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Heavy Metal Book Club #38 - Metal Hurlant (2025) #3 · 22 Panels - A Comic Book Podcast

0:01
Tad Eggleston: Good evening, morning, whatever time people are listening, everybody. Welcome back to 22Panels. This is episode 218.
0:14
Tad Eggleston: And Phil is here, and we're also joined by our…
0:18
Tad Eggleston: Minnesota correspondent and friend, Ryan Carey, and I'm not in the mood to talk about comics tonight. I just don't have it.
0:28
Tad Eggleston: So, We won't. We're throwing out the rundown. We're,
0:36
Tad Eggleston: It's been a hell of a week.
0:37
Tad Eggleston: In fact, I just looked down and have a news alert that apparently there is a…
0:44
Tad Eggleston: a Justice Department investigation into the head of the Federal Reserve for misuse of funds in renovating the offices of the Federal Reserve, and I'm sitting there going.
1:01
Tad Eggleston: from the Justice Department of the President that blew up the East Wing.
1:08
Tad Eggleston: Where…
1:09
Phil: God.
1:09
Tad Eggleston: We're investigating.
1:13
Phil: Never, never.
1:14
Tad Eggleston: And I'm sitting there… and I'm sitting here going, and like…
1:19
Tad Eggleston: In any other year of my life, this would have been the biggest story of the month.
1:25
Tad Eggleston: And here… It's like a foot… it's a footnote in this week.
1:29
Tad Eggleston: A footnote in this week.
1:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Ryan, you're, if I recall correctly, you are…
1:42
Tad Eggleston: what? A block or so from… from where…
1:47
Tad Eggleston: the George Floyd incident was, and 4 blocks from…
1:52
Ryan: No, close enough, though. I'm about, that's more like 9 or 10 blocks where this thing happened with Renee Goode getting murdered.
2:01
Tad Eggleston: George Floyd is literally…
2:04
Ryan: Not even a block. I mean, if I would have been in my backyard that day, I would have seen it.
2:09
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
2:09
Ryan: Yeah, I mean…
2:10
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah. That's the same…
2:13
Ryan: I'm one house in from the corner that's right kitty corner from that convenience store.
2:20
Tad Eggleston: Is that just so slow.
2:22
Phil: the size of Minnesota, or are you, like, just in the heart of it?
2:26
Tad Eggleston: He just happens.
2:27
Ryan: I just happen to live in that neighborhood, you know?
2:29
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:30
Phil: Yeah.
2:31
Tad Eggleston: Minneapolis is… you know, it's not Chicago, but it's probably… I mean, you're in Nashville, it's probably about the same size.
2:40
Tad Eggleston: Okay, wow.
2:41
Ryan: Yeah, I think we have…
2:43
Ryan: I mean, I know for a fact, because I work for the City of St. Paul, we've got
2:48
Ryan: St. Paul is 500 miles, even, of streets.
2:53
Ryan: And Minneapolis is larger than that by, you know, probably…
2:58
Ryan: not double, but, you know, one and a half, so I would guess we probably… if you added up all the city blocks in Minneapolis, you're probably looking at 700 to 750 miles.
3:09
Ryan: Of city blocks.
3:13
Tad Eggleston: And if…
3:14
Ryan: How old you got in Nashville?
3:16
Phil: Oh, jeez,
3:18
Phil: I mean… let me… unfortunately, I don't know off the top of my head, I'd have to look that up.
3:24
Tad Eggleston: This is… I'll give you right now, Minneapolis has a city area of 57…
3:31
Tad Eggleston: 0.51 square miles, and a population of 429,954, according to Wikipedia. Okay.
3:41
Phil: WIC has also helped me with that $715,000, according to the 2022 Consolidated Survey, which is always… I mean, that feels low.
3:54
Tad Eggleston: In… in roughly the same… Or no.
4:01
Tad Eggleston: You're more spread out.
4:04
Phil: That sounds about right, but also, yeah, because Nashville has been expanding its, its, but the other, but the other thing to remember is… is Minneapolis is… is one of the Twin Cities with St. Paul.
4:16
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. How come?
4:18
Phil: Oh, okay.
4:19
Ryan: The metro area, considered, is about 2.5 million people.
4:24
Phil: Oh, okay, there you go. Yeah, so that.
4:26
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
4:26
Phil: Which is funny, because that is… is… Probably how St. Paul.
4:32
Tad Eggleston: St. Paul is another 311… Thousand.
4:36
Phil: Yeah.
4:37
Tad Eggleston: and another 56 square miles. So, if you look at the Twin City Metro.
4:44
Tad Eggleston: Oh, look at that! There's a Twin City Metro page on Wikipedia, and that'll give us…
4:52
Tad Eggleston: It gives us a 8,000 square mile metro area.
4:57
Tad Eggleston: with… 3 points… 69 to 4.7…
5:06
Tad Eggleston: Depending on whether we go combined statistical area or metropolitan statistical Area, which are apparently two different counts.
5:14
Ryan: 3.6 million people?
5:17
Tad Eggleston: In the metro area.
5:19
Ryan: Wow, I didn't know we were getting up that big. Okay. Well, the metro area…
5:24
Tad Eggleston: goes… I mean, the urban area,
5:29
Tad Eggleston: Which I think is… is a slightly different thing.
5:32
Tad Eggleston: is 2.6 million. But regardless, in either case, it's… in any of those cases, it's the 16th largest
5:40
Tad Eggleston: metro area in… in the United States.
5:43
Ryan: Okay, yeah, that sounds…
5:44
Phil: They're in.
5:45
Ryan: Right.
5:45
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So… whereas… whereas Nashville is 21st.
5:51
Phil: Damn.
5:51
Ryan: Pretty close, then.
5:52
Tad Eggleston: So, yeah, similar.
5:57
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, no, and part of it is… I mean, I think it… the fact that… that… that, George Floyd happened in your district is… is more of a…
6:10
Tad Eggleston: roll of the dice, but this is because Ilhanaho Omar is your… representative, so… ICE is definitely…
6:23
Tad Eggleston: Definitely, definitely focused on… Because, you know, it's, it's the,
6:30
Tad Eggleston: It's the trifecta. It's a… it's a blue state that's done lots of great blue things, with the… the, vice presidential candidate as governor, and… and… and the administration's current… current least favorite
6:49
Tad Eggleston: Minority group.
6:53
Tad Eggleston: Has a concentration there, and
6:57
Tad Eggleston: That's when we send in the shock troops, I guess.
7:02
Ryan: Yeah.
7:03
Tad Eggleston: I can't believe… Like, just, I mean, this week, we start by invading a foreign nation, yeah.
7:11
Tad Eggleston: shooting in Minneapolis, which… by the way, and this just… as a teacher, I can't tell you how much this infuriates me. It would have infuriated me
7:22
Tad Eggleston: Regardless, but the timeline makes it infuriating me even more.
7:28
Tad Eggleston: shooting in Minneapolis that… Mr. Witch.
7:36
Tad Eggleston: They tear-gassed a school playground.
7:39
Tad Eggleston: As it let out.
7:43
Ryan: Oh, down at Roosevelt, yeah.
7:45
Tad Eggleston: Right. I mean, like… How does that seem like a good idea? How…
7:54
Tad Eggleston: We're already in the news today, because we…
7:58
Phil: I think it's… I think it's clear that there's… there's a discrete lack of thought going on, you know?
8:03
Tad Eggleston: There is! I mean, have either of you watched the video of… put out by…
8:10
Tad Eggleston: the freaking vice president to supposedly exonerate the ICE agent, and I'm sitting there going.
8:17
Ryan: even worse.
8:18
Tad Eggleston: Right, I'm sitting there going, on what planet is this good for?
8:22
Phil: The one where he circles her vehicle?
8:25
Tad Eggleston: Right.
8:26
Phil: Yeah, that… I didn't…
8:27
Tad Eggleston: The one where her last words are referred to be, it's alright, dude, I'm not mad at you.
8:33
Ryan: Then he called her a fucking bitch after he killed her.
8:36
Tad Eggleston: Right!
8:37
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
8:38
Ryan: Why is it Stone Cold Psycho?
8:40
Tad Eggleston: On what planet does anybody think that that makes it… Better!
8:46
Phil: Yeah.
8:47
Phil: I mean, it's…
8:49
Phil: People have been quoting the 1984, you know, the party asks you to… not to believe your own lying eyes. It was their final and most crucial directive, you know? And I mean, it…
9:04
Phil: It's weird because… you know, I remember hearing, I think it was, like.
9:10
Phil: a clip of a video from The View, where the women were like, we're… holy shit, it's fascism right now! And it's kind of like, yeah, it's been… it's been that way all goddamn year, you know?
9:22
Phil: And… it's…
9:25
Phil: It's probably… it's been like that for a long time for… for everyone. Or not everyone, but for… for…
9:31
Ryan: you know.
9:33
Tad Eggleston: I thought, jonathan Fee last…
9:38
Tad Eggleston: Actually put it pretty well at the bulwark.
9:42
Tad Eggleston: When he wrote about… yeah, because there's so many people…
9:46
Tad Eggleston: Who are trying to equate this to…
9:51
Tad Eggleston: Ashley Babbitt, and it's like, oh, if it's okay to shoot Ashley Babbitt, why can't you? And it's like, well, like…
10:01
Tad Eggleston: Ashley Babbitt was with a group that had already beat up cops who would help their fire.
10:08
Tad Eggleston: who had tried to be, and Ashley Babbitt was, like, through the window into the speaker sloppy, where there were people…
10:19
Tad Eggleston: huddled… for safety, And Ashley Babbitt was with a group that was… chanting, Hang Mike Pence!
10:30
Tad Eggleston: You know, whereas… Yeah, that's.
10:34
Phil: Nowhere near the same situation.
10:36
Tad Eggleston: Renee Goode was…
10:41
Tad Eggleston: Churning her car.
10:43
Ryan: Well, if you want to get a little more apples to apples rather than apples to oranges.
10:48
Ryan: the same right-wingers who were doxing people and getting them fired over Charlie Kirk taking a bullet.
10:56
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
10:57
Ryan: Are the ones who are, like, you know, celebrating this lady's death.
11:02
Tad Eggleston: But that's also where… I mean, the point that Jonathan last wound up making is it's not hypocrisy.
11:11
Tad Eggleston: It's… it's… we haven't understood… What their actual…
11:18
Tad Eggleston: position is. The difference is fascism. The difference is they're okay when it happens to somebody in their out-group. It's never wrong if it happens to somebody in their out-group, and if it happens to somebody in their in-group, it's always wrong.
11:34
Ryan: Yeah.
11:35
Tad Eggleston: It doesn't have to do with law enforcement, not a law enforcement. It doesn't have to do with any of the details. It has to do with, if you're on their side, and somebody fucks with you, then that's horrible. And if you're not on their side, and somebody fucks with you, well, you deserved it.
11:54
Ryan: Right.
11:55
Ryan: Yeah, the rules only apply to… yeah.
12:00
Phil: Yeah, it certainly comes back to… the distinct lack of thought extends to a distinct lack of logic as well.
12:09
Phil: You know.
12:09
Tad Eggleston: I mean, and, and… They're also… they're not hiding it anymore. They're not even trying.
12:18
Tad Eggleston: You know, christy Noem was in front, or behind a podium.
12:32
Tad Eggleston: That, that said, One of ours, all of yours.
12:38
Phil: Wow.
12:39
Tad Eggleston: She was defending the ICE agent.
12:42
Tad Eggleston: In New York City.
12:44
Ryan: Wow.
12:47
Tad Eggleston: That's what it says on the podium. They took the time to print up a podium that says…
12:54
Tad Eggleston: DHS.gov slash
12:57
Tad Eggleston: Wow. I don't even want to know what it… what would happen if I went to that. But one of ours, all of yours.
13:07
Ryan: That's so fucked up.
13:09
Phil: Yep.
13:12
Ryan: I mean, really.
13:16
Ryan: Look, what they're…
13:18
Ryan: The one thing I don't quite agree on that I've heard out of you guys is that there's a lack of thought to what they're doing here.
13:25
Ryan: Hmm, oh, I…
13:26
Tad Eggleston: I don't think there's a lack.
13:27
Ryan: Yeah, I think it's designed to provoke. They want somebody
13:32
Ryan: You know, they're dying for somebody to start shooting back at these.
13:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I think they're… I think they're pissed as hell that they haven't had the response that they've wanted.
13:41
Ryan: Right. They want an excuse for a martial law crackdown here. Right.
13:46
Ryan: And that's what that whole thing at Roosevelt was about. You know, they didn't even… they couldn't even come up with bullshit charges to stick with.
13:55
Tad Eggleston: Well, and for that matter, the thing, you know, on the south side of Chicago, where they literally did a nighttime air raid on an apartment building…
14:05
Ryan: was awful.
14:09
Tad Eggleston: A nighttime air raid on an apartment building, and then separated the people from the apartment building into two U-Haul trucks. One for people who were black, and one for people who were brown.
14:22
Ryan: Yeah, that was awful.
14:24
Phil: I guess what I mean when I say a lack of thought or a lack of logic is that they're people who clearly can't be reasoned with, and…
14:33
Tad Eggleston: Yes.
14:33
Phil: who… engaging, I, you know… Well…
14:37
Phil: We've long been past the point where we're engaging with them
14:41
Phil: Converse- like, talking has been possible.
14:44
Tad Eggleston: It's another…
14:45
Phil: negotiations.
14:45
Tad Eggleston: It's almost… almost lost in this book. You know, Stephen Miller said this, the quiet part out loud again on CNN this week, where, you know, he insisted that the way of the world is…
14:59
Tad Eggleston: The powerful use that power, and the world will be a better place when America can exert its interests without apology.
15:09
Tad Eggleston: And it's like… Really?
15:12
Tad Eggleston: Cause, I mean, I thought, like, part of the purpose of the last 50 years was trying to…
15:20
Tad Eggleston: Be above that.
15:23
Tad Eggleston: I thought the entire post-World War II
15:32
Tad Eggleston: Philosophy was being above that, saying that we don't have to have
15:39
Tad Eggleston: We don't have to live by the law of the jungle.
15:44
Tad Eggleston: That maybe, maybe our intellects make us better than… Tigers.
15:52
Tad Eggleston: Or sharks.
15:56
Ryan: No. I'm gonna tell you something, man. We'll never be better than animals for one simple reason.
16:03
Ryan: Animals don't lie.
16:06
Tad Eggleston: Oops.
16:09
Ryan: They don't.
16:10
Phil: That's true!
16:12
Phil: That's your name.
16:13
Phil: Due to camouflage.
16:15
Tad Eggleston: Don't mean to be laughing, it's just…
16:18
Phil: That is good, though, I enjoyed that.
16:20
Ryan: Bye.
16:21
Tad Eggleston: yeah.
16:24
Ryan: Plus, as far as any animal knows, you don't see them stressing too bad, because as far as every animal knows, they live forever. The start of their life to the end of their life, as far as they know, is forever.
16:42
Tad Eggleston: I think you just made a great argument for getting rid of the written word.
16:47
Ryan: Yeah.
16:49
Tad Eggleston: Can we go back to prehistory?
16:52
Ryan: Yeah, well, you know.
16:53
Tad Eggleston: Say the three guys that spend all of their life.
16:57
Tad Eggleston: The written word.
16:58
Ryan: Yeah, well, you know, certainly that's a… there's a pretty big… well, I mean, relative… we're speaking relatively here when I say big, but certainly there's always been a strain of anarchist thought that favors completely abandoning civilization altogether.
17:16
Ryan: And, you know, going back to being hunter-gatherers and things like that. I mean, it's interesting to consider. I mean, you know, the other cool thing when you really think about it, is what animals… people wonder, how can they sleep 23 hours a day? Wouldn't you if you could, for one thing? And the other thing is…
17:35
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I did yesterday.
17:37
Ryan: Yeah, well, you have my… you have my envy for that, my friend.
17:42
Ryan: And the other thing, too, is they've got the best free entertainment in the world, because no one ever told them their dreams are not real.
17:50
Tad Eggleston: Yeah?
17:52
Ryan: As far as they know, they're off flying in them golden arches, or whatever they're thinking about when they're dreaming.
17:58
Tad Eggleston: I hope they're not flying to the Golden Arches. I hope they could do better than McDonald's.
18:03
Tad Eggleston: Maybe the raccoons.
18:05
Ryan: But then when they get up, then they're here again, you know what I mean? But their dreams are as real to them as anything else.
18:12
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
18:13
Tad Eggleston: Oh…
18:18
Ryan: But we've gone way off the topic.
18:20
Tad Eggleston: Well, you know, I mean, that's okay, cause…
18:23
Phil: We're playing.
18:24
Tad Eggleston: It's a lab.
18:25
Phil: point, you know?
18:25
Tad Eggleston: I got to laugh for a moment, and that's been hard to do this week.
18:29
Ryan: That is for sure.
18:31
Tad Eggleston: I mean, and because, like, I don't even know what the topic is anymore.
18:38
Ryan: Fascism in America.
18:40
Tad Eggleston: No, I understand that it's fascism in America, but, like, every day we seem further and further away from…
18:48
Tad Eggleston: Any clear way to combat it.
18:51
Tad Eggleston: You know? Yeah.
18:54
Phil: I don't know about you guys, but at least in my day job, there's like a…
18:58
Phil: surreal veil over everything of, like.
19:02
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
19:02
Phil: nobody's talking about it. Part of it's just because we're at the busiest time of the year for us, so, like, everybody's fucking slammed, but, like.
19:09
Phil: nobody's… nobody's talking about this, except for, you know, I mentioned it to one of my friends on lunch, but yeah, it's just like…
19:16
Phil: It's like…
19:17
Tad Eggleston: I think the…
19:17
Phil: What the fuck's going on?
19:19
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I think the side effect of hyper-consumerism is that, like.
19:23
Tad Eggleston: If your door's not getting knocked down, if you still have a job, if.
19:31
Tad Eggleston: If you can still…
19:34
Tad Eggleston: Feed yourself and have a roof over your head. You're supposed to pretend like it's not happening.
19:41
Phil: Yeah.
19:43
Tad Eggleston: That's, like, the expectation.
19:46
Phil: Particularly because it's so… we're so polarized, and, like, I hate it when people say that, because…
19:55
Tad Eggleston: We are so polarized when we get into politics, but how much of that is because we don't get into politics? Because I don't really think we're polarized as human beings.
20:06
Phil: I think at this point, it's that, you know, large portions of the population have been exposed to such deep disinformation for so long that we're effectively, you know, occupying the same physical space, but different mental realities.
20:21
Tad Eggleston: And there's truth to that, but it's not a truth that I think is ever gonna be broken by…
20:28
Tad Eggleston: Not talking to each other.
20:31
Phil: That is for sure, yeah. By not…
20:34
Tad Eggleston: Why not?
20:35
Tad Eggleston: Like, like… I mean, and…
20:39
Ryan: You can't communicate with some of these assholes at the same.
20:42
Tad Eggleston: No, and that's true!
20:43
Ryan: Yeah, it's pretty… I mean, you can take…
20:45
Phil: Take a horse whip and beat him!
20:47
Ryan: And they still won't understand what the hell you're talking about.
20:50
Phil: But, but…
20:51
Tad Eggleston: But I think you're talking… I mean…
20:54
Phil: It's tough… I think the biggest reason we don't talk isn't because of the assholes, it's because of all the people in the middle who are just uncomfortable by the conversation.
21:04
Tad Eggleston: And I hate making those people uncomfortable, but it's time to make them uncomfortable.
21:10
Phil: That's part of it, but the assholes are another part. I'm thinking of a guy.
21:15
Tad Eggleston: Oh, word.
21:16
Phil: with particularly, who, you know, has unfortunately tried to be like, hey, why don't you get on Truth Social? And I'm like, because that's…
21:25
Tad Eggleston: I'm not a fascist.
21:27
Phil: Exactly.
21:28
Tad Eggleston: That would be my…
21:29
Phil: Yo.
21:30
Tad Eggleston: My answer would be, because I'm not a fascist.
21:34
Phil: Last time you asked me was, like, 3 years ago, but it was… it was along the lines of, like, that sounds like a terrible idea, and I'd never want to do that. And it's just…
21:44
Phil: And I've tried. I've tried to get down to it and say, like, look, this is what I think. No, this guy is… this guy is… is evil. And… and they think, no, no, no, he's the one keeping everything in line. It's… it's bizarre. It's downright bizarre how…
21:59
Phil: Completely backwards the things that they think and believe are.
22:07
Ryan: I can't disagree with ya.
22:11
Ryan: But, you know, even think about the right-wingers you know, who used to 10 years ago or so, Still.
22:22
Ryan: You know, They believed and thought stupid shit.
22:27
Phil: I mean, it was…
22:28
Ryan: Living in the same world as everyone else.
22:31
Phil: Right, right.
22:33
Ryan: Now they have a very comforting reality they can retreat to, and everything that runs outside the
22:41
Ryan: You know, everything that transgresses outside the lines of that is fake news.
22:48
Phil: Yeah.
22:48
Ryan: You know, or…
22:50
Ryan: you know, left-wing propaganda, or whatever they think. Everything that doesn't conform to what they want to be the truth, they just have decided isn't the truth, and they have a whole infrastructure of media in place to convince them of that.
23:06
Phil: And that infrastructure is expanding, as we see with, you know, CBS!
23:12
Phil: They don't even trust their own media.
23:15
Phil: And that's… that's because their… their own media, again, is… they've bought out the competition.
23:20
Tad Eggleston: No, no, I get it, but what I mean is, I guess my one caveat to what Ryan just said is, I don't know that they're comfortable where they are. I just… for whatever reason, they've decided where they are is the right place, and they actually are
23:37
Tad Eggleston: Deeply uncomfortable there, because they completely feel under attack, because they're aware that they're an incredibly minority opinion, but they don't
23:47
Tad Eggleston: trust any of the people telling them anything even slightly different. I mean, like, when Pew Research did a poll on, on, on, like.
23:59
Tad Eggleston: media sources and what was trusted and whatnot, like, Democrats have, like, 19 media sources that more than 50% of Democrats trust, you know? How often they go there.
24:12
Phil: Sure.
24:12
Tad Eggleston: changes, but, like, that they trust. And Republicans had won Fox News. Even Joe Rogan doesn't have 50% of Republicans trust.
24:21
Phil: Yeah.
24:22
Tad Eggleston: You know, Newsmax doesn't have 50% of Republicans' trust. InfoWars doesn't have 50% of Republicans' trust.
24:30
Tad Eggleston: they're actually, right? Like, InfoWars… if you're a Republican, you trust InfoWars about as much as you trust the New York Times.
24:37
Phil: Yeah.
24:39
Tad Eggleston: You know, and that's just a very lonely place.
24:43
Phil: Okay.
24:44
Ryan: Right, but they have to… Because their whole… sales pitch
24:52
Ryan: revolves around, we're the only people who can fix these problems. They need an endless source of problems. They can't actually
25:01
Ryan: fix anything, you know, that everything has to get… you know, Trump runs as the law and order guy, then creates chaos and disorder so that he can say, oh, look, you need a tough law and order asshole like me. You know, it's the old… it's the old Netanyahu playbook in Israel.
25:19
Tad Eggleston: It is.
25:21
Ryan: You know, that's how he does it there, too. He says, I'm the only guy that can keep you safe from the Palestinians. Then he fucking starts all kinds of shit with them, you know?
25:30
Tad Eggleston: Putin Playbook?
25:32
Tad Eggleston: Right.
25:33
Tad Eggleston: I mean, yeah, this is a tried and true authoritarian playbook.
25:38
Phil: Yeah.
25:41
Tad Eggleston: Which is why they've been attacking education for 30 years, too, because, you know, heaven forbid, we should…
25:49
Tad Eggleston: Learn things.
25:50
Phil: Be able to discern facts from falsehoods, and…
25:55
Ryan: Yeah.
25:55
Phil: Here's the thing. You want to know why, like you said, Democrats have so many different sources they trust? Because they actually compare sources.
26:04
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
26:05
Phil: Republicans don't need to compare sources, because they just have one.
26:08
Tad Eggleston: Once Fox News says that it's true.
26:11
Phil: If Fox News doesn't say it, but the Bible does, you trust the Bible. If the Bible doesn't
26:16
Phil: Fox News, right?
26:17
Tad Eggleston: How many of them have actually read their Bible, though?
26:20
Phil: I don't know, but I…
26:21
Ryan: Almost none. No more than anyone else.
26:24
Phil: But at the same.
26:25
Tad Eggleston: You know, I have read the Bible, and, like, that drives me up the wall when somebody like Mike Johnson says, you want to know how I'll govern? Read the Bible, and I'm sitting there going, dude, I've watched how you govern, and if you're using the Bible, you're using it as, like, the anti-template.
26:44
Ryan: Yeah, which part of the… which part of the Bible says that here's how you write your grinder profile?
26:50
Ryan: Which…
26:52
Tad Eggleston: Which part of the Bible says, don't take care of the weak and the unfortunate?
26:58
Ryan: Yeah.
26:59
Ryan: I mean, the Old Testament doesn't even say that crap.
27:02
Tad Eggleston: No! No!
27:04
Tad Eggleston: No, the Old Testament you could possibly use for a little bit of the law and order, eye for an eye type stuff, but, you know, you'd also have to stone people who wore clothes of two different cloths.
27:18
Tad Eggleston: Cuz, you know, that's in the same chapter.
27:23
Ryan: Yeah, or… yeah, or like, you know, the dietary stuff and all of that, too.
27:30
Tad Eggleston: Right.
27:31
Ryan: none of them follow that. I mean…
27:33
Tad Eggleston: No.
27:34
Ryan: You know, but… It's… very, you know, I…
27:42
Ryan: I live in an area that is pretty much 100%
27:48
Ryan: Unified in opposition to this crap.
27:51
Ryan: But there's still a distinct sense that outside of our little comfort zone here.
27:57
Ryan: everything, you know, people's definition of reality is up for grabs, you know? Right. And… yeah, my big concern is that AI gets to the point where you can just manufacture
28:11
Ryan: Video and news and quote-unquote evidence of anything you want to say.
28:16
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
28:17
Phil: And this is the regime that has tied itself to AI, propped itself up on it.
28:21
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
28:22
Ryan: Right, they want no regulation on AI for 10 years, even though
28:27
Ryan: You know, never mind the societal implications, which we can't even begin to grasp.
28:34
Ryan: But environmentally, AI is a goddamn disaster.
28:39
Tad Eggleston: Yep. At least…
28:39
Ryan: The amount of water required for it. Everybody, everybody that lives within a certain radius of that big AI plant that Elon Musk built in Memphis is getting sicker than hell.
28:52
Ryan: you know, it's just AI is.
28:58
Tad Eggleston: Though, I mean, it's another example of how broken our capitalism is, because, you know, the Chinese AI has, like, a third the carbon footprint as ours, and cost a hundredth what ours did.
29:13
Phil: They're… and for the two reasons. One is because, at least I've heard, that they're actually investing into solar.
29:20
Tad Eggleston: Yes.
29:21
Phil: So that, that, that would be huge. two is, is, again, because this…
29:27
Phil: They're not propping up the industry with venture capital.
29:31
Tad Eggleston: No. You know?
29:32
Phil: No, I mean, I mean, I'm not… this isn't… this isn't a pro… this isn't a pro-China AI thing. I haven't.
29:37
Tad Eggleston: No, no.
29:38
Phil: Same way.
29:38
Tad Eggleston: It's, it's not, it's not… not for me either, but…
29:42
Phil: It's a scam!
29:43
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
29:43
Phil: It's an overinflated scam, using Enron accounting.
29:47
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, or at the very least, using, somehow we need to make massive profits while we're…
29:56
Phil: developing. I've heard that their, like, network of co-related companies is supposedly the exact accounting strategy that Enron used.
30:06
Tad Eggleston: I wouldn'.
30:06
Ryan: I wouldn't be surprised. I believe that. I wouldn't be surprised.
30:08
Phil: That's not just a joke.
30:10
Tad Eggleston: No, no, I know it, I know it wasn't.
30:12
Tad Eggleston: You know, I mean, among the things that I think of, like…
30:21
Tad Eggleston: I don't know how you enforce the law without some sort of law enforcement.
30:27
Tad Eggleston: group.
30:29
Tad Eggleston: But…
30:30
Tad Eggleston: the way policing has been envisioned in the United States is so ass-backwards that it clearly needs to be
30:38
Tad Eggleston: completely and… utterly…
30:42
Tad Eggleston: reworked, and I gotta wonder if one of the first places is, like, look at how much money we spend on policing, and look at how much of it goes to
30:51
Tad Eggleston: Officers.
30:53
Tad Eggleston: Versus equipment.
30:55
Phil: That's huge.
30:58
Phil: So…
30:58
Tad Eggleston: You know, if we required more of our officers and paid them accordingly, would we get better officers? If rather than giving them
31:08
Tad Eggleston: qualified immunity, we had the perspective that,
31:13
Tad Eggleston: Your job is to enforce the law, and you can't enforce the law unless you are the absolute epitome of the law. We hold you to a higher standard, not a lower standard, and if you don't like that, go find another job.
31:27
Phil: Conversely, they are being sent to quote-unquote warrior training and militarized, you know? They're being taught…
31:36
Phil: You need to feel…
31:38
Phil: scare… this is how… this is how you kill someone. No, they need to be taught, this is how you protect people, this is, you know…
31:44
Tad Eggleston: This is how you keep people alive.
31:46
Phil: Exactly.
31:46
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I asked the same question with our military, you know, we don't actually pay our soldiers that well, we pay our veterans even worse.
31:55
Phil: Yeah.
31:56
Tad Eggleston: And we've got a trillion dollar military. What are we getting for our money?
32:00
Ryan: Oh, they can't tell you where over 60% of the Pentagon.
32:03
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, yeah, there's that.
32:07
Ryan: You know, it can't even be accounted for. It's one giant scam.
32:11
Phil: Damn.
32:12
Tad Eggleston: Like…
32:18
Phil: I mean, one of the… one of the… I've heard, supposedly a lot of the,
32:21
Phil: equipment that's being sold overseas, like, specifically to Israel, also comes along with, technicians, you know? So, you're right, it is very much a, no, no, no, it's…
32:34
Phil: it's all there to… to just make more profit on itself, you know? It's… it's…
32:39
Phil: It's pretty horrifying that when, you know, when your product is…
32:43
Phil: military technology, you're gonna want people to use it. And that's the kind of thing that
32:48
Phil: In my beliefs, I don't want anyone to use for any reason.
32:52
Tad Eggleston: Right. You know? And so few of… so few of the counterarguments
32:58
Tad Eggleston: Actually withstand much scrutiny at all.
33:00
Tad Eggleston: You know, if we ban guns, only the bad people will have guns? Well, no, because if you…
33:07
Phil: Look at your picture.
33:08
Tad Eggleston: If you have more restrictions on guns, then not as many guns will be made. The bad people won't be able to afford to get guns, particularly if you make the people who make them or sell them responsible for if the bad people get them. I mean, there are ways to…
33:25
Tad Eggleston: do this, you just choose not to.
33:29
Phil: Well, additionally, part of the issue is that the reason that gun control laws on a state-based level have not worked as efficiently is because
33:40
Phil: When people can just go to the neighboring state.
33:43
Tad Eggleston: Yeah!
33:43
Phil: And get all the guns they want or need, and then go back.
33:48
Tad Eggleston: Any given year, 40-70% of gun-related crimes in the city of Chicago
33:56
Tad Eggleston: were committed by guns bought out of state, and often 70-90% were committed with guns bought outside of Cook County.
34:06
Phil: There you go.
34:07
Ryan: Look at the few gun control measures that they have gotten passed over the years.
34:12
Ryan: And you're gonna find that they're racist as hell.
34:15
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
34:17
Ryan: You know, like, when they banned Saturday night specials, when they banned Saturday night specials, all that did was force poor people to get their firearms illegally.
34:27
Phil: Yeah.
34:28
Ryan: You can't get.
34:28
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean…
34:29
Ryan: Firearms anymore, legally.
34:32
Tad Eggleston: This is one of my favorite, favorite, trivia questions. You know what governor signed the strictest gun control laws into effect in U.S. history?
34:41
Ryan: Oh, probably Reagan.
34:43
Tad Eggleston: Reagan in California. You know why?
34:47
Phil: Cause he got shot at?
34:48
Tad Eggleston: No, because that was while he was president. The Black Panther Party.
34:52
Ryan: Yeah. Oh, when the Panthers were arming themselves, the NRA was for gun control suddenly.
34:58
Tad Eggleston: Right!
34:59
Tad Eggleston: Right!
35:00
Phil: That's beyond ironic.
35:02
Ryan: Yep. Which is wild. But yeah, yeah. Remember the guy, maybe you guys probably didn't see this, there was a fella in St. Paul who was…
35:10
Tad Eggleston: Lando Castile.
35:11
Ryan: Yep, who was mixed race, who told the cop, hey, look, I'm licensed to carry. The cop was asking to see his,
35:21
Ryan: insurance and registration on his car, and he was going into his glove box and said, just so you guys know, I got a pistol in here.
35:29
Ryan: I've got my concealed carry license with me and all that, and the cops shot him. The NRA did not, even though a bunch of
35:38
Ryan: members were like, we should be defending this guy's family in court, the NRA would not go to bat for that guy.
35:45
Tad Eggleston: Nope.
35:45
Phil: I forget the, the…
35:48
Tad Eggleston: the specifics, but, like, one of…
35:51
Phil: My friend and kid were in the car.
35:52
Ryan: Yep, yep. Oh, he got… So he was… the whole family!
35:56
Phil: Exactly, the whole family was in the car, and he's just communicating to the officer that a gun is present, and he gets shot before, like…
36:03
Phil: without even touching it, it's… yeah, it's… Right. It's…
36:06
Tad Eggleston: Right.
36:08
Phil: Yeah.
36:08
Tad Eggleston: a…
36:09
Ryan: literally everyone in St. Paul Which is not that big of a city.
36:15
Ryan: Right. Everyone knew that guy.
36:18
Ryan: He was well-liked, and he worked for the schools. He grew up, you know, going to the high schools around it. Everybody in town knew that guy.
36:27
Phil: Yeah.
36:30
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So,
36:34
Tad Eggleston: You talked, I guess, off-air, that the turnout for the protest yesterday was large. What's the neighborhood like right now, Ryan?
36:43
Ryan: You know, I mean, there's people down at the candlelight vigil still going on every single night down on Portland and 34th.
36:53
Ryan: People are dismayed more than anything, you know? But, at the same time.
37:02
Ryan: it doesn't… I think maybe because it's winter?
37:06
Ryan: there's not… You know, the feeling that everybody's outside, on edge, and anything could happen any minute.
37:14
Ryan: You know, if this was happening in June or July, it might be a different story.
37:21
Tad Eggleston: I… I… follow up to that, like…
37:27
Tad Eggleston: there's been reporting that ISIS sent agents from Chicago and from Louisiana to supplement the 2,000 that were.
37:37
Ryan: Yeah, there's 3,000 of those assholes here now.
37:40
Tad Eggleston: Are they still going door-to-door in your neighborhood, or are they now… because I know once things started to get too much
37:50
Tad Eggleston: too much attention in Chicago that they started hanging out around the detention center and twiddling their thumbs a lot more than they had before.
38:00
Ryan: They're hanging out at the airport, hassling guys.
38:04
Ryan: The big… did you see that Somalian Uber driver get back in their face yesterday?
38:09
Tad Eggleston: No.
38:10
Ryan: Oh, it's amazing. Go to YouTube and just look up, Somalian Uber driver versus ice.
38:16
Ryan: And he knew exactly how to play it. And those guys, after about 10 minutes of him, you know, politely not complying with any of their bullshit, they fucked off.
38:29
Ryan: So, that was good. But that's kind of what they're doing now, is hanging around out near the airport. They're, out in the burbs. They are not… just like after… you notice after they shot Renee Goode the other day, Ice cut tail and ran right out of there?
38:45
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
38:46
Ryan: Which is actually altering a crime scene, and you're not supposed to do that.
38:51
Ryan: But, yeah, they weren't supposed to do any of what they did. But, yeah, they've…
38:59
Ryan: You know, they're too chicken shit to…
39:03
Ryan: really be concentrated right now in this neighborhood, but they'll be back. They'll be back.
39:11
Ryan: You know, tears…
39:12
Phil: I… hear correctly that the, National Guard was called in to a public service?
39:18
Ryan: They were called up.
39:20
Ryan: in case anything happened to… Walls told them to be at the ready, but they haven't been called in to do anything.
39:29
Phil: I see. I see.
39:31
Ryan: Right, and ICE are kind of trying to lay low, because people have figured out the hotel that was putting them up.
39:38
Phil: Oh, okay.
39:39
Ryan: And so they were down there Saturday night, you know, so that's good. Yeah. Do you hear about what happened with the Hilton Hotel here downtown Minneapolis? That they got kicked out of the Hilton chain?
39:54
Phil: Well, that's great. You know, we need more… you know, it's… They refuse to put those rules businesses need to oppose.
40:01
Ryan: Right. The Hilton in downtown Minneapolis refused to put up ice.
40:07
Ryan: And so the Hilton corporate bosses kicked the hotel out of the chain.
40:13
Ryan: It's still…
40:14
Phil: Oh, shit.
40:14
Ryan: Still running, but they're not exactly.
40:16
Phil: Wow.
40:17
Ryan: Who owns it right now?
40:19
Phil: So they need, so they need to take the name off.
40:22
Phil: That's a… okay, that's even… that's even more impressive that the individual people running the place stood up, and the…
40:29
Ryan: The managers just said, we're not putting up ice.
40:32
Phil: Continue to fuck Hilton. Okay. Good to know. Good to know.
40:36
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I think Hilton actually really set themselves up to be fucked by both sides, because do you think that many of the people on the right noticed that they disavowed the one hotel, or do you think
40:49
Tad Eggleston: already, already fuck Hilton, and, and now, now, all the people on the left are also fuck Hilton, so who's gonna go.
40:58
Ryan: Right, because the hotel that is…
41:00
Phil: We can only hope.
41:02
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I guess the truly centrist people will go, Hilton prices are low.
41:07
Ryan: Yeah, the hotel that is putting them up is another one affiliated with the Hilton chain.
41:15
Phil: Oh, God, wow.
41:17
Ryan: Yeah, so they got kicked out of one… er, not kicked out, they just refused to put them up in the first place at the one Hilton. Sure, sure. And then this other, it's like, you know, it's the such-and-such by Hilton, you know, the Residence Inn by Hilton or something.
41:32
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Probably in one of the whiter suburbs.
41:35
Ryan: No, it's downtown, too.
41:37
Tad Eggleston: Oh, they Did she get one downtown?
41:39
Ryan: Yep, they got one downtown. There's the… oh my god, we have so many hotels downtown.
41:45
Tad Eggleston: You do. You do.
41:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you got a football field, and a baseball field, and a basketball court, all in close proximity to each other, that causes hotels.
41:57
Ryan: Yeah, so.
42:00
Tad Eggleston: Particularly because, like, you're the closest football, baseball, or basketball team within, like, A thousand miles going west.
42:10
Ryan: Yeah, there's, like, nothing till you get to Seattle on there.
42:13
Tad Eggleston: Right, right. Like, anybody east of the Rockies…
42:19
Tad Eggleston: And north of Missouri is… is a Minnesota thing.
42:23
Ryan: That's true. The… yeah, the…
42:25
Tad Eggleston: The Dakotas!
42:27
Ryan: Oh, yeah, the broadcast rights for our local sports teams here go all the way out to Montana.
42:33
Tad Eggleston: Right.
42:34
Ryan: Yeah.
42:36
Ryan: So, it, I mean…
42:39
Tad Eggleston: Too bad there's still not enough people to make it into a major media market, but…
42:44
Ryan: Yeah, well, I mean, who from Montana is really gonna pack up the kids and take them to a Wolves game, you know what I mean?
42:50
Tad Eggleston: You'd be surprised…
42:53
Ryan: Yeah, maybe a few.
42:54
Ryan: Maybe.
42:55
Tad Eggleston: It'd be, like, a once-a-year type thing, but, like, if you… If you love…
43:02
Tad Eggleston: Basketball, or you love baseball, or you love football, and it's the closest option.
43:10
Tad Eggleston: You know… I mean, my wife's family is from… South Dakota, so only, like, 5 hours out.
43:21
Tad Eggleston: But, you know, they make the trip into Minneapolis a couple of times a year for a baseball or football game.
43:29
Tad Eggleston: Oh…
43:30
Ryan: What was I gonna say? Oh, but I don't know if,
43:36
Ryan: I don't know if ICE is needed to switch hotels now, because
43:40
Ryan: People were demonstrating and making noise all night so that they couldn't sleep And.
43:47
Tad Eggleston: That has been the go-to since Los Angeles. Let's have a lock party outside their hotel.
43:54
Tad Eggleston: What's really impressive is every once in a while, they manage to do it legally. They manage to find that property that they can get the permission to play on, and it's, like, 100% legal, and there's nothing.
44:06
Phil: Oh.
44:06
Tad Eggleston: thought about it.
44:07
Ryan: Right, yeah, here they, you know, they're trying to draw a big focus on the fact that one security guard at their hotel got somebody spit in his face.
44:17
Ryan: and they're making that into some big deal, and it's like, never mind if there were 3,000, 4,000 people outside there who were all, you know, doing just fine. I mean, the other thing to look for in all of these scenarios, too.
44:31
Ryan: is, undercover provocateurs.
44:36
Phil: Yeah.
44:37
Ryan: You know.
44:38
Tad Eggleston: Well, in Minneapol.
44:38
Ryan: AI is accurate.
44:39
Tad Eggleston: actually dealt with that.
44:42
Ryan: Minneapolis actually dealt with that with George Floyd. Oh, you better believe it! Oh, my God!
44:48
Tad Eggleston: government provocateurs, but, but, but, like, the, the only, the only looters and, and, and vandals…
44:56
Tad Eggleston: who were right-wingers. Were convicted in Minneapolis were right-wingers.
45:01
Ryan: Yep. But also, there were a lot of… Surprise, surprise.
45:05
Ryan: DHS was in town for that, too, and there were… because I live right… I mean, I'm on George Floyd Square, you know? Right. And there were a lot of,
45:18
Ryan: snitches.
45:19
Ryan: That were around that area that summer, and…
45:24
Ryan: a lot of undercover cops from the Minneapolis Police Department, too.
45:29
Ryan: I mean, we can't… things have gotten so bad here that the local cops are preferable to ICE, and anyone can tell you our local cops are fucking bad enough. You know what I mean? We have one of the worst police forces around, and it has not gotten better.
45:46
Ryan: You know, sense.
45:47
Tad Eggleston: Right.
45:48
Ryan: That's the summer of 2020. They've got a lot more money, too. You know, so far, the only reforms of the police department here that have happened is they've managed to double their budget in the 5 years since then.
46:03
Phil: Goodness.
46:04
Ryan: We had a ballot referendum.
46:06
Tad Eggleston: And for people not aware, that was… that was under Joe Biden? Joe Biden funded the police?
46:15
Ryan: Oh, yeah!
46:15
Phil: I say this only because there seems to be a confusion about which party funds the police.
46:22
Phil: Yeah.
46:23
Ryan: They both…
46:24
Phil: both do.
46:25
Ryan: Right. We had a balance.
46:26
Tad Eggleston: Well, actually, almost every police cut ever has been a Republican one, and they've just hidden it as an overall budget cut.
46:34
Phil: I see.
46:37
Ryan: Well…
46:38
Tad Eggleston: Haven't excluded police funding when they're cutting overall funding.
46:42
Ryan: The other thing that ties directly back into our local cops is this footage that got out there that they're trying to use to exonerate the guy where they, you know, you can see she's not driving towards him and he calls her a bitch and stuff.
46:57
Phil: Yeah. Wasn't…
46:59
Ryan: actually released here to the local right-wing news outlet called Alpha News.
47:05
Phil: Right.
47:06
Ryan: Alpha News is owned by Bob Kroll.
47:11
Ryan: who was the head of the many… notorious head of the Minneapolis Police Union for years.
47:18
Ryan: He was the guy who defended every cop that ever killed anybody, and his wife was one of the local news reporters for WCCO, and now she's left there, and the two of them own this right-wing outfit called Alpha News.
47:34
Ryan: Wow. And Bob Kroll finally had to turn in his badge a couple years ago.
47:40
Ryan: And it was a long time coming. You know, he was… Bob Kroll…
47:45
Tad Eggleston: clearly didn't learn anything about what looks and doesn't look good for cops, if he thought.
47:50
Ryan: I don't.
47:50
Tad Eggleston: playing.
47:51
Ryan: that video.
47:51
Tad Eggleston: was gonna make the cops look better.
47:54
Ryan: Art of… he was part of a…
47:56
Ryan: right-wing motorcycle club called City Heat that are out of Chicago, that's.
48:02
Tad Eggleston: It's full of…
48:02
Ryan: Cops and veterans and shit.
48:04
Tad Eggleston: Right?
48:04
Phil: Yeah.
48:05
Ryan: And when our… that… the weekend that there were the big riots here, the big civil unrest.
48:11
Ryan: Our neighborhood was being buzzed all night by motorcycle guys loaded with white supremacist tattoos, and with city heat decals and shit on their bikes. So Bob… a lot of the unrest that weekend was from guys that Bob Kroll was bringing into town.
48:30
Tad Eggleston: Well, I… I… I live, like, 5 miles from Kenosha.
48:35
Tad Eggleston: And, even before… the night where shots were fired.
48:44
Tad Eggleston: Word was heavy, you know, amongst…
48:49
Tad Eggleston: organizers amongst just people that, like, yes, you know, there were gonna be protests and whatnot, but what we needed to watch for the most was provocateurs. The Boogaloos had it all over their website that they…
49:03
Tad Eggleston: you know, this is a perfect opportunity to go and, and, and start something. Like, like, so, so, you know, the, the…
49:14
Tad Eggleston: the anti-police violence protesters were constantly on the lookout for Hawaiian shirts.
49:23
Tad Eggleston: that sort of thing. Like, like, they're… they're…
49:26
Tad Eggleston: There are definitely groups out there that care more about fomenting chaos, because they think that in the…
49:34
Tad Eggleston: in the… Aftermath of chaos, their side will prevail.
49:40
Ryan: Right.
49:41
Tad Eggleston: Oh. And…
49:42
Ryan: You know who… you know where, you know where that whole thinking is copied from? You know who believed that?
49:50
Ryan: The Manson family.
49:52
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
49:54
Ryan: That was the core belief of the Manson family, that they were gonna go live underground.
49:58
Ryan: And that, they were gonna start, you know, a race war, and that when they came… and that the Blacks were gonna win the race war, but not know how to run anything, and then they'd emerge from their underground bunker and take the Manson family and take over the world.
50:15
Tad Eggleston: Which may be the only thing crazier than what Steve Miller Regularly spouts out loud.
50:25
Ryan: Oh, man, I'll take… I'll take Charles Manson over Stephen Miller any day, at least he was entertaining.
50:31
Tad Eggleston: Well, but I, I, I, I, I, I didn't, didn't, didn't say, less entertaining.
50:39
Tad Eggleston: For that matter, the advantage of being crazier is it's generally less competent as well.
50:46
Ryan: I hate…
50:47
Tad Eggleston: Don't get me wrong, this administration is not, like… High on the competency rating.
50:55
Ryan: No, and that's the one thing we should be glad for.
51:00
Tad Eggleston: Hopefully. Yeah. Because unfortunately, competency matters less the heavier your artillery.
51:08
Ryan: Well, that's true.
51:09
Ryan: But I mean, could you imagine if there was someone as shrewd and calculating as Dick Cheney behind all this right now?
51:17
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Oh yeah.
51:19
Ryan: You know?
51:19
Phil: Thankfully, he's dead.
51:21
Ryan: Thank God for that!
51:23
Ryan: Thank God you got it.
51:25
Tad Eggleston: I look down on him regularly, and I go…
51:29
Tad Eggleston: Dick, I love that you came around that this… but you never even acknowledged that, like…
51:34
Tad Eggleston: It was because of you that we got this far.
51:37
Phil: Right.
51:38
Ryan: Right. And honest to God, I don't mean to second-guess
51:43
Ryan: campaign decisions at this stage, but I think if they would have stuck more… you know, all that stuff Walls was doing, calling these guys a bunch of weirdos and shit, was really working. Yeah, it was. And they went away from that.
51:58
Tad Eggleston: I, I…
51:59
Ryan: for the Liz Cheney voter.
52:01
Tad Eggleston: I don't know.
52:02
Ryan: really exists anymore.
52:03
Tad Eggleston: No. No, I heard somebody say recently that establishment Democrats have been…
52:11
Tad Eggleston: running the 2002 midterms over and over and over again. Like, they got their asses kicked for…
52:18
Tad Eggleston: kicked for being weak. It… the… the…
52:24
Tad Eggleston: year after the terrorist attacks, and… and despite the fact that they weren't particularly weak, they… they now… put…
52:34
Tad Eggleston: appearing strong above all else. They seem somehow convinced that they're gonna lose votes if they show
52:42
Tad Eggleston: Compassion rather than strength, and, like, that's not…
52:46
Tad Eggleston: The place for them to be.
52:48
Phil: When instead, you know, their most successful and, like, nationally renowned figures are the ones that express compassion and aren't worried about.
52:56
Tad Eggleston: Fresco Passion Express.
52:57
Phil: Yeah.
52:58
Ryan: Yeah.
52:59
Tad Eggleston: I mean, among other things, the idea that compassion and weakness are synonymous is something that they should fight.
53:07
Phil: Yeah.
53:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
53:09
Ryan: Well, you don't… but they're… the leadership of the party
53:13
Ryan: doesn't have any fight in him. I mean, look at Chuck.
53:17
Ryan: you know.
53:17
Tad Eggleston: I mean, yep.
53:19
Phil: Yep. You know, that's the…
53:21
Ryan: When the Venezuela thing happened, Chuck Schumer's response was, well, I'm sure glad we got rid of that Maduro, but, you know, he should have come to… basically, his only objection was that Trump didn't go to Congress to get authorization.
53:36
Phil: Yeah, that's…
53:36
Ryan: We went in there and fucking kidnapped.
53:39
Phil: he… he wanted to be part of that insider trading hustle. Yeah.
53:42
Ryan: Right. He had no objection to the fact that we went in and kidnapped a guy who, no matter what we say here, was legally elected by the people of Venezuela, you know?
53:54
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's debatable whether he was legally elected, but it's not our laws.
53:59
Tad Eggleston: So, regardless of what we say, we're breaking the sovereignty of Venezuela to take him.
54:07
Phil: Right, and we've also discounted.
54:10
Ryan: from day one, how much support the Bolivarians have among the poor.
54:17
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely. Absolutely. It's almost unanimous. But beyond all of that, like, even if we were going with the whole, he wasn't legally elected, we didn't put the person who… the argument is that they won the election into power, we put the vice president into power.
54:36
Ryan: Right.
54:36
Phil: Huh.
54:37
Tad Eggleston: So… Well, you know, the…
54:41
Ryan: It's the thing.
54:41
Tad Eggleston: Actually, our dear leader said the quiet part out loud, and said, oh, no, it's about the oil.
54:46
Ryan: Yeah.
54:47
Ryan: Well, you know, the rumor is that they might actually have a deal with her, and…
54:53
Tad Eggleston: That's one of the rumors, though, who knows? We haven't seen anything from her side that indicates that yet.
54:59
Ryan: Right, no, I noticed that in,
55:02
Ryan: the Venezuelan National Assembly a couple days ago, the vote condemning the U.S. invasion was unanimous, even the opposition parties.
55:13
Ryan: Voted, you know.
55:15
Tad Eggleston: They're arresting people who… who are pro-US invasion.
55:22
Ryan: Wow.
55:22
Ryan: So, basically, we are… the government is continuing
55:30
Ryan: just with someone else. The other big rumor is that they're gonna cut a deal with Maduro, where he comes out and claims that he helped rig the 2020 election, and that he'll get a lesser sentence for that.
55:42
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you know that that would get him a pardon.
55:46
Phil: Ugh.
55:47
Tad Eggleston: Not a lesser sentence, he'd get pardoned.
55:50
Ryan: Yeah, he might, you know. I mean, for that matter…
55:54
Tad Eggleston: You know… I'm just gonna toss this out here, out there, you know. So far, Trump has been saying
56:01
Tad Eggleston: That… That… there's no way that he's gonna pardon P. Diddy.
56:10
Tad Eggleston: But… If Diddy were to say.
56:13
Tad Eggleston: that he had evidence that Jay-Z and Beyonce?
56:17
Tad Eggleston: We're ballot harvesting?
56:19
Tad Eggleston: He would get a pardon.
56:21
Ryan: That's true.
56:22
Ryan: That's true!
56:24
Tad Eggleston: I mean, look…
56:25
Ryan: All… it doesn't matter what Trump does from one day to the next.
56:31
Ryan: The cult will go along with whatever it is.
56:34
Ryan: it can be a 180-degree turn, and it doesn't matter. I mean, they were all against regime change wars, now they're all for it in Venezuela, you know?
56:46
Tad Eggleston: Though, this is another one of those, things where, where…
56:52
Tad Eggleston: There's an argument that we didn't… we didn't really…
56:56
Tad Eggleston: get where they were. They're all against wars that send U.S. citizens into combat anywhere. They're all for blowing shit up and taking…
57:09
Tad Eggleston: things for us.
57:10
Phil: Ugh.
57:11
Ryan: Yeah, you got a point.
57:14
Tad Eggleston: You know, as long as the U.S. death toll remains small or zero, they don't give a flying shit how much we bomb, particularly if somehow we make oil prices go down.
57:34
Phil: And yet… They didn't like Obama.
57:38
Ryan: I get this. I get this.
57:40
Tad Eggleston: But I spent a day out at Broadview, the Chicago area ICE detention center, and there was actually a woman who was, like, talking to the people among the protesters. She's like, yeah, this is terrible, but aren't you happy that your gas prices are lower? And I'm like…
57:57
Phil: peace.
57:59
Tad Eggleston: First of all, I don't know what those two things have to do with each other, but second of all…
58:07
Tad Eggleston: If they do? No! No! I don't want human beings subjected to…
58:14
Phil: I… I don't want lower prices due to death of people. That's not… that's not how we want to get there. That's not… no thank you, please.
58:23
Ryan: You'd hope that would be a universally shared sentiment.
58:27
Tad Eggleston: Y-you really do?
58:28
Phil: Yeah.
58:29
Tad Eggleston: Really, too.
58:30
Phil: Yeah.
58:30
Ryan: But the other thing, too, about the oil prices is, yes, Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves.
58:37
Ryan: But it's only worth pumping when oil is really high, because it's not, like.
58:42
Ryan: free-flowing crude oil, like Saudi Arabia. It's this heavy tar sand oil that has… that costs a fortune to extract and filter and shit, and so they really only…
58:56
Ryan: Start pumping that stuff in big numbers when oil gets expensive enough.
59:00
Tad Eggleston: Though, most of the places to refine it well are in the United States.
59:05
Ryan: Oh yeah, well, and they always, no matter how much saber-rattling we were doing with Venezuela, they were still letting their oil in here to be refined.
59:15
Ryan: You know, so that tells you how much we really, you know… I mean, it's all a show. The Venezuela thing, the ICE invasions in domestic cities is all right now. Trump is a cornered animal over this Epstein shit.
59:32
Ryan: It's the one thing that he's lost his base over.
59:36
Ryan: If it's shown…
59:37
Tad Eggleston: Well, that, and he hasn't managed to make prices go down.
59:40
Ryan: That's true.
59:41
Tad Eggleston: He's, he's, he's trying to,
59:45
Tad Eggleston: He's trying to, convince people that…
59:50
Tad Eggleston: That affordability is a made-up word in.
59:53
Ryan: Right.
59:54
Ryan: You're right, that, you know, that's had an effect, too, because by and large, his strongest supporters are the billionaire class and then poor white people.
1:00:03
Phil: Right. And the poor white people know they're still fucking broke.
1:00:08
Tad Eggleston: And they're gonna know it even more if, if, if, as their healthcare premiums skyrocket.
1:00:15
Ryan: Right. Oh, that, yeah. But what they managed to do was make,
1:00:21
Ryan: Pedophilia, the new modern scarlet Letter.
1:00:24
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, you did, you did hear Megyn Kelly.
1:00:28
Tad Eggleston: It's not like they were with 5- and 8-year-olds. Oh, right, yeah. I mean, 15-year-olds are…
1:00:34
Ryan: But even Now, even a lot of MAGA weirdos were, like.
1:00:40
Ryan: what the hell are you talking about to her over that, you know? And so, if it was, you know, if good, solid evidence came out.
1:00:49
Ryan: that Trump was messing around with teenagers, that would… and so all this stuff is a distraction from that. It's to get the Epstein files out of the headlines.
1:01:00
Tad Eggleston: Though, I mean, this is… this is my horrible conspiracy theory.
1:01:05
Tad Eggleston: That, God, I hope I'm wrong.
1:01:08
Phil: Is that…
1:01:12
Tad Eggleston: J.D. Vance is just enough more reliable and predictable for his billionaire overlords that, really, they're only trying to get to next January 21st.
1:01:30
Tad Eggleston: Because they want him to be able to run twice.
1:01:34
Ryan: Hmm.
1:01:35
Ryan: I hadn't thought that.
1:01:36
Tad Eggleston: Trump through 2 years.
1:01:38
Tad Eggleston: then Vance can run twice.
1:01:43
Ryan: I don't think Vance has the…
1:01:47
Ryan: Charisma, or whatever you want to call it, to hold MAGA together, though.
1:01:51
Tad Eggleston: Well, while I agree with you, that assumes that we still have anything resembling free and fair elections.
1:01:59
Ryan: True, very true.
1:02:02
Ryan: And we…
1:02:02
Tad Eggleston: Rather than just the desire to maintain the appearance of free and fair elections.
1:02:11
Ryan: Yeah, that's a… excellent point.
1:02:16
Tad Eggleston: And I think… I think that…
1:02:21
Tad Eggleston: your Peter Teals, your Elon Musks, your…
1:02:26
Tad Eggleston: Billionaires whose names we don't even know because they're smart enough to not have us know their names.
1:02:37
Tad Eggleston: see that they're better off without, like, the Putin that's in power forever.
1:02:43
Tad Eggleston: If they can just have their own guy in power forever, but appear…
1:02:49
Tad Eggleston: That they're a real elections. Every couple years, yeah.
1:02:53
Tad Eggleston: That would be infinitely better for them. And as the overturn window shifts, they can probably even arrange
1:03:01
Tad Eggleston: To have the other party in power for 4 years.
1:03:07
Tad Eggleston: This is where I start to depress the hell out of myself, though, so…
1:03:12
Phil: And so you mean, like, Clinton?
1:03:14
Ryan: Like, when Clinton took over from the Republicans and handed it back to Republicans? Yeah. Yeah.
1:03:18
Phil: And didn't enshrine Roe v. Wade when he could, when he had full control of Congress? Yeah.
1:03:24
Tad Eggleston: Failed to pass healthcare, failed, but did pass the crime bill.
1:03:30
Ryan: Yep, and did allow the media consolidation that we see today. That was a good creation.
1:03:38
Ryan: You know, yeah, he said he was a different kind of Democrat. Yeah, he sure was. The Republican kind.
1:03:44
Phil: Yup.
1:03:45
Ryan: You know, but I will say, Perhaps against expectations.
1:03:50
Ryan: Biden did govern more like a real Democrat.
1:03:54
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:03:55
Ryan: or Obama did.
1:03:58
Tad Eggleston: Obama… Obama did, for 2 years.
1:04:03
Tad Eggleston: But he was never as good at playing the politics.
1:04:08
Tad Eggleston: Well, I, I think that put him way behind the eight ball for 6 years.
1:04:13
Phil: everybody else? Like, I'm pretty sure the virulent racist party was at their most virulent racist, or at least
1:04:21
Phil: initiated… No, absolutely, which is…
1:04:23
Tad Eggleston: Which is… which is…
1:04:24
Phil: So…
1:04:25
Tad Eggleston: Which is why the way he played the politics during the first two years was absolutely wrong. He should have slammed everything through during those first two years.
1:04:33
Tad Eggleston: rather than negotiating anything, because you should have seen that this is the only time I'm gonna pass every… anything. So I need to make it so they spend the next 6 years trying to repeal things, not so they spend the next 6 years
1:04:48
Tad Eggleston: trying…
1:04:48
Ryan: You're right on the money about that, my friend.
1:04:52
Phil: Yeah?
1:04:53
Tad Eggleston: And, you know, on one side, I… I give him some credit for understanding that it was what he knew the least about. On the other side,
1:05:07
Tad Eggleston: When you've got… 50 years of hawkish military, sometimes the outsider should take the lead.
1:05:16
Tad Eggleston: He deferred to his… his…
1:05:19
Tad Eggleston: generals, et cetera, a little much when it came to things like drone strikes, to not closing Guantanamo.
1:05:27
Tad Eggleston: that sort of thing. Like, his… his… his autobiography is a worthwhile read. He's… he's a… Introspective man. I can't wait for the second volume.
1:05:39
Tad Eggleston: Because.
1:05:39
Phil: I'll read it.
1:05:40
Tad Eggleston: It doesn't.
1:05:40
Phil: adaptation.
1:05:41
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, that'd be nice, too. He doesn't sugarcoat, or I didn't feel like he sugarcoated the things that he wishes he could have done better, or the misjudgments that he made. He talks a lot about how he should have seen Sarah Palin as a much bigger harbinger of things to come.
1:06:00
Phil: Oh, yeah.
1:06:01
Tad Eggleston: Penny, too.
1:06:01
Phil: Sean.
1:06:03
Tad Eggleston: That sort of thing. But yeah, no, Biden…
1:06:09
Tad Eggleston: Biden did an amazing job with what he was given, and… and…
1:06:14
Ryan: He made one… Biden made one huge Awful.
1:06:21
Ryan: Mistake. 2.
1:06:23
Tad Eggleston: Two, but let me hear what your one is.
1:06:26
Ryan: Merrick Garland.
1:06:28
Tad Eggleston: Okay, 3.
1:06:28
Phil: Whoa…
1:06:31
Ryan: Any…
1:06:31
Phil: Well, how would you… how would you phrase that? What about that was a… was a mistake to you?
1:06:36
Ryan: Well, he didn't… he declined to prosec… Trump should have been prosecuted after January 6th immediately.
1:06:42
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, I mean, I agree. Whoever took that job should have taken that job.
1:06:50
Tad Eggleston: With the idea that…
1:06:54
Tad Eggleston: This is a massive event in U.S. history that requires all of our resources to figure out what happened and prosecute everybody who deserves to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
1:07:04
Ryan: We.
1:07:05
Phil: We were still on Obama, not Biden. I misheard.
1:07:07
Tad Eggleston: No, we're on Biden. But I will argue that that was just his first mistake. His second mistake was the…
1:07:15
Tad Eggleston: the… the unconditional support of Israel.
1:07:18
Ryan: Oh, yeah.
1:07:19
Tad Eggleston: And the third mistake was running again.
1:07:24
Phil: Yeah, I was… yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, should've stepped down.
1:07:27
Ryan: Or…
1:07:28
Ryan: you know what? You could make just a good… as big an argument that his mistake with regard to that was dropping out. They had one debate that freaked everybody out.
1:07:37
Tad Eggleston: I get that.
1:07:38
Ryan: But I don't think they should not prove that those debates didn't matter. Trump made a bigger ass of himself in those remaining debates. I think
1:07:48
Ryan: Titan could have won again. It might have been tight, but I think he could have won again.
1:07:53
Tad Eggleston: Maybe, but I don't think he could have been president again.
1:07:57
Ryan: Neither can Trump! Shit!
1:07:59
Tad Eggleston: I understand, but, like, the single… in my mind, the single biggest…
1:08:06
Tad Eggleston: cardinal sin of the current Democratic Party is there are essentially no Gen Xers.
1:08:14
Phil: Hmm, yeah.
1:08:17
Phil: Yeah, they've, they've got…
1:08:19
Tad Eggleston: Entire generation.
1:08:20
Phil: Yeah, they go straight from the baby boomer, old guard to the colonial old guard. There aren't that many boomers!
1:08:28
Phil: Yeah.
1:08:32
Tad Eggleston: You know, we go from people in their late 60s to 90s to people in their early 40s.
1:08:42
Tad Eggleston: There's, like, a 20-year gap. They didn't bother to actually… Pass the torch.
1:08:49
Tad Eggleston: Until it was ripped from them.
1:08:52
Phil: Yeah.
1:08:55
Ryan: Yeah, although, you know, did you see? I mean, I'm Generation X.
1:09:00
Ryan: I will say this, fuck us.
1:09:03
Ryan: Because I thought in the last election, we're actually the only demographic generation that went for Trump.
1:09:11
Ryan: Even the…
1:09:12
Phil: Who cares?
1:09:13
Ryan: the boomers were worried enough about their Social Security that they narrowly didn't go for Trump, and despite all his supposed gains among the young, which have now been way lost already, they still get clobbered by, like, 20 points among young voters.
1:09:31
Tad Eggleston: He managed to get.
1:09:31
Ryan: 50…
1:09:32
Tad Eggleston: He managed to get 51% of young white males.
1:09:37
Ryan: Okay, well, he won't get that again.
1:09:39
Tad Eggleston: No, but again, that's like… That's one small demographic of younger voters.
1:09:44
Ryan: Right.
1:09:45
Tad Eggleston: Because, like, young white females, he got, like, 30% of, and young non-whites, he got, like, 20%.
1:09:53
Ryan: Right, and if… and if you broke that down to,
1:09:57
Ryan: if you broke that down even further, most of those games were, I think, among Hispanic young, you know… I mean,
1:10:06
Ryan: you know, the smartest voters in our country, year in and year out, usually are Black women voters, who fucking understand, you know what I mean, the real score, you know? And that's… Trump made a little bit of gains among Black men that I'm sure he's lost again already.
1:10:25
Ryan: You know, and any gains he makes, Hispanics, he's completely wiped out.
1:10:29
Tad Eggleston: Well, and here's the thing on those groups, too, is you have to really wonder, like, Georgia enacted draconian.
1:10:42
Phil: Yeah.
1:10:42
Tad Eggleston: election laws during the four years of Biden. Texas enacted draconian election laws during the four years that Biden was in office. Arizona enacted draconian
1:10:54
Tad Eggleston: election laws during the… Right.
1:10:56
Tad Eggleston: Florida.
1:10:58
Tad Eggleston: enacted draconian election laws during the Biden was in office, and…
1:11:04
Phil: Yeah.
1:11:04
Tad Eggleston: And Alabama and Mississippi already had them. So.
1:11:09
Tad Eggleston: Did he lose those categories, or was there voter suppression in those categories?
1:11:16
Ryan: Right.
1:11:17
Tad Eggleston: Legal voter suppression, but voter suppression.
1:11:21
Ryan: And now, of course, I mean, well, look, what… you want to talk about a shifting window? Okay.
1:11:30
Ryan: The moderate position now is to abolish ICE. That used to be considered radical leftist. I mean, any Democrat worth their salt running next time has to run on abolishing ICE.
1:11:42
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think… I think we've reached the point where any Democrat worth their salt has to run on, there is accountability for everyone.
1:11:51
Ryan: Right.
1:11:53
Ryan: Yup.
1:11:54
Tad Eggleston: Our first priority is full investigations, full…
1:12:00
Tad Eggleston: We're running on this, so if we win, we can say, this is our mandate.
1:12:06
Tad Eggleston: And if we've got time to do the other stuff too, we will. But if we don't hold these people responsible, this will happen again.
1:12:17
Ryan: Oh, yeah. I mean, you can always count on the Republicans to get worse.
1:12:22
Ryan: You know what I mean? You can. Like, when I was a little kid, nobody thought anything could be worse than Reagan. Then we got Bush, he was worse than Reagan.
1:12:31
Ryan: Then we got George W. Bush, who was worse than his dad. You know what I mean? Now we got Trump, who's worse than George W. Bush. Whoever they serve up next is gonna be worse. That's just how it goes.
1:12:44
Tad Eggleston: Well, and the rank and file gets worse.
1:12:48
Ryan: Oh, yeah!
1:12:49
Phil: Yeah.
1:12:50
Ryan: Absolutely.
1:12:51
Tad Eggleston: You know, Democratic primaries move people to the center, Republican primaries move people to the right.
1:12:59
Ryan: But I don't know if that's gonna… when you look.
1:13:02
Tad Eggleston: But I don't know if that'll hold.
1:13:04
Ryan: Right. I think there's too much energy. I mean, Zora and Mom Donnie won in a landslide.
1:13:10
Tad Eggleston: And how weird is it that the love fest that Trump now has with him?
1:13:16
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah. That was the most surreal press conference ever. It's alright, you can call me a fascist!
1:13:22
Phil: Faster that way.
1:13:24
Ryan: Yeah, at the end of the day, Trump admires winners.
1:13:28
Phil: Yeah.
1:13:30
Phil: Again, it goes back to showing his complete… his complete lack of… of internal reason, internal logic, internal, you know, forethought, those sorts of things. It's all…
1:13:40
Tad Eggleston: that's a useful thing for people who do have that to use as a tool. I mean, I honestly think that the only thing that makes Trump
1:13:50
Tad Eggleston: problematic for Republicans at all is the fact that he's unpredictable.
1:14:01
Phil: Yeah.
1:14:02
Tad Eggleston: That every time they try to clean up his mess, he… which is why… you notice that they're not even trying anymore, because, you know, I mean…
1:14:11
Tad Eggleston: you saw the shift in a week. You know, everybody was about the law enforcement reasons, blah blah blah, about Venezuela, until Trump said, oh, we just want their oil. It's like, oh, well, I guess we have to shift. So when there's a shooting a week later, nobody!
1:14:31
Tad Eggleston: nobody tried to show any remorse. They immediately went to, she was a terrorist.
1:14:37
Ryan: Yeah.
1:14:37
Phil: Yeah.
1:14:39
Ryan: Well, I hope that somebody gets sued for slamming.
1:14:43
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I do too.
1:14:44
Ryan: For that shit, too.
1:14:45
Tad Eggleston: I do too.
1:14:46
Ryan: I mean, this woman…
1:14:48
Ryan: First off, you have every right to protest and be out there. But secondly, it doesn't sound like she was that much of an activist in the first place.
1:14:58
Tad Eggleston: No.
1:14:58
Ryan: You know, she was kind of wrong place, wrong time, after dropping the kids off at school.
1:15:05
Tad Eggleston: I am just waiting to discover that she,
1:15:12
Tad Eggleston: Lived on the block, and was actually just trying to get home.
1:15:16
Ryan: Well, she lived close.
1:15:17
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. I mean, because it feels so much like she was driving down the block and hit the point where it's like, oh, I can't get to my driveway, let me turn around and go get a cup of coffee. And her wife hopped out of the car, because it's like, well, let's see what's going on with our neighbors and bear witness.
1:15:39
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I don't know if we're ever gonna hear the full story. I know that the… I know that the U.S. government would like us not to.
1:15:46
Tad Eggleston: But, which, like, the idea that the FBI is not sharing with local law enforcement… is.
1:15:59
Ryan: Everybody knows the cover-up's underway.
1:16:02
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:16:02
Phil: Well, it's…
1:16:04
Phil: They got the head of the FBI, and they're, you know, it's one of their goons. It's their one, Kash Patel, one of their, you know…
1:16:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, what does it say about the FBI that Dan Bongino decided that he couldn't take it anymore?
1:16:16
Ryan: Oh, no kidding. It reminds me… it reminds me of the situation a couple years ago where the NRA leadership was so fucking corrupt and so crooked that Oliver North stepped down.
1:16:30
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:16:30
Ryan: as the kind of ceremonial head of the organization. Right. If you're too fucking crooked for a guy who was running drugs into the country to pay for a war illegally, then you're really crooked.
1:16:44
Tad Eggleston: Pay for two wars illegally.
1:16:46
Ryan: Yeah, I mean, nobody's more responsible for the crack epidemic than Oliver North, you know? And yet, the NRA was too crooked even for him.
1:16:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:16:58
Ryan: You know, but yeah, if you're too… you know, he's got a couple of, you know, he put a couple of podcasters in charge of the FBI,
1:17:07
Ryan: You know.
1:17:08
Tad Eggleston: Okay, don't bash all podcasters. Some of us… some of us have… have a couple of brain cells.
1:17:12
Ryan: You… I stand for… I could run the…
1:17:16
Phil: FBI better than those goons.
1:17:18
Ryan: You could.
1:17:19
Tad Eggleston: I would totally run the FBI better than Pash Patel. And you know why I know that? Because I would say, I'm sorry, sir, I'm unqualified to run the FBI.
1:17:29
Phil: I'd take a page out of who, who was, who was the previous guy that was known as, like,
1:17:36
Phil: Oh, oh…
1:17:38
Phil: I forget what… he had, like, a goofy nickname, but he was like, this is unconstitutional, I'm not doing what you're telling me to.
1:17:45
Ryan: Yeah, I might…
1:17:46
Tad Eggleston: Pence?
1:17:47
Ryan: Just close the place up.
1:17:49
Ryan: you know, you put me in charge of the FBI, I'd be like, okay, well, I'll just spend 2 weeks closing the joint up, you know what I mean?
1:17:59
Ryan: Forget it!
1:18:00
Tad Eggleston: Nope.
1:18:01
Ryan: But yeah, that's been one depressing thing that's happened over recent years that they've managed to sort of hoodwink too many people on the left into believing, is that suddenly the FBI and the CIA and shit are our friends. You know what I mean? No. They're not. They never will be.
1:18:20
Phil: No.
1:18:21
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean…
1:18:23
Tad Eggleston: There is that minor level of, until recently, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but then they got rid of everybody with even a mild amount of scribbles, and…
1:18:35
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:18:36
Ryan: Yeah, it's basically… I mean…
1:18:40
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's not an accident that the arm of law enforcement that has been juiced up during the Trump administrations is DHS.
1:18:51
Tad Eggleston: DHS is the newest department. DHS has the least institutional memory. You don't have people in DHS that will resign, because that's not what we do at DHS.
1:19:04
Phil: Yeah.
1:19:05
Ryan: Right.
1:19:07
Tad Eggleston: You know, he's had the problem at both the Department of Justice, at the FBI, etc, with people going, yeah, no, the problem is, what you're asking me to do is against the law.
1:19:19
Tad Eggleston: And my oath is to the Constitution. So… no.
1:19:26
Tad Eggleston: DHS doesn't have that kind of institutional memory, doesn't have that kind of tradition, it doesn't have that kind… it doesn't have as many people who have worked for both
1:19:37
Tad Eggleston: both parties.
1:19:38
Ryan: Right.
1:19:39
Tad Eggleston: You know.
1:19:41
Tad Eggleston: And now it has a budget?
1:19:46
Tad Eggleston: bigger than… all but, what, 5 militaries in the world?
1:19:51
Ryan: Maybe 10?
1:19:53
Phil: Shit.
1:19:57
Ryan: But, you know.
1:19:59
Ryan: we were… used to be… they used to say, well, that's too radical, going too far, when people were calling to abolish ICE 10 years ago.
1:20:06
Ryan: Well, should have been done.
1:20:09
Phil: Yeah.
1:20:12
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I think sometimes what we run into is when you say abolish people… People then imagine that
1:20:23
Tad Eggleston: Chaos.
1:20:25
Phil: And that's such a one…
1:20:27
Ryan: making the chaos.
1:20:28
Tad Eggleston: No, I get, and I get, and I agree with you. But what I'm saying is, when you say abolish the police, abolish…
1:20:36
Tad Eggleston: ICE, abolish, whatever. People think of the one thing that they're supposed to do, and what would happen if nobody was doing it. And I'm not saying that that's a good argument, but that's the visceral, knee-jerk argument to somebody who doesn't have the same level
1:20:54
Tad Eggleston: of embedded information.
1:20:58
Tad Eggleston: that other people have. So, I, you know, this is just one of those places where I think sometimes the problem is messaging. Of course, part of that is that, like.
1:21:11
Tad Eggleston: the Democrats are so… lily-livered with all of their messaging that, like.
1:21:18
Tad Eggleston: Of course their supporters come up with extreme messaging, because they're so frustrated that there's no message!
1:21:26
Phil: Well, and, I mean… I even…
1:21:29
Tad Eggleston: I mean, this…
1:21:29
Tad Eggleston: This is where my biggest problem with the Democratic Party in my lifetime is, with the exception
1:21:37
Tad Eggleston: of Barack Obama, we haven't had a leader.
1:21:42
Tad Eggleston: We've had people in leadership roles, but they didn't do anything to lead.
1:21:50
Tad Eggleston: Right. Leading means… I have… A coherent worldview.
1:22:00
Tad Eggleston: and I am going to express it to you, and I am going to convince you that I'm right, or you're gonna convince me that I'm wrong, and I'm gonna change, but we're not going to…
1:22:11
Tad Eggleston: focus test it before we decide what I believe.
1:22:15
Phil: Okay.
1:22:18
Tad Eggleston: My belief structure is gonna be based on…
1:22:21
Tad Eggleston: My knowledge and my experience, not what pulls well.
1:22:25
Tad Eggleston: That's leading.
1:22:27
Ryan: Yeah.
1:22:27
Phil: Yeah.
1:22:29
Tad Eggleston: If it doesn't poll well, then there's something wrong with our messaging. Not… There's something wrong with my… Vision.
1:22:38
Ryan: Well, look at… look at, like, the one thing where I would say that
1:22:42
Ryan: Biden was… that he stood firm on.
1:22:46
Ryan: And that they really hammered him on at the time, and that everybody admits he was right about now, was getting the hell out of Afghanistan.
1:22:53
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:22:54
Ryan: you know, very few Democrats even were like, you know, they saw those images.
1:22:58
Tad Eggleston: The optics were horrible.
1:22:59
Ryan: Right, but he was like, it's gotta be done. And you know what? He was right. It had to be done.
1:23:05
Tad Eggleston: It's 20 years too late for it to be done.
1:23:08
Phil: long overdue, but wasn't that also, from, like, a Trump order that he…
1:23:11
Tad Eggleston: It was, it was.
1:23:13
Tad Eggleston: Totally set up by the Trump administration. Trump signed a treaty that required a pullout during the Biden administration.
1:23:21
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:23:21
Phil: Right, right. Yeah.
1:23:23
Tad Eggleston: He actually signed it after he'd lost the election.
1:23:26
Phil: Wow, yeah, so it's… it's one of those things that… that, yeah, I agree with you, I think it'.
1:23:31
Tad Eggleston: But it was still the right thing to do.
1:23:33
Phil: Long overdue. Yes.
1:23:34
Tad Eggleston: Both because it was long overdue, and because we had an agreement in place. And if the word of the American… if the word of the United States of America is supposed to mean anything, you can't go back on it just because it's a new president.
1:23:49
Ryan: Right.
1:23:50
Phil: Yeah.
1:23:51
Ryan: Oh, you know, before I forget off… slightly off the subject, but one thing I wanted to bring up quick that is not… that is getting some play here locally, but hasn't made it beyond and is…
1:24:03
Ryan: of particular interest to people in our scenes, at least being adjacent to it, Tad, is that,
1:24:09
Ryan: ICE grabbed a couple of,
1:24:12
Ryan: Women who are big in the queer, goth, scene here.
1:24:17
Tad Eggleston: And who are both, well-known in the roller skating community, too.
1:24:22
Ryan: And, as of right now, they still don't know where one of them is.
1:24:28
Ryan: They did release one of these ladies with 5 or 6 broken bones.
1:24:34
Phil: Wow.
1:24:35
Ryan: And the other one has been disappeared into…
1:24:39
Ryan: They haven't been charged with anything, no one knows why ICE grabbed them, they're both American citizens.
1:24:45
Ryan: And.
1:24:46
Phil: It's… I think that this week, we can see the shift start moving.
1:24:52
Phil: You know, to anyone who disagrees with the administration.
1:24:56
Phil: Yeah.
1:24:57
Phil: I, I think that…
1:24:58
Tad Eggleston: I mean, that's always… I mean, it…
1:25:00
Tad Eggleston: it didn't get enough attention, but, like, portland…
1:25:04
Tad Eggleston: In 2020 was the… was the… was the… Testing ground for this.
1:25:11
Phil: Yeah, well, and…
1:25:12
Tad Eggleston: Can we yank people off the street, put them in vans, and make them vanish for 3 hours, and get away with it?
1:25:17
Phil: And I remember…
1:25:18
Tad Eggleston: Yes, yes.
1:25:20
Phil: We shot a couple in Portland this week as well. Yes, they do. There was a second… so yeah, so it's, it's, you know…
1:25:27
Tad Eggleston: Which makes 10 different vehicles that they've shot into.
1:25:30
Tad Eggleston: Do you know… do you know, like, the only legal excuse for shooting into a vehicle is if you happen to be dead center in front of it, and have absolutely no chance of getting out of the way? Now, you can't put yourself dead center in front of it.
1:25:48
Ryan: Right, that's the key… You can't…
1:25:50
Ryan: If you put yourself in that vehicle's way, then you are not authorized to shoot into it.
1:25:56
Tad Eggleston: Right. So, like…
1:25:58
Ryan: He was not in the way dead center, but he was… he put himself near it in the front… And you're specifically not…
1:26:05
Phil: There have been exactly…
1:26:07
Tad Eggleston: Exactly zero of the ICE shootings into vehicles have, have…
1:26:13
Tad Eggleston: Past the federal guidelines for use of force.
1:26:17
Phil: I'm sure.
1:26:18
Ryan: So…
1:26:19
Tad Eggleston: I mean, one of the biggest cases that they had to drop in Chicago was one where they claimed self-defense because they shot a guy through his
1:26:29
Tad Eggleston: In his car. And as soon as the video got out, it was like,
1:26:35
Tad Eggleston: And they dropped the charges.
1:26:37
Ryan: I remember that. That was the guy who was a cook at a restaurant somewhere.
1:26:40
Ryan: Yep. That was terrible. But yeah, so there's a lot of… there's… in the… you know our insert name crowd, and right.
1:26:50
Ryan: Who we intersect with among that.
1:26:52
Tad Eggleston: Very LGBTQ…
1:26:54
Ryan: Right.
1:26:54
Tad Eggleston: TIA+.
1:26:56
Ryan: Yeah, and, you know, music.
1:26:58
Tad Eggleston: Fair amount of goth, a lot of…
1:27:00
Ryan: Electronics, yep.
1:27:03
Ryan: So, yeah, there's a lot of consternation right now about where this woman might be and how the other one ended up with a bunch of broken bones.
1:27:13
Tad Eggleston: bones.
1:27:14
Ryan: when she was released from ICE custody. So that's been going on, and that one has not been getting.
1:27:20
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, in Chicago, and thank God Kat, I don't think, ever had any broken bones, but on three separate occasions, they threw a congressional candidate to the ground.
1:27:31
Ryan: Yeah. On camera.
1:27:35
Ryan: Oh, man.
1:27:37
Tad Eggleston: A 26-year-old white, blonde congressional candidate.
1:27:43
Ryan: Damn.
1:27:45
Tad Eggleston: Maybe 28.
1:27:47
Tad Eggleston: Do you know what I mean? Yeah.
1:27:50
Tad Eggleston: I mean, you know… you know that things are completely gone when…
1:27:58
Tad Eggleston: they don't… I mean, seriously, this is… I don't think it's an accident that it took so long
1:28:05
Tad Eggleston: for Renee Goode's photo to make it out. I didn't see the first photo of her for, like, 12, 13 hours.
1:28:13
Ryan: the fact that she's white, it would… Exactly.
1:28:15
Tad Eggleston: I'm like, I was certain, like, the more time it took, the more certain I was that she was gonna be both white and pretty.
1:28:25
Tad Eggleston: Because that just… it does not fit with their worldview.
1:28:29
Ryan: Right. That white and pretty.
1:28:31
Tad Eggleston: Could possibly be intelligent, or…
1:28:36
Tad Eggleston: And, you know, they needed to come up with… I mean, God, I won't even repeat the things that Jesse Waters said about her, you know, because they had to come up with their way to…
1:28:47
Ryan: Jesse Water!
1:28:48
Tad Eggleston: Mother her as much as possible.
1:28:49
Ryan: His daughter should have been aborted. That's the best thing you can say about this guy. You know, his mother should… I do love… His mother should pack him in the car now, drive him down to the clinic, and say, I'm sorry I'm 50 years late, can we do something about this bastard?
1:29:05
Tad Eggleston: See, it's funny that you say that, because do you remember his first episode on Tucker's?
1:29:11
Tad Eggleston: Spot?
1:29:11
Ryan: No, I've never really watched a guy.
1:29:13
Tad Eggleston: I didn't watch it, but I saw the clips. His mom called.
1:29:17
Ryan: Oh yeah, apparently his parents ate his gut.
1:29:19
Tad Eggleston: And, and.
1:29:20
Phil: Told him!
1:29:21
Tad Eggleston: To be kind! To not do this! To not…
1:29:25
Phil: Wow.
1:29:26
Ryan: I have read that somewhere, that his parents are barely on speaking terms with him. So, maybe we could prevail upon her to do that. Pack him into the backseat, drive into the clinic, and say.
1:29:39
Tad Eggleston: Unfortunately, as much as I would like it to be otherwise, that would qualify as murder, and I do not condone murder under any circumstances.
1:29:48
Phil: I just can't do it.
1:29:51
Ryan: Well, we can… I think we can make an exception there.
1:29:54
Tad Eggleston: Well, you're speaking for yourself?
1:29:56
Ryan: Yes, that's true. I'd like to make clear, I do not speak for the 22 panels podcast when I say Jesse Waters should have been aborted. I just…
1:30:08
Phil: I'll… I'll laugh at it.
1:30:09
Tad Eggleston: I would say that I wouldn't have minded if he'd been aborted, but…
1:30:13
Phil: Yeah, there we go.
1:30:14
Tad Eggleston: One of the things that I have taken umbrage with this president of is there isn't post-birth abortion. That's called murder, and it's already illegal.
1:30:24
Phil: Yeah.
1:30:25
Tad Eggleston: You don't need to have laws about it!
1:30:27
Ryan: Yeah, that's true. They did try to say, like, during their… before they got Roe v. Wade overturned.
1:30:33
Tad Eggleston: Right!
1:30:33
Ryan: One of the arguments they tried to make was that they're actually killing kids after they're born.
1:30:38
Tad Eggleston: Post-birth abortion.
1:30:39
Ryan: Yeah, oh my god.
1:30:42
Ryan: I mean, if there was such a thing, hand me a pen and paper, I'll start writing a list.
1:30:49
Tad Eggleston: No, I will settle for,
1:30:54
Tad Eggleston: like, if for whatever reason we feel like we can't get around the Supreme Court.
1:30:59
Tad Eggleston: in terms of, like, the various crimes committed by this president, I don't think there should be any problem extraditing him to Venezuela.
1:31:08
Ryan: There you go. Well, or he wants Greenland so bad.
1:31:13
Tad Eggleston: Well, but so far, so far, he hasn't done anything criminal in Greenland.
1:31:17
Ryan: No, but they… that's their next target.
1:31:20
Ryan: Yeah, no, I mean, if it changes, then we'll have more places that we could extradite him for justice, should he ever come out of power. An open confrontation with the EU, I think they think would be good for their optics.
1:31:33
Phil: He's.
1:31:33
Tad Eggleston: And I think they're wrong.
1:31:35
Phil: Yeah.
1:31:36
Tad Eggleston: Well.
1:31:37
Phil: It's.
1:31:37
Tad Eggleston: My nightmare?
1:31:39
Tad Eggleston: My nightmare is… They push things to the point where…
1:31:47
Tad Eggleston: the EU, China, pretty much everybody but Russia, starts sending troops to Canada and Mexico.
1:31:56
Phil: Yeah. With the…
1:31:58
Tad Eggleston: Welcome of Canada and Mexico, because it's understood
1:32:03
Tad Eggleston: that the United States is a global threat.
1:32:06
Phil: Yeah.
1:32:07
Ryan: The Canadians are worried about this Alberta secession referendum being a backdoor to
1:32:15
Ryan: U.S. Did you know that they actually.
1:32:18
Phil: I didn't see that.
1:32:20
Ryan: signatures in Alberta to have a vote.
1:32:23
Ryan: Wow.
1:32:24
Tad Eggleston: I don't think it'll win.
1:32:25
Ryan: Texas of Canada.
1:32:28
Ryan: every country has a Texas. In Alberta… Canada, it's Alberta. In Australia, it's Queensland, you know.
1:32:34
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, new poll suggests 1 in 5 Albertans would vote to separate.
1:32:39
Ryan: Yeah, it's not gonna pass.
1:32:40
Tad Eggleston: I don't think that that's enough to.
1:32:44
Ryan: But it's… it's on the back.
1:32:46
Tad Eggleston: Yeah!
1:32:48
Ryan: Yeah, it's not gonna pass, but, you know, if they could… I mean, look, if Quebec, in the end wouldn't separate, where there's always been a hotbed for it, and an argument could be made that it's a culturally different place, you know what I mean? If they couldn't even get a majority in Quebec, there's no way they'll get one in Alberta.
1:33:08
Ryan: But they're gonna vote on it.
1:33:10
Tad Eggleston: Maybe, because it looks like there's a tribal lawsuit… against it.
1:33:19
Ryan: Hmm.
1:33:21
Tad Eggleston: That's the newest… I'm literally learning about this as we go, so I'm not, by any means an expert, but that's the newest from the Calgary Herald, is that,
1:33:34
Tad Eggleston: unconscionable Blood Tribe vows legal action against Alberta Independence Petition.
1:33:41
Tad Eggleston: Southern Alberta's blood tribe is castigating. What it sees is the provinces enabling
1:33:47
Tad Eggleston: A drift towards separatism is vowing to join other First Nations legal actions against it.
1:33:54
Tad Eggleston: So…
1:33:55
Ryan: Well, maybe it won't come to a vote in the end, but even if it does, it isn't going anywhere.
1:33:59
Tad Eggleston: It won't pass.
1:34:00
Ryan: But a lot of people are worried that's a backdoor to… You know, the U.S.
1:34:06
Tad Eggleston: 21st state.
1:34:06
Ryan: argument that, oh, Canada doesn't even want to be in Canada.
1:34:11
Ryan: you know.
1:34:12
Ryan: So, I don't know, I mean, I think… I honestly think, because the people there are darker-skinned, that Mexico has more to worry about than Canada.
1:34:23
Tad Eggleston: Oh, they do! They have… they have more to worry about, but… Is Canada part of NATO?
1:34:30
Phil: Yeah, I think so.
1:34:32
Ryan: Damn sure.
1:34:34
Tad Eggleston: Which… which means that, like… They are.
1:34:41
Tad Eggleston: Which means that, like, there are… there are two versions of What happens should… the U.S.
1:34:52
Tad Eggleston: violate the sovereignty of Greenland.
1:34:55
Tad Eggleston: In one version, because the U.S. is also a NATO country, it would dissolve NATO. In another version.
1:35:03
Tad Eggleston: it would allow for Denmark to…
1:35:09
Tad Eggleston: exercise Article 5, and all other NATO countries would have to stand against the U.S.
1:35:14
Ryan: That's what would be more likely to happen.
1:35:16
Tad Eggleston: I feel like that as well.
1:35:19
Tad Eggleston: At which point… I think we find ourselves with a lot of EU troops, in Canada.
1:35:28
Ryan: Yeah.
1:35:29
Ryan: And again, I think that's what… the…
1:35:34
Ryan: An administration that relies on chaos to stay in power, Is all for that.
1:35:40
Ryan: Yeah. They can say, well, it's us against the world, baby, you know what I mean?
1:35:44
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Phil, we're gonna have to, we're gonna have to go revisit, Brian K. Vaughan, and… was it Steve Scroacci?
1:35:50
Phil: Oh, we stand on guard?
1:35:52
Phil: Oh, boy! Alright.
1:35:55
Ryan: Oh, that's a comic?
1:35:57
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:35:57
Phil: Yeah?
1:35:58
Phil: Something like that. I forget, I forget the specifics of it, but it involves.
1:36:03
Phil: and milk.
1:36:04
Ryan: Well, I mean, I know, I know Brian K. Bond, I'm unfamiliar with the other…
1:36:08
Ryan: Who, what was the name?
1:36:10
Tad Eggleston: Steve Scroacci.
1:36:11
Ryan: He's a… he's the artist.
1:36:12
Tad Eggleston: artist.
1:36:13
Phil: Yeah. Yeah. Highly detailed, ultraviolence sort of guy.
1:36:18
Ryan: Alright, I remember Brian K. Vaughan from, Saga, of course.
1:36:23
Tad Eggleston: Saga.
1:36:25
Ryan: And, oh, that one that everybody liked, but I didn't, why?
1:36:31
Tad Eggleston: the last minute.
1:36:32
Phil: By the last man?
1:36:33
Ryan: Why didn't you like it?
1:36:35
Ryan: I mean, it was fine, but it… to me, it's just like sitting down and reading a fucking TV show, you know?
1:36:43
Phil: Okay.
1:36:44
Ryan: A lot… that's the… I have weighted my hand into the image waters and things like that a little bit on… some on Tad's recommendation. He told me about a really good crime book I enjoyed.
1:36:56
Phil: But by and large, they read to me like TV treatments in comics format.
1:37:01
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, this is where I will say, Phil, that.
1:37:06
Tad Eggleston: Ryan is… and, like, you should take a buck a month just to be able to read his reviews for Color Apocalypse at Patreon.
1:37:18
Tad Eggleston: Ryan is interested in some of the most out-there comics you can find.
1:37:23
Phil: Okay.
1:37:24
Phil: I like the sound of that.
1:37:26
Ryan: I generally review comics that don't get reviewed elsewhere. Yeah.
1:37:31
Phil: Nobody has to, you know?
1:37:32
Tad Eggleston: Ryan is the guy that people send comics to because, they know that they'll never be heard of otherwise. Okay.
1:37:42
Ryan: True.
1:37:42
Tad Eggleston: And he's the one that, printed, friend of the podcast, Daria Faruhar.
1:37:48
Tad Eggleston: So.
1:37:49
Phil: Thank you for that.
1:37:50
Ryan: Oh, sure, yeah, and Daria's… there's a new comic store in Chicago.
1:37:55
Ryan: That Daria… hold on, I gotta look up the name for you. It just opened the other day.
1:38:01
Ryan: Daria is working… Daria, who, by the way, took the LSAT the other day.
1:38:06
Tad Eggleston: Oh, nice!
1:38:07
Ryan: Yeah, and thinks she did pretty well. Our girl is headed for law school here in the fall.
1:38:13
Ryan: Sheep Cult Comics.
1:38:16
Tad Eggleston: What is it?
1:38:16
Ryan: new comic store in Chicago that Daria's working at.
1:38:20
Tad Eggleston: What's it called?
1:38:21
Ryan: Sheep Cult Comics.
1:38:24
Ryan: She sent me some pictures, and it looks like they have some pretty nice displays and things like that.
1:38:30
Tad Eggleston: Very cool. I think that,
1:38:34
Tad Eggleston: Because I know we've got her coming out to, modern age in Algonquin that my friends at, Psychocomicology recently purchased.
1:38:46
Ryan: Aria's going there to do a signing or something?
1:38:49
Tad Eggleston: She's gonna do, a signing slash, workshop.
1:38:54
Ryan: Okay, good.
1:38:55
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, hey, give her points, you know what I mean?
1:38:59
Ryan: I am a big…
1:39:00
Tad Eggleston: I am a big fan of Daria Faruhar. Yeah. I meant to actually invite her tonight, and… and it just got away from me.
1:39:07
Ryan: Well, you know what? If you… she's got things tied up with, what's going on over in, Iran.
1:39:15
Tad Eggleston: I know she doesn't.
1:39:16
Phil: Oh, wow.
1:39:16
Ryan: Yeah, she's got a bummer.
1:39:17
Tad Eggleston: She's totally on top of that.
1:39:18
Ryan: still.
1:39:19
Ryan: I was texting her about it the other night, but yeah, she sent me photos. It looks like a cute little store. It's not terribly full of stuff yet, and I forget the name of the owner, but a friend of hers, owns it, and I think Daria's basically the one employee besides the owner.
1:39:36
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm just looking at the website right now, and it's definitely a… A, even more than…
1:39:47
Tad Eggleston: Howling Pages.
1:39:50
Ryan: Yeah, I think it's more howling pages than howling pages, yeah.
1:39:54
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I mean, Quimby's and Howling Pages are both also fantastic stores, but it looks like it goes deep into…
1:40:03
Tad Eggleston: Some of the, the, the really…
1:40:07
Ryan: Self-published stuff, yeah.
1:40:08
Tad Eggleston: self-publish.
1:40:11
Tad Eggleston: stuff.
1:40:11
Ryan: I think she's gonna like working there, though. Yeah. So, yeah.
1:40:16
Tad Eggleston: Well, and I'm gonna have to make certain that I get down there.
1:40:18
Ryan: Yeah, pay a visit.
1:40:20
Tad Eggleston: My, my type of shop.
1:40:22
Ryan: Yeah, I think, you know, there's probably a lot of good stuff to choose from in there.
1:40:26
Ryan: So, but yeah, she took the LSAT the other day and thinks that, she did… that she did pretty well with it, so she's getting her application.
1:40:37
Tad Eggleston: Crazy floor plan.
1:40:39
Ryan: We're gonna have… we're gonna have a cartoonist lawyer on our hands.
1:40:44
Tad Eggleston: I would be all for that.
1:40:46
Ryan: Yup?
1:40:48
Tad Eggleston: All for that.
1:40:51
Tad Eggleston: What is our address? How can I go if I can't find the address?
1:40:54
Ryan: I don't know where it is, maybe they need to do… maybe they need to do some work on that website. I'll have to.
1:40:59
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it's a beautiful website, I'm just finding.
1:41:02
Phil: You gotta…
1:41:03
Ryan: Accept the… Accept the address?
1:41:06
Phil: invite them on the show to find out where to find them.
1:41:08
Ryan: Find out where to get that.
1:41:10
Ryan: I'm at the About page, and…
1:41:15
Phil: Huh.
1:41:15
Tad Eggleston: It's got who we are, it's got… I forget the owner's name. The shopping experience…
1:41:22
Phil: It's gotta be about…
1:41:22
Tad Eggleston: Your overview.
1:41:24
Phil: Not the whereabout page.
1:41:27
Tad Eggleston: I mean, it shows us the checkout counter. Here, I'll share my screen with you guys.
1:41:33
Ryan: What do they got for shops in Nashville?
1:41:37
Phil: My… the one I go to, best in town, in my opinion, is called Rick's Comic City. They sell… they're pretty, like, half and half between Marvel and non-Marvel things, and they've got friendly staff. There is one…
1:41:51
Tad Eggleston: You from the entrance.
1:41:54
Phil: That does look really interesting.
1:41:55
Tad Eggleston: Wow, that is crazy.
1:41:57
Ryan: I've heard that in the.
1:41:59
Phil: account.
1:41:59
Ryan: sphere right now that DC's got it all over Marvel these days.
1:42:03
Tad Eggleston: Oh, DC's been killing it lately.
1:42:04
Phil: I think so.
1:42:05
Ryan: I've been hearing.
1:42:06
Phil: Yeah.
1:42:07
Ryan: I have not kept up with, but I want to read some of that,
1:42:14
Ryan: What the hell am I thinking of, Tad? They got, like, a new, setup at DC.
1:42:22
Phil: the absolute.
1:42:22
Tad Eggleston: Absolute line?
1:42:24
Ryan: Absolute line.
1:42:26
Tad Eggleston: I would particularly recommend Absolute Martian Manhunter and Absolute Wonder Woman.
1:42:32
Ryan: Okay.
1:42:32
Tad Eggleston: Those are the two that I love. A lot of people love Absolute Batman, but I…
1:42:40
Tad Eggleston: I think it's less of a deviation from…
1:42:44
Ryan: Batman.
1:42:45
Tad Eggleston: than the Wonder Woman, and…
1:42:47
Tad Eggleston: Martian Manhunter R.
1:42:48
Ryan: Am I mistaken, but isn't the Absolute Batman is,
1:42:53
Ryan: the big guys, Scott Snyder and Greg.
1:42:56
Tad Eggleston: It is.
1:42:56
Ryan: Right?
1:42:58
Phil: Or not Greg, but, Nick Dragat.
1:43:01
Tad Eggleston: Jock… well, Jock's doing an issue here.
1:43:04
Phil: Not an issue, but yeah, but Nick Dragata. Yeah, Dragada's doing a lot. No, Capullo went to Marvel to do…
1:43:11
Phil: And a draw of Wolverine, some of.
1:43:13
Ryan: I think he's a pretty good artist, actually.
1:43:16
Phil: Yeah, yeah, he's definitely talented. I was gonna tell you, though, there's… there's definitely one, comic store that you'd like in Nashville, Ryan. I'm pretty sure it's called,
1:43:26
Phil: what's it? Town Square Records and Comics? It's… it's got the, I'll have to look up the name for it. I've only been to it once, it was the first comic shop I went to down here, and I saw… it's a bunch of small press, they had one of Jim Woodring's books, and I was like, okay, this is a really cool spot, but this is not.
1:43:44
Ryan: Yeah, Jim Woodbury is one of my favorites.
1:43:46
Phil: I, I…
1:43:47
Ryan: Do they have a… do they have a scene at all? Is there cartoonists there locally?
1:43:52
Phil: I don't think there's many. Like, that's the thing, is that Nashville… Nashville is tough in that, you know, it's… it's a town that, oh, we know how to treat artists, but those are usually, we know how… the way that we treat them is exploit them still, you know? Yeah, so it's… it's a…
1:44:09
Phil: It's a… it's a touristy commercial town, that.
1:44:13
Ryan: I've been there before, and actually, I had a hell of a lot of fun.
1:44:18
Phil: It has changed over the past few years. My wife has lived here basically her whole life, and I've been visiting since 2008 when my parents moved down here. It used to be, like, a big small town. It was really cool, and it had… it still has some really cool parts of town, and there's great food and everything, but the downtown area is… is full of drunks 24-7.
1:44:38
Phil: It sits in.
1:44:39
Ryan: Oh, just tourist drunks?
1:44:41
Phil: Yes, people start their drinking from, like, 11 or noon until 2 or 3 AM.
1:44:47
Ryan: In other words…
1:44:48
Phil: It's not stop.
1:44:49
Ryan: In other words, you got 6 blocks of Vegas right down.
1:44:52
Phil: Yeah, they call it Nash Vegas.
1:44:55
Ryan: Okay, I guess I can see why.
1:44:58
Phil: Right.
1:44:59
Ryan: I mean, we've got… we've got… Tad and I have friends in Knoxville.
1:45:03
Tad Eggleston: Yep.
1:45:04
Ryan: And I… but I don't know if there's anybody else in town other than them.
1:45:11
Ryan: But, yeah, it's interesting to see what cities, kind of, cartooning scenes pop up in or not, you know? Oh, yeah. What are, usually what you, usually what you'll find is if there's a lower cost of living, you know, because everybody in comics is broke, you know.
1:45:29
Ryan: So places like Columbus and stuff have really had thriving scenes in recent years because they have a lower cost of living than other,
1:45:40
Ryan: places, and then, yeah, Minneapolis, Chicago, the bigger, you know, the places that have always had a little bit of a scene, and any other huge independent comic scene right now, probably the biggest outside of Seattle is Philly.
1:45:54
Phil: Oh, okay.
1:45:55
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, Philly's a good scene.
1:45:56
Ryan: Philly's a good scene, there's a lot of good talent out there, and…
1:45:59
Tad Eggleston: Pittsburgh's not a bad scene.
1:46:01
Ryan: What's that?
1:46:02
Tad Eggleston: Pittsburgh's not a bad.
1:46:04
Ryan: Pittsburgh's a good scene, too, you're right, but Philly is, like, they all live in North Philly, because it's…
1:46:09
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:46:10
Ryan: you know, it's cheap, I mean,
1:46:13
Ryan: But yeah, you're right, Pittsburgh is always… and, like, Cope Aesthetic's always been out of Pittsburgh and stuff like that. Right. Frank Santoro and those guys.
1:46:21
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:46:22
Ryan: are out of Pittsburgh, but as far as, like, the younger, like, 20-something up-and-coming cartoonists that are a little less established, a lot of that is happening in Philly now. And it's at partners and sons, you know what I mean? Having a good store there makes a difference. But just having a cheap neighborhood to live in.
1:46:43
Ryan: Well, they take books as consignment, too, huh?
1:46:46
Tad Eggleston: They do, they do.
1:46:48
Ryan: I'm still…
1:46:49
Tad Eggleston: I'm still looking for an address, though.
1:46:50
Ryan: the place, but it sounds like she's determined to,
1:46:54
Ryan: make it like she didn't get, like, any distro accounts or anything like that, I don't think.
1:47:01
Tad Eggleston: Well, you know, that… that doesn't… I don't know if that's true, because I was looking at the shop.
1:47:07
Tad Eggleston: And what they have available… And they, like, they even have it listed by distro, like, like…
1:47:15
Ryan: Oh, alright.
1:47:15
Tad Eggleston: else through Lunar.
1:47:18
Ryan: Because Daria said she didn't think they did, but they…
1:47:20
Tad Eggleston: This one is…
1:47:21
Ryan: Not at all.
1:47:21
Tad Eggleston: shop.
1:47:22
Ryan: do with it.
1:47:23
Tad Eggleston: I, I think, I think that they're picky about what they order.
1:47:29
Tad Eggleston: Through the distros.
1:47:30
Ryan: Yeah.
1:47:32
Tad Eggleston: You know… Well, they got handsome… And you can go other ways to get Phantographics, but, I mean, they've got phantographics here, essentially.
1:47:40
Ryan: Okay.
1:47:40
Tad Eggleston: Looks like they still have a little sprocket, too.
1:47:44
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:47:45
Ryan: For as long as they're gonna be around.
1:47:48
Tad Eggleston: I mean, not selling their comics isn't good for their artists.
1:47:52
Tad Eggleston: Right. Even if the money.
1:47:53
Ryan: The problem has been that, so far, selling their comics hasn't been good for their artists.
1:47:58
Tad Eggleston: Well, but what I mean is that, like, if you sell their comics, at least you put their artist's name and work in somebody's hands that will…
1:48:08
Ryan: Well, and if she's got a Lunar account there, then you're gonna get Silver Sprocket, because they are still listed with Lunar.
1:48:16
Tad Eggleston: Right.
1:48:17
Ryan: And I think they were with Diamond before. Oh, there's,
1:48:21
Ryan: Hey, what do you think, Carolyn Cash is doing Nancy now, huh?
1:48:26
Tad Eggleston: I've loved it.
1:48:26
Phil: Oh, yeah.
1:48:27
Tad Eggleston: I've loved it.
1:48:29
Tad Eggleston: I haven't read a ton of… I haven't read all of them, but the ones that I've rubbed, I've been… I've read so far, I've been all over.
1:48:35
Tad Eggleston: I was… I was… been very, very happy looking at Carolyn.
1:48:42
Ryan: Yeah, she's really done well.
1:48:44
Tad Eggleston: I liked it when she did a… she did what, a two-week hiatus for Olivia J?
1:48:49
Ryan: Something like that. Oh, there's.
1:48:50
Tad Eggleston: while ago?
1:48:51
Ryan: There's that Abby James, she's good.
1:48:55
Tad Eggleston: Which one?
1:48:56
Phil: Oh, yeah.
1:48:57
Ryan: Yeah, she's really good.
1:48:58
Phil: That looks really cool, yeah.
1:49:00
Ryan: Yeah.
1:49:00
Tad Eggleston: This is… this is totally Ryan's sort of thing.
1:49:04
Ryan: She's a good cartoonist, there's Whit.
1:49:05
Phil: Those are…
1:49:06
Ryan: There's my book.
1:49:08
Tad Eggleston: Which one?
1:49:09
Ryan: American cult.
1:49:10
Phil: Oh? That one's yours.
1:49:11
Tad Eggleston: book?
1:49:12
Ryan: Well, I mean, it's not… I have a story in there.
1:49:14
Tad Eggleston: Oh, you do? I didn't know.
1:49:16
Ryan: Me and Fryhite did a thing on Jonestown for that.
1:49:20
Tad Eggleston: I'll have to put it even, even higher on my to-read list.
1:49:24
Ryan: Yeah, it's my one fucking published credit in the comics world.
1:49:29
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, other than, like, the comics journal and…
1:49:32
Ryan: Well, yeah, I guess that's true, but I mean, you know what I mean. One piece of cartooning.
1:49:37
Tad Eggleston: Cartooning credit.
1:49:38
Phil: Yeah.
1:49:39
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
1:49:40
Ryan: Oh yeah, she's got some pretty good stuff here.
1:49:43
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, this is… this is…
1:49:45
Ryan: Where's the… where's the page? Let's see if Daria's on the, About Us page.
1:49:50
Tad Eggleston: No, she's not on the About Us.
1:49:51
Ryan: They didn't put her in there?
1:49:53
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, no, this is what I'm saying, I'm… I'm… I'm…
1:49:57
Tad Eggleston: I'm… I'm disappointed that I can't find an address, and I haven't found Daria herself yet.
1:50:05
Ryan: Yeah, Daria hasn't brought her books in there yet.
1:50:08
Tad Eggleston: They don't have any books.
1:50:10
Ryan: I was talking to her the other day, I said,
1:50:12
Ryan: put your books in the display window. She said, I will. And I talked to her again, I said, did you put your books in the display window? Oh, shit, I forgot to bring them.
1:50:22
Tad Eggleston: Well, see, this is… this is the problem with comics evangelists, is we're…
1:50:27
Tad Eggleston: We're great at plugging things that aren't us.
1:50:31
Tad Eggleston: Way better at plugging things that aren't ours than…
1:50:34
Tad Eggleston: Than plugging things that… that are.
1:50:37
Ryan: Yeah, and the other thing, too, is a lot of people who are… you know, you don't need me to tell you this, a lot of people who are good artists
1:50:46
Ryan: Are terrible at self-promotion.
1:50:48
Tad Eggleston: Oh, yeah.
1:50:49
Ryan: You know, they just don't have… they don't have.
1:50:54
Phil: It's the social anxiety of it all, really.
1:50:56
Ryan: Yeah, that's probably a big part of it, Phil, and then the other part is just, you know.
1:51:02
Ryan: they want to spend their time drawing, you know what I mean?
1:51:06
Ryan: And then once.
1:51:07
Tad Eggleston: Well, I'm…
1:51:08
Ryan: done, the creative impulse is usually to go on to the next thing, rather than taking some time to try to sell.
1:51:15
Phil: Absolutely.
1:51:16
Tad Eggleston: Well, and don't undersell the fact that a lot of the ones that are artists are artists because,
1:51:26
Tad Eggleston: They're not so good with words.
1:51:29
Phil: Mmm, yeah, as stable… said, the art.
1:51:32
Ryan: Right, although in this case, we're We're talking about?
1:51:35
Tad Eggleston: all of them.
1:51:36
Tad Eggleston: But… There is no lack of artists in the comic community who aren't so good with words.
1:51:46
Ryan: That's true, although in this case, we are talking about people who are largely writing and drawing there.
1:51:52
Phil: Yes. Duh.
1:51:54
Ryan: when we're talking about the self-published and small press world. I mean, there's some…
1:51:59
Ryan: collaborative, stuff that gets put out. But, you know, 9 comics out of 10 in our little independent scene are
1:52:09
Ryan: The handiwork of one person.
1:52:12
Phil: Oh, yeah.
1:52:13
Ryan: You know.
1:52:13
Tad Eggleston: Though, that's often just because, like…
1:52:16
Tad Eggleston: There's not enough money to go around.
1:52:21
Ryan: Well, there's no money going around.
1:52:23
Phil: That's my point.
1:52:25
Ryan: There's no money going around. But it's also… it's also what they… I mean, I'm not, you know, I'm not particularly interested in seeing
1:52:35
Ryan: you know, a collaboration between someone else writing for, like, Josh Pettinger, or Lane Milburn or something. I want to read their stories and see their art, you know what I mean?
1:52:47
Tad Eggleston: Though, you know what? I could go the other way. I think that Josh Pettinger could do some great stuff with somebody else's writing.
1:52:55
Ryan: He probably could, I mean, the guy's just good. But I'm just throwing those names out like an example.
1:53:01
Tad Eggleston: But that's… there are people who are 100% pure cartoonists who are never better than when they're writing their own stuff.
1:53:11
Ryan: Right.
1:53:13
Ryan: But there are a lot of people like Charles Schultz to collaborate with somebody else.
1:53:17
Tad Eggleston: Right, but there are a lot of people that…
1:53:20
Tad Eggleston: their strength is one way or the other, so, like…
1:53:24
Tad Eggleston: Even if most of what they do is solo,
1:53:29
Tad Eggleston: When they write for somebody else, or when they draw for somebody else, depending on what their primary strength is, it can be something really special.
1:53:38
Tad Eggleston: You know.
1:53:42
Ryan: Yeah, that's true. Hey, don't… never forget Alan Moore and Peter Bagg's, Kool-Aid Man strip.
1:53:49
Phil: Really? I wasn't familiar with that one.
1:53:53
Phil: That sounds incredible.
1:53:54
Ryan: Yeah, he did a… yeah, that one's… actually, it really is.
1:53:58
Phil: Oh, nice.
1:53:59
Ryan: Yeah, it was one of the… yeah. But, you know, as a jet… but yeah, I don't knock the,
1:54:06
Ryan: skills of Big 2 and other type of guys. I can't draw, so anybody who can draw, you know what I mean? They got my respect, that's for sure. It's just what you get used to as a reader, you know what I mean?
1:54:19
Tad Eggleston: Oh, absolutely.
1:54:20
Ryan: if you're… if you… I grew up on the same comics that we all did, you know what I mean? But it's… you know, which is just, you know, for lack of a better way of putting it, the assembly line method, you know what I mean?
1:54:34
Ryan: And that's how…
1:54:35
Phil: Over quality, yeah.
1:54:37
Ryan: And it's, you know, it's stood well for… but generally speaking, when you get into the point where you're not talking about corporate-owned properties, you know what I mean?
1:54:48
Phil: Great.
1:54:48
Ryan: you know, I'm more interested in seeing something that is one person's,
1:54:55
Tad Eggleston: I mean, well…
1:54:56
Phil: Well, even for that matter, like, even if it is a collaboration of, you know, say, less than 5 people, 5 to 10 people, you know, I think you can have a lot more clear of a story conveyed than your average TV show that's a collaboration between, like, 100 people.
1:55:14
Ryan: 500 people. No, you're right about that, you're right about that.
1:55:18
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I just… I think of some of my favorite comics involve people who are…
1:55:24
Tad Eggleston: I mean, don't get me wrong, if David Lapham never did anything but 100 bullets, I…
1:55:29
Phil: Oof.
1:55:29
Tad Eggleston: Would have absolutely no problem with that.
1:55:31
Phil: You mean no stray bolts?
1:55:33
Tad Eggleston: Yes. Yes. But if David Lapham never did anything but stray bullets, sorry. I just re-read 100 Bullets, which is also a fantastic book, but was never one creator.
1:55:43
Phil: The day we get a Stray Bullets 100 Bolts crossover will be a fine day indeed.
1:55:47
Tad Eggleston: That will be. If David Lapham never did anything but stray bullets, I would have absolutely no problem with that, but when David Lapham
1:55:56
Tad Eggleston: gets a call from Shelley Bond to say, I think you'd be great on this book getting pitched to me by the Grand Theft Auto guys.
1:56:07
Tad Eggleston: And then they find the right colorist, and the right inker, and the right letterer, you get something that's so much greater than the sum of…
1:56:15
Tad Eggleston: the parts, because it's not a David Lapham story, which doesn't mean that David Lapham's art doesn't go really well with it.
1:56:22
Ryan: Right.
1:56:22
Phil: I even felt like the thinking and coloring transformed him.
1:56:26
Tad Eggleston: Absolutely.
1:56:27
Phil: Pretty, pretty far beyond what I see in stray bullets.
1:56:30
Tad Eggleston: I mean, he… he did what, for David Lapham is loose pencils.
1:56:35
Tad Eggleston: Nobody else would be finished pencils, but Dave Platinum is loose pencils.
1:56:40
Ryan: what, un… out of left field, but… because you guys would know, but I don't.
1:56:47
Ryan: But I'm tempted to look, and I'm also really scared to
1:56:52
Ryan: What is the deal with these new EC titles?
1:56:56
Tad Eggleston: They're… how to put it? I have enjoyed them more than I haven't. I think that…
1:57:07
Tad Eggleston: There has been… sometimes hit or miss in terms of the height of the quality?
1:57:13
Tad Eggleston: But I think that if you actually read EC, all of EC, rather than, like, best of EC, you have similarities.
1:57:20
Ryan: Oh, yeah.
1:57:22
Ryan: A few clonkers.
1:57:26
Ryan: Although, I will say this, I never read… I never read a Harvey Kurtzman scripted EC clunker.
1:57:32
Tad Eggleston: Oh, no. Harvey Kurtzman. Or a Johnny Craig-written one.
1:57:36
Ryan: Right.
1:57:37
Tad Eggleston: Well, and.
1:57:39
Ryan: Yeah, some of the Al Feldstein stuff could be a little hit or miss.
1:57:42
Tad Eggleston: Well, and that's where I'll say, like, Chris Cantwell's written some, and I've liked all the ones Cantwell has done. Chris Condon's written some, and I've liked all the ones Chris Condon has done, you know. David Lapham's done art on a bunch of them, and I haven't disliked a David Lapham one.
1:57:58
Ryan: Oh, he's drawing some of those?
1:58:00
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he's drawn a bunch of them. But then the other thing I'll say is, if you're looking for it to be EC, you're missing the point. What they were trying to do is, if these comics had never gone away, what would they look like today?
1:58:18
Phil: Okay.
1:58:19
Tad Eggleston: So… So, there's…
1:58:22
Phil: speaking as someone who hasn't read any of the books, but has kind of observed it from afar, it… it looks like… I mean, I think that's… that's an impossible legacy to…
1:58:33
Tad Eggleston: No, it is. Oh, yeah. Which is why they're not really…
1:58:37
Phil: Exactly.
1:58:38
Ryan: So it's a licensing deal, right?
1:58:40
Phil: Yeah, yeah. Right. So it's the kind of thing that… I'd definitely check it out, I'd read it. It's not like, you know, there's handfuls of other licensing deals that I'm like, I wouldn't waste time on that, but this one is… no, I'd read all of that, you know?
1:58:53
Tad Eggleston: I think…
1:58:53
Phil: Sounds like there's some good stuff.
1:58:54
Tad Eggleston: I think, at their best, what they've managed to do is capture the EC ethos and the EC twist.
1:59:04
Ryan: Right.
1:59:06
Ryan: Gotta have a twist in there somewhere. But like EC, sometimes the twist lands, and sometimes the twist doesn't. Right.
1:59:12
Tad Eggleston: But they've definitely… like, one of the things that made EC great is in all of those horror stories, and all of those crime stories, and all of those sci-fi stories, there were also…
1:59:24
Tad Eggleston: social commentary stories, and I think that there's a lot of that going on, and there's a lot of the twist going on.
1:59:30
Ryan: Well, the other thing, too, though, is, you know, who are we kidding here? The main thing with EC is that even if you've got a clunker of a story.
1:59:40
Ryan: It was gonna be drawn…
1:59:42
Tad Eggleston: You know what I mean? Yeah, I think the art has been outstanding.
1:59:45
Ryan: Okay.
1:59:46
Tad Eggleston: you know, I've been really impressed with the… I mean, I'm not expecting another Wally Wood, but… Right, well, but I'm…
1:59:52
Ryan: Williamson or something, but the guys are good.
1:59:55
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I love David Lapham. David Lapham's done a bunch of them.
2:00:02
Ryan: That there… you know.
2:00:04
Tad Eggleston: There are more different styles, just like there are more different styles of comic art, period, today than there were.
2:00:11
Tad Eggleston: 50 years ago?
2:00:13
Ryan: a lot of different styles within EC.
2:00:16
Ryan: Right. You're not gonna mistake… you're not gonna mistake a Harvey Kurtzman-drawn strip for.
2:00:23
Tad Eggleston: Oh, well, it would.
2:00:24
Ryan: Kevin's, you know what I mean?
2:00:26
Tad Eggleston: Right. So, so, like, there might be some that don't wind up hitting your, your art
2:00:34
Tad Eggleston: Fancy, or whatever.
2:00:35
Ryan: Huh.
2:00:36
Tad Eggleston: But, but I, I think…
2:00:39
Tad Eggleston: I think that they've captured the spirit of what the EC line is.
2:00:44
Ryan: Do they got some in… do they got some in trade now?
2:00:47
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:00:49
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, every 5 issues or so.
2:00:51
Ryan: I'll order one tonight. If I gotta order one.
2:00:53
Tad Eggleston: Oh.
2:00:53
Ryan: What's the winner?
2:00:55
Tad Eggleston: Let me… let me go look really quick, cuz…
2:00:59
Ryan: Because I've been very, you know, I've been very reluct… I mean, I'm a huge EC fan, you know?
2:01:05
Ryan: So I've been on the reluctant side to pull the trigger on any of these.
2:01:13
Ryan: But, at the same time, you throw those two letters at me, and I'm gonna be interested.
2:01:18
Tad Eggleston: Oh, I, yeah.
2:01:18
Ryan: It just says EC, I'm gonna be a little
2:01:21
Ryan: Even if it's got fuck-all to do with, you know what I mean?
2:01:25
Tad Eggleston: Right, right.
2:01:29
Ryan: I should know better than to be that way, but…
2:01:32
Phil: They're… they're at least…
2:01:32
Tad Eggleston: We're.
2:01:33
Phil: Make you think about it.
2:01:34
Tad Eggleston: Well, here's my first… My first question, were you… cause honestly.
2:01:41
Tad Eggleston: I would have you start with one of the first two trades, and have it be, were you more a horror guy or a sci-fi guy?
2:01:49
Ryan: Or…
2:01:50
Tad Eggleston: If you're more of a horror guy, I would do the first epitaphs from the Abyss trade.
2:01:56
Ryan: Epitaph from the Abyss?
2:01:58
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:02:00
Tad Eggleston: And if you like more of that than you don't like.
2:02:04
Ryan: Hold on, I'm grabbing it up now.
2:02:07
Ryan: Epitaph from the Abyss, okay.
2:02:09
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:02:13
Ryan: Pardon me, epitaphs, plural.
2:02:15
Tad Eggleston: From the task. From the abyss. From the abyss. Okay.
2:02:17
Ryan: Yeah, I got it here now. Okay.
2:02:19
Ryan: Yeah, I'll order this up. What the hell?
2:02:22
Tad Eggleston: But yeah, I mean, Jason Aaron, Brian Azzarello, Rodney Barnes, Karina Bechico, Cullen Bunn, Christopher Cantwell, Cecil Castellucci, Chris Condon, Joshua Hale, Thealkov, Jay Holdem, Jeff Jansen, Matt Kint, Sean Lewis, Stephanie Phillips, Jay Stevens, Zach Thompson, Ben Willers, or Winters.
2:02:41
Ryan: Peter.
2:02:42
Tad Eggleston: Kraus?
2:02:42
Ryan: No kidding?
2:02:44
Tad Eggleston: Peter Kraus, you're, you're, you're, Minnesota?
2:02:48
Tad Eggleston: Guy.
2:02:50
Tad Eggleston: Leo Max, Malachi Ward, Dustin Weaver, Ryan Hughes, and most of the covers are Lee Bermeo.
2:02:58
Tad Eggleston: Though Greg Smallwood and J.H. Williams have done a lot of the…
2:03:02
Ryan: J.H. Williams, okay.
2:03:03
Tad Eggleston: A lot of variant covers.
2:03:05
Ryan: Yeah, I think he's a… I love Promethea.
2:03:07
Phil: Oh, same. That's one of my all-time favorite comics.
2:03:10
Ryan: Yes.
2:03:11
Phil: Did you read, Echolance?
2:03:13
Ryan: Echo Lands? No, I don't know that one.
2:03:15
Phil: Williams.
2:03:16
Tad Eggleston: That was all Williams, he wrote, and…
2:03:18
Phil: Williams wrote and Druitt, it's landscape.
2:03:21
Tad Eggleston: Widescreen.
2:03:21
Phil: So, so the issue…
2:03:23
Ryan: Yeah, I bet that.
2:03:23
Phil: It's the same dimension, but they're turned on their side, so the pages are, like, it's, like, four pages.
2:03:28
Ryan: When did that one come out?
2:03:29
Phil: That was a.
2:03:30
Tad Eggleston: A couple years ago.
2:03:31
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, he's working.
2:03:32
Phil: I went on Volume 2, I know that. Let me check, because I want… I want to say 2023?
2:03:37
Ryan: Is that a.
2:03:38
Phil: That was from Image, yeah.
2:03:40
Ryan: Okay, yeah.
2:03:41
Phil: It was so good.
2:03:41
Ryan: Follow it closely.
2:03:43
Tad Eggleston: Echo Lens, the first volume came out in… 2022.
2:03:49
Phil: 22, okay, yeah. So it's, so it's.
2:03:51
Tad Eggleston: I was gonna… if you're a Jay Stevens fan, did you catch Dwellings?
2:03:56
Ryan: Oh yeah, love it.
2:03:57
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
2:03:59
Ryan: Yeah, I get… yeah, I think he's a terrific guy. And, you know, he, like, totally…
2:04:05
Ryan: disappeared almost for a long time, and then turned back up with that, and he has not lost a step. I, really think that,
2:04:14
Ryan: I really think that he's a talented guy. So, alright, I ordered that up, Epitaps from the Abyss, and we'll see how it goes, you know, what the hell, right?
2:04:23
Tad Eggleston: You'll have to let me know what you think, because I know I pitched the idea of doing a EC read-along to you, with you, when these were announced, and you were like, I'm scared.
2:04:34
Ryan: I'll talk about all.
2:04:36
Tad Eggleston: Alt EC all you want.
2:04:38
Ryan: Yeah, no, that's exactly right, because I would not have any knowledge base of the new stuff whatsoever. Now, I don't intend to get into it too big, but, you know, if I read a book and it seems like, yeah, alright, this ain't so bad.
2:04:52
Tad Eggleston: I guess the…
2:04:53
Ryan: I'm asking for.
2:04:54
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I guess the best way to put it is that I have been getting them all.
2:04:59
Tad Eggleston: At the beginning, They were among the first books that I read, and now they sometimes stack up.
2:05:06
Ryan: Okay.
2:05:07
Tad Eggleston: Well, that'll happen, though.
2:05:10
Tad Eggleston: Well, and not because they're bad, but because…
2:05:14
Ryan: Something new's come along that… yeah.
2:05:17
Tad Eggleston: And they're not consistently, like, blow my mind enough to make me go, this needs to be on top of the list.
2:05:25
Ryan: Do they have a war title?
2:05:27
Tad Eggleston: Not yet, but they have done a Western title, and they have done a fantasy title, so I imagine a war title…
2:05:35
Tad Eggleston: will… I mean, they've been doing both… like…
2:05:39
Tad Eggleston: Seasons, or miniseries, like 5 to 12, or 6 to 12 issues, and one-shots.
2:05:46
Ryan: Because I thought, like, have you ever read… Because they can… people can successfully co… like, blazing combat, you know what I mean?
2:05:56
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:05:57
Ryan: That was pretty much just aping EC's war format.
2:06:01
Ryan: But it was still really good, you know? I still think Blazing Combat is one of the better war comics I've read, but I wouldn't put it up there with
2:06:10
Ryan: Kurtzman's Two-Fisted Tails or something, but it was pretty damn good, you know?
2:06:15
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, we did, we did,
2:06:21
Tad Eggleston: For our Pope Lotter book club, we did a, Corpse on the Engine.
2:06:25
Ryan: Oh, man.
2:06:26
Tad Eggleston: The, the, the… Fanographics collection of Kurtzman War Tales?
2:06:31
Ryan: Oh, yeah, that was… that was… that's right, they started… I've been collecting those up. It's the black and white EC.
2:06:37
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:06:37
Ryan: slide, and I thought.
2:06:38
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah.
2:06:39
Ryan: I don't know, because Marie Severin's colors are so good.
2:06:43
Tad Eggleston: There's truth to that. There's truth to that.
2:06:45
Ryan: is, these black and white books look great. And the, Dark Horse reprints they're putting out now are recolored!
2:06:53
Tad Eggleston: Right.
2:06:54
Ryan: Why the.
2:06:55
Tad Eggleston: Well, because… because there's not really, at least the way I understand it, the… the… there aren't… really…
2:07:12
Tad Eggleston: Good enough copies of the original colors to use?
2:07:16
Tad Eggleston: I mean, they don't have the original separations, whatever…
2:07:21
Tad Eggleston: Shelley Bond knows more about the coloring in terms of, like.
2:07:25
Ryan: Okay.
2:07:26
Tad Eggleston: This number and that number, you know, because the first thing she learned at…
2:07:30
Ryan: Nothing knows, but they're.
2:07:31
Tad Eggleston: Comicul.
2:07:32
Ryan: Achron reprints had the original covers, colors.
2:07:35
Tad Eggleston: Did they?
2:07:36
Ryan: Yeah.
2:07:37
Tad Eggleston: Or were they copying off of the best they could find of… Well, that's probably what they were doing.
2:07:44
Tad Eggleston: Right. Well, but that's…
2:07:45
Ryan: Those rough reprints are still kind of the gold standard reprint for EC people.
2:07:51
Tad Eggleston: Okay.
2:07:52
Tad Eggleston: I'll have to go look at them. I, like… but… but… I mean, again, and I'm not trying to take a strong position, because I don't have a strong position, but it's essentially between, do we take the… the faded colors off of…
2:08:09
Tad Eggleston: The best copies that we can find of printed, or do we work with
2:08:15
Tad Eggleston: What we know of what it was supposed to look like.
2:08:20
Ryan: Well, aren't they computer coloring them, though?
2:08:22
Tad Eggleston: I don't know what they're doing at… I know that that's the reason that Fanta decided not to color, was they didn't.
2:08:28
Ryan: Yeah, like.
2:08:29
Tad Eggleston: I had good enough data on what the color was supposed to look like.
2:08:33
Ryan: Yeah, and so they ended up splitting the license
2:08:36
Ryan: So the Fanta's got a black and white reprint license, and Dark Horse got the color one, but I have not… I can't bring myself to look at recolored, you know what I mean? Right. You see. In the same way, like, if I would have ever knew that when I ordered that Absolute Swamp thing.
2:08:54
Ryan: That it… that they were getting rid of Tatyana Woods.
2:08:58
Phil: Oh, no.
2:09:00
Phil: Oof.
2:09:00
Ryan: modern computerized shit in Swamp Thing?
2:09:04
Phil: Well…
2:09:04
Ryan: God, I never, I never ordered the other ones.
2:09:07
Phil: Yeah, and you know what?
2:09:09
Ryan: Volumes, no way.
2:09:10
Phil: Currently, most of that recoloring work, is kind of bottom of the barrel in terms of how it pays, so you're not even getting people's best effort on it, you know?
2:09:21
Ryan: God.
2:09:21
Phil: Yeah, so it's…
2:09:23
Ryan: What do you think would even possess…
2:09:25
Tad Eggleston: Depends, because, like, Because, like, Villarubia has been recoloring…
2:09:30
Phil: Yes, yeah. Like, there are a couple people…
2:09:33
Ryan: Yes, he…
2:09:34
Tad Eggleston: Corbin.
2:09:34
Ryan: redid the Bernie Wrightson swab things.
2:09:37
Phil: Right.
2:09:38
Ryan: But… and I did get that one, but on those, Steve Bissett and Alan Moore Swamp Things, why… what would even possess someone in.
2:09:47
Phil: Yeah, those original colors are so good.
2:09:49
Ryan: What would possess.
2:09:51
Phil: You know what it is?
2:09:51
Ryan: I think we need to recolor these.
2:09:53
Phil: Unfortunately, as you can see from the Sandman recolorings, is that a lot of times with the classic colors, they want things to be, you know, quote-unquote, photorealistic, you know, naturalistic.
2:10:04
Ryan: They're recoloring Sandman, too?
2:10:06
Phil: Well, they already did. They… they… it was… it was… I think those are the editions I read originally, weren't the original 90s colors, but they were more, like, modern.
2:10:15
Phil: drab sort of colors. I'd have to dig up my old ones, but but yeah, that's… when you see the recoloring, a lot of times, they go… they move away from, like, the shocking, what's seen as garish, like, oh, why is this whole panel, neon purple? And it's like, for dramatic effect, dammit.
2:10:32
Phil: You know, those sorts of things. So it's… it is… I'm with you there that… I mean, you know what, to me, the one that drives me up the wall is anytime I see Jack Kirby with modern colors, it just makes my skin crawl.
2:10:46
Ryan: When did they do that?
2:10:47
Phil: I've seen shorts here and there, and, like, anniversary issues, where they'll… I've seen a modern colored Jack Kirby one, and it's… it's grotesque.
2:10:54
Ryan: That would be. I'm… because I got the,
2:10:58
Ryan: I got the first one of those absolute fourth worlds.
2:11:04
Ryan: And they didn't… I did not get the second one, because I didn't care for, like, the whole…
2:11:09
Ryan: design a pro… I mean, I don't want to sound like an asshole, but…
2:11:13
Ryan: I didn't care for the whole, you know, they're trying to kind of make it look like this kitschy product.
2:11:19
Ryan: And, oh, this is kitschy and fun, instead of, like, this is fucking visionary thing, you know?
2:11:25
Phil: This is a space opera.
2:11:27
Ryan: Right. And,
2:11:29
Ryan: They weren't recolored, but the fact that it was on this glossy, high-quality paper made the colors pop way too much.
2:11:41
Phil: Interesting.
2:11:41
Ryan: You know what I mean? Yeah. As far as I know, they didn't recolor it, but it was just,
2:11:49
Ryan: And it was the same issue that I had with the, omnibus Fourth World, because the paper is so crisp and white that the colors pop a little, you know… Kirby stuff will look better with newsprint color. It just will.
2:12:05
Phil: I think most of the time, recreating the technology
2:12:09
Phil: You know, it's always gonna be hard when you don't account for…
2:12:13
Phil: Those things that, that, you know, the modern materials are doing differently from the original materials, so that, you know, getting that same level of,
2:12:24
Phil: Like, mutedness out of the newsprint, so that… as opposed to now, where we're in a world of hypersaturation with all the colors, and everything is glossed over, and…
2:12:35
Phil: Beyond rich and multi-layered. You know, so it's hard to get a good representation of what, at the time, was the height of technology, but now is absolutely minimalistic.
2:12:47
Ryan: Well, it's very interesting. I know that… the,
2:12:52
Ryan: I know that I'm not the biggest NCAL fan.
2:12:56
Ryan: It's alright, but I know that the, hardcore InCal fans really threw a fit when they put out some kind of a deluxe reprint of that, where they actually… I think I heard about that, too. Yeah, they actually,
2:13:10
Ryan: scrap… They actually recolored that thing.
2:13:14
Ryan: And, you know, obviously nobody wanted Mobius' work.
2:13:20
Phil: Yeah.
2:13:21
Tad Eggleston: Well, see, what I always wonder, because this is… and I don't… I don't know on this one, but I've seen it a couple of times. Heavy Metal actually did a really bad job.
2:13:32
Phil: of…
2:13:35
Tad Eggleston: coloring some of the stuff that came over from Europe initially, either just printing it in black and white rather than coloring it, or just not coloring it because American printing standards and equipment weren't the same. So I always wonder, when anybody gets upset about coloring or lettering on
2:13:54
Tad Eggleston: On a heavy metal type thing, whether the problem was that they're now seeing it the original way.
2:14:01
Phil: And they've just become so attached to… I don't know what the Inkle… Yeah.
2:14:07
Tad Eggleston: So I'm not wading into that one.
2:14:09
Phil: Right.
2:14:09
Ryan: The point is, with that one, they went back, I guess, when they went and printed it again, because, you know, it's one of those books, they're always, you know, the hustle, they're always.
2:14:18
Phil: Yeah.
2:14:19
Ryan: Format or other.
2:14:20
Ryan: When they went back to it then, they went back to the old colors.
2:14:25
Phil: Oh, okay. Okay. So they at least…
2:14:26
Ryan: Because, yeah…
2:14:27
Phil: Listen.
2:14:28
Ryan: cry.
2:14:28
Phil: gap.
2:14:29
Ryan: You know… And they had,
2:14:33
Ryan: And it was the same thing with the Swamp Thing. After that Absolute thing, when they went back to do the Moore and Bissette Swamp Things again in… I don't know if it was hardcovers or trades or one of them, they went back to the old colors again, because nobody liked the new shoes.
2:14:50
Phil: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that the paperbacks I picked up have the original style coloring, because I do know it looks… it looks of the era, and I didn't hate it, so…
2:15:01
Ryan: Right. I don't know, I don't… yeah, that, to me, I mean, I just don't understand… I don't think there's that big of an appetite to have this shit recolored. I think it's one of those things, they've got this idea in their head that, oh, modern readers won't like these colors. Yes, that's exactly right. There's actually no proof of that.
2:15:20
Phil: Right.
2:15:20
Tad Eggleston: I mean, again, this is one of the places where I would love to actually have the conversation with the person who made the decision, because I wonder how much of it's assuming that modern readers will want this or that, and how much of it is.
2:15:37
Phil: unusual.
2:15:37
Tad Eggleston: Sometimes adjusting old colors to new print styles is a… you know, how much of it is a technical decision versus a market decision? And when they discover that the market cares.
2:15:51
Phil: then they changed their technical decision. Right, right, yeah.
2:15:56
Phil: That… that would add… I would love to… I would love to be a part of that conversation, yeah.
2:15:59
Tad Eggleston: You know.
2:16:00
Phil: So, that sounds like a first one.
2:16:01
Tad Eggleston: Because I know that with the four-color system, a lot of it was just, like, knowing how to number grids. Yeah. Yeah. And one of the reasons that the U.S.
2:16:10
Tad Eggleston: did so much worse coloring than Europe did, is you could do infinitely better coloring than the US ever did.
2:16:19
Tad Eggleston: It just required a lot more work, and, and, and… Yes. …and, like…
2:16:24
Tad Eggleston: the U.S. wanted to work in, like, a set number of saturations, and, and…
2:16:32
Phil: they won.
2:16:33
Tad Eggleston: Europe would use much more, and the U.S. wanted very discrete
2:16:40
Tad Eggleston: coloring inside of lines, whereas in Europe, they'd sometimes be willing to use the colors to create definition in ways that you didn't see in the.
2:16:49
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
2:16:49
Tad Eggleston: Until they'd move beyond 4…
2:16:52
Phil: You know what?
2:16:52
Tad Eggleston: coloring.
2:16:53
Tad Eggleston: I'll reach with that.
2:16:54
Phil: probably is, is so that they could, reduce the amount of production waste and, again, material costs, you know, one of those things where.
2:17:02
Ryan: Yeah.
2:17:03
Phil: Getting those rich colors probably takes, like, to get a printer
2:17:07
Phil: up to that, you have to maintain it. So, I worked with printers, admittedly, for, you know, mortgage statements, so it was nothing fancy, but they really do change in quality as they run, and so maintaining something to be at that level of performance of, like, a painted European comic versus
2:17:25
Phil: the American newsprint stuff.
2:17:27
Phil: Like, I have to imagine with those set splotches, it's just…
2:17:31
Phil: That's how the… that's how it could run fast and maintain enough quality to be able to sell everything you printed, as opposed to a certain percentage of it.
2:17:40
Tad Eggleston: We have the address, and it just opened yesterday.
2:17:45
Phil: Yeah.
2:17:45
Ryan: I knew it was, yeah.
2:17:47
Tad Eggleston: Sheep Cult Comics is at 1632 North Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago, Illinois.
2:17:57
Phil: And I'll tell you, I looked through their store, there's, like, easily $140 worth of stuff in a cart that I'm gonna have to narrow down, because, yeah, it's…
2:18:05
Tad Eggleston: Come visit, buy it in person.
2:18:08
Phil: Yeah, I'm sure, but like…
2:18:09
Phil: you know, that one that I'd never seen, the emotional data, that looked fantastic. Beverly by Nick Dernasso, I'd love to read another book of his, you know?
2:18:17
Ryan: That's my favorite book of his, to tell you the truth.
2:18:19
Phil: Oh, really? I've only read Sabrina, and I thought it was incredible.
2:18:23
Ryan: Yeah, I like Beverly a lot. Alright, so nuts.
2:18:26
Phil: That one's staying in the cart.
2:18:27
Ryan: not so hot on acting class, but I thought that Beverly was a really… and it was his first book. That was a really strong debut.
2:18:36
Phil: Alright.
2:18:38
Ryan: Yeah. But, you know, dragging it back to the things here, because it's fun to talk comics and all that, but…
2:18:46
Ryan: You know, do you ever get to where you feel guilty about the time you spend fucking around reading and other shit, when there's.
2:18:54
Tad Eggleston: Yo.
2:18:55
Ryan: Problems that could be fixed?
2:18:56
Tad Eggleston: Cause.
2:19:01
Ryan: You know what I'm saying.
2:19:03
Phil: And I mean…
2:19:03
Tad Eggleston: I do. I get… I got… Frankly? Frankly.
2:19:06
Phil: And Doria says hello.
2:19:09
Ryan: Oh, is Daria talking to you?
2:19:11
Tad Eggleston: Texting, yes. I was trying to get her to come pop in, but she's out and about.
2:19:15
Ryan: Yeah, tell her I said hi.
2:19:18
Tad Eggleston: But the, the thing is that, I mean, two things.
2:19:26
Tad Eggleston: I think that sometimes, these comics are part of…
2:19:36
Tad Eggleston: the solution. And I know that can sound glib, but, like.
2:19:41
Phil: No, I agree.
2:19:43
Tad Eggleston: to… We talked earlier about, like, there, there are the people that are, are relatively easy to, to reach.
2:19:57
Tad Eggleston: And they're the people that are impossible to reach, and then they're the people that don't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole. Those people who don't want to touch it with a 10-foot pole might be willing to read a comic that made them think differently about the world. Possibly even without trying to make them think differently about the world.
2:20:17
Tad Eggleston: One of the beautiful things of a book like Saga is that There are a lot of worldly connections
2:20:28
Tad Eggleston: If you want them.
2:20:33
Tad Eggleston: But they're not forced on you.
2:20:35
Tad Eggleston: Oh.
2:20:36
Phil: I'd also say that…
2:20:37
Tad Eggleston: But that can mean that you wind up making… You wind up…
2:20:50
Tad Eggleston: Building parts of your character and your… your… Own personal morality and ethic.
2:21:00
Tad Eggleston: so that…
2:21:02
Tad Eggleston: then suddenly, when you see that morality that you built through Saga in the real world, even though you hadn't seen it before.
2:21:11
Tad Eggleston: You've grounded yourself in an idea of right and wrong, That came from fiction.
2:21:19
Tad Eggleston: But now, when it's in front of you.
2:21:24
Tad Eggleston: As an influence? Does that make sense?
2:21:27
Ryan: Yeah, I follow ya.
2:21:28
Phil: I'd also put it as, you know, art is…
2:21:32
Phil: what… what life's about. It's what… it's what we're fighting for.
2:21:35
Ryan: Well, that's true, yeah.
2:21:36
Phil: And on top of that, I was gonna say that I feel more guilty just going to my fucking day job and doing something to make profit for rich people.
2:21:47
Tad Eggleston: I mean…
2:21:48
Ryan: I don't have that word, because I work for the government.
2:21:51
Phil: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I, I.
2:21:52
Tad Eggleston: Well, I mean, I sometimes feel more guilty, like, I teach.
2:21:57
Tad Eggleston: And… and, like, these aren't… These aren't conversations that we're particularly comfortable having in schools right now.
2:22:07
Ryan: Right, and…
2:22:08
Tad Eggleston: And where the hell… I mean, of all the places that we should be having conversations like this, shouldn't… shouldn't high schools be at the top of them?
2:22:15
Ryan: They should.
2:22:16
Phil: You'd hope so.
2:22:17
Tad Eggleston: So, so, yeah, I sometimes feel more guilty at school than I feel at home reading a comic book.
2:22:23
Tad Eggleston: Like, like, if, if you…
2:22:29
Tad Eggleston: Comics are the fuel that keep me going and keep me willing to…
2:22:34
Tad Eggleston: Fight the fight, and give me this platform, however small it might be, to decide we're not talking about comics.
2:22:41
Tad Eggleston: Tonight, or we're.
2:22:42
Phil: Until we are.
2:22:43
Tad Eggleston: We're talking about comics tonight, because we're gonna talk about…
2:22:48
Tad Eggleston: How hard this week has been.
2:22:50
Phil: Yeah.
2:22:51
Ryan: And it still ended up on comics.
2:22:53
Tad Eggleston: It did, but it did when we needed to… to release.
2:22:57
Phil: Yeah.
2:22:58
Tad Eggleston: It did when we hit a point where we didn't know what else to say.
2:23:02
Ryan: We have… we have another ally here in our fight against ICE, which is… Real ice.
2:23:10
Ryan: If you watched the video from the other day, those motherfuckers were slipping all over the place.
2:23:16
Phil: Seen a couple.
2:23:17
Ryan: Because you know their boots, you know what I mean, aren't gonna be…
2:23:22
Phil: Yup.
2:23:22
Ryan: We've had this.
2:23:23
Tad Eggleston: Well, and when you bring them up from Louisiana, they're not used to, like, ice.
2:23:28
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they're not…
2:23:29
Ryan: the ice issue boots are probably… you know what I'm saying?
2:23:33
Tad Eggleston: You think they're actually issuing them boots? They're deliberately, they're deliberately,
2:23:39
Phil: fruits.
2:23:40
Tad Eggleston: among tactical adjacent people already. Those guys are wearing their own boots.
2:23:47
Ryan: Right, but I mean, I don't think… I don't think your Proud Boy uniform boots… No, that's my point, yeah.
2:23:53
Phil: Yeah, yeah.
2:23:53
Ryan: that… anyway, we've had this type of weather, and actually, I should be the one to talk, because I thought I was going to break my own fucking neck the other day.
2:24:04
Ryan: They have these… it'll melt during the day.
2:24:08
Ryan: and get sloppy, and then freeze up overnight. So, like, I work 3 to 11,
2:24:14
Ryan: And the other day, I was wearing a… I was breaking in a new pair of boots, and they were not winter boots. It was not smart.
2:24:21
Ryan: By the time I got home and had to park, because my alley was inaccessible, I could not get my car up the alley. It's sheer glare ice. So I had to park on the street, and I had to park… everybody was parked on the street, because nobody could get to their garage.
2:24:36
Tad Eggleston: Right?
2:24:37
Ryan: And I'm about 5, 6 houses down, on glare ice in goddamn dress boots.
2:24:44
Tad Eggleston: See, I'm equally stupid. I'm still perpetually clad in my converse, which are, like, not at all ice-appropriate, but… but because I'm used to… What?
2:24:59
Ryan: Don't you got, like, winter snow boots, or, like…
2:25:02
Tad Eggleston: I own them.
2:25:04
Tad Eggleston: I don't wear them as often as I should.
2:25:07
Ryan: Yeah, I don't think, I don't… I don't know… I'm trying to think…
2:25:13
Ryan: I don't… I don't see how I get through the winter without, like.
2:25:17
Ryan: at least around here, without, you know, your LLB or something.
2:25:22
Tad Eggleston: No, I get it. When I'm smart, I wear my Keens. Okay.
2:25:27
Ryan: Yeah, those are supposed to be pretty comfortable.
2:25:29
Tad Eggleston: They are, but I don't want to traipse around school with them, and I don't have a great place to change my shoes, etc, so it's like…
2:25:37
Tad Eggleston: I navigate the parking lot in my cons, and then I forget about it.
2:25:42
Ryan: You don't have a.
2:25:43
Tad Eggleston: I hope.
2:25:43
Ryan: Boots you don't mind wearing all fucking day?
2:25:48
Tad Eggleston: I have a pair of boots that I probably would be willing to wear all fucking day, except for the fact that I'm…
2:25:55
Tad Eggleston: I just… I just… I mean, again, if I was smart, Ryan, I'm using this as an example of me not being any smarter than…
2:26:05
Ryan: Yeah.
2:26:06
Tad Eggleston: I mean, I'm a step up from half the kids at my school that are in fucking Crocs, or… or slip-on Uggs, or…
2:26:14
Phil: Healy's? Are Healy's still around?
2:26:17
Tad Eggleston: Not at high school level. That's… that's an elementary school thing.
2:26:20
Ryan: very much an evangelist about this, because when I broke my ankle and leg a few years ago.
2:26:27
Tad Eggleston: Yeah.
2:26:28
Ryan: falling on ice. It was because… it was, like, the one time my dumbass thought to myself.
2:26:35
Ryan: I'm sick of wearing boots every day.
2:26:37
Tad Eggleston: And I just put…
2:26:39
Ryan: I just put on a pair of, like, slip-on loafers or something, and I'm walking back to my car from the post office and fell on the ice, and there went about the next 6-8 months of my life, you know what I mean?
2:26:53
Tad Eggleston: Well…
2:26:53
Ryan: I'm very much, I'm very much an evangelist for people to wear proper winter footwear.
2:27:00
Tad Eggleston: That's… that's a good evangelist thing to… to be. And, like, on that note, as we hit, like, the…
2:27:08
Tad Eggleston: 240 mark, when we thought we were gonna be short. I'm gonna say, for…
2:27:17
Ryan: I wanna sit…
2:27:18
Tad Eggleston: Okay, go ahead, Ryan.
2:27:19
Ryan: Let's hope real ice does the job for us against ice, you know what I mean?
2:27:25
Tad Eggleston: Yeah, I'm all for that. And for… and for that matter, I have, I have long thought that, that, the, the water coolers that we, we,
2:27:36
Tad Eggleston: We need to have all over any sort of protest is… is, like, free water for… for protesters, bystanders.
2:27:47
Tad Eggleston: city police, county police, no ICE.
2:27:52
Ryan: Yeah.
2:27:52
Tad Eggleston: And have it in a cooler with, like, some other way of cooling it than ice.
2:27:58
Ryan: It's actually a good question.
2:28:00
Phil: nitrogen.
2:28:01
Ryan: Yeah. Can you freeze cyanide?
2:28:07
Ryan: Like, does that work?
2:28:09
Tad Eggleston: Again, again, 22 panels does not condone murder.
2:28:13
Phil: No one's eating the cyanide, we're just freezing it, Ted, don't worry about it.
2:28:17
Ryan: It's just a… it's just a clue…
2:28:19
Tad Eggleston: Wanna make it clear…
2:28:22
Phil: I have neither access nor intend to use cyanide.
2:28:26
Ryan: whatever these guys have on their feet is not the right shit for this climate, and I.
2:28:31
Phil: Let us hope it stays that way for a while.
2:28:33
Ryan: They are slipping all over town.
2:28:36
Tad Eggleston: Of course, you know, you know that when they decide to switch, they're gonna switch to, like, old-school Ty Cobb sharpened spikes.
2:28:47
Ryan: Yeah?
2:28:49
Tad Eggleston: So that they're…
2:28:50
Ryan: Yeah, that they're.
2:28:51
Tad Eggleston: Boots can both be non-slip and weapons.
2:28:56
Ryan: Boy, wouldn't that be something?
2:28:59
Ryan: Well, then again, though, street gangs have a long history of weaponizing their boots, you know what I mean?
2:29:05
Tad Eggleston: They do. They do. And what is ICE if not a street gang?
2:29:09
Ryan: Oh, it's the government's official gang.
2:29:12
Tad Eggleston: I mean, if only… if only ICE and Border Patrol got along like the Bloods and the Crips.
2:29:21
Tad Eggleston: Then, we'd have less trouble, because they'd be too busy fighting each other.
2:29:25
Ryan: That's true.
2:29:26
Tad Eggleston: But, somehow, there's still some Patico street gangs?
2:29:32
Tad Eggleston: That's the wedge that we need to make. We need to drive a wedge between ICE and Border Patrol.
2:29:39
Tad Eggleston: Think on that, everybody.
2:29:41
Tad Eggleston: What's the way to convince ICE that Border Patrol is the bad guy, and Border Patrol that ICE is the bad guy? Because…
2:29:49
Ryan: That's true. And it can be done. I mean, a lot of police agencies have a long history of not liking each other.
2:29:55
Tad Eggleston: God.
2:29:57
Tad Eggleston: LA County versus LA City?
2:30:00
Ryan: Yeah. Or here, you know, the MPD against Hennepin County Sheriff's Department. Right!
2:30:06
Tad Eggleston: Right!
2:30:08
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
2:30:09
Tad Eggleston: County versus city is often a huge deal. FBI versus state, you know, you name it. Law enforcement often does not play together.
2:30:22
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. So…
2:30:24
Ryan: But right…
2:30:24
Tad Eggleston: We can arrange for the…
2:30:26
Ryan: problems.
2:30:27
Tad Eggleston: Here, here, here is… I think somebody needs… like…
2:30:32
Tad Eggleston: More and more, I think our president
2:30:35
Tad Eggleston: doesn't just want to be a king, he wants to be a Roman emperor. So somebody needs to remind him that before the individual gladiatorial matches, there were big melees.
2:30:47
Tad Eggleston: So he's got this cage match, UFC cage match, planned for his birthday.
2:30:54
Tad Eggleston: Before that, there should just be an ICE-CPD melee on the White House lawn.
2:31:02
Tad Eggleston: And then they can have their UFC cage match.
2:31:06
Tad Eggleston: And I don't know why they moved the G7. I think that they should have taken advantage of the fact that a president was gonna be busy with a cage match to have the G7 without him.
2:31:17
Ryan: Yeah, that's for sure.
2:31:19
Ryan: And there also is a.
2:31:21
Tad Eggleston: Or maybe they said they moved the G7, so he planned to go at a different time, and they are gonna have the G7 without him, and then when he shows up in Europe, they're gonna arrest him. Wouldn't that be nice?
2:31:34
Ryan: Yeah?
2:31:35
Ryan: They're gonna have…
2:31:36
Tad Eggleston: I'll say that out loud. I don't want anybody to get any ideas. I mean, I do want wink wink, somebody to get ideas, but…
2:31:44
Tad Eggleston: Yeah. Probably nobody listening to us will be… Hi, Mom!
2:31:50
Tad Eggleston: Hi, Adam.
2:31:52
Ryan: Hi, buddy.
2:31:53
Tad Eggleston: Britain.
2:31:55
Ryan: I know everybody that's tuned in, you know what I mean?
2:31:58
Tad Eggleston: pretty damn close.
2:31:59
Ryan: Yeah, that's a… I mean, that's comics, man. Everybody knows everybody.
2:32:04
Tad Eggleston: This has been the 218th episode of 22 Panels, where we…
2:32:10
Tad Eggleston: did very little to talk about comics, and we certainly didn't follow our normal rundown. We will be back next week to finally wrap up 2025. We've got our best miniseries, our best graphic novels, and our best ongoing series picks.
2:32:25
Tad Eggleston: Still to talk about, everybody be safe, be well, be kind.
2:32:30
Tad Eggleston: And, for Nate67, and we'll see you after the next page.