Endnotes and digressions from the latest show:
* Victorino opens the episode by talking about his recent Frankenfood battle: road-testing Taco Bell’s Naked Chicken Chalupa. There’s video. Don’t say you weren’t warned
* Speaking of Frankentacos, SNL was in on the joke pretty early with their classic Taco Town sketch. Art anticipates reality?
* During our discussion of the greatness of Keanu Reeves (Sonny and I say he’s great; Vic is simply wrong), Sonny mentions a short video of Keanu doing some three-gun tactical shooting. He looks awfully smooth.
* Over at the Free Beacon, Sonny has an important piece theorizing why Winston is the only character in John Wick who calls the Baba Yaga “Jonathan.”
* Also, per Santino, Sandra Bullock is classy, and a great actor, and just generally super-awesome. See her trip to the Razzies a few years ago.
* Finally, we took a brief digression Swedish character actor Peter Stormare. I don’t even know how to describe what Stormare does—maybe “unhinged Nordic Steve Buscemi” is a close approximation? Regardless, Stormare is one of those actors who you can’t really take your eyes off of—whether he’s Slippery Pete in Seinfeld, or Karl Hungus in The Big Lebowski, or the insane, clucking Dr. Eddie in Minority Report.
But, like Dennis Hopper’s classic turn in the series of Nike football ads of the ’90s, my favorite piece of Stormare’s work is actually in a series of commercials he did for Volkswagen. The ads were called “Time to Unpimp Ze Auto” and Stormare’s crazed genius is center stage and fully realized as a quasi-German engineer/game-show host who brings on American doofuses with their tuned up cars—and then destroys them.
The whole catalogue is two minutes long. Treat yourself to it. Watch Stormare’s wild eyes glancing off-camera, his weird body language, the orgasmic breathlessness with which he utters his catchphrase. Not to mention how he throws out a VW gang sign at the close of each ad. (Or the pitch-perfect work of his Brigitte Nielsen-meets-Sprockets assistant: “It’s definitely sucking.”) Pure genius.
* As always, you can download the episode
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And you should go give us a five-star rating. They’re like little shots of nitroglycerin for Vic’s naked-chicken infused heart.
