The Daily Zeitgeist - The Right’s Even Tired Of Fox News, Lena Dunham To Go Full Lohan? 10.31.18
Episode Date: October 31, 2018Boo! In episode 264, Jack and Miles are joined by writer and Hollywood Handbook podcast co-host Hayes Davenport to discuss how villains in horror movies rarely use guns, Matt Drudge being fed up with ...Fox News, how a convicted man for anti-Muslim terror plot blaming Trump for his actions, how in the world Shep Smith became the voice of reason on Fox News, Trump's new threat to end birthright citizenship with an executive order, Lena Dunham being tapped to adapt a Syrian refugee story, Halloween costumes, the Crunch Cup, and more! Happy Halloween! FOOTNOTES: 1. Fox News Slammed By Matt Drudge Over “Bizarre” Synagogue Shooting Segment2. Trump Fan Convicted In Anti-Muslim Terror Plot Asks Judge To Consider Trump’s Rhetoric3. Sentencing Memorandum, Patrick Stein4. Shep Smith on the migrant caravan: "There is no invasion. No one is coming to get you. There is nothing at all to worry about."5. Graham to introduce legislation to end birthright citizenship6. The Fourteenth Amendment Can’t Be Revoked by Executive Order7. Backlash over Lena Dunham script for Syrian refugee film8. Little girl's Halloween costume quite the scare9. CrunchCup - The World's Greatest Portable Cereal Cup10. WATCH: Dan Marino Freak out11. WATCH: Uyama Hiroto - 81 autumn Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Hello, the internet, and welcome to Season 55, Episode 3 of your daily Fright Geist for Halloween.
Wednesday, October 31st, 2018.
My name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. HackBooDian.
And I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray!
Yes, it's Miles, a.k Miles, aka Gay Slimer. That's an
anagram, and Slimer from Ghostbusters.
Also, bring back Ecto Cooler, I see.
Uh, and now let me just do a singing one
for y'all, too, because I have to sing.
Because with the Zeitgang,
it's less dangerous.
Here we are, Miles.
Entertain us. We're so
stupid and contagious.
Here we are, Jack. Entertain us with We're so stupid and contagious. Here we are, Jack.
Entertain us with ablation and potato.
We're the Zeitgang.
Here we are now.
Yeah.
Yeah, so that was from Sweetwater, at Sweetwater underscore 1981.
I'm guessing you were born in 1981.
Well done, Sweetwater and Miles.
Well, we're thrilled to be joined in our
third seat by the
very funny improviser and
writer, Hayes Davenport.
Hi, guys. What's up, man? Thank you for having
me. I don't have any Halloween
stuff geared up.
Are you dressing up for Halloween?
No. For the first time,
we're going to be home, and I'm going to put out a CVS battery-powered pumpkin just in case a kid comes.
So it's a little friendly for them.
But no dressing up this year.
In past years, I don't know if I'm going to brag, but I've been invited through a friend to Maroon 5's Halloween party that they have every year.
That's like a very serious dress-up event.
It's been, I don't know if I should say where.
It used to be at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Oh, wow.
And it was awesome, but I never got it together enough to compete with celebrity costumes.
Yeah, who have like stylists.
I had to spend like $20,,000 and just suddenly they have a costume
that's like really incredible
and I'm dressed in like
a Pikachu suit or whatever.
You just get like
the store bought.
Yeah, I'm green man.
Remember that?
It's a green bodysuit.
So this year, yeah,
we're opting out.
We're just too tired.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
What kind of candy
are you giving away?
Some Reese's thing.
Okay.
Crowd pleaser.
Can't go wrong.
Do you like,
as someone now as an adult who's on the giving outside of candy,
do you ensure that your candy is the kind of shit that you wanted as a kid?
I think that's... And you stay away from the shit that you hated?
Yeah.
And so I guess it's probably bad because as we were kids,
we're going to adults' houses giving out the shitty candy that they liked
when they were growing up.
So kids now are probably like, they just want whatever, a vape cartridge or something.
That's what we're giving out, jewel cartridges.
They're like, king size snicker?
What the fuck is a snicker?
Yeah.
No, actually, that's one thing I noticed in past Halloweens is that kids are more into not chocolate candies.
Chocolate candies are not as popular as they were in my day.
Yeah.
It's like us growing up.
Yeah.
The equivalent of those dusty candies that adults would always give out when we were kids.
Right.
Like Necco wafers or whatever.
Right.
Oh, gross.
Now that's chocolate.
Yeah.
For kids. Chocolate was the flex. Because I remember I'm like, Right, yeah. Ugh, gross. And now that's chocolate for kids.
Chocolate was the flex.
Because I remember I'm like, oh, fucking Starbursts again?
No, they go all Starbursts, all like the gummy candies and shit.
That's what these kids go crazy for.
The values of the chocolate morons.
Right.
Because they're used to having like CBD gummies.
Right, exactly. It's all weed.
They're going to come back.
They eat it.
They're like, poof.
Like, what the fuck, dude? Is thc or cbc my man uh i'm fucking with them and giving them circus peanuts because that's a non-chocolate candy i'll
be like oh you like non-chocolate huh i'm gonna write bible verses i'm gonna write bible verses
onto packing peanuts loose yeah circus peanuts all right hayes we're gonna get to know you a
little bit better in a moment but first we're taking our listeners through what we're talking about today.
The goal of our show is to tell you guys what our country is thinking and talking about today,
what's on our mind, hiding in our unconscious, using the headlines, box office reports,
TV ratings, what's trending on Google and social media. And today we're talking about, I want to go back and psychoanalyze horror a little bit more and specifically ask the question,
why do horror movie villains never have guns?
Like, why are we not scared of guns?
We're going to talk about how Matt Drudge has had it and the weird brand of having had it that Matt Drudge has. We're going to talk about this case being brought against three right-wing
militia members who are planning to bomb an apartment complex that was
housing Somali refugees.
We're going to talk about Shep Smith,
who's like just losing his mind at Fox News,
just being like,
what the fuck is happening right now?
And Trump's announcement that he's going to end
birthright citizenship uh just like that uh halloween costumes just check in any halloween
costumes we saw and finally we're gonna retire a trend but first hayes we ask our guest what is
something from your search history that is revealing about who you are last couple days
yesterday especially i spent all day
uh searching the air quality index of la i don't know if you've noticed it's been like filthy
outside like visibly like pictures you see of la in the 70s where it's like you can see
brown like smog everywhere uh and i see now apple has updated its weather app so you can see what the air quality
index is in the city at any given time and i don't know if you notice sometimes it says at the top
instead of like clear cloudy or whatever it says unhealthy air quality like don't go outside this
is like moderate right today it's moderate which is great but it's just another i like it's just another thing
to refresh life is just like finding new pages to refresh basically yeah and so now that's something
some new thing i can just check in on throughout the day that's so funny because for the past like
five days i've been getting migraines for the first time in my life and could absolutely
and then i like started hearing from other people who were like, man, I'm getting these bad headaches.
I don't know why.
It must be allergies or something.
Sonic rays.
Yeah.
It might just be terrible air quality.
Or it's a brain tumor.
Yeah.
Or it's a brain tumor.
My wife literally asked for that.
Maybe you have a tumor.
Isn't that what he says in kindergarten class?
Not a tumor.
Because he has a headache and he's like, maybe you have a tumor.
Yeah.
Shut up, kid.
Yeah.
That's what he should have said.
I'm still angry at that little boy who's probably a man now.
What is something you think is overrated, Hayes?
Overrated?
Well, I work in TV.
Mostly I'm a TV writer, so it goes without saying that I think every TV show that people
like is overrated.
I can't really enjoy anything.
But we were talking about cbd before
i guess that's mine i don't i've never really smoked weed so this is my first like foray into
like this fun culture it's still weird to me to go into like a coffee shop and get one of these
like cbd drinks oh i feel like just like. I feel like the person I'm getting it from at the counter is like,
oh, party time for this guy in the middle of the day on a Wednesday.
And it also either has no effect on me
or just makes me feel a little off in an unpleasant way.
Sure, sure.
Oh, interesting.
So I don't know.
It's not like i see it popping
up everywhere now these like cbd shaman places everything's like and we can add cbd to your soup
yeah like i don't need that at all can i smoke a blend here no oh then i'm gonna keep it moving
i think if you smoke cbd you probably will feel it more the effects of like how cbd is meant to
feel than if you do like drinking it in a mixed drink.
Like in a seltzer, yeah.
Yeah, because I've never had like the CBD infused drinks because to me I'm sort of like, I don't know if that's really going to have the intended effect.
Whereas like I was at a wedding recently and I had a little CBD pen with me and that was perfect for the wedding because there's no, you know, you don't get the drug freak outs in your head and you can just chill.
But I do feel like some people are like weed people who just like smoking or doing anything
related to weed just like improves their experience with something.
And some people just like feeling off in not a pleasant way.
Right.
It describes like 80% of my experiences with smoking weed.
Yeah, you know, it just all depends, you know, what planet you're from, man.
Yeah, man.
I'm from planet chill vibes.
Yeah, yeah.
I and I.
I am not.
I immediately assume everybody at the wedding is.
Hates me.
The wedding is about me.
Right.
Yeah.
Am I not dancing enough?
Yeah, that's what the bride's thinking about. The wedding is about me. Yeah. Am I not dancing enough? Yeah.
That's what the bride's thinking about.
What is something you think is underrated?
Underrated.
Something I've really gotten into recently is reading the print newspaper.
Just as we like are all like consuming more news than ever, like online.
I like how it organizes information in a way that's a little like
easier to know what's important and what's not on the internet sometimes everything feels like
an equally sized piece of information but in the newspaper it's like here's the front page like
here's the stupid shit you don't have to worry about uh and you also have the feeling of being
done at some point which is so much better than the internet where it's like oh you've read
everything in the newspaper.
You can throw it away now.
Imagine scrolling to the bottom of Twitter one day and you're like, wait, it's not.
No, I've read everything?
Right.
Does the world connect?
What print publications are you subscribing to?
I read the LA Times.
Never heard of it.
And I get it. This I really
love because I'm worried about it
piling up in my house and tipping over
to me and stuff.
And so I get it delivered.
Well, I mean, if you get it at your house
it's going to just pile up. That's how the New Yorker
is too sometimes. Yeah, totally.
So I get it delivered
to the cafe near my house.
So I can go get it there and read it there.
I feel like it's a New Yorker.
I'm trying to get the bodega lifestyle, like living in New York.
I didn't even know that was an option.
I just asked.
I was like, is this okay?
And they're like, yeah, I guess.
They probably thought I was setting up some weird alibi.
Right, right, right. No,
I live here. This is where my newspaper goes. Hey, can you hold this newspaper up and we take a photo right now? And also, can we point to the clock what time it is? Okay, cool. Thanks.
I'll probably never be back after this. You can keep all the newspapers.
Yeah, no, I totally feel you on having the information organized for you.
I subscribe to the Sunday New York Times,
and just having a front page to read all those stories
and feel like, okay, those were the most important stories of that week,
according to people who are paying attention to the news,
is kind of a good tool.
And you get T Magazine.
I go right to T Magazine.
I love that it weighs 50 pounds.
Yeah, exactly.
I don't know if there's anything that's not an ad in it.
No.
Yeah.
What is T Magazine?
I've only seen the cover of it and just promptly.
The binding is like three-dimensional.
It's so thick.
Like when you pick up the Sunday Times and it's so heavy, that's all T Magazine.
Yeah, mostly T Magazine.
Finally, what is a myth?
What's something people think is true you know to be false?
A myth.
I do a show about LA, a podcast about LA news and stuff called LA Podcast.
And we talk a lot about housing and homelessness, stuff that is a huge deal in LA and in pretty much every major city now.
And there are so many myths around that.
And the one that I think probably comes up the most is that it's really expensive to house homeless.
The thing that's keeping the homeless people from being housed is cost.
that's keeping the homeless people from being housed is cost right when really what's super expensive is what we do now which is let people live on the street so they go to the emergency
room every day they go in and out of jail that shit is really really expensive right it is cheaper
uh to just uh provide homes for people yeah that's awesome and we have a lot of money available to
actually tackle this problem but we're kind of running into a lot of neighborhoods where people haven't quite realized that this is actually a good solution to homelessness.
And they just see people like, you know, there have been town hall meetings where people are screaming down homeless people who have gotten back on their feet from support housing.
And people are like, we don't care about your story or whatever.
And they think there's like a whole pushback in the city too where we have the money to do this actually.
It's all there.
We just have to find the places to do it.
And, yeah, it's true.
Like there's no harder place to try and recover whether you have mental illness or something else going on than doing that on the street.
You know what I mean?
And it's such a simple thing, but we're still trying to, you know, overcome the optics, I think, of people.
Just the idea of there being support housing near them thinks, oh, it's going to breed
crime or whatever.
Yeah.
When the alternative is people living near you on the street, like you're saying, which
I would think, yeah, that you would like people moving inside instead of sleeping on the sidewalk.
But yeah, like exactly like you're saying, the money is so much easier to get than it
is to spend.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, and recently in the city, there's a new program that the mayor is, you know're saying, the money is so much easier to get than it is to spend. Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, and recently in the city, there's a new program that the mayor is saying, hey,
turn all your rental rentable units in the back of your house, your garage or in-law suite or whatever.
We can subsidize these people living there to help get back on their feet.
Then, you know, there are solutions that we're trying to pursue.
But yeah, there's a it's definitely like you say, there's this idea, this preconceived notion about what it means to help rehabilitate homeless people or get them the support they need that people have all around.
But yeah, we're moving step by step.
But we've got to take bigger steps.
Yeah, I live by UCLA, and they have this huge veterans campus.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just like back.
UCLA and they have this huge like veterans campus.
Yeah. It's just like,
it's like right in the middle of the city.
It's a huge campus.
That's just like old rotting buildings that haven't been used for decades.
Yeah.
They say they can't really put housing on it.
They're,
they're finally starting to,
but instead they like let the Brentwood school,
the private school,
like play tennis there and stuff like that.
Right.
Yeah.
All right. Let's get into today's zeitgeist and uh yeah i wanted to talk about horror movies the
horror genre again before halloween is over this is i guess appropriate to the zeitgeist because
there was another mass shooting and this one we kind of moved past the fact that it was another ar-15 shooting and
you know all the nra talking points that we usually talk about because the mentally ill
shooters motivation was specifically and literally triggered by a week-long fake fox news fear
mongering campaign about the caravan coming up towards the border. But yeah, I want to revisit horror movies like we were
discussing Halloween because it blew up at the box office a couple weeks ago from the standpoint
that it's a weird and unique genre in that it's the one where audience tracking scores don't
seem to matter and in fact sometimes have the opposite effect like hereditary scored a d and was a monster hit
because it was so unpleasant to go to but one specific convention of the genre that i've always
found weird is that the villain in a horror movie like can't use a gun like we have serial killers
who have used guns and like the son of Sam and the woman from monster and the protagonist we relate to in the horror movie can have a gun.
Like guns exist in these universes,
but the object of our fear is not allowed to use a gun.
Like trying to imagine Jason or Michael Myers or Hannibal Lecter pulling out a
gun and just shooting their victim.
We've normalized gun violence in this country to a certain extent.
And there's like a, you know, like even people who kill with guns, there's something more sadistic about using and like stabbing someone to death.
It creates a much more different profile than someone who shoots, kills someone with a gun.
Right.
That there's another level, like the intimacy of killing someone like that is different.
And maybe that's just, that's, that's something they try and underline in that sense.
This is a bit we do on the comedy show i do called hollywood handbook we talk about uh slender man
like sneaking up on you and shooting you right but it's ridiculous i think because those movies
survive on tension and there's really no tension you don't have to be snuck up on if you can be
shot from 50 feet away or whatever the bullet sneaks up yes so i
i mean but it is a reflection on that with this thing is so pervasive in our culture that is so
easy to kill people with it it can't even work for a horror movie because the movie would be
so much shorter yeah yeah i mean i can't like one of the spookiest experiences i've ever had was
living in dc during the d the D.C. sniper thing.
And just like people were just getting like picked off at random.
And you were just looking around you not knowing if somebody was out there with a sniper rifle.
And I don't know.
It was scary in a horror movie way.
But my high school canceled a trip to Walden Pond during the time that DC Sniper was going around.
Really?
Because I guess, theoretically,
they could have driven up like four hours
to get to Walden Pond to pick off
like a freshman year school trip.
So we just think it's like too easy for the killer
to kill people?
I mean, for the same reason,
like if you imagine, you know,
Jason just shooting a dude,
then it's like, all right.
You know what I mean?
Like, oh, I got a shot.
But if you're like, oh, he fucking hacked him.
You know what I mean?
Like there's just something darker
about that form of being killed
than merely just an efficient gunshot.
And maybe it's too realistic to be fun.
What they kind of use that for is like cop
thrillers like dirty harry is about a sniper so like the bad guy's a sniper jack reacher uh that
opening sequence right jack reacher is a sniper and so that's about like the cat and mouse between
a cop and a criminal but like but not about like the actual horror and like fear of being attacked by this
right person that would just be like maybe too scary and uncomfortable for people right it's
funny to think of it like if you mash the cat and mouse thing up with the horror genre where it's
it's like a grizzled detective trying to get freddy krueger or something like just how that
that plays out that relationship yeah because we're we seem like pathologically incapable of being afraid enough
of guns like as a culture right based on like the laws and the way we react to news i was wondering
if it's something like that or if it's like a deeper cultural thing. Like we aren't scared of guns because that's what cowboys used,
but we're scared of Indian burial grounds because they're the ones we like
fucked over and have like a reason to get revenge on us.
Literally the guilt of manifest destiny playing out where you're like,
Ooh,
yeah,
we shouldn't be here.
Yeah.
But it's a good,
like it's,
it's a good rule. rule i mean it's the same
reason that they don't use like a horror movie creatures don't use like a nuclear weapon or like
a tank because it would be too easy to kill people anything that is too easy for a horror movie
script shouldn't be legal to own right right there you go that would be a great a great rule if it's
a hurdle for a writer to be like oh it is too easy because the bad guy would just kill everyone immediately, that should be something that you are allowed to have in your house.
The Hollywood Handbook Act.
Yeah. Horror movie gun legislation.
All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16, 2017, was murdered.
There are crooks everywhere you look now.
The situation is desperate.
My name is Manuel Delia.
I am one of the hosts of Crooks Everywhere,
a podcast that unhurts the plot to murder a one-woman WikiLeaks.
Daphne exposed the culture of crime and corruption that were turning her beloved country into a mafia state.
And she paid the ultimate price.
Listen to Crooks Everywhere on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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And we're back. And Matt Drudge has had it.
Oh, he has had it.
With Fox News' foolery.
Yeah. Yeah, it all happened because there was a segment on Fox where they were discussing the shooting and some moment came up where they like the anchors were having a laugh and he just sort of captured these screenshots of some of the hosts is kind of yucking it up.
But like the chyron underneath was about like the horrible racist attacks that were happening in the country.
And they're like, have a little respect here.
Respect on their names.
And it was just sort of like,
you know, I think he couldn't believe the optics of just sort of saying
it and saying like, is this really funny?
And then having like another caption
of someone laughing saying, oh, it's hysterical.
But yeah, it was just sort of one of the things
his tweet was, a segment on Fox News
this morning where hosts laughed and choked their way through
a discussion on political impact of terror was bizarre.
Not even 48 hours since blood flowed at the synagogue.
Check your soul in the makeup chair.
Yeah.
Which is odd for Drudge, who typically marches of breaking rank as Fox News and the party moves farther right and making appeals to like sanity or whatever.
Some of the most popular Twitter guys are like David Frum and Max Boot, people that were like hardcore W devotees that are now become like never Trumpers.
I think it's kind of a mistake to ascribe any like, uh, sincerity or,
uh,
like genuine conscience to any of these people.
Right.
I think if you're just,
if you make your money this way and you feel what,
like the ground shifting under your feet,
you just run to the place where people will be receptive to what you're
saying.
Right.
I think that's happened to lots of people that joined the alt right that
just like wanted to be famous. and like that's where the standards are so much lower for celebrity so like
candace owens or baked alaska like runs over there uh because people will clap for them and then
oddly enough they will have nothing it's like doing reality tv it's like yeah well it's easy
to get a reality tv and then you try and cross over and people are like, no, you're a reality person.
Stay over there.
Yeah.
But, you know, Jack, you said when you watched it, it wasn't necessarily that they were joking around it.
So it's a little, he's not totally representing what happened.
It's just weird because of all the just horrible things that are happening on fox news this was the one
clip i've seen from the past couple weeks where i wasn't immediately outraged like they seem
punchy while talking about very dark news like you know almost like it's very uncomfortable and
so they're kind of laughing to break the tension so like performatively as newscasters i'd maybe give them
bad marks um but it's i don't know it seems like a case of transference where like some part of
matt drudge knows that they're in the wrong and that they cause this shit and so like like this
is something i notice a lot with him because i pay attention to his front page just to like kind
of keep an eye on what conservatives are thinking and I feel like he does this a lot where he'll say the right thing
but then he'll link to the wrong thing like he'll say Fox News is wrong right but then his example
won't be the right example and I feel like it's a way of both like having a valid point of view while also undercutting that valid point of view because it
conflicts with your like ideological standpoint jeff flaking it yeah right because i'm sure that
that segment where they were laughing was probably bookended by discussion about the caravan
right disease or whatever in the country the most like naked racist appeal like probably of the trump presidency so far
what's funny is all the laughter was set off by kennedy from mtv yeah making a quip at the end of
the segment which was sort of like broke the tension is what they're laughing at another
great example of someone who's uh 15 minutes ran out and just went scrambling to, I mean, the easiest way to run a fame grift. Right.
Go to the right.
Yeah, you've got conventions, you're on TV all the time.
You can just stretch it out.
Oh, and if you're a person of color, you will literally become an all-star overnight.
Yes.
That's the thing.
I think Candace Owens worked for an Upworthy or something like that during the 2016 campaign
and would write Hillary is Bay articles
and stuff like that.
Oh, really?
Yes, yes.
And then as soon as that ran out,
you find a place where people are
so much more receptive to what you're doing.
And look at her now.
She's best friends with Kanye West.
Are things really going that bad for Candace?
Right.
She's crushing it.
We can all aspire.
But the risk, I think, what happened with Megyn Kelly is if you start on the right and you move to the center and you lose your place in the center, now you've got nowhere
left.
I mean, you can shift really hard right and go to like wherever InfoWars or whatever it
is now.
But like at some point, you just kind of run out of real estate.
Oh, yeah.
You can have a show on The Blaze. Yeah. Oh yeah. You can have a show on the blaze.
Yeah.
Oh,
it's Tommy Lahren.
Yeah.
What was the Glenn?
That was the blaze.
Yeah.
Or it might still be,
I don't know.
Yeah.
I think he like basically flamed out at Fox news and went and started his own
network.
And he tried,
you remember for a minute he was like can try and he tried to move left.
Yeah.
And that one just kind of didn't take, it's funny when your politics are like, And he tried. You remember for a minute he was like contrite and he tried to move left. Be center. Yeah.
And that one just kind of didn't take.
It's funny when your politics are like that's the thing you commodify for fame.
Like, yeah, well, what am I going to be today?
Yeah.
What bit am I going to do?
Am I going to be the alt-right guy?
This opinion that I have is not working anymore.
Right.
Like, what's my new one that will.
And it's sad, too, because some people look at those people and think they're actual,
like they're sincere actors in like these discussions. And it's sad, too, because some people look at those people and think they're sincere actors in these discussions.
And you're like, no, no, no.
They say what is whatever will benefit them the most.
All right.
Let's talk about this bombing plot.
Another incompetent bomber on the right foiled by their own incompetence. Yeah, so one of those things where this guy Patrick Stein,
he got convicted with, like, two other sort of right-wing militia guys
who basically set out for the plan to bomb a mosque and an apartment complex
where there were a lot of Somali refugees where they were worshipping and living.
And, you know, it was one of those things where, like, the FBI caught wind of it
and were just like, okay, let's handhold you to the end.
Hi, we're the FBI.
Now you're under arrest because you were trying to pull some wild shit.
So on Monday, his attorneys were basically trying to argue about his sentencing and essentially using the argument that Donald Trump made him do this.
Because if it weren't for all the rhetoric and things going on around the campaign, it wouldn't have pushed him so far to these extreme measures.
and things going on around the campaign,
it wouldn't have pushed him so far to these extreme measures. But what's really weird is the way the request for lenient sentencing is written.
It's written very colloquially.
For example, when they're talking about how the president's racism and Islamophobia
was sort of the catalyst for all this, this is, quote, from the legal document.
2016 was, quote, lit.
The court cannot ignore the circumstances of one of the most rhetorically mold-breaking,
violent, awful, hateful, and contentious presidential elections in modern history,
driven in large measure by the rhetorical China shop bull who is now our president.
And then they go on with a really sick reference to Spinal Tap.
It says, a person normally at a three on a scale of political talk
might have found themselves at a seven during the election.
A person like Patrick, his client,
who would often be at a seven during a normal day,
might, quote, go to 11.
See Spinal Tap is written in here.
What the fuck is their audience?
I don't know if lawyers normally write with this kind of casual swag.
But it's just really odd, too, because then they're also trying to dismiss like what they were trying to do is sort of being.
They literally said they're knuckleheads who were.
And this was just a locker room talk when the guy called himself the Orkin man and he was looking for cockroaches to exterminate.
I mean, you're going to have a tough time, I think, convincing this judge otherwise.
exterminate i i mean you're gonna have a tough time i think convincing this judge otherwise but you know it goes to show you know that there are now people who are actually facing
like actual legal repercussions for trying to be terrorists and they're using the donald trump
made me do a defense right it feels like the audience is i guess the public like hoping to
get this case out in like the court of public opinion and have people be able to point to trump
for basically brainwashing people i've seen you've seen kind of the opposite of this i think with um after the
cosby conviction like the lawyer talking about that was like this is uh there's a war on men
fake news all these things and that was clearly directed at trump and like people that like him
like maybe even like pushing for a pardon right uh. So, yeah, I think so many of these now, like media is so pervasive,
you're not just writing something for a judge or for like a courtroom.
Like you're hoping it gets out to some wider audience.
Yeah.
I mean, it's going to be tough because that argument may be like a liberal person
may be sympathetic to, they would see the optics and be like,
yeah, I can see how the rhetoric drummed this up.
But you're not going to then be like, oh, I know, you just tried to bomb a bunch of
people at a mosque in an apartment building, so we'll give you a mulligan on that one.
So, like, I don't know how much real support they can drum up with this.
It might not work in this case, but if you fast forward, whatever, four years when people
are looking back at this era and, like, the Paul Ryans Ryans of the world are like forced to kind of reckon with it.
This is what that's the kind of thing you're going to see.
Yeah.
Like everyone was swept up in this movement.
The rhetoric was awful.
I he'll say like I said many times that he went too far.
They'll try to absolve themselves for like having like collaborated for so long.
He's like, and now I'm running to be your president.
Right.
If at the time, on a normal day,
I might be a three being a shitbag politician.
At the time, I was cranked up to a seven.
But yeah, I guess, is it working?
Because, I mean, we're talking about it on the biggest news show in America.
I mean, I think it's just more fodder for people like us to discuss like, okay, they're
trying that as a defense.
But when it's a defense for trying to bomb refugees, it's like, I don't know about that.
Yeah.
I mean, it's crazy that this is what they have to resort to to get people to talk about it because it is if it were the other way around
if it were you know three islamic people who were planning to bomb a apartment building full of white
people right and like their white white celebration uh that every day yeah like that would be the
biggest news story on Fox News.
But the defense might be kind of the same, that they were radicalized and basically brainwashed by this larger movement.
So I think it is notable that we could sort of say the same stuff about fundamentalist terrorism in the Islamic world as we can about white terrorism.
They're very similar
it's just one gets actually covered by the mainstream media and one doesn't yeah well
they also make the the point though they're saying because trump won that was actually going to make
them less likely to follow through on their plan because these guys were operating in a world where
it was a foregone conclusion hillary clinton was going. It was going to be on election day, right?
Yeah, because they didn't want to do it before because the optics they thought would help Hillary or something of that happening.
So they were going to do it after.
And they're like, well, you know, but since he won, they actually, you know, it released some of the tension for them, blah, blah, blah.
But yeah, I mean, right now they're one of the guys who's looking at like up to life in prison.
But his attorneys are hoping with this argument that maybe it'll be closer to 15, which they feel would adequately reflect the seriousness of the offense.
The last thing the synagogue shooter posted on Gab was, like, screw your optics.
Yeah.
And so, I mean, you wonder how many mass murders are being held back right now just by people being like, oh, the optics of this are just brutal.
Yeah, I mean, we're nearly guaranteeing the blue wave right now just by people being like, oh, the optics of this are just brutal. It's crazy.
Yeah, I mean, we're nearly guaranteeing the blue wave right now. Right, yes.
And, I mean, it makes you, on the same side of that coin,
you're like, what happens after Election Day?
Yeah.
You know, if this mindset is still out there.
Yeah.
So don't vote.
We were wrong when we told you guys to vote.
Don't vote.
Don't vote.
Hide in your house, play video games, and just eat Arby's.
Yeah.
We wanted to talk about Shep Smith over on Fox News.
Yeah.
The voice of reason.
Yeah.
I mean, it's not an act necessarily, but he's sort of there, I think, just to give Fox cover,
to be like, it's not all fucking psychos on our channel.
Shep Smith, come on.
It's like how they used to use alan combs right and so now because of all the caravan talk and how you know every day
there's something new trump's saying something wilder and wilder and you know recently on their
network they're having people coming on claiming that you know there's there's big strong men
coming in here and the people who have smallpox and fucking leprosy.
Like someone actually said there are lepers in this.
It's like I'm still wrapping my head around claiming you got lepers in the caravan anyway.
So that's sort of what's going on at Fox that Shepard Smith used his time slot to try and pump the brakes a little bit,
because everyone who is watching that channel is getting fed this diet.
And this is what he broadcasted to his viewers.
The migrants, according to Fox News reporting, are more than two months away,
if any of them actually come here. But tomorrow is one week before the midterm election,
which is what all of this is about. There is no invasion. No one's coming to get you.
There's nothing at all to worry about when they did this
to us got us all riled up in april remember the result was 14 arrests we're america we can handle
it but like i said a week to the election and jennifer griffin's on it from the pentagon
yeah i mean it's not even like yo please calm fuck down. Which is sad because on either side of him, you have people like Sean Hannity's and the Tucker Carlson's of the world who then go on and just have someone being like, oh, yeah, they're bringing like polio like diseases where everyone's going to be paralyzed.
Right.
You know, it's tough because on one hand, I want to be like, yes, great.
I'm glad someone is saying that.
But when you look on Twitter, especially after Shepard Smith has these moments, a lot of the viewers are like, get this guy off Fox.
They're like, this guy's a liberal or whatever.
And they don't like I guess that's so offensive to them that someone would be like, hey, you know, I know you're worried.
How about you not worry?
Don't tell me to fucking not worry.
It's my natural state.
Yeah.
I mean, it's good.
Right.
For him to say this.
But part of you is still like, I mean, quit your job.
Like, this is how you really feel like
how can you be still working at a place like this but also i i can't help but wonder if that clip
is circulating a lot more among like people on the left oh on the right i mean it was like 10
seconds of of the broadcast for people to see live uh And if he, you know, the same as these guys that, like,
every once in a while will say something against Trump
because it plays so well among, like, centrists.
Like, if people like Shep Smith know that this is a way to, like,
get goodwill and hedge your bets if everything, like, goes really south,
it's just hard to take really seriously when you're still getting money from that place.
Yeah, the kind of nonsense they're spewing.
But better than not doing it.
Yeah, well, I'm glad there's at least someone on that channel to make people angry and want
to change the channel.
Because if you get, you know, like it helps you realize that there are other viewpoints that much in the same way like if you're in your progressive bubble you're hardly
going to interact with people who are coming on to be like there's lepers coming yeah and then
you're gonna be like oh get this shit off you know but i guess for this because his argument
isn't as sensational he's just like it's okay the numbers are it's going to take two months
for them to even we reported that remember which is the equivalent of the mad as hell speech from network.
Yeah.
Just being like, it's all right, everyone.
It's just such a fucking contrast.
No one's coming to get you or your lake house.
Right.
But it lets, it's like you're saying it lets Fox say we are a balanced network.
He provides them so much cover.
So he's kind of a useful idiot.
Yeah, no, no way, totally.
That's why I'm like,
it's funny when you see people like Adam Schiff
and all these other politicians
hold this clip up on Twitter and be like,
yes, I'm glad someone is saying something,
blah, blah, blah.
And you're like, yeah, that's good for you to retweet,
but I don't think that has any effect.
That's not going to move anyone
who's a true, you know,
just mainlining Fox News all day.
Yeah. Yeah. If anything, it just proves that there is somebody, effect that's not gonna move anyone who's a true you know just mainlining fox news all day yeah
yeah if anything it just proves that there is somebody there is at least one voice that they
are actively ignoring or i mean if you didn't think that they were at least partially aware
of what they were doing which i mean i think it's pretty clear they know exactly what they're doing
but it's also funny too because then you you'll meet some elderly people who are like,
I love Shepard Smith.
Yeah.
Okay, so then you realize then there's some fox.
Maybe if they're on a spectrum, maybe 10% are of the Shepard Smith ilk.
And then the rest are kind of like whatever in between that.
They like to say in all their advertising,
they imply that there's a firewall between the daytime stuff
and the nighttime Tucker and Laura Ingraham stuff. There was that billboard up in silver lake for a really
long time that was like real news and real honest opinion and so it was like brett bayer is like the
news guy uh and then like hannity and all them are the opinion guys but the reality is they get so
much of the really toxic shit off in the daytime.
Oh, 100%.
It seems more legit because every once in a while they do stuff like shit.
They do the thing where they just allow an quote-unquote expert to come on
or someone who is a former ICE agent and then say wild shit
and don't challenge it and move on,
and that's how they get away with like, okay.
And I didn't say I agreed.
I just let him say that wild stuff.
And now we're moving on to a story about a lost puppy.
Okay.
I mean, there are people who watch ESPN who enjoy both Stephen A. Smith and Scott Van
Pelt.
And it's like, you know, they have wildly differing takes, but it's just, you know,
different sort of flavors, but they're still,
you don't have to always watch and enjoy watching things that have a coherent worldview.
No, yeah.
It's like an off-speed pitch watching Shep Smith. It's like they're downer when they get to relax.
All right, real quick, Trump says I'll end birthright citizenship.
All right, real quick.
No big deal.
We're almost out of time before the break.
Well, I mean, again, this is another thing that, along with Shepard Smith saying this is all happening a week before the midterms,
this is Trump's attempt to try and neutralize a news cycle that is very bad for him right now.
You know, like his polling is going steadily down,
especially after this weekend.
And yeah, now he's trying to take over the news cycle
by saying, I'll fucking alter the Constitution
with an executive order.
Okay, buddy, that's not even possible, my man.
But again, there are people who want to argue
that there are many ways to do this.
And he even said in the Axios interview,
and what's his face, Jonathan Swan?
John Swan.
Yeah, who was like
just shut the fuck up yeah that was the thing that really disturbed me about it because
that uh whole conversation is set off by jonathan swan being like so they say that uh you can't uh
like you're allowed to remove citizenship that's something okay for you to do. That's my Australian.
Pretty good.
He's offering up that this is okay for Trump because he knows that Trump will say some crazy shit.
He's trying to get a soundbite out of it,
but you're also emboldening him
to actually try to do this.
Yeah, that's the thing about Axios.
They love to be around it
and do whatever they gotta do
to stay close to this administration on top of doing fake journalism like this weird interview was.
Yeah.
When Trump says most people don't think I can do this, but now they're saying I can.
Like, how do you not just say who?
Who is they?
Who is they?
But he just instead.
Well, Swan says right after, well, that's under dispute whether you're allowed to do that.
And it's like, dude, you just told him that he could.
You just heavily implied that to get him to start talking.
He, you know, again, and so most people were scoffing, especially like when people look at like even a lot of people, even on the conservative side, are having trouble saying like, I don't even think this Supreme Court would be willing to, like, try and just overturn the 14th Amendment like that.
But as that happened, too, Lindsey Graham, who's in a downward spiral that continues,
he was saying, well, you know, because it has to also be, you know,
legislatively is another avenue to try and attempt this.
He was like, well, I'm going to introduce legislation to end birthright citizenship, too.
He said that today?
Yeah.
He said that yesterday.
But yeah, that was his attempt to try and give legitimacy to this other weird claim that Trump was making.
But again, it's like, my man, even to do that, they would have to get, what, two-thirds of
the majority in Congress and three-quarters of the states to ratify that kind of thing?
Right.
So every attempt to do this is just like, really, it's a head scratcher,
which is why everyone's like,
please, let's not talk about this
because this is just causing a debate
about us talking about, well, can he?
Because the answer is no.
Yeah.
And at best, it would be very, very laborious.
And when really we're talking about,
wait, what's going to happen to entitlement reforms
and things that you're,
what's really at risk for people who are voting against Republicans right now?
You know, like thinking about protecting preexisting conditions or the state of the president's rhetoric.
You know, so that's why most people like let's not get too caught up on this thing.
Yeah, that's the danger of it is crazy.
Obviously, the process is ridiculous that it would take to have it happen but the danger is
the conversation about it will move the window so that you find yourself defending birthright
citizenship and then the compromise becomes something much more awful than what we have now
it's like okay well you know we're not going to remove birthright citizenship but we are going to
stop people from having children in this country uh in this more like draconian way so i mean i don't know i don't
know what you do about it because i think it's a mistake to ignore it in some way like it like it
is like an electoral ploy i think he said last week that on tuesday that he was going to do some
big announcement or something and which is today right it hasn't really come i don't know if it
was moving troops to the border they were talking about shutting the whole thing down right another
another great sensational distraction right but to say like i don't know you can't delegitimize it but you also
can't legitimize it uh i don't know i feel kind of stuck yeah about it like to just not talk about
it then when it happens you're like oh should we have been talking about this well i think it's
just when you think of other times that other people have,
you know, there was a Supreme Court case in the late 19th century where people were talking about
like the Supreme Court ruled that there were children born to Chinese parents in the U.S.
were American citizens. Like time after time, people have gone after this. And it's always
been like, no, this is something that we set out, especially when it came to African slaves of
saying, oh, these slaves, they didn't immigrate here, but they were born on U.S. soil.
Henceforth, they are U.S. citizens.
Like it's a very complicated matter.
And it's not that's why to talk about like, oh, can you do that with an EO or whatever?
thing that is not it's it's so far beyond the realm of what is like possible in a legal aspect that it serves him because now we're all trying to talk about this when most sound legal minds are
like it's this is not this is not possible yeah but it's it's just kind of the hopelessness of
the you know he talks about it he's the, it's news. And he controls the news cycle.
And we're fucked because whatever he's talking about, you have to report the thing that he said.
But you can move on.
At least by the standard rules of how a media is supposed to operate.
But think of how much more severe this is than DACA, which he was seen as kind of being compassionate about for a while
and that was about like children being brought into the country undocumented being allowed to
stay here and become citizens now even unborn children that are like born in this country
have never lived anywhere else right he's talking about them being eligible for uh for being thrown
out so but one was a program that was legislatively
done and one is part of the constitution itself and i think that's the biggest difference is like
the hurdles you have to overcome to wholesale alter the constitution are much it's a different
mountain to climb i know but it's a problem that we're talking about that right uh like basically
saying like well you can't like the process for doing that you would have to go through congress
and you'd have to go through the states.
And, like, him saying, like, okay, you guys are right.
I'll go through Congress to end birthright citizenship.
And then it's like, oh, wait, this wasn't a win that we got.
The fact that he's going through this more legitimate process.
Right, but what I'm saying is even trying to go through Congress is a fool's errand, regardless.
I hope so I saw a lot of people saying on Twitter today like well see you in court for that if you're trying to do that yeah and it's like I don't know like do I really trust that
institution anymore sure sure uh to do the right thing or not just abdicate responsibility like
they did in the Muslim ban I mean like I remember thinking at the time this will never stand up in the Supreme Court.
And it did.
Yeah.
So that's the kind of thing that scares me.
Like having the conversation about process instead of just on moral grounds that this is.
Yeah.
And I think I think there are so many other things to talk about that people can focus on that.
I'll have some actual meaningful discussion about.
But, you know, he's he knows when the news cycle is getting out of his hands and he does stuff like this and he's like oh and we'll also send like 5 000 troops to deploy troops to
the or however many troops you need to deploy to the border and you have all these generals coming
on they're like that's so like why why do this and yeah and if it's just for the thing of like
oh well they'll build tent cities or something it's like you can do that in a much more efficient
way that isn't just you having the optics of sending the army to the southern border.
Right.
That's all.
It's just a moment for people to hang around.
Yeah, that's true.
All right.
We're going to take a quick break.
We'll be right back.
Daphne Caruana Galizia was a Maltese investigative journalist who on October 16th 2017 was murdered.
There are crooks everywhere you look now. The situation is desperate.
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And these are the only two times we know of
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This message is brought to you by the Ad Council. Syrian refugees, no less. Syrian refugees. Yes. Is Syria a part of Manhattan that I'm not aware of?
I don't know what the fuck.
This is for J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg or something?
Yeah.
I just read the headline, and I kept it moving.
I don't know any other details aside from that,
and that was enough for me to know.
Am I missing anything here?
No.
I think Spielberg is interested in this kind of thing because the Shoah Foundation has been doing a lot of work connecting the Syrian refugee experience to what happened to Jewish people decades ago.
And this is the same thing going on now.
So I understand why he wants to tell this story.
Right.
For sure.
Why it's Lena Dunham.
I mean, I don't believe that you have to have experienced something to write about it.
I don't think it has to be like a Syrian refugee writing this script.
Yeah, or else you'd only be writing movies about the 20th century. Yeah.
And she, look, I think the best version of it is she has articulated her experience so deep.
Like she's such an insular writer and like writing about her own stuff all the time.
She's such an insular writer and writing about her own stuff all the time. If she can translate that into fully realize the human reality of being a Syrian refugee,
that would be amazing.
But yeah, it seems unlikely given her track record.
I mean, Dave Eggers was a guy who made his name writing a very up-his-own-ass brand of memoirish writing.
And then he did a pretty good job eventually documenting other people's experiences.
He wrote a really interesting book that he said was like a nonfiction novel called What is What?
What is the What?
Yeah.
fiction novel called what is what uh or what is the what yeah and he wrote zaytoon which he admitted was non-fiction about a immigrant in new orleans who goes around saving people during
hurricane katrina and the aftermath and then is put in prison and like suspected of terrorism
for just being basically a brown person in
new Orleans because Katrina was so fucked up.
But anyways,
I mean,
I don't know.
Maybe that's like the aspirational version of this is that she has kind of
realized that she's tapped out of stuff about her own life and is ready to
move on to the next thing.
I mean,
go write a story about how OBJ fucking curved you.
You know what I mean?
Write that script.
I just feel like it's, for something as, like, so nuanced
than, like, about this Syrian refugee experience,
at the very least, I agree that she has talent as a writer
and things like that, but I feel like this can't be
the only option to do this.
And not that it can't be Lena Dunham,
but it just, it was a chin rubber
for me right sure yeah no absolutely i mean but i think yeah that's like the best evolution of
her career is just taking her like command of language just being like a good communicator
and translating into someone who can adapt someone else's story really well and effectively but there is also a catastrophically bad version of it just
unimaginably awful and i feel like that tends to be like i root for her because i don't know i i
liked parts of girls and you know i always root for like a a young writer and there's just always
whenever she kind of puts a political point of view out there,
it's just, I always end up with my hand on my forehead a little bit.
But all those things have had her at the center of them.
Right.
Right?
That's true, yeah.
All this stuff with, like, whatever, her dog and, like, the OBJ thing.
It's all, like, her centering herself in a way that is, like, kind of gross.
It's going to be hard to do that with this script.
So maybe it's the best thing she could be doing.
How is she going to research this?
The book, I mean, right?
Journalism, I'd imagine.
But you think she's going to go and live that life or something
to try and really get that firsthand experience?
No.
Because like, also you're writing a story about oppressed people and I'm hard, I'm hardly
seeing her experience with being oppressed.
No.
And how that translates.
Like, not to say that you, again, you have to be on one side or the other to write honestly
about that, but I don't know, like we're, we're trying to advance a little bit and I
feel like this is an opportunity for
maybe other people to be able to do this in a way that gets the the whole thing out but who knows
if she's being like no i'm going to aleppo and i'm going to see what's good and you know really
i'm gonna take eight months yeah and travel by boat and and just live with these people
okay what other people are there besides Lena Dunham, though? Yeah.
At the very least, I feel like, Lena, what you have to do is go to Greece, go to the beach where the boats are coming in.
And just spend a week there helping people get off the boats and stuff. I know Hollywood people who have done this and been like, it's this incredible, crazy experience.
I've done this.
Right.
Yeah.
And been like,
is this like incredible,
like crazy experience.
You don't have to go to Aleppo, but you do have to get out there in a private way too.
I mean,
like,
you know,
not in a way that is like,
don't Lindsay Lohan it up.
Right.
And like,
I'm going live.
Tell the people of America,
what do you want?
And I will give it to you.
What is your Venmo?
I'll get it to you.
What do you want?
Birkin bag.
And I'm like, why are you talking with that accent? you talking about that accident then we find out that she goes over there and we realize there's
like something in the water or like a sod has like gotten to them and like is actually uh like
whatever chemically brainwashed them to go over to their side you're like oh so that's like you
just become like the same whatever pod person that Lindsay Lohan is now.
Right.
Oh, Lena.
You know, we'll see what happens.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
Hope for the best.
It's a project we'll get to keep an eye on because it's happening out loud in public and we know the writer.
What about Halloween costumes?
You guys doing anything for Halloween?
Dressing up?
I, no.
I'm going to hand out candy.
And I'm going to hand them out bygone era
candy.
I'm going to hand out squeeze-its and Mondo
drinks. Remember Mondo?
Mondo was like a squeeze-it,
but it had a weird flat top
that you would snap off.
I got old Fruitopias on my handout.
I'm just like, I don't know about this.
Sobeys.
Yeah, exactly. Sobe this. Sobe. Yeah, exactly.
Sobe.
Sobe.
Sobe.
The carrot one.
What was the off-brand, the third brand, not Gatorade, not Powerade?
Was it Allsport?
Allsport.
That was like carbonated sports beverage?
That's right.
It had like little fins to it.
Yeah.
The thing about Sobe was that it was unfinishably huge.
Like those bottles were just like so giant and it was kind of thick in a way that sort of made it feel like a meal in a bad
way uh and so i always was throwing out the last third of that so that yeah and like old naya water
bottles remember naya uh anyway i don't know i think i'm just gonna hand out candy i got they
have glow-in-the-dark candy, which I haven't opened up yet.
I just saw it at the store, and it's like glow-in-the-dark Hershey's.
I don't know if the candy itself is glow-in-the-dark or it's the packaging.
It's got to be the packaging.
I haven't opened it up.
I mean, they've had glow-in-the-dark worms, like those gummy worms, for years.
I'm old.
So what do I know?
How about you, Hayes?
I'm not doing anything.
The idea I have now, what kids seem to like more is savory stuff.
They love Hot Cheetos.
Hot Cheetos and Takis.
Yes.
Instead of candy now, it's savory snacks.
So maybe if I really want to give the kids a thrill this Halloween.
Roast up a prime rib.
A little carving station.
A little rosemary.
They're like, would you like a more rare or well done side?
Okay, you're going to love this.
This is actually Australian Wagyu beef.
Just loose in the bag with all their big slab of meat.
And you're like, would you like some jus on there?
Horseradish?
Carving station is such a good idea.
Dude, a carving station.
So you just watch the kids just go by,
not making eye contact with you.
No, no, okay.
Just the really thirsty chef at a buffet.
At a buffet.
Why is no one coming to the station?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, and for you, young lad, I have moussaka.
You're going to love this.
Did you guys see the little girl's costume?
The headless little girl?
Oh, yeah.
I did see that one.
It's a costume that I think people have probably seen before
where the actual head looks like it's on a plate
and then there's an apparatus above it that makes it look like it's on a plate, and then there's an apparatus above it
that makes it look like it's a headless body
carrying the head on a plate,
but it's just the most...
And then you find out this is a physical deformity she has,
and you're like, oh, no, I'm so sorry.
Oh, your head is actually coming out of your chest.
Like total recall and shit?
Yeah, it's good for you taking ownership of it.
The proportions don't make sense in the costume.
That's why, like, I was...
Well, I like how when, apropos nothing this morning, you go, yo, did you see this little
girl's costume?
Yo, it's such a good costume.
No, but I didn't know what the fuck you were talking about.
So I'm like, what do you mean?
I was like, oh, shit, some blackface nonsense or some shit.
And it was a thing I had signed.
I was like, oh, yeah. But you were sincerely or some shit. And it was a thing I had saw, and I was like, oh, yeah.
But you were sincerely, like, you were really mesmerized by this.
And you're like, damn.
And then they put the candy, like, in the neck hole.
I know.
Yeah.
I'm just a fan.
I mean, that feels like one of those costumes that a parent does to, like, show their kid off.
The worst ones are when they dress them up as something that they, the parents are fans of, like their favorite whatever,
like podcast host or something.
But you see on your turn of views, you're like, do not do this.
Stop doing this.
And have people dressed their kids up as you?
Never kids, thank God.
Some adults occasionally, but I see like whatever,
some like barstool sports hosts,
you like dress your kid up as that.
And a kid has to grow up and be like,
what did you just learn?
How old were you when you were a kid?
Oh yeah, I was PFT commenter or whatever.
Don't do that to your children.
And finally, I want to talk about Crunch Cup,
which is a new invention
that is being sent around on the internet.
Not really, but it's something that's got a little heat.
It's a cup that's meant to allow you to eat cereal on the go
without having your cereal get soggy,
so it keeps the milk and the cereal separate.
It's not clear at all how it creates the bites
that have both the milk and the cereal in it. Well I think
it basically has like a
I don't know.
I think it just feels like you're going to be drinking
more milk than you get cereal. Like the idea
is that when you move the cup to sip
gravity will pull the little
cereal morsels to your mouth.
That's not going to work. And then the milk is coming
around the bottom lip of the cup and then you just mix
it in your mouth and eat it. Yeah. Which I get it. It's a good It looks. And then the milk is coming around the bottom lip of the cup, and then you just mix it in your mouth and eat it.
Yeah.
Which, I get it.
It's a good...
It looks like something the first time you used it, you'll want to lay out a tarp in your house because it's going to go really wrong.
Like eating lobster, you put a bib on or some shit.
For all of us who eat lobster on the regular.
But, yeah, I think what got Jack really pissed off is I was like, yo, you're about this crunch cup?
Because I just thought the idea itself was sort of interesting.
Yeah, no, it's super intriguing.
I love cereal.
How do I eliminate bowl and spoon?
You know what I mean?
You just do it in a cup so you could look extra juvenile.
So we go to the Kickstarter page.
And, you know, we all know Kickstarter is the key to a sick starter is a dope fucking video.
Yes.
And this video is just so annoying.
Like, it's done in this 80s way.
Here, I'm just going to show you a little bit, Hayes,
just so you can kind of get an idea of, like,
what we're talking about.
Uh-huh, okay.
It starts off with, like, a VHS thing.
Yeah.
Cool.
It's a bygone era.
Like, oh, wow, real cool 80s graphics.
That aesthetic is very big now.
I know, and then you get...
They lose that 80s thing almost immediately. Yeah, use a
fucking filter on the camera. Come on.
Your DP not know how to make this look 80s?
It feels like one of those products in the
aftermath of the
blanket, the Snuggie
and the ShamWow and things
that were not intentionally
stupid, but millions of people
bought as a joke, and now
they're doing it on purpose stupid
products this crunch cup i got you one of these that's the kind of sale right right and try to
make and the video is meant to be as sarcastic and sort of self-aware as possible like wacky
and it's almost specifically done you can tell that they looked at that dollar shave club viral
video and we're just like that is what we want from you
ad agency hold on that video fucked every like business owner up because when i was like doing
like digital content for companies so many people were like we just need like that dollar shave club
video it's not gonna work it was the only touchstone people my whole reason for bringing
this up is i just want anybody who is anywhere
involved in the launch of a private like that is not gonna work guys that happened it's over it's
not gonna work for you and you're gonna end up fucking your product up and fucking your product
launch up like this specific product they don't bother to show you like how the mouthful is created so it could just be yeah and
they spend their time instead like the scientist at one point has like a horse
mask on for no reason that like doesn't come back the 80s thing doesn't come
back like it's just like throw every wacky idea at the wall so you've just
gotten you have more notes for the people who are behind this.
No, but it's just we've seen this before.
Yeah, the desire to launch a product off some-
Like in a wacky viral video that is trying to recapture that Dollar Shave Club thing.
Dollar Shave Club can't even recapture that Dollar Shave Club.
But you have to do this now because every product that we need exists.
Right.
And so you can't create something
that people will actually buy out of necessity so it has to be for some joke reason like you can
only launch like a joke product but i guess don't do the sarcastic guy who's walking around a lab
being like this shit is dope right it might work on on VCs or something where you can just get flush with VC money and just
cut and run, basically.
They're like, dude, it was like the Dollar Shave Club video.
Yeah.
I'm getting in.
You getting in?
I'm getting in.
Right.
It's like these 60-year-old guys that are like, oh, OK.
Wow.
So they like this.
Millennials like this?
OK.
And that was just, I don't know what they mean by one long shot.
So that was, I thought it was one video.
No, no, no camera, forget it.
You're fucking money, assholes.
Yeah, maybe this is just offensive to me as somebody who watches.
But I think it is because the thing that upsets us is that it's the lack of ingenuity about it.
Like, you're just following the mold of this other thing that's already dated.
But yeah, like you say, Hayes, like, you do need something to kind of separate yourself from, like, the rest of this other thing that's already dated. But yeah, like you say, Hayes, you do need something to kind of separate yourself from
the rest of the herd.
And of course, there are a million ways to do a product video.
You just don't have to do the version that's a guy talking to camera, walking around a
lab, and doing all this tongue-in-cheek shit.
Pull us into thinking Justin Bieber doesn't know how to eat a burrito.
That's how to launch a product.
And those guys, I know everybody on the internet was like,
you guys, it was fake.
Bruh, if y'all were listening to the show,
I said off top that we don't know if it was Justin Bieber, okay?
So thank you.
Yes, the YouTubers got some of us,
but I knew his knees were too hairy for it to be Justin Bieber.
Hayes, it's been a pleasure having you, man. Thank you, guys.
Appreciate it.
Where can people find you, listen to you?
God, so many podcasts now. It's sick. pleasure having you. Thank you guys. Appreciate it. Where can people find you, listen to you? God, so many podcasts now.
It's sick.
Hollywood Handbook.
You've got an illness, man.
Yeah.
Once you got that Zoom H6, it's hard to turn it off.
Hollywood Handbook, LA Podcast, and doing an NBA show now on Patreon called The Flagrant Ones.
Yeah.
Or The Flagrant Ones. Yeah. Or The Flagrant Ones.
Yeah, Flagrant One.
It's a play on words for NBA fans in particular.
Those are the shows.
Awesome.
And are you on Twitter?
Yeah, I'm on it all the time.
I set screen time to an hour a day, and I don't even see that alert come up anymore.
There you go.
Where my thumb is just blasting it away before I can even register that it come up anymore. There you go. Where my thumb is just blasting it away
before I can even register that it's come up.
Screen time is a great little thing.
If it worked, it would be amazing.
I was like, oh, this is going to change my life.
I'm only going to do an hour on Twitter a day?
That's incredible.
No.
No.
At Hayes Davenport.
All right.
And is there a tweet that you've been enjoying from Twitter?
From somebody else?
It can be from you, from somebody else, just
any tweet.
No. Okay.
All of them and none of them. Yes, there
you go. You can find me on
Twitter and Instagram at
milesofgray
G-R-A-Y.
And a couple of things I liked on Twitter.
The tweet I liked today was from Dan White that Jack first found and then I got into,
and his tweets are just so fucking funny, at Dan White, A-T-D-A-N-W-H-I-T-E.
It's a photo of like those little koala bear care folding stations, like a baby changing station.
Yeah.
And it says, RT, if you use these as a fold-out bench
when you don't have to go to the bathroom
but want to sit and talk slash chill with your boys
while they blow out the bathroom stalls.
I like that.
We've all been there, man.
Just a guy casually posting up on that.
Yeah.
Feet dangling off the side. They're like, there, man. Just a guy casually posting up on there. Yeah. Just like chilling. Feet dangling off the side.
They're like, yeah, dude.
I told you.
Don't get that Kung Pao chicken, man.
Pressing the air dryer button for your friends so they don't have to get their hands dirty.
It's like, no, dude.
I got it.
I got it, dude.
I used my elbow.
Like the Fodds.
Tweet I've been enjoying is Adam Todd Brown tweeted something I didn't know that he said.
They're laughing it up on Monday Night Football because Tom Brady is just now approaching 1,000 yards for his career.
So this is a great time to roll out my fave sports fact.
Dan Marino rushed for 87 yards in his entire career.
Oh, that's cool.
That's amazing.
Oh, my God.
87 yards full career. Stay in that's cool. That's amazing. Oh, my God. 87 yards full career.
Stay in that pocket, boy.
Yeah.
He's at Adam Todd Brown on Twitter.
And then Julian McCullough tweeted,
what they don't tell you is that they were rated out of a maroon 10.
There's a YouTube thing I like based on Dan Marino.
Have you seen Dan Marino freaks out?
No.
That's one of my favorites.
It's like a 15-second clip of Dan Marino trying to say something on like an on Dan Marino. Have you seen Dan Marino Freaks Out? No. That's one of my favorites. It's like a 15 second clip
of Dan Marino trying to say something on like
an NFL Sunday like panel show
and like stumbling over his words
and just having like a
momentary like rage attack where
everyone else at the table is like whoa.
Wow.
Alright. I'm gonna watch
that immediately. You can follow me
on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. You can follow me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien.
You can follow us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist.
We're at The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram.
We have a Facebook fan page and a website, DailyZeitgeist.com,
where we post our episodes and our footnotes,
where we link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode,
as well as the song we ride out on.
You can also find that information in the show notes.
Show notes.
Show notes. And, Miles, what song are we going to ride out on. You can also find that information in the show notes. Show notes. And Miles, what song are we going to ride out on?
So today I heard a track that, you know, because it's fall,
you know, and the seasons are changing. Being in LA, we don't really get that
so much. And we were just talking, I was just talking to super producer Nick, who was
in New York, talking about how it really feels like fall and how much I long for that
feeling. I'm like forcing on a sweatshirt already when it's like 80 degrees outside. So this track is called
81 Autumn by Uyama Hiroto and it's like a little sample based track but if I don't know when I
listen to it I feel like it's fall. I wish I had a blanket on or something and it just puts me in
that fall mood and that's not often. Usually I'm out here saying it's gonna make your big toe shoot up in your boot well you know what it's gonna make
your pumpkin spices all spicy so just take this one in it's 81 auto the year 81 is that what it's
for i guess i don't know temperature 81 well that's what we're experiencing the year 81 is
getting a lot of run on today's podcast yeah Yeah. I should just point out. Because your AKA came from somebody who was born in 81.
Oh, yeah.
Whoa.
You numbers guy over here.
Fucking Mercury Rising.
Yeah.
I'm like Rain Man, but only about the number 81.
Yeah, I'm about 81.
I'm excited for it.
You need a fall walking around song.
Exactly.
Mine historically is Magic by The Cars, which Patty Moe, Patrick Monaghan on Twitter,
recommended, and it really works in New York and Boston and stuff.
Sure, sure, sure, yeah.
Out here, it sucks.
The only thing that's brown is the area.
But you gotta pretend.
Alright, we're gonna ride out on that.
We will be back tomorrow
because it is a daily podcast.
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