2025.12.22: Blast Off

Speaker 1 Hey dude!

Speaker 1 Hey! We're recording the podcast! Gut up!

Speaker 1 So it's laugh.

Speaker 2 Is it laughed first? Are we looking at the head folks?

Speaker 2 That feels bad.

Speaker 1 I don't know if it is or not, though. That's December 23rd.

Speaker 1 My name is Bernie Burns.

Speaker 1 We just got blasted by the theme music. I didn't hope it didn't hit you guys as hard as it just hit us.

Speaker 2 Or maybe that's the new thing because I'm definitely awake now.

Speaker 1 Sitting right over there.

Speaker 1 Ashley Burns. Holy cow, that was loud.

Speaker 2 Hey, Bernie, how you doing?

Speaker 1 We're trying a new setup here. What the fuck was that? We got hammered by that.
All right. I mean, this seems like totally normal volume right now, right?

Speaker 2 It does. It seems way better.
I don't know what that shit was.

Speaker 1 I don't know what that shit was. But hey.
Cut it out. Hey, welcome, everybody.
It's the week of Christmas.

Speaker 1 These are going to be punchy episodes in general because we're doing so much family stuff and we are.

Speaker 2 Ashley, scale of one to 10 how exhausted are you eight yeah i mean like i'm i'm not the level where uh you know they do like the torture where you're not allowed to sleep but it's close it feels like that there's no deprivation yeah there's no one deliberately keeping me awake and torturing me but they're just doing it accidentally No, and it's just as effective.

Speaker 1 It's just your love of family and tradition that's keeping you awake and torturing you. That's all that's doing it.
So yeah, so probably this week we'll do 20-minute episodes.

Speaker 1 Probably stay away from some like hot button issues because you're probably listening to this like in a kitchen somewhere with your extended family and they suck.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 we'll keep it nice. Not cause any arguments for you guys.

Speaker 2 I mean, unless you want us to start some fights.

Speaker 1 Unless you really are upset about Bone Yang quitting Saturn Alive.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, he's up there.

Speaker 1 You're highly invested in Avatar's box.

Speaker 2 Is that sad for you, Bone Yang leaving Saturn Alive? I know he was like, he's your favorite. It is.

Speaker 1 I don't really understand.

Speaker 2 So Bone Yang, middle of the season, has left Saturn alive i don't know why he chose the middle of the season and didn't leave with everybody else like i think the theory was um one he could stay through the sort of like wicked media blitz like like ariano grande was hosting this episode of saturday night live the this christmas episode that was i guess his last episode uh and you know his his his wicked buddy right and i'm sure there was a like a lot of like cross-promotion and and you know buzz from wicked so that being one thing i also heard speculation that he stayed on longer to ease the transition because quite a lot of people left, quite a lot of new people came on, and it was to sort of, you know, ease the cast transition a little bit more by leaving sort of at the, at the end of the year.

Speaker 1 Well, he, it's interesting, too, would you say like the whole like wicked media blitz? Because why would Ariana Grande be hosting this episode?

Speaker 1 You know, I guess they were going to do like a second push for the movie because it's been out for a month now.

Speaker 2 Well, the holiday is a good time to do a second push, right? Like there's going to be a lot of people who are on their like break from work, who are looking for stuff to do.

Speaker 2 Why not go see a movie musical?

Speaker 1 Go sit in a dark room with your family and not talk for two hours.

Speaker 2 Yeah, doesn't that sound nice sometimes? It does sound nice sometimes. You're like, Yeah, I would love to catch up, but if we could do that while not talking, that would be great.

Speaker 1 Let's put some, let's put some guardrails on this catching up business. Why don't we do that? But yeah, so he leaves SNL with a grand total of five Emmy nominations.

Speaker 1 He joined the cast, I want to say in, was it 2018?

Speaker 1 And then Lauren Michaels also

Speaker 1 reportedly at the beginning of the season said, went to him and said,

Speaker 1 You have more to do, and I really need you. So stick around.
And he left with very positive things to say about Lauren Michaels. And it's interesting, too, because with five Emmy nominations,

Speaker 1 that's a huge achievement for a cast member of SNL. But then I think a motorcycle just drove through our living room right there.

Speaker 1 But also, you can't take away too that he started with SNL

Speaker 1 with the whole controversy around Shane Gillis.

Speaker 2 Oh, because yeah, because he started, so he started as a writer in 2018, and then he actually joined the cast the second season.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think he was. Well, they do the featured players thing, and then they go to the cast, but he was joining the cast essentially at the same time as Shane Gillis.

Speaker 1 And then Shane Gillis was essentially canceled from remarks that surfaced specifically about Asian people.

Speaker 1 So Bowen Yang, I felt like, had such a hurdle coming into this because everyone wanted to talk to him about like

Speaker 2 what's your take on this. He's like, can you just leave me out of this?

Speaker 1 Yeah, he's like, Can I just not talk about this? It's got nothing to do with him.

Speaker 2 I'm here. I'm here to be funny.
Can we be funny?

Speaker 1 And he became like a huge fan favorite on the show. So I'm sure he'll go off and do amazing things.
So congratulations to Bone Yang and thanks for all the laughs, man.

Speaker 1 We had some great characters on SNL. Great characters.
But you're talking about the holiday box office. So the numbers are in for Avatar Fire and Ash.

Speaker 2 All right. So the numbers, the things, they're still good.

Speaker 2 Like these are, we're talking like the Avatar sphere of numbers now, which is like almost like a separate box office category so it opened to 345 million dollars 350 million ish uh worldwide it did 80 is that adjusted for inflation from yesterday

Speaker 2 it did uh do it on an hourly basis now uh like 88 million domestically so 257 million of its box office take for the opening weekend is international so it's really interesting uh as a franchise because it's it performs so well internationally and that's the case that's been the case for all of the avatar films right is that they do really really well internationally like this one is doing huge numbers in china i think all the avatars do really well in china but it's

Speaker 2 at that massive number a 345 million dollar opening weekend is still down from avatar two which was also down wasn't it from avatar one

Speaker 1 I don't know if it was down from Avatar one to two, but I know that we've dropped about 35% from Avatar 2 to Avatar 3, essentially. Got it.
And also, I thought it was pretty telling.

Speaker 1 The Rotten Tomatoes score is sitting at a 68% for Fire and Ash.

Speaker 2 That is interesting.

Speaker 1 So, if I had to guess, I would say that maybe James Cameron was predicting his move away from Avatar as a franchise.

Speaker 2 Was it sort of like soft launching the move away?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know, or just like hedging his bets a little bit. One of the things he said about the franchise in general is that he feels like there's only one unanswered question.

Speaker 1 And I was reading the comments about this. And like, people are like, what's the one unanswered question? And somebody gave a huge, huge spoiler for the movie.
So now I'm like, I don't really know.

Speaker 1 I wonder how they even found out about it because it was like, you know, and it might be one of those things where it's fake. I go into the movie to watch it, waiting for this huge spoiler to happen.

Speaker 1 And then it doesn't happen.

Speaker 2 You know, and I have

Speaker 2 had that happen before. And I'm not sure if I appreciate it or not, where people will be spoiling a big movie, whether it's an Avengers movie or Star Wars, something like that.

Speaker 2 And so other people start seeding fake spoilers. So you don't know what's a spoiler and what's not a spoiler.
And

Speaker 2 I kind of like the sentiment there that people are out there trying to save you from spoilers by bullshitting.

Speaker 2 You know, like it's a, it can be a real use of a questionable talent, right?

Speaker 2 But turned for good.

Speaker 2 But then you're also looking out for all this stuff in the movie and you have no idea what's going on.

Speaker 1 I also love when somebody makes the dumb prediction like eight years in advance and it turns out to be 100% true. Like they nail it.
There's always that one like million monkeys, million typewriters.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 1 It's like some internet comic gets it right.

Speaker 2 Right. They they posted some comment in some forum thread somewhere over here and that's that was perfect.

Speaker 1 By the way, there's no trophy for that. Like everyone gets excited about that kind of thing.
There's absolutely zero trophy. You get nothing for that.
No internet points, nothing.

Speaker 2 And also, we probably won't remember your username either. So, you know, it's cool that you did that.
And I hope it comes up a lot at dinner parties, but we forgot already.

Speaker 1 Well, this doomsday trailer, too, that's like or tease or whatever you want to call it before. And I had somebody who who went and saw it and they told me all about it.

Speaker 1 And it sounds exactly like the leaked one that I had seen. And I still don't understand what the fuck that is.

Speaker 2 What they're doing, you mean with the four different teasers or like what the teaser you saw is meant to be?

Speaker 1 What the one I saw was. Okay.
Yeah. I haven't seen anything but the age, whatever this is.
I just said, wait, wait a week and go see it.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Did you see the baby one? I heard that.
Someone was like, what are you doing?

Speaker 1 Why are you talking?

Speaker 2 Because I don't know what. Someone said, no spoilers, but I saw the baby teaser.
And I was like, I don't have have any context for what the baby teaser means.

Speaker 2 I assume that's something that if you saw the baby teaser, you would know what that means. Stop saying the word baby.

Speaker 1 I can only bleep it so many times.

Speaker 2 If you're like me, you just wouldn't have any context for that. So it doesn't mean anything.

Speaker 1 Well, there is no, I guess that is innocuous enough that, yeah, it had something to do with a baby.

Speaker 2 So have fun bleeping.

Speaker 1 I have no, I don't, I don't, we're going to bleep that. I don't even know.
Is that enough?

Speaker 2 I don't know. You decide.

Speaker 2 I'm the one who's always being like, what about this thing? And you're like, that's a spoiler. And I'm like, I didn't know it was a spoiler.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, because you haven't seen it, and you haven't seen the leaks either, but you've seen your little comments online and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 I guess you can't stay away from that with Marvel stuff now, though, too. It's pretty difficult.
It just, I don't think it's ruining anything. I think we're fine.
I think we're okay. We're good.

Speaker 1 Your uncle from Minnesota is now really upset with this situation

Speaker 1 because he was going to go see it later today. Now he's upset about it.

Speaker 2 Sorry, Uncle.

Speaker 1 It happens. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? So, we had a fun conversation on the weekend chat this weekend.

Speaker 1 Um, I caught myself doing something interesting, and I want to bring it up to the uh, you know, on the general podcast as well, which was the college football playoffs began.

Speaker 1 And on Saturday, by the time Saturday had rolled around, a lot of things had taken place. Oklahoma had lost to Alabama in a huge comeback.

Speaker 1 Also, the AM Aggies had lost their only their second game of the entire season, got knocked out of the playoffs. They didn't score a single touchdown at a home playoff game.

Speaker 2 Now, does the and UT, I assume, I assume, is, is, do they go, do they officially go on the books as having beat AM a second time, or is that just a fan thing?

Speaker 2 Well, you mean because they just like shook them up so bad, yeah, right, because the AM was doing really well, and then their first loss was to UT, right?

Speaker 1 Well, as is the case with most college football stuff, then they start to analyze, like, now that all the games are in, they say, like, who did they really actually beat over the course of the season?

Speaker 1 Someone put together their conference schedule and their, their conference opponents, they had a combined record of like 22 and 40 or something like that.

Speaker 1 And they were saying, like, you can actually see because when when you play a team in week three, for instance, like UT, when UT was ranked number one and they got beat by other teams, they weren't really the number one team that year.

Speaker 1 That turned out to be Indiana, right? Right. But at the time, they were number one.
But then at the end of the season, you can look back and go, okay, they, so what, you know, Ohio State beat Texas.

Speaker 1 Was that a big deal at that point in time?

Speaker 2 Okay. Okay.
So it wasn't, it wasn't really. So adjusted for deflation.

Speaker 1 It's all, it's all just university people wanted to argue about sports, basically. But then Jake Paul gets knocked out in his fight.

Speaker 1 And we think broken jaw oh god looks horrible i've seen a lot of too jake paul seems to be the target for a lot of ai videos where people fake him and somebody faked him in his hospital bed asking for prayers i think it's a fake video because if not it is a gigantic like swollen jaw that he's got but he got rocked in the corner and got smacked and it looked like he broke his jaw to me yeah i haven't seen any videos of it uh the only thing i've seen is a freeze frame of him about to take a punch he's backed into the corner like up against the the ropes And

Speaker 2 the look on his face is one of like terror and realization.

Speaker 1 And we spent way too long on the weekend podcast trying to unpack this guy who beat in a unanimous decision Andrew Tate in a Misfits boxing match.

Speaker 1 We're trying to figure this guy was a boxer or wasn't a boxer. I think the general consensus this guy isn't our boxer really.

Speaker 1 He's an amateur boxer that is now in some kind of like recreational league called Misfit Boxing.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So to put it in perspective, this Misfits Boxing was founded by KSI,

Speaker 2 the internet personality, who's part of Sidemen, is that right?

Speaker 2 But

Speaker 2 so that was founded by him. So I would classify that as like an amateur league.

Speaker 2 I think it's accurate to call the, you know, the boxers who are part of it then sort of boxing influencers, right, or internet personalities. But he is a boxer.

Speaker 1 But Andrew Tate was a professional fighter.

Speaker 2 But he was MMA, right? And that's kickboxing. Yeah, kind of a different class, right? Like it's, I mean, it's a different discipline.
It's a different style. Yeah, you're fighting people.

Speaker 1 I'll be honest, I pride myself on knowing as little about Andrew Tate as I possibly can, to be honest with you. But he lost to this guy who was not.

Speaker 1 Nobody looked good in that fight. I saw some clips from the fight.
It just looked like an absolute misery to watch that thing. So I found myself like middle of the weekend.
I found myself like...

Speaker 1 being super happy about Oklahoma losing, Jake Paul losing, Andrew Tate losing, and the Texas A ⁇ M.

Speaker 1 And then I had to catch myself. I was talking to Ashley.
I said,

Speaker 1 like, how can I, this doesn't feel good to be so happy about just a bunch of failures.

Speaker 1 It's like, what am I doing with my time where I'm just like, I feel like I'm sitting in the cheap seats just laughing at a bunch of people for failing. I don't want to spend my weekend.

Speaker 2 Did you have your like rotten fruit out? Did you bring your rotten fruit to the show with you?

Speaker 1 Yeah. It's like,

Speaker 1 I definitely felt myself falling into a trap in a way. Like I'm not rooting for anything.
I'm rooting against everything. If that isn't a metaphor for the modern world, I don't know what it is.

Speaker 1 So I had to stop and just be like, fuck. All right.
All this stuff happened. Individually, they're all completely awesome.

Speaker 2 But like as a trend, right?

Speaker 1 As a trend, it's not a good thing, right? Overall, as a trend, it's not a good thing.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, let's start looking for things that we can root for, right?

Speaker 1 Hey, listen. So, Christmas is coming up.
I keep meaning to tell people about this. This is our one tried and true Christmas tip that we have for people.

Speaker 1 And that is, we eat Christmas coming for what, Thursday?

Speaker 2 Can I guess what you're about to say? Go ahead. Unbox the thing that if If you're giving a console or like a gaming hardware of some kind, take it out of the box, plug it in,

Speaker 2 run all the updates, right? Run all the updates. If you bought games for someone, get the games downloaded, get it ready, and then put it back in the box and wrap it, right?

Speaker 2 One of the most frustrating things is like when you get the new toy.

Speaker 2 And then it's going to spend the next three hours updating, maybe longer because everyone else is also trying to update their brand new thing.

Speaker 1 And that's not more relevant for any piece of technology right now more than it is for the Apple iPhone because apparently there's some update right now for the iPhone that they are forcing on everybody.

Speaker 1 Not even like, do you want to update your phone? It's a security one that they're doing. So if you got someone in your life, an iPhone for Christmas, first of all, can I be in your life?

Speaker 1 But yeah.

Speaker 2 Who do you like that much? I don't know. Let's be honest.

Speaker 1 Can you bust out an iPhone? You can't just update it because it wants you to put in all your information.

Speaker 1 But it is something you should consider that the iPhones will all be updated on christmas morning if somebody got an iphone for christmas yeah but then there's xboxes and everything else too yeah like so but yeah just generally technology if it can be updated update it uh update it beforehand if you can this is from msn uh apple forces emergency update for virtually every iphone as zero click spyware locks devices So they're just preventing people from having the spyware that will lock their device.

Speaker 1 Great. Good.
Love it. Apple is in the lot of the articles I've read has said that sometimes Apple takes kind of a soft touch to updates, but they don't fuck around with security.

Speaker 1 Honestly, it's one of the main reasons why I'm still with Apple. The frustrating part about that ecosystem is that you are in this like walled-in garden that you have to use all their stuff.

Speaker 1 But man, does it keep you safe?

Speaker 2 Yeah, the upside of that is that there is a lot less to worry about when it comes to spyware and malware. Right.

Speaker 1 Knowing that nobody else, I can't install shit, but neither can the backups.

Speaker 1 We all have to ask Apple for permission to do that.

Speaker 1 Speaking of permission, hey, by the way, did you see I sent to the chat my favorite yearly screenshot of the winter solstice?

Speaker 2 I did, yeah. So happy one day after solstice, I guess, everybody.

Speaker 2 Yes, it's fun for us to look at,

Speaker 2 you know, especially as far north as we are, exactly how short our days can get to the point where it's like the sun comes, came up at, let me guess. Do you have the sunrise and sunset in?

Speaker 1 You got it right here.

Speaker 2 Okay, let me guess. Was it a 9.30 sunrise?

Speaker 1 No, we got 9 o'clock sunrise.

Speaker 2 Okay, 9 o'clock sunrise. And so we're talking 3 p.m.
sunset?

Speaker 1 Yeah, about 3, it's 3.20 p.m. Sunset.
3.20 p.m.

Speaker 2 And it's worth noting that those hours of daylight is also 80% daylight, maybe 75%.

Speaker 1 It's never getting all the way bright.

Speaker 2 You know, like when someone says, like, you know, out of 10, how tired are you? And it's like, pretty tired by that's the sun.

Speaker 1 The sun is that day of like where it comes out and goes, and you're like, what's up? And it's like, I won't talk about it.

Speaker 1 Just wants to be miserable all day long. Just, just don't talk to me.
But we're through it now, and now every day gets a little bit longer, and that's good, right?

Speaker 1 We're on the we're on the down, except it doesn't feel like so.

Speaker 2 I'll appeal until June.

Speaker 1 Well, the reason it doesn't feel like it's January feels like it's still like that's the dog day.

Speaker 2 I think it's because it's the slog, right? It's not like the days are going to be getting longer, but they're not going to get longer enough fast enough. So, you're still in the dark for a while.

Speaker 2 Yeah. And now we've passed the solstice.
It feels like, yay, we're on the upswing. It's all over now.
And it's not all over. No, it's not.
It's not. We got it.
We still got a solid two months.

Speaker 1 Great metaphor.

Speaker 1 One.

Speaker 1 Maybe this wouldn't be a good thing to talk about this week. But the Department of Justice is like, now they've released the Epstein files.

Speaker 2 Have you seen this? Yeah, I saw that they released the files.

Speaker 1 They're removing files.

Speaker 2 And then they keep pulling them down and then like putting them back. And no one seems to know who is supposed to be doing what.

Speaker 2 It's all very disorganized.

Speaker 1 Well, they're selectively removing, according to reports, certain files that they've already released. And I just, I won't comment on the politics.

Speaker 2 Good thing they weren't put on the internet.

Speaker 1 Right. It's like, I won't comment on the politics of it, but like the timing, what, if you're going to remove shit, do it before you put it out publicly.

Speaker 1 It's like, it's like, they're not, no one's even trying at this point with this stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah. It's like, it's like, you didn't include this one, did you?

Speaker 1 Oh.

Speaker 2 We put the intern on it. I think it's out there.

Speaker 1 It's like basically they're probably putting the file, seeing which ones get the most traffic and then looking at it going, oh, that's really bad. Listen.

Speaker 1 I'm sure nobody recorded anything.

Speaker 2 This one went viral. We should pull it down.

Speaker 2 That will definitely take it off the internet.

Speaker 1 Man, I just, I just, that saga, do you think that saga will ever come to an end?

Speaker 2 I don't know. I feel like there's always, you know, you always get like, this is it.
Like, finally, like, it's, it's here, like, this is coming. And it's smoking guns.

Speaker 2 You know, and it's going to, it's going to change everything. And there's going to be accountability.
And, and finally, there will be justice, et cetera.

Speaker 2 And then, like, there, you know, you get to that step that you thought everything was going to be,

Speaker 2 it was going to be the game changer. and then sort of still

Speaker 1 nothing

Speaker 1 changed to jail over this stuff. One person, I guess, even Epstein himself didn't go to jail over this stuff, right? Didn't he go to jail for like some kind of tax thing or something?

Speaker 1 But like since his death, one person has gone to jail over this stuff as far as I know. And I think she's the only one who even went to trial over anything with this stuff.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and she keeps submitting bids for being released and being like, hey, you shouldn't put out the Epstein files because that might damage my bid for release.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you know what would be really damaging to my parole hearing is finding out what I did. That would be terrible if people found that out.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, getting away from the never-ending horrors of the world, Ashley,

Speaker 1 do you want to recommend make a recommendation to people if they're with their families this week?

Speaker 1 You discovered this thing that made you laugh really hard, but I can see you installing and running it all the time. Apparently, someone has made essentially the Pokemon Go.

Speaker 1 For real life birds.

Speaker 1 Someone gamified bird watching.

Speaker 2 I sent that through to you and and I was like, I was like, I think Instagram has officially designated me a boomer because it's like, this is for you. You're going to love this.

Speaker 2 And I watched it and I went, I do love this. And it was like, it's like Pokemon Go, except for birds.

Speaker 2 So you can, I guess, like go around and like take pictures of birds and like get credit for looking at birds in your area.

Speaker 1 Looking at birds.

Speaker 2 And it'll like identify birds for you and be like, this is this kind of bird.

Speaker 1 And you looked at your first bird. Here's an achievement.

Speaker 2 And the thing is, like, I'm all about it. Like, I'm really invested in a family of woodpeckers that lives outside our window.
And I can recognize them. I'm like,

Speaker 2 I'm like, there's the one that's sort of like tall and skinny. And then there's the one that's like kind of like short and round and fat.
And like, I know the woodpeckers.

Speaker 2 I can tell them from each other, you know, and I get really invested in them. Or like, we'll occasionally see a Jaybird.
And I'm always like, I got eyes on you, Jaybird, because you're really pretty.

Speaker 2 But I also know that you like to eat other birds' eggs. And I'm not all about it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you cornered me in the kitchen one day. We're like, did you know that a UK robin is different than an American robin? I was was like, They're not even the same species, a bird entirely.

Speaker 2 And so, I, yeah, I'm now officially a birdwatcher according to Instagram, apparently. And I was like, You know, you're not wrong, pretty interesting.

Speaker 2 You're not wrong, but I also don't appreciate the label.

Speaker 1 Thank you. They're gonna have the uh, that same app, but for train spotting or something like that.
So, lamest possible hobbies.

Speaker 2 I'll see if I can put a link to the app in the linked up for anyone else who is uh who's can you form a guild that watches birds together, maybe. And then, do you think we can go on raids?

Speaker 1 Dear society of birdwatchers you all have together. All right, Ashley, who's going to be spotting Red-Breasted Robin with us this week?

Speaker 2 All right. A big shout out to fellow birdwatchers, CTH37C and Chad W.
Thank you both so much for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com slash morning sunwork and roosterteeth.com.

Speaker 1 All right, quick update on the site. Apparently the episode five of Restoration, when it debuted, had some problems with it.

Speaker 1 I checked it out after people reported to me and it turned out it had a little flag checked, which is like, don't let this video be played. So I I unchecked that box, and now it's okay.
Oops!

Speaker 1 Along with episode six as well. So, if you want to see those, check them out on the Russians website.

Speaker 2 We put the intern on it, so it's nanned about like that.

Speaker 1 We will

Speaker 1 be back all this week with some kind of shortened abbreviated episodes, but we'll be here all week, and we hope you will be here as well. Bye, everybody.