me up as her, I will have all of that linked in the show notes as well.

And well, that does it for our review of Firebite Night Episode 6.

That's not going to do it for the episode just yet because we still need to turn yet another cheek.

So, Heath, tell us what's on deck.

We're going to be watching Praise Band the Movie.

It's a movie about a praise band, I'm pretty sure.

One would assume, yeah, okay.

So, with that to look forward to, we're going to bring episode 510 to a merciful close.

Once again, a huge thanks to Janice and Melanie for suffering alongside us today.

Be sure to check the show notes to hear more from them, and perhaps even a huge thanks to all the Patreon owners that helped make the show go.

If you'd like to cut yourself among their ranks, you can make a per episode donation to patreon.com/slash got awful and thereby earn early access to an ad-free version of every episode.

You can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review and by sharing the show on all your various social media platforms.

And if you enjoyed this show, be sure to check out our sibling shows The Scathing Atheist Citation Needed Dnd D Minus and the Scout for God available wherever podcasts live.

If you have questions, comments, or send them out suggestions, you can email GuyAuthnovsgmail.com.

Tim Robinson takes care of our social media.

Our theme song was written and performed by our Ryan Slotnick and Philadelphia's on Mars.

All the other music was written and performed by our audio engineer, Morgan Clark, and was used with permission.

Thanks again for giving us a check of your life this week.

For Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick, I'm an illusion's professor to work harder to earn another chunk next week.

Until then, we'll leave you with the American graffiti close.

Blaine Bartell went on to watch porn in a hotel room immediately develop a debilitating addiction in his head and get divorced.

That'll happen in real life.

That 666 floppy disc went on to be thrown out the window by a nice young man named Tom and picked up by a glitchy cyborg named Mark Zuckerberg.

Oh no!

MySpace Tom, nice.

Family First went on to be stolen by Kurt Cameron and turned into a Christian sitcom.

Oh shit.

DeGarmo's mullet eventually grew so large that his muscles could no longer bear the weight, ultimately snapping his neck.

He is survived by that mullet, which lives in Franklin, Tennessee.

This content is can-credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm at their hotline at 617-249-4255 or on their website at creatoraccountability network.org.

The preceding podcast was a production of of Puzzle in the Thunderstorm LLC, Copyright 2025, all rights reserved.

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