Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| There we go. Boom. Boom. Okay. Music. Live. Any preliminaries or can I just take go?
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Ivan:
[0:14]
| Go.
|
Sam:
[0:15]
| Okay, here goes. Transcription by CastingWords Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner for Saturday, February 14th, 2026. It is just after 18 UTC as we are starting to record. I am Sam Enter and Yvonne Bow is back this week. Hello, Yvonne.
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Ivan:
[0:55]
| Hi.
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Sam:
[0:56]
| Happy Valentine's Day, Yvonne.
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Ivan:
[0:59]
| Oh, happy Valentine's Day.
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Sam:
[1:02]
| Will you be my Valentine, Yvonne?
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Ivan:
[1:05]
| Sure. Why not?
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Sam:
[1:10]
| Ah so it's it's it's a week it's a week uh we'll do our usual sort of less newsy stuff up front and then newsy stuff as we go along i don't know yvonne well you know i i i am i i i i'm still discombobulated via various things i just woke up a few minutes ago as i often do when we record on saturdays you know so i i'm still like oh.
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Ivan:
[1:35]
| You you you have been you know we have been through a series of health issues and crises.
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Sam:
[1:44]
| Oh yeah over the last i had several months right i mean you.
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Ivan:
[1:51]
| Know my son had surgery i had surgery i mean what the fuck man.
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Sam:
[1:57]
| And and i and i'm not done i have one more surgery i it was just scheduled it's scheduled for march 9th which is later than i hoped it would be originally they had me scheduled for uh february 23rd but then they couldn't get some piece of equipment they needed booked so they had to push me back so you know that doesn't.
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Ivan:
[2:18]
| Sound great when they need like specialized equipment to deal with you sam.
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Sam:
[2:22]
| It it was a laser they couldn't get the laser.
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Ivan:
[2:26]
| Exactly. They need a laser. I mean, you know, what the hell? What are we getting this from? We're bringing this down from the ISS? What are we doing?
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Sam:
[2:35]
| No, I think they just had other patients booked to use the laser because apparently they don't have enough lasers.
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Ivan:
[2:42]
| When it's this specialized that the laser needs booking like a month, you know, plus in advance. I mean, this isn't great.
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Sam:
[2:51]
| So, yeah. So I was excited when they said the 23rd. I'm like, that's pretty soon. I'll be done with this crap. You know, they'll, they'll take the stuff they put in my body back out again and I'll be done. Right. But then they called back and you're like, you know, I'm sorry. We can't actually do the 23rd. How about March 9th? And I'm like, crap, that's like, that's like so far in the future. I mean, it's not that far in the future.
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Ivan:
[3:19]
| But, you know. Well, it's a thing, like, we got, like, my son's, like, when he broke his arm, and then, I mean, we got him to see a doctor. It happened on a Friday night. I mean, we got him to see the specialist on Monday, and we did the surgery on Wednesday. So that was like, you know, yeah, we had boom, boom.
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Sam:
[3:40]
| Well, I am glad the doctor, by the way, the surgery I had this Monday could have been later because the doctor was about to go on vacation. And the first dates he was having for the first one were like after he got back. And then he managed to squeeze me in before he left. So I was like, that's good because, you know, I have further progressed and I'm in a better state than I was before Monday. And I will be in a yet better state again after the March 9th one. I just have to wait for the March 9th one. It's like they started to break up the kidney stone and stuff. They put in an extra drain and they used the laser the first time and apparently they got 90% of the stone. But they could not get that last 10% because of where it was located. They would have had to do something else in some different way, blah, blah, blah. So they would have had to have me back in anyway because they put in an extra little... Like thing thing to like increase the drainage between my kidney and my bladder. I, whatever does some, I don't know. There's something inside me.
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Ivan:
[4:55]
| But like I said before, if we can figure out a way to harvest these stones, apparently they're very, you know, difficult and we could use them for some kind of purpose. We could sell these for something. I mean, imagine we could sell some of these, you know, it's like a diamond or something, you know, and sell for a million dollars or something, you know, and I'm all for harvesting Sam for stones. I would like, I mean, we just start harvesting, you know, fuck everything else. We'll just start harvesting Sam for stones. That's it. There you go.
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Sam:
[5:29]
| That'd be beautiful.
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Ivan:
[5:30]
| I'll start, I'll be the stone dealer here.
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Sam:
[5:33]
| Yeah, it really is too bad these aren't like diamonds or something.
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Ivan:
[5:36]
| Exactly. I mean, if we were like going in there and we're like, you know, we're extracting diamonds out of Sam, I'm like, what the hell, man? you know, or I don't know, some other rare metal or whatever, you know, whatever or something. Yeah. But you know, maybe we could use it to power your car or something. I don't know.
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Sam:
[5:54]
| Exactly.
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Ivan:
[5:55]
| Like some kind of like, you know, like nuclear fusion material, you know, material could be used in nuclear fusion or something or fission for that matter, whichever, there you go.
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Sam:
[6:05]
| Yes.
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Ivan:
[6:05]
| Now, exactly like that.
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Sam:
[6:07]
| Yeah. So, so now like, yeah. So I, you know, so I still have like, I'm still on painkillers. I'm still on antibiotics. I have the prescription painkillers, but after the first day after surgery, I switched myself to over-the-counter. So I'm taking some ibuprofen, some Tylenol. I'm mixing them up to avoid... Because I could just take Tylenol or whatever, but I want to be careful. You're not supposed to take too much Tylenol. So I'm taking a little less Tylenol.
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Ivan:
[6:40]
| I mean, yeah, you're supposed to limit it to under 4,000 milligrams a day. Really, the dose that gets you effed up is 10. But the reality is that, look, you can mix e-ibuprofen.
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Sam:
[6:53]
| Right, so you can mix them, so I am. So I'm taking a little less Tylenol, a little more ibuprofen, and blah, blah, blah. And so I still have some aches and pains, you know, because I just had freaking surgery. God damn it. So, and of course, this was just to be fun and entertaining and graphic for our users. This is not the kind of procedure where they made an incision. This is the kind of procedure where they went in through an existing hole. If you're heading towards my bladder and kidney, you can imagine which hole they had to go through.
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Ivan:
[7:28]
| What? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I'm assuming it's in the front, not in the back. That would be quite a long route. That would be quite a weird route to get to your blood, to get to your kidneys. But yeah. Okay. Yeah.
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Sam:
[7:43]
| So, you know.
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Ivan:
[7:45]
| They didn't go through your mouth. They didn't go through your ears or nose.
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Sam:
[7:49]
| That's right. You know, so.
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Ivan:
[7:52]
| Okay.
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Sam:
[7:52]
| And there's a good reason why you are asleep when they do this.
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Ivan:
[7:56]
| Yes.
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Sam:
[7:56]
| So.
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Ivan:
[7:57]
| Yes. I, you know, I, I, you know, look. I highly recommend anesthesia. Look, there's nothing great. You know, I'm sorry, but I had my surgery, and there's nothing better than, boom, I'm out. And I wake up, I'm in recovery, and I felt all of a sudden I started feeling pain. I said, nurse, painkillers. Now, oh, we gave you something. No, not strong enough. No. Whatever I want. No. Stronger. Ah, that feels better. Okay, good. All right. Now I can sleep again. Thank you.
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Sam:
[8:33]
| Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, that's fun for both of us. We've had a great few weeks, few months, whatever.
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Ivan:
[8:42]
| Well, the thing is that last week was.
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Sam:
[8:44]
| Well, last week you weren't. It wasn't a health issue. You had a birthday.
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Ivan:
[8:47]
| Well, it was like, yeah. And the thing is that my, my, okay. My brother that lives in Texas that, uh, uh, came over for it. Okay. It's funny, but, but, you know, he comes visit all the time. but there was, There's a couple of times that he tried to come over for my birthday and something happened. Like one time, like for my 40th, he was going to fly over. There was a there was an ice storm in Texas that prevented him from being able to fly in it. All his flights, everything got canceled. He couldn't he couldn't leave. So that was like one thing. So you see, like one thing or another always happened. And so but he managed to come over this time. My oldest brother told me, well, he was going to be out of town for business. The thing is, my oldest brother sells industrial products, and his route is one that, It's he goes, he has a work truck that, you know, from his company that he drives to these places because in many cases is not that convenient to fly. OK. And so he's covering, you know, places like Savannah, Georgia, Athens, Georgia, you know, northern Florida, stuff like that, which actually it's not even like that easy to fly into anyway, which is why he's driving. Okay.
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Ivan:
[10:07]
| And he's driving, he's driving this truck right now. If I understood correctly, he told me he's putting in like 50,000 miles a year on this truck. It's a company truck. They pay for it. So, you know, but it's like crazy the amount of miles that he's having to, to put in for, for this. So he was going to be like in Savannah, like, and it's like, well, I don't think I could make it down, but he actually went and figured out because he heard that my other brother's coming in. He actually figured out a way. And all of a sudden, as we're at the restaurant, we're at the, we're at the bar area just waiting for a table, then all of a sudden he showed up. And I was like, whoa, you're here. Oh, good. So, so, so yeah. So, uh, so that was good. So we had a, we had a good time. So yeah. So because everybody was here in town, I was like, you know, take care of people. I didn't have time to record all of a sudden. So I was like, you know.
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Sam:
[10:54]
| Yeah. Yeah. I understand. Well, we had Ed, Ed was great. We did the thing, you know? So yeah.
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Ivan:
[11:00]
| And I don't know. Well, I, I, I, I don't know if you mentioned it last week, but I'll mention it because I sent this note and I know that I haven't been in the podcast in the past.
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Sam:
[11:08]
| Oh, I did not. I actually thought about it but saved it for when you were here if I'm thinking about the thing you're thinking.
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Ivan:
[11:16]
| The person that gave us the musical rights, the music that we have used on the show since back in college, WRCT, so this is like longer than 30 years, Ray Lynch, his family posted news that he passed away. He passed away in December. And I did not want to mention that, you know, his wife and him were very gracious to give us, you know, we were worried that we had been using it without permission. But we went and we reached out to them and said, hey, guys, you know, we've been using the music and I don't know. And we're small.
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Sam:
[11:49]
| We're small. You know, we're not making money off this thing.
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Ivan:
[11:54]
| Money off of it. But, you know, we just wanted to make sure that we were using the music just in case. I mean, I don't know. You know, sometimes this thing gets big or something or whatever. We don't want to be impinging on their rights.
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Sam:
[12:06]
| Or even if it isn't, they could decide to be assholes, you know?
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Ivan:
[12:10]
| Which some people are, you know, that we're using music without rights. But they gave us absolutely, you know, in writing, they put it down. We had absolute permission to use the music in our show. And we do promos regularly for them.
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Sam:
[12:25]
| In exchange, we do that break. And, you know, the first break we take this time, I will do that break. But yeah, it's and that was the deal. They said, just, hey, occasionally give us credit. So like, yeah, the show descriptions always have, you know, the Ray Lynch information and links to his website and all that kind of stuff. And we have that promo that runs every few weeks. It comes up in our rotation. And yeah, and that was the deal. And otherwise, they were they were very nice. And in fact, Ray Lynch's wife, immediately after we had that conversation, you know, start asking us for information because they were apparently they were apparently actually going after and suing some other podcast who used the music without permission. Oh, you don't remember this.
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Ivan:
[13:10]
| And oh, God, I forgot about that.
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Sam:
[13:12]
| Yeah, it was some major like podcast done by like one of the big like, you know, affiliated with a major news organization. I forget which one, whether it was NPR or something else, but they, and it was one of these big, like highly produced, whatever, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, they had, they had used the music without permission and, you know, the, the lynches were trying to get them to cease and desist or whatever. And they were trying, they were trying to claim that like that completely impossible. We can't do that, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, look, it's one thing for like a live podcast or whatever. But like, if you have done a completely produced thing where you have assembled all the musics and clips, you've got like some, some software somewhere with the edited version of this, where I'm not saying it would be trivial or not a lot of work, but you could go in and re-edit and re-release those episodes if you had to with different music or, or just take out the music entirely.
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Ivan:
[14:12]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[14:13]
| It might not be ideal, but is it possible? Yes. It's not, it's not like some, if you're doing a production, I mean, hell, even I, like I have all the raw tracks that I use to put these together, save from the beginning of when we started doing this show. Now there are, there was a time at the beginning where we just recorded, recorded live and whatever that was, it was, it was a single track. But for years and years and years, you know, we record all the individual tracks and I put them together and I, and the music gets added and it's all separate. And I like, you know, do some editing. At this point, I mainly do automated editing because I just don't have time for the human editing anymore, except for very small little bits and amounts. But like, you know, but I have all the originals. And I would be really unhappy about it, but if somebody came up and told me, there's a 2022 episode where you used a clip of something, you didn't have permission, you need to take that down. I could theoretically go back, find that episode, re-edit it, and republish that episode and leave it up. Or, of course, I could take it down. Right, right. And I would be unhappy. I wouldn't want to, but is it possible? Yes. Come on. Anyway, so we talked to them about that. And, you know, again, and we never talked to Ray himself. We talked to his wife, but she was very nice.
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Ivan:
[15:41]
| Well, Ray, you know, Ray, what they posted had been in some ill health for a bit.
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Sam:
[15:47]
| Their house had burned down.
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Ivan:
[15:49]
| Yes. And that was the other thing, that their house in one of the California wildfires, I think it was in the Palisades fire, burnt down. And not just that, you know, the house fire burned his original master recordings as well. Which that was horrible.
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Sam:
[16:10]
| Speaking of being able to go back and re-edit things, you can't if the masters go away.
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Ivan:
[16:15]
| Yeah. I mean, their original masters were gone. So that was sad. And so, you know, according to what their post, he had been in ill health and he passed away in December and they did make a post. But they had not published it until like January that that happened. But I just wanted to make a recognition that, you know, because we did, you know, I know Kathleen passed a note on to Ray that we were very thankful for him to authorize us to use his music. And, you know, we really appreciate it. And I just want to be, you know, recognize how gracious they were with us and, you know, about it. And it's passing, unfortunately, that happened in December. So, yeah. He was, I mean, I don't know. Look, Ray Lynch's music is one that caught my ear a long, long time ago. And, I mean, I was in high school.
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Sam:
[17:10]
| I mean, we used this as a theme song for this show when we did it on the radio in the early 90s.
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Ivan:
[17:16]
| Yeah. And I remember that I think I heard the album from a friend of mine in high school. And I went and I, I'm pretty sure I bought the CD and Tower Records in New York.
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Sam:
[17:30]
| Because we used this on the show. This was, I was not a music buying person up through college. This was like one of the first five CDs I ever bought, I believe. Because we were using it on the show.
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Ivan:
[17:44]
| And it's uh and it's um i mean it's one of the he he is one of the first like pioneers in like new age music and the thing is that you know it's it's just one of those things and by the way he's a guy that's really a classical instrumental music musicalist he really mentioned that he's not not really good with tech and so but it sounds like it may sound like it was digitally produced but it really isn't but he was also one of the biggest independent you know he didn't have a a recording contract he was one of the most how do i say successful like independent music publishers that that have been out there and he published a few few records and they they were i mean they they sold millions of copies so so it was you know this wasn't you know he isn't an He isn't an artist, it's just some tiny artist that just had a few records. He actually was very successful, but it was all on his own. But, you know, so anyway, just want to recognize the fact that he, that this happened and my eternal life take care of him very well. Thank you, Ray. Thanks, Kathleen.
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Sam:
[18:57]
| Okay. So moving on, I guess. I am going to do movies. I have one additional thing I want to throw out there. As I've mentioned on the show before, I've been working on this Robin Letter thing. Basically, for over a year, lightly, but I didn't really get going until after I was laid off at the end of October. So basically, I've been working on it November, December, January, three and a half months. I'm going to jinx myself here.
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Ivan:
[19:32]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[19:33]
| But I think, I think.
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Ivan:
[19:36]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[19:37]
| I should be able to be at the point where I can invite the first real test users later this weekend.
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Ivan:
[19:46]
| Whoa.
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Sam:
[19:47]
| Wow. Wow. Basically, what I have left is taking everything that I've done in a development environment and moving it to a real production environment and retesting things to make sure I didn't break anything in the process and then starting.
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Sam:
[20:05]
| I'm going to have it started out as basically, I'm going to start one of these with my mother's side of the family and one of these with my father's side of the family. Those are the first two I'm going to start. I'm going to see how they go for a few days to a week, and then I'm going to recruit for additional volunteers from other categories of people I know. I've got a list. Already of people who have explicitly said, hey, I want to be included in early tests. And so I will make sure all of them are included in the next round after that. And I'll do one for people who are active on the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack. I will start one with all of those folks. So if you're on there, consider yourself automatically included. If you've sent me thing saying you want to be included, you'll be included in that second round.
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Sam:
[21:03]
| But also the way I have the way I'm setting it up is like once I invite people for ones I create, they will in turn be able to make their own and invite more people. So we'll see if there's any organic growth based on that. But yeah, like all I have left is some some moving between environments and some final testing and blah blah blah which you know i i my intention at this point is to after we're done recording the podcast basically just move into my god i have to get this done you know i've only got a little bit spreading viruses and then we can start spreading viruses yeah so what.
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Ivan:
[21:40]
| Is that what we used to do with like a lot of people used to do with like forwarding email you know they used to do all these email forwards like 20 20 plus years ago of shit oh yeah look i found this cool thing or whatever and sending it on to people and they were just like going and clicking on attachments like spreading viruses on a regular basis.
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Sam:
[21:57]
| Yes yes so so anyway just for everybody out there we're not we're.
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Ivan:
[22:01]
| Not gonna is that we're bringing it back we're.
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Sam:
[22:03]
| Not bringing it back no no no no no no viruses anyway for anybody out there who is not already familiar who is not already expressed interest if they're interested robinletter.com, There's an email address at the bottom if you want to be sure to be included in my early tests. And the basic concept is an alternative to social media that's intentionally slower, intentionally longer. It's intended to not be sort of this thing where you're broadcasting to the world, but instead small groups of people that are explicitly defined that you want to keep in touch with. And you have to update when it's your turn. So it's not a free-for-all of everybody in the group can post whenever they want. You post when it's your turn. It ensures that everybody has an equal opportunity to contribute. It ensures that it's sort of like, it's not an everyday thing. It's not intended to be like, you know, the dopamine hit for your attention where you're, you're checking it five times a day, every day, whatever. It's like, Hey, you check in when there's an update and then you make an update when it's your turn to make an update, et cetera. So it's intentionally slower, which may hurt its virality, but you know, whatever we'll see. It's a, it's a concept I've been thinking about for more than a decade.
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Sam:
[23:23]
| And I finally built the damn thing. The initial version is only text, only text updates. But if, if, you know, the next up on the agenda after I launch these initial tests are, you know, everybody who gets invited will have a limited number of invites initially. I'm going to build a way to buy more invites. I'm going to add a premium tier that you can add images to your posts. I'm going to do things like being able to comment and react on posts, because right now you just make your own post when it's your turn, but I can see it being useful to be able to comment and react to a specific post. You know, that kind of thing i've got a whole bunch of things i want to further enhance it with it this is sort of the minimum viable product but if all goes well cross my fingers like i said i'm jinxing myself i'll try to move it to the new environment and absolutely everything will break or i'll accidentally delete everything at the moment i try to launch it instead of launching it but like if all goes well i'll have a test out this weekend if not within a few days because my intention is i'm not going to do other other.
|
Sam:
[24:31]
| Other shit other than get this podcast out until this is out as well so robinletter.com check it out if you want to be in the first few waves of tests and you're not already on one of my lists and you're not an active curmudgeon's corner slack user then you know email the email there and i'll make sure you're included for the second round i'm going to make a post on facebook and say hey any any of my friends want to be in more rounds like i'm going to make one for like people who knew Sam in college, people who knew Sam in high school, people who knew Sam from Merrill Lynch, people who knew what, you know, I'm going to make lists like that, but only with volunteers who say they want to be invited. Of course, I have built the mechanism so that once, um, once you're in a Robin.
|
Sam:
[25:17]
| You know, you can invite more people to the Robin, which may be problematic in the future. We'll see. I'll, I'll adjust things as needed anyway. So like, you know, I'll only invite people initially who've said they wanted to be invited, but then anybody else who's in there can invite whoever they want. So it could go crazy. Or it could immediately die because everybody thinks it's stupid and doesn't use it. So we'll see. So anyway, uh, okay. Beyond that movies.
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Ivan:
[25:48]
| What movies do we got, Sam?
|
Sam:
[25:50]
| First movie, another AFI movie from, and, uh, from the 1998 ranking, this was number seven. It is dropped to number 17 in 2007 ranking. And I noticed they have not issued any new rankings in nearly 20 years. They probably should. but you know whatever um.
|
Ivan:
[26:14]
| I'm sure trump will order a new ranking that will be an interesting ranking if trump is trump's favorite movies yeah well.
|
Sam:
[26:22]
| They'll all be by that guy who made the melania movie and melania is probably number.
|
Ivan:
[26:28]
| One no no no remember that he also gave sylvester stallone like uh uh uh some kind of award so so it'll be a combination of like probably Sylvester Stallone, Kevin Spacey You need You need an accused Sex offender At least in there They all need You know Yeah I don't know Woody Allen Yes of course, Yeah, it'll be like, oh, who's the guy in Europe, the guy that fled the country? Rowan Polanski? What is it? God, I don't want to call. I don't want to. Wait, I don't want to.
|
Sam:
[27:03]
| The under siege guy?
|
Ivan:
[27:05]
| Oh, wait, Steven Seagal. Yes. Oh, my God. Of course. No, no, I wasn't thinking of Steven. No, God. But yeah, it's I mean, shit. I mean, that's got to be at the top of the list. I mean, you know, yeah. No, the guy that fled the country because he was convicted of rape or something.
|
Sam:
[27:24]
| Oh, Roman, that R guy?
|
Ivan:
[27:27]
| I think, well, the thing is, I don't want to disparage the wrong guy.
|
Sam:
[27:33]
| The wrong guy.
|
Ivan:
[27:33]
| Yeah, so let me double check. I want to make sure, you know, hold on before I call somebody a fugitive and criminal and things.
|
Sam:
[27:43]
| Roman Polanski.
|
Ivan:
[27:45]
| Yeah, it was Roman Polanski, okay. was arrested and charged with drugging or raping a 13-year-old girl. So this is like, you know, right? I mean, it seems like this would be up in the Trump movie collection. Yes.
|
Sam:
[27:58]
| Of course. Okay. Anyway, the movie in question is The Graduate from 1967.
|
Ivan:
[28:06]
| I don't remember if I've seen it. I got to look this up. Hold on. Oh, I don't know. Did I see it? I think I did. But I got to look it up.
|
Sam:
[28:16]
| This is one where, by the way, famous movie, I had heard things about it, but I had definitely not seen the actual movie. I had heard, there's a famous phrase from it that has been sampled in songs that when the lady says, I am not trying to seduce you. Do you want me to seduce you? Right. Yeah, that has been sampled in a variety of songs. It's also famous, the whole thing about plastics. You need to invest in plastics.
|
Ivan:
[28:51]
| You know what? I don't know.
|
Sam:
[28:53]
| And of course, it's referenced like Mrs.
|
Ivan:
[28:55]
| Robinson. I know about it, but I don't know if I've watched it. Right.
|
Sam:
[29:00]
| The Mrs. Robinson song from Simon and Garfunkel was actually made for this movie. It was part of the soundtrack of this movie. Anyway, basic. I'll read the first two bits of the plot from the Wikipedia summary. First couple paragraphs. After earning his bachelor's degree, Benjamin Braddock returns to his parents' home in Pasadena, California. During his graduation party, Mrs. Robinson, the wife of his father's law partner, asks him to drive her home. Once there, she tries to seduce him. He resists her advances, but later invites Mrs. Robinson to the Taft Hotel, where he registers under the surname Gladstone. Benjamin spends the summer idly floating in his parents' swimming pool and meeting mrs robinson at the hotel during one of their trysts mrs robinson reveals that she and her husband married after she accidentally became pregnant with their daughter elaine when benjamin jokingly suggests that he date elaine mrs robinson angrily forbids it benjamin's parents and mr robinson pester benjamin to ask elaine out he reluctantly takes her out but attempts to sabotage the date by ignoring her driving recklessly and taking her to a strip club.
|
Sam:
[30:12]
| She flees in tears, but Benjamin chases after her, apologizes, and kisses her. They eat at a drive-in restaurant where they bond over their shared uncertainty about their plans. After they visit the Taft Hotel for a late-night drink and the staff greet Benjamin as Mr. Gladstone, Elaine deduces that Benjamin is having an affair. Benjamin admits to having an affair with a married woman who he does not name, because it's her mom. he tells Elaine the affair is over and asks to see her again dot dot dot it continues uh, It was a good movie. It's definitely, you know, it's a 1967 movie, but it kind of feels 1970-ish to me. But it, it, it is a good movie. I will give it a thumbs up. Is it number seven of all time? Eh, maybe not, but it was a good movie. It was enjoyable. And, and like I, again, like I had heard about the movie. I had known about parts of the movie. It's, if I didn't say it's Dustin Hoffman in the lead role. Um, and, it.
|
Sam:
[31:16]
| Because I wasn't spoiled, I didn't know what was happening other than sort of... I mean, I knew it was about a guy having an affair with an older woman. But that's all I knew. That's all I knew. And it was good. It was good.
|
Sam:
[31:33]
| 1970s style, which I'm not always super into, even though it was 67. But I enjoyed the movie. Good movie. Thumbs up. Watch it. There you go. It's one of those things that's referred to in culture all the time. and like, I mean, maybe less so. It's getting old now. I imagine like there are probably lots of younger folks who know absolutely nothing about this movie. And even I, at our age, knew that it existed, but, you know, had not seen it and was not aware of the details. But it was a good movie. There you go. That's all for that one. And I'll rush through one more. I think this one will be pretty quick. This is also from the AFI list. next one on the list, number six in 1998, dropped to number 10 in 2007. But this is the 1939 Wizard of Oz, the one that everybody knows. Everybody's seen, used to be on TV every year, I think around Thanksgiving, if I remember right. And, you know, it was, you know, I mean, I don't need to describe The Wizard of Oz. Everybody knows The Wizard of Oz, right? Like, certainly anyone listening to this podcast, right?
|
Ivan:
[32:50]
| Yes, I'm pretty sure, yes.
|
Sam:
[32:53]
| I'll give it a thumbs up. You know, it's one of those things where, you know, obviously I'd seen The Wizard of Oz before. I've, but yeah. I don't watch it regularly.
|
Ivan:
[33:07]
| I haven't watched it in, I'm sure, like in 30 plus years.
|
Sam:
[33:14]
| And by the way, just to be clear, we watched the original on our screen at home. We did not go and see the one in the sphere on Las Vegas where they have recreated it with AI. We have not seen that. Where they have actual flying monkeys in the theater.
|
Ivan:
[33:33]
| This is black and white, right? did you or you watch colorized.
|
Sam:
[33:36]
| Dude the wizard of oz is quite famous for its color.
|
Ivan:
[33:41]
| Was it a color.
|
Sam:
[33:43]
| Which one.
|
Ivan:
[33:43]
| Is the one i'm.
|
Sam:
[33:44]
| Confused the wizard of oz from that age the wizard of oz is quite famous because the first few minutes of it are are in sepia tone and then when she goes and.
|
Ivan:
[33:56]
| It switches to color which i'm thinking from that era that was colorized that was like very like controversial because it was colorized it was.
|
Sam:
[34:04]
| Like they've colorized a whole bunch of things from that era and it's always controversial because it's like and not even that era but i mean there continued to be black and white movies released well after this because color was more expensive and some movies right it's didn't deserve it well.
|
Ivan:
[34:21]
| You see i don't know if you forget it started in sepia then it turns into color right when they're.
|
Sam:
[34:27]
| Right and there this And because of that, lots of people think like this was the first color movie. It was not the first movie in color. But because of that transition, people like that transition was shocking to people because they come in, it looks like a black and white movie. It was sepia tone, not grayscale, but like, and then all of a sudden, kaboom, it's in Technicolor.
|
Sam:
[34:50]
| And that transition was very famous. Now, and it's interesting, the mechanics of how they did that transition because Dorothy goes through that door and beyond the doors in color. And so they actually did a thing where Dorothy was before, they were actually recording in color, but everything was colored brown. So it was in sepia tone. Like the earlier scenes were actually recorded in sepia tone, but that particular transition, the beginning, you see Dorothy's back but it was a stand-in wearing a brown dress and then she opens the door and it sort of zooms in towards the thing and the Dorothy the real Dorothy yeah the real Dorothy Judy Garland in the blue famous blue dress comes in and goes through the door and so the you know so that the you know because of course this was you know special effects were all practical so this was done that way anyway Wizard of Oz deserves its place in the pantheon, I guess. There's some things that like every time I watch it, I'm like, I never remember that part because some parts of it are clunkier than others. But you know, the main parts are all famous and you know it and you know all the songs and you can sing along to them and you know, whatever. And you know, so, you know, The Wizard of Oz, what else can you say about it. So.
|
Ivan:
[36:14]
| Thumbs up. Okay. Good.
|
Sam:
[36:16]
| There you go. And now I guess we'll take our break and we'll do newsy stuff. And as promised, we're going to start with the Ray Lynch break. So thanks again to Ray Lynch and his family. We appreciate it. Here you go.
|
Break:
[36:37]
| No no it's not the beginning of the show again we're just taking a little time to credit the artist responsible for the music we use at the beginning and end of the show what you are listening to right now is the o of pleasure by ray lynch We'll be right back.
|
Break:
[37:10]
| The music we close our show with is Celestial Soda Pop. Both of these songs are from Deep Breakfast. Now Platinum, Deep Breakfast was the first independently released album ever to be certified gold by the RIAA. Ray Lynch's other albums are The Sky of Mind.
|
Break:
[38:14]
| And the best of Ray Lynch. You can check out Ray Lynch or buy his music at raylynch.com, iTunes, Amazon, or anywhere you usually find music.
|
Ivan:
[38:32]
| Well, I want to take the opportunity. I looked up our last emails that we had traded with Kathleen at that time. There was a note that Ray Han wrote, because he wasn't very techie, but that he sent. It was one of the last notes that he sent to us. And he said, Dear Ivan, an answer to your question, Kathleen and I are recovering pretty well. This was after the fire, because I had inquired about that. We won't have a home of our own for about a year and a half or so. We both appreciate your continued use of of the music and we do hope that your listeners find it as attractive do find it to be as attractive as you have by the way i can tell you that the music is very dear to my heart as well and that i listen to it often as an artist after all i have to get it right and i can't release composition to the public until i know that it is beautiful i hope you and sam are doing well and i thank you for your kind words kind words and your support my best regards ray lynch so that was that was his note to us that was after a fire because, as you mentioned they had they had they had reached out to us over that issue with they had with podcaster and you know we had inquired about the fire so i'm saying yeah there we go all right okay so.
|
Sam:
[39:44]
| Where do you want to start on other stuff as.
|
Ivan:
[39:46]
| Usual we have a list yes yes sam we are using lasers to shoot balloons the hell is going on did you see this Yes.
|
Sam:
[39:57]
| Is it the same laser? Is that why I can't get my surgery?
|
Ivan:
[40:01]
| That's it. Yes. That's what's going on. They're using it to shoot balloons.
|
Sam:
[40:09]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[40:10]
| Apparently, party balloons, Sam.
|
Sam:
[40:13]
| So they closed the airspace for, where was it, El Paso or somewhere?
|
Ivan:
[40:17]
| Yeah, sometime in the middle of the night. They send out a note of saying we've closed the El Paso airspace for 10 days.
|
Sam:
[40:28]
| Right, right.
|
Ivan:
[40:29]
| And everybody's like, what the fuck? 10 days? The hell's going on?
|
Sam:
[40:35]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[40:36]
| They don't, no explanation. All of a sudden, all flights canceled, whatever. Then a few hours later, well, yeah, we didn't mean it. Airspace opened again. and then everybody's like what the hell is going on and then they said oh the story changed like a whole bunch of times yes i mean you know they said it was drones then somebody said that they were testing yeah it's a weapons test and then it seems that it was just some party balloons that were floating the wrong way and they used some kind of, like, new weapon that appeared to be a laser to shoot him down.
|
Sam:
[41:22]
| Awesome? What the fuck?
|
Ivan:
[41:26]
| This is, the hell are we doing, man? The hell are we doing?
|
Sam:
[41:30]
| They were attack party balloons from south of the border, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[41:35]
| Oh, I see. So important. That's the kind of a, so that's the kind of stuff.
|
Sam:
[41:42]
| You know, if the party balloon had said happy birthday instead of feliz navidad.
|
Ivan:
[41:51]
| Oh, then they wouldn't have shouted down.
|
Sam:
[41:53]
| I know it's Christmas, but you know what I mean? I you know.
|
Ivan:
[41:59]
| It's close to december it's close yes i mean it could have been floating like since december yes exactly i mean yeah and it got up there like you know and so yeah it's possible sure yeah you know one of those things well.
|
Sam:
[42:19]
| You you know, We did have, during the Biden administration, those Chinese spy balloon things.
|
Ivan:
[42:27]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[42:28]
| I guess they've just been miniaturized in some way.
|
Ivan:
[42:32]
| To party balloons.
|
Sam:
[42:33]
| To party balloons. And I don't know. Look, it just seems like this seems like another place where you had different agencies not talking to each other properly, staffed by people who are, I don't know. I don't know. Is this a scenario where all the career people who knew what they were doing are gone, and this is a bunch of, like, Trumpies?
|
Ivan:
[43:00]
| I think that this is just one of those things that it always shows the kind of, like, incompetence.
|
Sam:
[43:08]
| But is this normal incompetence that could have happened any time? Like, this could have happened?
|
Ivan:
[43:12]
| No, no, no, no, no. You see, the thing is that under disadministration, incompetence at ridiculous levels is, like, the norm of the day. It's like there's this story about Christy Noem deciding that she fired a pilot, because they didn't bring her blankie.
|
Sam:
[43:33]
| Well, didn't Lewandowski fire the pilot on her behalf?
|
Ivan:
[43:36]
| I, okay, I didn't see if it was Lewandowski or her.
|
Sam:
[43:40]
| Because they're also having an affair and that's apparently semi-well-known. Which they keep denying.
|
Ivan:
[43:46]
| But, you know.
|
Sam:
[43:47]
| But everyone knows it's one of those things.
|
Ivan:
[43:50]
| Yeah, but we fire a guy because a blankie didn't make it from one plane to the other.
|
Sam:
[43:56]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[43:57]
| And then they realize, oh, shit, we don't have another pilot. I guess we need to hire you back.
|
Sam:
[44:04]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[44:06]
| I mean, this is the kind of idiotic shit that these people do every day.
|
Sam:
[44:13]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[44:15]
| Just. Hey, we, we, we, you know, we tear off the shit out of, I don't know how many products. And I'm like, you know, oh, this is no big deal. And then all of a sudden they're like undoing. They started like undoing. Oh, well, shit. Coffee is through the roof. Maybe we shouldn't have tariffed coffee. I guess we weren't bringing coffee production back to the U.S., Sam. We're not going to... Sam, it's ridiculous, but we're not making coffee.
|
Sam:
[44:49]
| I don't know why. We've had a few months. Why haven't...
|
Ivan:
[44:53]
| The tradition has not ramped up. We have a longstanding tradition of, like, you know, up in West Virginia and the Appalachians where we get all these coffee-growing regions that we have, as you're well aware.
|
Sam:
[45:03]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[45:04]
| The famous Appalachian coffee. Right off the Appalachian Trail.
|
Sam:
[45:08]
| Just to be clear, in theory, you could have agriculture for any plant on the planet, anywhere on the planet, with proper indoor agriculture.
|
Ivan:
[45:18]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[45:19]
| Yeah, you could do climate control. You can bring in the necessary nutrients. You can do whatever, you know. So, they've had a year, Yvonne. Why couldn't they ramp this up?
|
Ivan:
[45:33]
| I don't know, Sam. may have to do something with a thing called economics.
|
Sam:
[45:38]
| Yvonne, we have once again missed our opportunity. At this point, we could have been the coffee kings of Nebraska or something.
|
Ivan:
[45:50]
| This is the new thing that I'm doing. We're going to become coffee kings. I didn't have this on my bingo card. Okay uh.
|
Sam:
[46:04]
| Uh any more on this or you want.
|
Ivan:
[46:08]
| You're officially talking about balloons yeah but but it's just you know it's just the thing we fuck why are we it's like every you know, we have a story like this popping up like just every week now every every other day I mean it's just it's just of just, sheer stupidity you know just just you know revealing itself on a regular basis right.
|
Sam:
[46:39]
| Okay so should we alternate topics do like.
|
Ivan:
[46:42]
| Lightning round style we can go what's the next topic what's the next big one you got okay.
|
Sam:
[46:47]
| I I'm gonna do what this thing where I pick one where I'm actually like asking you and you get to talk of it.
|
Ivan:
[46:58]
| Okay But.
|
Sam:
[46:59]
| Let's hit the unbelievable economic data. What's going on with our economy, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[47:06]
| Okay. Well, according to the government, Sam.
|
Sam:
[47:09]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[47:10]
| The economy is doing great. Awesome. I don't know if you've seen the economic reports, but a great inflation report, a great jobs report. I mean, everything just, you know, they keep saying the economy is like, it's doing great. The problem is that every other private sector data report that comes out shows quite the opposite. Okay. You know, it's like, hey, the tariffs, you know, the countries are going to pay the tariffs. One of the announcements that came out yesterday, a couple of companies announced where massive tariff bills that, tanked profits for automakers and other companies that just got crushed. You know, Ford had a billion-dollar extra tariff bill at the end of the year that crushed their profits. You know, housing sales, January had one of the worst drops in housing sales we've ever had.
|
Ivan:
[48:27]
| The private sector job creation report by ADP completely contradicted what that showed. But also, when the unemployment report got shown, they revised last year every previous report that they had issued downward.
|
Sam:
[48:45]
| All of them.
|
Ivan:
[48:47]
| Okay?
|
Sam:
[48:48]
| By a bunch, right? Not just like tiny.
|
Ivan:
[48:51]
| By a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. by two-thirds. By two-thirds!
|
Sam:
[48:56]
| Just a slight revision. It was off by like a couple percent.
|
Ivan:
[49:00]
| Right. By two-thirds.
|
Sam:
[49:02]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[49:03]
| Americans with higher income are starting to fall behind on payments. Rising debt levels and more mispacements push the financial stress gauge to its highest level ever. Ever!
|
Sam:
[49:16]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[49:17]
| Okay? The U.S. cattle herd Okay, beef prices are soaring. The U.S. cattle herd is down to the lowest level in 75 years. I mean, it's just... Every single point of data from private sector, companies repeatedly stating how massive tariff hits, hits profits, you know, billions and billions and billions that they've had to take. Like, you know, but then on the flip side, they keep, you know, posting these economic reports that seem incredulous. They posted about inflation being down, you know, but there is no data. I mean, when you see the issue with, like, beef, there's nothing to, you know, that shows that any of this stuff is under control. December retail sales were flat, for example.
|
Sam:
[50:25]
| Year over year.
|
Ivan:
[50:26]
| December, yes. You know, this is usually a very recessionary indicator, okay? You know, you got flat sales. You got people announcing multibillion-dollar tariff bills. You've got private employment data showing terrible stuff. You've got financial indicators, you know, financial distress indicators. It's like I said, a late payments and shit, and even including people that make, you know, higher levels of income in distress.
|
Sam:
[50:58]
| Mm hmm.
|
Ivan:
[51:00]
| And but oh, yeah, we've had we had excellent hiring. No, no. But but ADP says totally the opposite. So. I mean, this is this was the concern that that, you know, we had like from before where. They've made the government data not trustworthy.
|
Sam:
[51:23]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[51:23]
| At this point.
|
Sam:
[51:24]
| Well, and this aligns with, we've had more and more court rulings as well, basically saying we can't, like traditionally when folks go to court, the government gets sort of deference. Like we're going to assume good faith on the part of the government. And there have been increasing rulings from a variety of judges all over the country, appointed by a whole bunch of different presidents, including Trump himself, basically saying that the government has broken that track record and we can no longer assume the things the government says in filings are true without proof.
|
Ivan:
[52:08]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[52:09]
| And and we can no longer trust them to do the things we tell them to without measures to compel it, you know, and exactly the same thing with the economic data here. And for that matter, not just economic data, you know, information coming out of CDC on health data.
|
Ivan:
[52:27]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[52:28]
| Or out of wherever you just the you cannot. And lots of people say you could.
|
Ivan:
[52:36]
| How could you not trust our health information, the stuff coming from our top health officials, Sam? I mean, look, Health Secretary RFK Jr. Bragged recently that he wasn't afraid of COVID germs because he used to store cocaine off of toilet seats.
|
Sam:
[52:55]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[52:56]
| And I thought, I swear to God, that somebody made that up. I mean, honestly, when I first saw it posted, oh, come on, somebody made this up, right?
|
Sam:
[53:08]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[53:09]
| But no!
|
Sam:
[53:10]
| And I'll tell you what, my guard was down because of that. You posted that video clip. And then someone posted an AI-generated version of RFK Jr. Pretending to be Jar Jar Binks talking about Epstein. And I was like, well, you know, he's, he talked about licking toilet seats. I guess this is real too. And I was fooled for, for like a few minutes and then it was taken down. But like, yeah, at this point it's like, what do you know?
|
Ivan:
[53:51]
| I've done a lot of fucked up shit. Okay. Seriously I mean I'm one that has done a lot of fucked up shit, Damn it, RFK Jr. makes me look like just a saint compared to this shit.
|
Sam:
[54:10]
| Well, yes. I mean, I remember when he was running for president. We had, like, new stories about his, like, craziness, like, every week. I mean, the thing with the bear in Central Park.
|
Ivan:
[54:22]
| But, Sam, I mean, holy shit.
|
Sam:
[54:24]
| There was a whale head at some point. And we knew he had all kinds of drug problems.
|
Ivan:
[54:31]
| Yeah, but come on, man!
|
Sam:
[54:34]
| Yes. And women, of course. We had the nuzzy thing, and that was just one of many. You know. There was something weird with how he broke up with his ex-wife, too, I think.
|
Ivan:
[54:50]
| Oh, my God. I mean, actually, I'm afraid to hear it.
|
Sam:
[54:55]
| Okay? Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[54:58]
| Yeah, but these are the people issuing information and direction to our country right now.
|
Sam:
[55:06]
| Right. And, you know, the systematic destruction of all of the actual professionals and experts throughout the entire administration.
|
Ivan:
[55:21]
| Here's one thing. Can this be covered for? The answer is yes, but it is damaging regardless, okay? You know, look, Argentina for years, okay, had leaders that manipulated economic statistics. I'm convinced they still do. For like, they started really manipulating them like 20 years ago. You know, one of the things that Argentinians have shown me is that despite all of this kind of shit, which they've lived through this kind of shit for a long time, you can still survive. It's not great, but you can still survive. But it's not great.
|
Sam:
[56:11]
| Well, I mean, the thing with all of this is you get, there is a certain world you can live in if you have reliable, trustworthy information, a reliable, trustworthy government. You can be sure that contracts are enforced. You can be sure that laws are enforced.
|
Ivan:
[56:32]
| Well, Sam, we don't have any of that shit right now.
|
Sam:
[56:34]
| Exactly. And that world, actually, that regularity where you have the infrastructure in place so that there's a level set on expectations, there's a level set on truth, all of that kind of thing, enables a whole bunch of activity and potentially prosperity that when all of those things are taken away, it fundamentally puts...
|
Ivan:
[57:04]
| It puts everything at risk.
|
Sam:
[57:06]
| It puts society as a whole at a disadvantage. Now, the thing it does is it advantages those with inside information.
|
Ivan:
[57:18]
| Wow. Which is the intent of... Really?
|
Sam:
[57:20]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[57:21]
| Really? I mean, have you not known? I mean, it's like, that's one of the things that we've been talking about. How much insider trading, poly markets, weird bets, all of this shit is going on right now. And it's actually the same thing as in Argentina, for example. Look, one of the things that, for example, that was advantageous during all this era manipulation, one of the things we were doing with the currency was that if you had the right contacts, connections, or things set up, you could get...
|
Ivan:
[57:50]
| Currency at preferred rates. You could get all these other things at preferred rates and everybody else got the shaft. Okay. You know, they couldn't. You know, one example was of imports and exports because since they manipulated the currency, they limited your dollar buying and selling. And so when I was at my previous employer, because the company imported stuff that was deemed necessary, okay, we were able to go to the central bank and get currency in order to be able to properly pay and import shit, okay? But this distortion also created that the people that bought stuff from us, because we could get at the official rate. I have people like banging down my door to just buy shit because the official rate was so much better than any other exchange rate that people were just we just want to buy your shit and I'm like but why do you want to buy this much? well because it's at the.
|
Ivan:
[58:57]
| Preferred exchange rate then they could sell it at the at what it's really worth which is a ton more and they were like making tons of money off of that and this is the kind of like thing that happens with with these regimes and by the way and and by the way this applies to us in the terms of tariffs because like right now we have this fucking tariff regime right now where if you're in the right side of the tariffs, you're doing good. But if you're on the wrong side, you're fucked.
|
Sam:
[59:27]
| And that all depends on your personal relationship with Donald Trump and his cronies.
|
Ivan:
[59:34]
| Correct.
|
Sam:
[59:35]
| And whether or not you're paying them off.
|
Ivan:
[59:37]
| Right. And if you're getting exemptions or shit or whatever, or you're getting fucked.
|
Sam:
[59:42]
| Right. Which is why you have things like, you know tim cook giving that little trophy to donald orb the gold orb the the the shiny customized iphone whatever the hell you know yeah it is because of this because people know at this point that how that it is 100 personal it is 100 transactional play.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:08]
| Man 100 you have to pay to play. If you're not paying to play, you're not going to be, you know, you're not going to be one of the people really making money.
|
Sam:
[1:00:21]
| Which again, like that whole structure is 100% designed to benefit a certain group of people who control those strings. But as a whole, if you're looking at the impact to the overall economy, to society as a whole, to whatever, it's a negative drag, you know? And, and so, yeah, I mean, there, there will be certain people making tons of money off this and everybody else gets fucked.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:57]
| Basically, you know, so it's a new economy, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:01:01]
| Well, and the thing is also the, you know, there are many problems with this, but one of the big ones is let's say the quote unquote good guys take over everything. You know, come 2029 after the next elections, you can't just snap your fingers and undo all this shit.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:27]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:01:28]
| Like, there is... I mean, you can undo some of it. You can undo some things, but there is a lot of stuff that has been broken that will take a long time to repair. Once you break trust, it doesn't come right back.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:43]
| It's easier to destroy than it is to create. That is just a reality. You know, this is just the nature of this. You know, when you have... When you've created over decades ecosystems of checks, balances, controls, and things, and trust.
|
Sam:
[1:02:06]
| Trust is a big part of it. Regardless of what is technically on the books and what the laws are, if you have changed the culture, if you have moved from an area where people can generally assume good faith to one where everybody assumes everybody's out to screw everybody else, it takes a long time to rebuild the culture you just broke, if ever.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:33]
| Look, one of the things, and why there are many foreign debt issuers, historically, issued debt that was either resolved in U.S. Courts or...
|
Ivan:
[1:02:50]
| Uk courts okay historically and the reason for that is trust in the legal system because if you if you signed it and then you did it that it was contracted in a country with a system of laws that you believe will be enforced then it's more likely that somebody's going to loan you money Right. Okay. And so now at this point still, I will say that one of the things that our courts have been.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:27]
| Even if they aren't making in many cases decisions that we like, what they have been is I think that they have shown more resilience than a lot of the other institutions just because of the way that our courts are structured. In terms of, for example, one of the things that we were concerned about, you know, prosecuting enemies, right? Most of the cases of this administration trying to prosecute people, you know, for stupid shit, keep being turned away. They don't get far, okay? The courts keep rejecting them, like like when they were trying to prosecute Comey or Letitia James or, you know, repeatedly, you know, when they were trying to prosecute like the guy that threw that sandwich in D.C. You know, it used to be that we said that a federal prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich. And right now they have been in a situation where.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:27]
| It's an unprecedented situation where they keep being turned away from indictments, something that normally doesn't happen because they keep presenting indictments that people look at them like, are you crazy? No. They tried to indict the House members, the Democrat House members, for example, because they said something, they made that statement about military people disobeying illegal orders. And they tried to indict them and they couldn't. The grand jury, basically not one person voted to indict them.
|
Sam:
[1:05:04]
| It was zero. It wasn't even like they couldn't get a majority. It was zero.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:08]
| No, it was zero. And so that is one of the things that I will say that thankfully, even at this moment, because of the way it's structured, they haven't been able to crack that.
|
Sam:
[1:05:19]
| Well, and I'll add on that particular case also, they were trying to go after Mark Kelly's like military retirement benefits.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:29]
| That also got.
|
Sam:
[1:05:29]
| And the judge just slapped him down and said, this is obviously an infringement on First Amendment rights of veterans. And no.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:37]
| Yeah. So so there is that like right now in which the courts still in many cases are still, you know, standing in this. I mean, listen, the main problem that we've got with this entire situation right now is a completely spineless Congress. OK, it this it isn't it's not that the the mechanisms aren't there. It's that the people that supposedly have the mechanisms aren't using them. Well, they're all like, in the large part, the Republicans are either, they are complicit, many of them.
|
Sam:
[1:06:14]
| Well, that's what I was going to say. I was going to quibble with the word spineless because a good deal of the Congress is actually supportive.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:21]
| Yeah, they're complicit. They're either complicit or spineless, depending on which ones you're looking at. Right. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:06:27]
| So, yeah, I mean, and and and also listen.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:32]
| But Sam, you know, that in the listen in the in the whispers, a lot of these people go and say that he is a lunatic, that he needs to be impeached, but they won't do it. Well, and even a whole bunch of those that are that are that are going, yeah, yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:06:48]
| Well, one of the things that I was going to bring up as a later topic, but we can just merge into, is we are seeing more splinters on the Republican side.
|
Sam:
[1:06:59]
| Now, we've had various times where they've splintered before and then come back into the fold. So, as usual, I'm not anticipating any major actions until or unless we see it. But especially on this Epstein stuff, there are a half dozen Republicans, at least, who are clearly upset and unhappy with what the administration is doing. You have, you know, like Nancy Mace was ranting about what the administration was doing with the redactions and she was upset about them like spying on Jam Paul. Like those aren't exactly like allies. no you know but and what i mean is bondi when she was testifying in front of whichever committee it was about the epstein stuff had opened a binder that included a list of exactly what jay paul had looked at when she went to look at the epstein files that have been released to congresspeople to look at the unredacted versions and you know even even johnson was upset about that and said that should not be happening. I'll talk to whoever I need to talk to. That needs to be fixed.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:19]
| Hey, Sam, how was Bondi's testimony in Congress?
|
Sam:
[1:08:23]
| So it went really well, I gather. She came off looking great. Oh, for Bondi, of course. She did wonderfully. No, of course. Like, look, she had her little burn books. Where apparently she'd done this before, so they were ready for it. Basically, her strategy for every question was to ignore the question and instead look up oppo research she had in a little binder on the person asking her the questions. And instead, why are you asking me about this when you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever oppo research she had on the person asking the question? For the Democrats, of course. And when asked about Epstein, she started yelling about like, But the Dow, the Dow hit $50,000.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:10]
| Dollars.
|
Sam:
[1:09:11]
| Dollars. It hit $50,000. Why are you asking me about this stuff? She was asked to apologize to the Epstein victims for not redacting their names from the files that were released while simultaneously redacting all of the potential bad actors. Right. And she absolutely refused to do that. And so like, and yeah, a lot of, a lot of Republican Congress people are pissed at her now too. So we'll see. And again, like, and people just more generally on the theme of splinters on the Republican side, you see a lot of Republicans increasingly uncomfortable about the tariff issues because they're like, it's the economy stupid and we're coming into the election and our polls are all bad. It looks like we're going to get slaughtered in the House, and suddenly the Senate is competitive, and it didn't used to be, and meanwhile you're making coffee prices high? What the fuck, dude? Fix this. You know, so there are a lot of Republicans getting upset. They're also, you know, it's just...
|
Sam:
[1:10:26]
| Again, they've been upset before. Every once in a while. Going all the way back to the Access Hollywood tape in 2016, you get a flurry of Republicans being all like, oh, no, we have to dump him. Donald Trump's dead. He's over.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:44]
| But those were big swings that then reverted. Right now, it's more like a slow bleed. Yeah, it's more like a like a slow bleed of people either leaving Congress, resigning Congress, splintering and not going back to the mean and stopping being afraid of like calling him out on certain stuff. It's a slow bleed right now that that that he's enduring from from from those guys. And look, the economic data is not going to get better, Sam. Now, I will admit, and I said this because I finished my taxes this week, that there probably will be a bump this quarter because of tax refunds, okay? Because I mentioned, you know, on Slack that, look, I probably spent the last 20 years that I had to write a check, whether a big check or a small check.
|
Sam:
[1:11:46]
| Well, because you specifically designed it that way, right? So that you're not loaning the IRS money.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:53]
| Well, yes. Now, usually I try to design it that it was a small check.
|
Sam:
[1:11:57]
| Right, right.
|
Ivan:
[1:11:57]
| But, you know, so I try to like err on the side that I might owe a little bit of money instead of me loaning the government money for free. Okay. But look, with the tax law changes last year, I've had the biggest tax refund I've ever gotten in my life. Like, by a lot.
|
Sam:
[1:12:20]
| He was complaining about it a lot on the Slack, so I told him he should just send it to me.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:24]
| Yeah. No, I'm not sending it to you.
|
Sam:
[1:12:26]
| I'll take care of it for you. I'll happily take that off your hands.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:30]
| But my thing is that I'm expecting that a lot of people, because they did not adjust withholdings last year according to the law, and so that a lot of people are going to wind up getting very big tax refunds right now. Now, of course, the thing is that, as I mentioned, with so many people in debt distress right now, anyway, I don't know if that's going to make a big difference. What, by the way, surprise, surprise, debt distress. What do you think is the biggest issue right now in terms of people all of a sudden defaulting on debt that they had not been on default before? What do you think is the number one thing?
|
Sam:
[1:13:08]
| The school loans.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:10]
| Boom.
|
Sam:
[1:13:11]
| Because the deferments and everything were all taken away.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:15]
| Right. They, it is at a level, at the highest level, like almost, I think ever it was in the chart, period. Okay. That's where we're at right now with that. And then that's having a negative impact on people's finances that, you know, either you're paying them or you're going to, you know, you're getting a negative impact because of this. And, you know, this is something, this is another bond that the administration threw at people. Okay. And this is an economic bomb that hits disproportionately people that make less money.
|
Sam:
[1:13:54]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:56]
| So, you know, and it hits a lot of people with higher incomes as well, which is that's one change. Because if you think about it, say you studied a profession that was expensive, that then you had gotten all these deferments in terms of not having to pay on those student loans. But maybe you borrowed a couple of hundred thousand dollars for that for that profession. But then, you know, all of a sudden, you know, you're you're you're screwed again.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:29]
| So it's the the the stress behavior is is really bad, you know, because we have seen issues with auto loans. OK, auto loan delinquencies have been soaring. OK, credit card delinquencies are at their highest level since the Great Recession. Okay auto loan delinquencies are the highest level since the great recession as well student loan ones are at the highest level even higher than before the great recession okay and more and mortgage ones are also rising now they are not anywhere near level of the great recession because that was like the biggest precipitator but if you look at mortgage defaults they had gone from, a share of loans that are at least 30 days of liquid mortgages, they went from about, Like 1.5% to all of a sudden they're like closing in on 3.5%, 4%. That's a big bump. Now, it's actually back to where it was the norm up until 2020. So that would like rose. But the trend isn't great. So look the Trumpian economics is a mother fucking disaster Sam okay this is all these fucking people idiots.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:56]
| Fucking idiots that voted for Trump because he's $50,000 yes.
|
Sam:
[1:16:03]
| Like what are you saying the economy is horrible like all of these things are through the roof.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:09]
| You know i i i was going to try to pull for the podcast an analysis to try to separate in terms of the stock market performance where you've because because you've got a lot of a number of very large profitable companies that dominate these indices and they're doing well like we mentioned this whole thing about the economy where we've got winners. We got this winners and losers decided by the government. And you've got what a lot of people describe this K-shaped economy where people, some people are doing great and the other people are getting fucked. And the stock market is also exhibiting that behavior as well, where you've got restaurant chains going under one after the other. Okay. You've got Wendy shutting down 600 restaurants. Okay. For example, like they just announced like this week you've got, but, But on the flip side, you know, you got Apple that, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:10]
| Just had one of their biggest quarters ever. No, their biggest quarter ever, okay, on the other side. And so that's the situation that you've got right now where you've got a lot of sectors getting bubbled. I mean, think about this thing about how housing historically has been a very big economic motor, okay, in the United States, okay? Home sales last month plunged, okay? They plunged. and this is already from a level that was already low and they dropped even more i mean if home sales are plunging it's because people can't afford to buy houses sam because there is and look people have talked about there is a dearth of on the flip side there's a dearth of of houses people affordable houses people are struggling to find homes but if you've got people struggling to buy homes and sales are collapsing it's it's the it's the worst of both worlds right, but according to the trump economic data it's the trump boom.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:22]
| It was Peter Navarro came on the news the other day, and I think that the reason he was saying this was because of all the restatements of the old labor data, where they had to cut down the previous reports. Once they took out all the bullshit estimates, because a lot of the more recent ones include estimates of certain things, extrapolations, because you don't have the full data. Peter Nomura went on TV and said some real, one of his usual lunatic lines. This was a different one, a new one. Let me see if I find it over here because I shared it on the Slack, where he said, it sounded kind of like Kellyanne Conway talking about alternative facts, like about many years ago. He said something along the lines of, you got to learn to look at this data differently from the past.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:19]
| And you're like, what? You know, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't look at those labor numbers like they used to look at the labor numbers. You got to look at them and you got to think about them differently. You know, because here, the revision to the labor numbers specifically, I pulled it up over here. Prior year the slowdown that job gains averaged only 15 000 a month for last year but the original pace reported was 49 000 a month think about that okay it is one of the slowest bases of any job creation since the great recession and i and i think that the reason why he was saying that you have to look at this data differently and here here's a quote peter navarro the jobs report comes out tomorrow, we have to revise our expectations down significantly for what a monthly job number should look like. Wall Street has to adjust for the fact that we're deporting millions of illegals out of the job market. If you're, if we're, wait a minute, I thought they were mooches on, on, you know, on welfare, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:20:34]
| Once again, yet another place that exposes that all of the excuses about that kind of stuff are bullshit and it's just flat out racism.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:44]
| Correct. So. It's a brave new world, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:20:51]
| It is it.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:52]
| Is it is a brave new world.
|
Sam:
[1:20:54]
| Okay somehow i'm sleeping better.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:58]
| I don't know why i think i've gotten to a point where it's just like i just i i.
|
Sam:
[1:21:03]
| Well it's look it's so negative yeah well it's the thing that you know at the very beginning when donald trump first won in 2016, people were like don't normalize don't normalize but it's natural for human beings to normalize You get used to the new normal. And then, like, the things that were outrageous before are like, well, that's just how it is.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:26]
| But it's just in general. Like, I got to think, like, Londoners during the Blitz, right? Okay? They were getting bombed every night, right?
|
Sam:
[1:21:33]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:34]
| I could hear them. I'm sure the bombs were listening every night. I'm sure at some point, at first they couldn't sleep. But I'm sure at some point they started sleeping through the fucking bombs.
|
Sam:
[1:21:41]
| Because you have no choice.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:43]
| You got no choice! Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:21:45]
| I mean, the humans are naturally resilient. You know, they will figure out how to deal with whatever situation they're in. That's not to say the way they deal with it may not have all kinds of negative effects over time. Like there's all kinds of trauma, you know, like you, you can argue that entire generations and how they interacted with the world were.
|
Sam:
[1:22:15]
| After the Great Depression, after World War II, hell, after what we are going through right now, entire generations' ways of interacting with the world will be different and not necessarily different in a positive way because of the trauma that they've gone through. You know, you survive the trauma. You figure out how to deal with the trauma. You go on with life, even through the worst of circumstances. But that trauma impacts everything for the rest of your life. And trauma usually does not impact people in a positive way. No it doesn't with that excitement uh let's take a break we will be back and uh talk about a few other things i have an idea for the next thing and i'm gonna change the direction slightly but here we go change the direction slightly slightly you know whatever here's a break.
|
Break:
[1:23:16]
| Okie dokie here it comes, It was just my internet being stupid. My internet being stupid is a new song we will make. Do you believe in the blue the blue the blue the blue the blue the blue the blue the the, Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on. Come on, I'm tired. What's wrong? I'm really tired. You, you, you, it's, it's amazing. To get the show on the road. There's a road? There's a road? Oh my God, there's a road.
|
Sam:
[1:24:21]
| Okay, we are back. And so the first thing for my next thing, rather than pick another serious newsy thing, I actually, I should have included this during our media segment. It is not, you know, usually I only talk about, like, movies that I've watched or TV shows where I've watched the entire damn thing. But I think based on an episode Alex and I watched last night, it is time for another update on this show.
|
Break:
[1:24:53]
| Oh!
|
Sam:
[1:24:55]
| Okay. Okay. We are watching Law & Order, and last night, Alex and I finished season six. Okay? Now, the one thing I'll say is, we were on the last episode of season six, episode 23 of season six, and, like, we were just a few minutes into the episode, and I was like, holy shit, this is... This is different and noticeably better than almost all Law & Order episodes that I've watched before. And so I paused the show and I'm like, am I crazy? I looked this up. There's a website called seriesgraph.com where you can put in your show of your choice. And it shows you a chart of the individual episode ratings from, I don't know, IMDB or one of these others.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:56]
| I'm assuming this is after McCoy joined the cast.
|
Sam:
[1:25:59]
| McCoy is already in the cast at this point.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:01]
| Sam Waters, right. Yeah, but this is like, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:26:03]
| Yeah, he's in it at this point. But sure enough, and I stopped it after like five minutes into the episode, maybe 10 at the most, to check this because I'm like, holy shit what is going on with this episode this is like it's like on a whole different level than law and order usually is and sure enough out of we are now in the midst of season 25 of law and order is airing right now okay okay yeah this episode season six episode 23 is the single highest rated episode of all 25 seasons so far the one that i watched last night, it break and you will probably remember it because i know you're a law and order fan when i described the episode this is the episode where at the very beginning most of the cast witnesses the execution of somebody that they had arrested oh of course and so instead of the usual you have the law half and then the order half and they you know they go through solving the crime and then and then go to court and blah, blah, blah. Instead, the whole damn episode.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:19]
| Is about the aftermath.
|
Sam:
[1:27:21]
| That's the name of the episode.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:24]
| Aftershock. It's Aftershock.
|
Sam:
[1:27:26]
| Aftershock. But it's the aftermath and it's all of the characters and how they deal with having that experience.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:36]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:27:37]
| Extremely powerful episode.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:40]
| Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Everybody dealt with it so different. And it's, I mean, it really captured how human nature is.
|
Sam:
[1:27:53]
| Yeah. And it completely broke the format that the show usually does because it was all about the personal lives of all the people involved. But it was, it was done very well. And of course, and I'm not going to give a spoiler, but it ended dramatically as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:10]
| It ended all, yeah. Not end well.
|
Sam:
[1:28:14]
| Anyway, looking at all these ratings, these rate episodes from 0 to 10 or whatever, this is the only episode of Law & Order in all 25 seasons rated over a 9. It is rated a 9.1. I also noticed looking at the graph sort of how consistent Law & Order is in quality. You look at other shows and it's all over the place. There's some good episodes. There's some bad episodes. It's all over the place. Law and Order, like almost every, like if you, if you look at this chart, there's seven, seven point something all over the place. There, there's some eights there, there, there, there's some episodes in eights and apparently season 21 kind of sucked. It had the lowest ratings by far, mostly in the sixes. But overwhelmingly sevens with maybe 20-30% being eights. And just remarkably consistent as well through the entire run.
|
Sam:
[1:29:24]
| Apparently, the season I just finished, season six, and the season following it, season seven, are the highest rated seasons in terms of average episode ratings of the entire run. So apparently I'm at peak Law and Order right now in season six and seven.
|
Sam:
[1:29:41]
| And anyway, I just like, there are a handful of TV episodes in various places where you are just immediately shocked by the episodes.
|
Sam:
[1:29:55]
| This was one of them. Like, I added it to the list to talk about as an individual episode. And I don't usually do that because it was just like, whoa, what the fuck did I just watch? You know? And so, I just figured I'd call that out. And I'll note that, like, you know, Law & Order, very consistent in the sevens. You know exactly what you're coming in to expect. I'm comparing. There's another show that Alex and I are watching right now. We're actually about to finish the series called The Closer. It's also very consistent, but consistent in the eights instead of consistent in the sevens. So, okay. It's a different kind of show than Law & Order, a little bit more to it. So I get that, but nice and consistent. But like, again, like the consistency is actually valuable. Like for, you know, you know, again, you know exactly if you turn on an episode of Law & Order, you know what you're going to get. It's a very consistent level of quality, and you can say, okay, maybe that gets a little bit repetitive, but they managed to make it so that there's enough different to do it. We'll see when we get to some of these later series that have lower ratings. I wonder what they fucked up in season 21.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:15]
| Well, season 21 was the return.
|
Sam:
[1:31:18]
| No, season 22 was the return, wasn't it?
|
Ivan:
[1:31:21]
| No, I think it's season 21.
|
Sam:
[1:31:22]
| Wasn't season 21 the last season of the old version?
|
Ivan:
[1:31:24]
| Hang on, hang on, hang on. Looking at our... No, it's the return season. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:31:30]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:30]
| And it was kind of... It was a little...
|
Sam:
[1:31:33]
| Shaky. Okay. Yeah. It looks like they got their feet again in season 22.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:39]
| Yes. They started getting their feet back again after that. But that first comeback was a little bit shaky. I think it's just too much time off. They started getting their feet back again after that. But yeah, that was a little bit eh. And it was short as well. They only did 10 episodes. They went back. I know it's really hard like in this in this era where to get like full. Well, most, you know, companies only order 10 10 shows of a season. But but but, you know, I mean, these new season, like I'm looking at season 24 or low on orders back to like a full like 22 episode season.
|
Sam:
[1:32:24]
| And I've heard like people talking about like the need for TV to get back to this. Like, rather than having, like, 10 super expensive, super involved, high-end episodes as, like, a prestige drama or whatever, just start cranking the fuckers out again.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:43]
| No, and then way too many of these shows have gaps that are way too long between seasons.
|
Sam:
[1:32:50]
| They do 10 episodes. That too, but also people have pointed out, like, you need to give the shows time to breathe as well. You need some of the episodes that let you explore things. If you're crunching it down to 10, it's basically a miniseries or a super long movie, which is a different thing than a series series. Okay. Now, before I move on, I had mentioned episodes of shows that really just live. Individually knock you over i will mention two more from other shows neither of which i'm currently actively watching but one is buffy the vampire slayer episode five no sorry season five episode 16 the body um i don't.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:45]
| Think i've ever i i i am pretty confident on this.
|
Sam:
[1:33:48]
| I don't think i.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:51]
| I've not even watched a single episode or a minute of the show. Maybe I passed by it on the TV and watched a few seconds, but I am pretty confident that I didn't watch like a full minute.
|
Sam:
[1:34:02]
| It was a good show. Unfortunately, this is one of the shows where it turns out the creator turned out to be a scumbag, Joss Whedon, who did this. But it's one of those separate the art from the artist kind of thing. And also one of the actors in it also was a scumbag and ended up having all kinds of issues in jail, blah, blah, blah, afterwards. But, like, whatever. Like, anyway, The Body, season five, episode 16 of Buffy, it won't hit if you just watch this episode in isolation quite the same way. You have to know the characters already. But without giving... Detailed plot stuff. It is the episode where Buffy's mother dies.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:44]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:34:45]
| And it is just so incredibly well done. And it kicks you in the gut, etc. And I guess the episodes I'm mentioning have a theme. Because the other one that I immediately thought of.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:01]
| Apparently a lot of death.
|
Sam:
[1:35:03]
| Yes, because the other episode I immediately thought of.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:06]
| It starts with a freaking execution.
|
Sam:
[1:35:09]
| Yes, yes. And the other one is, just make sure I have the right episode here, there you go, is MASH Season 3, Episode 24, which is also, spoiler for that episode, from the episode that came out in what.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:31]
| 1979?
|
Sam:
[1:35:32]
| Yeah, something like that. 1975 for this episode. March 1975. It's where the first commander that you got to know gets to go home. And then in the last minute of the episode, you found out that his plane going home was shot down. The whole episode is like saying goodbye to him happy farewells blah blah blah and then he's shot down on the way home and you see everybody's reaction to hearing that news.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:08]
| Hmm.
|
Sam:
[1:36:10]
| Anyway, all of those happy notes.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:13]
| Just all these happy notes.
|
Sam:
[1:36:15]
| I mean, I'm sure there's, Oh, and the red wedding episode of game of Thrones also is like one of those like episodes with like a major.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:23]
| I've not watched, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:36:24]
| And I have never finished game of Thrones, but I got up to that episode. And anyway, it was, it's, it's one of those where people are surprised by what happens in it. If they haven't been spoiled and, shocked and, oh my God, what just happened? Anyway, there are a bunch of classic episodes of shows. I wonder if any of them are happy. Our listeners suggest, are there any episodes of TV shows that are so incredibly outstanding that you remember that one episode of the show over and above everything else of the show, but where it's happy. It's not outstanding because it handled tragedy well.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:09]
| I'm not going to say episode of a show, but I did post a lot about this. Okay. It was on TV this week.
|
Sam:
[1:37:17]
| But I will say that— I was going to transition into the Super Bowl next. Are you ready to do that?
|
Ivan:
[1:37:21]
| But listen, I'm sorry, but the Super Bowl halftime show that just happened with my compatriot, okay all right who i'm gonna let me clarify something here i'm not one that has a fan of his music not not because i was you know some people are like oh my god no it's like it's not my kind of music.
|
Sam:
[1:37:46]
| Yeah you're more into the ray lynch.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:48]
| Yeah exactly it wasn't my kind of music you know i many times that his albums have come out before i listened to listen to it i'm But I will say that one of the things that, well, a couple of things. His last album was very different, and I didn't realize that the album was that different, okay? And so I started hearing the music relatively recently, okay? Where he incorporated a lot more elements of actually, like, doing more traditional Puerto Rican music, like salsa, okay? There's, I mean, this is a guy who's in a genre, genre, reggaeton, which is, it's a, I don't know how to describe it. It's a combination of, like, it's a danceable music okay with it's kind of like a i will say that it's a style of rap that's puerto rican in a certain extent with a very different vibe and rhythm to it okay it's very puerto rican and you know my one thing was and this is my ignorance okay i will say is a lot A lot of stars of this kind of music usually are people that aren't thoughtful or nice people, okay?
|
Ivan:
[1:39:02]
| But the show, the halftime show, which I think that when the global numbers come out will probably have been the most watched one globally. Even in the U.S., it was like fourth of U.S. Watch numbers. But from what I could tell globally, this was this had a lot more appeal because look, Bad Bunny has been number one global music streaming artist for multiple years. OK, you know, topping Taylor Swift in many cases. They've been like up there. OK, right. You know, in that in that competition.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:42]
| So, I mean, I. The entire production, and I had seen one that he had done earlier, shorter, one in Puerto Rico that was also very moving that I realized, shit, this guy is more thoughtful. But the entire production itself was an ode to Puerto Rico and to people and to the Americas and to our diversity. And it also touched many themes, talked about the happy things, the great things, the hurtful things, the struggle things. You know, it started shooting, showing a sugar cane plantation. You know, people in Puerto Rico were, I mean, those plantations were slavery for many years, you know, for many people in Puerto Rico up until like the abolition of slavery in Puerto Rico, which was late in 1871.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:46]
| And then even after that, when companies took over, the employers were basically almost indentured slaves to the companies that worked for them. They wound up always, like, being in debt to the—it was akin to slavery, okay, for a long time, until that industry went away in the first half of the 20th century, finally, thank God. Than Puerto Rico for better and other employment opportunities. But it, it, it.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:22]
| To everybody that I spoke to that was from Puerto Rico that watched this, they all cried because of how beautiful it was and how it really shared everything that we have done from from how our culture is to the things that were the things that were hurtful and struggled. I mean, they had this entire scene where they did it with the, where all of a sudden the power lines, the utility poles like exploded. And that's a direct reference to the, what happened with Hurricane Maria, which is almost now 10 years ago, which was something that was very traumatic for everybody. I mean, it was traumatic for my family. Very much so. And so, and, but the one thing is that his message was one of joy and love, I mean, to everybody, and how he went through the trouble of mentioning every inch of land in the Americas. At the end to express the love for all of them. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:42:29]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:30]
| And, oh, it was, man, it was joyful. It brought tears, but it was more tears of joy, not tears of suffering to see him do that. Look, people are still, it's crazy. The attention it's gotten, like, on a global basis and how in media and other places, it just keeps being replayed over and over and over right now. So, you know, especially after Trump and a lot of MAGA idiots vilified him, that the show was just that good and that it was really done from the heart and with love and joy. Was so awesome. And I, you know, it made me very proud of him and my tiny little island.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:32]
| That, yeah, I mean, look, this kid, this kid is not from a rich family. This kid is from a town that's near from where my parents are. A very humble town, okay? This kid used to bag groceries, man. You know? And he started uploading music at the SoundCloud and all of a sudden started getting popular. And he started being popular. The thing about him that a lot of the way that he has...
|
Ivan:
[1:44:05]
| In general, is showing of such kindness and concern for everybody. You know, he mentioned that in his last album, one of his goals was why he made a lot of songs that were outside of his main genre was to give opportunities to people. And there's a public school of music in San Juan to give them an opportunity to shine, to get opportunities. So he decided that he wanted to do that because that's their kind, that's not, it's not a genre, but he wanted all those people to get opportunities to be musicians, to be successful. He said that basically, well, we're all going to die, so I need to do, you know, but that's just the way it is, so I love my people, why not help them out? Listen, he did that last year. You know, he held no concerts in the U.S., and the reason he did that is because he did 30 shows in San Juan over like a month It basically said, hey, you want to see the concert? Come to San Juan to watch it.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:08]
| And that was a huge boost to the local economy. I can tell you I was there. I mean, it was packed with visitors during a time that is usually low season. Okay? And so, and, you know, you know, they keep talking about price being price gouged out of concerts, people, you know, oh, my God, you know, ticket master the fees. So the first 10 concerts, he made sure that people locally could get tickets at really cheap prices. OK, there were paper tickets, so they couldn't be resold like a line. You had to go like they actually printed the paper tickets and they sold them at like these old prices. So he does all these acts and things that are just to care for people and show it. And he's a joyful and genuinely happy guy. And that's what he was trying to share with the world. And, you know, the thing is that Maga, I guess, tried to do this stupid kid rock show, whatever. I don't know if you saw the thing that apparently the because he did this entirely live and he did not lip sync one second of it. Okay. Of the show. Apparently Kid Rock, they have to reshoot it like 30 times. They spent three days shooting.
|
Sam:
[1:46:19]
| And it was recorded like months ago, right?
|
Ivan:
[1:46:21]
| It was recorded like weeks. Well, it was weeks ago or something. And that they had to do reshoots after reshoots because people weren't getting excited. The people in the crowd were paid. I mean, it's just so fucking ridiculous.
|
Sam:
[1:46:36]
| But Yvonne, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:38]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:46:38]
| Bad Bunny is spitting on real Americans by speaking and singing in a foreign language and being like brownish. And just not, you know, what's wrong with him? Why can't we have real Americans at the Super Bowl, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:47:02]
| Ah, real Americans. Yes. So what are we going to do?
|
Sam:
[1:47:06]
| Just to be clear, I am not expressing my own opinion.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:09]
| Are we going to have like the Seminole and Cherokee tribes do a show like live on the stage? Is that where we're going to move to? I mean, I would be all for that, actually, by the way. That sounds like a great idea.
|
Sam:
[1:47:21]
| It would probably be a fun show, but no, like, and by the way, all of these MAGA people talking about real Americans do seem to get somewhat flustered when you start talking about Native Americans and being like, you know, oh, we're going to kick out all the immigrants who came here without permission. Okay, okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:43]
| So where are we starting? Okay, you know, it's just so fucking stupid.
|
Sam:
[1:47:52]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:52]
| The whole thing is just so stupid. The whole immigration enforcement, the whole fucking thing, the whole bullshit, it's all just fucking fascism and racism.
|
Sam:
[1:48:03]
| That's it. And look, it's time to wrap up, so I'm not going to get into this extensively. But there was more that came out in the last week to two weeks about the conditions in some of these camps, you know, that they're setting up for adults and kids that are just I saw the stuff this morning about like, you know, diseases.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:27]
| It's all about cruelty. It is all about thing to do. It is all about being cruel to to to people that are to black and brown people. Look, now there are some, by the way, there are some white people being ensnared, by the way, as well.
|
Sam:
[1:48:46]
| I saw a post this morning about, like, some Russians who are, like, locked up in these camps. Oh, somebody from Ireland that I saw. Yeah, no, you know, this is, the clear target is non-white folks. Right. But there's lots of collateral damage they're hitting as well. You know, I mean, the stuff in Minnesota got attention because we killed like reputable looking white people, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:20]
| Very nice people, by the way. OK, I'm not I'm not going to because by the way, people that I by the way, I give my respects to them because they were out there protesting for people like me. That's why they were there. And that's why they lost their lives for people like me. And so I do appreciate it very much.
|
Sam:
[1:49:41]
| Yeah. Look, one of the things, you know, when talking about when this regime is gone and we have, you know, hopefully somebody good in place, one of the things that I'm going to be looking for, honestly, to evaluate success or failure is not just that we stop doing some of these things.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:05]
| It's how we prosecute these fuckers.
|
Sam:
[1:50:07]
| Absolutely. Like we cannot do the things like, oh, let's look forward, not back. No, like, no, no, we need to vigorously and especially look, look, I care about all the corruption crap, too. That should all be like prosecuted as well. But what really like what we are doing in terms of, you know, setting up goddamn concentration camps and and all of the abuses of power that are happening related to the immigration issue.
|
Sam:
[1:50:43]
| This stuff is like send them to the hague kind of stuff yeah you know and yeah you know we need we need to like and and i'm not confident of the uh the ability of the of us to handle this stuff internally so honestly like yeah some of this stuff is like sign us up to the world court and hand people over you know and let let them deal with it as international crimes against humanity, you know, and, and, you know.
|
Sam:
[1:51:14]
| With, with a whole bunch of this stuff, but especially like how we're handling the immigration issue, this is just completely intolerable. It is, it's like, and it's, it's the kind of stuff that makes you wonder at some point, and I'm not saying, I'm not advocating anything, but at some point you do wonder where does the, I still think nonviolence is the most effective way to deal with any of this stuff. But at some point, if somebody is being clearly abused on the street, when is it appropriate to intervene with violence to stop the cop from shooting the guy? Like, if there had been another bystander there in the two cases in Minnesota we're talking about that had a firearm and saw them about to shoot these innocent people, would they be in the right taking action against the ICE agents? I don't know. I don't know. So, anyway.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:17]
| Anyway. On that happy note. We sucked out the joy out of everything again.
|
Sam:
[1:52:25]
| I'm sorry. I brought us down with very dramatic affecting episodes that like hurt your soul, but like are incredibly good and powerful. And then you were like, but joy, Super Bowl halftime show, joy, joy, joy. And then I'm like, concentration camps, human rights abuses.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:49]
| By the way, another reason why Bad Bunny decided not to do the shows in the United States was he was afraid that ICE enforcement was going to go and, like, surround the shows. And so many of his fans are Latino. He was like, fuck this shit. No, no, no. I'm not going to expose them. In Puerto Rico, it's a lot, you know, because you blend in so much, it's not such a problem. And so, therefore, that's why all the shows were done there.
|
Sam:
[1:53:16]
| Right. Okay, let's wrap it up. Curmudgeons-corner.com. Go there, find all our archives, find all kinds of stuff. You can find all the ways to contact us. I will say, I have a little graph at the bottom that has sort of a listener chart, if you go to curmudgeons-corner.com. I have something similar on Wiki of the Day. And I will add that I'm not going to promise a timeline, but because of some stuff i've done to help out the snohomish podcast network that we're a part of for their stats i've got coming soon an improved dashboard for curmudgeon's corner stats, like i i i've i'm tracking downloads in a better way than we did before in terms of what's valid versus what's robots. I'm charting it in ways that show not only total numbers, but like downloads of individual episodes and stuff like that. I got good stuff. I've got it. I've built out some stuff for, like I said, for the Snohomish Podcast Network. Go check them out. Check out all the other podcasts, including our UMSR.
|
Sam:
[1:54:29]
| Who've done shows with us a couple of times. I've been on their show. They've been on our show. Well, one of them has. Sammy hasn't been on our show. Sammy, if you're listening, you should come on sometime. Anyway, but you can find all that stuff and archives, transcripts, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And of course, a link to our Patreon where you can give us money at various levels. We will mention you on the show. We will ring a bell. We will send you a postcard. We'll send you a mug. And at $2 a month or more, or if you just ask us, we'll invite you to the Commissions Chorus Slack, where Yvonne and I and a bunch of other people are chatting and sharing links all through the week. Yvonne, do you have a highlight from this?
|
Ivan:
[1:55:08]
| I'll make some, back to comedy, okay? I got a couple, okay?
|
Sam:
[1:55:13]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:13]
| One is, this was in the standard, hospital evacuated as man found to have World War I artillery share in rectum. The discovery of the century-old shell prompted a hospital evacuation amid fears it could explode. Yes. Greg made a comment that he said that he wanted to eliminate his kidney stones in a hurry.
|
Sam:
[1:55:38]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:39]
| That was part of his plan. So that, that's one that I got. I should have thought of that. Exactly. I don't know. You're, you're not. And the second one is that there was some novelty items being sold around. There's like a, but, but one is apparently somebody has made Donald Trump butt plugs for sale.
|
Sam:
[1:56:01]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:02]
| Yes. I, I, You know, that doesn't look very—I don't see who could be deriving any joy from having Donald Trump shoved up their ass.
|
Sam:
[1:56:14]
| It is not enticing to me. That's all I can say. I'm not going to judge anybody.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:20]
| Yeah, but I'm out on that one.
|
Sam:
[1:56:22]
| Yeah, I've had enough foreign objects inserted into orifices in the last week.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:28]
| Indeed. Let's quit on that. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:56:32]
| Now, two more things to mention. One, Alex just came up to me, wanting me to mention that I have shared this on the Commudgeons Corner Slack, but apparently there's a site where you can do custom wordles. And so he's made a whole bunch for me. But I was proud of one because it was a 13-letter one, and I actually got it. Because I realized with this custom wordle, every entry didn't have—I misspelled my first attempt at a 13-letter word because I didn't even attempt to spell hippopotamus correctly. So I put in hippopotamus but misspelled, and it still worked. So I was like, ah, you can put in non-words, and that helps with long words because you can just try a whole bunch of letters and see what works and what doesn't. Anyway, in five tries, I successfully got cephalothorax.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:28]
| Jesus Christ, that's it. I looked at it and my response is like, fuck no, I'm not doing this.
|
Sam:
[1:57:38]
| Well, he sent me some with even longer words and I had that same response for the others. I'm like, okay, I did the one. I'm out. He also did one that only had four letters, which I did do. It was liar.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:54]
| Okay, that sounds more reasonable. Four letters. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:57:58]
| I shouldn't give... Lies? It was lies. It was, he, he's.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:04]
| He's upset at me because I'm not remembering properly.
|
Sam:
[1:58:08]
| Okay. What was it? He's going to tell me. While he gets me that, I will repeat once again, Robin letter, robinletter.com. If you're, if you're interested, send an email and I'll, I'll get you on the list. I'll be expanding in waves. Hopefully people like it. And frankly, even if you don't like it, feedback would be useful for me to be able to iterate or just learn from my failure.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:35]
| Plus, we like feedback, positive and negative. You know, for some reason, we used to get more feedback, unlike other places. I think it's because we haven't been doing ads. But when we got feedback, it was funny, especially the guys that said we suck.
|
Sam:
[1:58:48]
| It was lies-a. Oh. Oh, no. It was lies was my last guess, but I was wrong. So I never did find out that word. Oh. It ends in a yes. So.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:03]
| Oh, well.
|
Sam:
[1:59:03]
| I thought, I misremembered. Anyway, robinletter.com. Yes. And Phil, you know, and we don't even check, like, the iTunes reviews anymore. I haven't looked in years.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:16]
| I checked it a while back.
|
Sam:
[1:59:18]
| Nothing new.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:19]
| I checked it in the last year, and I didn't see any new reviews.
|
Sam:
[1:59:22]
| That's because, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:24]
| Well, let me try again. Let me check again. Hold on. Not that you mentioned it. There we go. But I did look not that long ago.
|
Sam:
[1:59:34]
| Well, and I guess it's not even iTunes anymore. It's now the separate podcast app.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:38]
| Podcast app.
|
Sam:
[1:59:39]
| Yeah. Anyway. See y'all.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:42]
| See y'all.
|
Sam:
[1:59:44]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:45]
| Yeah, the last written review was years ago.
|
Sam:
[1:59:50]
| Well, we stopped asking, too. So, hey, if you're out there, go to your podcast app, whatever your favorite player is, whether it's the most of them have associated places to rate or review podcasts. So, you know, go to the Apple podcast app or whatever other thing you have and give us a rating and a review.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:10]
| The review I like the most. It's still here. This is from three years ago. Two guys ranting about stuff they barely know. Get a bloody editor. Unlistenable. By Basket Rabbit.
|
Sam:
[2:00:24]
| There you go. Best review ever.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:27]
| Yeah. See, I, you know. Okay.
|
Sam:
[2:00:31]
| We're done here. Thanks, everybody. Stay safe. Have fun. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. Blah, blah, blah. And yeah. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:39]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:01:10]
| And that was, of course, more Ray Lynch. So thanks again for Ray Lynch. And yeah. Okay. I'm going to head to stop button, Yvonne. Bye.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:22]
| Bye.
| |
|
