Hello the Internet, and welcome to season two ninety one, Episode one overall, episode number one thousand and five hundred.
Of Daly's Geist.
To super producer Justin for out pointing that out we are mild so bad, We're so bad and know him about this Half the time, it's y'all going like, hey, you know that was like your twelve hundred episodes.
You know, it's like a thousand episodes, and I'm like, is it?
And I know there's like trending episodes two that don't even mix in the mix all that to say, yeah, this one's fifteen hundred, man, Yeah, that's without trend one thousand, five hundred daily episodes of.
Guys.
Yeah, we got a murder at fifteen hundred.
Yes, okay, that's right, we do have a murder of fifteen hundred. This episode is absolutely Slays Still a production by Heart Radio Yeah podcast where we take Deep Avenue American share consciousness. This is one of our very special Dailies guest episodes where we have a couple of guests on and kind of focus on their areas of expertise. We have the one, the only one of our favorite listeners and the only listener who has been a full
on guest on the show. Christy Amagucci Mane coming a little bit later to talk to us about his on the job exploits a man who wears many hats and of first we are talking to Aisha Harris. Yeah, pop culture experts. She just wrote an amazing book about pop culture. First, I guess I should. We've only done it one thy five hundred times. I'm a little rusty. My name is Jack O'Brien aka Potatoes O'Brien, and I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my.
Co host me, mister Miles Great. Oh, thank you so much. It's Miles Great aka.
I was gonna declassify, but then I got high. I was gonna turn them all into the Fed, but then.
I got high.
Now I'm being indicted, and I know because I'm the guy that just wouldn't try to simply comply. But da da, and that's from Reddit.
TV on Discord said, hey, this is this is popping off on our politics, and then like people, this is this isn't even a listener. But sometimes y'all are finding just fantastic eight a's on there, So shout out TV on the Discord.
I feel like he would have a real mental health episode if he ever smoked weed.
Donald Trump, Oh, he'd honestly, And I don't want to say that. I'm not interested in justice, but I would settle if they if the Feds would allow me, I would roll a blunt soap potent that Trump's hair would fly off his head. And I would like to just watch him squirre him for that like seventy five ish minutes where he's like, they hate me, don't they? What is this I've been eating pizza all wrong or whatever
is going on? But yeah, he's there's no way you can be in like mentally on like a tight rope all the time like this guy is. And then it introduced weed to the mix.
Not but Yes so special guest expert guest up front, Aisha Harris. We're going to talk to her about whether stand culture is the new religion. We're going to talk about pop culture like archetypes like I. You know, I've always said that Freud should have just analyzed pop culture like movies from the nineties.
Right, rather than like Oedipus you are you are Charlotte from sex.
Oedipus is the like pop culture figure that smart people bring up first when they're like, hmm, doctor Freud, anyone. But I feel like all characters operate in that way, especially ones that really connect and become iconic. I managed not to talk for a half hour about Hannibal Lecter, but that is my number one example of like, you know, something expressing something in our unconscious as.
If you talk about Jaws. Though I do talk about Jaws quite a bit. I even reveal a very obscure character from film that I related to that.
Yeah, we'll talk about that after the episode. But oh my god, yeah, all that plenty more so, yeah, we'll we dive on and get into it right now.
Aisha Harris the author of the upcoming Wanta Be Reckonings with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me?
Yeah, well, Miles, you're thrilled to be joined for our expert interview portion of the show by a renowned culture critic podcaster who you can currently here is one of the hosts of MPRS pop Culture Happy Hour. Her new book is want to Be Reckoning with the Pop Culture That Shapes Me?
It's Aisha harr.
Welcome.
Oh that's the most boisterous introduction I've gotten ever.
ASO level.
We're very boterous here.
Well let us know if someone does a more boisterous introduction, call us, because we'll have you back just to come for that crown.
Yeah, given, Oprah, I like it.
I like it the first Yeah. Actually we were a big old energy there for sure. That such a compliment. First of all, I have to say, I laughed so hard when you called out the DMX lyric I'm not a nice person.
It's such a great line.
It's such a great line. It's just it's such a funny distillation of his whole vibe. But it just like drops all pretense, all dog metaphors go out the window. It's just I am not a nice person. Oh yeah, I mean that. I remember the opening of the song is so intense when it's.
Like, see this is ship I fucking be talking about, and then in a certain part it's like I'm not a nice person. Like, wow, it's the same thing I'm always when my friends when that album came out and then there was we were like, this is somehow the best line in all hip hop.
Yes, this is to the point it sounds a little like therapy, Like it sounds like I'm worried, I'm not nice person.
But yet he sounds so menacing and like, oh yeah.
That yeah, but yeah. One of it is a great read, very insightful. I want to kind of jump around to some of the different ideas that it raised that we talk a lot about on this show, and I wanted to talk start off with stan Culture. You have a really great essay I think called Kenny g Gets It, Yes, Yes, about stand culture. So, you know, a story that we talked about recently on our show a couple of weeks back was that people are experiencing post concert amnesia after
going to Taylor Swift concerts. And one of the more interesting like feces I've seen for why this is happening was Myra Fox and Forward comparing it to the Jews forgetting all of their time in the desert and Talmud. And but like even when you go into like their psychology today articles that are talking about, you know, why this might be happening, and it does seem to all kind of coalesce around this idea of their having this
highly affected, elevated experience at this show. And you know, the article then points out that you know, Swifties kind of pour over her lyrics the way that like a talmud Ex scholar would debate the finer points of their core text, and you know, there will be an extremist offshoot that believes she's coming out in her lyrics or something, and then they will go to war with like some
you know, some other branch of interpretation. But yeah, I just wanted to kind of you describe stand behavior as quote a wave of cultish behavior that has threatened to over tikpop culture of the past few years. Where stands original a pejorative reference to a crazed, violent fan like the one described in Eminem song Stand, but now apparently a badge of pride express a kind of unyielding devotion to artist, which mirrors zealous followers of you know, religion.
So yeah, like, did you see the story about people experiencing post concert amnesia? Are you buying that it's related?
No, this is the first time I'm hearing about it. So like they're forgetting the show happened.
They were saying things like, were it not for literal footage on my phone, I could I was having trouble remembering the details of the entire concert.
Yeah. Uh, that just sounds like they want an excuse to have their phones up the entire time instead of just like letting themselves enjoy its memory. Oh my goodness. Like, look, I have definitely been that person sometimes at concerts who puts her phone out and is like, oh my god, I need to catch this experience, and then like ten seconds the I'm like, what am I doing? They're right in front of me.
Right, and I'm looking at it through my phone screen.
Yeah, I And like I almost never go back and actually watch that video, so like, I don't know, I.
Don't think it's ever happened in recorded human history that someone has gone back and looked at the video of the footage they took at a concert. I feel like it's always just the act of taking it down to be like this is so good for evidence, right, Yeah.
Yeah, I don't It's it's dumb. I'm actually going to see Janna Jackson this weekend, and I'm very very excited, and I might pull out my phone, but it'll probably be more to like film myself and my friend's lip syncing as opposed to like trying to film you know, her dancing. To me, that makes a little bit more sense because like you're capturing the moment and you want to remember who you wrote with like that sort of thing.
But yeah, stands stands are weird, man. I mean, like you, like you said in the quote from my book, like this was originally a Stan was someone who murdered his his his. I mean, Stan was someone who murdered his wife and his pregnant wife or girlfriend and was writing crazy notes to EM and M And somehow we've turned this into like a positive thing.
That's me.
It's like it's such an American way of life. Like that's just like turning something that has really deep seated, like awful roots. And like I think Stan itself is the song is a really interesting song. I don't think it's a bad song. I just think like the whole point is that it's sort of a cautionary tale and now it's like something to aspire to, right, And that's
just it's just fucking weird. It's it's dumb. And so what I was trying to argue in the book was just like we need to have a better way of being fans and thinking about what fandom means. And I think for me, one of the more insidious parts of Standem is not just like that people are so into whatever artists or whatever franchise they're into. But it's that if someone else doesn't like what you're into, then it's taken as like this, you know, the worst offense in
the world. You hate this person and they hate you, and it's very like jets and sharp sort of situation. It's like, this doesn't need to be that serious, like yeah, oh, should be able to like what they like, hate what they hate, and never the twins shall meet or whatever.
You know, Yes, well, I mean, but that is also a thing that's been happening for millennia when it comes to religion rights, like my interpretation of the religion, and I mean, we've talked about trends around religion on the show, and it's clear that for a large portion of the country, like God and traditional religion are dead or dying or at least do not hold the central part of their life that you know, they did a couple generations ago, like and even that they did like a couple decades ago.
But the human search for meaning and like having some
broad significance to their life doesn't just go away. And I do wonder, like your essay really made me wonder if this is what is coming in to fill that space in people's lives, like the the like you mentioned in the essay, the religious fervor of Star Wars fans when they're forced to confront a new trilogy that might move in a different direction than their worldview, and the amount of energy that puts forth that they put forth, you know, arguing about it and criticizing it and stuff,
I feel like starts to make sense to me if I'm thinking of it, Like, you know, what if the Catholic Church was just like hey, new Gospel just dropped, Like I feel like that would get quite the reaction from you know, develot Catholics. And so this is like, if these stories fill that place in people's lives, then like I feel like I can understand the world. It is a terrifying situation to you know, a weird culture to exist in, and also like really makes the position
of these celebrities and these filmmakers like very scary. Right, that's a lot of pressure.
Yeah, absolutely, I mean there's something weirdly evangelical about the way that these fans stands approach these things, whether it's like trying to wrinkle as many streams of this artist's song or album so that they gets at the top, or you know, trying to convince strangers on the internet why like this is the best movie ever. Like it's just there is this weird sense of like and I
think I don't think all social media is terrible. I think it can be great for actually connecting fans to other people who they wouldn't normally interact with, you know, and people have more of a community they can find
and foster online. But but then on the other hand, it is it does have this weird sort of like religious bent to it that feels icky, and the fact that in some cases these artists who shower name nameless, sometimes they foster this weird religious fervor by you know, singing having seeking their fans on people who criticize them, you know, or the studios or are you know they really play into this or you know, release the Snyder cut like oh my goodness, like calm down, let's let's
calm down here. I definitely think the religious aspect of it is is very accurate. I also think there's like a comparison to be made to sports fans and how you know, pop culture has in some ways become its own sport. Where people take sides and you know, like team I don't know, team Malli, team you know, like
all the yeah or yeah. So yeah, it's really screwed up our way of like relating to one another, and also how we relate to art, because at the end of the day, it's like we should just like be able to enjoy it without having to add on all this extra layer of like meaning that I think can be harmful to society. Yeah yeah, social media, yeah.
Because yeah, I think everything's kind of like inverting in this weird way, especially with celebrity culture being where it's at.
Right.
If someone had a quote that I read like years ago that was saying, like, prior decades, you became a celebrity for achieving something. That's what brought along celebrity to someone was because of an achievement. And now we're in an era where merely being a celebrity is the achievement
and it sort of ends there. And I think through all that we're always if that's the case, then we're also trying to find like who our heroes are, and like it becomes this thing where now we're defending people tooth and nail over these criticisms of again like people were we just talk about how we're like deifying these people, but it's starting to take on like quite a more like literal sense of that, like where people are you know, coming at each other with the same level of energy
that you normally would be like, oh, is this some kind of religious like a religion like intra religion.
Battle or something like that.
But again, I feel like it's maybe just because like as we slowly like losing touch of like what has meaning what doesn't, then we just sort of like are left with these things and being like, well, I'm a barb, so this is.
What like my right.
You don't be careful, I've already died a thousand deaths on the internet.
I mean truly like not to take it to too dark a place, but I mean I feel like the Beatles might have been the first people to like fully get to this place, and like John Lennon commented on it by being like, we're bigger than Jesus like in some in some ways, and then he was assassinated, you know,
by one of his fans. Like, you know, so I do think there are like all sorts of dark directions that this shit can go, you know, John Lennon was at surface level a pop singer who sing sang songs about being a walrus, and yet like he took on such meaning to so many people that, like the the guy who shot him, I think one of his like chief motives was that he didn't like the direction that his career was taking at that point and like wanted
to preserve him in amber. So like again, it's just this religious fanaticism and devotion that has to kind of go somewhere and can go in like these really dark, horrifying.
Directions and before stan right, yeah.
Yeah, exactly, Like for for people who like aren't familiar, you know, some people know Kenny. Why did you use Kenny G to sort of illustrate this point? Because like I, for me as like a millennial, like I get it, yes, because that was like the first thing that we were like Kenny G sucks.
Face forever I felt seen because I have a religious devotion to Kenny g idol tootail that I just like kind of brayed into the back of mine like a paddle on.
But yeah, I mean what about Kenny G sort of like encapsulated this for you?
Well, yeah, so I had I had seen the documentary Listening to Kenny G, which is really great. I mean you have to actually listen to Kenny G music while watching it. So that's like the bad, the downside of it. But like it's really interesting because he seems very he's very aware of his reputation as like someone who's made millions and millions of millions of dollars because a certain segment of the population at a certain period in time was obsessed with him. And you know, my my, my mom,
she had several Kenny G albums. I had to listen to that ship a lot, especially during the holidays because like that was like peak Kenny G season and like the mid to early nineties so smooth, so few few genres as a whole, like just make my blood boil, like smooth jazz. I hate it so much, Like it's not it's not real jazz. It's not.
Oh no, it's so sanitized.
Yet it's so But that's the point of the documentaries that you have these music critics who are arguing, like this is not he's like not playing real jazz, and even he will admit, like, look, I know some people don't like me, and I realized I'm a polarizing figure.
And he says, you know when I'm paraphrasing here, but he says, you know, when someone says they you like something, I like something, don't you, and that person says no, I don't, then you take it really personal, as though like they're saying something is wrong with you or something
bad about you. And that's kind of like how I frame the essay, which is like I talk about stand up and all that, but I also talk about sort of how we also use these figures and these movies and TV shows to sort of like assign value to ourselves or make ourselves feel better about who we are. And so like it's not just enough to really like Beyonce's music, but you also have to feel as the Beyonce represents your values, like as a as a moral
human being. And so when she's called out for using the word spas in a song and then re sends it, like that makes you feel good because you're like, oh, she's listening, and like she's progressive and she understands these things yea, and like same like with Taylor Switch when like she finally stopped being well then she dated Matt Healey apparently, but like whatever, before that, you know, she was supporting democratic politicians and supporting queer rights, and when
that happened, it made her fans, many of them feel better about themselves because they're like, oh, she she also thinks like me. And I think that's just as much of a trap in some ways as you know, being just a religious fan of anyone, in part because it's just like, yeah, I mean sure there are ways. There are certain ways where you can assign like if someone is listening to I don't know, I'm trying to think of, like who's the like, are there any neo Nazi artists.
I'm sure there are, like if they're like, if you're listening to someone who has like neo Nazi traits, Oh, I recently learned that like one of the members of Ace of Base was like connected to neo Nazi.
Whatever kind of a wing at Nazism.
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, but apparently he was like a neo Nazier. I don't want him coming from it, but like may have been associated or sympathized with that movement. And if someone knows this and then like is like, oh yeah, I still loves the Base, like, then you
might be like that's that's troubling. But I also don't think that like it's it's it's just kind of it's a slippery slope because not every artist, most artists, most people are not going to have the same exact line of values as you are, So like, I think it's just like we shouldn't trap ourselves into like, you know, I guess our Kelly would have better like if someone's like fully supporting our Kelly, like in this day and age, I'm going to look sideways at you and I'm probably
not going to like want to be around you, but like at the same time, you know, I think most artists are more complicated than that. And just the subscribing of meaning it feels like play like, it feels like posturing, and I don't like it. I wanted to just kind of like like what we like and hate what we hate and not always try to put deeper yeah, not not put too much deeper meaning into it than that.
Yeah, because there's so many times too I'll hear a song and then like someone's like, oh, you know that person like was you know, it's like actually a monster, And I'm like, what even know, Like an algorithm suggested this song me and I liked it, but I also get too a part of you is like you start thinking, as a consumer, what's your role in that? But I think the further point is, like I think for some people the experience of music is probably the closest thing
we have to religion sometimes because people aren't. Ye, we're so disconnected that I can tell. Like for me, when I was just losing my shit to different music, it was because it was I could say, like I was envisioning myself like living out the lyrics or like the beat was just like put me in a different zone and things like that. And I think that's where it kind of gets slippery, where you do begin to be like this person can give bring this feeling out of me.
Therefore I'm going to like assign like all these higher values to them or their persona because of like that connection. And yeah, I think it does get a little It can't get a little slippery at times if you're also like you have to mirror every single value I have too, because shit, I mean, I love jay Z, but I hate capitalism. And he's told me, says day one, he is a capitalist, and so I'm like, yeah, you know everything, but that you know, crossing pit it lines and stuff, you know.
Yeah, yeah, And to be clear, I don't think we shouldn't critique those things. I'm just saying I don't think it should be a like burn it all down situation where you know, I think we should be able to enjoy the music but also say, like, but this this aspect of whatever they're saying or whoever they are, like jay Z, you're even Beyonce, who look, I levet Beyonce, but she's also just as much of a capitalist as
she is. You know, that is worth noting because it also just it comes up in their music, so it's impossible to separate the two. But yeah, I also don't believe that we should just be like, oh, well, if you like Beyonce, then you fully support capitalism, because it's like, no, that's not how this works.
Yeah, it's disconnected. It is that, you know, Kenny G's music gets me outside of myself, gets me outside of like time as normally experienced, which like that is something
that is being that needs to be a replaced. It's like people used to have these religious services where they'd all get together in community and you know, listen to music and and yeah, meditate and like, so if I because we're in this like hyper capitalist like cellular existence as like individual nodes, and like there aren't that many opportunities to get outside of ourselves. So like if Kenny G does that for me, like you know, and I didn't start listening to him because I knew that the
G stands for God. That realization came to me later, like you know, years after. All Right, let's take a quick break and we'll come back, and I want to talk to you about this quote where you talk about inadvertent self formation by way of popular culture, which I think is brilliant, and I want to talk about some psychological archetypes. So we'll be right back, and we're back. We're back, and Ayisha, So yeah, I read the quote. But you talk about pop culture informing how we think
about ourselves, how we like shape ourselves. You kind of run us through various pop culture figures who you modeled your identity on as you were growing up. I've often said on this show that Freud fucked up big time by using ancient Greek myths instead of pop culture archetypes from the nineties. I think he could have really made a name for himself if he had just you know,
stuck to pop culture. But it does feel like there, Yeah, these are the things that we should be like as we're thinking about you know, where does this weird urge come from? Two stand people? For instance? Like these are the figures that I think actually exist in people's minds and like deep in their unconscious.
Right, how would you how did you explain again this concept of inadvertent self formation by way of popular culture.
Well, I think especially when we're just kids or adolescents, we're not thinking deeply about what we're consuming, what we're viewing or watching. We are just we're taking it in. We're like a sponge, right, It's just everything affects us and we don't necessarily know how to name it or know how to identify it, and it comes out. And how we talk to each other, how we think of ourselves,
how we see ourselves. I mean, I think about, you know, growing up as a kid in the nineties and how casual homophobic language is just like the thing that everyone did. And if you go back and watch the movies that we were all watching, whether it was like Acepure or like the teen movies of it, Like there's all this casual homophobia, you know, showing up there, and so you don't realize until years later, or at least, I mean, I'm sure plenty of actual queer people recognize it in those moments.
You know.
I obviously it was never right or okay, and it definitely was hurting people then. But I think, you know, part of what growing up hopefully is means being able to go back and sort of look at the things that you took in when you were younger and understand how they may have and may still be affecting how
you view things today. And so that's where the sort of the idea of it being inadvertion comes from, is because like it doesn't like sometimes it just happens to you and then you have to later go back and realize, Okay, how did this happening to me make me who I am now? And a lot of it is sometimes like going back and undoing, trying to undo what sort of calcified in your mind and brain and how you relate
to things. Yeah, like it was. I'm pretty sure when I was a kid, I probably use the F word, the homophobic F word a couple times, because that's what I you know, grew up around. So yeah, it's a lot of undoing and trying to become better, hopefully if you're able to go back and look at those things and recognize those things.
I feel like so much of that debate now where people are like it's true, woke are like people who can't let go of Like, but my favorite movie is this, and I have to say it's bad now if I agree, and true, like how much we we take on shit that we see in the media, especially in the age before social media, Like I was, everyone's like looking for something that might feel like them or could be them, or something you could kind of just feel like aligned with what were like the shows or works of media
that you kind of grasped and sort of ingested to kind of become your personality.
You know.
I write in the book about what I called my my Hoe phase and and you know, which lasted from roughly my late teens to mid ish twenties, and how I kind of had this idea of what I wanted to be as a as a as a girl slash woman, and how I related to men, boys and men, and I thought that, you know, I had to be sort of tomboy ish and the type of girl who could hang with the guys, not necessarily, Like I never pretended to like sports like that was never my Like sports
aren't my thing. I never pretended to do that, Like it wasn't that. But you know, I'd use what I liked movies, TV music to sort of signal, oh, I'm like I'm cool, Like super Bad is one of my favorite movies, Aren't I cool? It really is one of
my favorite movies. I love that movie. Uh, but like I would play that up, or play you know, play up the fact that you know, I was really into I don't know, freaks and geeks or the wire whatever as like the thing I put on my dating profiles, and I saw like this vision of like wanting to be closer to this idea of masculinity in a way as a way of like shielding myself from getting hurt by boys and men. And so I was very much
like Samantha Jones was my girl. I wanted to be like her from Sex of City, Nola Darling and She's Got to Have It, the nineteen eighty six film, not the TV remake by Spike Lee, Like those were kind of my you know, the badass women who fucked around a lot, and like didn't like we're anti relationship, anti
getting too close to two men. That was kind of what I clung to, and then over time I realized, one that's reductive and also like at acting like a man, thinking like a man and whatever this was before Steve Harvey, I wasn't just like I'm not gonna just think like a man, I'm gonna act like one too, fuck being
a lady. But like I once I realized that that was all kind of a false dichotomy and that even if you do act like that as a woman or as a person who presents as a woman, like, you're still gonna get the short of ends of the stick, because like you're, you're still gonna get You're gonna be
slut shamed or you're gonna be you know, you're. It's just there's no winning, and the idea of getting closer like masculinity is not something at least that I want to aspire to in the way that I conceived of it, or that pop culture conceived of it, which was often like the ladies man, whether it's Sam alone and cheers or not, not that this like actually what I love about. It's always Sundy Philadelphia, is that it's actually like critiquing
those things. But like I'm thing of Dennis and like the dentist system and how like that is clearly something to be. That's like being critiqued, this idea of masculine men and what are those guys the pickup artists or whatever like that? Yeah yeah, or the game or whatever. Yeah, yeah,
like that whole thing. I like, I thought that's what I wanted to be, and then I realized it's all it's all, it's all bullshit, it's all patriarchal, and I had to sort of undo all of that mindset about how to be a good person and how not to be an asshole, because really I was just trying to mimic not just not really masculinity per se, but just like being an asshole, which is often assigned to men and often seen as a good thing in men.
Jack de What what?
What TV people?
What media people shaped you over the years, because I feel like I was always a loose collection of shit I saw on TV.
In film, yeah, I mean Kenny g number one first and foremost obviously influenced. I don't know if you've seen pictures of me in fifth grade, but my hair was long, kerned and always looked a little bit wet. I just wore you know, dress shirts with a vest over top.
At all times, you know, I was.
I watched Jaws so many times before the age of like six, that I think I was like a combination of like Sheriff Brodie and Quint at various points are like wanting to be that. And then also Rocky and Karate Kid were the ones that I where I really saw in like something about like the like I thought it was cool to get your ass kicked. I think other people like thought like yeah, like other other kids would be like I'm into Bruce Lee or like somebody
who is famously an ass kicker. And the two characters that I really loved were people who could like really take a punch and just like keep getting back up and so dog, yeah, the underdog who is just like losing fights repeatedly. I also liked John McClain, who you know, is just dragging his like broken body across broken glass like by the end of that movie. Like so something about that probably tied into the very strict Catholic app upbringing that I had, you know, like some like weird
Mel Gibsonian like the Pasure. Yeah, yeah, Jack's sadism or something was probably tied in there, but yeah, and then Michael Jordan came along and I was like I want to be that. I want to be Michael Jordan, and then went to like you know, early nineties hip hop, and then I'd say like pop intellectuals and writer like Hunter S. Thompson, even though I like didn't love his writing.
I was like, man, that guy's cool. I want to you know, drink and use drugs like the future doesn't exist while still being respected as an intellectual and the Yeah, I feel like those were kind of the main ones as I was like still forming myself. Yeah, I was just so addicted to TV and like films that like every time I saw something I could like find I was like always looking for like identity in like film like the things I was watching, and like one of
the earliest ones was like Goku and Dragon Ball. As a kid, like I was just like, oh this, like I felt like it was teaching me things about toughness. And then then I want to be Michael Jordan, and then I wanted to be Will Smith and Fresh Prince. Then I was ace Ventura for about two years with the way I spoke, like just like Pete annoying.
To every kid, every kid, every.
Kid I was.
I was alrighty then all that shit, yeah, I had.
I had specific friends I remember who were ace Venturer for three years in a row, and they, in my memory, the funniest kids I knew, people I've ever met were totally co opted that ship. And I was like, this man is a genius.
Yeah. And then I was the Wayans brothers. I mean, Marlin more than Sean because Marlon was a little more outgoing. Then I was Tiger Woods because that was the first time I saw a Blazian person like me on TV. And I was like, okay, so I'm that and I tried to play golf. That ship that was I was never going anywhere. Then there was the rock shot at another like vaguely blazing person. Then Puberty hit. It was all wrapped. I was like jay Z, I was method man.
I was Pharrell because people are like you gotta you could be like for I was like, yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. I will not wear trucker hats. I was wearing trucker hats and she should have seen me in the early.
I wore trucker hats too, because it was it was the odds.
Yeah, you had to, you had to, and at least for me, I was like, that's a trucker hat.
I'm like, but Pharrell wears one, so.
I guess yeah, right. I wasn't wearing Bond Dutch quite yet. Then I was like, I love Tom Sizemore and saving Pride Ryan for something that is so weird. It's because he kept jack to your point, and the Goku thing. He kept getting shot and he kept getting back up in the moment, and I was like, yo yo. And then my mom was like, there was a monk in Japanese folklore called Benk who maybe you would be more interested in. So then I got into figures like that.
But now I don't think I've moved on past Pharrell.
To be honest.
Yeah, but it is one of those things where, like so much of my identity was being defined by the media sadly, and I was taking cues, especially from like the blackness that I saw on screen as some kind of standard that I had to sort of uphold because I was being fed in a very specific version of like what black culture was via television and film, then other versions from my family, and then other times also being Asian, I felt like I was just kind of
like a punchline. So I was always kind of sifting through media to try and give me something.
I'm like, well, that shit's cool on TV.
For you, Oh.
Let me tell you how.
Yeah, my cousins, my black cousins were immediately they're like I was Jackie Chan from the second the first rush Hour came out, or Blackie Chan with a lot of things, and yeah, that was And at the time I was like, or I would even you know, the thing is you even point that inward and you're like telling other people. You're like, I'm like rush Hour the person, you know what I mean, and then take that because you'd rather
like you got laughs from that. But it's always interesting how I was, like I was always using media sort of like this touchstone to inform those things.
And again it was.
Like out of seeking some way of like finding myself, but also like maybe inadvertent or maybe very intentional kind of personality formation as I was doing that.
Yeah, it does feel like a very interesting way to kind of just view the world and the cultural landscape as like these figures that people that like resonate and you know, they express some like you know that I read this book when I was young about like how
movies are like cultural dreams. They're like expressing some something from like our shared unconscious and you know, so obviously they resonate and people pay money to see them, but then they have this second life where they shape us in the same way that like linguists talk about language shaping everything we do because they like give us the color palette that we are working with when we're like trying to build the person that we want to be, like how we talk, what we wear, how to like
you know, hold our body posture wise. There's this crazy story about how like Marlon Brando, characters like nobody in the Mafia dressed like that until Marlon Brando did in a movie and then they were just like, yo, that's me, that is me, that is who I want to be. And then they started dressing like that, and then that's that's what we associate with, you know, people in the Mafia. But it was like this invention by a great artist.
Yeah, that's so funny you brought that up, because I did an entire I did like this deep dive episode about The Godfather and how Italian Americans reacted to it, And I learned that where it was just like they were they the gangsters were imitating the movie version of themselves, which is just such a great little anecdote and a great example of how there's just this back and forth, this cultural exchange between the language of the movies and then the language of the people, and how they feed
into one another, and sometimes they become so blurred that you don't know, it's like a chicken and egg situation, like which actually came first? Like was this you know, did this exist?
Was it?
You know? Was Marlon Brandall basing the character off of a specific gangster, Humid, and then it just became sort of the template for all these other gangsters. Yeah, it's just it's so interesting to think about that, or even something like I don't know, the Rachel haircut in the nineties, how everyone wanted that. It's just like, what a weird time, what a weird weird thing, how ingreat pop culture is to all of us.
Yeah, and I feel like we see it now even more right, especially like with in politics, like every like especially with like when you look at the symbolism and like the imagery the semiotics of like political factions. Now, Like I feel like you see so many people on the right, like far right, who are just they like they love the Punisher, they love the Joker, and there's like this weird like again there are people are finding
these archetypes again. Do I think maybe give even their own like political battles, meaning you know what I mean, like because it might not be enough for them to be sort of get the picture because they're looking at maybe their own situation, but they like they're saying like, Okay, I'm on this side of the fence plus Punisher. Oh yeah, I like this, this is me. Now, this is me the guy who is like just unhinged violent and feels like that's the only way that can solve things, to make people safe.
Yeah. I think those two in particular are very like powerful central sort of psychological archetypes that have really you know, like back to Heath Ledger's Joker comes out at the start of the Obama administration, and I think the like resonated with people being like not everything's okay here, even though kind of the mainstream media seemed to be like we're good here, everything's good, right, history is over, and then like the Joaquin Phoenix Joker comes out and like
adds what I think are two crucial ingredients that he is an in cel and that he is like pointedly not funny but wants to be funny, which I feel like are two of the key features of a lot of the people who identify with the joke and like that. Yeah. I mean, that character's been around and resonating for a
long time, but it just feels like it's really Yeah. Wait, in the books that are written about our culture, there probably won't be as many of them as we like to think, but I feel like that there will be a whole chapter on like the Joker and The Punisher and shit like that. Unfortunately, yeah maybe just yeah.
Again, just shows how much meaning we like extract from like our like our popular culture, because it wasn't like no one's like going in history, right, Like I I want to like I want to be William to comes to Sherman or something like John Brown.
They're like, I want to be the Punisher.
Yeah, I want to be Batman.
And you're like, oh shit, okay, so we've completely just exchanged one for the other. But again has like that same motivating force behind it.
I guess. Well.
Also, like the meaning that is being extracted is often just like totally out of line of what the meaning originally was or really is. Like when I think about all the you know, the Bill Maher types who complain about, oh, you can never get Blazing Saddles made today, it's like, okay, but like Blazing Saddles is actually like a radical piece of like.
Filmmaking, and they're just yeah.
And they're just like focused on Oh, well they you know, they're they're using the N word or or whatever whatever. Actually I don't even remember if the N word is us. It doesn't matter. It's like they are taking the wrong takeaways from that movie to prove their point. But really it's just like that movie was, like maybe it wouldn't
have been made today. But also like most people who are actually like liberals, the ones you are fighting against, they would argue that Blazing Sddles is actually really great because it's way more transgressive than an episode of Family Guy or whatever. Like it's yeah.
We wouldn't let you Bill Maher remake that would suck and you would do a bad job. All right, let's take one more break and we'll be right back. And we're back, and I wanted to talk to you finally about the chapter This is Ip That Never Ends, which you open talking about what I think is one of the more significant movies of the past like a couple decades, which is the Lion King live action remake, And that movie jumps out at me when you look at the list of the top grossing films of all time, it's
in the top ten. But it's like a movie that didn't really like all the other movies on there, resonated and like had these cultural ripples and like you saw like Halloween costumes or whatever, and it felt like the Lion King movie, Like not a lot of people came away from that movie and were like great job, no notes, but it was it was a massive Like it wasn't successful.
I guess this is this is the thing that makes it stand out for me from the rest of the movies, and like the top twenty top grossing movies of all time is that it was not successful as a movie, but it was extremely successful as a marketing like event basically, And like I feel like we saw the same thing with like the Jurassic World franchise where it's like the premise, the promise of this movie, the trailer are all like
they're really brilliant works of marketing. They make all the sense as a marketing offering to a consumer, but like the product doesn't follow through in a way that is like culturally lasting. But because we live in a world of like you know, where capitalism is kind of the ultimate score that we're keeping, then we just like notched them as a w and kind of move on. But yeah, I'm just curious, like what made you kind of want to open that chapter talking about the Lion King live action remake?
Well, I, first of all, I did not realize it was like now in the top ten. But obviously that's account like I'm assuming that's not accounting for inflator or it's counting for inflation and not like actual number of tickets sold. But so yeah, the thing about The Lion King is unlike it's other Disney's other live action remakes and the ones that they have already made, the ones that they are going to continue to turn out, that
movie has all animals. There are no human characters, and so this movie was advertised it's like, look at how realistic. This is look at how it basically it really did look like an episode of Planet Earth. Like that's how quote unquote good the animation the CGI was, but good for who? Because you know, the nineteen ninety four version of Lion King is a classic in part because the
animation is so rich, richly drawn. They the character, the animals have facial expressions you can understand like they are connected. Their bodies and the way their bodies move are connected to their emotions and their feelings. It is animated, It is actually animated. And what we got with the Lion King was a sort of dead eyed reminded me of polar express like why are we doing this? There's nothing here?
And I think, to me, I wanted to focus on that in part because it was so stark, how much of a cash grab this was, and how Disney can you know, say, until it's blow in the face that it like wants to update these stories for new audiences and blah blah blah. I mean, you just know that we already know this property exists, we know the music, we know the songs. You throw in Beyonce and Donald
Glover and people are gonna go see it. The artistic aspirations, whatever they are, they do not play out for me, at least on the screen, And so I wanted to use it as a jumping off point to sort of examine how we are just drowning in all of this ip enfranchise bs for the most part in ways that just feels suffocating and cyclical and as though we're like never gonna get off this hamster wheel. It's interesting because, like that essay, I mean, this entire book goes through
down a lot of rabbit holes. But I was not expecting when I started writing the essay that I was going to wind up like quoting Nietzsche. But here we were, you know, in this idea of like us not being willing to reckon with like things ending and having an end. And I hire shows or movies that exist like as a single thing without having to be resurrected in any way.
You know.
Obviously pop culture has always had, you know, resurrections and reboots like, not that this is a new thing at all.
And I explain that in the essay, like I go all the way back to the Silent era, where there were remakes of Cecil b. DeMille, the filmmaker made like three or four different versions of the same movie over the course of his career, so it's not like this is new, but it has definitely reached its like suffocation level of like this is all Hywood seems to be focused on is recreating and rehashing its old ideas because
that's what's the easiest to get butts in seats. And I'm kind of sick of it and for every like Spider Man across the universe where it's like, hell, yeah, this is this is good, Like this is great, even there's plenty of Ghostbuster twenty sixteens or you know, offering all those busters or Arrested Development like on Netflix, which was just like a terrible Like.
I just I couldn't even do that where it's my favorite season, my favorite season.
I listened to that. I listened to Kenny g while watching that. It's nice because the words don't clash with the music, so you can kind of have just an overall yeah, no, it's it's a weird. It's you do a good job of describing like that, what the experience was for people watching season four of Arrested Development interesting like this, they're the same characters, but like just everything seems like a little bit off.
Yeah, and way longer, Like they need those episodes longer than they ever needed to be because it was on Netflix.
Yeah, like we can be wacky, man, what about a forty five minute one?
Who cares?
It's also just hard as a consumer, right because like we talk about this all the time on the show of like just how like in the nineties, when development people became all the marketing people at the studios, the emphasis just became about like raw numbers, and like imagination was kicked to the curb. And even now, like knowing that, I'm still susceptible to them the studios basically being like, Hey, the McRib is back, and I'm like, what a new
Jurassic Park movie? And I know it's not gonna come close to the fucking the first hit a Jurassic Park I took in nineteen ninety three.
It's not even gonna come close but that high.
Yeah, but I'm chasing the proverbial dragon or dinosaur in this case, Yeah, because it.
Stands out to me as like a real like it could have if they had the right people, like the dinosaurs at a park and like the park is now full of people or the last one, the third in the Jurassic World trilogy, where the dinosaurs are close in the world, Like, those are amazing premises for films that it feels like they were just like yeah, but the marketing is gonna crush, so we actual we don't have to worry about making them like great films.
You guys want to go to Italy, Why don't we say they're in the mountains in Italy?
So I was like, what, they're in the Dolomites.
Yes.
Yeah.
The other issue with like that specific example of Jurassic Park is that like the new one, the CGI, like it doesn't even come close to feeling as real and terrifying as the first movie. Like I can still watch the first movie and when those kids are trapped in that truck and it's like literally you can feel it breathing on you. Oh yes, these new CGI ones just don't I sound like such a fogie like there these
kids these days? Blah blah blah. But really, I think we reached a tipping point at some point, Like maybe it was Avatar where it's like it's just like, you know, he did James Cameron did Avatar, and then everyone decided like we're gonna go all in, but no one can do it quite as good. We're even close as good as James Cameron. So now we get all it's really shitty CGI that like doesn't feel real and doesn't feel like you're experiencing like it's just so flattening, and.
Learned the exact wrong lesson from that. Yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, like to your point, this has been going on for years, Like the theater world has been putting different versions of the same classic plays on for years. Nobody decries the cynicism of that. I have in the past been like what if we treated you know, superhero movies the way that the theater treats Shakespeare plays, and like, you know, if it takes you forty two Spider Man's to get to across the Spider verse, so be it.
But it like, yeah, the thing where Miles, as you said, like the development got taken over by the marketing people. It feels like you're actually able to feel that. And now the movies in the top ten, top twenty are being taken over by these movies that like the you know, they're directed by the studio, like they you know, they just they it's it's all based on like different moments that you can put in a trailer, and we're trending in like a just a very flattened direction, to use
your word, Ayisha. I guess the other possibility is movies are just not the art form going forward, and all the artistry and storytelling is gonna go into video games. But I will refuse to acknowledge that idea because I don't play video games that much except for your switch that you except for my Switch, which I love and play all the time.
Wow jamming out to Kenny and with the rest development in the background.
Yes, I think, I mean it does make me wonder. Like I think that's why everything everywhere all at once. I think was such a tonic for people because I think so many of us aret this place.
I'm like, bro, already seen this movie.
Yeah, on some level, we like I feel so many times, even when I went to go see Across the Spider Verse, you see some trailers, I'm like, already see this, Like, I mean, I know I haven't seen this, but I've already seen this, and and again, like it's just all about these like laser guided money making hits that aren't
necessarily like they just know that there's certain levers. It's like I'll pull the celebrity lever because if I put the right mix of celebrities in this certain ip which I know people just they don't care whatever it is, they want to be there. Then we have these quote unquote movies that do well while completely just you know, they don't they don't satisfy like our appetite for something
like imaginative. Yeah, and like you'd think maybe now the cynical like the cynicism of studio would be like what if we just did like wacky stuff, man, like everything everywhere is like that just that blew people's minds.
But that might be a bridge too far for.
That, I mean, but then then of course that's that's the problem though, is that often they the studios will try to recreate in everything everywhere at once, or like think of all the the movies we've movies and shows you've seen posts get out where I'm just like, right, m no, you're not doing it as good as you know the rest, Like you.
Know, we're talking about the same stuff kind of yeah.
Yeah, that is marketing. That is how marketing operates is by imitating things that already work. You can't. You can't invest in something unless you have like a proven track record and like a deck with you know, metrics that show that this like connected with people, And therefore you'll never get As long as marketing is running development, you will not get anything that has like a truly lasting impact.
You might have to start playing video games and get used to subtitles because the movies coming from non English speaking countries.
Are really great.
Yeah have you seen it? I finally saw Past Lives this weekend, so good, highly recommend. Yeah, I enjoyed that. All right, Well, Ayisha, thank you so much for coming and talking to us about your amazing new book. Where can people find you find? And anything else you'd like to mention about the book?
Yeah, go check it out. It's it's everywhere everywhere you get books. Go to your local bookstore. Get it because I like to support the local indies. Also, I have an audio version I recorded by myself and you can amazing check that out. I do a okay impression of Dave Chappelle, so like, look for that if you if you're if you're curious about it, and yeah, you can find me as I'm sure everyone says. For now on Twitter at crafting my style on Instagram at AHA number
eighty eight. And I'm now in Blue Sky, not really posting too much because like it's it's a place where things are still figuring themselves out. But I'm on Blue Sky at just Aisha Harris. Yeah, that's that's oh. And of course in pr howcoult your happy hour? There you go, Yeah, come listen to us.
Well, thank you so much for taking the time and for writing this book.
Yeah, thank you.
This was awesome and we're back. What a fun interview. Miles the time size more revelation.
I I look, I think I also, I too wanted to get my ass kicked and still be standing like.
You, Yeah, listeners, let us know anybody else like just really fantasizing about getting the shit kicked out of you. I just like there was that.
And also that Jetly movie Hero there's like the I think the last scene he's like facing down a wall of arrows. Yeah, and like it's like the last scene I think, and obviously like he dies, but I was like, that's tight, bro.
I was like one of the most iconic figures of culture of the past, like thirty forty years is Scarface and he goes out in a hill like it is taking, Like they just invent a rule that you were impervious to the first like forty five bullets when you're the highest anyone's ever been on cocaine. They're like, yeah, that's and I think everyone was like, Okay, that makes sense. So yeah, I think there's something there that we've identified.
We'll keep mind, always be standing, always be standing, will always take a punch, but for at least thirty five seconds and then we'll fall into a giant fountain and float face down. But that was fun. Another piece of information to producer justin let us know that apparently the SIMS video game now like when you hit a certain level, you can could be a rand game. Yeah you have to you Stan like, yeah, it just shows you how that evolution went from like that's not a good thing
to now like it's aspirational. Yeah, what I would do.
For a stand?
And also I wanted to well, we'll have to have aisha back on. I wanted to dig into, like what who are the pop culture like icons right now? Like Drake is mining some weird like sad fuck boy energy that I feel like I see in a lot of people. These days. Pete Davidson is like an archetype that was like he spoke into existence or something like that. Like I see a lot of Davidson's out there around. But what a fun conversation. We are going to take one
more break. We're gonna come back and we are going to talk to Christi Yamagucci man And we're back and it's time for us to call up one of you listeners. It could be anyone right now. We don't know, we don't know. Let's pick from the from this pile of submissions and would you look at that easy top hat?
Uh? Is it Christi Yamagucci Mane. Okay, I think we're gonna call. Let's call Christy.
Get this man on the horn.
Justin please get Christi Yamagucci Mane on the line.
Hello, Oh hey guys, what's up. This is so normal, This is so organic, This is so not scripted. Wow, I actually knew it was.
Y'all.
Do you realize that it says the Daily Zeitgeist like on the caller idea.
Yeah, when we call from the big red phone in the studio. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Was surprised by that. But thanks for giving me a call. Christy Yamagucci Mane a k A. Willie. Uh, you said we could. We're going to use your government name today.
I told you, I you know, I'm more comfortable with Sir Yamagucci Maine, Sire Yamaguchi Maine Esquire. But I guess we'll call you Willy today. Thank you for.
Expert of the AKA game. Christy Yamagucci Mane AKA will feels like it's like brilliantly anti clinat.
It's very it's very lackluster.
It's like when you find out like John Wayne's real name or some shit, you know, like like some some really cool stage name and then you find out their real name is Bob or something.
Yeah, what was this?
Oh oh yeah, Marion, Robert Morrison.
Yeah, John Way, that explained so much about him.
Doesn't have the same gusto as John Wayne.
In my mind, it's a cool name on its own.
Yeah, shout out Marian though. Yeah.
But yeah, man, we wanted to talk to you, obviously, because we're asking our listeners. We wanted to hear from people with interesting jobs. I know you like from the what you post. You wear many hats And when we were talking before, I was like, well, you hit us up about a your work out of car dealership, your time as a repo man, your time as a wedding efficient which like car lot and wedding efficient are your two primary occupations.
Before before you get me canceled or anything, I was the repo guy for like a year and a half, a long time ago. Damn yer, seventeen years ago. Now.
Yes, I do wear many hats. I'm a bald boy like you, Miles. I gotta keep the people the sun off of it, you know.
But yeah, for the past thirteen years or so, I've worked at a car dealership detailed cars, just full recon Basically, if you trade your car in, it goes through me. I do everything to the car that needs to be done, unless it's like heavy duty paint work and body work, then we.
Have an in house body guy.
But yeah, I basically try to make your car look as good as new before we stick it back on our lot so we can get as much money for it and ruin everybody's ability to go buy cars right now because the market is absolutely stupid.
Yeah, use cars. Yes.
So in addition to that, I've been a wedding efficiant. I think this is let me do them. This is gonna be the seventeenth year I'm coming up on having done weddings. So a friend of mine, good friend of mine that I went to high school with, he was getting married and he asked me to be the efficiant because of my beard, literally because of my beard.
That was I swear to God that was.
Something.
No, it was, it was not that.
It was just basically they they went and got the marriage license ahead of time and got married actually in a coffee shop that they met in. They they actually exchanged the legal vows, and then when they did the wedding for their friends and family in downtown Wilmington, they had me be the officiant. But they were like, yeah, your beard looks official. Well we want you to do it. We want you to stand up there. So that's why they asked me. And you know, I've always played music.
I've always been you know, I love a good karaoke night. I don't mind having a microphone in my hand and being in front of people, and so it kind of was just a natural pairing. I kept after after I did that first one, I kept having people ask me about about doing theirs, and then that branch.
Murmur throughout the wedding, people being like, damn, look at that guy's beard. We got to remarry exactly.
We need to do a vow renewal, we need to do a commitment ceremony.
We got to have this guy do this for us.
But uh, yeah, that's uh, that's essentially what happened is my friends. You know that that wave of friends you have in there in your mid twenties, that everybody starts getting married, and suddenly they all had somebody that they knew that they had a personal relationship with that was willing to do it. And so I went and got ordained and like made sure all the paperwork was squared away, and uh and there you go. It's just non stopped since then. And it's it's my side gig, as most
millennials have one of those these these days. I do the car dealership five days a week, you know, it's kind of like bankers hours, and then on the weekends or in the evenings during the summertime, especially when people are eloping down here. I live at the beach, so it's a it's blown up as far as a wedding destination. Over the past, however, many years I stay as busy with it as I want to turn down just as
many weddings as I accept. At this point, and I'm at about forty forty five weddings a year, I'd.
Say, holy shit, And do you ever just like kind of they happen upon two people who look like they're in love and you're like, hey, you know what I do for a living.
Here's my car? Yeah, so y'all on Twitter? Uh So I have.
I have jokingly said that to people that I've met who I know are on a date or something. You know, Hey, just if you ever need my services in the future, you know, and drop my name to them.
So yeah, yeah, I kind of have done that.
So what would you say, in your infinite wisdom of doing all these weddings? What kind of what kind of advice do you offer people from your efficient perspective, Like what do you see couples get wrong? Or what what do you wish people knew going into planning a ceremony to just to give a little insider tips wisdom.
If you're going to have a friend do your ceremony, make sure the efficiant gets out of the way for the kiss.
Oh yeah, that is the number one.
Thing that I steak that I see couples do are mistakes made at couple of ceremonies who have like a friend of the family or a relative of theirs, that they want to perform the ceremony to go.
Face in between and take a kiss on either cheek.
Yes, that's exactly like a surprise me. It happened to me one time early on.
My big stupid face was right smack dab in the middle of the of all of their kisses the frame, and I was you looked horny and it was uncontrollably horny.
My hand was on both of their asses. That did not help, did not beat those allegations.
But yeah, that is the number one thing I would say is always remember when when your your guests are standing for the bride to come in, always have the officiant tell them to sit down, and always remember to step out of the way when you say, uh, ladies and gentlemen, friends of family, it's my unique honor of privilege to present you for the very first time his husband and wife. Mister and missus, you may kiss your bride. You get out of the way of all the photos.
Any anything from the repo mandates or from car detailing like anything. That is an easy way to spruce up your car and make it look like it's brand new.
So I would say some advice I would give you is if your car shopping, there are some very easy giveaways to find it. First of all, the carfax thing that you see on windshields, it's all bullshit, like, don't don't listen to them when they say, oh, it's got a clean carfax, you have no idea. A very easy way of uh, there's you can go online and see
what I'm talking about. But there are clues as far as what the paint looks like what's called the orange peel, which is the texture of the on two stage paint. You've got your base and then you've got your clear and the base is going to have this like texture to it. And if that texture is wildly different from the other paint, even if it matches pretty close in color, that's a strong almost like one hundred percent sign that there's been body work done to those panels, so you
know it's at least been in a wreck. So then you need to definitely have it inspected by an outside mechanic and say, hey, pretty sure there's been damage on this quarter panel right here or this back bumper. Can you just take a look at the frame, make sure, you know, spend the few bucks if you're in the market for something.
That's what I would say.
As far as driving crazy stuff that I've found on the car lot, I mean, I've found just not I found electronics. You know, we found iPods and iPads and cell phones and stuff like that, but that just the typical stuff that people forget in their cars when they go to trade them in. Found money and there before, like wads of cash hidden in like little compartments, but nothing crazy good, you know, no serious drugs that I could have flipped and made any money off of, you know.
Right, I feel like that's good advice just in general. Is like I'm always way more confident that I'm going to remember where I hid something and that I hid something exactly like, well, gotta be safe, so I'm gonna put this thing like a in a side panel.
We're not We're actually not very different from the squirrels, Isn't that the whole thing? They like, they hide stuff everywhere, and then that's how trees.
Grew because they find.
Yeah, they can't remember that shit from the repoing days. So again I have to reiterate, I'm not this person anymore. Don't don't cancel me. I didn't have the class for the Democratic Party.
Okay, you know, fucking we row exactly exactly. Me and Miles are on the same page.
He worked for the Democratic Party, and I used to legally steal people's cars.
Okay, wait, break down, break down though the repo the connection between like in your specific situation you were telling me earlier about like the business of this car a lot and where you come in as a as a repo person.
So the economics of this specific car lot, this car lot had like a bad reput still does, it's still around, They're still wildly successful. And this was again like seventeen years ago, I think, going on, I was around twenty years old that I repod. But essentially when you would go, you know, you see tho these little rock lots and it has like you know, twenty two hundred dollars down, thirty five hundred dollars down, drive off the day, right,
that's all the money they have in it. So the moment you make that down payment and you drive off, they have broken even so any payments you make after that it's just profit. It is just money, is just gravy from them on then of course the financing, you know that they it's it's not just the payment, but they're making money off of the financing. And there was
one of those buy here, pay here situations. And so if you got your car repod, if you stopped making payments and you got your car repode, you either showed up the next day or the next few days and caught all the payments up, which again is just pure profit.
They just turned around and sold the car again. They still held the title, so they they were selling the same car over and over like on multiple occasions where people would would buy a ride, not not make the payments after a few months, and then they would they would, you know, we'd find it, bring it back. They would clean it up, you know, maybe pay like a small detail fee to someone and then stick it back on the lot.
Wait, how would you take the car like with the tow truck or did you you were like bust.
So if there was a towards the end of the time that I was doing it, he did get a snatch struck one of those that asked, you know, the little boom arm on the back of it goes under the front wheels, you lift it up, make sure, you know, you crawl underneath that, make sure it's in gear.
For the most part, though, we would get keys cut so we would pay.
We would go like, say you drive a Mazda, Yeah, we would take the ven number, go to the Mazda dealership, give it to them, and they could cut a key based on that ven number.
So then you're just riding around. You've got the file.
You know what their references are, you know where to look for the car, because if it's not parked their address, if they're trying to hide it. A lot of times it would be at one of the three references that they would put down on the application to buy a car, So then we would if we found it, we we just wrote around. The guy I worked for, his name was he drove this this Fleetwood Cadillac, you know, like like villain ass looking car, right.
And so we would we would scope it.
Out and we did not want any confrontation because it's dangerous as hell, you know, you those those from the yeah in their mind exactly that that uh that lizard lick toeing shit like it's it's not. It's not like
that at all those reality shows that you see. We would scope it out and we would repo from like ten o'clock at night to three o'clock in the morning, and then either I was driving the getaway car, I was driving the Cadillac, or I would walk up, you know, make sure there's no lights on in the house, nobody's moving around, and then it's just a mad dash to opening the car up, opening an alarm doesn't go off, hopping in, cranking it up, and peeling out essentially, and
again I have to reiterate, it is the funnest job I've ever had.
I hate that fact. I hate it. I hate it right right, But there's something about it. Yeah, you're like, you're twenty years old.
Cart, Yes, you're.
Twenty years old, and you're not in trouble for stealing cars. You get to, you know, go out late at night and and like you said, steal cars. It's unfortunately it was a blast, man.
But then yeah, you kind of come around.
You're like the economics of it too, It's like it's a wild how predatory it is to the pot. Huh, this is the best business you bring them in because you say you can pay with you can bring virtually nothing down, I get the financing deal. Then when they inevitably can't pay, I just rinse and repeat with the same vehicle. Baby, Like wow, I'm like that's when I'm like, that's I always like want about lots like that in the business dynamics of it, and like that makes perfect sense.
And I can't think of something more American than that, too, right right, I kind of wonder too.
I've I've caught up with the guy that I worked with at the time. It was a very weird dynamic because I saw him show like empathy to a lot of the clients that he whose car he was looking for.
There was a few instances.
Where they were older people that got behind on their payments and he refused to repoe their cars, like genuinely refused to take them. And he would we got on this this cycle where we would stop buy a few people's homes. He would take their payment for them because this was again this was before you could pay online or anything like that, and he would literally bring their payment back to the dealership to keep them out of trouble with you know, with with the lot. And so
I actually found out. Years later, he got out of the business. I don't think he was built for it long term. I think he probably had that kind of eventually you know, eventual awakening.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He moved out of town and I think he opened up like a comic book shop or something there.
You go, so yeah much, you know, opposite ends of the business spectrum.
I feel like, and I think, because you ord the repo man, you got to give us the zeitganga tip man. If you're behind on your payments, how to fuck you hide your car from the day away.
From those four references.
I guess yes, that that's that's my number one.
My number one thing is always uh like, wherever you hide it, always back it in because the first thing they're looking for is the license plate number. But don't park it at your house and any of the references that you put down, do not do not park it there. Mike had another thing which I don't know how you avoid this really.
He had if he.
Knew a car was like going to be in a general area, he had people from like Dominoes and pizza hut and delivery places. If they spot he would give them a finder's fee. Wow, and we're talking like fifty bucks. And this was like two thousand and three, two thousand and four, so it's like a nice little chunk of change.
And so he had like he had like spies everywhere and ship. It is pretty wild.
But we got chased by one guy one time. We repolled his escalade and he jumped in another car and took off after us, and it was a wild ass chase down this two lane. Yeah, essentially, until called the off duty sheriff's department number and they set up like a roadblock into downtown where we were headed and uh and so we flew through it, and then this guy like the they pulled in after him, and uh and and the next day he came down and called his payments up.
And so it was.
It was.
It was a wild, wild couple of days for that guy.
But yeah, he might not have even known that you were repalling.
That's exactly right, that's exactly right.
Like he he genuinely just thought that his car got stolen. And we're trying to avoid confrontation as much as you know, you don't want to open up a dialogue there with it when you don't know what somebody's got, you know, behind their back when when you're on their property. And then another time we had a guy he had a truck in a ditch in his front yard. It was the truck we were looking for, and knocked on the door and he told us to fuck off, And so we were waiting. We didn't have a tow truck at
the time. We were waiting on another guy. So we're sitting in this food line parking lot, this grocery store parking lot, and all of a sudden, we get surrounded by cops, like seven or eight car Sheriff's deputies.
They all draw their weapons.
You know, they weren't completely aiming them at us, but we get up with our hands up and starts explaining. You know, basically, the guy whose car we were trying to repo, he called the Sheriff's department and said that we were threatening him with guns and baseball bats, which we didn't carry any weapons on us. You know, it's just a recipe for disaster. It's going to escalate things into a bad area. So yeah, he explained it to him, and they all put their weapons down and and let us go.
And You're like, no, I'm doing this on behalf of a car lot company. Oh oh of course, Well then please on the on the degrees of awfulness.
I feel like we were not very high above the Sheriff's department, but just slightly, just that I wasn't a full on cop in that situation.
Right, because like it is like you're in that group of people who can like legally steal someone ship.
It's like, I'm sorry, man, Miles used to be a hoodlum. I know it.
You said, Jackie used to hang out the sewers of Kentucky or wherever Ohio.
Yeah, yeah, the Hallmark store. We know about that. Yeah, Hallmark Store. Yes, how could I have forgotten? You almost got you?
Uh, it's a blast. Doing bad ship is so much fun. That's why people, I mean, if it's not a crime of like needing to feed yourself or something, it's just fun doing fucked up ship.
Unfortunately it sucks, right, Yeah, that that's never the explanation given, like in law and Order when they're like why'd you do it? Son, and it's like I was fucked up? They're never like, yo, it was fun as.
Fun as ship.
Man.
It's an adrenaline rush.
Yeah, you know, people some people skydive and and uh, some people you know, do motocross or whatever ship and some people repoke cars.
I guess yeah, his is better than motocross. Mm hmm. Absolutely well, Christy, I'm a Gucci man aka Will. Such a pleasure. Thank you so much for coming through talking to us about uh that your career. You're you're one of our favorite listeners and guests to have on the show. We really appreciate you, man.
It's my pleasures, my pleasure, and this was a was this a collect call?
Yes, if you could actually just not yeah, cut just to cut that part out, say that again and say well actually whytch you take that again, Will, and say thank you so much.
And I can't wait to foot the bill for this call.
Guys.
It was an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it's an honor to be I'm a two time guest now. I believe two Tiers club, so two Timers club, and I cannot wait to pay the long distance bill.
You're such a not that we need to anything, but it's just good to know that you would.
Of course I insist because this was my pleasure first and foremost.
So amazing.
Thank you, guys.
I appreciate you all right, that's gonna do it. That's gonna wrap it up.
Don't leave your car at the places you leave as references, which feels like kind of obvious, but I get how people will get lazy. It might be like what ain't my house and then forget that, Like I think about that shit all the time, Like how like do I have people that like the government would have known I'm friends with because I'm not friends with them on Facebook type shite?
If you have any expertise on how to like drop off the grid or evade your debtors, just hit me up privately. We want to talk about it on the show. But yeah, just got some things going on. No that that was super interesting. And you know, crime not only does crime pay, crime is fun is I think I can't wait to play this episode for my seven year old when he when he hits age.
Eight and then show New Jersey Drive. That's right, all right, but that's gonna do it. You can find me on Twitter A Jack Underscore, O, Brian, how about you miles at Miles of Gray wherever there's at symbols go there.
You can find us on Twitter. Daily zeit Geist right, the Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram, we have Facebook fan page and a website daily zeit guys dot com. We post our episodes and our footnote link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode. Won't really be happening as much in today's episodes.
But yeah, but there is a song.
There is a song, miles and what is a song that you think people might enjoy it?
Okay, There's like a duo called Wilma Vritra v r I t R A and the first track on their album Grotto.
I was looking this album Grotto.
The first track just blew me away. It's called find an Hour, and they're like this, like one guy's like one of the people in the group's of lyricists.
The other's like a multi instrumentalist, and it just got this.
Like very cool, like live hip hop feel but kind of low fi, spooky sounding, like the recordings very like sounds very diy in this track, and like great string arrangement too, which I was telling Jack, I was like, this feels like when Mary ben Ari, the hip hop violinist, was like blowing it up in the odds, but like in a classier way, you know, more like Isaac Hayes type of shit. So anyway, this is Find an Hour by Wilma Ritra.
I'm getting losing my breath check it out.
Yeah, and I totally got Miles's reference and didn't need to explain to me at all.
I know.
Look, it reminds me of when Marcel was like, what kind of fucking Tumblr ass explanation?
I'm like, I'm sorry, I only speak at Tumblr all right. Well, The Daily Zeik is the production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Yep, that's gonna do it for us this morning, back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we'll talk to you all done.
Bye bye