Is It A Crime?

one one six two oh two five. Sometimes it's fun to go one one one six two oh two five. People have no idea what to do. My number, of course, it is six three one nine three five six two fa people, wait, wait, wait, do that again. We're just creatures of habit. Speaking of creatures of habit, I am. When there's a new guy that comes on the on the scene in Hollywood, I'm always a little let's wait

a minute. I get very judgmental. Glenn Powell, for instance, very handsome guy, square jord guy comes out of the forties and fifties in terms of this is the way a guy in Hollywood is supposed to look, tall, chiseled, good physique, great face, great smile. Physical comedy is his forte as well. And I got to tell you I didn't like him to begin with, but you know what, I watched SNL last night. Well I knew this before I watched SNL, but I've made room in my life

at Glenn Powell. I didn't like him, especially when it was said that he was banging Sidney Sweeney, who we all know is my internet girlfriend. I didn't like that. I know between her and I there's a bunch of years as an age discrepancy, of course, but what she likes about me you can't measure in birthdays. It's just something I possess. So she's been, you know, into me. We've kept it very quiet. We're going slow because listen, I just got out of a relationship. I'm going to

rush into the next one. I mean how famous she is, but you know, I told her she could maybe lose a little weight, and you know she's obliging. Cold. You imagine cold, You imagine being a guy that's rumored to be banging Sydney Sweeney. He probably did. When you look at the movie they made a couple of years ago, and you realize she was about to leave her fiance who was very too controlling. But I don't know what else.

I mean, this poor bastard. You land a girl like her, and Hollywood takes her in and suddenly she's whipping her top off every week on Euphoria and she's getting laid by all that. I mean, your wife's about to get crazy. And then Hollywood saw and the public saw just how sexy she can act on top of being sexy. Oh, forget about it, this chit is gonna go so far. Forget that her last movie about the female boxer bombed. That's because nobody wants to see her in anything that

doesn't show her assets. She's got to do that for a number of years. When she's in her forties, then she can do those roles where who she really got deep into the character, you know that, Not until she could play somebody with leprosy when she's forty eight. But right now, just smile, show your tits, show your ass. You're gonna make tens and tens of millions. She knows this, But Glenn pal didn't like him because I thought he's

banging Sydney Sweeney. That bastard, that lucky motherfucker. That's the way guys are. We can't stand that that someone's getting to a spot. We want to get to it, even if it's inconceivable how we get there. And if you guy like me who's done the impossible, you still think, well, you know, I mean, I've done crazy. There might be a chance. I know this not but you tell yourself that. But anyhow, this guy, I've watched him when it was Hulu show. I watched the last few movies he's done.

I gotta tell you it's pretty funny. He's got good comedy chops. So I've let him. I've opened up room in my life for Glenn Powell. I never thought I would, and now I like him. I wish he was with Sidney Sweeney and not that Scooter Braun pussy. So you see how weird life gets complete what eighty like I did with Trump, wanted to kill him, told him I'd kill him on national radio. And now I'd throw myself in front of a bullet for the guy. Yes I would. I know a lot of you maybe disillusion but I

don't give a shit. I love that guy. I love what he stands for, and I like America being run by him. I'm sorry it's me, but I'll tell you who became a big star the other night. I've been watching SNL since nineteen seventy five. I watched the first episode as a thirteen year old kid. We're fishing the next morning, Sunday morning, on the Great South Bay, Eat my father, my brother in law's Jack and Frankie, and

we had all the tools. We were fishing for flounder, which is like we call a chicken of the sea, just a great white meat fish. The bay was crystal clear back then, before the fertilizers and bullshit from all neighborhoods ran off into the sewers and got pumped into the beautiful bay. But back then it was an oasis. You could see the bottom seven feet down. We'd move our bait if a flounder was too small, and flounders weren't easy to see because they lay on the bay

floor like carpets. But sometimes they move and the colors on their back they all these these little it looks like snowflakes. They turned white when they move. It's beautiful like a trout looks like a rainbow. When you're fishing flounder and fluke had these white spots on their back that come to life when they moved. So we're plunging the bottom with We had big poles from our pools, vacuum fingers, and we put toilet plunges so we'd make

the bottom get all up tunded. And founder of swimming all over the place and smelling baity threw corn in there for chum, and we come back with fifteen twenty twenty five flounder. Give it to the neighbors. My mother was frying all Sunday afternoon. We're on the boat, Jack says pop A J. Franket, you gotta watch this Saturday Night Live. What a show. I did watch it, and I watched it ever since, and people give me shit. It's the worst show on DV No. I always find

something to laugh at once, twice, maybe three times. I know, some years as slim pickens, I get it. But if you remember nineteen seventy five with the big cast, you know Belushi, Gilda Radner, dan Aykroy, Bill Murray, you name it, Loraine Newman, Garrett Morris. And then five years later I'm in high school and it's Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo and that whole crew. That's what I really took off with it because Eddie was like almost my age, and these guys are comparable to the age I was some

of them, so it got really surreal. But I love the show and Jack Stalmers, you gotta watch it, so I always watch it. And I saw something last night that I know is going to matter in this guy's life, whether he knows it or not. But there's a sketch not ready for prime Time player named Marcello Hernandez. Actually it's Marcello Andre Hernandez Gondas, but he goes Marcello. He is so funny. Every sketch he does is good. He

gives his all on everything. But last night he played Sebastian Maniscalco in a sketch and he showed his physical comedy because that's what Sebastian does when he's on stage, and this kid destroyed. It wasn't the best sketch, but it was funny, but he the way he acted made me say, you know what this kid. This kid is like Dana Carvey, Will Ferrell, Molly Shannon, I'm talking physical comedy, Kristen Wick, Kate, Kate McKinnon, Sherry oh Terry my God.

With the Cheerleader sketch with Will Ferrell, Jason sudeik is dancing on What's up with that? What's up with that? O? Great shows? So I know you're gonna give me ship because somebody you say, why are you watching that crowd? It's all a bunch of liberals. I get it. I know. I even watched. You know, when I watch Weekend up making ship, they say about Trump. Look, it's okay. Let them have their time, let them make their big uppercuts and right crosses. It doesn't matter in the long run,

but I laugh. If it's once or twice a night for ninety minutes, that's good enough for me. Sorry, water break, but yeah he will. He is now going to get so many offers for comedies. I'm sure he already has, but it's gonna be even bigger for my cellovern enderes. Let me turn it to a sad story. I wasn't a Dawson's Creek fan. I was too busy back in the day, just building my life and going out every

single night. But I did see Varsity Blues, you know, because I'm a sucker for I love a great football movie, and I know you know James Anderbeek was a Dawson's Creek guy, also in Varsity Blues, and I love that movie. I love the book and one of my top twenty movies of all time. I really think I love a great football movie or bad. I love a good sports movie.

Not because the acting was so great, but it's because what it harkens back to, back to life in high school and how it was both hard at times to negotiate, but it was also wonderful to navigate those days. And I feel like that way of life right now is not going on for our sons and daughters. Is that's or bad to me? It's bad to you? You might say, good, I don't know my kids doing anything crazy. Yeah, but you can't coddle them every single day of the week,

every hour of the day. They've got to go off and make mistakes. That's the beauty about being young, that the world lets you go out and be stupid and make mistakes, hopefully not too bad. But you make mistakes, you learn, you come back, you regroup, and you live life. And you just thought to bust open the seams of this young little d doll. You were in the hopes of building yourself up to be a person that's needs to be seen and loved and heard. And you know,

I love those days. My buddy, Tony, Tony Botch was mentioning to me how our lives were different back then. You know, how we'd go out after games, even after practice in high school. You know, we'd head to the city at sixteen, seventeen years old. Oh you know, we had one or two friends in that car. If that's all we needed five bucks of gas, maybe ten, we

were good to go. And we would just head to the city hoping to see something, hoping to see anything, just as long as we were a part of that world for a couple hours, just to see the city, the skyscrapers, the junkies, the hohrrors, the pimps, the cops, hear the sirens, the yelling and the screaming, all of it. It was so different from the tiny, perfect town we lived in fifty miles away. That our parents were wonderful enough and lucky enough to spot and make a home

for all of us. So Tony was talking about we were both talking about the rituals back then. You know, I don't think these rituals are still going on. I mean, the world has changed. I know COVID. COVID was a big factor with these kids developing, for sure. And we used to have our fun. We'd go to a club. Maybe between the four of us we had thirty forty bucks. I'm telling you that's all we needed, maybe less. Like you know what, we allowed ourselves to feel that way.

We allowed ourselves to feel like we were rich. We could do anything. But there were many nights where things happened that we never imagine happening to us, and that was so exhilarating. It was also scary because you got to take those memories back home and head to school the next morning. Not many kids are doing that now, but we felt like it made us grow. We felt like we were getting older and smarter. We felt like

we aged ten years. After one night, driving through the Midtown total and coming back, it made us feel like somehow we'd surpassed all those in our class in terms of the kind of times we were having. The blasts we had just we weren't wasted a minute of our precious lives. And once we headed from along nightclub or the city, we'd inevitably pull into a diner do these kids still go to a diner. The fucking diners are

the best. And we finished the night eating dan romletz or cheese fries with gravy, anything that was great to soak up the alcohol from several hours before. And we continue to swap stories of what just happened, you know, earlier that evening. It wasn't stop, and we'd laughed so hard that whoever was in the diner would kind of turn their chairs toward us to see what else we were gonna say, or how wild we were going to get. Who's standing up on a chair, who's putting an ang

on his face? Just stupid high school shit. Now fast forward several years after high school. I'm with Chico and our buddy Johnny Diaz, who's getting married the next morning. We're upstate New York. I forget the town. I think it was like near Lake George or some shit, which might as well be Kansas. If you're from Low Island and New York City. Upstate New York is like Oklahoma. We don't consider it New York. Apple orchards, long highways, hills.

It's not like us. So we're driving around and the only option for food was it was like after midnight, maybe one o'clock, and is a Denny's. All right, we've gotta be up in five hours. Let's finish the night with sandwich whatever the fuck, you know, we'll be fine. The waitress was taken forever, we'd already ordered our food.

It wasn't a fault. There was a bunch of drunks sitting down being too demanding, And at some point Chico had enough of waiting and he says to the waitress, listen, honey, if I don't get my moon over my hammy in the next five minutes, I'm gonna shoot holes through the roof. And you know I'm doing my best. She kind of heard it, but didn't hear it. But I knew Chico. I knew what he meant he was gonna do. He's got the gun in his waistband. I didn't know what

it turned. Four minutes goes by, five minutes goes by, well, well into the seventh minute, Chico takes out of his gun and fires two shots into the ceiling and he yells, I bet you making my eggs now? Am I? Right? Whole place went bananas me. We all run out of there. Now. You would think that's enough. Go home, cut your losses. Don't beat a dead horse. All those sayings you said when you let's just go back. No. On the way home, we see a small bar, like a real dive bar joint.

We barked. We walk in. There was some karaoke shit going on. There was a little DJ to the right, jammed against the wall, maybe fifty sixty people in there. We walk in. We are the three drinks. Now we should have went home. We should have drank those drinks quickly and headed back to the hotel, maybe four or five miles away. But we didn't do that. Chico felt like we had enough to talk about at the next

day's when. So at some point Chico grabs me and says, I'm gonna go to the bar and get shots for everybody. Come on, now, I'm gonna do it. Pop, I got the money, don't worry about that. But when I do that, just when we're about to drink the shots, pull that blue pluck. See that blue plug to the next to the detail, Yeah, pull that out and then get the fuck out of here. I'll be wrapped behind you with Johnny. Oh, Chico, come on, can we just go? Come on, come, on

do it. He goes to the ball order shots to everybody in the house. The place is going bananas. The bartender and she's a shoot girl. She's so thrilled. She's on the bar pouring a bunch of shots. The waitresses are coming with the shots on the tray. Everybody so hip, hip parade, Chico, You're the best, that kind of shit. As soon as they throw back the shots, I pulled the plug out. Boom everything. I don't know how Chico knew. I don't know what his criminal brain knew, but he

knew that plug controlled. So the lights went out, the karaoke machine done, DJ soundless. There's nothing going on but a bunch of people yelling. It was a calamity. And me, Chico and Johnny run out three o'clock in the morning. Just sick, stupid, insane fun. But that was us. And I wonder is it's still happening with the younger generation

or are they all still into their fucking phones. But you know me, I love to reminisce about high school days and those days right after high school, mostly with the football team, which had the craziest guys in school. Speaking of which, talking about football, this is a sad story. James Vanderbeek is auctioning off merchandise from his time on Dawson's Creek because he's got to pay for cancer treatments. I hate these stories, and all the proceeds from the

auction are going to go toward his treatment. And the things he's put up for sale is both wardrobe and props from the show. There's a sweater in his shirt he wore in the pilot and a necklace that Katie Holmes gave him. There's also a Spielberg themed room decors with an et plushy and an Indiana Jones poster that's put together in a bundle. He also included his cleats and the hat he wore in the film Varsity Blues.

Listen just him, He and Ali Larder. You know when she came out with the whig cream on her tits and the cherries on her nipples and the whig cream downstairs. That was a great moment in films, I mean in film history, that was fantastic. Ali Lauter is sexy as she looked at Now Are You Kicked? Twenty six years later on land Man with Billy Bob Thorton, she's ten times hotter. Oh my god, Ali latter is tremendous. I wrote screenplays with her and mind back in the day

Herr and Jamie Presley. Now Ali Lader, Oh my god, chilling, watch Landman. So this auction is in early December because James said he was storing all these treasures up for years and waiting for the right time to do something with them, and unfortunately it's got to be because he's got cancer and these treatments are going to be very expensive. And he said, well, I have some nostalgia tugging at

me as I part with these items. It feels good to be able to offer them through this auction to share with those who have supported my work over the years. I understand what he's saying, but that's a very heavy, sad sentence because he knows what it means that he might be gone. I saw a video on Instagram the great quarterback Bernie Cosar who played for the Cleveland Browns.

Bernie was a terrific quarterback and he's sick with cancer and he's on Instagram I'm talking and being as wide awake and energetic as he can be with these treatments coming up. The guy is so thin, you know, cancer thin, thin in the face, thin like that's you know what I'm talking about. It's a horrible thing to see. But he's out there putting his best foot forward. And I think Van Derby is right there, if not beyond that.

But he said, there's no playbook, playbook on how announced these things, but I want to raise awareness and tell my story. Said, I don't like this stuff. I mean, these kids are younger than me and they're they're dying, and it just gets you. I knew when he missed there was a stage reading. They were reading a Dustin's Creek pilot episode on stage to raise funds for his treatment a couple of months ago. Well, these stomach viruses

he was getting and he couldn't do it. So Lynn Manuel Miranda did it, and those things just said, it's sad how it ends for a lot of people, you know, having to sell off memorabilia. But then part of me is confused. You know, Van der Beiek has been acting in Hollywood for what twenty five thirty years. I'm not saying he's a multi multi millionaire, but I'm sure he's got great insurance and some money saved he's got properties out.

I'm not sure why this needs to happen. It's one thing to sell memorabilia to get you know, your fans involved and all the things that you brought us. But I feel like this is more about money to help with the treatments. And that's you know, same thing happened to the Francis fort Coppola. He's not sick, but he's selling off a bunch of very expensive wriskwatches he has

from his personal collection. He's got this one piece work over a million dollars and he's selling the shit because he lost so much of his wealth financing this movie, Megalopolis, that was in the pipeline for decades, was a passion project and it didn't do well. Like a lot of Francis for a Copla films, give it time and in the future you'll look at this movie and go, you know what, Ashley, it's a very good film. But films are weird sometimes Sometimes the ear they hit they don't

really hit people the way they should. But wait a few years, like a great book or a great album, and suddenly you realize, Wow, there's genius in this song, this genius in this book, this genius in this movie, but a any six year man who's been a tremendous Hollywood star. He invested one hundred and twenty million of his own dollars into making this movie. The science fiction movie it only grows fourteen million. He put one hundred and twenty in fourteen point three million. Broke them. He's

broken now. Seven of his watches were up for sale first week of December, and he said, I need money to keep the ship afloat. I love when guys though just that honest, I need money to keep the ship afloat. Wow, don't ask me the names of the watches, because I don't care. I'm not a watch guy. I know Copola designed one or two or three of these themselves. I got no time for watches. Pardon the punt. I think watchers look great on some people, you know, depending on

the guy, they look fucking fantastic. Like when I travel sometimes with Mike Agavino on airplanes, Mike wears a blazer, jeans, belt, blazer and ice shoes. Me, I'm in sweatpants, T shirt, you know, a hoodie, fucking crocs. I fly comfortably. Mike old business looks great. Watch on his wrists. Don't know what it costs, but he looks put together. I don't look that way. I got eight bracelets on my wrist. That's what I like more. They're not worth anything, they're worthless,

but to me, they're very valuable. And I got my phone. I know what time it is all the time. Plus, I'm one of these sick fucking retarts where I know what time it is by. I'm always within five minutes at the time. You can ask me eight hours from now, I'll know it within five minutes. I have this thing in my head. Maybe some of you do too, The minutes tick by, the hours tick by. It. I just know it's about five point fifteen. Nope, five twelve, I

know it. Chico love by Buddy. Chico loved expensive watchers, of course he did. He had about five. One night. We're in Vegas, right, He's playing four hands a black jet. He's alone at the table, He's got four hands standing up. He's got a red smoking jacket, leopard skin shoes. He looked like Hugh Hefner. You gotta watch on his wrist that he said eighty thousand dollars, and you know, a

crowd gathered around him. Because he's making noise, he's winning, he's doubling down, he's this and that blackjack, and a crowd gathers. One of the guys who gathered around was the NBA Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony, an ex New York nick and he's watching Chico and he taps Chico on his shoulder, said my man, I'll give you fifty grand cares for that watch right now. And Chico said to him, go away, you bother me Carmelo, and Carmelo laughed and backed up. But I wather on my bracelets.

I think they're just to me, they're more valuable. I don't know. I don't know, but I will say this. I am going to uh give my fourth chapter this week on my upcoming book, Fame Adjacent on Substack, just so you know the book is not obviously he's not published, but I'm doing in these chapters every week or so to get you folks interested in the full book. These

are all my stories mainly about Los Angeles. There are some that bridge the gap between New York and LA, but primarily there are LA stories about the shoulders I rubbed up against and the fame I was adjacent to for the last twenty five twenty seven years. But in addition to that, you know, I do a Patreon every day that I wish most of you people would sign up for to make my army bigger. But in the meantime, I'll do one free show a week and the relationships

and theirs. Also, every data is a bit so you can keep tabs on me all the time. It's almost overdosing on me. But I will leave you one more story because I'm watching TV a lot, and somehow I got the Peacock channel. I don't even know why I got Peacock, but I like Peacock. As Sunday mornings, I can watch SNL the repeat in case I fall asleep, which I normally do on nights before it even begins because I'm old now. But I realized that Peacock has decided not to renew this show called poker Face for

its third season. Have you seen poker Face? Natasha leone. She's great, she's made a great comeback, and the show's fun, but she's leaving as the star. And now there's a mystery ahead for who's going to be the show's signature character. And the word is Peter Dinklice. The dwarf is taking over Natasha Leone's role as Charlie, who's basically a sleuth who has these superpowers to detect liars immediately, which I

kind of have myself, but this was designed. It's very much Natasha Leone is basically playing Peter Fox's character in Colombo. That's what it really is. She's a former casino worker and she's really good at call him bullshit. She understands when she witnesses crime, she knows who did it. She's got to go on the land because she knows that she should know. It's a funny story and it's she's the perfect star for this vehicle. I don't want to think about Peter Dinglich in this. I don't like Peter

Dinkligen anything, you know. I have a hm. I can't help it. I don't. I can't look at dwarfs or midgets and feel comfortable. I never watch Game of Thrones because I refuse to believe that this little three foot tall guy is what a great actor, he's the best part of the show. I don't want to hear it. I can't. There's not a midget or a dwarf in the world who I have to sit up and look at and take notice of. No, no midget or dwarf

has blown me away. Just stop it. Peter Tinglojack's like he's the best thingsince sliced bread because there's only one of them in Hollywood. If there were thirty of them, he wouldn't act this way. But he's the main gazine and he asked us way. I can't stand it. I only kept Peacock to watch the show poker Face because she's great at it. But you know, doing Colombo, you guys, man, I don't know how. I mean, some of your people never saw the TV show Columbo with the great Peter Falk.

Oh my god, he'd walk in with a trench coat and the notepad and just solved crime. He always knew who was guilty immediately. Anybody who watched Colombo, the repeats are playing now. Anybody who watches Columbo, we know the murderer or the bad person within the first ten minutes, and then Peter Fawk just chips away and chips away until it's uncanny that that's the guy, Oh that's the woman. But he has I mean the lines they wrote for him. My wife says, I'm the second smartest. She claims, there

are eighty guys tied for first. Shit like that, with the notepad and the trench coat. I can't stand suicide d bad. Suicide is sat great lines. I should give credit to the writers, but I don't know their names right now off the top of my head. But Peter Falk was the best at creating this persona. And he's the one who said I wanted to wear a rumpled up raincoat. He picked out the car, the pougeot. He improvised a lot of his own lines and mannerisms and things to do on the set. He would hum this

old man while he fumbled for his noteped. Those are all things he brought to the character. And it made me think of you know, last year, or well, it's almost two years ago now. We lost the great Jenna Rowlins, who died a couple of augusts ago. She was ninety four years old and she had Alzheimer's complications from Alzheimer's and her son, Nick Cassavetti's, who was one of the

guys who always played on a high stakes poker. Great great dude, great director, good actor, good poker player too, and he was the one who shared that she was in the advanced stages. But you gotta see a movie that she's in with Peter Fall, called A Woman under the Influence. This is another reason why Hollywood is so lazy, and ninety percent of decision makers don't know what the fuck they want to do. They don't have their fingers on the pulse of the country, and they're just lazy.

If they watch these old movies, this is what you have to come up with again. If you're gonna do a sequel, can you forget the fucking Marvel movies? Can you make art? Can you just try to recarve the statue that was already beautiful thirty years ago? But no, they keep doing book. Watch A Woman under the Influence Jenna Rollins married to Peter Fall, suffering from Alzheimer's, and how debilitating and painful and embarrassing it is for not just the person who's going through it, but the person

is married to her. Watch that relationship. It'll tear you apart. But no, don't do that movie over Hollywood's making. Well, Sony just acquired the rights to the La Boogle Doll. Yes, there's going to be a Loboogle doll movie, a live action film. These fucking dolls that there were that are made in Hong Kong, and everybody who's nobody wants these fucking dolls hanging from their forty thousand dollars burken bag.

I can't believe this. By the time this shitty movie is shot and ready to hit theaters or streaming platforms, nobody will give a shit any longer. The craze will have died down. What's that the cabbage patch doll fucking movie? A fidget spinner series? Can we stop this? Where are the Maverick filmmakers? What you need to Where's Robert Evans? Where's Golan Globus? The only way this movie would work as a film, well this story would work as a film, is if they made the Boo Boos turned out to

be very mean and violent. If there was like a Labooboo horror film where Beverly Hill's moms who have these dolls hanging up at Birkendigs were now you know, mangled in the streets off for a dayo drive and a heap of blood and guts. That movie would be fun. But they won't do that, you know what, because it's a great idea, but yeah, they're making a fucking Labuobu doll movie. I know what happens. I've been in these meetings. No one's attached it. There's no actors and directors attached it.

No decisions have been made as to whether this will be animated or live action. There's talk it will be live action, but nothing's concrete. So they have nothing to offer other than there was a meeting and somebody said, what about al Boo boo movie? And they all got wet. A stupid fucking idea, but all these assholes got wet. That's Hollywood can't stand it. That's why I hate it, and that's why you listen. I'm AJ Benson. That was your free show Frock November sixteenth, twenty twenty five. It

is going fast and furious. I'll talk to you guys during the week, but by all means, go to Ajbenzon dot subsect dot com and subscribe to read the chapters of my Uncovering book and other stories I publish every week. If you love the written word, that's where you need to go. Other than that, I will talk to you guys next week.