Am I Becoming the Grumpy Old Man? Mandalorian, Transformers & the Death of Hip-Hop

Pedro, are we good? Yes. And we're on. Well, I paid theater prices for something that seemed like it should have been streamed on TV, on a streaming app. What I mean by that is I finally watched last night. I'm late to the party. I went with my gut on this, but I watched the Mando Grogu movie that was set in theaters a couple months ago. And I kind of went with my gut. I'm like, you know, I watched this series on Disney Plus and I'm like thinking, I go, okay, first season was killer. I got into the plot. Second season was good. And then there was this whole Boba Fett season that got confused. It kind of mixed the Mandalorian and the Boba Fett. And then I just kind of got lost. And quite frankly, I don't even remember if there was a Mandalorian season three. I'm not sure if there was or not. But in any event, I said, well, let me just go you know, watch it on Apple. Plus I went to go do that. And lo and behold, it was 1999. They want you to buy this movie. And I'm like, what do I do? So I did the gamble. I said, well, let me just go ahead and get the Disney Plus app. And you can't even do that now. There's always something plus with it. You can't get Disney Plus by itself. And there's like a Hulu mix thing. So I said, well, you know what? I can start watching these other Star Wars series that I'm kind of behind on. So I just downloaded Disney Plus for the month, get caught up on some of these things that I've been missing. And lo and behold, yes, my gut was correct. Who in their right mind would even think about sending this to theaters? I don't know. I just don't know. I mean, am I getting, am I, Pedro, am I becoming the cranky old man here at the Jeff Adams show? I hope not, Pedro. No. Back me up, man. You got my back. But I feel like I'm becoming the grumpy old man when it comes to movies. I just don't know. They don't make them like they used to. Granted, it wasn't bad, but it was, I felt like, well, because I was, I was watching it on my computer, but I couldn't imagine paying money to go see this in a movie theater because I would feel like gypped. Yeah, they had the whole IMAX experience, but I saw what they did. I'm like, I don't even know. And it's sad. I don't know what the Star Wars stuff, the whole thing with Disney. I just don't know what to think about it anymore. I mean, I felt like when the Force Awakens happened, pretty cool. They retold the Star Wars story and, you know, I watched it and granted, I probably saw that movie 25 times in the movie theater. Reason why I was separated and had a bad marriage and Instead of fighting, I would just go out and see Force Awakens at night. So I saw it 25 times. So maybe I'm a little connected to it more than anything that I want to be. But I didn't think it was bad. Most people said, oh, that was a pile of garbage. I didn't like it. But I thought, you know, for a new generation, kind of retelling the story in a different light. Cool. Don't like what they kind of did with some of the characters. It didn't give us what we wanted. But since then, I have not been completely happy with what they've done with the Star Wars franchise. And when they released, you know, The Mandalorian, man, I was like, finally, something that is great. Now, granted, I like the Obi-Wan Kenobi series that they did. I thought that was good. I thought they should do more of that. But The Mandalorian series was original. It was something new, and it was great. Season one was just fantastic. I was like, man, I can't get enough of this. And you had to wait long periods of time for these seasons to happen. So, With this movie, I give it a C plus because granted there was nothing outstanding about the storyline. I felt like I was, this was, should have been Mandalorian season three or four. Excuse me if I'm wrong on that. The people that are on this thing, you want to rebuke me and correct me, correct me please. But that's just, it just tells you that it just did not leave that mark for me. It doesn't mean it's a bad flick. I enjoyed it. It had some moments, but if I paid money to go see this, I just don't know. And what Pedro, what are you saying? Yeah. Okay. I'm going to get to that. And then granted, I I'm thinking about this coming weekend, this Friday years ago, back in 19, was it 86? When was it? 19? I think it was 1986. And if, if you are on the money and you know, these dates, please correct me. I'm just going off the cuff here. flying off the cuff. I went to go see a movie that hit theaters in 1986. My pocket was loaded. I was ready to get my candy, my popcorn, to sit down with my best friend, Jeff Adrian, because we lived and breathed Transformers. And that was the only franchise that ever pushed out Star Wars for me. I was a big Star Wars fanatic playing with the figurines when I was a kid. And Transformers came along and rocked my world. And I said, Star Wars who? Transformers was everything. They had a daily cartoon that came out and it was amazing. Remember the VCRs? I'm showing my age. You had the VCRs. You had to set a timer for the VCR. I'd always have it record. So even when it wasn't on live, I could play back the cartoon and watch it over and over again. But we were obsessed with these Transformers. We'd buy the toys. We'd play with them. And granted, we were probably a little geeky because we were probably at the ages of 12 or 13 still playing with toys. Most people said, oh, that's sweet. But I guess it kept us out of trouble. Most 12 and 13-year-olds these days are doing a lot of other things. So granted, I tell this story because we're releasing Transformers, the animated movie, this coming Friday. And I've got to tell you that it is, I'm debating this. Should I go see this movie, go pay my money? Because when I was 13, 12 or 13 years old, I can't remember, maybe 13, probably, I left devastated. I left grieved because the great leader, Optimus Prime, died in the movie. And if you've never seen it, spoiler alert, he died. It ruined the franchise and it was, it hit us hard. I think it just, it hit me hard. It hit my best friend, Jeff Adrian hard. We left the theater. And I remember my mom in the mall, she used to work at bell cleansing. She goes, how was the movie? And we just, we thought we lost someone that we knew the great optimist prime had passed away and they killed some other great characters that we loved. And we're like, what are we going to do now? I don't even want to play with transformers anymore. And maybe we were getting interested in girls. I don't know the weight of it. I don't know. But then again, you know, the new series came out with Rodimus Prime and the series, a new cartoon series. I watched it. I supported it. But it just was never the same. And I think Hasbro knew they made a mistake. They knew that they made a crucial mistake of killing a beloved character off, which was stupid because it killed a fantastic franchise. So bad that towards the end of Generation 1, they finally... brought him back from the dead. And I think it had a couple, there was a headmaster series after that. And then after that, it was no more. The Transformers cartoon was gone. So to go to the theater, the reason why to go to the theater is probably because of this, because I'm thinking that I want to relive this. Yeah. And granted, I watched it again on VCR tapes when I was younger. I even watched it as adult, the movie. I had a DVD, but through a divorce, I don't know where the DVD's at. I don't know. So I've seen it several times. I kind of had my closure with it, but they doing something with this movie, they're adding something to the end of the movie. It's either the beginning of the end and it has Optimus prime. Like there was a teaser where he was floating in outer space and his, his hands do like this. And I was like, what? So it's like Hasbro is still apologizing for killing our beloved leader, Optimus prime all these years later. Yes. I got into the, um, you know, the movies, obviously after that with all the action movies that came out, my mind just went blank. I see someone in my head, I just can't spit out their name, the director. It'd come to me in a second. But I got on all that. My son was young. I got him into Transformers. He got into Transformers because of the live action movies with the Transformers. So I've always supported Transformers and I still do to this day. But the Generation One was everything for me. And I think it was beloved by so many people like my age that grew up with it. And I think this is their, this is what they're calling the apology tour. So I don't know what they're doing with this. Was them, they're going to make the movie like some kind of an illusion. Like it never happened. And Optimus prime lived. He was in a dream sequence. I don't know. Now I'm really geeking out here, but I think maybe I'm borderline. Maybe Friday night, I might go see the movie. Who knows? But I wanted to talk about it. And maybe I'm now on the Jeff Adams show. Maybe I am the old guy, the grumpy old man that complains about everything. Woe is me. Why are they doing this? I guess I am. I'm going to be 54 here in a couple of weeks. And so maybe I am becoming that crouchy old man that just goes, what are they doing? So I was eating dinner before I was recording this program. And I was eating at a place here in Florida. I think in Central Florida, they're kind of... a franchise that you can be a private owner with. They're called Beef or Brady's. And it's quite frankly, it's like hit and miss. I don't know why I went there. I think there's a Publix in the shopping center. I said, you know what? I got to grab a couple of things. So let me just go eat there. I sat down and. I ordered something fantastic. It was a, it's probably the best one I've ever had. I'm a big sloppy Joe guy and I love sloppy Joe's. I think they're fantastic. If you cook them right, you got the right bread, blah, blah, blah. You toast the bread. There's a whole process. So I saw something on the menu. They had like a $ 10 menu and I was like, you know what? Let me get that. So The sloppy Joe, it was a sloppy Joe's grilled cheese. They had peppers on it, onions. And I got to tell you, it was unbelievably great. It was great. I don't know if I was hungry, but then, you know, I was paying my bill and I wanted to tell the waitress and she thought I was going to complain. I guess there's a lot of complaints there. Cause you know, the foods, I got to tell you, it's like hit and miss. And I said, I got to tell you in her face, her whole demeanor just dropped. Like I was going to try to get my way of out of paying the bill. And I said, I got to tell you, this is, I'm a big sloppy Joe guy, but this was really perfect. This was unbelievably great. And she just goes, oh, oh, wow. Wow. I'm so glad you said that. I'm so, that just made my night. So I don't know, but I was, I was telling the truth. It was a really good sandwich. I wasn't trying to fluff it up and, you know, share some kind of story, but I was telling the truth, Pedro. Pedro, I was telling the truth. Yes. Yeah. And so I'm walking out of before Brady's and here comes the old man thing. You know, I used to love, I still do. I love the classic hip hop. I grew up on classic hip hop, their original OG hip hop. When they were taking samples and the break beats and they were putting them together, it was just a golden years of hip hop. No better years in hip hop than that. It influenced me to become a rapper myself early in my late teens, early twenties. I was inspired by that culture and I was just walking out and, you know, and I granted that, okay, give me some grace, or maybe I should give this guy some grace. I used to have a loud system in my car. I went in debt. I had this hoopie of a car, and I put this two 15-inch Wilfers in the back of my car. I had the base in the back of my trunk where it rattles the whole car. Yeah, so I'm not to each his own, but I'm walking out of Publix. Yeah, I was walking out of Publix because I just left people at Brady's, got a couple things at Publix, walked out, and This guy just has this loud system. And it's just the rap today is just not good. They're not rhyming. It's like they're singing this. And it all sounds the same. And I'm like, dude, why don't you just stop doing rap music and start singing? Why this? And I guess a lot of people like it, but I just think that's been the death of hip hop. it's been the death of hip hop. Granted, I go back to the classics and maybe I'm just an old man now, but KSR one run DMC, the classic beastie boys, public enemy. Oh, cool. Jay, the fat boys, you know, third base house of pain, Cypress Hill, all these guys that were just fantastic. You just don't hear them anymore. And I'm thinking that, but I also said, well, maybe it's just where I'm at because I, I, and it's not the, It's not to discredit what hip-hop is because it truly was a huge movement like we've never seen anything before. And I'm excited about that to continue to push that. I'm excited about pushing that legacy and sharing the knowledge that I know or I was a part of. But I feel that it's just lost its oomph. And I think early on with me, and the thing, I think why this happened to me, because I wasn't the greatest MC. There's some dope MCs out there that take lyricism to another level, that can just freestyle out the butts. But I was more like a producer making the beats and DJ, and I could rap, but I'd never consider myself like this rapper. So I got immensely bored easy doing the music, and I liked all these other things. I said, so I want to just like you know, put everything in a blender and I put a hip hop influence. So I've done a lot of fusion records after that. And, you know, obviously I didn't sell millions of records, but I wanted to do something different. I started singing, I found my voice. So the music I started doing afterwards, I just started straight singing and I kind of left rapping behind altogether. But there's just something about that classic sound. So when I hear like rap of today and I just don't get it. And maybe, you know, at some point, The people that listen to this, my kids that listen to that type of music, they'll be my age and go, I don't get it. I don't get it. I don't know why, what happened to our rap music. But I see a younger generation getting more into punk music. I see a generation getting more into alternative music, more rock music. It's like coming back. And with the world of AI and everybody becoming a musician now with AI, like I prompt a song. It's a whole different world now. And I'm not against AI music at all. Because that's how it was when sampling came out, when people were just like taking riffs of song and sampling, put a beat, a break beat over it and start rapping. They go, you stole my song. AI is kind of the same thing. We don't know where it's generating, it's getting its inspiration from, but a lot of people are producing and making music with AI. And I think it's a good thing. I think, you know, for me, it's a good way to get ideas instead of calling a guitarist and prompting some things. And I take it in a student and I redo everything. I think it's good for demos. and some things that you possibly can't afford as well. But yeah, it's a whole different world, a whole different music game. And I don't know, I went off on that tangent and I've been talking really, really fast because I'm really, really excited. And I have been struggling as of late talking. I don't know what it is. I try to, I see it, but I can't say it and it won't come out of my mouth. And so I feel like I have to slam on the gas a little bit and go, hey, hey, hey. But in any event, if you enjoyed this, I'm going to tell you with the Jeff Adams show, I'm going back to what I love to do. I'm not going to try to format and be somebody who I am not. And I'm going to do this type of format and I don't care if YouTube takes it, accepts it, rejects it or whatever, but this is who I am. I'm getting back to the roots of what made the Jeff Adams show and get more on a consistent schedule every week. You can catch me here every single week, Lord willing here on the Jeff Adams show to share my inside of just culture, entertainment, and whatever I might be on my chest that day. Until next week, see you real soon. Mike's seeing the theaters. He's going to see Transformers this Friday. See you. I've seen it a thousand times. Who cares? All right, Pedro, cut me out of here. All right? Pedro, you're slow. Come on, Pedro. Come on. Yes. When Jeff is buying, the prime ribs frying.