Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Okay, we're all set. Shall we just jump in?
|
Ivan:
[0:05]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[0:10]
| Is that about right?
|
Ivan:
[0:13]
| What about right? Wrong.
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Sam:
[0:15]
| I was making the noises. Okay, here we go. Let's start. Welcome welcome welcome welcome welcome yeah what welcome to curmudgeon's corner for i'm so confused well welcome to a new episode of curmudgeon's corner for saturday march 1st 2025 it is just after 3 utc as we're starting to record i am sam mentor yvonne boazier hello yvonne uh hi you sound so enthused and so energetic uh, yeah that's about right yeah um i've I am also tired. I've had a long week.
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Ivan:
[1:26]
| I had a very long week with work. Things and things didn't exactly pan out as I expected during that. That sucks.
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Sam:
[1:34]
| Yeah.
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Ivan:
[1:35]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[1:36]
| Yeah.
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Ivan:
[1:37]
| Okay. Yes. You know, the steady stream of like amazing news.
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Sam:
[1:45]
| Oh yes.
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Ivan:
[1:46]
| Where, you know, I, it's Sam. I mean, it's so refreshing. You know, this week I heard all these coherent plans about how we're tackling inflation and we're going to get the economy, you know, growing, you know, faster and helping the average American, you know, feel better economically. And we are going to be a leader and we are going to be a leader, around the world and peace and prosperity and democracy. It's just, I mean, it's just so refreshing, Sam. I mean, every day we've got a leadership that is working for every American so hard, you know, it's refreshing, right?
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Sam:
[2:48]
| Yes. Right.
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Ivan:
[2:49]
| Or, okay. Did that not happen?
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Sam:
[2:52]
| No, that, that, that did not happen. And we will talk more about newsy stuff in a minute. As usual, our agenda is we spend time, you know, what was the phrase that our listener Pete said? Chewing the fat?
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Ivan:
[3:09]
| Chewing the fat, yes. Was that it? Yes, chewing the fat.
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Sam:
[3:13]
| So we will chew some fat for a while, Yvonne and I, on non-newsy topics. And then we will take a break. And then we'll come back with newsy stuff. And as Yvonne said, there's been plenty of it.
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Ivan:
[3:26]
| So what are you talking about? It's been slow news cycle. It's just boring stuff. We got a whole bunch of policy wonks out there really just, you know, working really hard at the details of governing and absolutely prices and interest rates. And they're, they're really, you know, going out there and really trying to figure out how to help the average American very hard, you know, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's refreshing, Sam. I feel refreshed.
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Sam:
[4:08]
| Sparkly. Sparkly.
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Ivan:
[4:11]
| Tingling even.
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Sam:
[4:12]
| Oh, tingling again. Okay.
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Ivan:
[4:14]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[4:15]
| You know, that's good.
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Ivan:
[4:16]
| Yeah.
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Sam:
[4:17]
| So, okay. What's, what's your non-newsy thing? I will do another movie later, but you can start.
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Ivan:
[4:23]
| What's my non-newsy thing? What the hell is my non-newsy thing?
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Sam:
[4:27]
| Or at least it could be something you read in the news that just isn't like the sort of serious political stuff, too. That works, you know, it doesn't have to be like, oh, you went to the store and had this exciting experience at the store or something or your latest travel escapades. It doesn't have to be that kind of stuff. It can be.
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Ivan:
[4:47]
| My latest travel escapades.
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Sam:
[4:50]
| My travel has gotten extremely boring. Oh, OK.
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Ivan:
[4:54]
| No, no, no. My travel has gotten extremely boring. well just going back and.
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Sam:
[4:59]
| Forth to puerto rico.
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Ivan:
[5:00]
| That's all i'm doing yes it's all back and forth, basically at this point it's turned into that i keep i i've even gotten to the point where they rented me the same rental car twice um like the exact same car not like the exact same car yes not.
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Sam:
[5:20]
| Not just like the.
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Ivan:
[5:20]
| Same not the same model i got the exact same car i'd got like five six weeks earlier i'm like oh i i got this car already you know i what i i've what have i what have i done i i i i oh well i did mention this a few weeks back that i was going to go and do this car thing but oh yes.
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Sam:
[5:50]
| Yes yes that you you got to like drive some fast car in.
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Ivan:
[5:55]
| Our race truck. Yeah.
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Sam:
[5:57]
| Okay, that's worth talking about. Tell us about it. Did you crash? Did you die?
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Ivan:
[6:01]
| I did not crash or die. You know, I will say, I had read some reviews online, and people online were saying that this was kind of lame.
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Sam:
[6:15]
| Okay.
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Ivan:
[6:17]
| And I will admit that that tempered my expectations, okay? So I had some low expectations coming in.
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Ivan:
[6:27]
| So I got there. You know, the first thing that they do is they do this session where they explain how, show you how on a, on a, you check in first, they give you these things, then they, they, they have like half minute, half minute, half an hour, 40, you know, at least half an hour session where they explain the safety rules. They explain you're going to be riding with an instructor. You're not riding in the car by yourself. And they, they, you know, what, how you need to follow their instructions and so forth and so on as you do that, and you know so that's this is pretty well organized then the thing is that, I first did and I wound up doing this.
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Ivan:
[7:23]
| Is unplanned but it's the way it turned out I didn't go straight into the race car itself there was first a ride along okay on some other car, okay, that you rode along. And I will say that was not a bad idea because one of the things that, as I've raced tracks, it's very hard to just arrive at a track that you've never raced in and just drive it flat out. And, you know, any driver, look, good race car drivers, they don't just show up at a track, especially a new one that they're unfamiliar with and just go out there and lay a mega fast lap.
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Sam:
[8:04]
| Especially if it's not like the standardized shapes too, right?
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Ivan:
[8:09]
| I mean, even then you have to look. It's not like an oval. Still, you have to learn it. Now, I mean, it's got all these turns and twists. It's not an oval. It's a course. And it has a lot of twists and turns and straights and whatever. You have to know how those are and so forth. They've laid it out that it's a decent racetrack. racetrack itself, okay? And so, you know, anybody, I mean, if you watch like.
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Ivan:
[8:38]
| Any racing you will see that that they will do practice so they go out there so so all right so i got to do this uh first little like go jaunt around the track in in a sedan that is a very fast sedan where they got to show me how the track like went around okay and this was supposed to be with my son in the car but oh okay my son decided that he wanted to sleep um okay the only time that i found for this was quite early on a saturday and he decided he preferred to sleep i when i went to his room to try to get him up he basically took his pillow put it on top of his head and just go away i'm like okay don't worry about it's fine well i got there and they did change it around so So I didn't get like, I didn't like that money wasn't lost. They kind of like repackaged it and some other things. And I got a video because I didn't buy the video, but the video and stuff, whatever. I'm like, oh, okay. All right. So I'd some, and some other extra little extra thing. So I'm like, okay, well this works. Okay. And so I did that, that around the track. And then, then after you did that, then they put you into the, into the, into the.
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Ivan:
[9:58]
| You you chose you had a few choices i chose an italian car specifically because i i had never i i've never driven an italian supercar right so that was like the thing and so then we you know with the instructor that talked about a little bit we went out and we started doing laps and it was about The whole thing itself Was about less than 15 minutes Okay Hmm, It's relatively short, but I.
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Sam:
[10:32]
| Think your orientation was longer than the actual race.
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Ivan:
[10:38]
| Yes. And that's fine. Okay. That's not for specifically what you're doing out there. I thought that the amount of time on the track was perfectly fine. Okay.
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Sam:
[10:50]
| Okay.
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Ivan:
[10:50]
| I've done like quite a lot more of that gets exhausting at the track. Okay. So I will say yeah it was the amount of time was done some people said no it's not a lot I thought it was perfectly fine because you did get to do enough high speed driving because the way that they structure it they've planned it out enough with the instructors that you're able to get up to, speed real quick okay And they've also built a lot of safety margin into it. So anybody who is a novice is, is not going to wind up into a wall or off the track. By the way, one of the things that the orientation, they talked about all the fees that you would incur if you did that. Okay.
|
Sam:
[11:44]
| All right. Yes.
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Ivan:
[11:45]
| That was a very important thing, you know, about all the fees that you would incur. If you, if you go off the track, it's $500. Well, you had insurance, but there were like these deductibles that you would incur before you get up to the insurers to the damage part. So basically try to discourage anybody from just being a cowboy out there. And they built a lot of margin so people wouldn't wind up into a wall. Because one of the things is.
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Sam:
[12:19]
| I mean, there's good reasons to not want that.
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Ivan:
[12:22]
| There's excellent reasons. There's totally excellent reasons. One thing I was talking with the instructor is like, well, this isn't a racing school. And he's totally right. Because at a racing school, we basically, we would go as far, as far as we can with our throttle down on the track. And then slam the brakes as late as possible. We did not do that, okay? We did get a good long way, but we lifted off the gas, which in racing you don't do. You don't lift off. You go, you're going with a pedal to the floorboard and you slam the brakes. But over here, we did lift off and we braked early, okay? Earlier than normally you had. And they had color-coded cones to show you, okay, this is liftoff here, this color cone, this other color cone means braking and so forth. And you went around. And look, the reality is that these cars are really fast. You know, I was able to, in like a blink of an eye, get this thing over 120 miles an hour. Okay. It really did not take very long to do that.
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Ivan:
[13:35]
| So, so you were able to get up to quite a lot of speed. Okay. Especially if you were aggressive with the throttle, he did explain to me how, you know, about the throttle, whatever I, because a lot of these throttles of these cars, if you don't press them all the way down. Okay. They won't go to, they won't, they won't really go to full speed. You have to really like, you have to really like smash it all the way down. Okay. It's not just like pull it all the way kind of down or whatever. You have to really hit the floorboard because it will when you do that, it will make it will it will downshift these cars. They didn't want you shifting either. Now, the one thing is that in the past, obviously, you used like a manual five seat manual. Look, this was meant for novices, no manual cars. OK, and the reality is that now these super high performance automatic transmissions that they've got for this kind of car shift faster than you know it used to be a manual was faster than the automatic now forget it no these cars are faster than anything that you could do okay they will upshift downshift they'll do all that for you it's really just you know you're you're not worrying about shifting for the most part you could do it and i and i would see that how i would be if i was really racing i would but but it was perfectly fine but the one thing that happens is When you press the pedal all the way down.
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Ivan:
[15:04]
| These throttles are now electronic, so it will unleash more power. While at the same time, it signals to the transmission to downshift. Okay? So we'll do both of those things by just smashing the gas. And so the cars got up to speed. It was fun. It was a lot of fun. I i will say i i got a lot more enjoyment out of it than i thought that i would uh i would recommend it to anybody that wants to go and like really give the proper plug.
|
Sam:
[15:38]
| Where did you go.
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Ivan:
[15:39]
| It's called oh god what the heck i gotta get the name of of of this place so.
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Sam:
[15:47]
| Like other people were sort of saying it wasn't that good you liked it.
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Ivan:
[15:50]
| Yeah yeah it's called the extreme w you the extreme experience.com okay and extreme x-t-r-e god x-t-r-e-m-e, experience.com so you know so extreme experience so it's it's it's it starts with both starts with an x instead of with an e oh of course of course so um yeah and the thing is that they do it around the country they actually have all these trucks where they bring all the equipment and everything to the play to a different city different places they do that and you know look like i've said i Look, I am one that is worried about the environment. I don't plan on buying a car like this again.
|
Sam:
[16:39]
| Well, how good would that car be in daily driving, Yvonne? Could you go to the grocery store with it?
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Ivan:
[16:47]
| Actually, here is the thing about these new modern hypercars. They are actually pretty decent now at driving around slow. Okay? Now, could you put a lot of groceries in them? Not particularly, but you drive to work. It does drive. It does have like a this is the crazy thing they've done these cars. Now I could I could have shifted it to the soft comfort mode and it's just pretty puttying around like like a normal car. No big deal. And I did drive a little bit like that because once you start, you don't first go out like that. You're just driving around slowly or whatever. And I'm like, oh, this is just, you know, like whatever. It's like just any normal car. Now, it used to be that these cars before now, they were just, I mean, doing that was an ordeal, but, but you could, but you, you could manage that if you want, but I, but that's not the reason I'm just like, I said, no, I, I'm not, I'm not buying what these kinds of cars, even though I know that, I don't know why, why, you know, why I'd be wearing a different era now where apparently none of that matters. I guess, you know, but you know, I had a lot of fun. If you want to experience that, I would highly recommend it. It was a good time.
|
Ivan:
[18:03]
| You know, I may not sound that excited about it right now, but it's probably more because I'm just a little bit tired. I, you know, I've been like six, seven weeks. I don't know. I've lost track of like fucking traveling every fucking week and chasing people and calling people and doing and presenting and meeting and going from one meeting to another fucking meeting and something and so forth. And I'm just like, I'm, I'm, I'm wiped.
|
Sam:
[18:33]
| I really i feel you i feel you okay my turn yes okay so my movie this time around is ghostbusters but which one not yeah not the original but the 2016 ghostbusters the one with the women it is after the fact been sort of well apparently they put it into credits right away it's ghostbusters answer the call but it was marketed as just ghostbusters at the time ghostbusters and here's here's the thing this is one where so first first of all it is a reboot it is not a sequel to ghostbusters and ghostbusters 2 okay it it basically starts It's over. There's a new cast of characters. They are, in fact, women. They're sort of analogs to the ones that were in the original Ghostbusters, but completely recharacterized. So it's not just like, yo, it's Venkman, but it's a woman Venkman, you know, or whatever. It's that their backstories are different. How they come together is a little bit different.
|
Ivan:
[19:55]
| Which year did this movie come out?
|
Sam:
[19:57]
| 2016.
|
Ivan:
[19:58]
| Oh yeah was there another ghostbusters after that so there.
|
Sam:
[20:04]
| There have been multiple ghostbusters after this that are.
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Ivan:
[20:07]
| Sequels to the original multiple yes.
|
Sam:
[20:10]
| There were i believe two.
|
Ivan:
[20:11]
| More we've had i i i have managed to not watch any of them you actually beat me to a movie that is a modern movie to watch.
|
Sam:
[20:22]
| There you go. Well, see, here's the thing, though. The two after this were sequels to the first two.
|
Ivan:
[20:31]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[20:32]
| They basically tried to erase it. And they pretend it never happened. They pretend it never happened. And here's the thing, because the main thing around this when it happened was this massive I don't know. Reaction against the fact that it was women ghostbusters and your sort of typical misogynistic trolls went after it okay and so they were flooding review sites at the time with negative reviews before the movie even came out they were you know talking about how you know these these women aren't funny and this is not like a good, you know, this is disrespectful to the original Ghostbusters and all kinds of stuff like this. The, the, the women in it, by the way, Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Kate McKinnon, and Leslie Jones were the four pretty good cast. That's a pretty good cast. Those are all like well-known funny women. Okay. You know, now Now, here's the deal. I'll give you my overall review and then talk a little bit more about it. I will give it a thumb sideways overall. Okay? It was fine. It was not exceptional. It was not great. While I was watching it.
|
Ivan:
[21:56]
| I was— So they gave it shit for the women, even though maybe the problem is, you know, but look, sometimes happens the script wasn't maybe that good.
|
Sam:
[22:03]
| Well, here's the thing. It was an average okay movie. It was not a bad movie. Okay?
|
Ivan:
[22:09]
| Right. So it was just average. And so, yeah.
|
Sam:
[22:11]
| Yeah. And, and, and look, it did not deserve any of the use it got.
|
Ivan:
[22:17]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[22:18]
| Like it did not at all. Like now generally I like sequels better than reboots. I always get a little grumpy when they just like completely ignore the previous and say, we're starting over, but you know, it's sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't, but like when you're going for something that there's a lot of nostalgia value for having the connection to the original is, I think, good. So I question the choice to reboot rather than sort of introduce new characters into the Ghostbusters universe. But this is what they chose to do. And it was... You know, I kept thinking like it, it sort of roughly paralleled the structure of the first ghostbuster movie. They changed a bunch of stuff. Like the, the details were not the same. You did not have like, you know, the, the, the, the, the gate, the key master and the gatekeeper or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[23:13]
| Yeah. Yeah. I am the geek. Yeah. I'm the key master. Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[23:16]
| Yeah. You did. You did not have Rick Moranis and.
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Ivan:
[23:20]
| Oh God. And who's the other person? I'm sorry. It's just the other person wasn't as famous.
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Sam:
[23:24]
| Sigourney Weaver is actually more famous.
|
Ivan:
[23:27]
| Oh, okay. Well, I thought it was, I thought, wasn't it the, it was, wasn't it? Oh, nevermind. Okay. I didn't remember that it was Sigourney Weaver. Okay. Yeah. Sigourney Weaver is definitely far more famous than Rick Moran. Way, way, way.
|
Sam:
[23:45]
| Anyway, like, and the one thing I will say, yeah, like, but again, like, it got abused for it got abuse it did not deserve at all like people were all like ripping it to shreds saying it was horrible blah blah blah right now like with years passed by it has a 74 percent at rotten tomatoes which you know what.
|
Ivan:
[24:08]
| Percentage you're rotten.
|
Sam:
[24:09]
| 74 that's not bad that's not bad right like it's good actually you know it it is you know like when it first came out like i said they were flooded with these negative reviews. It was in the toilet. Right. But now years have passed. More people have rated whatever. 74% is not bad. You know, it was a fine movie. And I just get pissed when I think about it, about like the abuse it got. Now, again, like I'm only giving it a thumb sideways because it paralleled the original Ghostbusters so much. If you'd seen the original ghostbusters every single moment you were thinking about the comparisons like yeah are they doing a problem are they doing it better or worse than the original what it what have they changed and what is the same you know you're thinking about that like the whole damn time and and i think that detracted from it i will say actually like with.
|
Sam:
[25:09]
| And this is kind of a negative that I'm going to say this, but the, the best part of the movie was the cameos from the original cast. Cause most of the original cast did end up in cameo roles and new one. And especially like sort of in the end credits, they brought in everybody from the original movie was sort of like, you know, sort of in, in, in like little gaps in the end credits, they'd roll some credits and then there'd be like a little mini scene. And repeat over and over again. And it add all kinds of little riffs between people in the original cast. And that was actually the funniest part of the whole damn movie, was the people in the original cast are interacting with the new people, not as their original characters, just as completely different characters. But doing some of the things, like for instance, you remember Bill Murray and Sigourney Reaver doing the whole scene where he pretended to be a psychic.
|
Sam:
[26:09]
| And first there was some other character and then sigourney weaver came in and he reacted completely different to sigourney weaver than the other character they basically redid that scene okay you know in the end credits of the movie and it was funny like again the funniest part of the movie were these cameos and it's like well that doesn't say much about the rest of the movie but the rest of the movie was okay. But yeah, like thumbs sideways. It was okay. If you're watching all the Ghostbusters, don't leave it out. It's unfair to these people. Oh, I should mention, like I mentioned the harassment campaign. It was so bad that I believe it was Leslie Jones was the one that was completely like exited social media because she was getting so much abuse. And it's, no, just...
|
Sam:
[27:02]
| Be good people come on even if you don't like the movie there's no reason to like turn it into a harassment campaign and that's essentially what happened and the these women were harassed relentlessly for this movie and sort of chased off and then they they sort of try to pretend this movie didn't even exist and that's not fair that's not fair at all this this was fine this was a fine movie it you know it it's in the shadow of the the others though but it it was you know i don't know it just pisses me off and that's all i have to say about that okay okay and and and you know i did i have watched one more of the ghostbusters movies but then there's like the the very most or maybe two how many are there ghostbusters franchise let me just make sure i.
|
Ivan:
[27:58]
| Guess i'm going to guess.
|
Sam:
[27:59]
| Five there so yes the in the original in the original timeline there's now there's four with another one coming so there's there was ghostbusters ghostbusters 2 ghostbusters afterlife and ghostbusters frozen empire i have seen ghostbusters afterlife i will eventually talk about it here i have not yet seen frozen empire it just came out last year both.
|
Ivan:
[28:25]
| I mean You've seen, I have seen none of these Ghostbusters, other than the first two, like, back from, what, whatever the hell it was, 80s, 90s, I don't, I don't, 80s, right?
|
Sam:
[28:38]
| Yeah, the first two were 84 and 89.
|
Ivan:
[28:42]
| Yeah, so, yeah, these were from the 80s.
|
Sam:
[28:44]
| And then this one with the women was in 2016, and then the two that returned to the original universe were 2021 and 2024. for. I will hold my opinion on the 2021 version until I get to it in order. And I have not yet watched the last one. The last one only came out last year. The reason I was rewatching all the Ghostbusters was actually to try to prepare to see the new one in the theaters. I didn't make it. So anyway, okay, that's it. Let's take a break. And then I guess we'll hit the newsy stuff. yeah.
|
Sam:
[29:22]
| So much fun with the newsy stuff okay here's a break, Okay, we are back. So, Yvonne, as is traditional, you pick first.
|
Ivan:
[31:17]
| I'm trying to...
|
Sam:
[31:19]
| You know, you could have thought about this during the break or even before the show started.
|
Ivan:
[31:23]
| I was... Well, I was reading about something that perhaps to talk about, but I don't think that we've got much to say about it. I don't think I've got anything to say about it. So, I mean, other than it sucks. but i mean i i think i could i could make that argument for everything that is in the news you can mention.
|
Sam:
[31:44]
| The thing that sucks and then move on to the real topic.
|
Ivan:
[31:47]
| There is this guy who's an nfl punter that went to meeting in california to protest it was an anti-maga protest that he did and for some reason he got fired from his job at a school as a coach basically they said that the only reason they said is they were getting way too much attention over, his comments at the school and they just didn't want to deal with it. So anyway, that sucks. So anyway, let's just hit the elephant in the fucking room. Okay, so Trump and Zelensky met at the White House. Did that go well, Sam?
|
Sam:
[32:34]
| About as beautifully as any meeting I've ever seen between heads of state.
|
Ivan:
[32:39]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[32:42]
| No, it did not go well.
|
Ivan:
[32:44]
| I mean, just, you know, I mean, I've got a fucking president that basically just sat there and just talked like he was Vladimir Putin.
|
Sam:
[32:56]
| Well, and Vice President Vance took part as well.
|
Ivan:
[33:00]
| Oh, and Vance also.
|
Sam:
[33:01]
| The whole thing was clearly planned out. This was not like they deny it. But clearly this was like they they plan to ambush him like this. This is not like spontaneous.
|
Ivan:
[33:14]
| How was it? Was Marco Rubio happy?
|
Sam:
[33:18]
| Marco Rubio was not happy.
|
Ivan:
[33:21]
| He looked very glum. He looked about as bad as I did on election night. I mean that's the face that I had like going into election night this last election you know I'm just, Is it surprising?
|
Sam:
[33:44]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[33:45]
| No.
|
Sam:
[33:46]
| Although I did hear an interview in the hours after this from someone saying that the Ukrainian delegation expected that it would be tough. But they did not expect this. They did not expect it to be this bad. And how?
|
Ivan:
[34:05]
| I also, I will agree with their assessment. I expected it that it would be tough. But I thought since this asshole invited him to the White House, that it would be a little bit better.
|
Sam:
[34:21]
| One thing Rubio said after this, I think it was an interview with Fox, was that actually Zelensky was the one who insisted on coming to Washington for the final negotiations on this mineral deal rather than signing it there. And presumably that's because he wanted to get directly in front of Trump to try to like negotiate something.
|
Ivan:
[34:46]
| Well, I mean, I, I mean, if you're going to sign something that if you're negotiating something that of that importance, wouldn't you, you know, they're, they're saying they want to go forward. Wouldn't you ask for, Hey, can we have face to face? But they agreed to it. They could have said no.
|
Sam:
[35:10]
| Oh, yeah. They agreed to it for sure. I mean, basically, the notion is that, hey, Trump is very transactional. Trump is very much about personal one-on-one interactions as well. So, like, if you're trying to make a deal, you want to get face-to-face with Donald Trump.
|
Ivan:
[35:29]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[35:30]
| And so that all makes sense. Just to make sure we've covered it. You know, basically, the timeline, they came in. They had a meeting. And then they were having a sort of Oval Office part of the meeting where they brought the press in for photographs and all this kind of stuff.
|
Sam:
[35:46]
| And basically, Vance and Trump started berating Zelensky while this was going on. And Zelensky, for the most part, kept calm and cool. And, you know, he didn't snap back at them. He did. He also didn't give in. He like when they said something wrong, he was like, no, that's not right. You know and and tried to hold his own there and it got very contentious and very hot there was one point on there were multiple video feeds from this one of them sort of panned to the side and you saw a woman with like her head in her hands apparently this was like the the actual like u.s envoy to ukraine who was like this is not going well um but they and then they They were going to have a full-fledged press conference with the two of them afterwards, and they were going to sign the mineral deal. That all got canceled. And there were conflicting reports at first, but it looks like in the end, Zelensky and his team went off to another room for a while while the White House decided what to do next. And then White House staffers came in and told them to just leave. And so they left the White House. And so there's no deal, nothing signed.
|
Sam:
[37:00]
| And, and there's all sorts of speculation about, like, like I said, this seemed planned to me, but like the white house denies it. The white house says that Zelensky provoked them. You know and okay even if the lens first of all i see nothing in the videos that indicate zelinski provoked anything but even if he did well keep your damn self under control you you don't like.
|
Ivan:
[37:28]
| Lash out they berated they brought him in and they just berated him and and and you know vance with his you know fucking sanctimonious bullshit you should be thinking us you should be thanking us and then you know trump saying well i got all the cards you would be you know you you would be and then just all the lies i mean it went back to the damn lies you know you started the war you're a dictator you're i mean i'm just like.
|
Sam:
[38:00]
| They didn't they didn't.
|
Ivan:
[38:02]
| Repeat all.
|
Sam:
[38:02]
| Of that during this session.
|
Ivan:
[38:04]
| But a number of that stuff was like you know Insinuated I've got all the cards You're just You're fighting because You We're, You feel powerful because we're backing you or something like that.
|
Sam:
[38:22]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[38:23]
| To that effect.
|
Sam:
[38:24]
| And look, part of this is, you know, okay, if you brought him here and knew you were going to do this, then you knew you weren't going to go through with this mineral deal anyway. Which, by the way, was not good terms for the Ukrainians. The Ukrainians were just trying to make good with Trump so that they could, you know, have further discussions afterwards. And so, like, look, here's the bottom line that, I mean, lots of people predicted before the election, but I think is absolutely clear now. This isn't just Trump backing off from supporting the Ukrainians.
|
Ivan:
[39:05]
| And it's from backing up Europe, period. Backing up Europe. Backing up anybody. Backing up Taiwan. Listen, backing up anybody. This is like Trump retreating completely from the role that the U.S. Had in the world post-World War II. Well, I'd go and and and accelerating an arms race globally, because that is what we are looking at now.
|
Sam:
[39:34]
| Look, I'd go further than that. It's not even the United States moving from a pro-democracy position to a neutral position. They are nearly 100 percent taking Putin's side on every single one of these issues. This isn't just moving to neutrality. This is switching sides in the war.
|
Ivan:
[39:52]
| Oh, I mean, in the Ukraine case, yes. Okay. I just, because again, because Trump, this is, because Trump's transactional. I think that is the case with Ukraine. I don't know what the fuck else he's going to do with anything else, but it definitely, in Ukraine's case, he is taking Russia's side. Yeah. Period. A hundred percent. Whether that holds up in any other thing, who knows? I don't know. But he definitely is inclined to be aligned with Putin on stuff. And so, like I said, it goes into, takes the U.S. From a role that it had as basically seen as defender of the Western world. In large part, especially in the post-Soviet collapse period of time, into now it's just like everybody better fend for themselves because the U.S. Might just basically throw you under the bus.
|
Sam:
[41:04]
| Well, we started to talk about this last week, and I mentioned something on the curmudgeon's corner slack as well. But Europe in particular, but this applies to other parts of the world too, The whole world basically has to assume at this point that the U.S. Is, A, completely unpredictable. It could go any way and it could change on a dime, but fundamentally needs to be considered as an adversary. Like even our nominal allies.
|
Ivan:
[41:33]
| Oh, you can't. Yeah, you cannot count on them as an ally for anything.
|
Sam:
[41:38]
| Not at all. But worse than that, you have to make plans assuming that the U.S. Is going to be outright hostile. You are not safe making an assumption of anything else.
|
Ivan:
[41:52]
| But Sam, here is the thing that he has repeatedly said. He wants to significantly diminish the U.S. Military strength right now. I mean, Sam, he said it. he wants a 50% I mean this is this is like I mean basically I mean Putin told him this, Oh, cut your military 50%. He's going, he is saying he wants this. Now, I know Congress isn't authorizing it, but it's what we want. And obviously it will hobble, you know, the military in many ways. But again, the one thing is that the only, if I am, say, Taiwan right now, I would be crazy if I'm not making plans to ramp up our defense spending like tenfold.
|
Sam:
[42:53]
| Same for Europe.
|
Ivan:
[42:55]
| Same for Europe.
|
Sam:
[42:56]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[42:57]
| Tenfold. Fuck this shit. You know, if I'm spending, well, maybe not Europe tenfold as much, you know, but certainly like double, triple, whatever your outlays are right now. But for Taiwan, I would say I'm fucking spending 10 times whatever the fuck we're spending right now. And we're basically just, you know, becoming a militarized nation at this point. If I were Taiwan, that would be my approach. And I would say that I would probably be thinking along those lines of our North Korea or Japan. I mean, what I'm saying is that this is unleashing a global arms race. It's crazy. But this is what.
|
Sam:
[43:42]
| I think you're right. I think it's inevitable. And honestly, like, it's the smart thing for any of those countries to do.
|
Ivan:
[43:50]
| Fuck yeah.
|
Sam:
[43:50]
| We lived in a universe for 80 years where, you know, the U.S. Was the arsenal of democracy.
|
Ivan:
[44:00]
| Yep. That was the phrase that was used multiple times.
|
Sam:
[44:03]
| And so lots of countries grew up essentially under our protection. And you can argue that they should have been defending themselves all along. But the fact is that by extending this umbrella, the U.S. Produced a sort of peaceful zone that was able to develop rapidly. Europe was able to recover from World War II. Japan was able to recover from World War II. Other areas in that umbrella were able to move forward faster than most of the rest of the world. And it was the Pax Americana, right?
|
Ivan:
[44:42]
| But it wasn't just that. It gave you significant advantages economically. The fact that the U.S. dollar has been the reserve currency. All of these damn things are interrelated, Sam.
|
Sam:
[44:56]
| All of them.
|
Ivan:
[44:57]
| And this is what these idiots are not seeing.
|
Sam:
[45:00]
| Well, and the key point they're not seeing as well is like Donald Trump views all this as like, why were we giving away all this shit for free?
|
Ivan:
[45:07]
| But you weren't giving it for a way for free, you asshole. That's the prison. You fuck out.
|
Sam:
[45:14]
| We got all kinds of benefits out of this. Like, yes, these other countries benefited as well. But there's no comprehension in someone like Donald Trump that everything isn't zero sum. If we help out if we help out Japan or Germany, we must be hurting ourselves. No, there's a such thing as a relationship where we can do something that benefits them and us. And, and that was what was happening. You know, this, and I know there are people who are like, you know, American hegemony was not good. There are all kinds of bad, you know, colonialist things and everything else.
|
Ivan:
[45:57]
| Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know. I get it. It wasn't perfect, but let me tell you something. You know what? But this is the same shit that I heard from all of us going into Iraq and saying that we're bringing down Saddam because we're going to bring like pieces, you know, this Jeffersonian democracy over there. Ask them if they preferred how the fuck it was under God, under Saddam. And Saddam was not. And so that was way worse than the United States is. Let me tell you something. Most Iraqis still to this day that were alive back then say, fuck this. Give me back Saddam. That's the shit that we're talking about right now And so, yeah Was it perfect? No, But the alternative where we're basically ushering in a new fucking global arms race now in 2025 is way worse.
|
Sam:
[46:50]
| Well, not just the global arms race, but also if every country in the world is forced into sort of fend for yourself, transactional one-on-one interactions with others, it's just inherently very unstable. Yes. I mean, that is...
|
Ivan:
[47:08]
| Extremely so.
|
Sam:
[47:08]
| This is why the pre-World War II world had so many wars. Was like a constant, like.
|
Ivan:
[47:18]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[47:20]
| Wars were the norm. The peaceful.
|
Ivan:
[47:23]
| Wars were their own.
|
Sam:
[47:24]
| Yes. And wars between major powers.
|
Ivan:
[47:27]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[47:27]
| We've sort of, for the last 80 years, frozen them. Now, have there been wars in various countries and these proxy wars? Absolutely. You just listed Iraq. We go back further. We had Vietnam, Korea. We've had wars all over the world that we weren't involved in, although for a lot of them, we stuck our fingers in one way or another. There have been plenty of wars, but there have not been the flat out straight like, hey.
|
Sam:
[47:55]
| Germany is going to invade France and try to expand its borders, you know, like we had in World War II and a bunch of other countries, too, obviously, not just France. Whereas what we're normalizing here again is Russia saying, yeah, we want Ukraine. We're going to just take over. And we're allowing that. And not only that, hell, Donald Trump's out there talking about like Greenland and Panama and Canada and blah, blah, blah. It's all part of the same thing. It's part of saying, like, we want to go back to the world where all of this stuff is in flux. And it's just like whoever's strongest gets what they want. You know, again, you can say you can make really good arguments that the quote unquote rules based international order was fixed to sort of help the major Western powers and shit on everybody else. And maybe you'd have a point in some areas. but it also had significant advantages.
|
Ivan:
[48:59]
| Benefits, yes.
|
Sam:
[49:00]
| Over just everybody's all out for themselves.
|
Ivan:
[49:04]
| Everybody is just armed to the teeth. Look, it's the same thing as the problem that we've got with, like, whatchamacallit, gun control in the U.S.
|
Sam:
[49:13]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[49:14]
| Are we safer because everybody is armed to the teeth?
|
Sam:
[49:18]
| No.
|
Ivan:
[49:19]
| No! Is the world going to be safer because everybody's now going to go and get armed to the teeth?
|
Sam:
[49:26]
| So much more dangerous. Like the odds of, well, I mean, people, people always talk about the odds of like world war three or something, but the odds of just more regional conflicts and big ones, big ones is going up dramatically. Like, and, and there are a number of nuclear powers involved. So, you know, that, that may happen too, but even absent that, like with this kind of stuff going on. You know, hell, you know, Turkey and Greece have had territorial disputes for like decades, right? Over like Cyprus and crap like that. What's to stop one of these from eventually being, oh, you know, well, let's just do something. Hell, I just saw a news story flow by like right at the beginning of this show about how our lovely defense secretary is apparently warning Mexico that we won't warn them if we do military strikes on cartels. We're just going to do it if we feel like it's necessary in Mexico. You know, and what? You know, so the risk to the world has gone up significantly. Like of small scale conflicts, medium scale, large scale, And, yes, of World War III, too.
|
Sam:
[50:52]
| Now, maybe it'll turn out the U.S. and Russia are on the same side of that one. I don't know. And we both decide to nuke France because they're going against us. I don't know. I'm hoping not that far.
|
Ivan:
[51:07]
| Okay, let's try that thing.
|
Sam:
[51:12]
| Nuke the uk instead not france leave france okay well.
|
Ivan:
[51:16]
| I mean did we get in are we gonna i mean now that you're talking about that so what are we are we restarting the wars of fact.
|
Sam:
[51:24]
| Well well this this goes to the other thing like you know you we mentioned europe having to arm up and europe having to figure out what to do about ukraine without us because we're clearly not going to help the natural like extension of this is you know even if even if nato doesn't dissolve tomorrow, which by the way, you know, Trump keeps talking about it. I would not be surprised at all if he exits the U S from NATO at some point.
|
Sam:
[51:49]
| But yeah, Europe having to like figure out, okay, what are we doing now that the U S is an adversary too is, you know, they're, they're going to have to make their own pact separate from NATO about what they're going to do and how they're going to coordinate and all of this kind of stuff and they'd be stupid not to by the way.
|
Ivan:
[52:13]
| There is a somebody has a montage of clips where trump in the campaign guaranteed that he will end the war in ukraine.
|
Sam:
[52:22]
| In 24 hours 24.
|
Ivan:
[52:23]
| Hours of taking office.
|
Sam:
[52:25]
| It wouldn't.
|
Ivan:
[52:26]
| Even be tough for him to do and that everyone will be happy sam.
|
Sam:
[52:30]
| Everyone everyone is clearly happy was.
|
Ivan:
[52:34]
| Trump happy today.
|
Sam:
[52:36]
| I'm not sure what emotion to attribute to him, but...
|
Ivan:
[52:41]
| Yeah, it's true. Who the hell knows what the fuck emotions are inside that monster. Lord. I don't... I gotta be honest. I don't know. If you... One thing that is really disturbing about him, I've never seen him laugh. You realize how fucked up that is? A man that cannot laugh. Do you know what kind of a miserable fucking prick you have to be you can't laugh that is such a horrible existence and I hope it ends soon, by a heart attack.
|
Sam:
[53:20]
| Just to be clear you're not encouraging anything.
|
Ivan:
[53:23]
| No by a heart attack his cholesterol spikes oh well damn Yeah, too bad.
|
Sam:
[53:35]
| So anyway, it's a mess and it's getting worse. And I don't think we're in, I mean, what, what are we six weeks in seven weeks in something like this? Like not even like we're, we're not even at the a hundred day mark.
|
Ivan:
[53:53]
| We're not at the a hundred day. Like we're not at a hundred day mark. And good news, Sam.
|
Sam:
[53:58]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[53:59]
| Atlanta fed Zen on a forecast today. Basically, at this point, they're basically, with all the shit that Trump's done, that we're probably going to be in negative growth in Q1.
|
Sam:
[54:13]
| Right. Because everybody's retreating. Everything's uncertain.
|
Ivan:
[54:19]
| It's not just that.
|
Sam:
[54:20]
| Inflation's up.
|
Ivan:
[54:21]
| Listen, last year, seeing Alice talk about today, one of the biggest drivers last year of economic growth had been government spending. Government spending from, you know, Inflation Reduction Act and all these other things that Biden had put in place or whatever. And so this guy has taken a wrecking ball to that. And by the way, unemployment claims, we just had the worst week of unemployment claims that we've had in a long time. I mean, this son of a bitch.
|
Sam:
[54:54]
| What percentage of that is the federal firings?
|
Ivan:
[54:57]
| It's it's not clear okay.
|
Sam:
[54:59]
| All right but.
|
Ivan:
[55:00]
| But this stupid bastard can't even take a good economy and keep it running properly.
|
Sam:
[55:06]
| It's i yeah all you have to.
|
Ivan:
[55:10]
| Do is not fuck it up.
|
Sam:
[55:11]
| Well it almost seems intentional to be honest it's like at this point yes you you are you are doing stuff that every reputable economist says is bad yes and and will hurt the economy overall now look you you can argue like oh okay yeah we need to to make some improvements in what the federal government do is doing it's too big etc blah blah blah but like everything combined oh and we haven't even mentioned like the the uh the tariffs are supposed to come into effect what tuesday this coming Tuesday, and now who knows you may back off again before we get to Tuesday but you know Canada's already announced their retaliation plans you know this is, now of course before Donald Trump was sworn in and Elon Musk was already talking about this stuff he said oh yeah this will be painful but it'll be good in the long run.
|
Ivan:
[56:13]
| Yeah Elon explain to me what the fuck is the good in the long run because the stupid budget that your bozos are doing, okay? Oh, because we're going to get all these deficit reduction. There is no deficit reduction. We're only doing a whole bunch of tax cuts for the rich and fucking everybody else. How is that going to help the economy? Big fat zero. You know why? Today, one of the things that one of the articles I shared on the curmudgeon court of slack was an article in Bloomberg Businessweek talking about how right now in the last year. And this also, look, this got stimulated by a lot of the moves that Republicans forced on Biden after Republicans took control of the House, okay, where they cut a number of programs that were helping, you know, lower income people. Remember the first year for a while, we had those child tax credits that were going to a lot of people, okay, and other things. And all these fuckers went and said, and there was like help with like, whatchamacallit, he was trying to help people with child care assistance and other shit. Well, who the fuck does that help, Sam? Does that help billionaires?
|
Sam:
[57:41]
| Of course, they need free child care too.
|
Ivan:
[57:45]
| Right. No, that helped people lower income. So what's happened right now is that even with the economy improving, as that money got pulled back from a lot of lower income people, But the economy had been doing very well and upper income people had been doing very well. The percentage of spending that was by the top 10 percent of Americans had been has reached like a peak that is just not not it's not good. OK, it's like people that make over two hundred fifty thousand dollars a year. Basically, what the article said, it's like we're shooting we're shooting, you know, we're shooting cannons of money at the economy. OK, but but the other people are not spending as much, man. And everything that Trump is doing is only going to make that way worse because that's what's in this fucking budget. It's to make all those people even poorer, way poorer.
|
Sam:
[58:43]
| Right. But who cares? Who cares about those fuckers, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[58:46]
| Well, you know, apparently nobody. But hey, good news, though. Trump supporters also lost $12 billion as the president's cryptocurrency. Guess what happened?
|
Sam:
[58:59]
| Why?
|
Ivan:
[58:59]
| It collapsed.
|
Sam:
[59:00]
| Oh, wait. So I should check my account. This is bad, right?
|
Ivan:
[59:04]
| Yeah, this could be bad.
|
Sam:
[59:06]
| I put all my money in that Trump coin stuff. That and hock to a girl.
|
Ivan:
[59:10]
| And that and a hock to a girl.
|
Sam:
[59:11]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[59:12]
| Of course, I wasn't the guy with the account at Citibank that got mistakenly credited $81 trillion. Dollars i i that would be nice you know i mean 81 trillion dollars you want to talk about a bank here let me tell you you know all i mean all i needed look i all i have to do is he got to keep it right wired yeah well no not really no i mean not like he could have you know somehow wired 1 billion somewhere to some some country without extradition this is the first thing i needed to No.
|
Sam:
[59:47]
| But, but speaking of like pulling money back from stuff like that, one of the things that the Trump administration has been doing and they've gotten slapped down by a couple of courts, but apparently are still doing it anyway. There was $20 billion or so worth of money that had already been distributed by the inflation reduction act to various.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:13]
| Oh, and they're trying to claw it back. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:00:15]
| They're trying to claw it back they they the the whoever they're trying to send the justice department after them actually to like do an investigation the justice department they they they tried to get one of the career people to do it they quit rather than do it so the it's ridiculous so the trump appointee and they quit with a a a resignation letter saying There's no legal basis for it. There's no crime here. There's no legal basis. And so the Trump appointee submitted a... A request for a warrant to the judge directly himself. The judge said, no, there's no legal basis for this because they were requesting to freeze all these accounts that this money had been distributed into. And the judge said, no, absolutely not. But apparently some of the owners of those accounts who would receive the money through those accounts are reporting that some of them are actually frozen anyway, presumably because the government also went straight to the bank and asked them to freeze it and the bank did at least in some cases so you know so this is not only like with the usa id stuff but.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:30]
| But this is like but this is the crazy shit that i'm talking about at fucking with the economy sam.
|
Sam:
[1:01:35]
| Yeah why.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:35]
| The fuck they're going into like i mean this is just idiotic shit.
|
Sam:
[1:01:39]
| Well by the way and the problem is it doesn't.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:42]
| Even help the deficit.
|
Sam:
[1:01:43]
| No i i just wanted to say this, like with the, there's several layers of what they're trying to do that are more and more illegal as you go. The first is just saying, Hey, let's stop doing things in the future. Now, if those are things where the executive department has discretion, okay, you can stop doing them in the future. But then there's all sorts of things that are mandated by law, and they're saying, we're not going to do it anyway. And stopping that is clearly illegal. But then you move on to not only programs that are authorized by Congress, but programs authorized by Congress where the spending had already been authorized and in the pipeline, where you're.
|
Sam:
[1:02:32]
| From going out that had already been promised. And then this is even further. You're trying to pull back money that was already given out, that was already paid. And as you go through those, those are all illegal, but it's sort of more and more egregious as you go down that spectrum. And, you know, the key element here, and we have, you know, we've mentioned they are already violating court orders of federal courts. None of this has yet gone to SCOTUS and had SCOTUS disagree and then they violate that. But this is already like a regular, normal occurrence. Yeah. They're violating court orders on a regular basis now. This is not something that you would see in other administrations. If you did, it was a rarity and it was quickly corrected. Because it's one thing to say, oh, okay, we respect the court, but we're going to appeal. This is like, we're going to ignore their court while we appeal.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:43]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:03:44]
| That's an entirely different thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:03:46]
| Right, right, right.
|
Sam:
[1:03:47]
| And, and it's already happening more and more. And again, like we said, we're, we're what, what, six weeks in, this is going to get worse and worse and worse. I don't see how it gets better under these circumstances for a long time. I mean, because I don't know, like, do you see Trump like magically saying, oh, you know, actually the court said, no, I guess we can't do it. Nevermind. Like the whole setup of his administration this time around is to make sure there is nobody around him who will say no. And that's where we are. Okay, let's take another break. And then I'll have a little bit to talk about, and then we can get out of here. Both of us are tired.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:37]
| Yeah, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:04:39]
| Here we go. Alex.
|
Sam:
[1:05:17]
| Okay. So the thing I am going to pick is prompted by the fact that MSNBC fired a bunch of people this week and reshuffled others. But I think it's, and my topic is larger than that, because I think it's emblematic of a whole bunch of things that we've been seeing ever since the election in terms of media organizations retreating, for the most part. There are a few that have stood up, but there are a lot of media organizations retreating. So let's talk about MSNBC for a second, just to start it. And I'm not going to remember all the names, but the most prominent one was Joy Ann Reed, who was an anchor in the evening, and she lost her show and was kicked off the network there was another explanation.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:12]
| Why did they explain why the the the.
|
Sam:
[1:06:16]
| They're they're they're just revamping and retooling and blah blah blah they're they're taking a panel show that's on the weekend and they're gonna make it go all week long that has you know uh but but.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:31]
| Separately was there a show doing badly.
|
Sam:
[1:06:33]
| Well everything was doing badly i mean and that's that's your fundamental excuse. Like both CNN and MSNBC and to an extent, all news, but like was tanking since the election. And to some degree, this is normal after every election. People, people watch a lot more news in the run up to an election and then they sort of tune out for a while. But this time it's even more so like you and I have talked on this show before, how people, especially on the left, which was MSNBC's target audience, decided they just couldn't deal with it. They had to turn off politics. They had to turn off news because this was just too bad. And so, yeah, the ratings have been tanking. There's no question about that. So they're trying to figure out how to deal with that. However, the way they dealt with that was, The people they fired were all the people who weren't white.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:30]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:07:31]
| You know, and I shouldn't say all the people who weren't white. They have like Michael Steele, who is black, was one of the weekend.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:40]
| No, but all the people that were almost all the people that were fired were. Yeah, they were not.
|
Sam:
[1:07:45]
| Yeah. Various different ethnicities. There was a weekend host who was very prominently like representing Asian Americans and talked about that a lot on her show. There was Joanne Reed, who is very prominently black and talking about that there. There were, and the other people were all various varieties of non-white. Okay. And Rachel Maddow actually called this out on her show afterwards, where it was like, you know, this looks bad. Like, I think this was a bad decision. These were all great people. They were doing a good job. Now, some of them more so than others. Like, I like Joy and Reed's show more than some of the other people who were let go. And Joy and Reed, I think, was the only one who's left the network entirely. A couple of others were sort of demoted. They're not going to have their own show anymore, but they'll still act as reporters, etc., stuff like that. But the people who were let go were also very harsh Trump critics. I mean, most of the people on that network are, to be honest, but I'd say these were some of the ones that were most—, I don't know. I, maybe I shouldn't say that. Cause I, I'm thinking about some of the people who are still on and it's not like they're like Trump cheerleaders.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:05]
| You know, exactly. It's what I'm saying.
|
Sam:
[1:09:08]
| But, but it looked bad and they're, they're trying, most of the people who are getting pushed into new slots, I'm sort of like, they're, they're okay, but I would not say they're better than the people they were replacing. You know, like this, The overall quality level will go down after this change. And again, that's probably enough about MSNBC specifically. They're also doing layoffs of behind-the-scenes staff. Rachel Maddow pointed out that they're doing all kinds of layoffs and cutting the producers and the camera people and all these behind-the-scene people. That's getting decimated as well. So they're clearly in cost-cutting revamp mode. And, you know, it's quite possible that the people that lost their shows were more expensive people, too. Wouldn't be surprised.
|
Ivan:
[1:10:04]
| That is the reason why I was asking. I'm like, because I was wondering if that was a factor in some way.
|
Sam:
[1:10:11]
| I'm sure it was a factor. Because there's also a reshuffling, if I remember right, where they were spinning off some of these, the news channel and a couple other things into a separate legal entity and some other stuff like that. So there's definitely some of that in play as well. But I think it's part of this larger pattern than we've seen. Because we also had, of course, famously, the Washington Post right before the election declined to do an endorsement. They were going to endorse Harris and then backed off at the last second. They just now, Bezos announced that the editorial page is going to focus on, what was it, personal liberty and free trade. And that anybody who wants to produce contrarian views on those issues is not, can do it somewhere else. They didn't say they'd exclusively do those things, but there's going to be an extra emphasis on there. The editor there resigned.
|
Sam:
[1:11:11]
| The New York Times has done some things. There have been a number of outlets. Oh, CNN fired a couple of people too, and a couple of people left because they were being asked to... Basically, the key is on all of these news outlets, they don't want to be seen as 100% anti-Trump. They don't even want to necessarily, like they can't even pretend to just be like, hey, we're fair neutral down the middle because the way the Trump administration is operating is if you say anything bad about him, they're going after you. And they've made it clear that they're doing that. They're locking the AP out of White House events because they won't say Gulf of America.
|
Sam:
[1:12:05]
| All of this kind of stuff. And I think a lot of these companies, because this is not necessarily true of some of the smaller independent outlets, but all of these companies that are part of megacorporations and just have sort of media as one facet of their business, are very cognizant of the fact that, hey, we don't want to piss off Trump too much because then he can hurt us in other ways, because he can put the thumb on the scale on mergers and acquisitions. There are all kinds of ways he can make their lives miserable. This is why you also saw several media outlets settle on where Trump had sued them for libel for things that they had done that was perfectly legitimate reporting and would probably win in court, but they settled anyway. Because it's just, not wanting to make waves and not wanting to antagonize. And I feel like it's not like none of these places are publishing anti-Trump stuff at this point. It's not reached that point. But they are clearly pulling their punches a little bit and are a little intimidated.
|
Sam:
[1:13:21]
| And that is not healthy. And this is also part of the standard authoritarian playbook for taking over a country is you neuter the press. And sometimes it's very overt. Sometimes it's more like this. You just make it very difficult for those press outlets that do anything that you don't like. And you increase that pressure over time and you ratchet it up. And it's just, it's disturbing to see play out. Any additional thoughts, Yvonne?
|
Ivan:
[1:13:56]
| What else can I add to that? It's a fucking, you know, it's, yeah, he, he, he is. The thing is that I feel that in many cases, it's more like we don't want to tangle with him. So we're just, we're, we're just gonna, you know, we just, we just want to avoid the conflict. You know what I'm saying? They're basically they're being scaredy cats.
|
Sam:
[1:14:31]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:32]
| I just think it's just ridiculous. You mentioned something about the New York Times. The reality is that I don't see that the New York Times has done anything overt like all of these others to be honest. They've basically pretty much stayed on whatever the hell course they were. Bloomberg for example.
|
Sam:
[1:14:51]
| They haven't done shit.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:52]
| As a matter of fact I know that Michael Bloomberg did certain things specifically.
|
Sam:
[1:14:57]
| Wait, wait, wait. Let me say, even on the New York Times, even on the New York Times, even when they report a story that is highly negative to Donald Trump, the headline tends to be neutered and couched in neutral language. And they, I'd say they pull their punches too.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:16]
| Trump and bans berate Ukrainian leader in Oval Office. I'm reading the new york times headline on that one by the way look i listen but i'm sorry but i will say this new york times has a history of doing that yeah the entire time they've done that for years absolutely so so you know they've been criticized why aren't they more aggressive in their headlines and i'm like you know what to be fair that's the way they've written a headline as far as i can fucking remember, And so, you know, take it for what you take it to whatever you want. You don't like it. I get it. But, you know, the New York Times doesn't also want to be the New York Post.
|
Sam:
[1:15:57]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:57]
| And that's and that's how you wind up and using that other language. It's that's how you turn into the fucking New York Post. I, you know, that's just reality. And I get it that, you know, you want to say, well, it's a different time. It's a different person or whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But, well, that's what you get. Look, another guy who is a very rich billionaire who also has keen business interests, Bloomberg, he basically hasn't done a fucking thing to kowtow to him at all. Nothing. You know, and he's basically, you know, he hasn't gone and told the line. As a matter of fact, hell, he went and he paid which dues that were due to a global organization he paid because Trump decided not to pay him. I can't remember which one it was. I can't remember if it was a World Health Organization or one of those we pulled out. Bloomberg went and wrote the check for the U.S. dues.
|
Sam:
[1:16:53]
| Nice.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:53]
| So he basically, not just that, he said, F you. I'll pay. Oh, you're not going to pay the dues? I'll pay the dues out of my pocket. So I'm like, and Bloomberg is like, yeah, you want to come after me? Come the fuck after me. Fuck this shit. You know, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? What do you think? You're Putin? What?
|
Sam:
[1:17:09]
| Right. Well, he wants to be.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:12]
| He wants? No, I know he wants to be.
|
Sam:
[1:17:14]
| He wants to be. I would not be shocked if some prominent liberals over the next three years don't end up falling out of windows. I'm just saying. You know, I'm not predicting it. I'm just saying I would not be surprised.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:33]
| Look i i do think uh listen i i will i will say it a little bit differently but we've said this already there will be escalating political violence yeah that's just look this entire thing honestly.
|
Sam:
[1:17:51]
| Probably in both directions but.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:53]
| In both directions there is going to be escalating political violence. There is no way that all of this doesn't unleash that, as well as the military buildup we're talking about, as well as everything else. Look, it's affecting everything, everywhere.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:12]
| You know, even at a state level, it is affecting things. You know, I was just at a dinner table tonight earlier talking about it. All the things that we were just talking about is how, just again, how people's demeanor in general. And I also think that the pandemic had certain effects on that as well, in terms of the anger levels in general and how people are treating each other in general. And what companies are doing, how companies are treating employees in general. There has been this pendulum swing from during the pandemic where, you know, employers, you know, employees had a much bigger upper hand on employers. And now it's like totally the other way. And then and people are just copying what they see from our leaders in in many places. And the saying is, you know, they just copycat this shit. They think, oh, you know, they're doing it, then we should do it that way, too.
|
Ivan:
[1:19:27]
| Now, a lot of this bending the knee on, like, DEI, for example, he can write whatever the fucking thing. He can't really force the companies to do much of anything. But a lot of companies have just decided, you know, to just bend the knee. Now, others didn't, and they said, well, look, if the law says that we've got to tweak something, we'll tweak something. You know but but i see so many that are just rolling over and that's the thing that's a little bit scary is.
|
Sam:
[1:19:58]
| That is that easy rolling over this is the whole thing about i think was it tim snyder is the author who you know had the guidebook of fighting authoritarianism or whatever it is i should i should look up the proper name hold on.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:17]
| Oh, but before I forget, I just saw this quote. This was regarding Zelensky. No, we talked about that, that Trump thinks this is all a reality TV show. This is going to be great television. Trump sums up his Zelensky showdown.
|
Sam:
[1:20:32]
| Yes. Yes. It's, it is Timothy, Timothy Snyder. Uh, and he has a, a variety of books that I'm looking for the name of on tyranny, I think is the one that this is from, from 2017, but like number one rule, don't obey in advance.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:55]
| Right. It's the number one rule.
|
Sam:
[1:20:59]
| And, and this is, this is what people are doing. I mean, it's rolling over. Yeah. Yeah, it's just like, oh, how can we avoid getting on Trump's bad side? Let's figure out what we can do right now that'll keep us off his radar, keep him happy. And yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:20]
| Here is my recommendation. Just don't be Mark Zuckerberg. Don't be Mark Zuckerberg. Change that. They should change that as the first rule.
|
Sam:
[1:21:31]
| Don't be Mark Zuckerberg. Don't be Zuck. I did see a video today. Of him ripping off a suit and having a gold lame outfit underneath it for his wife's birthday or something.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:44]
| What the fucking hell? Jesus Christ. Sounds great.
|
Sam:
[1:21:51]
| I'll have to share that. But, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:56]
| Okay, I'm going to summarize all of this.
|
Sam:
[1:21:58]
| Yeah, summarize everything.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:00]
| This all fucking sucks to all fucking hell. And we are only not even 40 days into this fucking thing so my prediction which now sam knows pain why you know sam had no idea that that was a pop culture reference not until the last couple of weeks well.
|
Sam:
[1:22:29]
| I i i like out in in in response to the pain thing yvonne shared a gif or a video clip or something of mr.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:38]
| Video clip somebody.
|
Sam:
[1:22:40]
| Asking mr t for predictions and he said pain and i was like wait a second this isn't.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:46]
| Just an yvonne thing no this.
|
Sam:
[1:22:48]
| Exists and apparently it's from it was.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:51]
| Rocky three movie rocky three okay three mr t was this boxer called clubber lang okay and who was vicious and he was yeah he was asked about what was his predictions were for the fight okay between him and rocky and says predictions yeah prediction and he said pain and look unfortunately mr t, If we asked him right now what his prediction is and what we're going through right now, his prediction is accurate.
|
Sam:
[1:23:21]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:22]
| And everybody's getting fucked. Hey, by the way, you know what? Here's the kicker. This is equal opportunity fucking right now because these idiots are so fucking dumb. I gotta tell you something. Tesla stock keeps plummeting like a fucking rock. Okay?
|
Sam:
[1:23:37]
| Uh-huh. Yep.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:39]
| Mr. Genius over there has pledged a lot of those shares for margin loans. Okay? All right. At some point, if that thing doesn't stop, he's going to have a fucking margin call. He's going to get fucked. OK. All right.
|
Sam:
[1:23:55]
| If that would be fun, that would be fun.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:56]
| You know, this keeps happening. OK, because the amount of money that he has, nobody can. You know, this is not like Donald, that somebody could just throw him up a billion here, billion there, bail him out. This is several hundred more billion dollars. OK. All right. There ain't nobody big enough to bail his ass out, okay? So let's see what the fuck he keeps doing. Because, look, all the financials are pointing that this quarter for Tesla will be an unmitigated disaster, okay, of epic proportions. Something like you probably haven't seen any company shit the bed as bad after being successful for a long time in a product and having some difficulties last year. And then all of a sudden, you're going to be thrown into a massive loss over being a massive asshole.
|
Sam:
[1:24:50]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:51]
| And we'll see what the fuck happens with that. Because then shit starts getting complicated.
|
Sam:
[1:24:57]
| Because Tesla, as cars, had a few issues here and there, but overall were popular. This is Musk.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:04]
| Right. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:25:06]
| This is not independent of him. This is all reaction to how he's behaved the last couple of years.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:13]
| Yeah. And so.
|
Sam:
[1:25:15]
| Now, you mentioned Musk. I thought you were just going to talk about just general Donald Trump voters who are now getting screwed by the policies of the guy they voted for.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:25]
| Well, wait until those guys start getting fucked, okay? Because then those guys are going to be angry. This is the reason I predict a lot of violence. One thing somebody said today. I'll tell you something. The two people, the people that tried to take shots at Donald Trump were both Donald Trump supporters, okay? Let me tell you something. You get one of these arm-to-the-teeth guys that finds out how his health care is getting cut, how his shit is getting cut, and how he's going to get fucked. And their family that had, you know, a military job got fired, who was a veteran, bah, bah, bah. All of this shit cascades on one of these guys. Let's see, one of these guys is going to pop. Yeah this is that because this is the he he has totally hyper inflated and made these guys hyperventilated how he was going to be his their savior and their savior is going to come and fuck them and they're going to snap i already have a couple of times yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:26:33]
| I i would not be surprised in the slightest i think i think in our prediction show we said there'd be at least one more attempt and I think we predicted it would fail, but, Yeah, of course, there's going to, of course, somebody like that is going to snap and go after him or people surrounding him or Elon or somebody, which is why, you know, all of these people have massive security details. Like there was a report this last week about how Elon's security detail got deputized so they could continue to carry their weapons like in the White House and within the Secret Service perimeter and stuff like that. Because Elon Musk's security detail is second only in size to the president's.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:20]
| Jesus fucking Christ.
|
Sam:
[1:27:22]
| Because he knows that, you know, people hate him.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:28]
| Gee, Elon, I wonder why.
|
Sam:
[1:27:31]
| Meanwhile, I know all of these folks have some security, but I remember pictures a while back of Bill Gates just standing in a line to get fast food somewhere.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:44]
| Yeah, in Manhattan.
|
Sam:
[1:27:47]
| I thought it was out here in Seattle. He was in Manhattan. He was in Manhattan. He was just standing in line getting his food and whatever, saying hi to people.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:56]
| You know what? Because, you know, we kind of, we, we, we, we hated, we hated Microsoft software, but, but, you know, we weren't like, we want to kill like Bill Gates, you know?
|
Sam:
[1:28:06]
| Well, and also since he left Microsoft, he's been doing all kinds of good stuff.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:10]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:28:11]
| Yeah. And we're like, he's one of those billionaires who has, you know, he, he picked a point in time and he was like, I'm out. And now i'm going to spend the rest of my money rest of my life and.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:25]
| My money.
|
Sam:
[1:28:26]
| To figuring out the best thing i can possibly do with this money for the benefit of humankind.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:33]
| By the way one other one other note warren buffett who's getting old yeah he had his annual like letter to you know that he writes to stockholders you know basically as an annual report and a couple of things just to see how his mind is thinking right now they they've sold so much securities they're hold they're holding more cash than they had ever had at at berkshire hathaway they're holding berkshire hathaway is so much money they they got like a three to four hundred But like four hundred billion dollars in cash right now, just sitting in books. OK, they've never held that much in their life. And he basically, without saying Trump's name, basically just ripped them to shreds, saying that everything that they are doing is just, you know, stupid.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:33]
| You know, from tax policy to tariffs policy to what they're doing with the government. I mean, he just completely tore tore him to shreds. Now, so for that's worth, I mean, he's not a dumb fuck. And he basically agreed with, you know, what every other economist has said that this is we're just inflicting pain to just inflict pain. These guys are just, right now, they're going to inflict pain to inflict pain. Mr. I'm going to have the strongest economy ever right now is going to hit us again with the last quarter of negative growth that we had since he was president. Stumble genius, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:30:20]
| Yvonne, it's Biden's fault.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:21]
| Of course, yes, it's Biden's fault. Yes, yes, it's Biden's fault. It's all Biden's fault.
|
Sam:
[1:30:27]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:28]
| Okay i want to go like i want to you know i i get i would like to do one thing i would like to share an ice cream cone with joe biden before he passes away seriously yeah i would love to buy him a cone.
|
Sam:
[1:30:43]
| Well, you know, head out to Wilmington. He's probably just hanging out these days.
|
Ivan:
[1:30:47]
| You know what? That wouldn't be such a bad idea. Let's go.
|
Sam:
[1:30:51]
| I mean, it's probably a little bit more locked down than Jimmy Carter was. But you remember, for decades, Jimmy Carter was just hanging out in Plains, Georgia. And if you visited Plains, you could meet Jimmy Carter. Like he had his Sunday school class that he taught every Sunday that hundreds of people would show up to just because Jimmy Carter was teaching the class.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:16]
| You know, I'll go over there and like, say, hey, Joe, do you want to have a coat? I'll get you an ice cream coat. Let's chat.
|
Sam:
[1:31:24]
| Give him a hug. Yeah. Okay. I think we're done. I think we're done. Thank you all for joining us again. As usual, you can go to curmudgeons-corner.com and see all of our information. You can see how to contact us. You can see our archive. You can see transcripts of last year and a bit of shows, all of that kind of stuff. Link to our Facebook. Link to, I don't know, link to our TikTok, which, by the way, I have, look, I have been so super busy. I forgot to even post the clips for TikTok from the last show. I think I'll do it right before I edit this show. So you'll, and then like do the next one. I don't know. So you'll find a link to our TikTok where you can find those things. All that stuff. It's a fun website. You should share it. Tell your friends to listen and watch. Oh, there's a link to our YouTube. So you can actually watch these shows too. The unedited version of the shows. Including sometimes blurry me or blurry Yvonne when our connections are spotty. Usually I'm spotty more often than Yvonne is. But, you know, I saw, I was looking at the preview over at YouTube and Yvonne was blurry for part of this show. It happens. I was also blurry and... Not only blurry, but like low frame rate. So like every few seconds I'd move, you know, for a while.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:50]
| Well, I mean, Sam looks blurry in real life. So therefore, I mean, that's part of it.
|
Sam:
[1:32:54]
| I am a very blurry kind of person. Yes. But anyway, you can get to our YouTube. More of you should subscribe to our YouTube and watch over there. It's fun too. But I understand. I prefer to podcast audio only podcast myself. But importantly, you can also go to our Patreon from there and give us money. I once again repeating the busy I have not done the cards I have not done the mug I promise I will eventually get to it I have been utterly swamped the last few weeks and probably will be for the next month to be honest but yeah so you can go to our patreon give us money at various levels we will send you we'll mention you on the show we'll send you a card we'll send you a mug all this kind of fun stuff and at two dollars a month or more or if you just ask us we will invite you to our curmudgeons corner slack where Yvonne and I hang out and share links. And a few of our other listeners are on there regularly and a few more are on there occasionally. It's a lot of fun. You should join us. The more the merrier. In the meantime, Yvonne, what was something from the curmudgeons corner slack that was so compelling that it would make people want to give us money and join the slack? Or Fyre Fest 2. Oh, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:11]
| It makes sense for 2025. Fyre Fest 2 reveals alleged ticket sales.
|
Sam:
[1:34:18]
| Wasn't there already a Fyre Fest 2 that fell apart? Like, and so this is actually a third attempt?
|
Ivan:
[1:34:24]
| Maybe.
|
Sam:
[1:34:25]
| I think I vaguely remember them already trying to promote a Fyre Fest 2.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:30]
| It is his grand second attempt.
|
Sam:
[1:34:33]
| Okay. Second attempt at Fyre Fest 2.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:36]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:34:37]
| Because there was already a failed Fyre Fest 1.
|
Ivan:
[1:34:40]
| Right. Yeah. So you've got another Fyre Fest going on, which I guess makes sense for 2025. But that's one thing. I got a couple of things that happened in here. Yes. I mean, we didn't make an honorable mention because it's in here. Gene Hackman died.
|
Sam:
[1:34:58]
| Yep. And I also mentioned that Michelle Treckenberg, how do you say her name?
|
Ivan:
[1:35:04]
| Oh, God, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:35:06]
| Last week, we started talking about characters that disappeared from shows. And I mentioned that on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a character just randomly showed up.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:17]
| And it was her as a sister to Buffy. That's right.
|
Sam:
[1:35:20]
| It was her. And she died this week. Official cause of death hasn't been announced yet, but she'd recently had a liver transplant.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:29]
| Apparently.
|
Sam:
[1:35:29]
| Apparently, it was having complications. I saw a couple of reports that people who knew her said she knew she wasn't well and that death was a possibility.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:40]
| Yeah, it sucks.
|
Sam:
[1:35:42]
| She's so young. Yeah, 39.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:44]
| 39. Yeah. And a couple of other things. Skype is shutting down on May 5th.
|
Sam:
[1:35:52]
| We used to use that to record the show for years.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:55]
| That's right.
|
Sam:
[1:35:55]
| You know?
|
Ivan:
[1:35:56]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:35:57]
| We stopped a long time ago.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:58]
| Because it sucked.
|
Sam:
[1:36:00]
| A lot of other people stopped using it too.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:03]
| So, I mean, it got bad, bad, but worse. And they didn't really upgrade it or update it. And it just, it finally died.
|
Sam:
[1:36:15]
| And they lost their, like, the big opportunity would have been the pandemic to really jump in and blah, blah, blah. But no.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:21]
| Well, the thing is that they had rolled out, well, but the thing is that they have really replaced Skype with Teams.
|
Sam:
[1:36:28]
| I know, Teams, yes, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:29]
| And so that's the thing.
|
Sam:
[1:36:32]
| And that is, and, you know, lots of people use that. I've never used Teams. I think I maybe have one call I had on it once when for something, I don't even remember what.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:43]
| And I'm going to confirm this, but it seems it is correctly, that 25 years ago, Steve Jobs changed the path of the PC forever by introducing Mac OS X. And to realize, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:37:03]
| That it's been 25 years.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:05]
| 25 years ago! Holy shit!
|
Sam:
[1:37:12]
| I remember.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:12]
| I thought about it. I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait.
|
Sam:
[1:37:16]
| I remember installing the beta as soon as it was available.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:21]
| Think about this. Imagine if we had been, I mean, if in 2000 we were still using, like, I don't know, a desktop operating system from 1975.
|
Sam:
[1:37:32]
| Well, it has evolved quite a bit in the last 25 years.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:36]
| It definitely has, but still, many of the things that you look at it, the dock.
|
Sam:
[1:37:42]
| Well, actually, if you think, wait, wait, but wait, if you think about it, macOS is built on top of Unix, which is from 1960s.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:49]
| Which actually is from 1960s, yes. That is true. The basis of all of this, yes, is Unix, which is from the 1960s, yes. Which I did use, but, you know, so anyway, yeah, macOS 10 is 25 years old.
|
Sam:
[1:38:06]
| Totally shit okay one more thing from the slack that i just want to point out that i mentioned on the show a couple minutes ago and then immediately shared on the curmudgeon course slack that if you were a member you would see the fact that i shared it is the video of mark zuckerberg stripping off the suit into the gold lame suit thanks.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:33]
| And what was this?
|
Sam:
[1:38:35]
| Well, the video came out today. I think it was for his wife's birthday. So I think it was like very recent.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:41]
| Oh, that is so. Okay. I'll. I'm never doing that. I can guarantee you that one.
|
Sam:
[1:38:51]
| Even for your wife's birthday, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:53]
| If she. Okay. If she insisted that's what I. She wanted me to do. Then. Maybe.
|
Sam:
[1:39:01]
| So apparently it was imitating. I guess it was Benson Boone. Did this at the Grammys a few weeks ago. And that was one of her favorite artists and she liked that performance. So he imitated it.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:17]
| There you go. So yeah, I, okay. If, if my wife demanded it, then maybe.
|
Sam:
[1:39:25]
| Okay. I'll, I'll have to call her up and make a request.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:28]
| Oh no. What am I doing?
|
Sam:
[1:39:29]
| Make sure that it gets videoed. We'll put it on Tik TOK.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:34]
| So that's how you're going to get the podcast to get more traction.
|
Sam:
[1:39:37]
| We're getting Yvonne in a gold LeMay suit with an open chest area. You know? Oh, fuck.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:44]
| Jesus Christ. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:39:46]
| Very sort of Savvy Discos looking thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:48]
| Disco looking thing. I hate the gym harder than I've been doing. I actually, you know, I will say that I actually, I've gotten, you know how bad it is how much I traveled? I'll tell you one thing I had to do. I had to buy a gym membership down there.
|
Sam:
[1:40:02]
| Okay. Very good.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:06]
| That's how bad it is I'm like oh god fine I went and I They won't accept It's a chain It's Orange Theory Fitness They have a location there But they won't accept my membership From, from here. And I'm like, so I was paying for classes, but then the lady was like, come on, let's say you pack of classes. What are you doing? And I've been like resisting that because I felt kind of like defeated this how long I'm going to be here that I'm actually buying like, like a pack of, and I'm like, okay, fine. You're right. Okay. Here, sell me the pack of classes.
|
Sam:
[1:40:44]
| Okay. I think we're done.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:45]
| We're done.
|
Sam:
[1:40:47]
| Thanks, everybody, again. Stay safe. Have a good week. Tell your friends. Make them listen to the show. Tie them down and force them to listen to the show.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:58]
| Oh, that's a way to get listeners.
|
Sam:
[1:41:01]
| That's the way. You know, they will love us and not be able to get enough. Anyway, we're done. We'll talk to you next time. Goodbye.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:09]
| Bye. Bye.
|
Sam:
[1:41:40]
| Okay good night yvonne bye okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:43]
| Bye, Thank you.
| |
|
