Thoughts on starting a new job while watching the 1999 Classic, Dick

Goal of this blog post: to prove to myself (and other overly ambitious data scientists or those interested in television analytics) that personally curated content can lead to weird thought patterns.

NOTE: I am not in any way affiliated with Roku. Apparently I’m just very passionate about their product when I’m running on little sleep.


  • old beat up refurbished iphone 6 with a plan which until very recently was paid for by my former company. Sim card changed, but still questionably secure.
  • 4K Roku TV that an amazing sales person at Costco convinced us we wanted. Turned out to be my favorite tv of all time. And for the low low price of half the price of a smart tv.


What is this new TV streaming app I’ve never seen before? (sidenote, when I just went back to this screen the This is Us picture was replaced with an annoucement that Boy Meets World is now on Hulu. Smartly played Hulu)


Free TV for me? As in just for me? As in aggregating my user preferences and clustering me with other users that have similar watching behavior? Genius, that’s pretty much my idea, but in execution so of course it’s better.


Whaaaat Roku has a handy search feature that searches across all streaming sites? Let’s search this movie that I remember being hilarious and seems super relevant to the current state of the world but no one has ever heard of. Is Roku going to judge me for using the search term “Dick”? Wait, is this movie titled Dick so it can fly under the radar? That’s my idea, to use loaded terms to fly under the search radar. Wait, the Koch Brothers do that so much better than I ever could, is that why their last name is a homophone with a company that is basically America’s greatest accomplishment?


NOTE: Since watching this movie (twice in two days) it has since been taken off my Roku channel? Coincidence? Probably.

NOTE p2: When it was on the Roku Channel Ryan Reynolds and Will Ferrell were first billed, Will Ferrell plays Bob Woodword, Ryan Reynolds’s part was so small I had no memory of him being in the movie. So I turned to imdb.

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This is terrible search engine optimization. What happened to you imdb, who owns you? 

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Oh that’s right.

Okay let’s get to the actual movie. Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams play ditsy 15 year old girls who get to the bottom of the Watergate Scandal by stumbling their way into a friendship with Richard Nixon after getting lost on a class field trip. Best side plot line ever, Kirsten Dunst’s brother hides his pot in a walnut jar, hidden in plain sight in their kitchen, tells her it’s just the walnut leaves, she and Michelle Williams make cookies with the contaminated walnuts and they feed the resulting cookies to everyone in the White House.

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Am I on to something? Will I be rewarded for finding out about this amazing Roku channel that is pretty much talking to me right now by finding this movie and watching it? I’ve googled “what streaming sites is Dick on” with very terrible results enough times to conciveably trigger some sort of watch list. 


Ha Dick on TV, that’s a funny image.

Wait, I’m really on to something, all this deep study of the Bachelor is finally paying off. Politics is basically the bachelor. Richard Nixon = Dean Unglert, celebrity status sucks. And if Dean had to sign an iron clad contract not to disparage the Bachelor after his unflattering edit I can’t imagine what Richard Nixon had to sign. Maybe if I take a picture of it sideways the robots at the CIA won’t realize I’m on to them. 


The CIA drives around in a van that says Plumbers? That’s not suspicious at all, flying under the radar. Oh wait, Plumbers is a superset of my new team name (Player Lifecycle Marketing, the u is for fun). Do I work for the CIA?

Pretty much. I have to take this video sideways and from far away because it’s so relevant to my life it has to be proprietary. 


Baby Ryan Reynolds, I remember you, how could anyone forget? Oh wait, I forgot you were in this movie. 


Are burps the only thing that are real? Is Elon Musk right, are we really just living in a simulation? Is this movie at this time a break in the simulation? Or am I just being personally recruited by Elon Musk after googling him so many times?

DEAN?!?! DEAN UNGLERT? Are you in on this too? Is the Bachelor just a front for the CIA? Do they have a hit out on Dean for being so vocal and candid about his experience on the show? Do they pick exotic locations because some Bachelor producer (or possibly Mike Fleiss) has to travel around the world to kill operatives? I knew Chuck Barris wasn’t crazy for writing Confessions of a Dangerous Mind


Oh I am just high? It’s possible. I do live in Seattle. Yeah the Bachelor probably has no connection to the CIA. 

**You’re so Vain by Carly Simon starts playing for the closing montage. This is the moment the whole movie has been leading up to, Nixon’s resignation. Brought down by two 15 year old girls just trying their best to be helpful. **

This song is so iconic, there’s no way they could have messed with this song. Wait what is Gavote?? Are they cutting up the flag?? I guess they can, they pretty much saved America by getting Nixon stoned enough to stop the war. I better shake this video as I’m taking it so it can’t be traced by robots owned by the CIA. Or just because I don’t want to have to pay for clips from this movie when I present my case to an interested party. Is that how movie rights work?


Clouds in my coffee? Carly Simon, you’re deep. Maybe this is just a really great movie made by someone who likes puns. I didn’t think puns were funny, but maybe they’re just too high brow for me to understand because this is probably my favorite still from a movie, punny sign and all.


SUPER DRUGS ARE REAL?!?! Or maybe the message is just follow your bliss and it doesn’t matter if you make money. Or maybe I should just invest my money in big pharma. Was this really a documentary hidden in plain sight with amazing actors a la HBO’s hit movies, Game Change and Too Big to Fail? Only one way to check, let’s consult the most reputable source I know. 

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Yep, basically a documentary. 


In hindsight this maybe wasn’t the best thing to watch instead of sleeping.