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Boomers, Rage, And Responsibility · Critique-Opolis

• 0:26
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna just open by saying I did not do a recipe this week.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_04: And between the two of us, I think I speak for both of us saying that we apologize that we've been off the reservation for a while.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_04: Can you are you okay?
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was just making sure you were okay because when I pulled things, did I make it too tight?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_04: No, that's fine.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, fine.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_04: We were just discussing.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know, how would you frame what we're we're just talking about how people, especially the boomer generation, feels like they did a great job.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_04: They love to pat themselves on the back.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_04: And they've collected the bulk of the money, especially in America.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_04: And they they like to pat themselves on the back for things outside of the office like parenting and and they're they like to take the moral high ground a lot, but when you peel back the curtain on an individual level at people's families, like we've all like you and I both know families that are well healed, but then you get to know them a little bit better, or you hear within the family, oh, you know, so-and-so has a drinking problem, he has a second family, and he screws around and screams at his kids all the time.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_04: And I remember I don't know how much I've talked about it on the podcast, but I didn't have the greatest relationship with my dad.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_04: I did up until he got remarried.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_04: And then when he got remarried, it just kind of di devolved.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_04: But I remember, especially when we lived down in Brighton, whenever human he we would have contentious, whenever he'd fly into rages about things, I remember thinking, like, am I there's something wrong with him.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_04: There's something wrong with our family.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_04: And it's not until twenty-some odd years later when social media lays its footprint on the social context of the world we live in that you hear so many I've told you this before, you hear so many similar stories.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_04: People like, oh yeah, my dad had a ra like my friend, I have a friend Nicole, who she's like, yeah, my dad was her dad, I remember I met him, and I was I'm I think I've always been to some degree gregarious and outgoing and engaging.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_04: And he was not like that.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_04: This guy was just angry and pissed, and he like he I remember remember being a little like just getting the vibe from him, like I should shut up.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_04: And she even told me like now he's I don't know if he's gone now or if he's just in a a home.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_04: But he I think he was in a home last time we talked.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_04: But every now and again she sees me and our the conversation of her dad comes up, she's like, Yeah, he's he was not, he was pissed at a lot of things all the time.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_04: And the story you told me about, well not out your family, but that sect of the family that may or may not have had another a second family.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know where like did I tell you a couple weeks no, it was probably it was probably two, three months ago.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_04: I asked AI, I just said, why are boomers so pissed?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember this?
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I do.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_04: And and AI had an answer, a good one.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: What did they say?
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_04: It was something like they have like they have a lot of fears about the economy, the jobs just aren't gonna be there because a lot of them grew up around her in the shadow of the depression.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_04: It also said things like, you know, the their parenting from their parents wasn't great because there wasn't a lot of emotional intelligence, and so if there was an error made, a lot of times kids were smacked or hit or whatever.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_04: And they grew up in a time when the use of alcohol was like it was very social, and like the idea of going too far was almost like a comedic thing instead of having like a negative effect on like the idea that the story of the guy who goes a happy hour and he ends up with a lampshade on his head.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_04: It's a funny trope, but in real life, it's like that's somebody's dad.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_04: He'd come home like that, he'd smack his wife around, and what I find funny is that like those people who became who are boomers who are still alive, like they don't take responsibility for any of it.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_04: Like you you bring it up to them, and they're like, The way it is, kind of like the the way it is, like your kids have emotional well, the kid just didn't turn out right.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_04: It's like it's his fault.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_04: Actually, it's your fault.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_04: Because like we would now we can trace it back through the things that you did as you were raising them or didn't do.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_04: And I have oh my I've had these conversations with other family members outside of my old man.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_04: And it's so funny, they push back, they almost they almost have this like how dare you try and lay this on me.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_04: I just f I find that so Oh, that'll that'll never not bother me.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_04: It just seems so like brazenly it's not irresponsible.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_04: What's the word I want?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_04: Like It's like the this refusal to examine how your own behavior impacts those around you.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_04: And I whenever I see that I just That's what I meant about the social about how social media, like when I've started hearing other people be like, oh my god, that's exactly what it was like in my house, I'm like That's the tough thing about the 80s, is there wasn't a way to share this.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_04: If you taught you had other friends who had good home lives, instead of finding your community of people who came from rougher backgrounds, you'd talk to them like everybody has a better life than me.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_04: Which is funny because now with social media, you can you're the bots kind of curate what you look at and you have a almost like a pictorial view of everybody has a better life than me.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_04: I mean you you can still find people who share the same things that you do, but like I've showed you before scrolling through whenever there's a comedian or something who's talking about the boomer behavior.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_04: Like, oh god, these are all the same people.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_04: And they all play golf.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think nobody really knows what it's like behind closed doors because you can put on an act and people can see you on the outside and think one thing.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not necessarily true.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to think back to like relate it back to what you were saying about um like everybody has these similar situations in their family.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's not coming out well.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um, it's no I I get what you're saying.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: I just think that um like everybody has like crazy people in their family are the people that like i just say this, but like that ruin everything for everybody.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like everybody has those people.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're in your family, you think that that's only in your family, you don't know that that's in other people's family, because it's not like you broadcast it or go around asking your friends.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, um in your family, like not even in your immediate family, but like in your extended family, when you like have holiday get-togethers, for example, like is it like kind of tense?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, do you have an aunt who gets way too drunk and like ends up like throwing up on the Christmas tree and like collapsing in the in your bedroom?
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_04: I would love to like it was I had a you remember the story I told you about when my mother took me to uh uh Cub Scouts and she was ripped.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_04: And uh I do.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_04: It's funny, like I can retell this story now and make it sound funny, but honest to God, it was one of the scariest days of my life.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_04: It was just like emotionally I hate the word trauma.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_04: I cannot stand that word, but I was I didn't know what to make because she was melting down and drunk.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_04: She when she picked me up, I remember my cubmaster was a was my buddy Bobby's mom.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_04: I think it I think his name was Bobby.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_04: This is so long ago.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_04: But she pulled up in front of the church where we were meeting, and the door opened, and she was like crying and f she was falling halfway out of the car.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_04: And my I remember my Cubmaster turning because she was in front of me while she was gonna go say hello to her, and she saw her turned around, she looked past me, and she just had this look on her face like remember that I remember just being like feeling such disgust and shame and ugh.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_04: When I before she passed away, I think I told you this one when Ben told me to come over because they had found her and she was she was kind of on the downslope and she was living with her parents at the time.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_04: And he had said, like, this might be one of the last times you see her because she's kind of a mess.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_04: Um we met outside of my cousin Suzanne's house, and we kind of like I don't Ben, I don't know what you think we're gonna talk about.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_04: I haven't seen this woman in 15 years.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_04: We she's like, you know, your your father like wrecked our family.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, this had nothing to do with him.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_04: Like, he has his own problems, but you well, you were a drunk.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_04: And I I remember like because she was starting to get on a roll about blaming other people and just saying, like, you have a bad problem with alcohol, it's destroyed your life.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_04: And this is why no one talks to you.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_04: It has nothing to do with it, it's your fault.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_04: And I I remember like it was like she was hit in the face with a slab of cement, she shut right down.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_04: And then we all went back into Suzanne's house, we kind of had our little weird Christmas thing, and she went off in the corner of the living room and just kind of sat by herself and I not to be mean about it, but you almost like when people don't take responsibility for how they impact other people, and you present it to them, it's just this like gross obstinence that bothers me at this point when we're like, you did all these things, and this is how you fuck these people up.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_04: And they're like, nah, it had nothing to do with me.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_04: And like, oh god, you you're the worst, you're the worst kind of a piece of shit.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_04: Like, and this you oddly enough, this isn't a total segue into our movie.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we uh we do have a movie.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_04: We do have a movie, that's true, it's not just but you know, and what made me think about this is that this movie was about in in to some degree about separation and divorce.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_04: And it was your pick.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: It was.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to see this movie for a long time.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_04: This was Will Arnett co-wrote this with Bradley Cooper.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: I do believe so.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_04: And what is this?
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_04: Um This picture.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_04: That was my that was my desire to have you intro it.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: The movie is called Is This Thing On.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_04: And it is Take Us Through It.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: And um it is I wasn't prepared.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_04: Laura Dern and Will Arnett, they're a couple.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: And um uh and they're going through a divorce, and or a separation I would say.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_04: They don't really say what it is, like why it starts.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's just kind of a So he thinks he's going through through Will Arnett's character thinks that he's going through a divorce, but I think they're just separating.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_04: And it's just kind of they're like taking a beat.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like, yeah, that's a good way to put it.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and um oh, and so Will Arnett, he's like down on his luck and he's you know, filling it.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_04: Well, he's not out of a job, he's a finance guy.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_04: He's just like his personal life is a little bit.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_04: He's down on his luck.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: There you thank you for it.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and he wanders into um a bar one evening.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, he's going to get a drink.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: He is, he's going to get a drink.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: He wanders into a bar one evening to kind of take, you know, whatever, relax.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_04: The edge off.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: The edge off, thank you.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And um it says that it's fifteen dollars to get in.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, fifteen dollars to get in.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to go in and have a drink.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: Why do I have to pay to go do that?
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: And the guy says, Well, you can the person at the door says, you can pay the fifteen dollar cover charge, or he said you can um sign up for the open mic and then you don't have to pay the cover charge.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And he's like, Okay, I'll sign up from and he doesn't know what that is.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: And he has no idea, so he's like, Okay, but I'll do that so that I don't have to pay the fifteen dollars.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it turns out it's an open mic night for comedy for comedians, of which he doesn't really have any he doesn't have any experience in, and he just gets up there one night and starts talking.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_04: And then it kind of starts talking about how he realized he was in a divorce.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's true, which is not really comedy, I guess.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um it's it's like how you what's comedic about it is how you figure out that your life is in this weird place.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and I think that he has to get up there and talk about it to figure that out.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: Because like I was just saying, like I mean, you don't think of divorce as like a funny topic.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_04: It like while you're going through it, no.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_04: No, but but like when you look back at it, because you don't have any experience with this.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_03: True.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_04: But I do.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_04: And not to take over your breakdown of the movie, but I think I've told you this before when my dad and my mom split up, my sister and I, I was on the, I want to say I was on her right-hand side.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_04: She was taller than me.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_04: I was little.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_04: I was like maybe five or six.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_04: I want to say I was six, and she was, so she would have been twelve.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_04: We were in the we were at the door of the den, and mom and dad were at the far end of the couch sitting next to each other, and they just said that uh your mom and I have decided to get a divorce.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_04: And I remember instantly just being like, ah, and like anybody who would have seen this would have cried.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_04: Because I remember I ran up to both of them, and I can only imagine what that felt like for them.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_04: Like as an adult now, I'm like, that must have been agonizing.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_04: Because I grabbed onto both of their legs and tried to hold them together.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_04: And if I had become a filmmaker, that's a scene I would shoot for sure.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_04: And I remember my dad kind of pulling me, like, like just like trying to, like, things are gonna be okay.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_04: And like, oh man, I was I don't that's that's I don't remember anything else about that night.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_04: I just remember that sofa that they were sitting on, it was a red and yellow plaid sofa.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_04: And oh my god, I was pissed.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_04: And I don't I don't remember what Renee did, but when I look back at I am so glad they got divorced.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_04: Oh my god, that would have been the two of them, if they forced themselves to stay together because she had a drinking problem and he had a rage problem, it would have been a nightmare.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_04: It would have been horrendous.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_04: There would have been like my dad owned a boat.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_04: He uh my dad died, I think I I mentioned it a year ago.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_04: And his to see him as a person it's funny how like you go from childhood thinking your parents are these like mythical beings into like they're just regular people.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_04: I just told you the other day that my he the biggest picture he had anywhere in his house of anything from his life was not his children.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_04: It was his it was the last boat he owned.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_04: And I still have it.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_04: It's this big eight by ten of a of a fucking cabin cruiser.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_04: And there's little pictures in little frames of his kids and his family, but this boat took center stage.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_04: And when my mom was um, she died in a I don't know what you call it, like a not a halfway house, but like a like a group home or something.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_04: And sh the one of the only things that she had was a big picture of the two of us, of Renee and I.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_04: And like I still have it.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_04: And I know that like we we were the most important things to her, but like part of the reason why our relationship with her was so terrible is just because she had a problem with alcohol.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_04: And like deep, deep, deep inside her, this is what was important to her, but she couldn't.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_04: And this is the funny what's I'll bring it back again to this movie.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_04: This is what's funny about separation, is that when I'm watching the kids in this movie, the two they were they were kind of uh how would how would you say they were dealing with it?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, the two kids in the movie.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm yeah.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_04: Um because th this was like it was giving me s weird feelings when I'm watching this.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_04: I'm like, this is not how I dealt with it at all.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean if