Episode Transcript
Well, folks, we have a classic episode for you this week.
It's one of our favorite guys, commonly called Doctor Seuss, and we think you will like it.
Speaker 2On a log, we think you will like it.
With a frog, we think you will like it.
Next to a goose.
We think you will like it writing on a moose.
We hope that you'd like it.
We hope it's your jam.
You can eat it gluten free or with ham.
Speaker 1This is the story of Doctor Seuss's most famous book, Green Eggs and Ham.
By twenty sixteen, it had sold over eight million copies.
Buddy wrote it on a bet.
Speaker 2Yeah, try it, you might like it.
Jump right in.
Speaker 1Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio.
Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians.
As always, thank you for tuning in.
I am pumped about today's episode.
Speaker 2Are we gonna do it in a box?
Are we going to do it about a fox?
Are we gonna do it while eating some locks?
Are we going to do it in a basement beneath Fort Knox?
Well, that sounds like the plot of National Treasure right right?
Speaker 1Well, this is this is a show that's giving us an excuse to talk about I don't know about you, my friend.
But one of my favorite authors when I was growing up is just a we Ben Bowlin.
I love Shel Silverstein, Doctor Seuss and Stephen King.
Speaker 2Wow, that's explained so much about how you've turned out.
Thanks man, Hey, who are you?
I'm Noel.
It's good to see and I'm gonna do it in a hole, possibly while eating cereal from a bowl.
I'm not as good at this as Theodora Seuss Geisel.
That's right, that's right.
Speaker 3You know.
Speaker 1We have to also ask super producer Casey Pegram did you read Doctor Seuss as a child?
Speaker 2Casey, absolutely I did.
Yeah, what were some of your favorite books?
Speaker 3I'm terrible at remembering anything childhood related.
It kind of all flew out of my brain at some point.
But I know I did.
I know I had the books around.
I could not tell you titles.
I would probably be able to identify them if I went and looked at covers online, but that'd be about it.
Speaker 2The covers are a big giveaway that that's what gets burned into my memory.
I don't remember the titles very much either, Casey, but lately I've been kind of exploring them, especially during this research, and it was a real nostalgia blast from the past.
That's redundant.
That was good the nostalgia blast.
Nostalgia blast is already a blast from.
Speaker 1The well if it was a nostalgia blast that happened in the past.
If you're remembering a time nostalgia blast hit you, so like even if it was just twenty minutes ago, it still worked.
Speaker 2That's a good point, Ben, Thank you for saving me.
Speaker 1No No, I got asked before we go any further.
Did you have one book by Seuss that really like stuck out in your brain?
Speaker 2I do.
It was One Fish, Two Fish, Redfish, Bluefish, because I distinctly remember that being the first thing where I was aware of the fact that I could read.
Oh that's metacognition, yeut, there, But it really is.
Speaker 1It really is.
Speaker 2And I might be manufacturing that memory, but it stuck with me.
I remember being very proud of myself that I could read.
But I also think it might have been some combination of memorization as well, because it was read to me, and I think I may have been looking at it and reading it from memory and thinking that I was actually reading the worst Because I was very very little.
This is a very early memory.
Speaker 1And you also have a stunning innate sense of rhythm and cadence.
Speaker 2As does doctor Theodor Suth Keizel, Yes, Geisel, Geisel.
Speaker 1For the record, my favorite for a long time was The butter Battle Book.
I thought that thing was an epic tale of like tragedy and heartbreak and the human condition.
Speaker 2Well, that's the thing that's neat about this guy's books is they kind of have these big, lofty themes, like the Lora Acts, for example, which is sort of an environmentalist look on conservation and like saving the forests and how man is like raping and pillaging Mother Earth and all that stuff, but not in a particularly heavy handed or pedantic way, and in a way that's pretty approachable to you know, youngsters or whatever, but still has some pretty important messages.
Speaker 1Yeah.
I think that's a great point.
And one thing, one thing that a lot of kids don't know when we're growing up and reading Doctor Seuss books is that Theodor himself was allegedly not the biggest fan of children, but he was a really interesting guy.
And I think you and I probably had a similar moment later in life where we realized that his family originally pronounced the name Seuss, as Zoyce like zo Icee yikes, which I think is a great word.
Zeikes is what I would say.
Yeah, he's interesting for a lot of reasons.
He got his start working in like advertising as a cartoonist, and there's actually some rarely problematic cartoons you can dig up that he did for It's like a mosquito spray called like ze or something like that, or like bleep, I don't know, but it's it's like all of these kind of like African jungle scenes with his very recognizable elephant.
It looks like something out of one of his books, only it's got a lot of like natives depicted in that horrible way that you see in early you know, Disney animations or Warner Brothers cartoons that are now considered completely embarrassing to those companies that are responsible for all this, like classic children's entertainment.
Speaker 2The same was true for Guys Soul, and he also did some propaganda around the Japanese with some pretty nasty depictions of those folks during war during World War two exactly.
Speaker 1Yeah, he was nothing if not prolific, But we did feel would be remiss on our part if we did not include the less than wonderful, whimsical aspects of his life.
Speaker 2You know what I mean.
Speaker 1He was a great cartoonist and a great writer, but still a person, and you might be surprised to learn the process that he used to write a lot of these books.
The guy was so prolific.
He has what over forty children's books.
Yeah, and that's not counting any of his advertisement stuff.
That's not counting the short lived comic strip he did before called Hedgy I believe.
But the weird thing is, while we all kind of, I think naturally want to have this romanticized idea of a guy who just wakes up in a very bright, pastel cartoony house and says, what wonderful lessons will I teach children today, that's not the case.
In fact, there was a lot of calculation that went into the way he wrote books.
His first successful children's book was called Cat and the Hat.
And the story about Cat and the Hat is really surprising.
It starts with a guy named John Hershey who was a big time journalist and in nineteen fifty four, when writing in Life magazine, he put out an article called why do students bog down?
Speaker 2On first r?
Speaker 1A local committee sheds light on national problem colon reading that was colon the punctuation mark, not reading.
Speaker 2Colon's And is that the one that was kind of a backlash against those super dull Dick and Jane primer books.
Yes, just the same, which is like see Dick walk, see Jane walk too.
Yeah, there is a dog.
It is spot watch Spot walk to Jane.
Uh huh, stuff like that.
Speaker 1Yeah, because they had a more rigid system of introducing vocabulary words to children.
And after reading this article, the director of Houghton Mifflin, the publishing company, the director of Houghton Mifflin's educational division, a guy named William Spaulding, got Theodore Geisel in the room and he said, look, I need you to write a story that first graders actually like.
The actual quote is I need you to write a story that first graders can't put down.
And then he put on some weird restrictions.
Speaker 2I love this.
Speaker 1Yeah, this part was really interesting to me too.
So there was a list that Spaulding had, which I guess came from the Educational Division, of three hundred and forty eight words that were selected from a standard first grader's vocabulary list, and Spalding said Okay, THEO, you've got to write this book, but you can only use words from this list, and you can't use them all.
You can only use what two hundred and twenty five exactly.
Speaker 2Yeah, And I think originally he wanted the story to be about like a queen cat and a king cat.
Yeah, but queen wasn't on the list, so he had to like adjust, and then he realized that hat rhymed with cat and that was a good starting point and the rest is history.
Speaker 1Which, yeah, it took him nine months to write this book, primarily, I believe because of that word restriction, and according to the story, he didn't quite hit two twenty five.
Speaker 2It was still a little bit longer, right, Yeah, I think he, you know, if we're going to call that a bet, then he sort of failed the exact parameters that were given to him, but he came damn close.
Speaker 1Yeah, two hundred and thirty six words.
And I get the feeling this was almost more of a mandate from his boss.
I love thinking about what the original story with the king cat and the Queen cat would have been, because now I see this picture of Theodore Geisel like pulling his hair out, gnashing his teeth and trying to figure out how to depict this cat as somehow regal or kingly, and then the best he to come up with is all right, he's got a hat because we can't use crown.
Speaker 2Yeah.
I feel like that's what happened.
That's probably true.
That's a good point.
And of course, you know when I say the rest is history, I mean like literary history.
It's sold a million copies, like right off the rip, I think in the first couple of years, and it was out in print, right yeah, and he was able to quit his day job as an ad guy an admin, you know, and went on to become a whimsical children's book writer full time.
Zeyce, that's my new exclamation.
Loved it.
That's quite good.
Speaker 1I also like, what was the name of that pesticide company?
Was his z to or was it something you know?
Speaker 2I actually looked at it.
It's called flit flit.
Yeah, like you know bugs, they flipped and this is what you scored at him to make them stop flitting forever.
Stop the flit.
Speaker 1I don't know why I'm feeling these catchphrases so much, my friend, but we know that a lot of people love the way Zeyce wrote, and so you know what, I'm just gonna call him doctor Seuss for this show for our purposes here.
Yeah, yeah, that's fair.
Okay, it just feels more comfortable, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2We all know who doctor Zeus say is right, but this doctor Zeis guy.
Yeah, it sounds like some sort of mad scientists.
So he does.
Speaker 1So this guy's career takes off.
He becomes a prolific author of children's books that are loved around the world, especially the English speaking world obviously.
And then in nineteen sixty, just about three years after Cat and the Hats come out, he has a strange conversation with a guy named Bennett Surf, the co founder of Random House.
Speaker 2He does it very similar to the conversation he had with mister Hershey that kicked off his career, you know, in such a huge way.
With Kat and the Hat.
This guy really ups the Annie here in terms of what that first bet I guess or challenge would have been.
And he challenges SEUs to write a children's book that uses fifty unique words or less unique being individual.
Speaker 1Words, which sounds like if you're just thinking about this initially at first, blush, This could sound like, hey, that's enough words for a children's book, it's not, because what they mean by unique words is that let's say if you had a word that was just I'll pick one admiral, sure, right, then you can use that one word as many times as you would like.
Speaker 2Right.
It's like that vocabulary list we talked about earlier, and I think you know it was around two hundred and sixty words for cat and the hat.
So that's and that's a pretty relatively straightforward, sing songy, kind of like simple language book.
So that this is like really taking it to the next level, because to use fifty words and still have it ay tell a story and not just be completely just see Dick Rudd right exactly.
So he took this as a challenge and he delivered.
Speaker 1I propose that we play a game with the listeners, nol because we have this list.
We did the fifty words, okay, so let's let's read out some of these words, not not all fifty, and let's like skip the ones that automatically give it away, and let's see if you can guess which book this is.
Okay, are you ready, folks?
R A am and anywhere?
Are b boat box car could dark do eat here house?
I if in let like, I think that's pretty hard to guess.
We didn't have any really juicy.
Speaker 2And there You're not going to finish?
Is that it?
Oh?
No, do you want to do?
You want to do the rest of them?
Are you skipping the word green?
Is that in there?
Oh?
Yeah, casey on the case Wow, spoiler, I love it.
No, we hadn't gotten there yet, but yes, in fact, green eggs and ham are all in this list.
And that's ham like the food, not ham like hard as am off.
Speaker 1Right.
That was a little bit before Susan's time, or maybe that was part of his uncollected work.
Speaker 2I actually read somewhere that he coined the word crunk, did he?
But it didn't mean the same thing as it means in the parlance of today.
Oh that's so cool.
But it appeared first in print in a doctor Seys's book.
Speaker 1This book that he wrote on a bet is known today as green eggs and ham.
And I was thinking, there's a there's a neat coincidence here when he has this conversation with Ben at Surf when they make that bet for what fifty dollars?
Right, it works out to a dollar a word which I thought was I don't know if that's on purpose, but it's pretty neat.
Speaker 2And I think a fifty dollars bet back then would have been a couple hundred bucks now, right, three hundred bucks maybe.
Speaker 1Yeah, a little close, maybe a little closer to four oh okay, but yeah, so it's it's still a significant amount of money, but to this guy who's a best selling off now, it's not like a make or break thing as far as his bank accounts can do.
Speaker 2We know where this falls in the Doctor Seuss bibliography.
Is this sort of mid career.
Speaker 1This was since nineteen sixty when the bet occurs, So that's right after that's three years after Cat and the Hat.
Oh okay, this is relatively early lat koreer Y's for sure.
And so when he writes this book, we can only imagine that it's a little less of a laborious process because he's already been through it before with Cat in the Hat.
Speaker 2Yeah, except this is like a little bit more challenging.
Right, This has been a parent like, you know, even limiting his verbal palette even more.
Right.
Speaker 1Yeah, So we mentioned that this has a One of the brilliant things about this book is it does actually have a plot that you can follow, you know what I mean, there's some tension in there.
What's the plot.
Our protagonist is named Sam i Am.
Speaker 2He is Sam Sam he is well yeah, and then there's him right, and then there's this other character who is who goes nameless and he's sort of the sad sack kind of fellow who Sam keeps trying to force him to eat green eggs and ham.
And he proceeds to go through these various scenarios.
As our buddy the quizzer would say, there we go, and the guy just keeps he's like running away from him.
It's actually kind of a stalker situation because the nameless character is literally trying to escape this Sam i Am who keeps popping up with green eggs and ham, you know.
And then he's like, you know, would you do it on a house, a car, a tree, with all these different things with a mouse?
Would a mouse change the scene?
And exactly exactly, And at the end of the day, there there's you know, they're surrounded by the carnage that's been caused by this dude literally trying to run for his life from this psychotic Sam i am character.
I mean really is if you look back up the book now, Sam I am is very sinister.
He goes hard on, he goes am, yeah he really does.
Yeah, and green eggs.
And at the end the moral of the story is the nameless grumpy dude eats the green eggs and ham and he likes it.
Speaker 1Right, Sam, if you will let me be, I will try them.
You will see.
And then he tries them and say, I like green eggs and ham.
Speaker 2I do.
Speaker 1I like them, Sam, i am.
And then it goes on the refrain flips and now he's talking, I want to do it in all those places.
Bring the mouse, please?
Speaker 2A fox?
You say, probably this green eggs and ham with anything, But I know you can only be a fox and mouse.
And what else a goat?
A goat?
Speaker 1Yeah, it's weird because if you look at the way.
One thing that's really impressive about this is if you look at just the lyrics or the poetry itself typed out, it's four pages long, which surprised me because it's four pages fifty words.
Speaker 2It's tough.
It's all about placement.
It's like a comic book.
I mean a lot of these things are like graphic novels, and the text is very much incorporated into the design.
And you know, let's not forget Sus wrote the text and he drew all the images, and he's single handedly responsible for creating these worlds which are very uniquely him.
You know, I think he's a pretty interesting artist, kind of a renaissance man in that way.
I also think it's funny that both Ham and Goat both have modern day acronym equivalents.
And krunk, you know, I think he was onto something.
I think he was too.
Speaker 1We should do a deep dive read into the works of doctor Seuss.
We should also mention, by the way that yes, doctor Seuss did succeed.
This wasn't like a cat and a hat thing where he went a little over his word count.
He managed to make a coherent story with only fifty words.
He turned it around really quickly.
It was published on August twelfth, nineteen sixty, and it became his best selling book.
You know, it's purposely meant for beginning readers, right, But there is one one twist to the story that I find hilarious just because of its petty nature.
Speaker 2There's a couple of good twists I want to hear yours.
Okay, Well, here's one.
I think.
Speaker 1This is the question that's on a lot of our minds right now.
What happened to the bet?
It turns out Bennett Sarah didn't pay up at all.
Speaker 2What a jerk.
And he was a co founder of Random House.
It's not like he was hurting for the scratch.
Did they publish the book?
Yes, yes they did, old Random House and the Living Books Company.
So it stands to reason that this dude not only didn't pay up, he benefited from it.
So he's the double cheapskate.
Yeah, massive benefits.
What's one of your twists.
There's a couple of other good ones.
One of them is that there were some pretty bad reviews for this book, specifically from some children's librarians.
The New York Public Library actually had a card catalog of hand typed children's book reviews by their librarian staff.
And here is a choice exerpt from one of these reviews.
Sam I am won't eat green eggs and ham until after many pages of learning words, he tries them.
Book is typical of Seus's late period, and his output, being as prolific as it is.
It's alarming to think of the onslaught that can ensue if these books are continually added to the collection.
This is the best line.
There must be better ways of teaching a child to read than this not recommended.
Speaker 1I saw that one too.
It was it was strange because we see this kind of harsh reviewing repeated.
It's a cyclical thing in children's literature, right, like Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs also got some shade thrown at it.
Speaker 2I think there was an issue with it being like not vegan friendly.
I it's like more of like our PC police kind of situation that we're living in right now.
There's a good one here, Ben, that you told me about where a federal judge actually referenced this work in an opinion, an official judicial opinion.
Yes it's true.
Speaker 1In two thousand and seven, a US District court judge named James Muirhead received a hard boiled egg in the mail from an inmate, and the inmate was sending this hard oiled egg through the post to protest his diet while he was incarcerated.
The judge ordered the egg destroyed with the following with the following language in his court order, I do not like eggs in the file.
I do not like them in any style.
I will not take them fried or boiled.
I will not take them poached or broiled.
I will not take them soft or scrambled.
Despite an argument, well rambled, no fan, I am of the egg at hand.
Destroy that egg today, today, today, I say, without delay, this judge must have had.
Speaker 2A long week.
He's a real character.
You know what.
Speaker 1We could also do an episode on bizarre judge rulings, because there have been judges who respond with poetry, sometimes in very serious situations, and there have been judges who, because they have complete jurisdiction, have imposed some really weird, unorthodox penalties for crimes.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Remember that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry has to wear the sandwich board with the like I steal forks from restaurants or whatever, a scarlet letter punishment.
They call that.
That's a thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 1And this is just one aspect of the tremendous influence that Green eggs and ham specifically has had on modern culture.
I think now it's in sixty different formats.
It's in a multitude of languages, which confuses me because surely there would be some languages where it's more difficult to do that story just because of sentence structure or something.
Speaker 2Right, Oh yeah, it does seem that way.
Well, still they pulled it off.
Speaker 1I would love to have a copy of Green Eggs and Ham in a different language because it would help me learn that language pretty easily, right, or.
Speaker 2Fifty words of it at least?
Yeah, wow, Yeah, you would have the like a first grader's grasp perhaps, now last kindergarten maybe.
And if you so desired, you could potentially use the works of Doctor Zeus to learn Latin, even though it's sort of incorrectly said that Latin is a dead language.
But you can definitely find different books that are translated into Latin.
But here's the thing.
It's hard to translate this kind of stylized writing like Doctor Seuss into a language like that, isn't that.
Yeah?
Speaker 1According to Terrence Tunberg, who's been teaching Latin for decades and decades, green Eggs and Ham was very difficult to translate.
He and his spouse Jennifer, had already translated several children's books into Latin, and they tackled Green Eggs and Ham with the title being can you help me out with the Latin here?
Speaker 2And oh boy, uh, variant ova verant parana with lots of exclamation marks.
Yeah.
Speaker 1The Tunbergs have also translated other Doctor Seuss books specific but they said this wouldn't was one of the toughest because of the simplified language and the short length.
But it's worth doing because it gives Latin a more contemporary feel and it feels less like a dead language exactly.
And that is the story of Green Eggs and Ham so far.
However, that is not the end of these Doctor Seuss facts.
We found several.
Some of them are darker, some of them are just kind of hilarious.
Yeah, Like did you hear about how he's traumatized by Teddy Roosevelt?
Speaker 2Yeah, it did.
Ben.
I had to do with some money he got from his grandfather, isn't that right?
Yeah?
Speaker 1World War One was in full swing and Doctor Seuss was a boy scout and he went door to door and eventually, because his grandfather bought one thousand dollars worth of war bonds, he became one of the most successful war bond salesmen in his town.
And they were brought on stage, him and nine other boy scouts to the municipal auditorium.
And who was there to present the award.
Theodore Roosevelt himself, the President of the United States.
Speaker 2Yeah, he was there to officiate this ceremony to pana metal on these plucky young lads and old Teddy Seuss was the last one in line to receive this major award.
But it turns out that they didn't have enough medals.
And then Roosevelt gets to him and he doesn't have anything.
He just looks over at the people on stage.
It's like, who the hell is this kid?
Get him out of here, and they trundle him off stage and he gets nothing.
It's like Willie Walker style.
Man.
Wow.
Speaker 1For the rest of his life he had a crippling fear of crowds, and he actually skipped a lot of speaking engagements when he was a famous author because he was terrified they would be publicly humiliated.
Speaker 2Again.
Well, there's also not a lot of interviews with him, like video interviews with him that you can even find.
Speaker 1Right, let's see what else is.
His first book was The Complete and Unabridged pocket Book of Boners.
Speaker 2Wow, is it just like a visual compendium of different boners.
It was.
Speaker 1This is back when a boner just meant an error, Like that was a real bone.
Oh okay, okay, So the book was it was a compilation, but it was a compilation of lists of silly, incorrect answers to questions given by children.
It did have a bunch of risque jokes and illustrations.
He knew the other meaning of boners.
Speaker 2You know, he did.
Speaker 1He was a bodie boy.
He was, he was, And I guess you could find a copy of that.
It first published in nineteen thirty one, and New York Times called it hilarious.
Speaker 2I love sixcinct.
New York Times reviews like that.
They usually so overly verbose.
Have you ever seen Halloweens Grinch Night, Ben, Yeah, I love it.
It's so trippy, it's so cool.
It's awesome, and it's very psychedelic and hetty and strange.
So if you haven't seen that one, it's a quick one to watch around Halloween time.
It's actually pretty spooky.
This little kid and there's all these creatures, and Halloween is Grench nine and the hacking sacks are yowling.
We din't even talk about that.
He invents such great creature names.
I love.
Speaker 1I'm glad you mentioned this because I have a little bit of a bone to pick with this.
I love Halloween is Grench Knight.
However, I think in some recent years Doctor Seuss's good name has been besmirched with terrible film adaptations such as The Cat and the Hat.
Oh with Mike Myers.
Yeah, gross, grown, I know, And I used to love Mike Myers when I was a kid.
You probably did too.
With Wayne's World Sired Live all that stuff, Austin Powers.
But apparently behind the scenes, and we have n't.
I haven't met the guy at least, so I can't confirm or deny this, But apparently behind the scenes story is he's a real pill to work.
Speaker 2I have heard this.
You've heard it him, especially like on Trek or whatever, like, yeah, yeah, no, I've definitely heard that, which is a shame.
You know what else is quite bad?
What's that how the Grinch Stole Christmas?
It was like a short little little book and a short little cartoon and they try to stretch it into like a two hour movie.
It was a great cartoon also, you know what I mean?
I don't know, It's just I wish they would stop.
Speaker 1Are we Does this mean that we're getting old?
Isn't there another Grinch?
Reboot coming out there as we're recording this.
Speaker 2Well, I think it's animator.
It's like it's like, you know, CGI or whatever.
Oh.
He also invented the word nerd.
Yep, didn't he he did.
Speaker 1This guy is a real wordsmith.
So one last thing I would like to contribute.
I want to see your opinion on this nool and we want to hear your opinion.
Ridiculous historians.
Apparently doctor Seuss had dabbled in erotica.
Excuse me, erotica?
Oh what I thought you said?
Speaker 2He had contributed art to something called The Bedroom Companion that had a comic showing.
Uh.
Speaker 1Well, let's just say he contributed to that to that book, and as a condition of his contract later on in life, he said, Okay, i'll write children's books for you only if you let me write an adult book first.
The Seven Lady Godivas a story about seven naked women.
Speaker 2Yeah, and they're writing on one of his you know, like signature, kind of nondescript beasts, like it's not it's not a horse, it's not a hippo.
I don't know, it's it's got traits of all of those.
Speaker 1It's probably got a name like a barkernof or something exactly.
Speaker 2There you go, Ben, and it is, you know, a stride.
This creature is uh two three four sixty seven naked women of all shapes and sizes.
Yeah, in his defense of all shapes and sizes.
Here's the thing, Why do we need to defend them?
This is this is delightful.
Speaker 1Well, the book flopped and he was kind of uh, he was kind of peet about it because he had to settle for a career as a children's writer.
This is a quote from doctor Seuss.
Okay, it's not us say, it's a quote from him.
He said, I tried to draw the sexiest babes I could, but they came out looking absurd.
Speaker 2Well, what the what is it?
They look like doctor Seus's characters?
What did he think?
There's nothing sexy about them.
They've all got like who hair, they're all hooviy and yeah big time.
Well you can't say the guy wasn't interesting.
When did he pass?
Ben?
Speaker 1Doctor Zeuss actually lived a very long time.
He did not pass away until September twenty fourth, nineteen ninety one.
He was eighty seven years old.
Speaker 2I remember that, I remember when it happened.
I mean I was very young, but I definitely distinctly remember the death of doctor Zeuss.
Speaker 1You know who else another personal legend of ours who passed away recently, stan Lee.
It's true, all right, p stan You know it's it's strange because I'm sure that he'll still be in cameos for a few more movies because they must have filmed a bunch of I.
Speaker 2Guess they would have had to.
Yeah, it makes sense doing a batch.
Speaker 1And this reminds me he was in his nineties, right, Yeah, he did look great and he also growing up as a kid who didn't have a ton of friends, I think stan Lee taught me a ton about reading and really added to my vocabulary, you know what I mean.
He's the guy who brought back excelsior.
Speaker 2Yeah.
I keep saying that.
I don't know what that means.
It's like excellent, Oh okay, got it.
There were a lot of tributes to him when he passed away, and everyone was saying excelsior.
I thought it was some sort of stomach medicine it's used to.
Speaker 1I guess it means that something is of superior quality, got it?
Like a little more flashy way of saying grade a number one.
But the reason I'm bringing up stan Lee here, Noel, is because you and I made a mandate and we we got a kind of a bumpy start.
Our mandate was to recommend comic books.
Remember, we did do that.
Speaker 2We did do that, We did say that, and we kind of you know, this is a perfect episode to do that in because I would argue that Sus is kind of a graphic novel in some ways.
I would agree, I would agree.
What do you dig in these days?
These days?
I'm digging some.
Speaker 1Okay, I've been really into some horror comics because you know, it's always kind of Halloween in my heart.
And there's a comic called Regression, which is terrifying, not for children, it's about reincarnation.
And then there's another comic series that's complete called The Clean Room, which is about aliens.
Or maybe something different to say anymore would be to do you a disservice coold.
Speaker 2Have you had a chance to check out Nameless?
Nameless?
Yes?
Yeah, yeah yeah.
Nameless was the one shot four issues right, yes, by Grant Morrison, who I'm always in love with everything he does.
I'm just really trippy out there, existential dread almost he kind of veers into love crafty and territory, and this one is no exception.
This one's about like space madness and just like demonic possession and narcissism and all kinds of crazy stuff doorways to other dimensions.
But it's a tight little story and the art is insane, insanely not for the feint of heart.
Speaker 1Yeah, not only is not for children, I would say it's not for you if you're already feeling a little bit, you know, less than good.
Speaker 2It's agreed.
It's a bit of a bummer.
I'm so glad you read that one man.
Speaker 1That's one of those that I keep buying copies of and I keep giving them away.
Speaker 2Yeah, I have a hardcover of it.
And just the art is just alone is fantastic.
So we have met our mandate for this episode.
We talked about a crazy, weird children's book, Guy recommended some comics, had a good time learning the origins of the word crunk, and.
Speaker 1Nerd invented a new phrase to yell out and exclamation zoice soice.
Speaker 2It's also kind of like noise noise choice noy soyce.
Speaker 1And we hope that you enjoyed this episode even half as much as as we enjoyed exploring this story with you.
That's all for today.
Stay tuned for our next episode, when we examine beer, A lot of beer, A whole lot of beer, like a dangerous amounts of beer.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1In the meantime, thanks of course to our super producer Casey Pegram, Thanks to our research associate Gabe, Thanks.
Speaker 2To Alex Williams our Pal who composed our theme, and thanks to you Ben for being a dapper and intelligent co host.
Speaker 1As always, thanks man, I recently did my laundry.
That's probably probably way it smell fresh and clean, my man.
Speaker 2Thank you.
No, you're welcome.
Goodbye.
Everyone.
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