Dedicated C&B Fan Corrects Us on Top Gun Reference at 5:18AM

BUCK: I had a little moment of nostalgia there for the Reagan era — and obviously there have been some shows, Clay, that have hearkened back.

CLAY: Stranger Things.

BUCK: Stranger Things, of course, which really does remind me of the early days of video games and having little robots and things like this that were, you know, fascinating —

CLAY: The 8-bit Nintendo.

BUCK: I used to play Duck Hunt all the time. Duck Hunt was a game-changer for me on the original Nintendo system, and then I see that the Maverick movie which you and I have both seen —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — and we had Captain Flatley on, my girlfriend’s dad, did a great job talking about what it was like to be a part of the Top Gun school, which was really cool,

CLAY: Third-generation fighter pilot, by the way, which is as badass a of a way to think about your family legacy almost as is possible to exist.

BUCK: One of the Flatley naval aviators landed I think was the C-130 on an aircraft carrier. Kind of a big deal for anybody who’s in the aviation world.

CLAY: How about you fight kamikaze pilots during World War II! That’s kind of a big deal too.

BUCK: Yeah, a big deal. Yeah. It’s tough enough to be fighting against somebody else in dogfights and in aerial maneuvers. If they’re just trying to run at people, run at ships, that’s a whole other level. But Top Gun — which I think struck the balance of new visuals, technology used, et cetera, in the movie but also really did connect it nicely to the original what was it?

CLAY: 1986.

BUCK: The original 1986 movie, it’s definitely one of my top 10, probably top five eighties movies for me. It made $400 million domestically. People actually want to see movies where the Americans are heroes, where good triumphs over evil, where bravery is rewarded. It doesn’t have to all be some left-wing seminar coming out of Oberlin College’s gender studies department. There actually can be entertainment that we could all enjoy together.

CLAY: By the way, speaking of entertainment we can all enjoy together, I woke up this morning and one of our listeners, Greg, had emailed me. I got this email… He sent it at 5:18, first bright thing, early in the morning. The headline is: “Buck messed up on Top Gun.” So first of all, before I even read his email, I don’t know how we’ve ended up in a world where people reach out to me to share opinions about you on movies.

BUCK: No, I love it.

CLAY: But here’s what he said. I actually… We need to fact check this but I thought this was funny because we were just bringing it up. “Buck has messed up big time on the show with his Top Gun references.” I’m reading from his email. “When talking about Top Gun instructors, he always refers to Merlin. This is so wrong!” exclamation point. “Merlin was Cougar’s RIO in the first movie, not even a pilot. To make matters worse, Merlin was played by that freaking socialist liberal Tim Robbins. The Top Gun instructors were Michael Ironside as Jester –”

BUCK: Jester. Okay. Okay.

CLAY: “– and Tom Skerritt as Viper.”

BUCK: Oh.

CLAY: These were the guys —

BUCK: Ahhhh! I legitimately. I messed up Merlin and Viper.

CLAY: “I thought this was amazing: “Not some no-talent Merlin. Get it straight. On a serious note, love the show; you guys make Rush proud.”

BUCK: I stand corrected. I always say, I want to get it right, and when I get my eighties action movie trivia wrong, that cuts deep, that hurts so much.

CLAY: I just love that Greg was so committed to the show, 5:18 a.m. You know, his alarm went off this morning and he was like, I gotta make sure that Clay and Buck know that their Top Gun reference was not a hundred percent accurate. So thank you to Gregory. In all honesty, one of the most fun things — I think I can speak for you, too, Buck — about the one-year anniversary as we get up to it is how committed this audience has been on helping us to continue the fight that Rush was so committed to himself. And it’s emails like that, honestly, that I wake up early in the morning and I read it and I smile, and I wouldn’t have even thought to read it until we started talking about Top Gun. But those kind of things happen all the time. We appreciate your commitment to the show.

BUCK: And also, we took just kind of a two guys hanging out on the tone photo together and one of listeners responded to the photo with, “Yeah, good photo except Buck has his hand in his pocket like a psycho.” Is that a…? Is that not a thing? I was like relaxing —

CLAY: I didn’t know that hands in the pockets is a psycho move.

BUCK: I mean, I once was accused because I crack my eggs for scrambled eggs in the pan, not in a bowl first, of being a psycho egg cracker by a listener. So, you know, people take this stuff seriously, Clay. Hey, we read a lot of the opinions, we read a lot of what’s sent in, and we appreciate all the feedback.

CLAY: No, I love reading the comments anytime there’s a picture that’s out there just to see what people are going to react to so we were up on top of your building yesterday before dinner — and as soon as I tweeted it out, I was like, I gotta check out these comments so I got back late last night after dinner and I was just going through laughing as I read.

We get destroyed no matter what we wear, no matter what. It doesn’t matter what — we could be in tuxes at, you know, the inauguration of Donald Trump part two and people would find a flay with the way we behave.

BUCK: But I will say there were some people that gave some props: The Clay and Buck hair game? Strong.

CLAY: It is very strong.

BUCK: #JustFacts.