https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVu-y8YkNnQ
Oh great. Rainman makes a virtual appearance on Talking About Tapes. Covid and all. God. I don’t recommend psychiatric help hardly ever but that guy needs immediate intervention. IT WAS ALL A BIG SCAM, JIMMY! YOU CAN COME OUT OF YOUR HOME NOW! YOU’RE NOT GOING TO DROP DEAD FROM COVID!
0:00 – Ummm…Newt and his “model” ladyfriend doing some Irish stereotype thing. His ladyfriend is dressed as a “sexy” leprechaun.
Let me have a brief digression on St Patrick’s Day. I don’t give a fuck about it. I NEVER gave a fuck about it. I think as a kid we would eat corned beef on that day but I don’t know why. My parents weren’t remotely Irish.
Maybe it’s a regional thing? Maybe it’s bigger on “The East Coast” because, at least historically, there was a large Irish population. But this was in the fucking 19th century. All of these people have assimilated and inter-married.
Let me tell you what they do for Saint Patrick’s Day in England: NOTHING. It’s a fucking Irish holiday. Same thing in Scotland, although it might be more complicated because there are a fair number of people in Scotland who claim to be Irish. Similar thing as in the US. If you had an Irish grandmother or something, you might claim to be Irish. Like how Tony claims to be Italian in spite of the fact that he doesn’t speak Italian, I don’t think has ever been to Italy, and I suspect doesn’t know anything about Italy.
But anyway, all this stupid bullshit in the US like St Patrick Day parades and whatnot. Fuck off. Why not celebrate St George’s Day? Or St Andrew’s Day? It would be just as ridiculous.
You know, Ireland has one of the most liberal citizenship requirements based on ancestry. If you can you prove that you have even one grandparent who was born in Ireland, you can get citizenship. So why don’t all of these hardcore “Irish” people get Irish citizenship and move back to their homeland? Because they can’t even meet that requirement. They just have a hazy idea that some ancestor somewhere, through the ages, might have been from Ireland.
I think that Italy is even more liberal with this. If you can prove that you have ANY Italian ancestor EVER going back to the founding of Italy in 1861, you can get citizenship. I might be wrong, consult your nearest Italian embassy or consulate for further information. But Tony should get to work if he’s serious about this. He could move to Italy and get in touch with “his” people.
Anyway, oh god. I forgot that I have this piece of shit to “review”. Let’s get to it.
James is appearing sans hat. And sans hair in a can, it looks like.
3:00 – Obvious edit. I suspect that James said “yeah” or something. So they edited out the awkward transition. I think that there’s going to be a lot of this. It’s just going to be Tony talking while Rainmain thinks about poop.
And yeah, the movie is fucking stupid. I have absolutely no interests in these stupid fucking horror movies. I’m an adult.
Okay, I’m at 9:00. I’m going to have to take a break. This is boring as fuck. It’s edited to hell. James is obviously incapable of having a normal conversation so Tony is having to edit around that. It also doesn’t help that James is doing this on Zoom while cowering in his home.
But it’s not TOO bad, Tony has been able to edit James’ autism down pretty good so far, so I don’t want to give up on it right away. I’m just going to go do something more interesting for a while, maybe eat, maybe take a nap, and then come back to this bullshit.
Alright, I’m refreshed. Let’s get to it.
10:00 – Tony is talking about bad magicians and says, “I’ve seen David Copperfield live but this is like the worst magic show in existence.”
Is David Copperfield considered a bad magician? According to Wikipedia, as of 2006, he’s sold 33 million tickets and grossed over $4 billion. He must be doing something right.
11:30 – Tony starts talking about All Elite Wrestling. James has no idea what he’s talking about. And the fact that Tony is watching All Elite Wrestling says a lot about him.
I stopped watching wrestling in about 1997 when I was 18 or 19 years old. And this is back when wrestling was “good”, or at least popular.
This AEW shit is horrendous. Same with the WWE shit. It’s all choreographed and overproduced and you have these guys reading from scripts. It’s unwatchable. I have no idea who the audience. Even children wouldn’t be interested in this.
But here’s Tony yuking it up with a completely clueless James Rolfe about All Elite Wrestling.
12:15 – James asks, “Are pay per view events still like $50?”
He doesn’t have a clue. First of all, that question doesn’t follow from anything that Tony just said because James doesn’t understand what Tony is talking about. But secondly, the WWE Network effectively ended pay per views. At least for WWE. But Tony just says, “Yes, they are” and ends it. He doesn’t want to have to explain the WWE Network to James.
I guess that AEW pay per views are like $50. Can that be right? Who’s buying that?
Then James talks about how when he ordered the recent Mike Tyson fight on Pay Per View, it felt like going in a time machine. “It felt like the 80s again”. Rainman sure loves his time travel.
By the way, I tried to avoid saying this but Rainman’s hair is really distracting. His hair has receded at least to the middle of the top of his head but he has a couple of tufts of hair in the front that he tries to work with. But they don’t even cover the whole front of where a youthful hairline would be, they’re on the sides.
So yeah, I mean…When the balding in the front meets the balding in the back, as it has done with James, it’s time to shave it. Or grow the sides out and do a combover. Old school. Why not? Use a *nostalgic* hairstyle for bald men.
But yeah, then James starts talking about Las Vegas. Let’s play some cards, Rainman.
Okay, I made it to 20 minutes. That’s good enough. That’s almost halfway. This one is like 15 minutes shorter than most of their “reviews” obviously just because James has nothing to contribute. He references notes and it’s just bad. He can’t have a normal conversation.
Let me just skip around the rest. See if I stumble upon…I don’t know even know what I can stumble upon. Maybe that “model” will come in and take her top off or something.
26:00 – Nothing as “exciting” as that but Tony starts talking about those psychic hotline commercials that used to air. James has NO IDEA what he’s talking about. And then there’s a bad edit that cuts James off mid-sentence, presumably because what he said was completely idiotic.
James doesn’t remember Ms Cleo but says, “I remember late at night those infomercials would play.”
They were commercials. They were regular 30 second commercials. Maybe they also had infomercials but you’d see these commercials ALL THE TIME. How did James miss these? Daytime television. FOR YEARS. Maybe he was in school but he’s basically the same age as I am and I saw them. You could see them on the weekends or if you were sick from school or during vacation time or whatever. The whole fucking summer. James has no fucking idea.
He was too busy playing with his poop, I guess. No time for television. I have to focus all of my efforts on this piece of stool. It’s fascinating stuff.
Then Tony talks about a Ms Cleo soundboard and again, James doesn’t recognise what he’s talking about at first. But after a while he says, “Oh yeah, those soundboards. I remember that.”
Again, we’re the same age and I know exactly what these are and would be able to contribute more than, “Oh yeah, those soundboards. I remember that.”
What about the Pruane soundboard? Hey guys! Remember Pruane?
And didn’t Howard Stern have a segment where those two guys used a soundboard? There were those two guys who made prank phone calls. I think that they used soundboards in some of those. Like soundboards of other people on the show. This had to be in “the 90s” or possibly early 2000s.
Oh, I paused the video too soon. James says, “I remember the Howard Stern ones.” So great.
38:45 – Tony gives a whole long synopsis to this film and then James says, “yeah”.
42:00 – Tony starts talking about that app Peacock. James says, “Oh, okay”, clearly not knowing what this is.
I know what it is and I don’t live in the US or watch television or use any of these streaming apps.
42:15 – James says, “It’s weird. It was a year ago when we stopped filming Rental Reviews in person and it became like, ‘Okay, how are we going to continue these’ and we’ve been doing this. Here we are a year later and maybe soon, maybe soon we’ll be able to get together in person again.”
Two points arise:
1. “WE” aren’t doing anything. You (James) quit doing the show because you were fucking horrible at it and wanted to spend more time with your faeces. So Tony took this up. The show is (almost) watchable now. At least sometimes. And the key factor is that Rainman is out of there. He was AWFUL. He rarely even bothered to watch the fucking movie, he just read from notes, and he was totally incapable of having a conversation.
2. You can get together in person RIGHT NOW if you weren’t some fucking autistic lunatic who’s petrified of covid.
James’ final contribution to this video is “yeah”. Fitting.
Then we’re treated to “bonus content” of Newt and his “model” girlfriend in her “sexy” costume doing some stupid shit with Lucky Charms and a bottle of…I don’t know…whiskey, I guess.
So that was the video. It was bad. No question. But through NUMEROUS edits, Tony was able to make as much of this as humanly possible. Presumably there was a lot of pausing to give James time to think of what to say next and/or check his notes. This was all edited out. Tony probably prompted him with some questions to help and this was edited out. Shit like this.
It can only “work” as a one to one conversation. If you introduce a third person, as they often had on Rental Reviews, it’s just impossible to edit into something at all watchable. You have the two normal functioning people having a conversation and then Rainman just saying “yeah”. You can’t edit it together to make it remotely seamless. So that’s why they had to include James checking his notes and them prompting him with questions and shit like this.
Justin would speak to James like a child and this isn’t a criticism of Justin. That’s the way you have to speak to somebody like James to get him to talk. “So what did you think about the movie, James?” Shit like this. You have to expressly invite him to speak because otherwise he won’t. And even then, it will take time for him to think of something to contribute.
He’s fucking awful. This doesn’t make him a bad person. He has autism or something. I would be even worse than James at this sort of thing. But that’s why it’s important to find what you’re good at and do that. And avoid the shit that you aren’t good at. It’s not a big deal.
It’s like with Erin. I always say that she should stop making videos on video games because she’s simply not interested in this shit. And that’s okay. Make videos about Disney instead. What’s the big deal? People like videos about Disney.
Ideally, Erin should stop making videos entirely because she has absolutely no charisma. But again, that’s fine. Find what you’re good at and do it. I don’t know what that is for Erin. It’s something that she has to figure out. But making videos on Youtube is not it.
So Rainman. He likes poop. We know that. When is he going to start Rectal Reviews? He would be great at it. He has the passion, at least. Try it out. Just James talking about poop with other autistic guys. Maybe they could get that guy who says “HUGS!” from Erin’s channel. Or that mentally challenged guy who gifted Retro Ali that game. Assemble a crew. And it doesn’t matter that they don’t live in the same area because James will insist that everything be done on Zoom anyway.