Does my mic sound good?
By the way, your mic sounds nice? Your mic sounds nice. Brian, during the break that was in my head, I was saying that, what is that from just puttering around my house, just Brian and I being fucking weird doing Mike Mike nice, My mic sounds nice?
Oh that was Crisp Crisp, Mike, Crisp, Crisp, Mike Unique, New York Chris Crisp, Mike Mike Hot pod. This is a hot pod.
I thought of hot topic, hot topic.
Hello the Internet, and welcome to season three, seventy episode for I don't know what this is. Uh, it's s d's Hey, it's a production of iHeart Radio. It's Wednesday, January eighth. We're kind of off cycle because I don't know if you guys seen this shit. But La is on fire right now.
The cities on fire.
Wow, And there she is. There. She is thrilled to be joined by very special guest co host.
Paula because we'll cry.
Oh my god, it's chaotic. It is fucking crazy out there. But my mic sounds nice, sounds nice, doing vocal warm ups, doing mic tests. Yeah, I'll let Miles speak to his experience when he's back whenever that is, I'll just say he's safe, but unable to record at this time. At my house, we're just like over here doing the analog version of doom scrolling, which is watching the local news.
Is we got the local news on in some rooms, trying to like hide it mostly from my kids, who are like my eight year old's always had like a fear of fire, and now I'm like wondering if he's psychic, but he's It's like half of his nightmares are fire based for some reason. That's why, because.
He's Los Angeles.
So I've been i don't know, trying not to make like freak him out too much.
Other dreams are about the economy, He's like the houses.
Yeah, that's right. Those dreams are about black rid. He's just like really plugged into the current events, and I'm like, what is it with this kid? How are you doing?
I'm grateful that I'm doing okay. I am worried about out people in LA. I'm worried about my friends and people in the affected areas. I'm worried about the aftermath of this. I'm worried about unhoused people. I'm worried about the environment and wild animals. But I am grateful I have power of running water. I'm doing okay. I hope they stop this soon.
Yeah, Like the running water thing, isn't it. Like I've never noticed this where the fire is so out of control that they've been like, you need to stop using water because we need it all to spray at the fire. Like last night, we didn't have enough water to like fill the tanks that they're pulling from.
There also has been like things going around about people like spraying wetting their own houses to stop the fire. And I'm like, yeah, I'm wondering if people are doing that too, like in leading me too.
Yeah, I've been told that is a smart thing to do. I have not done that this time. I have done that in the past when I lived in a different area. That was when I left that house for the last time. There was like ash raining into our yard. It was like, Wow, this is really happening. Yeah.
I remember, like years ago, I was so stupid. I went to college in the LA area and like we would still play basketball outside when there were fires. Like we were so fucking stupid.
We were a nosebleed. Every time I cross you up.
I know and then like there was another time at the beginning of stand up of my stand up career where I was like still hosting the Slapper's open mic, and I walked outside and there was ash raining down on me, and I was like, this is the grind, the hustle.
That's right, that's how real I keep it out here. Yeah, air quality is definitely kind of one of the main concerns for me. There is a unnaturally bright gray cloud hanging over everything. It's like overcast, but the quality of the light is very weeld, weird and wield that baby mode on that one per se, it's very.
Wield get shut together, we need to go back like it smacks me in the faith. That seems like such a metal the clouds with the weird light seems like such a metaphor for like our Los Angeles dreams, like like overcast with patches of lights shining to us.
Might need to revise that California dreaming. So at some point maybe Zach and the Rippers can do it and we'll save by the bell reference for other forty five year old people who.
Love being on the left. According to the Vagrum Swammy, what's that his whole analogy about Screech and Zach and Slater. Did you guys cover that? Like?
Vi?
Vig Ramaswami wrote this whole post about it.
Oh no, I missed it.
Oh sorry, I thought the audience would know. He wrote a whole thing about how we're when the H one B visas were like the hot topic in the moment. He wrote a whole post about how we're elevating Zach and Slater instead of Screech from and he had all these nineties references.
But yeah, I mean, I've always I've always liked that guy. We've always saw ey eye on only saved by the bell references. But how are you just kind of doom scrolling? How are you experiencing the whole thing?
I I'm probably gonna start cleaning more just to handle it. I'm trying not to watch, Like I have my app open. But there's the watch Duty app.
That auty is blown.
Yeah, everybody download. It has where the fires are. You can turn like the flags thing off so you can see like the actual borders. It has evacuation orders, it has where shelter locations are. So that app is doing great right now. So I'm looking at the things that I need to look at. But other than that, I'm just like, this would be a great time to catch up on Real housewives or something that I don't need to anxiety my way through.
You know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, how is your dog reacting in any weird ways? Or well, this morning there's no birds anywhere?
Oh my god, that's so sad. That is so sad. Yeah, I did any of them.
They're like like my bitches.
Yeah. I Like I went outside this morning for like a minute, just because I was like, like, my one dog wasn't peeing or pooping inside because he's great. But and then I went outside for like a minute, and then they started sneezing, and I was like, we're going back in. It's inside time. I can't do this, yeah, like you're just gonna have to figure out how to pee inside.
I was immediately aware of, like how long it's been since I changed the air filters in my house, Like the second that I was like, fuck, yeah, I'm meaning to change the air filters. Yeah. It's kind of hard to politicize and make sweeping generalizations from like inside a news story that feels like it is still ongoing, and it does in many ways feel like it's like, you know, just nature rolling the dice and taking out entire chunks of our city. But that has not stopped people from trying.
I will say the one like political reality this is driving home. I remember during the election, one of the stories that was used to highlight like why a next Trump administration would be different from the first Trump administration was I think it was Ezra Klein pointed out that during the first Trump administration and at one point and that this is like the shape of this story is echoed repeatedly by people who worked in the first Trump administration.
But there was a wildfire. He was mad at Gavin Newsom. He's also like currently uh, you know, tweeting wild shit at Gavin Newsom, like he hasn't contained this fire at all, which.
He's doing photo ops.
Come on, he's not. Yeah, but during his first administration, he told people in his cabinet to withhold funding, like federal support for a wildfire catastrophe in California to like just get back at like in a like bitch off
with Gavin Newsom. And the only reason California like hasn't been on fire ever since then is because the people in his cabinet just fucking ignored him, And the moral of that story was like, it's gonna be really bad this next administration because like he's surrounding himself by people who won't ignore him, who will actually do what he's saying. Yeah, I mean, that's like seems to be the entire operating
principle of this administration. So it's just kind of uh eerie to have this climate catastrophe happening, like as we're days mered days away from that reality being upon us. The other I feel like politically salient detail.
It's salliant, it's salient.
The point the detail is salient. My mic sounds nice. The detail is I'm scared valliant. But people are like the mayor is in Africa, like when she should be here, Like I don't know, man, Like she didn't know this shit was about to happen. Like I'm sure there's some coded racist shit involved in people being outraged that she's
in Africa. I will say that one detail that keeps coming up that does seem worth talking about is that the LAFD like budget was cut by eighteen million dollars this year, which is like a small amount considering the overall budget of the department. But they also increased the police budget by like one hundred and thirty eight million dollars.
Okay, but they needed that money because they needed to buy the add ons for candy Crush on their phone. Okay, that's right, They need to hit it for all the app purchases.
Yeah, at a time when crime is going down and the danger of fire due to climate catastrophe is going.
Up, just like the crime though, can't.
Can't they just arrest the fire.
It is funny because to the fire, the.
Police are tweeting about the about you know, they're they're obviously completely helpless and useless for many scenarios in this one in particular, But they did tweet at two am last night the LAPD. So this is from the LAPDHQ. The LAPD remains vigilant during the ongoing fires throughout the city of la and has deployed officers for high visibility
patrol during the tactical alert. At this time, we have received no information regarding looting or other criminal activity in the affected areas, so like the only thing they're worried about is looting and then followed up individuals taking part in such activity may be subject to enforcement. Please check back for updates. That's individuals taking part in such activity is just like such fucking dumb guy, smart police language.
I think they're calling out the fire because they viewed as a person of color because it's like red and orange.
And stuff, you know what I mean. It's true. Yeah, you know, they would love to report information regarding looting in the affected area, So that means there really ain't shit going on. They really are useless.
Not be surprised if they started like arresting people who were just taking their belongings and putting them in their car. Yeah, like you can't be looting this house.
And you're like, where are you going with that?
They're like, we're gonna have to confiscate this for our Is it registered? Do you have a license for that, kitty?
But yeah, high visibility patrols, which is basically their strategy for everything. If the fucking helicopters are any indication, although they what does that mean?
They're just like they're just out there just walking around, just strolling.
Yeah, but they like want to make sure that you see them. They're like, we're out here. Maybe they're putting their lights on a little bit they're they're flexing.
I'm definitely hearing sirens, but I assume that's for the fires.
Like they're just out there just running their sirens, just trying to be like, hey, don't forget about us.
They're like, it's go time. We woo oo woo.
Really seems like it would be a good, good opportunity for somebody to be like, all right, so like clearly climate is the problem and not you know, shoplifting. May maybe we shift that budget over here.
I really do hope that people that are affected or able to like not just the people that are affected, but it feels like if they have more power in the city, like or connections or whatever, then they use those to like make a change, because it's it's just sucks, like all of this could have been prevented within the first Like isn't it like fifteen minutes if you can qualify it prevents it from turning into like hundreds of acres of damage or whatever.
I mean, yeah, the winds are bonkers.
Yeah, it's crazy.
You know, it's up to one hundred miles per hour winds, And yeah, I have you know, friends and parents of friends mostly who's like houses of burned down and it's a fucking it's really wild out there.
It's devastating, it's so sad.
Let's take a quick break. We'll come back. We'll finish talking about this story and move on to a couple other things that are happening in the news. We'll be right back, and we're back, and we do want to say a positive word that one member of a police force, the Police Academy Police Force, Steve Gutenberg, here acting like
a wildfire hero. Just he was caught on the local news moving people's cars to ensure that fire trucks could get through so that the over in like the Pacific Palisades, which is where the first big fire broke out, and you know, like entire like towns, we're just like wiped out.
People were evacuating their cars because there was an evacuation order and there's a traffic jam because everybody was evacuating at the same time, and so they just all had to leave their cars behind and that clogged the roads.
And so Steve Gutenberg was still there for some reason and he just like was They found him on the street moving people's cars out of the way so that fire trucks could get in and so he went on the news to urge the public to leave their keys in their cars if they were leaving them behind, so that they could be moved.
When I first saw this screenshot of the interviewer in Steve Gutenberg, it looks like Steve Gutenberg is the interviewer because that's how I imagine him in my head from like police academy. But now he's like older obviously, so he's the person being interviewed. Yeah, but that's like cool that he's encouraging people to do that. Yeah, what if the police arrest him because they think he's.
Living you know, I mean, I will say, like, so he says, in a crisis, always remember that you are you're part of a community. Great advice, and if you're an able bodied you've got to help. I think situationally, really good advice. But like the thing that you seem to hear from authorities is like stay the fuck home
right now. So I don't know, like, but I do think it's admirable that he's out there helping people, especially because it sounds like they needed the help to get these cars out of the way.
Yeah, but he is saying like when you walk by, like if somebody's in a wheelchair or something.
Yes, exactly, that's good and I think that's really good advice. So shout out to Steve Gutenberg, one of my childhood heroes coming through for me, you know, an adult hero. Yeah, childhood into adulthood. But that was Were you a Police Academy fan?
Yeah, my family watched those for sure, huge, huge fans of the franchise.
Yeah, the two through because Police Academy one was rated R for some I don't think. I still don't think I've ever seen Police Academy one.
I feel like I have. I don't know, but I feel like my parents were like they they didn't encourage me to see like crazy movies, but they also weren't like super restrictive about it. So I feel like it made me like well balanced on that end. So I might have seen it or like the TBS version of it or whatever. You know.
Yeah, that was like a very formative series of films that I have not gone back to revisit, but I'm sure I do remember how they treated gay nightclubs in that film as just a place where if you walked in by accident, they were going to force you to slow dance with them.
I love that we need to do that more men for them to slow dance with each other.
But Gutenberg, you know, was fucking holding those films down with his He was like sort of like a more charming Chevy Chase. I feel like was his energy, Like he feel like.
He also had like the Tom Hanks vibe too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just friendly got the better one. Yeah. Rather than picking somebody with a bad personality and saying he's like that guy with a good personality, I think you picked the better example. He's like Tom Hanks. He's like just really likable. Uh, And it's nice to see him doing a nice thing for people when my other favorite film, like Sylvester Stallone is like hanging out at mar A Lago, you know, being oh my god, super Trump supporter.
Wait, can I say something that's off topic? Most fun I went to Monday Night Raw with Juckies and did We talked the moment we were so upset because we thought Stone Cold was gonna come and then it was whole cogin instead, and we were like, oh this sucks. And like the line to get in was really long. They were other people in and on us and like our gate or whatever. And we were like, ugh, like what's happening? And then we we like when the Hull Cocaine moment happened, Oh my god, we booed so loud.
It felt so powerful booing with an entire arena of people.
It was a magical underrated yesterday, I think, uh or yeah, because friend of the show frequent guest Joey Cliff Big a wrestling fan and was talking about how great wrestling audiences are and it's so fun. That specifically called out you guys for booing Hule Cogan, which.
We boot the fuck out of Hull Cogan, and you could we couldn't even hear in the arena like what he was saying on Mike because we booed so loud.
Yeah.
And Macaulay Cochin huge pop like so the timing that he had when he lifted up his hat like to give the audience that little reveal. Oh my god, I'm like, this man is an entertainer. Everybody like loved him. So those were two highlights of the of the night for sure.
Socaulay Culkin was there in the audience.
Yeah, Macaulay Culchin was in the audience, and they had I think it was like Seth Green or something and then they pan over and you just see like a baseball cap and then it raises up and Macaulay Culchin is like, does a little hammy fun thing to me camera. Yeah, and then everybody was like, we just watched Home Alone for Christmas, you know, and it was super fun. And then it was like the exact opposite, even worse for hull Cogan, like the booing was it was. I know,
he was so mad when he went backstage. There's because some there was some tweet that was like he dedicated his whole life to the WWE, and then and then he came back for his moment, everybody was like fuck you.
A tweet from hull Cogan saying that no, no, no, no.
No, Like somebody was saying, like he must be so upset because he spent his whole life doing this this stuff and like he's.
Been yeah, yeah, shouldn't have been fucking Trump's hype man, Like what the fun.
He's also always been racist, always openly Racistes died unions within the WWE so he could earn more. Like he was.
Awful the Reagan of WWE. W W at the time.
Yeah, brother, that's the only thing is that's really fun to say, so I can'tnot say it. But he's like so.
Bad that I don't think anybody at this point is like, oh, guy's a big hul Cogan fan. I guess you know. Yeah, I think we can just call each take of him.
Yeah.
Yeah. One of the lesser problems caused by the fires. I'm having a hard time keeping up with the myriad stupid and dangerous things that Donald Trump is doing. He's on it. He's on a fucking heater right now of just stupid bullshit. He just like riffed a press conference at mar A Lago where you talk about renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Just going full risk on the nation of Greenland or the territory of Greenland.
I guess he's like threatening massive sanctions on Denmark if they don't just like give us Greenland because we need it for I think, like his exact quote was something to the effect of, like we need it for military stuff, so they should give it to us.
It's fucking insane. Also, does he not know that it's North America, So even if he names it the Gulf of America, like that's not the US.
Yeah's he think. I think he just wants it to be more equitable in.
A name Mexico, like South America or something, and.
Then we change South America to then I don't know, he.
Said the thing about Canada. He wants it to be the fifty first state, and it's like Puerto Rico is right there, and like DC, they're just like what the fuck, like give us representation?
Nah hm hmmm. That would that would let the Libs win to come up with an idea that nobody has thought of, because it's completely insane.
I don't know if I could handle if we if the United States of America became more French. I think it would cause me severe discomfort, you know what I mean?
Right? Yeah, So you like seemed to be threatening to annex like a bunch of countries Like this feels like the I don't know, like start of something different where it's just like, yeah, we're going to actually like go full hitler, We're going to like bevading, We're just going to like take over a bunch of the world. It seems like that's like I don't know Elon Musk's influence.
But maybe I mean, like I don't like, how realistic are we like at doing that successfully without destroying ourselves first, like in those hands.
You know what I mean. Yeah, it's a very very stupid decision.
It's going to ruin other people's lives and Americans lives like it's so it's the end of a It's the end of an era.
You guys, we have we really did it conspiracy theory because the big outcome, the big consequence of his So the way he's trying to get Denmark to give Greenland to US is by threatening the most massive sanctions, which would cause huge spikes in the weight loss drugs like that ozempic and all all those would I always want to say would go VIA, But I think that's like a bank in the Midwest or something.
There, something that's VIA. I know, I know what you're talking about.
But those those medicines are all made in Denmark, so they would all get incredibly expensive. It's just like he thinks things one step ahead. Essentially, we would.
Think that like, oh, if there are weight loss drugs that like rich and powerful people like want to keep taking that, Like, first of all, they'll still get them, but second of all, like he would love to do that to like the Hollywood elite, even though he's part of them.
You know, right, yeah, yeah. And also you know, we have talked about how the weight loss drugs, the way that they get you to lose weight is by eating less, and so it's hurting the like profits of grocery stores and you know big food McDonald's and working with like young brands and McDonald's and the dairy industry to make America overeat again. It is wild. Our writer Jam McNabb pointed out that in this in this press conference that
could have massive international relations implications. He also went on a long rant about how dishwashers. He said, they want very very little water to go into your dishwasher, almost none. You know what people do, They just keep pressing, pressing, pressing, keep it going, using more water, likewise washing machines, which I don't think is true.
But about any buyers, I think he knew, and he was using this moment to talk about water and conservation. He's just like and steps ahead, you know what I mean, Like he's really got it together, really does. Also, when the fuck is Donald Trump ever ever used a dishwasher? Like he he has a dishwasher and like they probably have a name, like that's like he doesn't have a he.
Never used pressing, pressing? What is he? So they just like have to keep running the dishes multiple times.
I don't think that this man is just upset that there he hears dishwasher sounds in his vicinity and doesn't understand how they work.
Right, Yeah, exactly, all right, that's what's going on. Basically, it's the wildfires is what's going on. We're just hoping everybody and your families are staying safe out there if you're if you're being affected by this, and yeah, and had good energy to Los Angeles, Paulove, thank you so much for joining us at this kind of crazy time. Where can people find you? Follow you, see you all that good stuff.
I'm at Paula Diganal and p A L A v I g U n A l A N everywhere. Our show featuring South Asian, Middle Eastern North African comics called Facial Recognition Comedy is on the seventeenth at the Comedy Store I believe at ten or ten thirty, who knows, but you can get tickets online and then we also are going to be at SF Sketch Fest. I'm doing Comedian Clash on the twenty fifth, and also Facial Recognition Comedy.
So if you're in the Bay and you're part of the Zeit gang, come out, tell your friends buy tickets. The more tickets you buy, the sooner the probably bigger, better shows we get to do next year.
So yeah, come out and class faith is that where like you and other comedians just fight each other.
That is Jack Yas's show that his game show has morphed into. It is now called Comedian Clash and they're doing, I believe, two shows in the Bay and it's gonna be fucking awesome. The format is gonna be a slightly different but just as fun, just as really like amazing guests are going to be there, So come through.
I love Jaquis's game shows are such a blaster, but check them out. Yeah sounds great. All right, Well those are the things that are trending on this Wednesday, January eighth. We are back tomorrow. At some point we'll check in with you and we'll talk to you all. Then stay say fore everybody, Bye day, safe bye.