The Karol Markowicz Show: I'm Not Hiding and an Interview with Kyle Smith

Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. It's not a great time for Jews. After the slaughter in Israel on October seventh, every Jew hater in the world decided now is the time to let us all know how they feel. Spare me the talk of a free Palestine. Anyone who cares about the Palestinians would not let them continue in their delusion that they could someday get rid of Israel. And let's be real, all Jews, if they just continue pushing, that's just not going to happen.

So?

You like a lot of things that I don't like, and that's sort of been a theme in our friendship. You like fruity drinks, you like going to the movies. I don't like any of that. I super rarely actually enjoy a movie. So I wanted to ask you what percentage of movies as a film critic would you say that you like?

Well?

I try to correct for that by only seeing like the top hundred or so movies, only reviewing like the top hunderds out, but even those, about forty percent of them?

I guess forty percent. Hi, I think I like like five percent.

Maybe, Yeah, I sort of feel like I'm a consumer advocate, like, it's my job to steer you away from movies that are a complete waste of time and money, particularly time.

I'm right and right, you know. The wayst example is this Scarcezi movie, which I think is terrible.

Killers of the Flower Moon, universally praised because it's supposedly shows the dark side of American history. To me, three and a half hours of brutality, it's very monotonous. It's like the same musical score is kind of going for three and a half hours. Indians getting killed, Indians getting tricked, Indians getting poisoned, Indians getting defrauded.

It's so dispiriting to watch. I can't believe anyone actually enjoys this movie.

So would you say that, I'm like, at my low percentage of movies I enjoy, and I really like I try. I'm a happy, optimistic person. I go into movies being like, I am going to love this, and I'm inevitably like, oh that was awful, awful, awful, awful. So am I just watching the wrong things? Or are movies generally bad?

Yeah? I think most of them are bad.

The problem is that movies are kind of the top of the pyramid for sure. It's like the thing everyone wants to do. Taylor Swift, right, she's the biggest pop star on earth, and she wants to make movies. Everybody wants to make movies. If you're a novelist, want to make movies. You're in TV, you want to make movies. Uh, you know, Daily Wire is getting into movies. But you know, there's there's so much action in the movie space that you know, too many of them are just not great ideas.

You know.

I saw this Netflix movie The Killer yesterday, David Fincher, very highly claimed director.

It's just a terrible script. It shouldn't have been made. But Netflix was like, David Fincher wants to make a movie with us Okay, here's a check. Right.

So you're a film critic, but you've also been a culture columnist, politics. You write about a lot of different stuff. I think you've written on some really controversial stuff over the years, like I remember the anti waiter column that got you banned from New York City restaurants, and then the women don't Understand Goodfella's column, which you know I personally took offense to. But I still like you. Any regrets, any thing that you would not write again?

No, to me, everything I write is obviously true, and everything is obviously wrong. You have to have a lot of confidence in being a writer. You almost have to be arrogant, don't you think to be a writer?

Almost? Almost?

Yeah?

Right?

And you must have listened to me.

And I'm the one who's on the page five of this newspaper and you're not. So my opinion matter is more than yours does. So I guess I'm sufficiently arrogant enough to think that I have confidence and whatever I'm saying.

So you you stand by it all. It's yeah, okay, that's bold. I mean, are you back in New York City restaurants or still using an alias?

I was never banned. I've never stopped going to restaurants.

All I needed was make fun of unctuous waiters who you know, you know how they are, it's particularly true, and you're like, they get down on their haunches and like, Hi, my name is Jason.

Have you ever been to this restaurant before.

I'm thinking I'm pretty sure I ordered food and you have some you know, minimum wage person to bring it to me, and I won't see you again till it's time to pay a check. Yeah, I know how this restaurant works, probably right right, you know, it's pretty easy to make fun of waiters.

But you know I wrote this comment.

Every waiter waitress in the world wrote in to tell me how horrible it was that one of the big things that problem was. One of the big things they had a problem with was I referred to them as servants, and he said, no, we're not servants with servers, big different servers, not servants. Still tell us servants or servers, and I mean one lady wrote in to tell me, I'm a nurse and in an r room and if I see you, I mean, I will let you die rather than.

I'm sure she's got you know, a very healthy life to put.

Various body uh uh things into my food if they saw.

Me coming, right, So you, I mean, and so you got some pushback, but you're you kind of shrugged it off. Anything worse than that.

Well, you must get pushed back all the time.

Oh yeah, but I don't. But I'm a nice person who does not criticize waiters. So I was just I was wondering, how well, but they deserve it.

They deserve I think Jason is not very dangerous. That could be wrong. Maybe it's been poisoning.

I have a friend actually who had this line where she said, when the waiter comes over and says like, have you been to this restaurant before? And starts explaining the menu, She's like, no, but I have been two restaurants before, and I feel like it's going to go you know similar, right?

Is that what you do here?

But like the top is usually smaller plates, and as you get you know, lower in the menu, it's the bigger plates. So it might get confusing for you.

Oh well, I think I can handle that. Okay.

So you once had a column. I actually couldn't find it as I was looking for it, but it was about how much you love what you do. And I think you call people who aren't writers, like, you know, new suckers or something. I was trying to find it. So you love being a writer, and obviously that the suckers was jokingly. Do you feel like you've made it?

Oh?

Yeah, definitely. I mean continuing where I came from. I'm basically a blue collar shmow. I should be like a carpenter, you know, a plumber or something, you know, truck driver.

My brother puts roofs on houses. That's the kind of thing I was made for.

I should have wound up doing that, but I would have been terrible at it.

Like I'm really bad at building.

I'm building out those like heat, furniture and stuff, and I always build it wrong. I put the thing on back. Yeah, I would have been a terrible blue collar worker. But I somehow walked into being able to sell words for a living.

How great is that?

I can just say, awesome, there's more to me money, and but they come to me and offered to buy my words.

It's just amazing. It's just such a scam. It feels like a grift.

I'm very grateful for, you know, not having to get my hands dirty and I have to work on my feet.

My dad worked on his feet.

Six days a week. He was a dog groomer. He sometimes worked even on Sunday. He worked literally every Saturday.

My entire childhood.

And he was on his feet the whole time. He's doing manual labor. And it was in the basement of our house and it was really hot down there in the summer, so he was kind of boiling hot dogs everywhere, dog hair everywhere. Just a miserable job. And that's the kind of thing I could easily have fallen into. That's what he was made for. That's who my people are. As the first person in my family to go to college.

Wow, I didn't know that. It's amazing. And you were also in the military.

Right, yeah, that was the pay for college.

Yeah, so yeah, I signed up for what I was ORFTC, and then I wound up going on active duty in Germany and I made to Saudi Arabia for the Gulf War.

How was it.

Boring? But also interesting?

War in general is very interesting and strategically, but the day to day reality of being in a personnel service company thirty miles and back is just kind of like you, you know, a military is like a snake, right, there's a deadly head and then there's a long long tail. That's probably that long tail that kind of doesn't. So it's basically just getting through every day, you know, getting meals and delivering mail and stuff like that. That's yeah, keeping records,

Do you consider that you're living a public life, like, do you get recognized?

Not really, No, I'm not really on TV that much unlike you.

Well, I mean, now you're going to be recognized all over the place after this, you know.

As you know, I wasn't aware until five minutes ago that we're going to do video here.

I thought it was just a phone call.

Here we are doing the video. It's going to be everywhere and people are going to stop you in the street and say, hey, you're that Kyle Smith.

Is any be famous that I picture?

Like? I know Maggie Harman pretty well to me. She's famous enough that might actually be annoying. Maybe you're not that famous where it's annoying you.

Yeah, I'm not.

I'm in I love my level of fame. If I could keep it at this level. I definitely would because the only people who recognize me like me. I'm not big enough for paters or I mean I have had a lot of hate. I had, you know, a note left on my door in Brooklyn. I mean, I've definitely had that. But I on the street or like in public, I've never had somebody be like, you know, I know who you are, and I'm going to like try to

More famous, right, but there's probably a time when only conservatives knew who Sean Head he was, and then he kind of weaked.

Out and he got right right, So like, you know, I'm going to try to keep it right here and not like I don't know, being famous without a lot of money coming with It makes no sense to me. It never made sense to me, like fame for the hell of it, like influencers and all of that. It just it seems like hell to me. Like to be famous and not make a lot of money from it. Just I don't get it.

I was reading Matthew Perry's memoir, very interesting book, and there's the point in the book where he's just about to audition for Friends. The only reason he got the audition for Friends was because his friend Craig Burgo turned it down.

Oh, really jewish.

Sitcoms, and you picked the other one.

They were really good friends at the time, and everyone's trying Craig Burgo, you know, take this opportunity.

What was the one that he picked?

The show that the lasted duct six weeks?

I think it also called like just Friends or my other Friends, you know, have friends at the title, I believe totally forgotten show that it's on.

I believe ABC.

Right before he did this audition, Matthew Perry prayed to God. He said, please, God, you can do whatever you want to me, but just make me famous. That was a curse because he was he's been an addict.

Yeah, thirty years. I feel like, I'm going to teach my kids at being famous is not good and that they should not strive for it. Of course, my middle son already has a YouTube channel and he really wants it to blow up. So yeah, it's it's already a hard road to teach the kids. Are your kids into that.

No, not at the moment. Now.

They're both kind of more shy than uh, you know, eager to perform in public, So I think that's good.

Yeah. So a question that I ask all of my guests, and you know it's an easy one, but what do you think is our largest cultural or societal problem in America? And do you think it's solvable.

It's kind of a trap because when you answer that question, you automatically sound really grouchy.

But it's okay, I am grouchy.

You sound really grouchy all the time. I think it's fine to be funny. Oh you're funny, funny, groucy for sure.

To me, the biggest problem we have is everyone wants something for nothing. We have lost track of this idea that if you want to get something, you've got to pay for it one way or another. It goes all the way up and down the line it starts at the bottom level. You've seen this TikTok video where there's this twenty four year old women in a car and she says, I'm going to my service job and I hate it in marketing. I have a marketing degree.

Damn it. I should be making one hundred and fifty to two hundred per a year. I'm twenty four years old. I have no.

Experience except my work at Starbucks or whatever. No, you don't start one hundred.

And fifty thousand dollars a year. Why do people think that that that you get to start rich?

And on the other end, we have the Paul Krugman's of the World, World's Leading Calmness, the World's Smartest Man, Nobel Prize winner telling us debt doesn't matter because it's money we owe ourselves, so we can spend as much as we want on the social safety net, which is always fraying and tattered. No matter how many trillions of dollars are spending on welfare and everything else. We're just spend as much money as we want. It doesn't matter.

My personal favorite of the Paul Krugman nonsense right now is when he puts up the charts that show that there's no inflation if you take out like food and housing and cars and like you know, all the things that you buy those if you just remove those things, wah, no inflation at all. But yeah, I've seen those videos where the young people are expecting to make six figures

I know, I have to think social media is a big part of it. I think people are under the impression that everybody else is having a better time than they are because people, of course they're only putting their best selves on Instagram or whatever. Yeah, and it's a very distorted view. And we've seen, particularly younger else, very high rates with depression, suicidal, idiation and stuff, and I think the evidence is pretty strong that that's social media driven.

Right, So is there I mean, is there a fix? Like what are we telling our children? Like how do we make them have kind of rational expectations. I mean, my seven year old, who's like fifth percentile, thinks he's going to the NFL. But I don't want to like ruin his dreams yet. I like, you know, give him a minute of believing he's going to be a wide receiver and then you know, let him figure it out on his own. But I don't know how to you know,

Don't know to me there's you know, the old fashioned maxims whatnot.

There's no substitute for hard work really.

If you you know, I tell my kids if you if you're smart and you work hard, there's no stopping you.

But it's got to be both of those things, and goodbye.

Just being smart, right or just working hard? You could actually do either one.

Both?

Yeah, both is great. Yeah, So end here with your best tip for my listeners on how they can improve their lives.

Okay, my idea I've always wanted to tell married people this or people who are thinking about getting married, is uh, think of marriage or your relationship. Let's say you're in a committed relationship. Think of it as a job, right, It's it's a good job. Maybe it's the best job you'll ever had, but think of it as something you have to work at every day.

Like every day you should be thinking of a way to please your partner. Do something over in above what's a normal? Uh? Just the way you try to you know, impress your boss.

Right, You're you're always sucking up the boss, right if you get some FaceTime to your boss and so put the effort into it. And also, don't worry about the blame chain I think a big part of the successful relationship is something goes wrong. You're instinct to say you screwed this up, and your partner's going to go, well, you screwed up this.

Underlying thing, and you go, oh wow, well that kind blows me away. But then you go, well, you screwed up the underlying thing. Of the underlying thing.

To me, you should just cut the blame chain when something goes wrong, you should just acknowledge. Okay, we both have our problem. We forgot our passports. Okay, now what do we do. I'm not going to say, yeah, no, your fault, you forgot that, but well it's your fault because they weren't in the place they were supposed to be. And right, don't worry about whose fault it is. Just

Kyla, I love that so much. That's like, really not where I was expecting you to go. I thought you were going to like lay a lashing on people and you know, tell them all the ways that they need to improve their lives like otherwise. But I love that you did a relationship that's really really awesome. Thank you so much for being on. You were amazing and I can't wait to see you over fruity drinks and you know, not movies very soon. Okay, thanks so much for joining