Wish it were a metaphor, but we're not working in metaphor. If I put before you on a table two items: a magazine filled with pictures of naked women on your left, and an actual naked woman on your right, which will you choose? If I put your rations on the right and Battalion colors on your left, which will you choose? Because Encino Man and Casey Kasem are so far to the opposite side of that concept that they'll tell you to choose the porno. That this is the more meaningful choice. That's how they are able to live, by putting the moto shit so far above the real shit that it starts looking like valor, like a better choice, to go with the things you're being told to love instead of the things you know you love. I do think that there are things bigger than us that you can't put your finger on: our country, our world, our people. But I think it's reductive and naïve -- and most of all lazy -- to go the extra step and say that the things that signify those things are more important than the things they represent. They aren't.

Encino Man is playing the management game, so he goes down the line to Baptista, calling him "Baptist" with a confused look, and Baptista rattles off some Portuguese nonsense to the effect that their equipment is fucked up and the whole thing is stupid. Encino Man readily agrees, gratefully, because all he sees is the smile on Baptista's face. What cartoonist was it, was it a Far Side, translating how it actually sounds when you talk to dogs? "Blah blah blah FIDO blah blah FIDO GOOD BOY blah blah blah FOOD blah FIDO." That's Encino Man. Thinking he's two for two, he looks at Doc Bryan. No! Don't do it! Doc tries to put him off, twice, with Holsey in the corner praying he doesn't open up both barrels like he wants to. I was horrified to think about what was about to happen, and very happy too. Every guy standing there is thinking the same screwby thing, like, "This is bad news, yes. But damn, where's the popcorn?"