71. Harry Styles, Clowns

Every Damn Thing

Phil, Jake and Jason are reunited with Natalie H. to rank Harry Styles and clowns on the List of Every Damn Thing.

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SHOW NOTES:

• Harry Styles has a role in Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk. It's not a major role, but it's bigger than the role of Guy Looking at Camera.
• Charli XCX is a pop star and songwriter from the UK. You know her voice from the hooks on "I Love It" and "Fancy". Phil appreciates her but doesn't know the name for what her fans call themselves (a la Harry Styles' “Stylers”) so he's kind of noncommittal in his fandom.
• Harry Styles’ fingernail polish line is called Pleasing and the pre-sale is already sold out.
• We make the obvious comparison of Harry Styles to Prince, and express doubts as to whether Styles is a songwriter on the level of Prince. Jake looked into it, and found that Harry Styles is in fact a songwriter (including songs for other artists), but unlike Prince he doesn’t appear to have sole credit on any songs. Also, he’s nowhere near as prolific a songwriter as Prince (at least so far).
• Natalie is right when she says Billy Porter wore the Christian Siriano tux dress design to the Oscars in 2019.
• Here’s the Vogue Magazine Harry Styles story that we discuss.
• “Hungry Heart” was written by Bruce Springsteen for the Ramones. If you listen to the song, you can hear how he sings it sort of like Joey Ramone and you can also imagine how Joey Ramone would have sung it. People have tried to recreate it. Phil likes to imagine it would have sounded like a song on End of the Century. It's not clear why they never recorded the song.
• According to Andrew Dice Clay, My Cousin Vinny was developed as a vehicle for him, but when The Adventures of Ford Fairlane flopped, they made it with Joe Pesci instead. In an impressive feat of inference and detective work, Phil and his wife figured this out by themselves. She said that it seemed like the part was written for someone younger and they just wracked their brains thinking of Italian-American comedic actors from the early 90s until they figured it out.
• Pee-Wee Herman maybe could have worked playing the title role in My Cousin Vinny but probably he shouldn't have done Italian-Face.
• We briefly discuss the Insane Clown Posse and how our podcast is pro-Juggalo.
• Bill Irwin is the king of clowns.
• Oscar-winner Julianne Moore plays a sexy clown in The Ladies’ Man.
• “Tears of a Clown” by Smokey Robinson is one of the greatest pop songs to ever be recorded.
• Here’s the Cecily Strong clown bit that was on Saturday Night Live.
• Bianca del Rio is the winner of Season 6 of Rupaul’s Drag Race and is often referred to as the “Clown in a Gown”.
• Jake refers to “Wavy Gravy’s Clown College” but it’s actually a Clown Camp called Camp Winnarainbow. It’s still in operation. Talk about glamping!
• Pickle Family Circus was a troupe in San Francisco in the ‘70’s and is said to have brought back the circus trend.
• The Man Who Laughs is a 1928 German film. Conrad Veidt's look in the title role is where the look of the Joker from Batman was pulled from in 1940.
• None of us could say for sure what the capital city of Tennessee is. It’s Nashville.
• Jake was wrong when he said San Francisco was never the capital of California. It was temporarily made the capitol in 1862 while Sacramento suffered from flooding. There was naver a capital building in San Francisco, though; the state legislature was held at the Merchants’ Exchange Building during the brief tenure in S.F.
• The I Love Lucy episode featuring Pepito the Clown that Jason refers to was actually a pilot episode that never aired during the original run of the show, and was apparently lost for decades.
• We ponder whether the term “hobo” is offensive, and decide that it isn’t. But we might be wrong.
• Violator from Spawn is a pretty sucky character.

ALSO DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE:
As Good As It Gets * Castaway * One Direction * Orville Peck * masturbation * Madison Square Garden * “Watermelon Sugar” * David Bowie * Madonna * Eternals * Olivia Wilde * Jason Sudeikis * Jenny Lewis * Dolly Parton * Steven Seagal * Hank Williams * John Wayne Gacy * Baskets (tv show) * circuses * firefighters * The M...