Automated Transcript
Sam:
[0:00]
| Hello.
|
Ivan:
[0:01]
| Oh, what is this thing doing?
|
Sam:
[0:04]
| Can you hear me?
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Ivan:
[0:05]
| I can hear you, but hold on one second, because why?
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Sam:
[0:09]
| Okay. What's wrong?
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Ivan:
[0:13]
| I don't... Okay, I'm having a problem, which has happened the last few weeks, where my camera is zoomed in. It won't zoom out. I don't know why. um i.
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Sam:
[0:30]
| I see you normally like it's not like i only see your nose or something i see your whole.
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Ivan:
[0:35]
| Yeah but that's because i had to move physically to get in front of it i can't like adjust it in any way you.
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Sam:
[0:43]
| Mean that the automatic moving and centering.
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Ivan:
[0:45]
| Well not even well it's not even i'm not trying to move it automatically i'm trying to do it manually which i'm supposed to do and It's not letting me in any way, shape, or form. Ah, wait, wait, wait. Hang on.
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Sam:
[0:57]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[0:58]
| Well, it's letting me re-center, but what it's not letting me do is zoom. I can't. It used to be I am zoomed at that zoom, and it's not letting me adjust it for whatever reason. I can't zoom out, which I could do normally, and it's not letting me for some reason. Okay. And I don't know why.
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Sam:
[1:25]
| I'm sure if it's a problem, somebody's found it and you'll be able to Google a solution.
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Ivan:
[1:30]
| Oh, God. Yeah. Well, all right. Well, let's. Okay. You got a close up of my. You got a close up of my face.
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Sam:
[1:36]
| It's not even close up. It's completely normal from what I can see. Like, it's exactly like you look every week. Anyway, just because you've been talking about zooming, zoom, zoom, zooming.
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Ivan:
[1:49]
| Zooming.
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Sam:
[1:49]
| We're going to have a special intro this time for us Gen Xers out here. That, that's it. Yvonne was looking like confused. So I presume this is not a show from his childhood.
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Ivan:
[3:41]
| No, it isn't. Which show was this one?
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Sam:
[3:44]
| This is Zoom, which was a PBS show in the 1970s. The PBS kids show from the 1970s.
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Ivan:
[3:52]
| Well, here's the thing. It sounded familiar, but I guess it's not one of the ones that was one of my top choices.
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Sam:
[3:58]
| Because it's got a bunch of kids running around doing stuff. And they, the big thing was they had Sazis. self-addressed stamped envelopes. You could send in a self-addressed stamped envelope to get some stuff from them and blah, blah, blah. It's, yeah, it was a 70s kids show.
|
Ivan:
[4:15]
| I must admit, let's see, what year was this from?
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Sam:
[4:21]
| Well, it started in 72, which was a little bit early even for us, but it was on for a long time.
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Ivan:
[4:28]
| Well, 72 through 78. Interesting, but I, I look I religiously watched every PBS show and what I it it when I was little and that show was not on our PBS feed in Puerto Rico.
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Sam:
[4:44]
| Oh well you missed out.
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Ivan:
[4:47]
| I missed out you're.
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Sam:
[4:49]
| Gonna you're gonna have to like find all the episodes on YouTube and watch them now.
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Ivan:
[4:52]
| Oh yeah I got plenty of time for that right now sure, Look, I had a friend of mine yesterday.
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Sam:
[5:00]
| Oh, by the way, this is Curmudgeon's Corner. Welcome to Curmudgeon's Corner. Saturday, October 25th, just after 16 UTC as we're starting to record. I'm Sam Minter. This is Yvonne. Okay, continue, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[5:10]
| I had a friend of mine yesterday from HP. This is one of the first people I met when I started working at HP, and this was like in June of 1997, okay? This was just coincidental, the reason I met him. We wound up just being assigned. I was an intern. They gave me this cue. And he was relocating from Venezuela to Miami at the time for a job. He's, I think, about five years older than I am. So he'd already been working at HP for a while. Okay. He had started very young. in his early 20s. And he had gotten a promotion. He had been doing work, basically, and what he used to do was warranty repair work, basically. I mean, the entire warranty supply chain and managing partners and doing stuff, especially in Latin America, Caribbean, a lot more complex to do those there than in the U.S. for the repairs. A lot of times you had to get local companies to do a lot of the work because you had to hire a local company that you could trust, import parts, export parts, do all this stuff. So he became pretty.
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Ivan:
[6:34]
| A guru on that stuff and he was pretty good and they decided to relocate him to miami to to to this business and so he wound up so we get assigned we moves there our queues are right one right beside the other me starting as an intern and him him there and so so we've known each other now so it's like what he's 28 years just a little while yeah just a little while and so you know We've always kept in touch regularly, but we hadn't seen each other. We hadn't met in a while. So we got together after work yesterday. And he works at a company that had some, for Land America, that had some major IT outage this week.
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Sam:
[7:17]
| Yeah, I wonder who that could be. Go ahead.
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Ivan:
[7:19]
| Yeah, yeah. It's like if you look in the news, you can figure out which company that is. Doing kind of the same thing with partners and stuff. And so I was discussing with them the fact that, you know, they still work remotely in their in their geography. He's based over here. But bastards. But. But.
|
Sam:
[7:38]
| But. OK, yes.
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Ivan:
[7:39]
| Here's the but. OK. But they have a new regional VP and that person is based in Brazil now. And this person has recently decided that she doesn't want to have staff in Miami, that she wants all her staff in Brazil. And so they told him if, well, if he wanted to continue in his role, that he needed to relocate to Brazil.
|
Sam:
[8:04]
| Right.
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Ivan:
[8:05]
| You know, he's a few years ahead of me and saving money. His kids already work. his wife worked a long time at this and like their company the company where she was at which kind of funny she worked at nortel but she worked at nortel up until basically it she was one of the last employees left at nortel before it it it it was really finally sold off and then the company And then bought Nortel. Bought their asses with Ericsson. Now, initially, she was paid a severance and dismissed. But the Ericsson people were like, holy shit, she's the only person that knows this shit. Could we hire you to come over to Ericsson? Like, very quickly, like, less than a month after. So then she worked for Ericsson until that long ago. So she wanted to retire. So he's like, he was like, screw this. I'm retiring. he's turning 60 now and he's like to hell with this I told him that he's going to retire at the end of December rather than relocate to Brazil for work so that was my.
|
Ivan:
[9:22]
| Conversation yesterday so it's one of those things where I'm like well, He's asking, so what are you guys doing? Nothing. I mean, our company hates offices. They don't want to spend their money on data centers. Billions of it. They don't want to buy a damn office right now. What the hell am I buying a damn office for? They need to spend $100 billion building data centers. The last thing I want is like real estate for people sitting in a cube. That's what it seems like the attitude is. But anyway, I was curious that that was the conversation that I had like yesterday. But one thing is interesting, though, you know, with the way I got to interact with him first was so he moved up. We moved over from Venezuela. And so he smoked back then. He quit smoking quite a long time ago. OK, he quit smoking like a couple of years. He quit smoking in the night. OK. All right. But the thing is, even Venezuela, he did not smoke American cigarettes. He smoked Venezuelan cigarettes. It's this brand. I'll never forget the brand called Belmont. The reason why, why do I remember this is because, You know, they knew he was sitting right beside me. So what happened was that you couldn't get those cigarettes in the U.S. So people were traveling frequently back and forth to Venezuela. And they would bring him.
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Sam:
[10:42]
| And dropping off the cigarettes.
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Ivan:
[10:43]
| And dropping off the cigarettes. But he wasn't at his desk. They were like, didn't want to just leave him there. I said, hey, Tony's out. Here, hold these for him. Give them to him when he gets back. So I was being the cigarette delivery courier for him at first. So when he arrived, it's like, hey, Tony, hey, yeah, they dropped off these boxes for you. Oh, OK, great. Thank you. So so I was the cigarette delivery guy for for him.
|
Sam:
[11:12]
| You should have just made that your new career. Could have moved into that full time.
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Ivan:
[11:16]
| Listen, I mean, obviously, that's a declining career. You know, we're looking at, you know, it's crazy how cigarette smoking rates of the United States have been plummeting for decades. It's plummeting, but it's like, I mean, it's plummeted in just, you know, so much. I mean, it's down to like...
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Sam:
[11:36]
| Of course, we did have like an upswing in vaping. Yeah, but... Not as much as the downswing.
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Ivan:
[11:43]
| But not as much. But not as much. It really, I mean, but I can't remember what country, and I shared this story that I was like reading about this week regarding cigarettes, where I can't remember what country. Oh, it's Lebanon. Lebanon has had a massive upswing in smoking. It's crazy. And not just that, well, the result of this has been that Lebanon also, not just due to the smoking, but to other environmental factors like that massive explosion that they had and some other shit or whatever, has had a ridiculous upswing in cancer. I mean, cancer right now in Lebanon is soaring uncontrollably. okay and so but yeah but i got to meet the guys like this week is kind of interesting i realize that it's been jeez fuck 20 i mean i was like trying to count like how many damn years, this shit i'm getting it keeps adding.
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Sam:
[12:48]
| Up and i i don't i don't like it.
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Ivan:
[12:50]
| No not particularly no not at all and here's the other fucked up conversation that this kind of aging starts so talking about hey we're we're people are going to retire whatever so there is a group of xhp people that i haven't look we got one guy who was our vp who's suffering from dementia alzheimer's okay which that's really rough okay to see okay yeah right i told me that i hadn't seen him but i've talked to a couple of other people and telling me that he sees you and he kind of like remembers you but he doesn't know anybody's name any okay which that's fucked up okay he's 70 he's not really 77.
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Sam:
[13:28]
| He's not that old.
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Ivan:
[13:29]
| Not that old, but something has really impacted his health. But all these guys are also looking at all these 55-plus communities, like, right now, to buy houses into, okay, to go. I'm like, yeah, because there is this cheap place up in Port St. Lucie, 55-plus, where you can get whatever. I'm like, fucking my goddamn house in a 55 plus.
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Sam:
[13:53]
| You know i should i.
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Ivan:
[13:55]
| Don't want to move into an old people old people's prison camp no.
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Sam:
[13:58]
| Well yeah well you know here's the thing like i can understand the like my my dad just moved into one of these places that starts as an apartment but as you need more care can transition into giving you more and more care as you get old but he needed And I can understand that, right? Because it's about, you know, hey, you know, you're getting older, you know, you're physically diminishing in various ways, and you are going to need more care. And it provides a smooth transition, but lets you have as much independence as you can, as long as you can, right? And I understand that. That makes a lot of sense. I like it. I've been to the place. You know, it's cool. But absent that, the age-restricted communities, it seems like it would be the opposite of what you want. You want to be in a community where you have younger people and you have kids and it's all mixed and you have all experiences together. And I feel like that would keep you young more than surrounding yourself with a bunch of other old people.
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Ivan:
[15:01]
| Our old fucks. Yes, that's right. I mean, I want some mixing ages. I don't want to be just surrounded by a whole bunch of old fucks.
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Sam:
[15:09]
| Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, I, I, I, I agree completely. I feel like, and it's one of those things that especially, I mean, you can speak to international trends, but in the U S the tendency is to like, go hide your old people. So you don't see them anymore.
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Ivan:
[15:26]
| You see, but that's the thing. That's the thing. That's not, I, we don't do that. Okay. As a matter of fact, we have more as like cross-generational, uh, uh, you know, households born and going and hiding the old people. Like my, listen, my aunt, my, my, my, both my aunts, they still live in the same house that they lived since I've known them since, since I was born. you know in their still the same house my grandma lived in her house up until she was in her 90s and then when she was too old to be by herself she moved in with my mom, you know so she was like so we could see her I mean I could see her regularly like every week you know I just you know I was able to see her all the time you know so yeah like my my sister and mother-in-law she lives in a house across the street.
|
Ivan:
[16:19]
| You know so that's more you know what I'm used to I don't want to like really be like I don't know now granted I I do live a little bit like I don't live like I don't live like in another state but I do live like about 30 miles away from when where my parents and my my sister live and so forth but I mean it's not 30 miles isn't that far no 30 miles see them regularly I see them regularly yeah yeah yeah see them all time so so that's not like you know i i do see them regularly so you know.
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Ivan:
[16:53]
| I don't I don't want to be like in this community where I live is quite a mixed group of ages. We have old retired people while we have college age college students. Like, you know, I just, you know, right. You know, we had like a couple of ladies that lived right across from us and their parents like from California had bought and bought. They started going to college over here. And so they had bought a condo. And so I knew them for about five years. and you know the one thing is that you know they moved out they left us a very grateful note because they're they were like actually extremely grateful that they had us as neighbors because.
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Ivan:
[17:33]
| Shit happened our parents lived in california right and you know they they actually you know they were so grateful like you know anytime that we needed something from you your wife you guys were always so grateful and graceful you helped us out with stuff or whatever so it was kind of nice and it was kind of nice honestly it was super nice to see them grow up into adults get a job and They just moved out because they got a new job and they're relocating for that job. And that was actually quite nice to see that, to be honest. And it's kind of like, I honestly, I like seeing that shit instead of just seeing, unfortunately, we had another couple like from in front of us that unfortunately their husband passed away. But you get, I think that we get both of them. Yes, we're getting the older people that also pass well at the same time as seeing people like do that. I like to see that diversity. I don't just want to see, I just want to be in a place where everything we've got down over coffee is like, hey, who died this morning? Oh, John over at 702. Yeah. It's depressing after a while.
|
Sam:
[18:31]
| The thing is about having the mixed ages and everybody together and, you know, and honestly, I'm not great at this because I never see anybody outside my whole house, practically. Like, I don't go out. I don't see my neighbors. I don't, like, interact with them on a regular basis. But the advantage that I could see anyway is you see the whole life cycle.
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Ivan:
[18:52]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[18:53]
| You see kids. You see them grow up. You see new babies being born. And yes, on the other hand, you see people getting older and people passing away and it centers you in. Yeah. Yeah. This is what life is.
|
Ivan:
[19:08]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[19:09]
| You can't pretend that whatever your stage of life is, is the only stage of life.
|
Ivan:
[19:13]
| Right. We're all, you know, not dying. You know, everything that's happened is that we are old and just all drop dead. So anyway, so yeah, so I, I, I, that was like just a, just, you know.
|
Sam:
[19:26]
| Okay. So I got a couple things. I will do a movie, but I have one thing first, so I'll only do one movie today.
|
Ivan:
[19:34]
| You know, I keep forgetting that I should have done a movie and I did not do this.
|
Sam:
[19:37]
| Oh, okay. Do your movie.
|
Ivan:
[19:39]
| I want to see Tron Aries.
|
Sam:
[19:41]
| Ah, okay. Yes. I've heard mixed reviews of this. I know you said on the Slack you liked it, but I've heard mixed reviews online. line.
|
Ivan:
[19:49]
| Okay, this is what I will say about this. First of all, my wife, my son, and I, we all went to see the movie.
|
Sam:
[19:58]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[19:58]
| I hear a lot of people...
|
Sam:
[19:59]
| Did you refresh yourself by watching the first two first?
|
Ivan:
[20:03]
| We had watched them in the last year even before. You know, we watched that movie right a little bit. So it's not like.
|
Sam:
[20:09]
| Even the second one? You've watched both of them?
|
Ivan:
[20:12]
| Yes. My son likes the second one more than the first one. And the second one is actually a better movie as entertainment. It was a better... The script was far more developed. Whereas the first one was more showier. Still a good script, I think. I think both had a good script. But the second one had a better pace of the movie, okay? I think the first one gets kind of the same criticisms as the first Star Trek The Motion Picture kind of a thing.
|
Sam:
[20:48]
| Yes, yes. It's showing off the look and the idea more than it is like, here's the actual characters involved.
|
Ivan:
[20:54]
| Which I like Star Trek The Motion Picture of the original movie myself. So I don't have a problem with the pacing. Although, as I said before, the latest director's edition that he did, he did tighten up the pacing quite a lot on it, and it actually made it for a better movie. Okay? Alright?
|
Sam:
[21:09]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[21:09]
| But I liked the original anyway, okay? You know, but I can see how a lot of people didn't.
|
Sam:
[21:15]
| Okay, back to Tron.
|
Ivan:
[21:16]
| But, but, listen, my wife went as well. I will, I will, my wife really liked the movie, okay? And my wife is not a Tron fan. She knows that me and Manu like Tron, but she went and just watched the movie and came out of it really liking the movie. Okay? And I think that a lot of people that are shitting out the movie, first it starts with the fact that Jared Leto is a controversial, actor because as far as I can understand, because I wasn't following this closely, it's related to a whole bunch of Me Too stuff, okay, as well, that apparently I saw, okay, but granted, Recall me having seen a Jared Leto movie before, I'll be honest.
|
Sam:
[22:03]
| I know nothing about him or his scandal.
|
Ivan:
[22:06]
| Exactly. So me coming into this, I did not have this in my head that there was such a scandal about it.
|
Sam:
[22:16]
| Yeah, I just brought up his Wikipedia page and I'm like, I don't even recognize this guy. I have no idea.
|
Ivan:
[22:21]
| Exactly, I didn't recognize the guy at all. And I thought that the movie was quite good. The plot was really good. a timely plot it really did like uh uh tie back in many ways to the to to you know the other movies even though the tie the ties itself were it did tie back there is one but there is one plot gap that that's kind of difficult in there okay all right that that i that is the only gap really okay that that you just don't it's it's difficult to to you don't understand it there there is a, some kind of like throwaway explanation that's thrown in there but it's not it's not clear how we got to from and i guess i should warn this is a spoiler alert at this point spoiler spoiler, how in tron legacy we had you know kevin flynn was the guy from the original movie who was the creator it was really the the guy who was the head of any comma who was who was who was the main star of the first film let's be clear about this flynn was the star of the movie tron it wasn't tron which also brings back to why the hell this movie called tron okay instead of planet i'm gonna guess because it sounds cooler, okay? Because the reality is that Tron was more of a secondary character.
|
Sam:
[23:50]
| Both in the first and second movie. It's the cool computer guy, not like the regular human.
|
Ivan:
[23:55]
| Exactly. So this was...
|
Sam:
[23:57]
| Like the whole thing, like if you'd named the movie Flynn, I mean, come on.
|
Ivan:
[24:01]
| Yeah, I know. It doesn't work, okay? All right, I get that. So that was the one thing, okay?
|
Sam:
[24:07]
| It's like calling Star Wars Luke.
|
Ivan:
[24:10]
| Yeah, exactly. It kind of like that. So, you know, it was just that you didn't, you know, you had Kevin Flynn. Sam Flynn appeared in the second movie as his son who went to try to find, investigate about where his dad was, who disappeared. There was a clue that came in that allowed him to go, like, to find him in the grid. But in this third movie, at the end of the second movie, Sam Flynn came back out of the grid and brought back a life form that was an amalgam of human and technology. Okay?
|
Sam:
[24:52]
| I watched the second movie, but I have no memories of it.
|
Ivan:
[24:55]
| And they rolled off in the sunset, and that was that. When this other movie starts, it appears that Sam disappeared, quit the company, and they named this other person as CEO. But what you don't understand is why that is. Why was it this person? It's just not clear. Okay? But what you know is that Sam Flynn disappeared, and it's this other person that has no relationship with either of them. Okay? but skipping that but in the movie it explains well Sam Flynn disappeared and they named her CEO that's it but it doesn't really delve into that, but look the movie, the action was good the idea was well executed the special effects looked great and at the end by the way they did tie everything together in a certain way that by the way leads you to well they left it You know, obviously, it depends if Disney decides to make another...
|
Sam:
[25:55]
| They left it open for another sequel.
|
Ivan:
[25:56]
| They left it completely open and tied everything together.
|
Sam:
[26:00]
| Mm-hmm.
|
Ivan:
[26:01]
| All right? In a certain way. That you didn't understand at first, but then everything actually, at the end, did come together in a certain way. I... My wife, my son, me, all thought the movie was great. What I've seen is that people that have watched the Tron series loved the movie. They loved the movie. A lot of people, you get people who's like, well, why isn't Tron in the movie? Now, there is a good question about that because they could have had Tron in the movie. But again, even in Tron Legacy, Tron was just a peripheral, presence in the movie he wasn't really you know a central character to the plot okay right so you know that didn't really faze me okay about that it's just that was you know, look I even if you don't follow the series that movie was enjoyable it was pretty cool it was worth a watch I would recommend to go see it.
|
Sam:
[27:07]
| Thumbs up from Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[27:08]
| Thumbs up from me and everybody in the house.
|
Sam:
[27:11]
| Okay well I'm looking at the critical receptions section on Wikipedia and it sounds like at almost all of the places that do this let's see Rotten Tomatoes 53% Metacritic 48 out of 100. Cinema score gives it a B+. So there you go.
|
Ivan:
[27:29]
| But by the way I think that the reception to Tron Legacy was very similar as well. I just this is not a movie for everybody and a lot of.
|
Sam:
[27:38]
| People go to.
|
Ivan:
[27:39]
| A movie and they just don't like it but i think that um.
|
Sam:
[27:42]
| You think for the people who like the previous two movies they'll like this one too absolutely 100 yes okay okay so i have like i said i will do one movie but before i do the movie some podcast announcements todd podcast bum bum bum bum, So number one is I've been mentioning that I was going to do this for a long time, but I finally did. The curmudgeons corner blue sky account is now actually active and posting. So if you it's just curmudgeons hyphen corner dot com on blue sky, it doesn't have one of those BSKY things. It's it's the it's the domain name. So you can follow curmudgeons corner on blue sky and it will it automatically posts when we start our live streams. and when new episodes come out. And I am also manually now posting on there the same video clips I'm posting on TikTok.
|
Ivan:
[28:40]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[28:41]
| So you can get the, and I'm still like a month behind or something posting those video clips. So as we are recording this, the last clips I posted were from, I believe the September 20th show, something like that, maybe 26th. I have to be accurate. So I must say this. Let's see. September 20th. And the last clips I posted were from the September 20th episode. By the time I put this out, you'll probably have some from the next show after that. But I am doing that. So follow us on Blue Sky.
|
Ivan:
[29:19]
| I didn't do anything. Anyway, I'll be staying for the other video clips.
|
Sam:
[29:25]
| Follow us on Blue Sky. Mastodon also gets the episode announcements. So, you know, follow us there. If you're there instead, I'm not posting the video clips on Mastodon. I guess that you can do that, but whatever. And I'm still posting on TikTok. I have, I have still not linked to the TikTok because, you know, TikTok officially is still in flux. You know, there's stuff going on. Who knows what's going to happen with TikTok? I don't know. I may get to it eventually. And TikTok, you know, you've heard all the stuff. It may get acquired in a new U.S. version of the app, blah, blah, blah. Who knows if I'll continue with that or not. Anyway, so the videos are now on Blue Sky. So that's announcement number one. Announcement number two is that as part of doing this, I refreshed the Curmudgeon's Corner website a little bit. specifically you know all the blue sky contacts are on there now as well as mastodon to make it a little bit more parallel i made the facebook links the same so for mastodon blue sky and facebook there are links to not only the curmudgeon's corner accounts but to both me and Yvonne personally. And then the big thing for the webpage.
|
Ivan:
[30:39]
| Big.
|
Sam:
[30:39]
| That people have been clamoring for.
|
Ivan:
[30:44]
| Clamoring. Clamoring.
|
Sam:
[30:46]
| And, you know, on the curmudgeons corner, Slack, specifically.
|
Ivan:
[30:50]
| So that's why there were people on the streets last Saturday. That was it.
|
Sam:
[30:53]
| It was, you know, very excited. You know, no. John on the Slack asked for this. Some other people have asked for this. There is now a link. So without joining our Patreon, you can directly buy the mug. You can buy the curmudgeons corner mug.
|
Ivan:
[31:10]
| There you go.
|
Sam:
[31:11]
| If you go to the website, it says mug colon, and it has a little Zazzle icon because Zazzle is who we use to do the mugs. You can click on that. You can go straight through and buy the mug. And if people do buy the mug, we get a small kickback from that, from Zazzle.
|
Ivan:
[31:28]
| Hey, you're learning from Trump, huh?
|
Sam:
[31:30]
| Getting kickbacks well you know not completely because zazzle lets you pick how much of a kickback you get and like there's a certain level that if you go above that level like you can go as high as you want you can say like the the base cost of the mug is 12 bucks but our kickback is 50 you know or 100 or whatever like.
|
Ivan:
[31:50]
| A so yeah so like it's like yeah like trump watch levels yes.
|
Sam:
[31:53]
| Yeah yeah no but i did not do that there's a certain level that they don't recommend you go past and is like, they take an extra fee for themselves. If you go above that level, I went as high as you could go without them taking their extra fee. So the mugs are like, what are they? $13.16.
|
Ivan:
[32:11]
| Oh, there you go.
|
Sam:
[32:13]
| And I think we get like a buck out of that or something. I don't even know. Like, you know. So if you want a curmudgeon's corner mug and have not earned one.
|
Ivan:
[32:22]
| This will ameliorate our losses.
|
Sam:
[32:24]
| Or being on the show.
|
Ivan:
[32:26]
| All it does is ameliorate our losses. I, you know.
|
Sam:
[32:30]
| Yes. Yes. And, you know, despite recent increases to the Patreon. Thank you, Emily. we uh we we still run at a loss every every month so i mean by the.
|
Ivan:
[32:41]
| Way and the loss that you're looking at doesn't include how much i'm paying for slack.
|
Sam:
[32:44]
| I know you added the slack payment yeah on top of the slack payment i've got the let's see what do we pay at the moment we pay for riverside we pay for aphonic we pay for dream host for hosting and we pay for slack at the moment right yeah and our and our own time.
|
Ivan:
[33:01]
| And our own time.
|
Sam:
[33:03]
| Yes so none of none of what comes in in exchange adds up to even one of those services I listed, let alone all of them.
|
Ivan:
[33:12]
| We're going to do, like, my friend and plan our retirement, like, right now by December 31st.
|
Sam:
[33:18]
| Unless you are out there right now and want to join our Patreon. There is, on the website, there is a link to our Patreon with all kinds of benefits. And, you know, if instead of, you know, the $25 that it used to, $25 a month that it used to get, I mean, you can still get a mug for $25 a month. But if you really want a mug, you can buy one for $13. Plus shipping. And Zazzle's shipping is not trivial. It's not free shipping. They add, like, in some stupid shipping.
|
Ivan:
[33:48]
| So for $100,000 a month.
|
Sam:
[33:50]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[33:52]
| Then, you know, we're in business.
|
Sam:
[33:54]
| Exactly. So we will do that. Anyway, no, absent that. So anyway, bottom line out of all this, my whole point was here. The Curmudgeon's Corner Blue Sky is now active and posting on a regular basis. I had created the account like nine months ago or something, but it hadn't posted a damn thing until like a week ago. and but it is now active and posting and you can now go to the website and directly order a curmudgeon's corner mug if you so wish you can still get a mug by joining our patreon at the i think it's the 20 level 25 you know and now i'm gonna have to like actually say what all the levels are at our patreon so the levels the tears on our patreon membership okay here we go not.
|
Ivan:
[34:38]
| Not Not crying tears. You mean tears like levels.
|
Sam:
[34:42]
| Yes, yes. Although you can cry. You are permitted to cry during the show. It is often warranted. No, at $1 a month, we will mention you. Yeah, at $1 a month, we will mention you and thank you on the show. At $2 a month, we will also invite you to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, which we also give away for free if you just ask. For $5 a month, we ring a bell. for $10 a month we will send you a postcard, And for $20 a month, we will send you a mug. Now, we also do have a $50 a month tier, which no one has ever done. For that, we will invite you to record a 30 to 90 second audio clip on almost any topic you like. We reserve the right to reject obscene or offensive content, which we will play on the show in the next episode.
|
Ivan:
[35:34]
| I mean, if the content is just insulting us, we'll probably be okay with that.
|
Sam:
[35:38]
| Yeah, yeah.
|
Ivan:
[35:39]
| I mean, if you're just saying, like, you know, you guys suck, you know, terrible show. I don't know why the hell I donated, blah, blah, blah. We're fine.
|
Sam:
[35:50]
| Yeah. And look, I made up these tiers when we first set up the Patreon ages ago. I know they're somewhat unrealistic tiers. They are basically a tip jar for us. We've also had the request on multiple occasions. Can I just give you a one-time thing instead of a subscription? And, you know, I've, I've given people like, you know, a PayPal or whatever and ways to do that, but maybe one day I'll put that on the, on the site too. Like just a one-time tip jar mechanism, you know, because I understand, I don't like. subscriptions either. And especially like, I don't, you know, $20 a month for a mug. I mean, you know, whatever. It's not about the mug. Now you can, you can also get the mug from being on the show. If you're actually on the show with us, I will send you a mug for that as well. I didn't do that at first, but I've done that for the last few years. Whenever somebody joins us on the show. Anyway, that's that. Any, any thoughts on that before I jump into my movie, Eva jump.
|
Ivan:
[36:52]
| Into the movie go.
|
Sam:
[36:53]
| Jump jumping oh my oh I will say on the don't hurt yourself I will not hurt myself I on the the last I mentioned the videos I post on TikTok the very last one I got on TikTok did also get a a decent amount of people commenting on it and such including some MAGA folks and some whatevers and you know some people you know defending us against the MAGA folks. And of course, I have yet to be convinced that this translates into people actually.
|
Sam:
[37:26]
| Listening to the podcast itself.
|
Ivan:
[37:27]
| I doubt it. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[37:30]
| I mean, it takes extra work. You have to figure it out.
|
Ivan:
[37:33]
| Well, think about, well, it's not just that. Think about, look, you watch these clips from certain shows a lot of time that you like, and you even like the clips a lot. But that doesn't necessarily translate into you watching the show in its entirety.
|
Sam:
[37:47]
| Absolutely. Like, I mean, I'll tell you right now, like, you know, it has been years since I have actually watched in its entirety, any of the late night talk shows, Saturday night, live the daily show, any of these. Now, do I see clips from them on a regular basis? Yes, I do.
|
Ivan:
[38:07]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[38:07]
| Just because they show up in my social media feed.
|
Ivan:
[38:10]
| Yeah. But, but you don't watch the show.
|
Sam:
[38:11]
| I don't watch the shows. I don't, I don't know. And, and like the thought of doing so is even like, really, Ridiculous. Why would I do that?
|
Ivan:
[38:20]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[38:21]
| It's crazy.
|
Ivan:
[38:22]
| It's preposterous. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[38:24]
| Yeah. So anyway. Okay. Movie. I'll only do one. I'm never going to catch up on these damn things. But Hairspray from 1988. I knew absolutely nothing about this movie coming into it. I mean, I knew it was a musical.
|
Ivan:
[38:39]
| I gotta say, look, I don't think I've watched it either. I think I may have, like, because that was one of those movies. 1988 was a time when, like, that was around the time when I used to subscribe to all the movie channels, right?
|
Sam:
[38:55]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[38:55]
| So I'm sure that I, I know, I know that flipping through channels, it must have been on at some point. And I'm sure that I, I saw a little bit, but the moment I realized it's a musical, I probably I'm like, okay, I'm out next.
|
Sam:
[39:13]
| Right. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[39:15]
| So I, I have no idea, but it sounds like something that happened in a beauty salon.
|
Sam:
[39:21]
| And it's not.
|
Ivan:
[39:23]
| Okay, so there you go. You see, I mean, how wrong am I? I just proved my point that I have no clue about it either.
|
Sam:
[39:32]
| Yeah, and the only thing I knew was a musical, and I guess it was based on a Broadway musical. Oh, no, wait. It was a movie musical first, and then it was adapted into a Broadway musical. It usually goes the other way around.
|
Ivan:
[39:45]
| Yeah, almost always.
|
Sam:
[39:47]
| Yeah, so no, no. It was a 1988 movie, and in 2002, it was adapted for Broadway. And there was a second movie version in 2007. I watched the 1988 version, not the 2007 version. So I will start with the first couple paragraphs of the description and go from there. In 1962, Baltimore, overweight teenager Tracy Turnblad dreams of appearing on The Corny Collins Show, a popular local television program featuring a council of teenagers dancing to popular songs. So, like, you know, think American Bandstand.
|
Ivan:
[40:32]
| Sure.
|
Sam:
[40:33]
| One night, she and her best friend Penny Pingleton sneak out to a record hop emceed by the show's host, Corny Collins. though the yes, Though the event is segregated, she impresses guest judge Motormouth Maybelle Stubbs, who co-hosts the program's monthly Negro Day. After Tracy and her partner Fender win that night's dance contest, narrowly beating council dancers Amber Von Tussle, the show's reigning queen and a mean, conventionally attractive high school classmate whose racist parents, Velma and Franklin, own Tilted Acres Amusement Park, which bans African Americans. and her boyfriend, Link Larkin. Corny invites her to audition for the program at the WZZT television studio the next day, inspiring her to bleach, tease, and rat her big hair. At the audition, Penny nervously stumbles over her answers and another girl is cut for being black. Tracy's dance moves and stellar performance during the mock interview challenge earn her a spot on the council beginning with that afternoon's taping. After mocking Tracy's weight, Amber is suspended for the day by Corny... Dot, dot, dot. The one thing you will have noticed, even from these first couple paragraphs, is... It talks about race. It talks about segregation in the 1960s. And this is one thing.
|
Ivan:
[42:00]
| If this movie came out now, like, what the hell, man? I mean, it'd be like a MAGA, like MAGA people would be protesting in front of the.
|
Sam:
[42:09]
| Oh, yeah. MAGA would be protesting. Right, right. I thought you were going to say they would like it. No.
|
Ivan:
[42:14]
| No. No, they would be protesting outside the movie.
|
Sam:
[42:16]
| Because it exists.
|
Ivan:
[42:18]
| Yes.
|
Sam:
[42:18]
| Yes. Yes. No, and this is the thing that, like, again, knowing nothing about this, I was actually surprised because it had serious themes.
|
Ivan:
[42:26]
| I'm shocked.
|
Sam:
[42:27]
| It had serious themes.
|
Ivan:
[42:29]
| I thought that this was just some dumb musical.
|
Sam:
[42:32]
| Right. And like you, I was like, okay, it's hairspray. They're going to be, like, at a salon or something, like you said.
|
Ivan:
[42:37]
| Right. Fuck. I was not even remotely, remotely close to what the hell this movie's about.
|
Sam:
[42:46]
| Well, and even when they start talking about like, oh, OK, they're going on like this American bandstand type show. I was like, OK, light and frothy, blah, blah, blah. And then it gets into segregation and the effects of segregation on the people. And then the spoilers here, essentially, the majority of the movie is their efforts to desegregate this dance show on TV and how that effort plays out. and, you know, there are police involved at various points. There's a riot. People get injured, you know.
|
Ivan:
[43:20]
| Okay, well, question, question. Okay, well, then now this is very confusing. Going back to what I talked about, why Tron is called Tron, but it's got very little to do with Tron. What the hell is it called? Hairspray.
|
Sam:
[43:31]
| Well, I did mention that, you know, to get ready for audition, she bleached, tased, and ratted her big hair. And presume, you know, and so like, no, I'd say the same thing. Look, it's, it's, it's, it's probably a big part of it is exactly.
|
Ivan:
[43:49]
| I guess the title bandstand racism, is it like, does it really roll off the tip of the tongue?
|
Sam:
[43:54]
| I think that's part of it. And also you want to get people in who aren't necessarily expecting the heavy message.
|
Ivan:
[44:00]
| No, exactly. That's what it will. They won't buy. They won't buy that. You know, the other one isn't attractive and it doesn't roll off the tip of the tongue. It's like you said, like, you know, call the movie, you know, Flynn kind of sucked.
|
Sam:
[44:15]
| Anyway, it is a musical. It is highly stylized. It's not intended to be realistic, but it does hit the more serious themes, and it surprised me. It was not what I was expecting coming in.
|
Ivan:
[44:30]
| I'm okay. This is not what I expected in any way, shape, or form.
|
Sam:
[44:36]
| And, and, and so, yeah, I, in the end, I'm giving it a thumbs up. It's not like, I don't remember any of the damn songs. Like, so I can't, I can't tell you that like, you know, I, it hit me in that way.
|
Ivan:
[44:49]
| You were blown away by the song.
|
Sam:
[44:52]
| Yeah. No.
|
Ivan:
[44:54]
| Something.
|
Sam:
[44:55]
| No. Yeah. So I wasn't blown away by the songs. I don't remember the songs. I don't remember a lot of details, but I really remember the transition from, oh, crap, this isn't going to be like light and fluffy.
|
Ivan:
[45:11]
| It's not a light and fluffy. This is a serious fucking film. To hell.
|
Sam:
[45:16]
| And I remember enjoying it. And, you know, like, you know, at the end, when it ends, you feel all the right emotions and et cetera. I'll also mention a few members of the cast that you might recognize. Sonny Bono is in it. no ricky lake you remember ricky lake god.
|
Ivan:
[45:36]
| Yes holy shit.
|
Sam:
[45:38]
| Jerry stiller wow those those are the ones i really knew apparently it has divine in it who i didn't really know but apparently is well known and a few other people but those are those are the ones that uh that i recognized uh and specifically ricky lake i was like what what like i haven't heard that name in decades you know did a talk show quite a long time ago quite a long time ago late i guess when did she do the talk show is 80s had.
|
Ivan:
[46:12]
| To be the 90s 80s.
|
Sam:
[46:15]
| Let's see i, to that talk show talk show ricky lake yeah you're right 90s 90 93 to 2004.
|
Ivan:
[46:25]
| The ricky lake show was on yeah it sounded about right and.
|
Sam:
[46:28]
| Uh and she's close to our age she's 57.
|
Ivan:
[46:31]
| Fuck really yeah ricky lake she would be a lot older so wait a minute ricky lake so wait she started a show basically at the same about about the same age as we left college yeah.
|
Sam:
[46:44]
| Something like that.
|
Ivan:
[46:45]
| Wow but by the way but but she apparently was an actress because i mean think about it she did that movie uh in what 88 so she was like shit i mean 19 yeah okay okay so she was 1920.
|
Sam:
[47:02]
| Yeah she was born in 68 yeah.
|
Ivan:
[47:04]
| Yeah yeah so it's 1920 yeah and.
|
Sam:
[47:07]
| And she was in a she was in a few movies it looks like in a couple.
|
Ivan:
[47:11]
| TV shows as well as a show. Yeah, so she was somebody who was a famous young actress.
|
Sam:
[47:15]
| She wasn't an A-list actor.
|
Ivan:
[47:17]
| No, but, you know, she was around, you know, yeah.
|
Sam:
[47:22]
| Anyway, thumbs up to Hairspray. More for the themes than the movie itself, I guess. But it was fun as a movie, too. I mean, I don't remember the songs, but I remember them being non-objectionable. I remember the...
|
Ivan:
[47:37]
| Always, always the song review that you want to get from your audience. Hey, how was my concert? I was non-objectable. Objection. I can't even say it. Whatever. The stars looking at you like, oh, that's, that's.
|
Sam:
[47:52]
| I remember liking. I'm glad you didn't.
|
Ivan:
[47:54]
| I'm glad you didn't wretched vomit. at my songs.
|
Sam:
[47:58]
| Thank you yes yes i i remember also liking sort of it was 1960s but stylized and so i i remember noticing the colorful outfits and the 1960s look and sort of the you know you know just the 1960s vibe but it was like you know upped you know so it wasn't a realistic, gritty 1960s. It was like a, I'm not quite, it's not like, it's not like watching the original Batman TV series like that.
|
Ivan:
[48:31]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[48:31]
| But, but it's still like, you know, colorful, amped up, you know, sort of cartoonish version, but mixed in with the serious themes. So anyway, thumbs up for that. Shall we take a break and get onto our serious stuff?
|
Ivan:
[48:46]
| Yes. Let's take a breaky. Breaky, breaky.
|
Sam:
[48:49]
| Okay. This one. Okay, there we are. So, Yvonne, you usually do the first segment. What are your top topics in this amazing week where we've had, you know, things happen?
|
Ivan:
[50:01]
| I'm getting, like, heartburn just thinking about it. I'm looking at this shit.
|
Sam:
[50:08]
| At our lovely list that we maintain throughout the week. He looks so excited. So excited.
|
Ivan:
[50:18]
| You know... Okay, I'm going to bring this up because I don't know much about this, and it seems like I think that you do know more about this.
|
Sam:
[50:29]
| Oh, no.
|
Ivan:
[50:30]
| It's about the main Senate thing.
|
Sam:
[50:32]
| Ah, the main Senate thing.
|
Ivan:
[50:35]
| But can you explain what's going on with the main Senate? I mean, listen, all I know, this is I will give you my.
|
Sam:
[50:42]
| I probably don't know a lot more, but go ahead. Go ahead.
|
Ivan:
[50:45]
| OK, well, I will just say what what I'm pretty sure, you know, more than that.
|
Sam:
[50:49]
| OK.
|
Ivan:
[50:49]
| OK.
|
Sam:
[50:50]
| And if not, I'll just make shit up.
|
Ivan:
[50:52]
| Well, that's that's great. Perfect. You know, you know what? We would be very 2025. OK, by doing that.
|
Sam:
[50:59]
| Yeah. I'll ask chat.
|
Ivan:
[51:01]
| Yeah. So what what? OK, all I know is that there is some Democrat, right, that's running for the primary to be the nominee for Senate for Maine, which people think is a winnable seat at this point.
|
Sam:
[51:19]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[51:20]
| And apparently this guy had a tattoo on his chest and it was a Nazi symbol. and then apparently he said that he removed the tattoo or something something and then i guess that some chats or some stuff about him appeared to show that he was just throwing around nazi shit you know like just like the young republicans that we heard about uh the other time uh yeah so So that's it. That's all I know.
|
Sam:
[51:53]
| Okay. You are close to what I know already.
|
Ivan:
[51:56]
| Fuck.
|
Sam:
[51:57]
| Let's go into a little bit more. So first of all, yes, this is Susan Collins' seat in Maine. They're up in 2026. She is considered one of the most vulnerable Republicans because generally speaking, Maine has gone Democrat on a statewide level for a while now. You know, they split their votes in the Electoral College the last couple times around because they're one of the two states that can do that. And they have continued to elect her as a Republican for Senate for a while.
|
Ivan:
[52:29]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[52:30]
| But it's considered gettable because she's.
|
Ivan:
[52:34]
| She said it because she's a fucking sellout. I mean, that's it. I mean, every time that something comes up that is horrible, her default, you know, it's now a comedy skit. Well, it's not just that. I was going to say. Oh, I am deeply concerned. Oh, I am extremely concerned. Now I am, like, disturbingly concerned. You know? Do something, bitch.
|
Sam:
[53:03]
| Well, I. I was going to, I was actually going to, it's not quite as dramatic as the situation, but I was going to compare her to Manchin in West Virginia. She is a Republican leftover in a state that has moved blue as opposed to a Democratic leftover in a state that has moved red.
|
Ivan:
[53:18]
| But even Manchin voted for some Democratic shit and protected some important shit like the ACA, whereas she got it. She voted to, I mean, she voted for these psychopathic fucking nominees.
|
Sam:
[53:29]
| But for most of the time, she votes with the Republicans. Every once in a while, she votes with the Democrats on something. So it's kind of she, you know, the difference is that Maine hasn't gone as far blue as West Virginia has gone red. But she's still one of those people who are, you know. in a position where her state has moved and she hasn't necessarily. But she is one of the last remaining people who, you know, is considered one of those swing Republicans that actually sometimes goes with the Democrats on something.
|
Ivan:
[54:04]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[54:06]
| Even though, as you said, she's constantly saying she's concerned.
|
Ivan:
[54:10]
| Deeply concerned.
|
Sam:
[54:12]
| Extremely concerned. She said, she says Roe versus Wade is important for her, but she votes for the judge that's obviously going to get rid of it.
|
Ivan:
[54:19]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[54:20]
| Because they told her, like, maybe they won't.
|
Ivan:
[54:24]
| They promised, because we promise you we won't. Fuck it.
|
Sam:
[54:28]
| Right. Anyway, all this kind of stuff. So, she's gettable. So, there is a primary on the Democratic side. There are all sorts of people running. So, on the Democratic side, let's see. The guy we're talking about is Graham Planter. He's been the front line.
|
Ivan:
[54:49]
| You see, that's one thing. Listen, if right now you had said Ivan for $50, name the guy in Maine. That is a controversy. I would have struck out.
|
Sam:
[55:05]
| Right. But we've also got David Costello, Tucker Favreau, Darius Smith Rodriguez. Yes. Daria Smith-Rodriguez, Jordan Wood, and just within the last two weeks, jumping in, the current governor of Maine, Janet Mills. Now, And let's hit this a little bit. Graham Planter, who all this controversy is about, had been gaining lots of momentum.
|
Ivan:
[55:37]
| Well, the last poll that I saw, which was before all of this came out, he was over 50%. What was his appeal? By the way, why was he the frontrunner? What was his bona fides, bona fides?
|
Sam:
[55:48]
| Well, interestingly enough, given what we're about to talk about, about Nazi tattoos, was he was getting popular with the progressive crowd. He was endorsed by Bernie Sanders. He was endorsed by Ro Khanna. He was endorsed by David Hogg, if you remember him, and a few other people on those lines. And he was making a lot of sort of progressive noises that made the left side of the Democratic Party very happy. Also, he was just being direct and outspoken. And, you know, like we've talked about other candidates, he was sort of, you know, directly attacking Trump and hitting some of the national issues while also rooting things locally. people were talking about. There were some comparisons to Fetterman before he went crazy in terms of he's got sort of the look of a guy who might appeal to sort of right-wing or moderate MAGA folks and may be able to convert a few of them.
|
Ivan:
[56:50]
| I mean, actually, it's not MAGA people. The kind of people that these people appear to are the more low-information people, of voters that sometimes because they're they have been raised in some conservative environment they kind of like always like oh well i was raised republican i'm going to vote republican they're low information so they want to but this is the kind of voter that would appeal to him because it sounds like it's like he's like one of them and so when he's talking he's like oh i i you know this guy i you know i relate to this guy okay great you know that's that's what i see.
|
Sam:
[57:24]
| And part of his appeal was military, masculine, whatever, you know, had that kind of, you know, macho guy kind of look, but still had sort of your, your progressive opinions on social issues and other things like that. And so he was getting a lot, you know, I mentioned some of the endorsements, but also like other democratic senators, like Elizabeth Warren, Chris Murphy, Sheldon Whitehouse, So, yeah, good, good, good, good. They didn't endorse outright, but they expressed support.
|
Ivan:
[57:56]
| They supported him. Okay, yeah, sure. Sounds like a good.
|
Sam:
[57:59]
| Okay. And so, like, he was gaining lots and lots of momentum. Now, a lot of establishment Democrats were like, uh-oh, we can't have this. He's, like, he's going to be too far left or he's going to have other issues. and we're just going to, if we run this guy, we're going to end up with Susan Collins winning again. You know, she's going to pull out the win because this guy may be appealing to certain parts of our party, but he can't win a general election. That was their take on him, and they generally were unhappy with him. And maybe they knew some of this stuff that was going to come out. Now, because they were actively trying to recruit Janet Mills, who is the Democratic governor of Maine. And she's term limited, so she can't stay on as governor longer. She has been around a long time. She is also 77 years old. So she's one of the people who like that. You know, we've talked many times about sort of the democratic age problem where, you know, and I know you take the point of like, hey, if they're effective, age doesn't matter, whatever. However.
|
Sam:
[59:15]
| The Democratic leadership is really top-heavy with baby boomers or even silent generation who just won't let go. They're starting to, but that's still an issue. And so, okay, we've got another late 70s person who, with a six-year term, would be in here.
|
Ivan:
[59:34]
| More my question is about her positions and how she has been. I mean, and how popular—well, here's the thing, and I think more importantly—.
|
Sam:
[59:41]
| She is very popular in.
|
Ivan:
[59:42]
| Maine. You see, that's the thing. If she is a super popular governor in Maine, then obviously she and this has happened before here in Florida, she would be the natural candidate to win that that Senate seat. Look at fucking Rick Scott. That bastard.
|
Sam:
[59:55]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[59:56]
| You know, maybe wasn't the most popular governor, but he was governor. And that guy went and easily moved from being governor into winning the damn seat. And when you are able to do that, the reality is that I will say that just looking at the situation without really knowing the specifics, the reality is that that is definitely gives you a far more winnable candidate for the campaign, period. End the story.
|
Sam:
[1:00:22]
| And I think in terms of viewpoints and everything, as far as I know, she's a fairly mainline Democrat. Like, she's not a progressive Democrat, but she's a fairly mainline, what you would expect of a Democrat who's been around for a while.
|
Ivan:
[1:00:41]
| Can I be, listen, but can I be blunt one thing about what the hell defines a mainline Democrat versus a progressive Democrat these days? Because the other day I was listening to Bernie Sanders in an interview talking about this, and it's not the positions.
|
Sam:
[1:00:59]
| It's the attitude.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:00]
| Yeah, that's it. It's a thing of like where Bernie says the system is completely broken. And I'm saying this is what he said for the last 20 years. And that the way to what we need to do is that we can't be timid by making, you know, by the way that the Democrats want to legislate or make these changes when we need to destroy the whole thing. And that's what Trump understands. OK.
|
Sam:
[1:01:30]
| Right. You can't make small incremental changes for, you know, yeah, maybe you're improving it a little bit, but you have to address the underlying problem.
|
Ivan:
[1:01:38]
| And he said, well, that's what Trump understands. The problem is that what Trump understands and what he's doing is that, yeah, Trump may be saying the system's broken, but the problem is that what he has is a disdain for the law and a disdain for everybody else. And I'm sorry, but if what you're telling me is that the way to make things work is to basically, you know, wipe your ass with the law, with the rule of law. I mean, I'm sorry, but that's not a way to either to fix things either. You know, now, now I do think. That Democrats need to be take what the law allows and be far more aggressive with it.
|
Sam:
[1:02:29]
| Yeah, you need to push it as far as it.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:31]
| Exactly. You need to push the limits of the law. OK, that that I am with and they are not and they have not. And that's been the problem because there were things that Biden could have done that were far more aggressive in order to do certain things. And we just didn't do it. OK, it just wasn't done. So that I agree with, but, but I don't, I don't, I don't.
|
Sam:
[1:02:52]
| I don't at least part of it is we did have mansion and cinema.
|
Ivan:
[1:02:55]
| Which, but even blocked a bunch of stuff, which blocked a whole bunch of stuff as well, because you couldn't even take it. Even if you took the limit and said, Hey, we'll break the filibuster. It didn't happen because you didn't have enough. You didn't have enough senators anyway, to, to, to get, to get stuff, but other stuff like with the Supreme court. And, you know, going going all the way to say, fuck it, we'll pack the court. Go, you know, you got to go more Roosevelt than than than we have. And Roosevelt did a lot of a lot of this and he got pushed back. OK, yeah, he was super aggressive. I don't I don't I don't I don't disagree that you got to be aggressive. But but my point is that.
|
Sam:
[1:03:36]
| It's it's about even on even on his court packet. you know he basically the way that played out it is he was going to nominate a whole bunch more judges without explicit legislation to expand the court or anything like that he was just going to nominate more judges and and see what would happen and basically this was because the supreme court was in the process of they'd already done it on a few things and we're going to do it on more push back a bunch of new deal legislation and declare it unconstitutional exactly and basically with the threat of the court packing, the court backed down and agreed to compromises, essentially, and allowed things through. At least this is how I remember it.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:19]
| I think your recollection is correct.
|
Sam:
[1:04:22]
| And so the court packing never actually came to the head in the end because you exerted the pressure.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:28]
| You exerted the damn pressure. That's the point. You can't just sit there, you know, my whole thing, and like I said, progressive, this isn't appropriate. You fucking put the positions out there. It isn't about the goddamn positions anymore.
|
Sam:
[1:04:43]
| They actually aren't that far off from each other. And even before, the biggest difference was incrementality versus big pop changes.
|
Ivan:
[1:04:53]
| I think we all agree on big pop changes.
|
Sam:
[1:04:55]
| At this point, certainly. I mean, I've made the argument before that you have to do certain things incrementally because otherwise you get all kinds of unintended consequences and backlash and all kinds of things. But at this point, certainly for the kinds of things we were talking about that Obama should have done, you know, make new states, expand the court, et cetera.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:20]
| Yeah, just fuck it, man. Listen, just you got to go take that playbook right now and you got to fucking, you know, basically, whoever the hell wins like right now has to take the you have to take the you you would need to run on the anti-project 2025 platform.
|
Sam:
[1:05:36]
| Basically you you.
|
Ivan:
[1:05:38]
| Go and you're saying i'm undoing all of this shit and by the way we're gonna undo it the same way this asshole did it and.
|
Sam:
[1:05:47]
| Go further you know i saw someone post on blue sky and i i'm gonna be mad at myself because i don't remember who that oh okay we're going to we're gonna solve this where the democrats are gonna figure out like you said the the approach and the approach is going to be hire some consultants to come up with a plan. The plan is health care and or jobs, and then we're going to do the same thing.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:17]
| To be fair to Biden, Biden was very aggressive on a lot of things that he did compared to previous presidents.
|
Sam:
[1:06:25]
| Well, he actually got more, I mean, he got more of the progressive priorities done than any president since LBJ.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:33]
| Well, yeah, the LBJ.
|
Sam:
[1:06:35]
| No, since LBJ.
|
Ivan:
[1:06:36]
| Yes, it's LBJ. Okay. And here's the one thing for all the Bernie talk or whatever that he talks about. I'm sorry, but how much legislation has Bernie actually passed? So here's the thing. And that's the other thing. I'm like, look, my problem with him is that he's been very ineffectual. He's been super ineffectual. So I don't give a shit what, you know, show me during his track record, during his life, you know, what has he accomplished? Okay. So that's my knock on him. He sure as hell can complain or rile up, but not actually get anything done.
|
Sam:
[1:07:13]
| So let's circle back to Maine.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:16]
| And the whole point was because you mentioned that they're trying to bring the governor. Apparently, did she officially throw her hat in the ring at this point?
|
Sam:
[1:07:24]
| Yes. Her hat is now in the ring. She is now running. And this is where some of this stuff comes back into play. because the rumor is that everything we've been hearing about Nazi tattoo guy, whose name I already forgot, Graham Planter, is essentially oppo research coming out of Mill's campaign.
|
Ivan:
[1:07:48]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:07:48]
| Which makes you think, like, was the mainstream opposition to this guy actually mostly, oh, he's a progressive, or did they know some of this stuff and knew it would be a problem?
|
Ivan:
[1:08:00]
| Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:08:00]
| Right?
|
Ivan:
[1:08:01]
| Like, okay, listen, I don't give a shit where this came out. I'm fucking sorry, okay? Just because it came out of somebody else that the motherfucker was Nazi-tatted on his fucking body doesn't make a fucking difference in the facts.
|
Sam:
[1:08:19]
| So let's go through some of the history. So before the tattoo stuff came out, what had started to come out was this guy apparently was a prolific poster on Reddit.
|
Ivan:
[1:08:28]
| Oh! Yeah. Yeah, a platform of absolutely civil discourse and, you know, discussion. Yes, of course.
|
Sam:
[1:08:39]
| And so people, of course, started looking through his history. They found him making comments about, you know, how, you know, black people don't tip and, you know, that kind of stuff. he made some comments basically defending how the military was not taking seriously accounts of sexual assault and rape in the military oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:02]
| Yeah oh a wholehearted progressive right here buddy.
|
Sam:
[1:09:06]
| And basically saying like you know hey you know the the military is right to downplay this stuff it's a bunch of you know whiny women who should just suck it up that kind stuff. Ah, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:18]
| Just enjoy the rape. That's what they used to say.
|
Sam:
[1:09:21]
| Right?
|
Ivan:
[1:09:21]
| You know, why don't you just calm down and, you know, enjoy it?
|
Sam:
[1:09:25]
| No, what I said was not an exact quote.
|
Ivan:
[1:09:28]
| No, but I'm not doing an exact quote either, but that is what... I'm sorry. There are people that used to say that, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:09:36]
| Yeah, yeah. So anyway, there were comments like that that were already out there, and he was already like defending them, and then the tattoo thing came out, And apparently the way he did this, he actually released it first. He got wind that somebody else was going to release it. So he went on some podcast. They played this video of him from a birthday party or whatever. And he was singing karaoke shirtless and the tattoo was very visible, right? And, and so he brought this up and it is apparently one of the well-known Nazi symbols. It's like a skull with wings or whatever. It is not a swastika. It is not the SS symbol, but this is apparently like number three. Like if you were going down Nazis, you know, symbolism and, and things that were used and that people are well-known for. He, his argument, he said he had no idea what it was. it was just, yeah, it was, he got it on a drunken night in the military and it was a military thing and it was about being in the unit he was in, et cetera, et cetera, which by the way, if true is all problematic in and of itself, but whatever. He says he didn't know it was Nazi at the time.
|
Sam:
[1:10:53]
| And once this pressure started coming up, he started talking about getting it removed. I saw one report, but I didn't see this talked about a lot more that he did get a cover-up tattoo that also was something that tended to be used by white supremacists and such. It's like, I haven't seen that. I saw some talk of it for a couple hours on the day, but then not much since. So I'm wondering, was it even true or was it misinformation as well? I don't know. So, but then, you know, I think it was K-File from, from CNN. And just went looking at more of his Reddit posts and found him talking about that symbol that he had tattooed, that he denied he had any idea what it was from several years ago, in a conversation that fully acknowledged it was a Nazi symbol. Now, having said that, he was saying in that conversation how, yes, it was a Nazi symbol, but it was okay because. And he started, basically, he was saying, you know, it's used by lots of folks in the military. It's just sort of an aggressive skull kind of thing. It doesn't have to be associated with its Nazi origins, you know, blah, blah, blah. And there are lots of folks in the military that have this that aren't Nazis.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:15]
| Yeah. You know what? That all may be true. but I will say this. I don't want to elect somebody that believes that. Even if I take him at his foot, at his word, I don't, I, that's not a guy I want period.
|
Sam:
[1:12:32]
| Yeah. I mean, it shows this, the best possible interpretation of all this is bad judgment from start to finish, including how he's handled the last two weeks. So we're not just even talking about like things that happened years ago.
|
Ivan:
[1:12:47]
| And that's giving them the benefit of the doubt on anything you said. It's still, to me, it's unacceptable.
|
Sam:
[1:12:57]
| I mean, I saw, you know, there's been some debate about this, and I think I... There was a post by Christy Coulter, who's someone I knew and has been on the show a few years back, about this, where she talked about.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:13]
| And other people have said this too. I'm going to make a joke. She's not related to Ann Coulter.
|
Sam:
[1:13:16]
| No, she's not. Thank God. Not as far as I'm aware.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:20]
| Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:13:22]
| Spelled differently.
|
Ivan:
[1:13:23]
| Okay, good.
|
Sam:
[1:13:23]
| Anyway, look, if you're going to do, redemption arcs are part of American history. It's something we tend to revere. The person who was like, was wrong, realizes they were wrong, admits they were wrong, and then works to undo the damage they did previously. Okay, that happens. And that can be okay. But what we have, but if he was going to play those cards for the tattoo, for his previous bad statements, for whatever... then he would have started out right out of the gate, essentially, with that story.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:03]
| Yeah, there you go. Not deny, deny, deny.
|
Sam:
[1:14:07]
| Right. I used to be an asshole. I did a lot of things that I am ashamed of today. Not even specifically about Reddit posts or whatever, but just in general, I held views that I now realize were wrong. I have had some further experiences. I have met more people. I've talked to people. I've realized my previous whatevers were toxic and bad. And now I'm better and I'm working to undo damage. I'm working to do the right thing now. By the way, I got that damn tattoo removed 20 years ago or whatever. He's probably not even old enough to have a tattoo 20 years ago. I don't know how old the guy is.
|
Ivan:
[1:14:56]
| How old is he? What's his name again? I can't remember his name. I don't want to remember his name. I want to delete him from my files. What the fuck is his name again?
|
Sam:
[1:15:05]
| Let me bring him up again. Graham Planter.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:08]
| Graham. I was going to say Graham Parker.
|
Sam:
[1:15:11]
| He's 41. He's 41.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:12]
| So 20 years, well, no, 20 years ago.
|
Sam:
[1:15:14]
| It would have been 21.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:15]
| Yeah. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:15:16]
| Could have done it. Just barely, just barely. Anyway, he, that's not what he did at all.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:21]
| No.
|
Sam:
[1:15:22]
| He preemptively went and started deleting as much off Reddit as he could. He denied knowing that this tattoo was of Nazi origin, even though subsequent Reddit posts that people found showed that he knew exactly what it was. Maybe he didn't know what it was when he got it, but he certainly knew before now.
|
Ivan:
[1:15:43]
| Sam, if I found out that I got something that I thought was cool, okay, not that I have any tattoos, okay, but if I went and I found out that I got something on that I thought was cool and then somebody fucking told me that it was a Nazi symbol, I'd be fucking running to the goddamn fucking place to get this shit off of me.
|
Sam:
[1:16:03]
| Yes, absolutely. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:06]
| Say if I bought a t-shirt, okay, that I thought, oh, that looks cool. And somebody tells me, oh, you realize, right? That's a white supremacist logo. I've been fucking burning the shirt immediately.
|
Sam:
[1:16:20]
| Right. Yeah. No, absolutely. And, and, and, yeah, and, and. And you'd tell that story if it came up.
|
Ivan:
[1:16:31]
| Exactly. I said, listen, I went to the shop. I saw this T-shirt, man. It looks so fucking cool. I thought, whatever, you know, let me get this. Then all of a sudden I'm together with some friends and somebody points out that it's a fucking white supremacist thing. And we were having a barbecue. And I, you know what? I grabbed the damn shirt off of me and just fucking tossed it in the fire pit. I didn't know what I bought.
|
Sam:
[1:16:52]
| Yeah. Yo, to switch to a slightly lighter thing for a moment, since you mentioned the tattoos that people don't know what are. Okay. There's a woman, you know, she does a whole series and I wish I, man, I don't know her name. She just has come up for me flipping through on TikTok, but she's a woman, fluent Chinese speaker. Her whole thing is translating people's Chinese tattoos.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:21]
| Yes, I've seen some of this. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:17:24]
| Because people get these tattoos because they think the Chinese characters look cool or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:29]
| They have no idea what they say. Or something wise or something. And it says, eat at Joe's.
|
Sam:
[1:17:36]
| Yes. Or like, I am stupid.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:38]
| I am stupid. Yeah, exactly. Like, yes, yes.
|
Sam:
[1:17:42]
| You know, and it's just hilarious. Because, like, you know, they come in every once in a while. There's one that actually makes sense. But most of the time, and of course, she doesn't pick the ones that make sense.
|
Ivan:
[1:17:54]
| Because why would you? Well, obviously, why? That's not the fun. Right.
|
Sam:
[1:17:57]
| But, like, there are lots that are just gobbledygook nonsense phrases, which mean absolutely nothing at all.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:05]
| Oh, yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:18:06]
| And then there are phrases that are just like, like you said, eat it, Joe's. I am stupid. Like the, the, the, the butterfly is dead, you know, whatever. I don't know. Like, and it's just, it's, it's hilarious. Okay. So anyway, I guess, I guess this is the key thing to me is like, He has not shown that arc. He has not shown that he is, you know, really over this, which makes you sort of immediately suspicious.
|
Ivan:
[1:18:40]
| He is actually using the standard, substandard GOP playbook, which is double down and deny. That's it. Which makes you. Evade. You know, fuck this shit. I don't want that guy. Go run in the Republican primary.
|
Sam:
[1:18:56]
| It makes you wonder, like, if you actually elected this guy, what would you actually get?
|
Ivan:
[1:19:01]
| Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:19:02]
| You know, are you getting something more like the asshole that will be happy wearing Nazi tattoos for 15 years and everything you associate with that?
|
Ivan:
[1:19:13]
| Probably.
|
Sam:
[1:19:14]
| Or, you know, did he really, is he really like this great progressive whatever? and i feel like this is a scenario where you're highly likely to be disappointed but even more so you just don't know you can't trust him anymore you know whatever whatever ability to trust is gone and and also like now to to to tie to uh another conversation we had on the curmudgeon corner slack this week like okay he's not what you want like if he does end up winning the nomination is he still better than collins now this is a you know with collins i'm not sure at least you know what if it was him versus trump i'd probably still pick him over trump yeah but if it was him versus collins i don't know maybe probably like is it is it is it enough of a complete disqualifier do you believe his redemptive arc do you take the gamble yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:20:09]
| Okay the problem is like you said it's it's the choice between like him and collins like right now and and i'm like Fuck You know I would have to I would have to fucking like swallow hard And still vote for this guy if I had to But I sure as hell wouldn't like it.
|
Sam:
[1:20:27]
| And, and, and, and meanwhile, like, and I don't know, see, see, here's the thing. If it's just between like him, I sat on the curmudgeon's course Slack. Okay. At first, a few weeks ago, before all this stuff coming out, I was like, why the hell are they trying to get Mills to run? They've got this guy, people are excited about him. He's young. He's got energy. He looks like he could win. He's, you know, he's, you know, whatever. Like, why would they run Mills? This guy looks good. And so I was excited about it. As soon as all this stuff came out, I was like, okay, fine. Run the old 77-year-old Democrat with whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:07]
| Who's a woman.
|
Sam:
[1:21:08]
| Who's a popular governor.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:11]
| Who's a popular governor and a woman.
|
Sam:
[1:21:14]
| So I would probably pick, at this point, my default would be- Right now, my default is- No.
|
Ivan:
[1:21:24]
| No, no, no, no, no thinking about it.
|
Sam:
[1:21:26]
| The one caveat I would say about this still, I'd have to think about it, like, you know, Yvonne and I were talking on the Slack, and you guys can go look on the Slack for this if you missed it. Join the Slack if you haven't. We were talking about this in the context of Newsom and Trump, or other MAGA Republicans. But if at this point, though, if there was lots of polling, and the polling showed this planter guy doing better against Collins than Mills did.
|
Ivan:
[1:22:01]
| Hmm.
|
Sam:
[1:22:03]
| Would that change? Like, cause I, and it are mixed feelings here because there's different points in the decision-making process. There's who do you actually like the most? There's whose policies do you agree with the most? And then there's the completely strategic, do you want to win and is winning the only thing that matters. If a Democrat who I don't like is doing better against the Republican, do I still vote for the Democrat I don't like over the Democrat I do like because they have a better chance of winning? Years ago, I would have said, of course not. You vote for the one that is most aligned with your own views and you vote for, and duh, not even a hard decision. But in the situation we're at now, where every senator matters and we're looking at the absolute destruction of everything I value in this country, do you make that choice? you know because this is the same thing by the way I.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:21]
| Will say listen, Honestly, this is very simple. This is going to a primary. I'm going with whomever the primary picks as the guy.
|
Sam:
[1:23:31]
| Well, no, but if you were voting in the primary, who would you vote for?
|
Ivan:
[1:23:34]
| If I was voting in the primary, I'm still voting for Mills. Yeah. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:23:40]
| Even if polls said Mills.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:41]
| I mean, unless the polls were like, I mean, like there's a 10-point difference. If the difference is like we're talking margin of error difference, I'm going with Mills.
|
Sam:
[1:23:52]
| Right. But I'm doing that scenario. I'm doing it.
|
Ivan:
[1:23:54]
| But if it's if it's like a 10, 15 point difference, then yikes. I got it.
|
Sam:
[1:23:59]
| If the polls were showing that Collins would crush Mills, but it would be competitive with this guy. I mean, that's not I haven't seen polls that say that. I'm just putting it out.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:09]
| That's a tough that's a tough call. But because especially because, listen, so many things change after a primary. Look, we saw that with Biden when he won the nomination back in 2020. I mean, he was behind on everything up until all of a sudden, you know, he surged and everybody consolidated around him.
|
Sam:
[1:24:33]
| He was he was behind in the primary polls. I mean, one of the appeals to him was even back then in early parts, he did better against Trump in the polls than anybody else.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:43]
| Than anybody else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but that's one of the reasons people consolidated. But by the way, but even then, even though I saw that, I wasn't voting for him at that moment.
|
Sam:
[1:24:54]
| I thought you'd already switched him because like, Kamala was already out.
|
Ivan:
[1:24:58]
| I think it may have been, you know, I can't remember. It may be because Kamala was already out. But my first and second choices, you know, were not him. He was really down to my third. So I went with him because he was my third choice. But it wasn't.
|
Sam:
[1:25:19]
| And just to be clear, by the time we got to Florida, the race was essentially over.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:23]
| The race is over. Right. Exactly.
|
Sam:
[1:25:26]
| And certainly by the time they got to Washington State as well.
|
Ivan:
[1:25:28]
| Yeah. So that's the thing. I mean, I just but but that but I had not changed my mind is what I'm saying. If my candidate would have still been on the ballot, I would have still voted for them anyway, even though I knew the matchup. And because I knew that, look, even if they didn't win, I was going to vote for whomever was the winner of the fucking nomination anyway. It's not like this was, you know, I was expressing my opinion of what I who I thought should be there. But that didn't mean that I was going to vote. You know, I wasn't going to vote for them anyway when they got the nomination.
|
Sam:
[1:26:00]
| The problem of that, of course, is it essentially assumes that your vote doesn't make a difference in the primary and whoever wins wins. If you were just, you know, picking them outright, you know, it makes it more complicated. I mean, all I'm saying, like these these decisions get complicated in this scenario. And also to bring it back to general elections, this kind of rationale with, OK, I don't like them, but they're better than the other guy. are exactly what a lot of Trump voters said about Donald Trump. It's also the same kind of rationale of, on the other hand, saying, you know, oh, they are toxic. I can't vote for them no matter what. Right. Is what a lot of left Democrats, or what a lot of leftists, who wouldn't call themselves Democrats necessarily, their rationale for not voting for Harris.
|
Ivan:
[1:26:54]
| Or Hillary.
|
Sam:
[1:26:55]
| Or Hillary or whatever. And it's because I'm not going to make the lesser of two evils choice. I'm going to sit back and vote third party or whatever.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:07]
| Actually, I love how that becomes I'm not voting for the lesser of two evils when what you're doing is actually voting for the evils. And I'm like, you're trying to argue, no, what you're doing by not voting is voting for the evil. Period. That's what you're doing. You're just doing it passively. You know, being passive aggressive about it. But you're doing it.
|
Sam:
[1:27:30]
| That ends up being the effect. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:27:32]
| Yeah. So don't give me that shit that you're not voting for. You're doing it. You're giving passive acquiescence to the evil. just because you're not getting everything you want like a toddler. Fuck you.
|
Sam:
[1:27:47]
| So anyway, I don't know. I am anxious to see the first polls that come out after all of this stuff has come out about Planter to see if he drops and Mills goes up. My kind of expectation is that that will happen and that Mills will end up being the nominee here, not Planter. But I don't know. I mean, like I've heard Sanders didn't immediately back away from this guy, for instance. He sort of was going along with, well, he's changed, he's fixing it, blah, blah, blah. You know, so I don't know. He may have some enduring support. People seem to, he's charismatic. He's, you know, he talks well. People relate to him, and he is younger, so I don't know. We'll see what happens.
|
Ivan:
[1:28:41]
| Ah, we will know soon enough.
|
Sam:
[1:28:43]
| Okay. Let's take a break, and then we'll figure out something else to talk about for a few minutes. Back after this episode. You know, now I have to look at this stupid list and pick something.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:39]
| By the way, while we were doing this, I am traveling Monday back to San Juan for some stuff. By the way, I don't know. You didn't post anything, but I did tell you that I am getting surgery on November 5th. Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:29:54]
| You mentioned the surgery before.
|
Ivan:
[1:29:56]
| But I did tell Sam, Sam, you know, because he gave me shit about the other day. about, yes, about, yeah, I, I, by the way, my wife, yeah, but, but it was short notice, but my wife also forgot about our fucking wedding anniversary too. Okay. I remembered before she did. Okay. So, um, so, you know, so, you know, so I, give me some fucking break. I did remember and I did get her something nice and a Rachel something, you know, uh, for, for our anniversary, but, uh, you know. I'm getting surgery on November 5th and that's on a Wednesday. And I will not be in a good position to be able to record the podcast because I know that I'm going to be recovering from the surgery. And I am staying at my brother's place in Texas because the surgeon is somebody we know in the family that lives over there. And I was like, I really would like if I'm going to get my first surgery really ever. I would like it to be done by somebody that is somebody very trusted by my family. My sister-in-law is a doctor. My brother is a pharmacist at the pharmacy hospital. I've already known this guy for a lot of time. He's operated on other people in the family. And, you know, he's been very, he actually has figured out shit that other people haven't. Okay. So I trust this guy very much. Obviously, some DEI hire that we got from Mexico, you know, I'm allowing myself to be done that. And, you know, I know.
|
Sam:
[1:31:24]
| So the bottom line is.
|
Ivan:
[1:31:25]
| So bottom line is I can't record. I'm not I will not be able to record that weekend. So therefore, somebody should co-host with Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:31:33]
| And I was going to send out my regular email a little bit later, closer. I mean, I don't like to do it like the day before, but I don't like to do it too far out either. But for those of you listening, if you are interested in co-hosting and are actually listening to this show, not just receiving a random email from me, you can email back. It's feedback at curmudgeons-corner.com and let us know you're interested. If we know you, it's probably a slam dunk. We'll try to work it out. I'll try to work it out, make a time work for you. This would probably need to be recorded either the evening of November 6th, Thursday, November 6th, or Friday, November 7th. Or... earlier in the day on saturday november 8th those are the options where we usually record, let me know if if we have never heard your name before and have never heard of you we may save you for another time but we can start talking to you uh and get to know you so that we can maybe do that another time but yeah if you've been talking to us already we know you blah blah blah you've done the show before uh let us know that you're interested so one thing is that we'll get One or more if you want. We could have a whole party. We could have like five of you.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:45]
| Wow.
|
Sam:
[1:32:46]
| Could be crazy.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:47]
| Woo! Okay.
|
Sam:
[1:32:49]
| Yeah, or you can tell me on the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack as well if you're already on there. DM me.
|
Ivan:
[1:32:54]
| Okay. So, as we're preparing for the Curmudgeon's Corner orgy, I mean party, whatever the heck this is going to be.
|
Sam:
[1:33:01]
| Are you trying to say the next topic should be Epstein?
|
Ivan:
[1:33:04]
| No, no, no. What I was going to say is that I just got a note I had a notice of a mistake that I just did in booking my travel. Oh, oops. That I, in my... Look, I mean... Look, in my ridiculous amount of time that I've done bookings.
|
Sam:
[1:33:24]
| Did you do those like those girls did a month or so ago and go to Tunis instead of Tunis?
|
Ivan:
[1:33:31]
| No, not something that dumb. Okay. All right. But I mean, I've made... I'm trying to remember. I think that maybe once it's a travel agent, we confused the Greensboro.
|
Sam:
[1:33:43]
| Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:33:44]
| Because there are more than one in the Greensboro. Okay. And I think that the person that was booking and me, we weren't sure which one they were heading to. And I think we may have sent them to the wrong one, something like that. I may have done a mistake like that in my travel agent days. Okay. But understand that I've booked. I mean, with my, listen, as a travel agent, sometimes we would issue like 20, we would do 15. I'm going to say on average, we did 10 bookings a day. So if you think about it, I mean, you know, the number of bookings I would do it, it was, it's, I've done thousands, tens of thousands of bookings. bookings, okay? Rarely did I ever make a mistake, okay? Not that it didn't happen, but it happened, I'm going to guess, less than 10 times, okay, that a mistake was made. But I just did a mistake in this booking that I just did, and I got on the app from the travel agency notified me, and it sent me a weird notification because it said, you don't have a hotel for your stay. I'm like, what the hell do you mean I don't have a hotel for my stay? I know I booked a hotel for my stay. What the hell are you talking about, okay? Yeah, you're missing a hotel from your next trip to San Juan. And I'm like, but why is that? Well, here's this goofy thing I did. Traveling from Monday through Thursday, I somehow booked a hotel only from Monday through Wednesday. Now, I don't know how the hell I was able to do that.
|
Ivan:
[1:35:05]
| But the app just notified me that, hey, you're missing a hotel. And I'm like, really? I am? And I just went in. I fucked that up. I, well, probably the hotel, because I'm extended a stay at a hotel, you know, probably would have given me an extra night. Listen, I have been in hotels where it's happened that we've needed to do an extended stay and the hotel has been booked solid. And they're like telling me, no, sir, we're sorry, but we cannot give you an extra night. You need to check. So I just fixed it as we were talking because I, but I may, I, I, I, I'm, I'm shocked. This is, I'm telling you, about from all the bookings I've ever done, thousands, I made a mistake like this in less than 10.
|
Sam:
[1:35:56]
| Okay. Good job. Oh, before I get to my actual topic, I did have one other thing to mention. Since you're talking about your surgery, I do not have another surgery coming. I did have surgery on my nose a few months ago, but my wife, Brandy.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:12]
| You need to get a refund.
|
Sam:
[1:36:14]
| Refund on the nose surgery. Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:16]
| Yeah, that nose job. I mean, it looks the same. What the hell are you doing?
|
Sam:
[1:36:21]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:22]
| You know, there is this thing. I didn't share this article where apparently a whole bunch of people that work in companies like ours in tech are now, as they approach their 60s, all getting facelifts.
|
Sam:
[1:36:32]
| Oh, come on.
|
Ivan:
[1:36:33]
| Oh, yeah. I just stumbled upon that story right now because tech is for the young. And so, therefore, they're all getting paid for plastic surgery. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:36:44]
| Okay, whatever. I'll just tell you, like, I did have the reconstructive surgery on my nose. And the intention was to make it look like it did before. And I think they did a decent job. This is a little bit of a scar if you look carefully. But, like, there was a giant hole in my fucking nose. Okay? Like, you know, it was giant. It was huge. I've got pictures, if anybody wants the pictures of the open wound before they reconstructed it.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:14]
| No, thanks.
|
Sam:
[1:37:15]
| But... Just hit me up at that feedback at curmudgeon-quarter.com if you want those pictures.
|
Ivan:
[1:37:22]
| Yeah, I'll send them to you directly. Don't post them on the public. You know, whatever. If you're going to send a picture, DM the pictures. We don't want to. The rest of us don't want to see this shit.
|
Sam:
[1:37:30]
| Yeah, there you go. No, but my wife is having surgery on Tuesday. Oh, God. Knee surgery. She injured her knee like it was actually a long time ago. Like not this July 4th, but the July 4th before this July 4th. So like a year and a bit ago, she was at like, we were at the fireworks celebration and she was walking back from getting snacks or whatever. And there was a, there was a hole in the pavement and she basically, her foot went in the hole. She tripped, she went over, she hurt her knee and her knee's been bothering her ever since. She finally got it fully checked out about a month ago. And they were like, yeah, we should, we should fix that. There's an extra piece of like floating cartilage or whatever that did something it wasn't supposed to and blah, blah, blah. And it's causing problems. We should fix that. So she's going and having that fixed on Tuesday. So anyway, surgery all around.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:32]
| Surgery's all around. Surgery's for everybody. Yay!
|
Sam:
[1:38:36]
| Exactly.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:36]
| It's not like we're not Oprah. We don't hand out cars. We just hand out surgeries. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:38:40]
| Buy one, get one free.
|
Ivan:
[1:38:42]
| Oh, God. Great. There you go. both the kind of bogos I don't like.
|
Sam:
[1:38:48]
| Okay. There are a number of things that could be talked about. That I'm not going to talk about. The value of strategic pandering. That was the Newsom Trump stuff. The Virginia, how do you say her last name? Giluf, Giluf, Giluf, something.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:07]
| Gafoy. We should pronounce her name properly.
|
Sam:
[1:39:13]
| She deserves some respect. Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:15]
| I'm going to look that up because, yeah, she does.
|
Sam:
[1:39:17]
| Okay, look it up.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:18]
| I got to look.
|
Sam:
[1:39:20]
| Anyway, while you do that, She had a book out that details a bunch of her experiences with Epstein and others. There's more about Prince Andrew in there. She mentioned some other folks.
|
Ivan:
[1:39:34]
| Jeffrey. Jeffrey.
|
Sam:
[1:39:35]
| Jeffrey. Jeffrey. Virginia Jeffrey. And so there's a bunch to talk about there. Yeah, the only thing I'll mention before moving on, I guess, is the one thing that stood out for me from the clips or what people have talked about in the book so far, just besides Prince Andrew and Maxwell and the main players, is her mention of the way these parties worked. All of these other rich and famous people, they may not have directly interacted with the girls. Some of them did, but they were, it was open.
|
Ivan:
[1:40:20]
| They had to be aware that something was happening.
|
Sam:
[1:40:23]
| Not just aware, watching. They had these like, these things would be happening in the middle of a living room or whatever with the party going on around them. So like, you know, if, if you were an attendee, you saw what was happening. It wasn't just plausible deniability. You knew exactly what was happening, which, you know, even if you didn't partake, makes you culpable for not doing anything about it at the very least, you know, or, or even for staying for not walking away like you know anyway that was that was one thing i noted which to me like vastly expands the group of people who are probably very right to be afraid of the epstein files you know anyway moving on we we we have the trump giving himself money from the doj I mean.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:28]
| Like I mentioned, we have moved on from the kind of like indirect payment of, hey... By, you know, oh, we're staying at my hotel during an official trip. We're doing the G7 meeting at my hotel and we're paying, you know, we're sending payments straight into the I am just going to have the Treasury send me money.
|
Sam:
[1:41:56]
| Yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:41:57]
| Phase of this grift.
|
Sam:
[1:41:58]
| And so specifically the way this worked out, before his second term started in sort of the interim time period, Trump had filed various motions. It wasn't a lawsuit yet, although he said it was at one point he was wrong. He filed a thing basically saying, I deserve compensation for the improper prosecutions you have done against me, both for the Russia stuff during the Mueller investigation and for the raid of Mar-a-Lago. And basically, bottom line is, once he becomes president, it's his administration that gets to decide what to do about those complaints.
|
Ivan:
[1:42:41]
| Right. And it's his appointees. By the way, it's his attorneys.
|
Sam:
[1:42:46]
| It's his attorneys who are on the opposite side of those cases when they were happening, who now are in positions where they get to decide whether or not to give him $230 million in compensation. And he made it clear from his comments as well that it's not really his appointees choice anyway. It's his decision. He will make the decision of how much money to give himself.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:10]
| Which, Sam, but he said he's going to give it to charity.
|
Sam:
[1:43:13]
| Oh, yes. Just like all the other charities.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:16]
| Just all the charitable donations that he has given over the years. Of course. Yes.
|
Sam:
[1:43:20]
| Right. Okay. Lightning rounding again. Instead of, like, picking one of these first. We got Bannon talking about Trump 2028 again. He has made mentions of this before. You know, when the clip was going around this week, I'm like, hasn't he said this stuff before? Yes, he has said this stuff before, but he said it again this week and was in the news for it. Basically saying, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:43:43]
| Someone asked him- Flat out that Trump is getting a third term.
|
Sam:
[1:43:46]
| Trump is going to run again and Trump will get a third term. And somebody asked, what about the 22nd Amendment? He's like, we've got ways around that. He didn't specify, but we've got ways around that. And there are a number that people have talked about. Yeah, there's the trick of Trump runs as VP, and then as soon as they're sworn in on January 20th, Vance or whoever immediately resigns, and he becomes president again that way.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:12]
| Of course. One of the things about that is because—, People in that circle are so traitors, right? Hell, if I'm, honestly, if I'm Vance, I don't want to let go of power. Fuck that. I'm probably taking him and sending him to jail.
|
Sam:
[1:44:29]
| Well, you know, Trump could just shoot him at that point on Fifth Avenue.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:33]
| Well, actually, Vance could shoot him and he's immune.
|
Sam:
[1:44:36]
| Well, he could do that now. But I'm saying once we had that scenario where Vance was trying to stay in power.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:42]
| Right, what I say, but Vance could shoot him and he's immune.
|
Sam:
[1:44:46]
| He could do that now oh.
|
Ivan:
[1:44:48]
| That's right and he'd be president.
|
Sam:
[1:44:50]
| Right yeah we we've talked about this before like there's there's no there's no like way around this like you know because at that point you can't it would take a long time to impeach right you can't invoke the 22nd amendment at that point because you don't have a vice president and you need vice president plus half the cabinet Right. You know, so, you know, a coup here is completely legal. Also, by the way, since if it happens in D.C., then the federal pardon power applies.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:25]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:45:25]
| Because normally murder is a state crime.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:28]
| But in D.C., right, it's a federal crime.
|
Sam:
[1:45:32]
| So the vice president at any time can shoot the president, take power, pardon himself, and he's free and clear. You know, there are a few holes in our constitutional system as it currently is.
|
Ivan:
[1:45:46]
| 30 years ago, if you had told me that we'd be having these discussions as plausible, as truly plausible things, I would have told you you're completely out of your mind.
|
Sam:
[1:45:59]
| I don't think Vance is lining up to shoot Trump. I think Vance is much more a smothering with a pillow type.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:08]
| Fair. Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:46:09]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:46:09]
| That's a good point. Yeah. Died in his sleep. Oh, well.
|
Sam:
[1:46:13]
| Exactly. So anyway, yeah. So corruption run rampant. 2028. Oh, another another theory of the case is basically just the make them stop you. Just run anyway. Run it through the courts. I mentioned and again on the curmudgeon corner slack, Yvonne and I went back and forth on this a little bit. The same kind of theory that the Supreme Court used on saying that you couldn't disqualify the president for being an insurrectionist could potentially be expanded further to basically say, well, the states can't really determine eligibility at all, and that has to be determined on January 6th by the Congress. There are all kinds of things. There are all kinds of ways you could do this. And none of them are like legit or normal. But we're not living in that world anymore.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:07]
| We're not living in that world anymore.
|
Sam:
[1:47:09]
| We're living in the world where Donald Trump will just try whatever he wants and make them stop him. You know, and we're going to talk about my last thing is going to be, of course, the White House, which is another example of that. But even on more minor things, he's determining that he's going to pay the military through means that are not legal. He's taking all kinds of things. He's moving money around during the shutdown that is not authorized in any way, shape or form and basically says, well, stop me. And the thing is, you know, who's going to sue him? There's a question of who has standing. And if the Democrats try to go after him for it, like, wait, wait, you're paying the military. You shouldn't pay the military. You don't have authorization. It's a bad political, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:56]
| Yeah.
|
Sam:
[1:47:56]
| So they're not going to.
|
Ivan:
[1:47:58]
| OK. By the way, one great thing. You're going to talk about the ballroom. And this came up on our Slack today. And I realized there may be a silver lining to this right now. I just realized. Okay. They didn't have time to do a proper asbestos or lead mitigation whatsoever. Because that would take a long time to do. I hope all these fuckers get sick and die. Like right now, which is very likely that they will, given that they just went and exposed themselves to all of that. For a construction like this, usually, to go through that and mitigate all of that shit literally takes years. to properly do that. And they did not do that. And I hope to fucking hell they get all of them die of some serious fucking disease from that fucking demolition.
|
Sam:
[1:48:53]
| Now, of course, the person who got the most dose is probably that poor schlub driving the backhoe or whatever it was.
|
Ivan:
[1:48:59]
| Hey, you know what? Fuck him too. Because if they went and they sent me on that job, you know what I would have done? I would have quit on the fucking spot. I'm sorry. It's not like those jobs are scarce. That is a job that actually is one of those jobs that we keep saying we have trouble filling. And so if somebody went and told me, oh, just take that backhoe and knock down the fucking White House, I would have said, fuck this shit, I quit. Or no, make me, fire me, so I can get my unemployment.
|
Sam:
[1:49:29]
| Right.
|
Ivan:
[1:49:30]
| So if that guy did it, that guy was okay with it. He gets exposed to it, fuck you, you did it on your own.
|
Sam:
[1:49:37]
| So anyway, this is another example of, you know, I saw a number of people post detailed rundowns of applicable laws and such. there are most of it seems to be as with so much that we have discovered over the years, that there are all kinds of norms about what should have happened here but there are very few laws and when there are laws there are no teeth to those laws and so because.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:11]
| We expect the people to respect the law.
|
Sam:
[1:50:13]
| Especially the president and in some cases there are laws specifically about preservation of federal buildings, guess what? White House exempted. Like specifically written out of the law as this doesn't apply to the White House. And this is the kind of thing where, you know, the Trump folks have been pointing out over and over again, oh, there have been lots of renovations to the White House. Hell, the East Wing itself was a renovation to the White House in like 1901 or something. It was added.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:42]
| I thought it was, was it Teddy Roosevelt or FDR?
|
Sam:
[1:50:48]
| For the east wing.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:49]
| Yeah 1901.
|
Sam:
[1:50:50]
| Would be Teddy right.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:52]
| And definitely.
|
Sam:
[1:50:53]
| Not FDR I'm just.
|
Ivan:
[1:50:55]
| I mean that was okay so I thought it was I thought okay but she's.
|
Sam:
[1:51:01]
| McKinley was president in 1901.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:04]
| Yeah, but I thought...
|
Sam:
[1:51:05]
| And then the first Roosevelt took over right after that.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:11]
| No, it was expanded in 1942. That's what I said. I knew that Roosevelt had done something.
|
Sam:
[1:51:15]
| But it was expanded. Truman did a major renovation. Truman gutted the entire White House because it was falling apart.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:21]
| Well, it was falling apart.
|
Sam:
[1:51:22]
| He preserved the exterior and redid the entire interior of the White House. I mean, it was falling apart. There were various expansions. There are various things that have happened. And, you know, and people point out, you know, Obama added a basketball court and blah, blah, blah.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:36]
| Obama didn't add a basketball court. Obama converted the tennis court to basketball.
|
Sam:
[1:51:40]
| To a basketball court, yes.
|
Ivan:
[1:51:41]
| Okay, so there wasn't a construction of a new court. They just repainted some lines and added a couple of basketball hoops. Not exactly really, like, you know, which could have been easily turned back to what the hell it was.
|
Sam:
[1:51:54]
| Anyway, the point is all of those, all of those actually did go through a process.
|
Ivan:
[1:52:00]
| Well, the one that they were saying about Obama, the $393 million, because I remember that one very much, was a lot of the systems in the White House, the boilers, the ACs, everything, electrical, were ancient, okay? The AC systems didn't work. Everything was old and falling apart. And through an appropriation through Congress or process, money was approved in order to fix all this shit that in many cases was dated back to fucking, you know, FDR and before.
|
Sam:
[1:52:30]
| Right. Anyway, the point is, everything previous did go through some sort of process. There was a proposal. It was examined. There was an appropriation. There was an appropriation. There was a this. There was a that. And there was a long, detailed process where whatever changes were being proposed were approved by multiple people in multiple places. It wasn't a unilateral decision. in this case no no it's is it's just go and also apparently there is one law like they are touting over and over again how this is privately funded the the taxpayer won't pay a dime right apparently there is a law from the late 1800s that specifically prohibits private funds going to maintenance and construction of public buildings it has to come through the congressional appropriation process.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:29]
| Yeah, and there is a reason for that, by the way.
|
Sam:
[1:53:32]
| Yeah.
|
Ivan:
[1:53:33]
| A very good fucking reason.
|
Sam:
[1:53:36]
| And so, as is his approach with everything, Donald Trump is like, just do it, and then we'll deal with it. I mean, I was going to say, make him stop me. In this case, there's no make me stop me. It's done. By the time we're recording this, the entire East Wind of the White House is gone. You know? And apparently the remnants are now being buried in some golf course somewhere. You know, no consideration of, you know, historic faithfulness, whatever. No process. The funding is apparently illegal and is just being used as a yet another mechanism to bribe this administration. It was really sad watching this, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:24]
| It was awful. I had a terrible week with this thing. look and and it's and it's not because it's a building.
|
Sam:
[1:54:33]
| Right it's.
|
Ivan:
[1:54:35]
| Not because it's the it's the building because buildings get renovated things sometimes happen you know.
|
Sam:
[1:54:40]
| I i mean people have pointed out by the way that there have been serious proposals for building some sort of, ballroom type area to hold bigger events and even even even potentially renovating the east wing to do it. Now, most of, if not all of these proposals were, you change the interior, you leave the exterior alone, and we're nowhere near as massive as this. But there were some serious proposals that were being talked about because there is some need there, but not like this.
|
Ivan:
[1:55:13]
| It's just, it's not like this. And by the way, speaking of the whole asbestos mitigation and stuff, there is an organization called the Asbestos Seas Awareness Organization, okay, which literally posted a story specifically about this in their webpage. And they are talking about specifically about how that building, okay, the East Wing is more than 100 years old with portions constructed initially in 1902, later additions in 1942, at the height of our nation's use of toxic ambestos in our construction. Okay? That there is no way, They properly did anything to mitigate that when they demolished that. There was no time.
|
Sam:
[1:56:01]
| Yeah, and they probably did some of the encasing the asbestos stuff that was going on a lot in the 70s and 80s. But when you demolish it, it undoes all that.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:12]
| Exactly. Exactly. You undo all of that, which is why if you're going to fucking demolish it, It takes a process, a very painstaking process of first going in and removing all of that before you go and demolish the fucking building.
|
Sam:
[1:56:36]
| Yes. And, you know.
|
Ivan:
[1:56:39]
| So right now I can tell you flat out, people will get sick and die from that demolition as well.
|
Sam:
[1:56:50]
| Ah so and and this brings another one of those issues where like you know can can the democratic candidate please actually directly campaign on you know we'll tear down whatever the fuck he builds and oh fuck yeah i want that.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:05]
| Fucking thing like i i swear to god that my i i would like for explosive charges to be placed at it and just imploded as soon as possible.
|
Sam:
[1:57:15]
| You know, well, and here's the thing, you know, aside from everything else, because like I was thinking about that and like, you know, actually, it is unlikely that a future president will do that. They will use the space because it's actually useful, blah, blah, blah. But then I also remember this is Donald Trump building it. It's going to be a piece of shit.
|
Ivan:
[1:57:36]
| Is going to be shit, which is what I, what, what, what, what, one of my friends that's been in construction for 30 years, okay, basically said that there is no way that they're going to build something that isn't a piece of shit in the rush timeline they are doing this.
|
Sam:
[1:57:50]
| Yes. And, you know, and of course the grift angle is here too. They're going to be siphoning money off that 300, you know, so it's not all, they're going to be like, oh, let's get the cheapest possible materials we can get. Let's cut every quarter we can possibly get.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:08]
| Listen, let's get the cheapest possible materials that we can get, but let's gold plate them so they look like something expensive, which is exactly the Trump style.
|
Sam:
[1:58:21]
| Oh, but also the cheapest in terms of quality.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:25]
| Right.
|
Sam:
[1:58:26]
| But pay full price for it to your friends.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:29]
| To your friends.
|
Sam:
[1:58:30]
| Who will pocket the difference.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:30]
| Who will, by the way, you know, go and send back part of it to myself.
|
Sam:
[1:58:37]
| Absolutely. There's no question in my mind that that will all be happening. Okay.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:44]
| Happy times, Sam.
|
Sam:
[1:58:46]
| Happy times. Happy times are here again. Like, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Let's end this. Not the universe, not our lives. End the show.
|
Ivan:
[1:58:59]
| Yeah just just just to be clear it sounded very very very you know how do i say just very just just just i'm done end this where's the gun.
|
Sam:
[1:59:15]
| No no no no not that kind.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:18]
| Of let's add this.
|
Sam:
[1:59:19]
| Not that kind of let's add this let's end the show all the stuff at the end curmudgeons-corner.com go there i mentioned all the new exciting stuff, we got mastodon we got blue sky we got facebook links and we've got the link to buy the mug, so if you have been craving that curmudgeons corner mug or you've got one and you just want to have five or six of them instead.
|
Ivan:
[1:59:43]
| I must say, the curmudgeon corner mug I use regularly, okay, it's quite useful. And it's been quite durable for me as well. You know, the image on it has stuck on, you know, I've got some other mugs that maybe with age look like they're fading a little bit, whatever. This one has been.
|
Sam:
[2:00:01]
| Man, what mine typically do, and I have, like, I'll get scrapes on that picture over time. Like from it scraping against other things in the cabinet or whatever, you know, but yeah, no, but they're, they're good mugs. It's, I use them all the time, you know, whatever. Hey, and if, if you guys are interested and want other Purmudgeons corner swag, you know, I've only got Zazzle linked directly to the mug, but you know, they make all kinds of stuff. You, you, you, you want our faces on a t-shirt. We could probably do that.
|
Ivan:
[2:00:42]
| Oh, God. I don't want to see my face on a t-shirt.
|
Sam:
[2:00:51]
| Yes. Anyway, you can get the mug. Of course, all the ways to contact us as well. All the ones I just mentioned, plus email and feedback at curmudgeons-corner.com. Of course, I'm telling you all this stuff. So now you don't have to go to the page. Well, you still do if you want the mug. But all the transcripts, all the old episodes. Ow! I just punched my desk. I've moved my heads around and I punched my desk.
|
Ivan:
[2:01:15]
| We're trying to arrange another surgery here for.
|
Sam:
[2:01:18]
| Exactly. I need the hand replaced. Get one of the Luke Skywalker hands. Anyway, all the stuff. And, of course, the link to our Patreon, which we went over all the tiers before. So give us money. Lots of money. And we appreciate that at various levels. You can get the t-shirt. You can, the mug. No, not the t-shirt. I guess if you really want a t-shirt, let me know. I'll figure it out. But you get the mug, you can get a postcard, you can get us mentioning you on the show, all that kind of stuff at $2 a month or more. Or if you just ask, we will invite you to the Curmudgeon's Corner Slack, where Yvonne and I and others hang out throughout the week, sharing links, chatting, whatever. So Yvonne, what's the highlight of the week from the Slack that would make people really, really want to join or visit more often?
|
Ivan:
[2:02:21]
| Okay, there we go. Woman trying to kill cockroach set South Korea apartment block ablaze.
|
Sam:
[2:02:30]
| Oh, no.
|
Ivan:
[2:02:31]
| You know, a neighbor died after falling to the ground in a failed escape attempt, okay? To escape through a window, this lady for some reason had thought that the best method to try to kill a cockroach, instead of stomping on it, was to use, if I remember correctly, a can of, like, flammable spray and a lighter, okay, to try to kill the cockroach, okay? Apparently, she had used that method before, but on Monday, items in her home caught fire, okay? And so, you know, for whatever reason, apparently on social media. Blasting cockroaches with blow-tortures or homemade flamethrowers has emerged as a novel way of getting rid of house pests made popular by videos on social media. Look, Can I just say, and unfortunately that this led to, this would have been really more, this would have been funny if somebody didn't die from setting the fucking building ablaze. Right. Look, if you want to kill a fucking pest, just stomp on it. Damn it.
|
Sam:
[2:03:39]
| You know, and in this case, I wouldn't be surprised if in the end, the cockroach survived.
|
Ivan:
[2:03:45]
| Survived. Yes. Probably.
|
Sam:
[2:03:49]
| Yes. yet just generally as a ongoing theme i like to avoid fire yes like like yeah there are a few places where it's necessary yeah but like just just as one example once upon a time when we were younger having candles in the house was commonplace fuck for one thing or another, and and like it before us people even used candles on their damn christmas trees and stuff like that that's true you know before the little electric lights but like people still when we were young candles were commonplace people had candles used as decorations i guess some people still do but i know at this point like and also as a backup you know the power goes out have some candles Right. At this point, all my backup light stuff is still electrical. You know, I've got I've got flashlights. I've got little lanterns that are battery powered. Even when you want like little decorative tea lights or whatever, you've got like battery powered ones. You don't need open flame.
|
Ivan:
[2:04:56]
| I mean, I will admit I have some in my house. My wife likes to have some candles that furlough, some aromas or whatever. But they are in containers that even if you let, I mean, even if you forget the candle lit, nothing's going to happen. Okay. They're in a safe, like, you know, uh, uh, uh. container and limited location, okay, in order to, you know, avoid such kind of things. But it's not like I have a lot of them. There's like, you know, it's just, but that's about the only thing that we use it for.
|
Sam:
[2:05:29]
| I get the appeal, they're somewhat cool sometimes, and, you know, and people like fireplaces too sometimes, but, you know, like, I remember a story, like, when I was researching my genealogy stuff a number of years ago. I think I may have mentioned this on the show once before, but I forget which ancestor this was. This was back a number of generations in the mid 1800s sometime, maybe even earlier, might've been 1700s. But anyway, they had a fireplace and it was like, I forget, like three or four kids plus the parents, little girl, like three or four years old, her dress caught fire off the fireplace because she got too close for it, went up like a candle ran around the house as she was dying set everything else on the fire on fire basically the family of five there was like one survivor or something everybody else died the house was gone like you know and it's like this kind of stuff happened all the time because people had open flames everywhere you know we used to have that in.
|
Ivan:
[2:06:37]
| Puerto rico our houses are made of cement and there was like the lady that used to take care of us she set two of our kitchens on fire, However, however, the house is made out of cement. The fire was contained to the kitchen. The whole the whole house on in neither case did not go up, which would have been normal here in the U.S. if the kind of fire that we had would have would have set a house here in the U.S. 100 percent on fire. But because thankfully we like to use reinforced concrete, the fire was absolutely contained just simply to the kitchen. and therefore we didn't do that. But it was scary, regardless. Okay, you know, we had those happen.
|
Sam:
[2:07:22]
| So, yeah. Okay, anyway, reduce open flames to the bare necessities. That's my advice.
|
Ivan:
[2:07:29]
| All right.
|
Sam:
[2:07:30]
| Everybody. Okay, we're done here. Thank you, everybody, for joining us for yet another Curbudgeons Corner. Stay safe, have fun, not too much fun, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we'll be in again next week, if all goes well. And two weeks from now, again, Yvonne will be out. If somebody wants to potentially be the co-host to record either the evening U.S. time of November 6th or 7th or the daytime of November 8th, Saturday, let me know. feedback at curmudgeon-corner.com. I will send out an email to all the usual suspects minus the last three co-hosts. I always eliminate the last three co-hosts for variety, you know, but contact me anyway, if you want. Okay. We're out for real. Here comes the thing. Goodbye. Goodbye. Say goodbye, Yvonne.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:21]
| Bye.
|
Sam:
[2:08:53]
| Okay, thank you, Yvonne. Heading stop. Bye.
|
Ivan:
[2:08:56]
| Bye.
| |
|
