#289 Sal Saves Christmas and Crossing the Streams (Bonus Ep81) – Great TV binge watching suggestions!

CTS Announcer 0:02

Looking for your next TV show or movie to binge? Well buckle up, grab the remote and settle into your couch for this special edition of crossing the streams. We're here to help you tune in and get the most out of those 50 monthly streaming channels you're currently paying for. So without any further ado, here's your host of crossing the streams. Jeff Dwoskin

Jeff Dwoskin 0:31

Hey, oh, it is I Jeff Dwoskin your host of classic conversations in your guide through this bonus episode of crossing the streams. What is crossing the streams? It's where we answer the universal question. What should I binge watch next? I just watch something and now I got to watch something else. Well, you have come to the right place. We got your back. Our YouTube channel has over 132 hours of streaming suggestions just waiting for you. But you're in luck, me and my pals. We have handpick three segments from three of our live shows. And we're going to beam those into your ears right now from a live episode 44 depress Darth himself. John Sullivan, friend of the show joined us to talk about rise of Skywalker from a live episode 36 Bob Phillips is talking about cradle of champions and because it's not Christmas without salads, Emilio from Live episode 100 I believe in Santa all these are coming up right now let's kick things off with Brito of champions Bob Phillips, take it away. Bob, we're gonna let you go from it. Okay, ready to live champions.

Bob Phillips 1:37

I appreciate you putting me first because as you know, we have issues sometimes with my with my internet connection, I have many times done. And I appreciate you letting me do this documentaries on boxing because I find I find the whole I find boxing fascinating for a number of reasons. And I don't know if I've talked about it on this show before. But one of the reasons I love it is that it's very similar to stand up comedy, which is what Jeff and I have done for 20 years, you are entirely on your own. There's nobody there that's going to bail you out. If you're having a bad fight, if your opponent is knocking you around the ring, nobody's gonna bail you out. If you're on stage, and you have to do 45 minutes and three minutes in you realize these people just still like you. You got to figure out a way to survive that. So I've always I've always liked that kind of comparison. Anyway I did last week was sort of I don't want to say depressing, but it was a little bit dark documentary on somebody who had actually been, if not killed in the ring, certainly, right after the fight. This one great live champions is joyous. This one is everything I love about boxing. It's everything I love about Competitive Boxing, it's amateur, it's the Golden Gloves. It's the level that I fought at many, many years ago. And it's an it's a sort of in between thing where you're not, you're not an Olympian, you're not an A, you're not a pro, but you are sort of an elite amateur. And that's what this whole thing is about. This is this documentary is about the Golden Gloves, the New York Golden Gloves that are held in Madison Square Garden every year. And it involves 500 Boxers from all the boroughs in New York. And now you can imagine all the personalities and all the stories and just just imagine what I want to say here like an American Idol. That's what this documentary is. It's an American Idol about Golden Gloves boxing, because everything is about story. It's about people that are being covered here takes place over three months, the New York Golden Gloves has spawned over 40 World Champions, that's more than the Olympics, the United States, you know, the United States involvement in the Olympics over the same amount of time, which is a very fascinating thing, because then that's why they call it cradle of champions because this is the breeding ground. These five boroughs in New York, this is where so many talented young people come out of whether they're black, Hispanic, white, I think the the commonality among among all of them is that they come from underprivileged backgrounds. And so when you see these people pinning their hopes on winning the Golden Gloves title is such an inspirational thing. And as some of these people are so inspiring to me, and they're so funny, and they're so warm, and some of the stories like for example, this particular documentary follows really three different people. One of them is Titus Williams, who was a featherweight and a featherweight. I believe I look back now and I think it's 115 pounds, something like that. So these are very little people, but a little badass is okay, so Titus Williams is a featherweight, an enormously gifted, funny, energetic young guy, who is just the just wants to do his best for his family for himself. He just loves what he's doing. And there isn't any. There isn't any other motivation for him but that and then you go to a young lady named Lisa Rodriguez. She is a single mother from the Bronx. She's got a couple of kids and she's fighting it. Now. This is something that never would have happened 20 years ago, but now they have women boxing, right? I'm not a big fan of that. And you can call me a chauvinist, whatever. I just don't like seeing women get hit. But this woman is so courageous. And she, she works so hard, and she can so much on this and understands what's going to happen for her. If she wins this. She understands the marketing of it. She understands the idea that she's she's a good looking girl, and she has the story. And she knows if she wins this thing, her life is going to change. So she works hard, she puts in the effort. Then another young fella named James Wilkins, who was a super featherweight, who lived in an apartment with 24 other people, Jesus, yeah, imagine that. And I think there was one bathroom, I'd have to go back and look at that. But all of these three, these are not these are not the stereotypical these are not the Fox News interpretations of neighborhood people. And the people come out of these neighborhoods and boxers, these are articulate, these are funny, these are jubilant people who want to win so badly and they don't have any illusions about what happens if they don't win, but they are energetically and joyously going for that brass ring. And I love I loved every minute of this, because you see these people coming out from situations that might brush some of us might crush other people, but they look at it as fuel to keep going to do that extra round to run that extra mile to you know, to do you know, to lose that extra pound to make weight. These are extraordinary people that are finally be given finally being given their due and my book, because they're not famous pros, I'm not going to give you the I'll give you a little bit of their backstory, but I'm not going to tell you how their lives and their careers play out. This documentary is a few years old, I think it's three or four years old, each of them had gone on to the pros, and each of them have met with a certain degree of success and a certain degree of failure but all of them did it with balls and with courage and with the kind of energy that I that I wish that I still had in my life and I think that people watching this would get such a such a kick out of seeing people enter this violent I mean it truly is it's a it's a violent sport, but all of them did it with good humor and with positive expectations and they did the work they did none of these people skated in right so watch it and then when you're done with it, look at what each of them became after the Golden Gloves whether they wanted or not, or whether they came up a little bit short of that's The fascinating part to me. So I recommend this to anybody who's looking for a rags to riches or a rags to something in the middle story was what channel was it on? This was originally on Showtime you can watch it on YouTube now. I fact I watched it on YouTube but I think there's some way you can get it on Showtime

Jeff Dwoskin 8:40

All right, Bob another fascinating deep dive into the world of boxing cradle of champions. Check that out on YouTube, I believe. All right up next getting ready for Thanksgiving. Is it even Thanksgiving without talking about Sansa sale is here to talk about I believe in Santa Fe I'm live episode 100 Take it away sale. Oh, let's I want it. Let's start off with the holiday. Oh, and I believe in Santa. I'm

Sal Demilio 9:08

the Rickey Henderson of the 100. I'll take that lead. I'll take

Howard Rosner 9:13

a chance Jeff getting that reference.

Sal Demilio 9:17

Who's following me? I'm following you that Ron? Ron has so this is another just holiday movie I chose this was in the top 10 Zack Zacks in the house, this isn't the top 10 of the Netflix metrics or whatever the hell that thing was. It's in the top three so Zack would have watched this last night and if he was still doing that, I don't know maybe he's doing that another podcast but anyway, it made the top three so I thought I'd watch it because I liked these romcom Christmas movies and basically this one, I tell you, Jeff, just keep your keep the tomato sauce jar slide you can just put that away.

Speaker 1 9:58

Oh no Oh, this is not

Sal Demilio 10:01

hit nah, this is not hit look now we all know what these movies are about. And if you have like a 14 year old if you're a parent out there watching this and there's millions of parents watching this all over the world if you have like a 1415 year old daughter and you know they want to see a Matthew McConaughey movie with his shirt off there she does, and you're not allowing that let her watch this movie. This is a perfect movie. For a really really young girl or guy that's just getting into the rom coms but the adults if you're if you're on a date, Bob if you got a date tomorrow and he got a glazed want to get a Christmas movie, or Jeff if you and your wife have your your sit on the couch, watch time, do not. Do not watch this. Make sure to tell you what not to put

Unknown Speaker 10:47

in. I don't have a date. I have a date with you tomorrow.

Sal Demilio 10:50

We have our show we do. Anyway, basically in a nutshell, the movie is about a girl that's a writer Hey, what do you know rom com movie a girl's a writer. I'm still waiting for that girl to be working on the plant over there. Hasn't happened yet, but one of these days is going to happen. She's a writer, and she doesn't like Christmas. She doesn't like Christmas time and all that. And during the July 4 weekend she meets a guy at a July 4 party and they date for five months until December 1 she finds out that he is just obsessed with Christmas he's just a Christmas nut and he believes in Santa Claus. He actually still believes in Santa Claus for kids under 10 years old. By the way,

Unknown Speaker 11:35

everybody sent us very

Sal Demilio 11:40

sorry about that Ducey is played by he plays Tom and then Christina more plays his girlfriend Lisa and then the daughter I want to get it right and she does a good job violet McGraw plays the little girl okay she's a single mother with a kid obviously every romcom movie as a single mother they got to have a kid in there because that's the way it is. Anyway they date and she finally again not to get into it but she finds out that he's obsessed with Santa Ana it kind of ruins their relationship because he's just so obsessed during the month of December and it kind of they get that fights over it. But all in all, they do a lot of like there's a lot of Christmas caroling in it they do a tree lighting ceremony. That's pretty cool. Other than that, the dialogue is horrible because they're trying to have this conversation where she's trying to figure out why he believes in stand up and it just doesn't work. I know what they're trying to do. But it just doesn't work. It falls flat on its face. They have a sled he has to build the daughter a sled for her sled ride, saying that they're going to do any builds at the things as big as the frickin golf cart. And the mothers not even worried that the kid is gonna go down this big icy hill with a you know with a man made sled I mean it just it's not believable. There's really bad parts in it. I don't know it's just I barely got through but I did I watched the whole thing and at the end I'm not I don't care if I spoil it nobody's gonna watch it basically, there's there's a wedding proposal at the end Tom literally proposes this is a workout the Santa thing somehow he proposes to her and it's literally one of the worst proposals I've ever seen on on film. So anyway, it's just I don't know how it's in the top 10 For my first marriage it's the only reason I watched it because in the top 10 I know tomato sauce first

Unknown Speaker 13:41

show is sauceless Sal

Jeff Dwoskin 13:43

is ruining

Bob Phillips 13:44

well Sal Sal is a puppy in human form. And so if he doesn't like anything, you know, it's shit.

Jeff Dwoskin 13:52

We're starting off the show with like Christmas.

Sal Demilio 13:56

Hopefully It Gets Better It Gets Better along the way. You know?

Jeff Dwoskin 13:59

I will tell you that the trivia I read on this movie is that Lisa the character Lisa and Tom they're married in real life

Howard Rosner 14:08

probably why there was no chemistry

Sal Demilio 14:13

actually looked into that. She's very good. Very good actors. He just didn't get the script. Whoever wrote it very good

Jeff Dwoskin 14:24

all right. Well, that was fun I had so I just feel bad when Fidel doesn't like his romcoms important All right, I think Sal just saved your Christmas by helping you to avoid I believe in Santa of next depress Darth joined us to talk about rise of Skywalker take it away. John, slash Darth is rise of Skywalker and

John Sullivan 14:57

yeah, so I just have a very intro sting relationship with this movie because of depressed star, I go and see the movies, the new ones basically and all the new movies that come out in the shows I basically see them the second I can just because I get like crushed with spoilers just from my feed and my mentions like anywhere with the movies would come out. So I went to see this one like right which came out I remember and I swear to God, I barely saw any of this movie because the press star as I was sitting there, I like went to check it. It had gotten suspended by Twitter, which is like, like, when that happens in Twitter. It's like you're done. So I

Jeff Dwoskin 15:34

was a little more context he had, like, I'm rounding he had 800,000 If not closer to a million followers. Okay, yeah. Wow, this was a panic moment. This is how it makes money, and Twitter. Just shut them down. Or why go ahead.

John Sullivan 15:50

I literally I did not watch the movie The whole time I was on my phone, like writing these appeals like trying to get in touch with anybody I could to unlock his account. And basically, I like did not watch the movie. So I got suspended. What ended up happening was I had was making these music videos, I have a Darth Vader costume. I was making these like long music videos of just all this footage. I had the Darth Vader costume over the years. But I was putting like very popular songs to it. I don't want to say who it was because their management or whatever had some sort of algorithm that could go into Twitter and find all the music. And I would use it for different things like it's Friday, and there's like a music video with like popular music of him dancing or whatever. So anyways, I got flagged a bunch of times, and I got suspended. And this is from December all the way to August, I was just shut out hold no explanation, I thought. I mean, it was gone from my life. And I have other Twitter pages. So there's like other things like and I ended up creating this Backup page. And there's the Instagram itself. This was like, completely gone. And then I had written to like this music management company to this guy. And I was like, Look, I'm really sorry, you know, I'll take it down. And he wrote back this email like angry, not angry, but just kind of like, No, we deal with this all the time, like people are stealing music because it's like the music industry trying to protect their copyright. And you know, on the internet, it's it kind of gets wild people are using music, your music there and like so long story short, I had never seen rise of Skywalker. Like for real. I have a son now who's getting like, really into Star Wars like I think Mandalorian has hooked in a lot of people to Star Wars, so especially the younger kids. So now he wants to see like all the movies, everything. So we sat and watched rise of Skywalker. So I've seen it a couple of times now. And here's my thing with the new Star Wars movies, I understand the criticism that there's like plot problems and blah, blah, blah. But I think you can literally say that about every single Star Wars movie. But like in the rise of Skywalker, there's an opening scene where Kylo Ren is basically murdering all the murderers like 100 of these creatures. And it's just this dark scene and this smoky planet. And he's just going absolutely crazy. And I'm like, you know, that's a great opening scene. And like, the music is very good. And like the visuals are very good. And yes, there's plot problems. And like I get all that. But I also think we're like hitting a place now where it's like almost like cruel to like, immediately hate something. So you can walk out of the theater and be like, You know what, that was pretty cool. I like that part of the movie, blah, blah, blah, you're sort of processing and then you get home and you go online, it's like a million different people are saying it's bad, and then you start getting influence on the movie being bad. So I think much like the prequels, like I think these sequels, like as they age, and you start to go back and re like, revisit them or if they're just on TV, you know, like, I'll always watch a prequel movie, if it's on TV, even like Attack of the Clones, which is technically arguably the worst of the Star Wars movies. But I liked rise of sky, I just thought it was entertaining. I mean, it's definitely not the best

Jeff Dwoskin 19:00

is that the last one, it's the last one that's

John Sullivan 19:03

been raised in the desert, she becomes a Skywalker, they've tried to tie together all these plot points and like, you get all that, but there were great lightsaber battles. Some of the visual stuff is really good. Like, you know, some of the battle scenes are really good. And it's like, you know, I think there's this sort of like, like, My son loves it. I just sort of view him as kind of like a kid looking at it without all the baggage of like the pretty Star Wars movies. And I'm like the online commentary and like all that I'm not necessarily saying this is like a great movie, per se more. So it's just like, I think they're entertaining. And I think they get a little too much hate because it's almost become cool online to like, make fun of stuff or it becomes a trend almost where it's like, Oh, I

Unknown Speaker 19:46

agree with you. Yeah,

Howard Rosner 19:47

and that happens with these series movies. Right? And you know, you look at the original three, and you look at them in the scope of what would be today Right? Right. If you had seen Star Wars, life changing at the time, just something we've never seen before then in my opinion Empire, which was the best of the original three by far. And then Jedi, which wasn't, you know, it was, it was the Ewoks ridiculous right? Story was kind of rehash. It's a great movie. I'm just saying, right? If that movie had come out if those three movies had come out in the atmosphere we have today with Reddit subgroups, and, you know, fan pages, Jedi would have been ripped to shreds when it came out. Because it was just a different time, as opposed to what we had to do, which was wait a few years, and then stand in line to see it. And then we're just excited because of the scope of it.

Jeff Dwoskin 20:50

This is my take on it is my hot take is I agree fundamentally with everything you just said. But I think the element that is missing that I think is detrimental. One is for some reason, internet has given fans, the somehow they think they have a right to actually have an opinion, right? We grew up when you handed me some movie, we watched the movie, we either liked the movie, or we didn't like the movie, we moved on with our lives. Right? So Star Wars Empire, and then return the Jedi come out within what six years or reasonable every couple of years, which was a normal pace for movies, right? When you add all of a sudden decades of things, and people can talk about them and there's just too much to get in your head. There's just no way you can win. There's no way you can win. And people have created ideas and concepts and stories and decades have passed because you've almost given up the right to do it because you're like oh well go back don't go back to me like going back is just as bad as that stupid Home Alone trailer this shot remake because there was no I don't want Macaulay Culkin in a home alone remake. I don't want a home alone remake. Some kid gets left somewhere and make it a new movie. It doesn't literally have to be the same exact movie that we've all seen it especially Disney. I'm not paying all that money. You just reboot a movie. Okay? Do something new. Anyway. So the other problem was Star Wars is they're too caught up. And now they're going to fall back into this problem where they're too caught up and everything having to do with Skywalkers everything has to do with the Skywalker, they could have easily just gone in a completely different direction. Right? They say with the Mandalorian that is great. And what do they do with the Mandalorian? They screwed it up and brought Luke Skywalker and I thought that was great. Oh, great. Oh, hang on, hang on. I got I don't mean screwed it up. Like it was bad. And it wasn't a cool moment. But now they've kind of put a little nail in their foot tied back into Skywalker before it was his whole its own thing. And so it's a universe it's an entire universe they Galaxy multiverse need to just do that. And so by going and making 789 Just the continuation and then yes, I had a problem because Carrie Fisher unfortunately died and so that changed things but I think time just creates unnecessary expectations when they made solo horrible I hate movies where they go backwards the prequels I hate when movies go backwards, because then you have to make it you have to make it fit in with the present. And if you didn't actually think about that in the beginning, then it's just it's just come on.

Sal Demilio 23:25

I totally agree. I saw a brand new episode of Star Trek today with William Shatner that was today.

Speaker 2 23:37

Brand new, except all of the red shirts made it back I noticed that's the

Jeff Dwoskin 23:42

best. That was the best Photoshop I

Howard Rosner 23:44

think I ever saw. The best meme going around today was the one say with the picture the guy from McDonald's from Planet of the Apes that said we should all dress like this

Jeff Dwoskin 24:02

All right, John Sullivan depress Darth himself with rise of Skywalker. I just know how you feel about all of these including I believe in Santa. You got so much ahead of the rise of Skywalker go check that out again, under depressed darts, eyes, maybe skip I believe in Santa unless you want to challenge Sal. But you know, Sal didn't like it. He likes everything. And cradle of champions. Looks like the one to find on YouTube. Cuddle up on your couch, grab your remote cross your own streams, and I'll see you next time.

CTS Announcer 24:39

Thanks for listening to this special edition of crossing the streams. Visit us on YouTube for full episodes and catch us live every Wednesday at 9:30pm Eastern time. Now turn this off and go watch some TV. And don't forget to tell your family. I'll be busy for a while.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai