Ep. 1861 - I Watched The Worst Netflix Woke Slop Ever Made, And I Barely Survived The Experience

Ever hit a wall in the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Here's what's actually happening. Coffee only briefly blocks adenosine, the chemical that tires you out. When it stops working, your system is flooded and you crash. Modafinil is a prescription treatment that works in a completely different way. Modafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate, and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy. Go to mod.com, that's M-O-D dot com, for a free consultation. And use code DAILYWIRE to get 10% off your first order plus free shipping. That's code DAILYWIRE at mod.com to get free shipping and 10% off your first order. You know, I don't watch a lot of slop. Generally speaking, I am anti-slop, but every once in a while, a bit of slop catches my eye. There's something about the slop that I find intriguing, mysterious. I become slop-curious. And when these occasions arise, I know that I will almost always regret giving in to that temptation, but sometimes the slop. impulse is too strong. The siren song of the slop is simply too much to resist. And that's why today, I'm going to offer a review of what is, at the moment, the most popular piece of slop on Netflix. It's also perhaps the sloppiest slop in the entire history of slop. And the show is called Below. Okay, the latest streaming hit that millions of people have watched and already forgotten. My wife and I endured the entire thing. And now I'm going to tell you about it. With all the detail I can remember, as the memory mercifully fades, I do this partly as a warning to anyone who might be on the verge of succumbing to the temptation to watch this atrocity, and partly because I wasted five hours of my life on this thing, so now I will waste 20 minutes of yours. Fair is fair. The logline of this show, which is again called Below, at least as it was presented to me by a few close associates, who I will murder in cold blood if I ever see again, is that it's Jaws, but with a giant, killer squid. Below is a sort of Jaws-like story about a giant squid that's essentially terrorizing a town. Needless to say, in theory, Jaws with a squid is an excellent elevator pitch. That's what made it irresistible. It's like heroin for white middle-aged dads. I don't think you appreciate the gut reaction people have to these things. We love Jaws, and we tend to think of like most non-Jaws movies and shows, in Jaws terms. That's how we describe them to each other. Like, The Grey is Jaws, but with wolves. Anaconda is Jaws with a snake. Cujo is Jaws with a dog. Tremors is Jaws with giant worms. The Godfather is Jaws with the mafia. The Devil Wears Prada is Jaws with a fashion magazine. Jaws is Jaws with Jaws, and so on. You know, and Jaws comes in many forms. But as far as I know, nobody had ever done Jaws with a squid, which is an unfortunate and rather baffling oversight. As a huge fan of Jaws, and really an even bigger fan of squid-based horror, that seemed to me like a match made in heaven. But then came the Netflix sleight-of-hand trick. I thought I was getting some entertaining killer squid action, but I got something else entirely. You know, it's like in Jaws when Jaws thinks he's about to eat somebody at the end, but instead ends up with a scuba tank lodged in his throat, which Brody shoots, causing him to blow up. That's basically what Netflix does to its audience trillions of times across billions of pieces of content. You would think I'd have learned my lesson by now, and I have, but again, it's Jaws with a squid. I wanted to see the squid. You can't blame me. And I'm not the one on trial here, so back off. Now, the story follows Josh Hartnett, who last starred in the movie Pearl Harbor and was then exiled into the wilderness for 25 years to atone for the movie Pearl Harbor. And now he's back, and based on his performance, and the show, it seems he has not repented of his sins at all. Hartnett plays a man with a tragic past that I won't get into, it doesn't matter, who lives at a remote fishing village in Newfoundland. And I will note here that Hartnett and all the other actors have adopted Newfoundland accents for this series. I have no idea whether the accents are accurate. You go on, Ollie. I just need to stay and see this thing through. If that is really how people in Newfoundland speak, they should stop. You gotta stop, okay? They should not speak at all. Especially not on camera, where the rest of the world might be subjected to it. And I mean no offense to the good people of Newfoundland, but it is just the worst accent I have ever heard in my life. It is the ugliest accent of all time. Like, it's basically what you would get if you took the most grating parts of the Canadian accent, and the Pennsylvania accent, and you mushed them together and then added like a tablespoon of Irish, and a cup of speech impediment, and a little dusting of Elmer Fudd. It is an ungodly sound. It is the sound of some ancient curse issuing forth from the bowels of the earth. It is such a bad accent that the New Jersey accent sounds like a romance language by comparison. But even this, I could forgive if the show were competently made, or at least watchable, or at least not the most unpleasant thing anyone has ever put on film, to include the Hindenburg crash and the JFK assassination. Now, Josh Hartnett, I don't remember any of the characters' names, and it doesn't matter, lives in the village with his annoying deadbeat son, played by an actor apparently named Charlie Heaton. And with all due respect to Charlie Heaton, and, you know, I don't know whether this just is because of the makeup they use for the show, or whether he has some kind of genetic condition, but he looks like Harry Styles, if Harry Styles had a decades-long methamphetamine addiction. And put more generously, he looks like, kind of like a Rite Aid brand version of Harry Styles. Again, I'm not trying to be rude, but every actor in this thing, it's actually pretty remarkable, resembles a Rite Aid brand version of a better actor. So, Hartnett's daughter is Rite Aid Ellen Page, before she went trans. Hartnett's love interest, the brilliant female scientist character, looks like Rite Aid Emily Blunt. The actor who plays Hartnett's other son is, I think, a guy who actually just works at Rite Aid. And, of course, Josh Hartnett is Rite Aid John Bernthal, who himself was once Rite Aid Josh Hartnett, and they're both still Rite Aid Christian Bale. In any case, these are the principal characters, along with Hartnett's sister, who lives in the village and appears to be involved in some kind of thruple arrangement that is hinted at, but never explained or shown in detail, thank God. There's also a boyfriend of the pre-trans Rite Aid Ellen Page, who, and I swear I'm not saying this just to stretch the joke out, it just is true, the boyfriend of pre-trans Rite Aid Ellen Page looks like post-trans Rite Aid Ellen Page. So, there are Ellen Pages running all over the place in this show, except for the real Ellen Page, who apparently decided that this series was even too woke for her. Now, the boyfriend character doesn't do anything essential to the plot. You could remove him from the story, and it wouldn't make any difference at all. And this is, in fact, true of every other character in the show, and every random subplot that pops up and goes nowhere. The brother character, not Meth Head Harry, but the other one, is being chased by two evil henchmen because he owes money to a mob boss or something. It's never explained why he owes money, or who the mob boss is, or how much money he owes. At the end, one of the henchmen gets eaten by the squid, and the other one, who has no dialogue through the first five episodes, except to tell us that he's a Somali immigrant, survives and suddenly becomes best friends with the brother he spent the entire show trying to kill. This whole subplot could be cut from the show. It would change nothing in the story. It appears to be there just as a very convoluted way of wedging a Somali immigrant with a heart of gold into the plot. I have to imagine there were much more efficient ways of achieving that goal. I mean, you could have made the brilliant female scientist Somali, for example. That's much more efficient. But I guess that even for a show about a giant homicidal squid, the idea of a brilliant Somali scientist would stretch the suspension of disbelief beyond its breaking point. So they couldn't do that. Fall leaves have one of the best marketing campaigns in nature. When they're attached to trees, people drive for hours to look at them and take pictures. The moment those same leaves land in your gutters, they become wet garbage, threatening your foundation. Same leaf, a dramatically worse location. This is where seasonal charm turns into home maintenance. Claw gutters can send rainwater spilling over the sides onto your landscaping and around your foundation. Waiting for a storm to expose the problem is a very expensive way to remember that your gutters exist. Leaf filter helps protect your home before that happens. Their local pros inspect and clean out your gutters and repair or replace them if necessary before installing leaf filter. It's surgical grade stainless steel micro mesh keeps common debris out while directing water away from your foundation where it belongs. Every installation comes with a no-claw guarantee and a lifetime transferable warranty. So enjoy the leaves while they're on the trees. Once they reach your roof, the admiration period is over. Protect your home. Before issues arise with LeafFilter, America's number one rated gutter protection system. Schedule an inspection for free by visiting LeafFilter.com slash Walsh to secure an estimate locked in for a full year. Take advantage of saving up to 35% off when going to LEAFFilter.com slash Walsh today. Requires minimum purchase. Certain restrictions apply. Contact representative regarding warranty and promotional details. Between work, errands, and family, we're all busy. And with elections around the corner, it can be hard to find time to vote. Waiting until Election Day is a risk. A flat tire or a sick child could mean you miss out on making your voice heard. That's why I need you to go vote early. Go to GOPvotes.org, find your polling place, and bank your vote today. If you live in the critical Senate battleground states of Alaska, Michigan, Maine, Ohio, Iowa, or Texas, early voting is already underway this week. The radical left has won Democrat primaries across the country, and their turnout machine is ready to swarm the place. And if you're not going to vote in the polls this fall, that's why you need a plan to vote, too. President Trump is counting on you. Our movement is counting on you. I'm counting on you. Don't wait. Head to GOPvotes.org. And make your plan to vote early today paid for by SLF PAC, not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. So anyway, the story kicks off with the arrival of a giant iceberg in the harbor. And along with the iceberg, various villagers and tourists start going missing. And it turns out that eating ice from the iceberg will make you feel better. It will make you extremely sick, and it might cause you to go insane and drown yourself in the ocean. Now, you would think that a toxic, psychedelic iceberg wouldn't prove to be much of a threat because all you have to do is not eat it. And the temptation to eat a giant iceberg floating miles away in the ocean should be pretty easy to resist. Like, I know that if I were in a fishing village, and I don't mean to Monday morning quarterback this thing, but if I was in a fishing village, and somebody pointed at a huge iceberg offshore and said, "Don't eat that. It might make you drown yourself," I would say, "Sure, fine." Like, I really wasn't planning to eat the iceberg anyway. Why would I do that? But now that you've told me that, I will continue with my plan not to eat the hunk of ice floating in the harbor. Not eating that iceberg is one of the easiest things I've ever not done. I would say. And that'd be that. But for the residents of this village, and I don't know if this is a Newfoundland thing or what, but they have like this fetishistic urge to eat the iceberg, and it overwhelms them. Like, you have to understand that so much of the plot hinges on the unwillingness of the characters to stop eating an iceberg. And many of them consequently get sick and drown themselves. And meanwhile, the giant squid is stalking the iceberg. And it's like killing the waters and killing anyone in its path. And to make matters worse, there's apparently a ghost. There's a skinny white girl with long black hair hanging over her face, which is the form of every ghost in every horror movie from like '98 to 2017. And now again in 2026 for some reason. And she's stalking the village. And in particular, she is tormenting poor meth-head Harry Styles. Now, early on, meth-head Harry Styles goes out in a boat with a friend and shoots at the iceberg. And the squid doesn't like that very much and responds by chopping Harry's friend in half. But leaves Harry himself alone. I guess because he already looked mostly dead from the first scene of the episode one. So it was no point in killing him. And this speaks to one of the problems with a premise like this. And to some extent, this is a problem shared by Jaws also. Which is that the deadly threat is, again, extremely easy to avoid. If there's a weird poisonous iceberg in the harbor and a monster squid murdering random sailors and swimmers, all you really need to do is knock him down. Not go in the water. Now granted, this is infamously a problem for the horror genre in general. Like if there's a haunted house, just don't go in the house. If there's a chainsaw murderer living in a creepy cabin in the middle of nowhere, just go literally anywhere except the five-mile radius around that guy's property. If there's a demonically cursed videotape that will kill you if you watch it, just don't watch it. And so on. So the job of the writers then is to manufacture plausible reasons why the characters would put themselves in the path of whatever hellish force the plot revolves around. And writers have varying degrees of success in that regard. But in Below, the writers dispense with any plausibility concerns whatsoever and they have their characters do things like get drunk and take a boat out to the pathogenic iceberg in the middle of the night in squid-infested waters to shoot the iceberg. They also rely heavily on my least favorite dopey Hollywood trope of all the dopey Hollywood tropes, which is that characters possess important life or death information, but fail to convey it to the other characters. Or they do convey it, but the other characters don't believe it for some reason. I hate this trope in any show or film. A plot where like this whole thing could be solved if you just told the other person this information that you have. And there's no reason to not tell them. At one point, Josh Hartnett and the Scientist Lady, they watch camera footage of the evil squid dragging two unsuspecting tourists off the beach and into the water where they're then eaten alive. And for anyone who's ever lived in a tourist area, this is one of the feel-good moments of the show. But later, Hartnett and Scientist Lady are trying to convince the other villagers that there's a giant squid in the water. And for reasons that are never explained, they don't show the footage they have in their possession. The villagers, they're like, "There's no squid out there." And the villagers are like, "There's not a squid. What are you talking about?" "It's on tape. Just watch the tape." But they never do. So the villagers therefore spend a while believing that there is no squid and that all the suspiciously squid-like deaths happening in the neighborhood must be the result of COVID or something. So if you're keeping track, okay, we have four major problems facing our heroes. There's a giant killer squid. Pretty big problem. There's an iceberg with apparently supernatural mind-control powers. There's a ghost, a white girl with a bad haircut haunting the village. And there are really terrible accents that cause anyone who hears them to gouge their eardrums out with ice picks. That last is more of a problem for the viewer than the characters. So that leaves three problems the characters have to sort out. Now, I don't need to spend much time explaining how these issues are resolved because they aren't. The show spends several episodes implying that there might be more to this series of squid than just a squid. Because of, like, the mind-controlling iceberg. There's the ghost. There must be more to this squid. This is not just a normal squid, you think. But then it turns out, no, the squid is just a regular squid. It's just a squid. That's all it is. The iceberg is the nest where the squid has laid her eggs. Why does it have mind-control powers? Who knows? It just does. It just does. I mean, that is the answer to every mystery in the show. Sorry to spoil it, but the answer to every mystery in the show is that it just is that way. Why did that happen? Well, just because it did. And the end. The white girl ghost. Okay, remember the ghost that's haunting people's dreams? It turns out she's just a regular white girl. She lives on a nearby island. She's not a very nice person, it turns out, but there's nothing paranoiacal or abnormal about her. Well, that's a problem because she shows up in people's dreams. She haunts them in their bedrooms. There's a scene where meth-head Harry Styles is sleeping. He wakes up. This ghost is drenched in water. Her hair over her head, standing on his bed, creepily looking at him. And then she disappears. It turns out she's just a girl from, like, a few doors down. Why was she doing that? Why was she drenched in water? Why is she in the guy's room? They don't explain it. She just was. Who knows? Don't worry about it. Don't ask questions. We've all heard the radio ads about owing the IRS money. They try to scare you and frighten you into calling. Well, Tax Relief Advocates is different. If you owe the IRS $5,000, $50,000, or even $500,000, TRA has a solution to resolve your tax problem. Don't lose hope. TRA could reduce or even eliminate what you owe. Their passion is taxes and helping regular people and businesses fix their IRS mess. They have over a thousand five-star Google reviews and an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau. You don't have to be afraid of the IRS anymore. Real tax relief programs are available that can give you a fresh start. So don't wait. Go to TRA.com. That's TRA.com. Or call 800-575-1753. Again, 800-575-1753. Tax Relief Advocates. Real solutions for real people. Ever hit a wall in the business? In the middle of the day and a third coffee just doesn't do it anymore? Modafinil works by stimulating multiple receptors in the brain associated with wakefulness, including dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, histamine, glutamate and orexin. It's a more complete solution that gives you 10 to 12 hours of steady focus and energy go to mod.com that's mod.com for a free consultation and use code daily wire to get 10 off your first order plus free shipping that's code daily wire at mod.com to get free shipping and 10 off your first order now as for the squid not only is it a regular squid but it's a nice squid it's a mommy squid the squid has been horribly misunderstood you see she's a single mom trying to make her way in this topsy-turvy world she's a feminist icon this squid like uh like lena dunham now sure she's a giant gelatinous monstrosity who grabs her horrified prey with long slimy tentacles drags them into the icy depths and devours them whole while they scream in terror but that's just how lena dunham says hello but back to the squid we learn that this girl boss cephalopod only stalks and mass murders humans because she wants to protect her babies now granted the tourists she killed were on shore and nowhere near her babies but they were tourists so it's fine i guess actually none of the humans she killed were threatening her babies in any way but whatever stop nitpicking i guess in the season finale and i i i'm not making this up rather than trying to defeat and kill the giant murderous squid josh hartnett teams up with the scientist lady to save the squid the whole show is like how what are we going to do about this squid in the last episode they realize oh it's a nice squid and they try to save it and specifically they want to save her from the evil white male corporate guy who shows up out of nowhere in the final episode with a plan to bomb the village in order to kill the squid in order to secure the rights to mine for minerals what's the plan to kill the squid in order to secure the rights to mine for minerals what do any of those things have to do with each other why would you need to bomb the village to kill the squid and how would either step help you in your mining efforts nobody knows he's just evil and evil people like to build mines and blow stuff up that's it hartnett and the scientist lady tried to explain to the evil corporate white man that it's not the squid's fault you know she was driven out of her natural habitat because of climate change but evil corporate white man doesn't care you know he says that she's dangerous and she's not dangerous and she's already slaughtered 19 people and so she must be exterminated which is actually a pretty good point okay i'm on his side when it comes to the squid issue and i'm also on his side when it comes to bombing the village actually because these villagers are some of the dumbest most irritating people who have ever been assembled in one location so by the end of the episode by the end of the show i'm saying yes please just bomb these people kill all of them please but that's not the side the writers want us to be on so our heroes uh well the writers heroes my my hero is the evil corporate white man i'm totally on his side at this point but they devise a plan to save the squid from the military which has arrived along with the the white guy to blow the squid up so what was what was sold to me as jaws with a squid actually becomes free willy with a squid this is free squiddy let's call it and their plan to free squiddy involves moving the enormous 150 000 ton iceberg out of the heart of the world and they're going to be able to save the squid from the military harbor so that squiddy will follow it but the iceberg is too big to move so the strategy is to shoot it and break it in two now that might make some kind of sense maybe if they were shooting the mountainous chunk of ice with a bazooka or a missile or something but instead they shoot this iceberg the size of a mountain with a hunting rifle and meth head harry takes a couple of shots at it to no effect of course so then right aid pre-trans ellen page takes the rifle and says let me do it and shoots it and with her magical feminine powers the bullet causes an iceberg bigger than the one that sank the titanic to splinter into a million pieces now you'd think by the way that well isn't that what where the babies are like where the eggs are on the iceberg or something and so didn't you just kill all the babies wouldn't that make squiddy really angry since her babies are in there but i guess squiddy understands that they're trying to help her so next josh hartnett takes a fishing net and somehow wraps it around the remaining piece of iceberg which is still probably like 90 000 tons and then drags it into deeper water with a small fishing boat and that's enough to save the day although he doesn't even take it that far into deeper water so the killer squid is still only about six or seven miles from innocent women and children but even so the squid appreciates the gesture so at the final scene she comes in and she's like oh my god i'm gonna die i'm gonna die and she comes to the surface and locks eyes with josh hartnett and the two like wordlessly express their love for one another again i'm not making this up this is what actually happens in the show i promise you imagine if at the end of jaws rather than blowing up jaws brody was a pita activist who throws himself in front of the shark as a human shield to prevent him from being killed and then imagine if recognizing this self less act jaws came to the surface and like flapped his fin at brody in a show of gratitude and then you will have an idea of just how incomprehensibly retarded this show is if i made a parody of a woke netflix series with exactly this plot and resolution you would think it was way too on the nose and preposterous even by woke leftist standards you would watch it and say come on there's a giant squid killing people because of climate change and so a female scientist and josh hartnett plus his polyamorous sister have to save the squid from an old white male capitalist and the colonialist military that wants to murder the squid who's actually just laid a bunch of eggs and is suffering from postpartum depression really give me a break but that is again i stress the actual plot of this show a show i sacrificed five hours of my life to watch i am five hours closer to death thanks to netflix and my only regret is that it didn't come while i was watching it yes this is what i get for watching netflix you don't have to tell me that this is what i get for falling for the classic squid jaws bait and switch but it's not my fault i didn't deserve this i'm the victim here and let's not lose sight of that now that we've spent some time too much time talking about an especially grotesque piece of netflix slop i think now's a good opportunity to uh remind you that there are other options out there you know you can escape the slop there are people making non-slop content and one of those people is me now for example we have our real history series which in many ways is the antidote to slop it's the anti-slop uh because it's dense it's well researched informative important and entertaining next week we have perhaps my favorite installment of the series drop on daily wire this is our episode on hernan cortez and the conquest of the aztecs it's not exaggeration to say that this is one of the most important events in the history of the human race it's also one of the least known uh or at least it it's not nearly as well known as it should be you know the the gap between how important it is and how well known it is is wider with this story than it is maybe with any other so i'll leave you with an extended preview of the episode you can watch this and then tune in for the whole thing next week on the daily wire enjoy and godspeed by then in his early 30s and living in cuba though not without controversy he was charismatic and young and he had a penchant for womanizing he had briefly been imprisoned by governor belasquez due to a personal dispute over a broken promise to marry belasquez's sister-in-law at the time no one thought he was the man for the job and yet against all odds he convinced belasquez to make him the commander of the upcoming voyage it was a feat of shadow diplomacy that foreshadowed much of what was to come cortez met with the governor's secretary and the king's cuba-based accountant and offered to split his share of the spoils if they proposed him for the job they agreed to his terms and convinced governor belasquez to appoint cortez to run the mission the appointment shocked the population of cuba cortez had no experience commanding an expedition only recently he was considered a Cortes bet everything on this mission. He invested his entire fortune. He mortgaged his encomienda and used the money to buy ships, arms, and provisions. He recruited 300 men and smartly won them over through charisma and overt displays of generosity. He made a huge banner embroidered in gold featuring a giant cross that bore the message, "Brothers and comrades, in true faith, let us follow the Holy Cross and we shall conquer." Huge crowds turned out in support of Cortes, ready to join him on his mission. As Cortes' force and popularity grew, Velázquez grew jealous. It occurred to him that maybe it wasn't such a good idea to give such a charismatic and talented young man so much power. While Cortes was gathering his fleet in Santiago, Cuba, he received a warning that Velázquez was about to revoke his charter. Frantically, and despite not being ready, Cortes rushed to purchase him. raced along Cuba's beaches as the ship moved west, the governor sent letters to port officials and municipal leaders telling them to stop Cortes and arrest him. But Cortes' men were enthusiastic. According to Richard Lee Marx's book, "Cortes, the Great Adventurer and the Fate of Aztec Mexico," their, quote, "would have been a ride of resentment." So the port officials and Velazquez's relatives and friends chose to ignore the governor's entreaties. The original plan was for Cortes' fleet to rendezvous at Cuba's western tip and travel together to Mexico, but one of the ships left the north coast of Cuba and, defying Cortes' orders, went directly to the island of Cozumel, where they ransacked abandoned villages, stole gold from a prayer house, and took dozens of turkeys. Once Cortes arrived the following day, he was livid and made them give the gold back, paid for the turkeys, and put the navigator in irons. Once again, he lectured his men that this new land would be permanently pacified and truly conquered only if the Indians were induced to accept Spanish rule. It was his policy, Marx wrote, that the Indians must be given the chance to welcome Christ and the king. He had 508 fighters, including 16 cavalrymen with mounts plus a foal. He had powder shot cannons, arquebus, servants, a translator who had been captured on the previous mission, and even, according to Marx, a few Negroes. While on Cozumel, Cortes climbed to a temple where the idols stood in the pavilion at the top, and the walls were black with blood. He had the idols smashed, the room whitewashed, and set a painted figure of the Virgin Mary on the altar where the men had been killed. The conquest had begun. These Indians were vastly different from the American Indians who inhabited the United States. The area spanning modern Mexico had many tribes, but the most notable were the Maya and the Aztecs. The Maya lived on the Yukon. They lived on the Yucatan Peninsula near modern-day Cancun, and their territory spread into modern Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize. These were the first mainland Indians the Europeans encountered in Mexico, and they spoke their own set of languages. Further west and north along Mexico's Gulf Coast, the Europeans encountered Nahuatl-speaking Indians, a language still spoken by more than a million in Mexico today. It was the official language of the Aztec Empire, the biggest and most impressive of the Mesoamerican Indians. The tribes were, in many ways, civilized, and their civilizations were complex and impressive. As Richard Lee Marx put it, Aztecs were, quote, "amply productive, sustaining millions of people in place without having them wander as nomads in search of sustenance." And there was enough excess production to support nobility, clergy, and an artisan class of builders and artists. They had massive cities and impressive architecture, including canals, roadways, sophisticated levees, dikes, aqueducts, floating gardens. They also had accurate calendars to keep track of Holy Days. And they built temples, often on pyramids, the largest of which exceeds in volume the famous pyramids of Egypt. It was at these temples that the Mesoamerican priests carried out their most notorious practice, human sacrifice. The anthropologist Marvin Harris, in his book Cannibals and Kings, notes that the Aztec gods ate people. They ate human hearts, and they drank human blood. And the declared function of the Aztec priesthood was to provide fresh, human hearts and fresh human blood in order to prevent the remorseless deities from becoming angry and crippling, sickening, withering, and burning the whole world. In his memoirs, the conquistador Bernal Díaz del Castillo described the gods as having distorted and furious-looking eyes, large serpents, monsters. He entered one temple, besmeared with blood, and the stench was worse than in a Spanish slaughterhouse, with five human hearts roasting there. Victims were usually prisoners of war, and on the day of sacrifice, they were taken up the steps of the pyramid, held down on the stone, and the priest opened the chest and tore out the heart. The body was thrown down the steps, beheaded at the bottom, butchered, and the flesh eaten. The NBA's back on PrizePix. Pick a shootout in the West and a boards battle in the East on PrizePix. You can make all the picks you want, all in the same app. And now, PrizePix is available nationwide. So what are you waiting for? Download the PrizePix app today and use code SPOTIFYED, that's code SPOTIFYED, to get $150 instantly in lineups if you win your first $5 lineup. PrizePix, run your game. Must be present in certain states. Visit prizepix.com for restrictions and details. Hank joined BJ's Wholesale Club the day he became a father of 30. I coach football. Now, Coach Hank saves up to $25,000. 25% off grocery store prices, 30 pounds of pasta, three cases of protein bars, 75 sports drinks. And that's just pregame. He knows teamwork, and BJ's knows savings. This is your home, Coach, home of the save. Join for just $20 at bjs.com/mesquite and save $0.10 per gallon for six months. Open soon. Limited time offer, new members only. BJ's, home of the save.