You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
Handle here on a humpday, Wednesday, May seventh, and we finished it with our Pope news. We'll be talking about that for sure. I noticed that the popes take a new name, and that became really important back in the nineteen thirties when Cardinal Secola became pope and he did not want to be known as Pope Scola, so he took a new name.
I used that before. And by the way, I love that, truly.
Okay, Will shaking his head and going, come on, seriously, Handle, all right, let me tell you what's going on in Altadena. And this is really good. And I think you're gonna be interested in the stats.
You know. I like stats when they tell us something.
There's a story in the La Times about this woman, Michelle Williams, who lived in a nineteen twenties cottage and it was destroyed and she was there for seventeen years. She rented, and she received a proposal from her landlord she could have the burn lot. All she would have to pay is five hundred and sixty five thousand dollars cash within fifteen days.
That was a little tough.
Obviously she couldn't qualify or she couldn't come up with money. And she's not alone. Thousands of homes were destroyed in Altadena, and this is a very special area because a lot of people don't have much money. They're living in homes at our generational grandparents bought these houses for a couple
of reasons. They were affordable, and a lot of African Americans bought these houses because the entire southern California was redlined, which means that you couldn't buy a house if you were black in neighborhoods, so you could in this island of homes, and they got nailed. These people are not of the same socioeconomic level as people in the Palisades. So how do these mainly homeowners, how can they stay there?
Because the fear is and it's happening, And this is eighty already where property owners have simply sold the land. They just they don't want to build, they can't qualify, there's no way they can afford it. So developers come in and eighty of them have been bought so far, and a lot more being negotiated. And gentrification is going to happen because the land is several hundred thousand dollars
a lot. Today it costs seven hundred dollars a square foot to build, so if you're building a thousand square feet, that's seven hundred thousand dollars. So you're into this a million one, a million two. Who can afford it? So what happens the land? The landowner sells off to these developers who come in. So what is going on to
save those neighborhoods? And they're trying for sure. So in terms of Aschelle, she went to the Neighborhood Housing Services, the Neighborhood Housing Services of La County, and they came up with the money and they're going to build it or give her enough money to build a house and then sell it to her an affordable price. The county is buying the property. Wow, that's a pretty good deal now.
The chief executive of the Neighborhood Housing Services of La County said that their organization and a coalition of nonprofits are looking to raise more money.
How much do they have, we don't.
Know, to purchase a couple of hundred burned properties and then to build homes and ideally sell them to people from Altadena.
At an affordable price to those people.
And the numbers are staggering because so far they've been able to buy lots and arrange financing to rebuild and sell to the property owner, and they've hit the magic number of.
Two lots two. How is that for a success story?
There are thousands of lots of homes that were.
Burned. And so if you're doing.
Two every let's say six months, because this has been going on for a while, that's what for a year? At what point do you reach six thousand? That's a success story. Heart's in the right place. You can't argue with that. And this is not giving someone a couple one hundred dollars a food voucher or a snap you know, a food stamp.
This is a million dollars.
All right.
We've talked about this before and this is kind of fun. Every year there's something called the World Happiness Report and we talk about it and the United States has dropped to its lowest ranking. I think Sudan and Yemen are happier places than we are. We're pretty miserable. And here's what happens. How do they come up with this these figures, this ranking? Well, the question is what's the world's happiest country,
and inevitably it's Finland or Denmark, Sweden. Those guys are at the top, and they get there by asking people in different countries to answer a single self assessment question, self assessment question about life satisfaction. However, some surveys are looking at this and it turns out people in different cultures answer in many different ways. Depends on where you live, depends on whether money is important, depends on culture.
Depends on.
Just the way people look at life. We, for example, look at money very differently than other countries do they pall for example, They just don't look at it the
same way. So there is the Global Flourishing Study. It's a new study and it's based on a survey taken by a bunch of institutions, including Harvard at the Human Flourishing Program, and it uses self reporting and collects some real comprehensive data on well being from half a dozen dimensions in twenty two countries, two hundred thousand people it followed over five years. There is some serious research, it's not just a single question.
And here's what they did find.
Happiness declines gradually in young and middle adulthood. Then turns upward in life. Starting at about fifty, you get happier now. Of course they didn't ask me because I would skew it completely.
Bill. Are you unhappy yes? Were you always unhappy? Yes? When did you start being unhappy?
Uh? Probably at the age of two weeks? And are you going to stay unhappy?
Yes? Okay, fair enough. Now here comes the.
Interesting part, and this is I think no surprise to kneel. And that is one of the facets of this. One of the happiness levels you can point to.
Has to do with religion.
The more people are involved in religion, not just religion, but being involved in churches and synagogues, the happier they are. There is a correlation between the US becoming secularized. We just don't go to church or synagogue anymore. After my girls were bought MITZVD, I stopped. I wasn't interested. And
that's what happens to many many of us. And I don't know how it works in the Christian religion when people stop going to church in our cases because the kids were no longer involved because they went to the day school there. And so it's a direct correlation organized religion. People who are organized religion meet at church or synagogue or mosques where they have pot lucks. Do they have pot lu and mosques, by the way, I don't know.
I've often thought about that, huh. Anyway, certainly churches do, and there is just this camaraderie. There is just this connection with other people, and connections to humans is really important to lifestyle and happiness. For example, I was just talking to Anne about we are doing off the air about the pope and religion, and you know, I'm not very religious, and Neil, let me ask you, the more religious someone is, do you believe the happier someone is.
I don't know about religious that means a particular thing to me, but I think that if you are faithful and dedicated to your faith, I think that it can be incredibly uplifting. I mean a lot of atheists that don't have understanding of hope. Genuinely, they don't understand. They're pretty dark outlook on things. And it doesn't mean they're bad people any way, shape or form, but there's nothing nowhere to put there's hope is part of faith. So I find faith is part of happiness. I think it
can be. Yeah, absolutely, I was.
I was talking to I mean one of the things that was talking to Anne, and then people do believe? I mean, you know, obviously, and I don't understand it. You know, do I understand?
You know?
Did Jesus really feed the multitudes on one package of fish sticks?
How the hell do I know?
Did he walk across the Galilee without pontoon shoes on?
How the hell do I know? Does it seem plausible? Not to me? But and I am miserable?
Does that mean, Neil, you believe in a package of fish sticks and therefore you are happier?
Yes, thank you for every reason.
I am happier than you, for you are a miserable bastard.
And I don't even think faith can help you. I think you're just done.
That's probably true.
It's like George and Michael said you got to have faith? Yeah, you got to have faith.
Is that? Did Michael Bolton say that you have to have faith?
George?
Michael? It wasn't. It wasn't.
Uh.
Oh, I thought there was Michael Bolton during a period of time.
Do I have that right?
By the way, as far as am I accusing Michael Bolton to do anything here, am I right on that that name?
No Michael Bolton not at all different.
Yeah, no, I know that, but just uh, some reason that came to mind. And uh, I don't know why.
I'm a big Bolton fan, but I agree with Neil.
Faith is important. Faith and hope are both. They go hand in hand.
All right.
Have you ever heard of fridge scaping? I hadn't, and then and pointed this out. The Wall Street Journal wrote about this because someone there realize there's something here that's fun. It took the internet by storm last year, or maybe you missed it.
I certainly did.
And fridge scaping is about sprucing up your refrigerator, the inside of your refrigerator, not putting magnets outside with.
All those crazy places you've been to.
No, it's to make every nook and cranny of their refrigerators look whimsical. And they looked pretty deeply in this into this and the Wall Street Journal talk to experts and they're looking at the reason to temporarily escape the current economic political uncertainties and what It's just a neat way. It's sort of a hobby, but it's your refrigerator, which is really very strange.
I do this, do you?
I do it, but not to that extreme. But there's something esthetically pleasing about having my refrigerator organized in a certain way. And like, you know, I don't put like other decorations and things in there, but I do enjoy a visually pleasing refrigerator.
That's so bizarre. It's so bizarre now.
Yeah, one person interview said, well, manicuring the contents of myridge fridge is a fun way to spend.
A few hours.
The one downside is leaving the door open too much to look at the wonderful work that I've done. And some people see the shelves and drawers and a way to left to leave leftover chicken casseroles. And what they do is, in addition to leaving leftovers and buying new products of course, new produce and meats, et cetera, is that fridge scapers are decorating them with the same care that they wouldn't decorating a room.
I mean, does that tell you have absolutely no life? Now?
They tend to divide themselves into two categories. Oh no, this gets deeper, I'll believe me. Okay, there's the casual stylus who spends a few hours just jazzing up the inside of the refrigerator, you know, decanting the drinks and yogurt and jams into glass containers and playing placing fruits and veggies and bowls and vases and vases or vases, and just making it look clean and neat and just kind of you know, I have one of these at home, not the I'd live with one of these people, Okay.
Then there are the decorators who decorate the inside of those refrigerators, lining the shells with baskets, photos next to the milk and cheese, twinkle lights when the door is open, and they choose a theme. Now there's one popular fridge scaper, Lindsay Judish.
She did the fridge interior by themes.
The Great Gatsby is one theme, Bridgerton another theme. The Winter Solsice is another theme. Now, the Gatsby one is art deco.
Right.
Aaron Pitpgrass is known for really intricate fridge scaping. She's forty four years old, described herself as a max maximalist, loves vintage decor. She stumbled across a social media video last year showing strings of lights in the fridge, and then it wasn't until an old Peewee's playhouse Christmas special.
That's when inspiration took her. So what did she do?
What does she do to decorate the inside of her vintage nineteen fifties refrigerator as an homage to Peewee's Food in refrigerator segment. Well, what people do is typically this is a big deal, is you open the door and there's your Peewee's Food refrigerator segment, and you uncontrollably start.
Master bating pee wee Herman.
The hell someone's not muting? Okay, moving on. She then began the fridge scaping. A string of color lights outlined the shelves. They were adorned with strands of garland. Then artificial fruit was scattered around, eggs and broccoli stocks and butter. Then there was a small metal stand that was the base for a Christmas tree made of green grapes, and there were plastic googly eyes that were put on a slab of meat and a wedge of cabbage. Wow, isn't
that impressive. There was one Reddit user last year really limited the fact that their spouse had taken to fridge scaping and had taken over the world, and he posted that flowers, fancy baskets, jars were taking over at the expense of access to the food and adjusting the decor to even grab the leftovers was creating a strain in the household. Now that is and I'm looking at a picture.
This is his insanity, is what this is. It's almost you go to one of those very high end grocery stores that take the produce and make this extraordinary, almost a sculpture of the produce.
That's what these people do.
Now, the people who are fridgescapers say, wait a minute, this isn't just about aesthetics, because displaying fruits and vegetables rather than shoving them in drawers means less weight, less weights, healthier eating, better tracking of when food is ready to eat.
That that's true.
I mean i will take food and I'll put at the back of a drawer, and then all of a sudden, I'll realize that g I can make penicillin out of this. I mean it can get pretty rough, but that's a fascinating This is when you have too much time.
This is when you know I'm thinking of taking this up. Let me talk about that all right.
Well, today is the last day to have the real id or yesterday was the last day that you had the real ID, which allows you to get on airplanes and get into federal buildings. Otherwise you are not coming into a federal building. I wonder people who are arrested and going to trial for some criminal offense. Can they not go into a federal building and not be tried if they don't have a real Idly there's probably that's an excten, is my guess. In any case, the real
ID you have to have. And how do you get the real ID. You go to the DMV and the issuing new a new driver's license and the real ID, and I'm looking at mine. There's usually a star in the right hand corner, and the technology is better, it's harder to forge. And in the case of California real ID, there's a little bear, California bear with a star in the middle, and there's your real ID. Okay, you have to have it, now, why don't you have it? Eighty
one percent of travelers have real IDs. They met the requirements eighty one percent in the United States. That means twenty have not twenty percent.
It's even better.
In California, fifty eight percent have a real ID.
That means forty two percent have not gotten it.
So the lines that the DMV are long, long, long, because you have to have it the way you can't get on an airplane. Well, Christinome, who is head of Homeland Security, says, I'll tell you what We're going to, not stop you if we're getting on an airplane, but bring a passport that'll work, or bring a military idea. You have to have a picture on it, or tribal ID if you happen to be a Native American.
And what makes this so funny, and.
What makes people who have not yet done this such morons is the real ID law was passed by Well, was recommended by the nine to eleven Commission, and sign into law in two thousand and five, twenty years ago. It was supposed to be rolled out in two thousand and eight, and it was and you were supposed to well, actually you were supposed to have it done by two thousand eight.
Hm.
Well, since people weren't doing it, the implementation has been repeatedly delayed, over and over and over again. And at what point do Americans take this seriously? I mean, I complied early on because I was told and I believed it, We're not gonna let you get on airplanes at least domestically.
So I got my my early ID or real ID early on.
Have you seen the videos of hundreds and hundreds of people that are circling Department of Motor Vehicle buildings all over the country. Come on, guys, you can't be that dumb and guess what they are. This is proof positive that if you look at the average IQ of Americans across the board, you get very close to par golf. Americans have a way of just not complying.
Very often.
They just don't. We're not really good at following the law. All right, we're done another day, another eighty cents because we work at iHeart should be a dollar, but it's not. And we're back again tomorrow. Neil is here with me starting at six o'clock. At five o'clock, it's Will Cole Scheiber. With Cole Schreiber, I always screw it up with not Amy.
Amy's gone for the week. It'll be Heather Brooker.
And then we got Kno and we have an everybody here as we start all over again and see if I can offend as many people as possible.
How do I do today? Neil?
Ten out of ten, sir, excellent?
Okay, have a good one. Gary and Shannon up next. KFI AM. You've been listening to The Bill Handle Show. Catch My Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app