Binging the Purge

it feels great. It feels like it's been forever. But I was away, as as was detailed on the show, marrying somebody I met on a podcast, met on this podcast. Technically it is podcast grandfather, yes, grandfather grand like I would think of it as like a like a mother, grandmother, grandmother, because there's there's been other incarnations along the true Yeah, there have been. There's a there's a there's a m

c U of the Girls and Hoodies. Yeah. We talked about this last week about all the podcasts that we've had, Molly's five podcasts. I just keep starting more. I can't stop podcasting. Emily. Yeah, welcome back. Thank you. We missed you a me too. I really, I really wish that we could have podcasted like from Afar, because I feel like there are so many things I wanted to tell you guys about, especially when we were on our honeymoon.

We got some really good texts from you at times that were like made sense to us, right, yes, wait, like what it's all kind of a fog. Oh you know, just like sometimes I'm wake very late at night and maybe it's daytime in Japan during that time, and you send a nice text of some forest crabs, and then all we talked about on this podcast while you're gone is the four forest craps. We need to spend a

minute talking about the forest crabs. Well, also, you should just tell us every like, tell us all of the highlights, because your Instagram was full of some really good ones and what we have to get to the lost in Translation hotel. I felt like we were all on vacation together.

We were good. Oh good. First, I rarely am on vacation, but I guess this is the first time I was on really on a vacation with Instagram stories, so I kind of I really liked falling back on Instagram stories instead of say Twitter to talk about whatever was going on, because it felt like I didn't have to explain or make a joke about whatever I was doing and just be like, look at this cool thing that I'm looking at, and that could be it. I didn't have to be

a writer about it. So that felt like a kind of nice way to to share the vacation without being too without having the social media thing take it over. So there were so many cool things to look at. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and and that's the other thing I say about stories is it doesn't all need to go on your actual feed. It can just sort of like My only complain there about stories is that then they go away, and they go away. All I wanted was to see

the forest craft I have. I saved the video of the forest craft, so I I made the joke on on Instagram that they were confused and thought it was the ocean. I think it's more like they just got washed up from a nearby creek and we're just like wandering on the pavement. So we went during the rainy season, which I think is kind of the reason why our tickets weren't in a zillion dollars when we were out there. Um,

and it really wasn't that bad. But the one day where it really rained a ton was of course, the one day we decided we were going to be walking around Kyoto and doing like having our most touristy day. It was so beautiful though. Yeah, it was nice, like it was very atmospheric, and it was nice because it

wasn't too crowded because of the weather. But um, the side note, um, like, very shortly after I got married, Um, I bought my first pair of Teva's um and I feel like this like this transformation took place over the course of one week where I'm like, I love my Tevas, I'm gonna go be a tourist and wearing my squashy sandals. You entered the seriously because like, when it's raining that much, you can't even really wear boots because it'll just get inside the boot. So I just thought, why fight it,

Just be barefoot and let the water wash over. You became a forest crab yourself. I did, Yeah, I I became slightly amphibious. So we were leaving um Nansen g which is this huge Buddhist temple, and of course as we're leaving, like the five PM was the closing time, so we couldn't be inside anymore. And then it just

starts pouring down rain. So we were just like running, like bolting down this path um trying to get back to the subway, which basically took an hour because it starts lighten up, and then we'd start walking and then I would start pouring again, and we'd like find shelter under the nearest thing. But see, that sounds so nice because we are in a place that doesn't have a

rainy season anymore. And I talked about how we look at the weather app every day and it says zero percent chance of rain for every entire week, for every entire year. It's like everything you can just fill in rain with whatever else you good, you want to have happened, Like, yeah, it's sometimes it will be raining and it will say zero percent chance of rain. Sounds it was so it was so and it was it was really moisoking everything you posted. I was like, oh my god, yeah, it's

so crazy because we were there. We were staying. We're staying outside of Kyoto in this um like of yokam which is like the kind of a bed and breakfast, like the Japanese version of a bed and breakfast, and the one we stayed at It's like they had this river side thing where they turned off all the lights at a certain points so you could see the fireflies, which was so funny because it reminded you me of you Molly, because there were like three fireflies on the

river when I saw the fire in New York and yeah, lost your ship? What are those? Well? I think I've said this before, but this is like a lot of l A kids, I know, have this thing. We're the only place we've ever seen fireflies is on pirates of the Caribbean. Yes, you know. And then that's like what I expect them to look like. And then when we saw them in real life, I was like, what they exist? I was looking for them here. Nobody tells you there's no fireflies l A. When I moved here, I was like,

trained summer, where are the bugs? That the trade of mosquitoes? Well no, but now we have the mosquitoes. We now we also have some mosquitoes because you're getting but wait, but it's not raining. How do you have mosquitoes water? You know people have pools. There's the mighty l A River. Yes, Rory, wait at this bed and breakfast, did you have to have communal breakfast and dinner. Um, yes, it's a well everybody gets there on little table. It's okay, that's I mean,

it's like very formal. It's very old school communal tables. Worst nightmare. No no, no no, no, you don't have to you don't have to talk to anybody else. They accept huge exception, and I think not not a good trade off this This place, like many of these types of super traditional like I would say, like fancy real cons had geisha's, Like they come through and they like

perform some kind of dance or whatever. I mean, I didn't know that this was a part of this hotel's deal when I booked it, and then I saw later on, I was like, oh that's interesting. I have very little interest in that. But okay, but it's like a mandatory part of your meeting that you have to like sit and watch the geisha performance. But you there, mic goes

I like geishas and training. But uh, but then they come through and they talk like to each table and you have to talk to them and you have to

talk to them. It's like one of them that came through and talked she spoke a little more English and it was okay, But then those of them mostly don't, and so I was speaking to them in Japanese, and my Japanese is really bad and also takes a lot of brain power for me to use, and especially at the end of the day, I feel like like almost wiped out, like I cannot like speak Japanese like it just it would like take it out of me at the at the end of every day to try to

have a conversation with the mico. But uh yeah, so that I would rather be at a communal table with other people who are staying at the hotel than than with what did you guys talk about? Like, oh, where are you from? And I found it to be supremely awkward, but like the drunk businessman who were there for dinner gotta gotta kick out of it, So I guess it's not really for me. What else did you see? And

where else did you go? Are three main places we were with Kyoto Osaka and Tokyo Osaka is the best. We only spend a day there, but I really want to spend like a whole trip there next time I go to Japan, because it's um really really on and the food is amazing and people are just like it's more fun. But I wanted to tell you guys. So this campaign was started a few years ago in Kyoto to get more people to use public transportation and to

use the subway. They decided, like the best tactic to attract people to the subway would be to make like cute anome girl mascots for the train. Um. And so it's called like the Moe Moe Kyoto like campaign. UM. And they have like they have this full cast of characters now, Like this started a while ago and so by now they've unveiled more and more characters. UM. And there's uh, like the main girl, she has like a brother, and then another one of her friends as a brother,

and they're all these bios for them. And I think they made some kind of short animation, but it's just hilarious because like all of the subways are plastered with these ads of like these cute aunome girls like holding their their subway passes and like showing how cool and cute it is to have a subway. Doesn't work? Did people ride the subway more? I guess? I guess it's been successful because they've kept it up. Are they like moa versions of the trains like, are they supposed to

be like a character who is the train? No? No, no, so they're right. Yeah, they're writers and I guess they're supposed to be like Kyoto residents. But they're also named after some of the different stops on the Kyoto subway. Um, it's so funny because they all have these official profiles. It's like somebody at this who works for the city.

How do we get I know, it's amazing, but but there's one of the guys who's like kind of like a jockish guy wearing a pink kodie is named Takeru and say Takara attended the same high school as Yo and his best friend, who's like the other boy there. He has an easy going and optimistic side. After graduating from high school, his desire to become a breadmaker let him to study at a bakery in Kyoto. He likes

how people can buy bread around Kyoto subway stations. Now I'm just picturing somebody riding the train and falling in love with one of these characters. It seems as though that happens, and people are collecting the posters, right Emily, Yeah, yeah, And I was trying to find them because I I realized that this was the thing, and then I started trying to figure out where I could get the posters.

But like they have different promotions like if you use if you get a day pass and then go to the zoo, you can get a poster or something, but like none of those were happening while I was there. I was I was so charmed and and and delighted by think we should have more train mascots. There's that

really good Twitter account. I think it's Mondo mascots, and it's all just Japanese mascots for different things, and a lot of it is like mascots for like a precinct or whatever, you know, like they do just having a mascot for everything. It's great the grain industry or something. Some of the ones I've seen on Mondo mascots, it's like they're always about like well, like their main trades are like growing melons and like trees, so it's like

an oak tree with a melon for ahead. Well. The weird thing about it the boy who's not the bread baker, who's like the older brother. His picture makes him look like he's just like shady, he's got something to hide, and his description is like, you know, he's really cold to his younger sister, which he is protective of her, but it was also like he hates when the trains don't run on time. Everybody has like normal personality traits and then one hyper specific transportation. Let's take a subway

train to our next topic. Oh so we recently started um a Facebook group from the Facebook page and uh, somebody whose name is Emily asked if we had any thoughts about the Cecil Hotel, which, um, if you were following maccabre stories a few years ago, you may remember from a woman named Lisa Lamb who was found dead in a water vault, is that the terminal was the water tank and the water tank and it was like a huge mystery because um, she she had she was

like using tumbler, I guess, so there was a lot of stuff to pour over, like her you know, musings on tumbler. And then there was a she had been seen on the like surveillance cameras sort of wandering in the hotel. There was a video and they it was later referred to as the elevator game because the surveillance video shows her getting into an elevator and like this weird. I mean, there was no audio, you couldn't it was

hard to make sense of. But it looked as if there was someone outside unseen on the surveillance tape, and she was in the elevator and like almost like she wanted to step out out of the elevator and then was kind of hiding in the elevator from someone. So it kind of sparked some conspiracy theories. And yeah, there were a lot of conspiracy theories about it because it was like, it's impossible to get in the water tank by yourself, so they're like somebody must have gone with her,

Like how did she get up there? There were all these did she close the back over her? Yeah, it's

really horrible. And then somebody wrote a really good long piece about it that was on medium, and I think that was about sort of going over the details and it was like, hey, you know, the answer to this mystery is that this person probably had like mental illness and she had a psychotic break, a psychotic break, and it's like not not that cool, right, I Mean, that was the thing that as soon as it was kind of like that the likelihood of her having been killed

and put in this vault or whatever was seemed like the least likely explanation. It just became very sad. But regardless of Cecil has kind of like a creepy aura around. It's haunted a f Yeah, yeah, it's super haunted because it's an old ass hotel in downtown l A. It gets all the shine as as being like, oh, the one creepy hotel. They're all creepy. These are all my favorite places in Last Angeles too. I had to say, like I wanted to talk about this just because I

was clean it out a hard driver. I was looking for something on a hard drive, so I found all these old pictures. Um, because I had done this um kind of conceptual photo shoot for a project I've been working on at the time. Uh and and did it at the Cecil Hotel because I needed like a kind of this before or after this happened. This was before this would have been in like ten or twenty eleven or something that would have been like two or three

years before this happened. Yeah, it was after they had done this sort of um remodeling to kind of make it more of a tourist hotel or like kind of something like a low budget hotel. For like people who would you know, be using hostels or something like that. They were trying to market themselves that way. This is like the very beginnings of downtown starting to be rehabbed

in a way. But so there was like a coffee shop out from but it wasn't really that operational, like like all of these early efforts in downtown l A. It was like there was a thing that looked like gentrification, but it didn't really work, like like nobody worked there. Yeah, like a lot of it is. They put it up. They were like, we'll build a stage set of a downtown and then people will fill it with real downtown and then still have a crape shop that nobody ever

works at. That's probably most people experience downtown driving through it, you know, it's not like I mean a lot of the people who are downtown are working there and don't have that much time to explore the quirky place. Like the Cecil Hotel was always like a hotel for like people passing through. It's like right right in the middle

of the heart of downtown. But they do keep trying to flip it and make it like now it's a fancy hotel and now it's gentrified and it just is so scary but still so they are actually like the people who own the Bowery here New York about it and are going to try to make it into like an ace, Like I actually think this is super interesting.

This is the main thing I want to talk about, is like how long do you have to wait before a place it's hunted becomes like something that people like young urban professionals like are attracted to it and can find it, like like think it's hip because the the Black Dollia stayed there or something like. I was totally into the Builtmore for a long time because it was the last place that the Black Dolly was seen and it was at the bar, the gallery bar at the Biltmore,

which is incredible. It's one of the best bars, like just for appearance alone. So I lived downtown for a while, so I would go there and I would like wander through the lobby of the ce Cil just because I thought all these places were so cool. But like that was I wasn't like rehabbing it. It It as like a hip ace hotel. But I'm wondering how long does it take?

What's that window for where you can be like Okay, we can turn this into a Ace hotel esque project and and the kids will flock to it because ghosts are hip now or what I feel like, I don't know, right, And also, like the Chateau mormont Is, many people have died there and there are many ghosts and that's part of its appeal. I guess my mom stayed there once and she said that, um, she was staying in a room with a broken mirror and was like, she just

couldn't stay there. I have to move rooms, and I feel like she just kept energy broken mirrors and like ghostly things. But I talked to somebody. I went on um this podcast Bizarre States a little while ago, and they were talking about how they went to the Stanley Hotel, which is one of the Shining hotels. They were like, it actually wasn't scary at all. It was disappointingly unscary. Somebody was like having a wedding there and we kept being like, oh, we're trying to get spooky, and you

guys are just like having a wedding. They said that they kind of like downplay the spook nous because like they got bored of people only wanting it to be a spooky Shining hotel and they're like, no, no, we're also just a nice hotel. Well, they have a film

fest now called the Overlook Film Festival. It's like a horror film festival and for the past two years, not this year, but um, they've they've had it once once I had at the Stanley Hotel and then the other which is the one where where Stephen King wrote The Shining there's one that he wrote it and then the one that that they shot the Shining Net. Well, there's two different shot it um in Pine Win Studios. They built a set, but there's a couple of different hotels.

They Yeah, the exterior I think is the Stanley, and then the interiors modeled after a hotel in Yosemite's I think he wrote it in Colorado. I think that's yeah, that's the Stanley. But yeah, the one in Yosemite that the interior is based off of has a lot of like Native American themed stuff because it's in Yosemite. But also that's like why people think The Shining is about Jennifer Native Americans because it kind of is uh guys speaking of downtown l a uh we Binge to vary

degrees the Purge. Yes, over the past week. Um, the first Purge just came out or not just came out on July fourth. We talked this is one of the first things we talked about doing for the podcast. And then we're like, oh, but the movie doesn't come out until July, and we're like, well, that gives us so a lot of time to watch some Purges. Molly and I are not completely caught up on all of the p ridges because it turns out that binging the Purge

is also like a tremendously stressful and depressing experience. Who knew, who knew? Who knew it would be that way? Um, but yeah, I had seen the first one when just when it came out on v O D, so it was probably or something I think it came out in and then I watched it right when it came out, So it had been a couple of years, but I remembered it as fun. I remembered as we first loved it.

Anarchy is the best in the somebody asked me recently to rank them, and having not watched all of them recently, I still would put Anarchy at the top. I think Anarchy is the best one. So so I watched the first one and the second one, and then I'll be honest, I couldn't couldn't do the third one. I'd had enough purging. I was like, man, I gotta watch something really dumb to chase this. Well, what was it dumb? Just so that we're in on the all right, there we go,

there we go. You know it was a Christmas episode, Good Purge, Purge, Taste cleaner. Um. Yeah, but the second Purges all takes place in downtown l A, which is why we're talking about it. And I was like, oh, of course, I only love this movie. It's all about like just running around through downtown l A. Yeah, with Matt Saracen. Also Frank Grillo. Yeah. And who's then in the third one as well? Yeah? I mean because not

in in the most recent one. So I was wondering if they were going to try to sell Frank Grillo as a kind of thread throughout the franchise, if not an actual hero, then at least like a connecting thread. But he couldn't have been. He couldn't have the first first eight. You know, Well, it's unclear how much time passes between the first Purge and by that I mean the most recent movie, not the first Purge. No, that's aasing. Two is you're like, the second Purge is about the

sixth Purge. Okay, wait, so the first one is supposed to be two, right, so that's the fifth that this is like the the initial Purge. But then there's the yeah, the Purge anarchy is rights the following year. Let's explain the Purge to listeners who might not know how the Purge works. Everybody knows about that person. I did not know how it worked. How the Purge is of series of horror films. They're not sequels. They are all about

one idea and different takes on the same idea. They're created by a guy named Jason Demonica James Demonica rather, no, I confused him and before the Purge for writing the movie Jack Yes, where Robin Williams ages four times faster than he Just the concept is that it's some at some point in the in the near future, America has has elected a party like a super right wing the New Founding Fathers of America, the New Founding Fathers of America and f A because the crime and whatever like,

there's so there's so many problems in in America and somebody decides that they can all be solved once a year. Uh, for a twenty four hour period, all crime is legal, including murders especially. I thought it was twelve hours. I thought it was seven pm to seven am once a year, but I may be wrong, but that's why. Yeah, it is,

it is. It's only twelve hours. It's only twelve hours, so it's yeah, it's it's I guess it's framed by the n f f A as like, well, there's so much unrest, We're going to solve it by having everyone expressed their violence during get it all out. During this twelve hour period, you can't be tried for anything legal.

Hospitals are closed. Importantly, I think government officials are protected when you kill the third until per election year, and all rich people are are protected because they can afford to like armorize their house. But as we're seeing in the first one, it doesn't always work. First one is like a home invasion movie about Ethan Hawk and Searcy Uh in a house in Chatsworth, Um, and they get

it kind of makes no sense. He's a security expert, so he's re installed all the systems in the neighborhood, but that kind of was like beside the point, Like it really just is like a home invasion movie about the Purge that focuses on this one couple, like a homeless black guy tries to enter this suburban community. They take him in like because there's just the scuffle and

then they're keeping him. But the like white evil preps and blazers that that come and try to terrorize them want want to take the guy away from them so that they can murder him. So it's sort did this chamber play. I read about the making of it. A lot of it was like we we wrote it because it was cheap to make it, all right, that's like

that's ingenious, genius. And then in the second one they expand the world of the Purge because they have more money, because they have more money, and uh, it's but it's the same I think as the first one, Like it's all kind of cozy catast fee, which is like where it's like a group of survivors trying to get through,

you know, something insane. It's kind of like just a post apocalyptic movie, but the post apocalypse only lasts for twelve hours at a time, and if you break the rules during the purge, then you get executed after the purge. I forgot about that. That's one of the things is if you break the rules, if you like do something you're not supposed to, there's some rules you can It was it's something about the level of weapons. Guns are okay, but not to your gas or something. I was really

into the rules. I don't know why. I just that's as a horror film, I think that makes it really good because, like I think most horror films have a set of rules, and it's all about like when the rules get broken or if the rules are going to get broken. So that's like kind of built into the

purge Sherris and I think it's really smart. But I also like that it tends to and now with the fourth one, also the recurring imagery is, yeah, like a bunch of like middle or lower class people kind of like huddling together in their like dumpy apartments and trying to just like survive together. These that wild political is what I'm not really you know. I feel like James Demonica was was kind of avoiding talking about that up until the release of this one. Um. I think he

was talking about it also during election year two. Well, the second one, the second one came out, there's some stuff in it that's very like like at the end, there's like a guy with like a scary American flag hat who's like the scariest guy. And I was like, this is like, this is directly just maga hats. But what's crazy is that it does kind of accidentally predict I mean it it has its finger on the pulse in a way that's kind of it's kind of hard to watch because it was like, this reminds me way

too much of reality exactly. You know, there have been a bunch of pieces that have kind of broken broken this down. There's a good one on vox Um. But the first one it was kind of like, you know, just playing off the Home invasion and like, you know, almost like the Hunger Games aspect of the government pitting citizens against each other was almost like an incidental thing. And then this in the second one, they brought in like this class anxiety. They brought in mistrust of the government.

In the second one, it was like a really big thing because there was you know, you have to watch like the YouTube channels to get the real dirt on what's going to find out that the Purge sucks in the second one. I mean, I don't even know if they allude to it in the first one or if they decided in the second one that this was the thing,

if they had this all along. But the whole thing about the first one is just like the illusion of this being a thing about families versus like some kind of marauding outsiders, right, kind of gets broken down in like social and racial and economic terms in the second one. Yeah. In the second one, it's like you find out there's a counterinsurgency against the Purge, the consistence counter pergers Williams so good, it's amazing. Fuck the Purge, Yeah, fuck the

new Founding Fathers of America, because it's great. It really,

it's great. So yeah, And the second one you find out that the Purge is basically just a scam for rich people to kill poor people, and that they have started hiring like outside contractors, that the government is like sending in people basically to like kill people during the purge, just to like kill more poor people during the purge, and that they use the fact that poor people are like excited about the Purge like against them because everybody's

like this is my right, like these are my freedoms. A lot of it seems very gun control e because it's like people who are like I have nothing, but like one day a year I get to go shoot whoever I want, and like that makes everything worthwhile. Yeah, they actually like name check and the new one. So the new one is basically about um the first Purge as it's called, but um that they do a trial

run of it on Staten Island. And of course the first one is Chatsworth, the second one is downtown l A. The third one is apparently was shot in these ends but takes place in d C. But um, it was shot in Providence. So a friend of the pot who went to Rizzy sent us a picture of when they built the giant guillotine in the alleyway outside her studio. She was like, it was actually like everything was blocked off because they were filming the Purge, so like nobody

could like get food to their studio. And I was like, oh, so it was like the Purse And I was like, what about like Purge mates the new ones in of course, plenty of jokes to be made about that. But the thing that they set up is that they so they pay everybody. If they stay, they get five thousand dollars. And so all these people who are like super poor, like, well, I'm not going to turn down five thou dollars if I can just stay in my house and like you know,

wait for it to blow over. But then they pay people more if they say that they're going to participate in it. Um and then they wear these um they are given these contacts so that they can monitor their activity, and the contacts turned their eyes blue. Uh it's so nuts. But but so the thing that the thing is crazy is that um, when they when they start the experiment, uh, nobody's killing each other, Like they're just like having parties

and kind of just like hanging down. Some people are like stealing money from a T M S or whatever.

So then that's when they start sending in the outsiders, and then also broadcasting when they're like, oh, there's been all this gig activity at whatever street and whatever street, and then broadcasting that back out to the people who live in sat Niland, being like, look at your neighbors, look at how crazy they're being, Like you should be afraid of them, which just felt like such a chilling I had never seen that kind of laid out in those terms, or like a narrative that allows that kind

of dynamic to be laid out in those terms, which I thought was so so smart. I was so impressed with it. It's very smart. I mean, weirdly, this is a genre that I think we all love, which is like weird sort of side science fiction of like this could be happening now. It's not like quite in the future. It's like this feels like now, but like a slightly more insane version of now, but like reality becomes more

like the Purge every day. If you would know that, describe who did Jack would have basically predicted or current dystopia. Can you confirm, Emily, is there really a pair of people in the first Purge named Anna and Elsa or any so in the first the first Purge meaning the most decent Purge. I heard that there are two sex workers whose names are Anna and Elsa, which, of course I mean there are two sex workers, but I don't I didn't remember catching their names. Curious if true, Well,

they're not. They're not Scandinavian. If did you guys ever see Death Rays five thousand? Okay, so there's like a lot of Roger Corman movies that are about things like this because they're like exploitation movies and they're like an excuse for everyone to like kill each other in a movie. Be Death Threes five thousand is a car race where you get points for running people over five thousand or two thousand. I think it's two thousand. Yeah, So it's

always people in a car race. It's basically like a like a gumball rally, but you get points for running people over, So the more people you run over, the more points you get. And then David Carradine is like a guy whose name is Frankenstein who turns out to be like against the death Race, I think um, but also Battle Royale Um, a movie we all love. Have you seen Punishment Park? Anyone? Punishment Park? I think it's like on Criterion, But it's just like an art movie

about like it's a punishment park. It's like a theme

park where where hippies get chased by cops. Basically, so there's a thing where it's really obvious, like an exploitation type movie thing where it's like, okay, the bad government and this movie has created a set of circumstances that create a very entertaining movie for us, and you can kind of like lay at and like as long as you accept those terms, you understand, like you know, there can be some social commentary, but also you're like enjoying

the violence and on its own terms. In a way, it's hard to watch sometimes because you're like a little bit it's just it's hard to watch. It's disturbing. But I would argue that compared to things like funny games, there's so much more. They're also funny. It's not like torture porn. It doesn't feel just like people getting tortured and like, oh, isn't this bad. It's like a little bit funny. It's a little bit like more poppy or

something that makes it well. It's also it's interesting to see the different iterations of it, like it opens up, and especially to end it with the idea that like there was a time a long time ago when it was an experiment and you could escape because it's just sat An Island, and then in each subsequent film that's a race, so it's like you can't. It's like got like hyper normalization too. It's like, oh, this thing that

seemed really fucked up when they first announced it. Then everybody just got used to it really fast, which is like something we've all been dealing with a lot that can't happen, and then it's like, oh, it's happening, and everyone just sort of like got used to it. And it's also the question of how do you kind of

moderate your response to something very extreme? And in the purge, the good guys will fight back with the same violence that the bad guys are fighting with, and you know, it's it makes you really consider like how extreme things have to get before you are complicit just by nothing. Like the counter perjurers in the second one are kind of like they seem like kind of like patterned after the Black Panthers or something, but you know they're militant.

They're like the government is a bunch of militant, insane people, and like we have to fight back against them using like things that are illegal, because like they're doing things that should be illegal. I just think like there are there are parts of in all the movies where it's like the only way to fight back is to just

like do more violence. But I think that the most the most recent one definitely interrogates that more and it's like I don't ever feel like there actually is less violence, I would say in the most recent one, And it's more just about like this sort of sense of dread and like kind of this closing, there's a lot of dread. Um. It wasn't maybe as cathartic because I wanted it to be. I was sort of just like, oh, like this also

feels like things feel a lot right now. Um, But yeah, I mean it's also like it's obviously none of it feels very far fetched at this point especially, but it also was just making me think about, like if it's a comment on like sundown or laws, which were the super racist laws that everywhere had, especially there's been like some incidents in l A. And somebody was talking about, like, you know, Glendale being such a nice town, and then somebody was like, well, you know, Glendale had like sundown

laws until like very recently, and for people who don't know what sundown laws are, it was basically you know, and it wasn't It wasn't an actual It was like an unwritten rule understood thing that if you were a person of all or you could not be in that place after dark. It was an unwritten rule of like, if a person of colors in this white neighborhood after dark, then like whatever happens to them is like I'm not gonna you won't be prosecuted for that. Yeah, so man,

the purge, the purge. Well, you can either call or text us at two four oh four six night or you can send us an email at Nightcall Podcast at gmail dot com. Um Also, as always, if you're enjoying the podcast, please rate, review, subscribe, and follow us on social media. We have a Facebook group Nightcall Podcast, uh, Instagram Nightcall Podcast, and Twitter Nightcall Pod. And now let's

roll that beautiful being footage HI called podcasts. I'm not sure if this belongs on Nightcall, but we're trying to ask for any advice speaking like that. I'm a twenty year old guy living in Berkeley, California. I just got our college that are pretty useless degree on I think my inters Luckily I don't want you, just didn't want it. Only what advice you have for people getting out of college who I have no idea what to see with

their lives. Non we passed into fin any particular acts to make it a clear, I do want to be able to support my family, be successful with the future, but for strange days and momentas. This is what I've been thinking about, and I'm sure any people think about this. If you have any advice, please do some podcast. Thank you. I feel like we've been talking about this in some form or another, Uh, colors, just asking about you know, post college general anxiety, trying to figure out what you're

gonna do, you know, big questions like that. Um, and we've certainly been thinking about that, I think in terms of our jobs and how we came to our jobs and all the weird uncertainty that proceeded us having the various lines of work that we have. UM. So yeah, I mean, do you guys have any advice that you have for our caller? Uh. On the way here, we were like, we're gonna have a fun time answering this

question because we're the worst people to answer it. But UM, we've been talking, all of the three of us about the general kind of like just implosion of online media, um, the Univision, sale of the Onion, a V club, the Gizmoto media group. I mean, it's just kind of endless. Uh. Every week it seems like a new place that we either one of us used to write for we or

we're all big fans of is Folding. And I think, um, right after we graduated from college, that was a time when people were you know, if you had a blog, it was like kind of embarrassing slightly. There's a time when people were embarrassed to admit how much time they spent on the internet, right, like to tend not to be on the internet. You'd say like, oh a friend of mine said, and it's like, no, they weren't your friend, and they didn't say it out loud on a blog.

And then there's like a point when it turned where suddenly everybody was like open about how much time they spent on the internet. And then it became kind of a joke like ha ha, we all spend our whole lives on the internet, extremely online. And then some of us got paid to right on the internet for a while. Um, I totally naively thought that like the money and add stuff from magazines would just like eventually move to the web, you know that, Like, well, magazines did just such a diffuse.

I don't even know that it did. Yeah, I mean I did. For like fifteen minutes, it felt like it was any moment. Now we're going to figure out how to monetize blogs the way that we monetize magazines with like big ads. And then it turned out that's way harder than anyone thought, or just it's because it works differently, because the web had been around and creating good content for free for so along, but nobody had really acknowledged

it as a legitimate source. I think everybody was like very skeptical and kind of um took offense at reading like an advertorial, having a pop up ad, having like embedded ad links. It was very offensive. It was like, this is supposed to be free, this is supposed to be something we all create together. But I think between like two thousand seven and it seemed reasonable all of a sudden to believe that there was like an actual career to be had. I don't think any of us

were like trying to get into. I mean, I think that the way I can generalize a little bit of advice to break it outside of just the media thing, but just I think some something we've all kind of shared.

I think we all kind of thought of ourselves as writers in somewhere or another, and then this sort of opportunity came up, or like you could sense that there was some kind of gold rush happening maybe two steps to the left of what maybe we would have envisioned as being a writer's job or something, and so you kind of just sort of make that shift over, well, this is basically like what I want to do. This is the way that I could maybe see some money

for it. And I think in those times too, this is like a theme I think of our generation, Like you come into everything with a fear of selling out, and you get that worn down and then they're like, please, please may I sell out? Ye give me to sell out?

You know. That's the thing is like we graduated kind of right into the recession, and so a lot of the things that were of the recession I just thought were like what happens when you're twenty two, which is like nobody wants to hire you and you can't get jobs you are overqualified for, and then you start applying for like retail and food service jobs and you can't get those either because like everybody else is trying to get those, And I think you should take the most

interesting shitty job you can, like apply I for an array of things and they don't have to at all correspond to what you studied in college and pick the most interesting one, because the interesting ones always lead to something else, but the uninteresting ones take up so much

of your time and leave you with nothing. I think I would I would add to the interesting ones if you can find an interesting one that also has a heart out every day, which is more and more rare than more and more that jobs are our our telecommunication.

Something we talked about a lot is being able to have a division between your work life and your life life is like very important and maybe not something that any of us like knew we needed to prioritize when we started because we were just like so excited to get paid on something. Yeah, I'm assuming that there's kind of a deadline on this that you need to start

making money soon. So I would say, if you need to like find a job that you're telling yourself you're not going to have forever, but it's like the job you have all you're figuring stuff out, then then definitely have one that you can walk away from when you leave it, and don't like pressure your self to get the job you're going to have for the rest of your life, because those jobs don't exist anymore anyway, and

nobody has that. Nobody has that, And also they secretly suck because they know that they have cashet with you, and so they can treat you like garbage. But if there's something that's like a little quirky that you are into but that maybe other people wouldn't be, then at least you get a great story, and at least you get an idea of what you liked about the weird thing and didn't like. Whereas I think, like, I mean,

definitely the worst jobs I've worked. We're not in food service or retail, but in offices doing nothing for a company that didn't matter to me because it just you leave. It's like it sucks your brain dry, it hasn't given you any interesting experiences. You're interacting with the same people all the time. There's like it's a higher pressure job, so you can't really leave it when you leave. Two of the people that I most uh kind of have

been interested in their careers since we all graduated. One of them was a girl in a box at the Standard hotel, and I was like, like, should I apply to this? I don't think I'm cute enough to apply to this, But also like I would feel crappy about myself. She went through that whole thing and she wrote a book and it was great. Yeah, I think a lot of probably there was a time when it feels like a lot of people were like, I'm going to do something weird, so then I can write a book about it.

But if but even if it's just like it would it would pay you the same amount as waiting tables. But at least even if even if you don't write a book's like you have the story and you're thinking, like, god, I hate it for these reasons, I've got to get out. So it like motivates you more because you got that fire, and it puts you in a situation you wouldn't have been in normally, with people that you might not have been in with normally, even if it's unpleasant, like nothing's

going to be forever at that age. Oh, this is the other thing I would say, don't get married to the idea that your best work you're gonna don't get married. Also, don't get right when you get out of Hey, I'm back from my no I thought, you know, like like

don't get married when you're twenty two. But also we also don't do that honestly, but also just don't fall in love with this idea it that you will create your best work, or that you're the prime of your professional and or creative or whatever you're trying to do. Life is post collegiate, because it's not, like I speaking from a very specific instance, this goes back to why I was at the c Cell Hotel, Like I graduated

from school. I had I got a script optioned. In heavy scared quotes, I don't want to get too much into the legal aspects of it, and it didn't happen because it just didn't happen and there wasn't the funny for it. It It was also two eight or two nine, like nobody was funny independent film. But had it happened, like that would be the end of my career because it was a terrible script and it would have been

a really bad movie. I wouldn't be able to still accumulate experiences and like think about what I actually want to do instead of like hurrying up after school to be like this is my genius piece of work that I'm going to do, like as a college graduate. So don't like let yourself like not be a student for a while. Well as a rebuttal to that, though, I think my life would have been a lot better if I just booked that role in the movie that I auditioned for pretty much right out of college, that was

Golden Retrievers in Space. So I'm just saying, like, sometimes you yeah, I would say my main advice, not that I'm the person to give advice, but yeah, don't do something you hate. And it's okay to like get life experience and not think that you have to like find your passion immediately and do it. It's like picking a major. It's like you give yourself some time in college to pick a major, give yourself some time out of college to like find out what you actually want to do.

And if you want to be around people, be around people and go party because you should. You feel like you shouldn't because now you're an adult. Definitely later your bones will hurt. Your bones will hurt, and right now, like everything is so bad. I just wish I was twenty years old and was like, just put it away and party, but I can. I just read that I

wouldn't be able to party. I feel like I'm glad that, like nothing nothing category is mich was happening, and it was just, yeah, we were like Y two K partying. I would have loved to be at a Y two K, right, but no, I was not. I would I basically just wanted to be at the party at the end of strange days. But I wanted to be um an Independence Day when the strippers on the roof and she's holding up the sign to welcome the aliens, that's me. Yeah.

I mean, one really honest piece of advice that I would give is like, if you know, if you can learn how to program, do that, you've just gone full dad. But it's true and something everyone's dad has already I know, but I'm just like, the thing about writing is like everyone gets paid completely different amounts of money, just you know, depending on who you're doing it for and how much

money they have. And sometimes you hear people who used to work in magazines and they tell you how much money you used to be able to make in magazines, and then you have to go like walk into the ocean. However, let me just say, how many times has either your dad or someone else's dad, or just the person who's not a dad been like, Molly, you should learn to program, because great advice, but I'm not going to do it because of plastics of our My brain doesn't know how

to program. But my friends Sarah, who went to film school then also taught herself how to program and now she works as a programmer. I'm just saying, it's a field where people actually get hired to do a thing and they need it. So I'm like vibrating with happiness. Also, you can't tell Molly and I are out of the garage. We are in a studio. Thank you, studio and a studio and studio, so thank you to Audio Boom for

doing that. Hopefully we'll be sounding um even more yeah than more us than we are in a sound proof room. It's really cool. It's really nice. Um And and thank you to to our producer has always been host East Coast. We got double studio action, double studio. This was this for this week. We are back next week with more night calls. Give us a night calls on the Facebook. Yeah, Facebook now has a group if you want to join. Yeah, we have a group. Ever, whoever runs the Twitter account

will start tweeting. Whoever runs the Twitter account is back from Japan and we'll start tweeting whoever runs the Instagram account. You can also send us questions there. You can really send us questions or comments or All channels are open. All channels are open, but now the Facebook group. UM. If you want a little more interactivity, to meet fellow your fellow night callers, and if you want to send us memes or make memes, make some night call memes,

we'll take it. Emily, welcome back, we missed you. Welcome back. I'm not glad to be back. We're gonna have a We're gonna have a legendary summer. I can the surgical summer. Oh no, it's the purgical summer summer. Thank you for listening. We'll see you next week.